As anyone who has played Bloodborne or the Dark Souls game will know, FromSoftware delights in leaving a series of breadcrumbs for the player to follow should they wish to decode the story at these games’ core.
It can be frustratingly oblique at times, but also helps give Miyazaki’s games their unique, cultish appeal, fuelling conversation and fan-theorising long after you’ve put the controller down.
As confirmed above, the snatches of story I uncover during my brief time with Déraciné, make it clear that it’s a game very much cut from the same cloth.
“It’s an absolute true fact that this is the methodology that I take in telling stories in our games,” says Miyazaki when asked why this is how he chooses to tell his stories. “It’s an approach that I really like.”
“I believe it’s rooted in my own life experience,” he continues.
“When I was a kid I was reading books that were probably intended for an older age group. They were books that were very hard for me to understand.
“If I read the book straight-up I probably didn’t understand some of the words or concepts and the meanings. But the work that I had to do – like leaving some of the story up to my imagination, or going back to read things again later when I had greater understanding – that’s a process that has had a big influence on what I do today.
“I feel like you can have ‘easy’ books that you can read all the time but once in a while I feel like you should feed yourself something a bit more challenging,that gives you a sense of enjoyment and fun when you are finally able to understand it.
“That’s the approach I like to take – to ensure there is that sense of happiness in understanding what is being told.”
