Development may have initially kicked off without him, but Hidetaka Miyazaki has once again hinted that Dark Souls III could be the final installment in the popular RPG series.
While speaking to GameSpot, the Series Creator touched base on a slew of topics often levelled at gaming franchises, including whether the Dark Souls IP has risked saturation in recent years. From Dark Souls II to the eventual Scholar of the First Sin remaster – not to mention the release of spiritual successor Bloodborne on PS4 – Miyazaki is wary of overexposure when it comes to the excruciatingly old-school template.
Per GameSpot:
It’d be a lie if I said I have no concerns about [franchise over-exposure]. I don’t think it’d be the right choice to continue indefinitely creating Souls and Bloodborne games. I’m considering Dark Souls 3 to be the big closure on the series. That’s not just limited to me, but From Software and myself together want to aggressively make new things in the future.
Dark Souls 3 will mark the last game where the development project began before I became president. The next title will be a game that was conceived while I was president. I believe that From Software has to create new things. There will be new types of games coming from us, and Dark Souls 3 is an important marker in the evolution of From Software.
While he doesn’t explicitly state that Dark Souls III will act as the swan song for the revered franchise, further in the piece Miyazaki notes that the upcoming threequel will at the very least bring closure to a “large theme that has continued through the entire series.” But what could it possibly be?
Dark Souls III will make its bow in From Software’s native territory of Japan on March 24, 2016. While there’s no official word on when the game is coming west, a leaked retailer recently pegged the English-language version for April 12.