According to his own statements, Hidetaka Miyazaki is once again longing for classic solo adventures following the studio’s recent multiplayer projects.
Hidetaka Miyazaki, president of FromSoftware and the mastermind behind numerous acclaimed Souls games, hints that the studio plans to return to single-player titles after the upcoming multiplayer action game “The Duskbloods.”
In aninterview with our colleagues at IGN (English), Miyazaki explained that it was pure coincidence that two multiplayer games—Elden Ring: Nightreign and The Duskbloods—were set to be released in 2025. “It’s kind of funny. We never had a grand master plan to release these two games so close together,” he said.
“I mean, there was another director at the helm,” he added, referring to Junya Ishizaki, the mastermind behind Nightreign. “But both ideas ultimately resulted in a multiplayer game. This isn’t some big announcement that we’ll only be going in this direction from now on. We’re still focusing heavily on single-player content. It just happened that way this time.“
He elaborated on this thought and emphasized how much fun developing a multiplayer game had been. Then Miyazaki added: ”But here’s the thing: When we work on a multiplayer project for a long time, it actually just stirs up a burning desire to create a single-player game again afterward.”
FromSoftware’s last major single-player game was the mega-hitElden Ringfrom 2022. While it did feature a multiplayer component—including co-op and invasions—that was fairly traditional for the studio, But Elden Ring didn’t place as strong an emphasis on multiplayer as Nightreign did—or as the Switch 2 exclusive title *The Duskbloods* will with its significantly more competitive PvPvE experience.
In fact, The Duskbloods seems to be more of an exception to the rule for FromSoftware. Miyazaki describes the game as an outlet for ideas that “simply didn’t fit into the context of a single-player game.”
“Over time,” he explained, “many of these ideas have piled up. Things we would have liked to try out here and there. It was always incredibly important to me to find an outlet for them—a place where all these ideas could come together or where we could tailor them specifically to a multiplayer context.”
The Duskbloods is a Switch 2 exclusive title developed in collaboration with Nintendo. According to Miyazaki, this partnership came about because Nintendo was “very enthusiastic and open-minded” about the idea behind The Duskbloods and took a “very forward-thinking” approach to its development. You can also feel Nintendo’s influence directly in the game—especially when it comes to making it easier for you to get started.
“Onboarding tutorials and the task of ensuring that you understand the mechanics and can succeed in the game—we weren’t exactly masters of that in the past,” Miyazaki admitted. “We often just threw you in at the deep end and hoped you’d figure it out somehow. In this case, Nintendo is definitely the right partner to convey this information in an understandable way. That’s absolutely one of their strengths.”
The current network test for The Duskbloodswill take place this weekend in five phases—one each day, from August 21 (Friday) through August 24 (Monday). The finished game doesn’t have an official release date yet, even though September 24 briefly appeared today. However, FromSoftware has already confirmed that the title is set to be released this year. So the really exciting question for this fall is: How close will the game dare to get to the GTA 6 release on November 19?
