/lit/ - Literature

>>17849952
>What did inspire the game was a combination of European mythology and artistic sources outside of the world of videogames. "There aren't any other games [that I'd cite as inspiration], but there are films like Conan the Barbarian and Excalibur, and Frazetta's fantasy art," Miyazaki explains. Demon's Souls' medieval horror aesthetic is itself a product of the back-to-basics approach behind its punishing gameplay; where Japanese action-RPGs are traditionally fond of a historical Japanese setting, From's designers found their inspiration elsewhere.

>"The worlds of the games we used to play, the ones that made us tremble with excitement, were all Western worlds," says Miyazaki, "like series of fantasy game books like Wizardry and Varitmu. When we made Demon's Souls we took a back-to-basics approach, and so it turned into that kind of world - it was perfectly natural... It isn't widely known overseas, but lately in Japan games with that kind of world have all but disappeared."

>The crumbling forts and gothic dungeons of Demon's Souls' world have a European aesthetic to them that Miyazaki thinks is entirely understandable, citing inspirations from Arthurian to bloodsoaked old-Germanic myth. "Aren't all of us, especially those involved in the actual making of games, influenced by the West? It's only my personal taste, but I'm very much drawn to things like King Arthur and Beowolf, and also the Nibelungen, because they're classics. They show the good and evil in the human psyche and you're made to breathe the unvarnished stench of humanity... [Medieval tales] are not trying to put on airs."