Miyazaki says Elden Ring’s graphics team felt ‘extra pressure’ due to Demon’s Souls PS5

Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki has said that Sony’s PS5 remake of Demon’s Souls has put his team under extra pressure to improve the graphical fidelity of his upcoming game.

Bluepoint’s PS5 launch title was one of the highest-rated games of 2020 and received widespread praise in particular for its visuals, which many perceived to set the bar for new-gen console games.

Speaking in the latest issue of Edge magazine, which is on sale now, the From Software designer revealed that he’s not played Sony and Bluepoint’s remake of his 2009 title, but he suggested that its impact has been felt by Elden Ring’s development team.

“Yes, I’m pretty sure our graphics-creation staff felt that pressure more than anyone else,” he said in the magazine, transcribed by VGC, when asked if the graphical fidelity of Demon’s Souls created extra pressure for his team.

“And not just with Elden Ring, but with all the games we make. Graphical fidelity is not something we put as the top priority. What we ask for on the graphics side depends on the systems and requirements of the game itself, and it takes less priority compared to the other elements of development.”

He added: “So this is always an area where I feel a little bit apologetic towards my graphics team because I know they work extremely hard. And they’ve worked extremely hard on Elden Ring – our graphics-systems team and our programmers have been pushing a lot of new features to create the best-looking games we’ve ever made.”

Miyazaki went on to explain that he’d not played the PS5 version of Demon’s Souls because he does not like revisiting his own creations.

“As you say, I was not directly involved in it, and I haven’t actually played the Demon’s remake. But this is because I just don’t enjoy playing the games that I’ve made in the past,” he explained.

“It brings up a lot of old emotions, a lot of old memories, and this gets a little bit overwhelming, and it doesn’t feel like playing any more. So I have not played the Demon’s remake, but I am very glad to see it get this fresh look, these brand-new current-gen graphics.

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“It was an old game, so to see it get remade in this way and have new players playing it was obviously something that made me very happy.

“It was a rough game back in the day, with a relatively rough development, so I was anxious that new players would not enjoy it in that same way. That was a cause of concern for me when it was re-released but, you know, in the end, I’m just happy to see the reaction and happy to see people enjoying it.”

He added: “One thing that was really fun was seeing [Bluepoint Games] come up with things we didn’t consider and to approach certain elements of the game its visuals and its mechanics in a way that we either couldn’t or didn’t back in the day. So to see them researching and applying these new thought processes and new techniques, this was something that was really exciting and interesting for me.”