From designing brilliant level designs to creating the best battle systems ever seen, Hidetaka Miyazaki has set himself apart from nearly every other game director out there. Not only did the culmination of his experience lead to the massive success of the Souls franchise, but the purity in his craft allowed him to make his hardest game ever back in 2019.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice was an experimental title for FromSoftware that took off when it was first released. It even became the face of the studio for the longest time before Elden Ring, which happened to be the director’s take on an open-world game, released in 2022.
The renowned director is known for pouring his soul into every video game he has been a part of, whether that be Elden Ring, the Dark Souls series, or the massively successful PlayStation Exclusive, Bloodborne. However, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice was where he was able to show a part of himself that he was never able to express before.
The 2019 FromSoftware title takes us back to a Feudal Japan setting, with the perfect blend-in of mythology and supernatural elements along with the old-fashioned punishing level design the director is known for. Revealing in an interview via The Verge, Hidetaka Miyazaki revealed the following about how he crafted the perfect battle system for the game.
The genesis for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice came from two ideas we had for a game. The first was that we wanted to enjoy the multi-layered maps we’ve come to create from another perspective, as well as move through them with greater freedom, both laterally and vertically. The second was that we wanted to create a more ferocious, more dynamic battle system filled with tension and strategy.
He essentially revealed that one of his primary objectives was to bring a new way to look at maps along with better freedom to enjoy every nook and cranny of it. Furthermore, Hidetaka Miyazaki wanted an ever-changing battle system, which would have required major tension and strategy to be utilized properly.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice may be the most mechanically unique game Miyazaki has ever made, but its DNA is unmistakably Soulsborne. Just like any other game made by the studio, Sekiro calls for mastery and punishes foolishness and hesitation.
The game’s bosses, like Genichiro Ashina, embody FromSoftware’s brutal design philosophy. While everything about it might seem a little different from the usual Hidetaka Miyazaki world, Sekiro never truly leaves the Souls pack.
Like every Souls game that has come before and after, the 2019 FromSoftware title has undoubtedly left a mark on the gaming world, mostly because of how the director chose to shake things up this time.
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