Miyazaki: This was another area that gave us some trouble. Since she designed the Elite Knight Armour, I asked Hatsuyama to design the cover. The cover features the player character and the bonfire but it's the darkness behind the two that is the key to the design. Explaining this darkness was difficult without getting extremely abstract… Of course, having said that, there was need for some direction, so in Dark Souls there were three main sections or themes, the image of Gods and Knights centred around Anor Londo, Lost Izalith and the theme of Chaos, Fire and Demons, and Gravelord Nito and the image of death and decay. I suppose you could also add to that the image of the ancient dragons. These themes, along with utilising the artists personal styles, formed the basis of the Dark Souls design principle. And as I mentioned previously, in contrast to most art teams, we didn't have our artists concentrating on a specific section, for example, this artist will work on environment, this one on characters and this one on equipment. Instead all the artists contributed to all of these areas. -

I hadn't expected people to say it looked like a character from Demon's Souls though. That wasn't intentional at all. Nakamura: I heard later that Satake and Miyazaki were discussing my designs over ramen and saying how pleased they were. I suppose you could also add to that the image of the ancient dragons. These themes, along with utilising the artists' personal styles, formed the basis of the Dark Souls design principle. In contrast to most art teams, we didn't have our artists concentrating on a specific section, instead all the artists contributed to all areas. Satake: My first design was a huge guy covered in spikes, but that wasn't what you wanted at all, was it? I love the character designs for this game. The enemies are incredibly scary. There are lots of enemies featured. It's good that some have included many design variations, but many also come with just one design by itself. There aren't any 3D renders.Miyazaki: Yes, but the artist had such a happy look on his face, I didn't have the heart to stop him. Miyazaki: We tried a slightly different approach with the New Londo ruins, closely basing it on existing architecture, in this case Mont Saint-Michelin Normandy, France. Of course, it's not exactly the same, but if you compare the two, the similarities are obvious. Miyazaki: I think it turned into a good silhouette in the end, he looks like someone who doesn't like other people… I can empathise with that, haha.

Miyazaki: Her Brass Armour was actually one of the starting sets for a while. Unlike the other classes, I wanted to create something a little more unusual and this was designed as a pagan knight but it was too difficult to balance, so we gave it to the Knightess. However, that initial image remained. Miyazaki: Yes I suppose so, but each of the areas had it's own feel or tone, as far as art direction was concerned. for an area like Blight Town for example, we found that once we decided on the general direction and gathered together the appropriate reference materials, there wasn't really a need to spend too much time developing the look of the area, it just came together. However in areas which were composed of more traditional architecture we had to spend a lot of time working on the finer details. There weren't a huge amount of artists on the team so it was a case of moving people to where they would be of most use. Miyazaki: You can almost imagine it saying things like "you're too far away", "get over here, I want to eat you". Of course, these words never came up in the design process as I never imagined the creature would develop in this way, but I think it's a really incredible design. As I said before I love working together with the artists, I really think it benefits both of us. In fact I'd go so far as to say that it's my favourite part of the job. Nakamura: Before we move on, I'd like to ask you about the Demon enemies I designed, specifically those designs which incorporate some type of symbolism. I know that you dislike designs which are too easy or obvious, but spending too much time trying to force symbolism into designs can be just as damaging to the development of the world. So I just wanted to know how you feel about the demon enemies overall. Miyazaki: That's right. We really had trouble with that. I've already talked about quite a few aspects of the game I'm not entirely happy with, but I'd have to say that my greatest regret is the Bed of Chaos. The artists and designers worked extremely hard and came up with some fantastic ideas, but it exposed a real problem in our production method. We had no way to find a common goal and work towards it when things went wrong. It's definitely something I want to correct in the future.Miyazaki: Well, we pursued two main avenues when designing Dark Souls. In the initial concept stages I gave each of the artists a few simple "Image words" to use as a starting point, and then they were free to develop these in whatever way they wished. We then took the images we liked, adjusted them where needed, and used them to begin shaping the world. The Gaping Dragon, Egg Carrier and Gravelord Nito for example, all emerged during this concept stage and made it almost unchanged into the final game.