From Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls to Sekiro and Elden Ring, Hidetaka Miyazaki redefined developer FromSoftware so thoroughly that he became the company’s president. Yet for a guy who came up actually making games, the world of gaming executives is a weird one – and something that’s apparently brought the director some inspiration for the notorious enemies in his RPGs.
Miyazaki was promoted to FromSoftware president in 2014, shortly before the launch of Bloodborne. “I’ve been to places I wouldn’t have visited before,” as a result of that new position, Miyazaki told The Guardian in the wake of Bloodborne’s launch. “I get to see different things, which is important. It gives me new experiences to draw from.”
Among those influential experiences were apparently meetings with other executives. “Now I’m president, I get to meet a lot of other company presidents,” Miyazaki said. “They’re such weird people. I’m fascinated by them. I use some of them as enemy characters in our games.”
I think it’s clear that Miyazaki’s being tongue-in-cheek here, but it’s such an oddly specific thing to say that I absolutely believe it’s true. The real question now is which FromSoftware monsters best correspond to which gaming executives. Maybe there’s a bit of Strauss Zelnick in Starscourge Radahn? But I should probably keep my guesses at who the Blood-starved Beast represents to myself.
Regardless, you shouldn’t take this to mean that Miyazaki’s designing enemies and bosses around game industry in-jokes – not that the true Soulslike fans out there would ever believe such a thing. After all, when designing the Undead Dragon for Dark Souls, Miyazaki famously implored his staff to “try to convey the deep sorrow of a magnificent beast doomed to a slow and possibly endless descent into ruin.” Those aren’t the words of somebody invested in throwaway jokes.
Following up on that quote many years later with our friends at PC Gamer, Miyazaki explained that “I think what I’m trying to do is depict something beautiful, at the end of the day. How you interpret beautiful is obviously in the eye of the beholder; it doesn’t necessarily have to be something physically charming or outwardly beautiful. It can be something inside that lets you empathize with them on a deeper level.” Maybe the most unbelievable idea of all is that FromSoftware has had us empathizing with gaming executives for all these years.