Decades before Dark Souls and Elden Ring, FromSoftware's first dark fantasy RPG was built "from a kind of ignorance": "It was the type of challenge a first-time game developer naively takes on"

From Demon's Souls to Elden Ring, the obtuse, challenging dark fantasy RPGs FromSoftware is known for trace their roots back to King's Field, which launched in 1994 just weeks after the PS1 debuted in Japan. In hindsight, building an ambitious, open-ended RPG on a brand-new console with then-cutting-edge 3D graphics was a bold choice for a debut game, but it seems FromSoftware's very inexperience is what allowed it to lay out the blueprint.

At least, that's how Shinichiro Nishida saw it at the turn of the century. Nishida was one of the developers on the original King's Field, and still works at FromSoftware to this day, having most recently served as a systems designer on Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree. In an interview for the King's Field Verdite Trilogy Perfect Guide in 2001, recently translated by Shmuplations, Nishida laid out his feelings on the series up to that point and how it came to be.

"We considered various ideas" for a debut game, Nishida explained, "but since we were going to develop for the PlayStation, we decided fairly early that it would be a polygon RPG. It was the type of challenge a first-time game developer naively takes on – a kind of ignorance, in a way. Our president said, 'This game absolutely must be full polygon. We will be the first to release a full polygon RPG.' But it was tough in the beginning. (laughs)"

FromSoftware had existed for nearly a decade before it started making games, and it originally developed business applications. Nishida credited that experience in software development for how well the programmers were able to transition into making games for a platform that hadn't yet gotten a ton of development tools.

"We were originally an application developer and everyone was a programmer," he said. "In the very beginning we couldn't figure out how to display polygons, but once we got that working, it was like, 'ah, so that's how it's done.' So I don't recall the lack of development tools being particularly troublesome for us."

Nishida described the contract work FromSoftware was doing as a "tough business," which is part of why the company wanted to transition into making games. "We had concerns that continuing down that path would lead to a shrinking market, coupled with a desire to release our own creations to the world," he explained. "So it wasn't exactly a revolution for us, but we decided to try making games. The PlayStation was about to launch, and SCE was very supportive."

Sony and FromSoftware have ended up having a long relationship, with PlayStation having a hand in publishing both Demon's Souls and Bloodborne many years later. The King's Field series never proved to be more than a cult hit in its day, but it gave FromSoftware the formula that continues to power its biggest hits to this day.

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