On Miyazaki (Patreon)

No, not that Miyazaki.

Today I'm talking about Hidetaka Miyazaki, the video game designer behind the Dark Souls series and Elden Ring.

I am not a great video game player. I usually muddle through games on Normal mode, with many tries. And like a lot of people, the most I had heard about Dark Souls and its sister games is that they are hard. Mercilessly hard. That did not appeal to me at all.

But when Bloodborne came out, I was instantly drawn to its atmosphere and aesthetic. I bought a ps4 specifically so I could play it. And listen: it's a hard game. But it's also a beautiful game, lovingly designed, full of moments that stick with you long after playing. Also, it's not as hard as people say. Oh sure, you will die a lot. But that's just part of how the game is designed. If you keep sticking with it, you can absolutely beat the whole game. I did, and I'm not that great at video games.

I have since played all the Souls games, Sekiro, and Elden Ring, most of those multiple times. Something about these games keep me coming back.

There is, of course, the atmosphere, which is always lovely. Elden Ring contains moments of stunning visual beauty that have nothing to do with the technical level of the graphics, and everything to do with an eye for timeless design.

And there is the game design, which destroys you in thoughtful and often funny ways. Sure, it's a little frustrating when steps away from a bonfire, an enemy comes careening out of a hidden corner and pushes you off a ledge. But it also carries with it the knowledge that the designer thought about you in this moment, thought about where you were going to be focusing, and put a little guy there to mess with you. It makes you feel cared for, in a way that you often don't in the vast empty corporate open worlds of many high budget games.

But at its heart is the story telling. At this point it has become a cliché, the idea of hiding story fragments in item descriptions and oblique bits of spoken dialogue, to be cobbled together by dedicated youtubers in videos titled things like "10 secrets about Elden Ring that will make you sob".

That's missing the point of this kind of storytelling though. It's not a story designed to be understood in full. It's a story designed to be caught in fragments, to be half understood in passing. Names repeat. Themes emerge. But there are no big pay-offs. No twists. Just the sad feeling that you are living in a world that's glory days are long behind it, and all you can do is try your best with the decaying world that is left. It's relatable.

I've played this games over and over, and will keep playing them. Because no other game I've found gives me quite the feeling that they do. Because every time I move from them to some other game, I feel a little pang of disappointment. And because they tell stories that I still don't quite understand, but that live in me like dreams, or like memories half-forgotten.

So thank you, Hidetaka Miyazaki. You're the less famous Miyazaki, but you have the same ability to conjure a world that feels truer than true, and that makes me sad when it's time to leave it.

-Joseph Fink