Brittany Alva 
FromSoftware president and director of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring, Hidetaka Miyazaki, may not direct any future games in the series he created.
2009’s Demon’s Souls was transformative for FromSoftware. The studio long produced games on a rapid-fire basis with wildly mixed results. For decades, the company produced cult classics like Otogi: Myth of Demons and catastrophic flops such as Shadow Assault: Tenchu. Demon’s Souls saw the birth of the Soulsborne genre and marked a new era for the company.
Miyazaki has directed most of the company’s biggest hits since then, but that’s about to change. With FromSoftware expanding and Miyazaki settling into an executive role, the operational level of the studio is set for a major shakeup. Miyazaki discussed this in an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine.
Is Miyazaki retired from game development after Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree?
Miyazaki isn’t retired from the video game industry but isn’t going to be FromSoftware’s go-to game director moving forward.
He stated in the interview that Elden Ring forced the company to evolve in a positive direction. In fact, he said to expect games from other directors because of Elden Ring’s scope and success. He believes the way to do that is by letting others become game directors.
“I attribute a lot of our in-house creative team growth to Elden Ring because the sheer scale of what that game demanded naturally elevated our talent pool to a higher level…We want to definitely take advantage of that growth through Elden Ring and apply it to whatever comes next, with different directors and game designers,” Miyazaki said.
Elden Ring was born from the minds of Miyazaki and A Song of Ice and Fire author George RR Martin. While FromSoftware was already a AAA studio, that partnership helped propel the company to new heights, leading to a tidal wave of fan support ranging from fan art to massive streaming events. Much of its success is still built upon the goodwill and high expectations Miyazaki built up across Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne.
Miyazaki didn’t completely deny the possibility of coming back as director for the probable Elden Ring sequel or whatever else comes next for FromSoftware. But the company’s next Deracine or next per-diem development project will likely be led by someone else.
While fans might panic at the thought of a post-Miyazaki FromSoftware, this isn’t the first time that he hasn’t directed a major release from the studio. Plus, Miyazaki may have more up his sleeve outside the Soulsborne framework.
The best FromSoftware games without Miyazaki as director
FromSoftware has done well without Miyazaki as game director in its most recent releases. The two most recent releases that didn’t have Miyazaki as director are Dark Souls 2 and Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon.
Despite directing the first and third Dark Souls games, Miyazaki stepped back for the second while he led the Bloodborne team. While fans have historically been hostile towards it, Dark Souls 2 was a critical and commercial success with directors Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura. In recent years, fan opinion of Dark Souls 2 has softened.
Similarly, Miyazaki handed over the Armored Core series to Masaru Yamamura partway through the development of Armored Core 6. Miyazaki worked on three of the Armored Core games before Armored Core 6. He started as director for Armored Core 6 before passing on the baton, and Yamamura finished the game well.
Again, Armored Core 6 was a critical and commercial success without Miyazaki, even though Elden Ring’s popularity overshadowed it.
While he’s a revered figure in gaming, FromSoftware games have performed well without him. This doesn’t mean Miyazaki’s done making games, though.
Miyazaki stated he’d like to explore other genres, if there’s space for it. In particular, he wants to make a traditional turn-based JRPG. It wouldn’t be the first time FromSoftware created a game in the genre, with its last entry in the genre being 2006’s Enchanted Arms. Miyazaki suggested any possible JRPG from him likely wouldn’t be a revival of Enchanted Arms, but he hasn’t retired by any means.
