Miyazaki wants Dark Souls to evolve through ‘expression’ — not countless sequels

Former Demon's Souls and Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki is slowly moving on from the series. He's now acting as a supervisor only on the next game, Dark Souls 2, handing over directorial duties to Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura (who worked on the Japanese mech-action series Another Century).

Before he leaves and concentrates on a new, undisclosed project, he's making sure the game is in order, according to Edge. That means overseeing the transition from a peer-to-peer online system to server-based network play, which should greatly improve the online experience.

He also wants to avoid previous mistakes with the production schedule.

“I’m aware that many fans were a little bit frustrated about Dark Souls in terms of the scheduling — more specifically speaking, about the patches that we’ve released,” said Miyazaki. The developer pushed the game out the door before it was completely polished. “I really regretted that, so I reviewed all those kinds of things that I worked on in Dark Souls to make sure that Dark Souls 2 is ready on time.”

But most of all, Miyazaki doesn't want to keep the series from evolving, but that doesn't mean seeing it pump out sequel after sequel.

“I want new expressions," he said, adding, "I’m looking forward to playing Dark Souls 2 not as part of the development team but with a little bit of distance. Everybody knows what the core of Dark Souls is — the dev team does, the fans do, the media does — and that will never change. I [wouldn’t] really care for Dark Souls 8 to come out. That’s not the point. It’s more, ‘What do the fans want?’ We want to stay true to what they expect.”

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