Elden Ring Director Admits He Went Too Far

After all these years, it seems Hidetaka Miyazaki might actually feel bad about what he's put every "Dark Souls" fan through. Alright, he didn't exactly say that. However, CNET reports that the FromSoftware director realized one part of his game design ethos needed to be scaled back while making "Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree."

"In terms of the poisonous swamp, I guess in the original 'Elden Ring' I went a little too far," Miyazaki said, "So I'm trying to take some learnings from that." Every FromSoftware game since "Demon's Souls" has included some kind of poisonous area, but "Elden Ring" went above and beyond and included two. Miyazaki might think that he overdid it in the base game, but that doesn't mean he's totally bypassing his love of poison in "Shadow of the Erdtree." In fact, he clarified that he just took some lessons from his experience playing "Elden Ring" and applied them to the DLC's poison area.

Yep, Souls fans are in for another doozy, but now that the DLC has been released, it's clear to see that a little bit of poison is the least of our concerns. "Shadow of the Erdtree" is unbelievably huge, and it throws an incredible number of threats at players who are expected to rely on their years of experience with "Elden Ring" to survive. Luckily, Miyazaki talked about more than his penchant for poison and gave us some hints about what to expect inside the DLC.

FromSoftware has built its reputation on putting out games that smack players down over and over again. In terms of difficulty, you could argue that "Elden Ring" is the studio's most accessible title, but the game's main bosses still demand a ton of fighting prowess from Tarnished who charge into battle. When it came to the DLC, Miyazaki knew that he wanted to give diehard FromSoftware fans a challenge that they'd remember.

"We've kind of really pushed the envelope in terms of what we think can be withstood by the player," Miyazaki told CNET. He said that the main bosses of the DLC are meant to be tough obstacles, but the side bosses hidden throughout the Land of Shadow are what players can seek out to truly test their mettle. Aside from basic power upgrades, "Shadow of the Erdtree" offers us a ridiculous number of new armaments to get the job done. There are over 100 weapons in the DLC, which also introduces entirely new weapon types for players to experiment with. Miyazaki was quick to clarify that all these weapons are meant to create new ways to engage with the game, not to overpower the tools that players already enjoy: "I don't think players are going to feel a drastic or insurmountable change in the difficulty curve just because they have access to these new weapons." After all, weapons aren't going to win the day every time, especially if the environment itself is deadly.

Despite his slight misgivings with the poisonous sections of the game, Miyazaki seems to think that FromSoftware has struck the perfect balance between fun power fantasy and challenging mechanics in "Shadow of the Erdtree." He told CNET that through working on the base game and the expansion, he's gotten a good sense of what FromSoftware needs to do for its next game. It may not be open world like "Elden Ring," but Miyazaki said, "I think that combination between freedom and difficulty will become a big hint in whatever it is we do next."

Before FromSoftware begins its next project, fans will need to decide if Miyazaki is right about "Shadow of the Erdtree." Just before the DLC launched, half the game's players were still locked out of the entrance because they hadn't beaten Mohg, Lord of Blood. Mohg is one of the hardest bosses in the base game, but now he's just a warm-up act for what's to come. Players are powering through his fight and discovering something major on the other side.

Fans think Miyazaki undersold what FromSoftware pulled off with "Shadow of the Erdtree." The DLC alone is bigger than some AAA games, and everything from the bosses to the weapons to the architecture seems to have been carefully crafted by passionate designers. Simply put, FromSoftware has done it again — even if Miyazaki is pushing it a bit with the poison swamps.