Elden Ring Director Discussed It and FromSoftware Games’ Difficulty

There’s a new The PlayStation Blog interview with Elden Ring Director and Writer Hidetaka Miyazaki went over the difficulty of both it and FromSoftware games in general. At first, when offering tips for newcomers to the company’s games, he suggested people shouldn’t worry too much. He noted, “…I realize that while we offer games with a high level of challenge, we design them in a way that feels fulfilling to overcome.” However after that, he specifically discussed the difficulty of the company’s games and his thoughts about how many people might be able to beat Elden Ring.

Here is the exact response Miyazaki had regarding the difficulty level from The PlayStation Blog.

I feel like our approach to these games, not just Elden Ring, is to design them to encourage the player to overcome adversity. We don’t try to force difficulty or make things hard for the sake of it. We want players to use their cunning, study the game, memorize what’s happening, and learn from their mistakes. We don’t want players to feel like the game is unfairly punishing, but rather that there’s a chance to win a difficult encounter and make progress. We understand that Souls-like games are regularly associated with impossible levels of difficulty with high barriers to entry. But we try to design the games to make the cycle of repeatedly trying to overcome these challenges enjoyable in itself. So we hope that with Elden Ring and the new options it provides, it will be a success in that respect.

Miyazaki also said, “In Elden Ring, we have not intentionally tried to lower the game’s difficulty, but I think more players will finish it this time.” This ties in to Producer Yasuhiro Kitao’s estimate that the game, at minimum, will take about 30 hours to beat.

Elden Ring will release for the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC on February 25, 2022. There will also be a The Overture of Elden Ring primer out digitally on February 3, 2022.