Post
The FromSoftware director who took an inherited cancelled project and built the most influential action-RPG lineage of the 2010s.
Joined FromSoftware in 2004 after careers at Honda and Oracle, Miyazaki was assigned to a struggling project that became Demon's Souls (2009) and was given creative freedom because nobody else wanted the job. He directed Dark Souls (2011), Dark Souls III (2016), Bloodborne (2015), Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (2019), and Elden Ring (2022, in collaboration with George R.R. Martin on worldbuilding). Now President of FromSoftware. Famously private, gives few interviews, and credits the studio's collective work over personal authorship.
Example
Miyazaki has said in interviews that his obsession with cryptic, fragmented storytelling traces to reading English fantasy novels as a child without fluent English — filling in gaps with imagination. The Souls series' opaque lore is a direct extension of that experience.
Why it matters
Miyazaki's design philosophy — punishing combat as honest communication, world-as-puzzle environmental storytelling, opt-in difficulty — has become the dominant influence on action-RPG design in the 2020s. Every Soulslike traces to choices he made.
Related concepts