Hidetaka Miyazaki, the mastermind behind Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and the soulslike subgenre as a whole, fully understands the pain fans experience during their playthroughs. In a recent interview with The Guardian, the developer admitted that he often sees the «You Died» screen himself.
According to Miyazaki, he usually plays his projects shortly before release because he won't be able to make important changes afterward. However, before the release of the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion, he made an exception and played through the original game.
Leading up to the release of any game, I'll be very hands-on playing it and getting as much time on it as much as possible. But after the release, I tend to not want to touch it, because I know I'm going to either find things that I left on the table or issues that will bug me. And once I become a player, I'm powerless to do anything significant to change it. So once a game is out in the wild, I tend to not play.
But in preparation for Shadow of the Erdtree, I played through the main story of Elden Ring. I want to preface this by saying I absolutely suck at video games, so my approach or play style was to use everything I have at my disposal, all the assistance, every scrap of aid that the game offers, and also all the knowledge that I have as the architect of the game … the freedom and open-world nature of Elden Ring perhaps lowered the barrier to entry, and I might be the one who's benefiting the most from that, as a player, more than anyone else.
The release of Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree took place on June 21.