If you’ve been worried that FromSoftware is pivoting to multiplayer games full-time, Hidetaka Miyazaki wants to put that fear to rest. In a new interview with IGN, the FromSoftware president and director of The Duskbloods addressed the unusual run the studio has had — two back-to-back multiplayer releases in Elden Ring: Nightreign and The Duskbloods — and made it clear that it was a coincidence, not a new direction. And then he said something that’ll make every Soulsborne fan feel better: working on multiplayer for this long has made him want to go back to single-player even more.
Meanwhile, The Duskbloods network test is live this weekend — running across five phases from August 21 through August 24 — giving Switch 2 players their first real hands-on time with FromSoftware’s most experimental game yet.
What Miyazaki Actually Said
“It’s funny because there was never really any big plan that these two games [Nightreign and The Duskbloods] would both release next to each other,” Miyazaki told IGN. “Both of those ideas just coincided with being multiplayer games. It’s not necessarily some big reveal saying that this is the direction we plan to go moving forward. We still have a heavy focus on single-player content as well. This is just something that happened to work out the way it did.”
And on what the experience of making multiplayer games has done to him: “The more you work on something multiplayer for a long time, if anything, it scratches that itch only to want to make something single-player again.”
That’s as direct as Miyazaki gets on future project intent. FromSoftware’s last pure single-player release was Elden Ring in 2022 — which is three years ago now. Even with the co-op and invasion systems in that game, it was built as a single-player experience at its core. Everything since has pushed more actively into the multiplayer space. The fact that Miyazaki is explicitly saying he wants to return to single-player — and framing it as a creative itch that multiplayer work specifically creates — reads like a clear statement of what the next major FromSoftware project is going to look like.
Why Two Multiplayer Games Ended Up Back-to-Back
The short answer is that Nightreign and The Duskbloods had independent creative origins that just happened to align. Nightreign was directed by Junya Ishizaki, not Miyazaki — a distinction Miyazaki made clear in the interview. The Duskbloods is Miyazaki’s own project, but it came from a very specific creative impulse: years of ideas that never fit anywhere.
“Over time, a lot of those ideas piled up — things that you wish you could have done here and there,” he explained. “Having an outlet for them, somewhere we can find a place where they all fit, or can be made to fit specifically in that multiplayer context, is something that was always at the forefront of my mind.”
So The Duskbloods isn’t FromSoftware making a multiplayer game because multiplayer is the future. It’s Miyazaki finding a home for ideas that couldn’t fit anywhere else. That reframing is important. It’s less “FromSoftware goes multiplayer” and more “Miyazaki cleaned out the creative drawer.”
The Nintendo Partnership — And What Nintendo Actually Contributed
The Duskbloods is a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive made in direct partnership with Nintendo, which is unusual for FromSoftware. Miyazaki explained that Nintendo came to the project genuinely excited about the concept and was unusually forward-thinking about how to execute it.
But Nintendo’s contribution went beyond just platform exclusivity. Miyazaki specifically credited Nintendo with improving the game’s onboarding — an area FromSoftware has historically been… let’s call it “hands-off” about.
“The onboarding tutorials and making sure players understand how the game works and how to succeed in the game is something we’ve historically not been super great at conveying instantly,” Miyazaki admitted. “We’ve definitely just dropped players in and hoped they would figure it out. In this case, Nintendo is definitely the right partner for better conveying that information in a way that is understandable to the player; it definitely suits their strengths.”
For anyone who has spent 45 minutes getting wrecked at the Cliffside Mausoleum in Elden Ring before learning you could go somewhere else first, that is a loaded statement.
What The Duskbloods Actually Is — Full Gameplay Breakdown
The Duskbloods has been in development since 2021 — while Elden Ring was still being finished — making it the longest FromSoftware development cycle ever. The concept has always been ambitious, and now that hands-on previews are out ahead of the network test, we have a clearer picture of what the game actually plays like.
The Setup — Bloodsworn and First Blood
The lore runs classic FromSoftware dark. As humanity reaches its twilight, a mysterious substance called First Blood begins to flow — pulling locations across time and space into convergence in a phenomenon called the Dusk. The Bloodsworn are beings who have transcended human limits through blood, summoned into these convergences to compete for the First Blood. Whether they want to or not is left deliberately ambiguous, which is very on-brand.
