How Sekiro influenced Elden Ring, according to Hidetaka Miyazaki

According to Hidetaka Miyazaki, director of FromSoftware, Elden Ring was indirectly influenced by Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice’s storytelling and mechanics.

Miyazaki spoke out about how ideas from Sekiro were influenced by Elden Ring in a new interview that was posted to the PlayStation blog (opens in new tab). Miyazaki said that the work on both games was “overlapping to an extent”, but he did mention a few common features and ideas.

For example, Elden Ring’s stance mechanic was influenced by Sekiro’s posture system. Although staggering enemies is not the main objective of Elden Ring’s combat strategy, stances can add depth to critical hits. This contrasts with Dark Souls’ approach of fishing for backstabs and parries. Breaking an opponent’s guard allows for devastating finishers.

Miyazaki also said that “we even referenced Sekiro’s player traversal system for the horse mounting system, and how you traverse Elden Ring.” Sekiro’s vertical exploration and vertical movement is the best of FromSoftware’s games. This made it a valuable reference for the creation of The Lands Between. Elden Ring’s less severe fall damage encourages players take leaps of faith. The horse-powered launchpads scattered around connect areas in surprising and encouraging ways.

Miyazaki said that Sekiro was also more direct in terms of narrative and the way we tell character stories than previous Souls-like titles. “While we are still keeping Elden Ring’s world alive with depth and fragmented storytelling, we are still adhering to our storytelling philosophy. However, there is more emphasis on drama and human elements than ever before. We certainly took inspiration from Sekiro’s approach and tried to incorporate the best parts of Elden Ring.

This is in line with Yasuhiro Kutao’s recent comments about Elden Ring, who said that the game’s cutscenes & character interactions were at least as good as Sekiro. We have heard repeatedly that George R.R. Martin’s work was a major contributor to the world-building of Elden Ring. Martin was a contributor to the lore of Elden Ring and helped to create a world. This narrative is a bit more direct than what FromSoftware fans are used to.

Kitao says Elden Ring is “perfect for people stressed out by Dark Souls.”