It’s obvious Dark Souls shares DNA with Berserk, but guessing the game’s true foundations is much harder. Director Hidetaka Miyazaki says childhood staples — board games and gamebooks like Dragon Pass and Fighting Fantasy — shaped his vision.

If you’ve read Berserk or dug into the lore of the Dark Souls series and its offshoots, you know FromSoftware’s action RPGs echo Kentaro Miura’s manga. Enemies, weapons, and even environmental motifs often mirror or adapt that source. Yet Miyazaki’s work isn’t only — or even chiefly — driven by Berserk. Some of his biggest inspirations are far more obscure to many players.

In Udon’s 2013 art book, Dark Souls: Design Works, a developer interview reveals that much of Miyazaki’s fantasy sensibility grew out of the board and role-playing games he loved as a kid — a point he raises while discussing the origins of the Chaos Witch, Quelaag.

Dark Souls And Board Games

“There’s an old tabletop game called Dragon Pass, one of my all-time favorites, and in that game there’s a unit called the Crag Spider,” Miyazaki recalls. “The game gives you its name, its stats, and a sheet with the creature’s silhouette. I’ll admit it’s not much, but it was a very powerful unit and for some reason it really caught my imagination. It obviously had an impact on me because I still think about it after all these years.”

“I’m a big fan of old board games and role-playing gamebooks. I still have my copies of Titan and Out of the Pit, for the Fighting Fantasy gamebook series. Sometimes I’ll flip through my books and whisper, ‘So, eighteen skill points, huh? I guess I couldn’t handle that.’ (laughs)”

Designer Daisuke Satake adds: “It wasn’t uncommon [during Dark Souls’ development] for Miyazaki to come in and open some stained, half-torn book and say ‘See this one here? I want something like that’ (laughs).” Miyazaki sums it up: “They were my gateway into the fantasy genre, so I guess it’s only natural that they mean so much to me.”

Dragon Pass

Dragon Pass, first published by Avalon Hill in 1983, is a war-strategy design set in the fantasy world of Glorantha, where knights and monsters replace modern armies. Some creatures were so strong they could wipe out forces single-handedly — an idea that may well have nudged Miyazaki’s later design instincts. A kin title, King of Dragon Pass, is available today.

By contrast, Fighting Fantasy is a choose-your-own-adventure line dating back to 1982. Each book presents problems and options; you jump between sections to chart the story until you finish — or die in battle. Stats are rolled at random, and dice determine combat modifiers every turn.

For context, the late-’70s Dungeons & Dragons craze in the U.S. reached Japan a few years later, whipping up such excitement that it arguably set the trajectory for the video game industry soon thereafter.

Source: 3djuegos