One of the best-known features of the Miyazaki souslike it’s their “reticence” to present a plot in a linear and cinematic way. One cannot expect a clear beginning, progression, and crescendo to an easily readable ending. No, FromSoftware’s games designed by Miyazaki are based on “lore“, that is, on a narrative context made up of many details scattered around the world, either in the dialogues with the NPCs, in the descriptions of objects and sometimes simply in the mind of the director himself.
Ryan Morris – lead translator of the Frognation localization team – recently spoke with Edge. Morris is one of the figures behind the translation (also) of FromSoftware’s games, including Demon’s Souls (original and remake), the Dark Souls trilogy, Bloodborne, Elden Ring and Armored Core 6. He is therefore a person who has direct contact with the team and with the way content is created.
According to him, the lore is not really written clearly somewhere, but in practice it exists in its entirety only in the mind of Miyazaki himself.
Morris’ words on Miyazaki
Morris says, “One of the big ideas that drove the design of these games is [avere] a seamless experience, and do as much as possible to make it not feel like a video game“, says Morris, giving as an example the unconventional handling of multiplayer, which allows for “more role-playing, can be more engaging and, hopefully, can be a more emotional experience”.
Speaking instead of lore management, writes: “With FromSoftware’s games, there’s the idea of not telling the whole story in a linear way and not telling every detail of the world. I feel like the story probably only exists in Miyazaki’s imagination, I don’t think that it is written somewhere so you can have a point of reference.” After these words Morris laughed.
“A lot of information has to be gleaned from all the extra material you can comb through when reading item descriptions. This feeling of self-discovery, if done well, can really work“.
If you want to find out as much as possible about Elden Ring, one YouTuber has created a complete explanation of the lore, it only lasts 36 hours.
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