Dark Souls 3 isn't the last in the series - but it is a turning point
And Miyazaki is co-directing it with the chap behind Steel Battallion's Kinect outing.
Dark Souls 3 won't be the last game in From Software's series, director Hidetaka Miyazaki has clarified - but it is the start of a new era for the games and for the studio.
"First of all, this is not the final product for the Dark Souls series," Miyazaki said in a roundtable interview at E3 attended by Eurogamer's Aoife Wilson. "However, I believe it's the turning point for the Dark Souls series. First of all, Dark Souls has a really unique worldview. It's not a good idea, continuously releasing titles for this series because of that factor. And this will probably be the turning point of From Software as a whole - it's the last project we started working on before I became president. It's basically From Software, they started working on this project when it was an older generation. So it's a turning point. It'll be a turning point, but it's not final."
Miyazaki took over From Software last year, and already in 2015 he's overseen the release of Bloodborne. In order to lighten his workload, for Dark Souls 3 he's co-directing with Isamu Okano, who was director on Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, the Kinect outing for the mech series. Okano is overseeing the day to day duties, while Miyazaki is responsible for the world building.
Miyazaki only relatively recently wrapped on Bloodborne, and there's some overlap between the team that worked on the PlayStation 4 exclusive and Dark Souls 3. "The development timeframe of Bloodborne and Dark Souls overlapped by a year. But none of the team swapped over - just me. Some visual designers have also worked on both titles, though. That's an exception."
As to where the new direction will take Dark Souls, and From Software, Miyazaki elaborated.
"From Software is well known not only for the fantasy game, but they've been creating the sci-fi mech game Armored Core and also some Japanese-style games, like the ninja games. So I may introduce a new direction in those genres or themes that From Software has worked on in the past in new, future titles. However, there are so many things that I want to work on, and I'm actually not communicating anything at this moment, so don't call me a liar if they don't happen!"