I’ve recently started playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, the latest game released by FromSoftware, and, after a steep learning curve, I’ve been blown away by how incredible Sekiro is. I had doubts when I heard that Sekiro wasn’t an RPG like their Dark Souls series but I’ve been truly astounded by it’s quality and how fun it is. This, along with the hype for the upcoming Elden Ring, made me think that it might be interesting to take a look at the history of FromSoftware, a company that I consider to be one of the greatest game developers of all time!
For a company that took the gaming world by storm in the past 15 years, it might surprise you to learn that FromSoftware was originally founded in 1986 to develop software for businesses! Eventually, FromSoftware shifted to video game development and released their first game in 1994 for the PlayStation, King’s Field. A first-person RPG, King’s Field would go on to have three sequels and featured many mechanics that would go on to define their later games such as difficulty, exploration and abstract storytelling.
In 1997, FromSoftware released the first game in what would become their second big series, Armored Core. Armored Core is quite different from what we might expect of FromSoftware these days as it’s a mech shooter that sees you take on missions, earn money and upgrade your machine which is called an Armored Core. This series proved to be very successful for FromSoftware and saw five main games and several spin-offs. It was also this series which Hidetaka Miyazaki, the man who would redefine FromSoftware, would start working on when he joined FromSoftware in 2004.
Over the next decade, FromSoftware continued to make a wide variety of games such as the two Lost Kingdoms games, Metal Wolf Chaos which was released only in Japan and was an Xbox exclusive, Enchanted Arms, Ninja Blade etc. alongside more entries in the King’s Field and Armored Core series. Meanwhile, Hidetaka Miyazaki, who was still working on Armored Core games, heard about a RPG that was in trouble at the company. With the intention of creative freedom, Hidetaka decided to take on the ailing project and design it as a spiritual successor to the King’s Field games. This game would become Demon’s Souls, the first entry in the Souls series and the game that would change the future of not just FromSoftware but also the gaming industry. Despite the impact that Demon’s Souls would have, initial media attention was quite negative. Infamously, Shuhei Yoshida, then president of SIE Worldwide Studios, played the game for two hours, failed to get out of the starting zone and declared “This is crap. This is an unbelievably bad game“. Sony decided to not release the game internationally, a decision that they would later come to regret, and the game was later released internationally by Atlus in North America and Namco Bandai in Europe. The game became a worldwide sleeper hit, selling over a million copies worldwide.
The success of Demon’s Souls prompted FromSoftware to make a sequel with Bandai Namco. However, the Demon’s Souls name belonged to Sony so FromSoftware had to rename the game as Dark Souls, a game that was distinctly its own IP but featured many of the gameplay mechanics and design choices of Demon’s Souls. Dark Souls featured a more open world than Demon’s Souls and was released on both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 with a later release for PC after a successful petition. The success of Dark Souls led to two sequels, Dark Souls II which was not directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki and Dark Souls III which was. After Dark Souls II but before Dark Souls III, Sony decided to amend their past mistake and team up with Hidetaka Miyazaki and FromSoftware to create Bloodborne, a souls-like game that took place in a Lovecraftian, Victorian-era world and featured faster combat than in the Dark Souls games.
After Dark Souls III, FromSoftware and Hidetaka Miyazaki decided to try some new genres. In 2018, they released Déraciné, FromSoftware and Hidetaka’s first VR game, and in 2019, they released Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Sekiro was quite different for Hidetaka as it was an action-adventure game rather than an RPG and featured greater mobility and a completely different combat system. I also remember hearing concerns that the game would be too easy when we learned that you could resurrect yourself in the game. However, those concerns were swept aside when it was finally released and people began to call Sekiro FromSoftware’s hardest game. Having played it myself now, I can truly see how brilliant it is and it gives me further faith in FromSoftware and Hidetaka’s next game, Elden Ring.
FromSoftware has truly come a long way from business software to becoming one of the greatest video game developers in modern video gaming and their history is truly fascinating. Let me know your thoughts on the history of one of the greatest game developers FromSoftware, which games of theirs you have played, if you were aware of them prior to the Souls series, whether you are excited for Elden Ring and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Thanks for reading and if you wish to seek any of the titles I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs! Also feel free to follow my curator page on Steam “JRPG Reviews” for thoughts and opinions on any JRPGs that I play and my YouTube channel “Victory Achieved Gaming” where I guide my friend through challenging games.