“From that perspective, I can say that Dark Souls didn’t suddenly become a massive success overnight,” Harada said. “It was the result of everything Miyazaki and his team had built up through their previous titles.”

According to Harada, the acclaim that FromSoft enjoys feels like “almost complete reversals in attitude” compared to “the days when [Miyazaki] and his team were struggling the most.” It was a contributing factor to his own exhaustion with people who he says can only judge a game’s merits “by saying things like, ‘That title cost X billion yen to make and sold Y million copies.’”