Match Structure — Four Phases, 30 Minutes
Matches support up to eight players and run approximately 30 minutes, split across four phases. The core loop: all eight Bloodsworn drop into a map crawling with enemies. Killing enemies and completing objectives earns Virtue. Players with the least Virtue are eliminated over a series of rounds — progressively culling the field — until three Bloodsworn remain. Those final three are then transported to a dedicated arena for a direct showdown, with the winner claiming First Blood.
Crucially, you don’t have to kill other players to accumulate Virtue. You can hunt bosses, collect items, complete map objectives, and grind enemies to stay alive through the culling phases. It creates a structure where PvP is always a threat but never the only path — particularly relevant for FromSoftware’s audience, which skews heavily toward PvE players.
The Characters — Six Playable in the Network Test
Rather than a custom character creator, The Duskbloods uses pre-designed Bloodsworn with fixed identities, weapons, and lore. Six are available in the network test:
- Albert
- Trang Lanh
- Bloodhand Jan
- Sniper Layla
- Senator Samir Patres
- Zork
Each character fits a familiar FromSoftware archetype — there’s a bruiser, a ranged specialist, a sorcery-type, and others — but with distinct mechanical identities rather than just cosmetic differences. The full roster at launch will be larger, with more than a dozen Bloodsworn confirmed.
How It Actually Plays
The base combat feels like Elden Ring or Bloodborne — light attack, heavy attack, block, roll, ranged option — but with two major additions that change everything: a double jump and air dash. Movement in The Duskbloods is significantly more vertical and kinetic than any previous FromSoftware game, with Bloodsworn able to jump to heights and cover distances that would be impossible in Elden Ring. The air dash in particular makes PvP encounters chaotic in a very different way from Souls invasions, where both sides are operating at roughly similar mobility levels.
Each Bloodsworn also has two unique skills on cooldowns, and a companion called a Kin — a smaller creature that fights alongside you and can be used to pull back and heal during engagements, giving players a tactical retreat option without fully retreating. Reviewers who went hands-on described it as feeling like you’re playing as a FromSoftware boss rather than a player character, which is either thrilling or deeply unfair depending on your opponents’ Kin management.
Sigils — The Tabletop RPG Twist
The most unusual system is Sigils — customisation items inspired by tabletop RPG mechanics that alter a Bloodsworn’s backstory and assign them a specific in-match objective. It’s a role-playing layer on top of the action RPG foundation, encouraging players to pursue match goals that might not align with simply killing everything. Whether this creates genuinely interesting emergent story moments or just adds noise to an already complicated format remains to be seen, but it’s a deeply FromSoftware idea to bolt tabletop roleplay logic onto a PvPvE shooter structure.
Hub and Lore Delivery
For players who care about the narrative, Miyazaki confirmed that The Duskbloods delivers its story through the House of Night — an explorable mansion hub where matches are initiated. A special NPC in the hub won’t be accessible until the full game launches, suggesting the story is tied to progression rather than individual match outcomes. It’s a smart concession to the reality that people playing a 30-minute competitive match aren’t going to stop and read item descriptions mid-fight.
Network Test Schedule — Five Phases Over Four Days
The network test runs across five sessions, one per day from August 21 (Friday) through August 24 (Monday). Each phase has a specific time window. Check the official Duskbloods network test page for exact times in your region. The test is open to Switch 2 owners who registered — access codes were distributed ahead of the test period.
Release Date — Still Unconfirmed, But This Year
The Duskbloods has no confirmed release date. A September 24 date appeared briefly in a regional listing earlier this week before being pulled, with Nintendo denying it was an official announcement. FromSoftware has committed to a 2026 launch window and parent company Kadokawa has confirmed the same in earnings reports. The real question — as the article source points out — is how close to GTA 6’s November 19 release FromSoftware dares to go. That’s a collision nobody wins.
For more gaming news this week, Bethesda’s Fallout 4 Creations patch dropped August 18 and broke half the modding community’s load orders — with Skyrim next in line — and Battlefield 6’s free trial is running simultaneously with the MW4 beta through August 25 if you want to fill the hours before Duskbloods goes live. The Rockstar union situation also has a major update this week, and if you missed it, gameplay footage of the canceled Star Wars: Magellan surfaced — a co-op RPG from the Torchlight developers that never got a single public announcement before the studio shut down.
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