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Where Dark Souls III's Nightmares Are Born – A Tour Of From Software
For our October cover story on Dark Souls III and Hidetaka Miyazaki, we traveled to Tokyo and visited From Software to learn more about the production of the game. Our tour guide for this photo gallery was Yasunori Ogura, the marketing and PR director for Dark Souls III. If you're more interested in how the gameplay is changing for Dark Souls III, you can check out our recent stories on the revamped magic system and more. We hope you enjoy the tour!
From Software is located in the heart of Tokyo, within the Shibuya district. Founded in 1986, the studio now employs roughly 230 people and has consumed "five to six floors" of their office building.
One of the first things you see when you walk into From Software is a unique diorama. This artifact was made for a photo shoot for Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu back when From Software was working on the King's Field series, the birds on the stairs were an addition from Famitsu.
The room above is the Dark Souls III development floor, which contains roughly 100 developers. Some of the visual designers on the game and the team handling pre-rendered movies are on other floors.
Some of the 3D modelers and people responsible for "polishing the graphics" are outsourced, making the total number of developers working on Dark Souls III around 200. That's roughly the same number that worked on Dark Souls II.
Check out the next page to get a glimpse inside Miyazaki's office and more!
As you can see above, the corner of this large floor focused on Dark Souls III is From Software president Hidetaka Miyazaki's office. While he doesn't allow cameras into the space, he gave us a tour of the office. The far wall consists of shelves filled with board games (an old, worn copy of Arkham Horror), books (a guide to D&D), and games. He explained that this is a relatively new office for him, so all of his shelves aren't lined with his full collection yet.
Above: This image of Miyazaki's whiteboard is from IGN's 2014 "Making Of" for Dark Souls 2.
In front of Miyazaki's desk there are two couches facing each other and a whiteboard near them. He joked that his president's office looks more like a meeting room because he's always speaking to game designers in this space. They stand and listen while he draws out his designs for the Dark Souls series on a white board.
From Software's Ogura explained that there are five to six floors of development within the studio, with each floor focusing on a separate project/focus. The floor that developed Bloodborne is working on that game's DLC, and there is still a small team working on maintaining the servers for Dark Souls II.
Above is From Software's audio team. While components like the orchestrated soundtrack in Bloodborne are recorded elsewhere, the music for Dark Souls III is recorded here and the booths in the back of the photo are where the atmospheric sound effects and voices from the Dark Souls universe are recorded.
Here's a photo of our team consisting of Tim Turi, Ben Hanson, and Dan Tack alongside Hidetaka Miyazaki at the bonfire near the entrance to From Software. Click on the banner below to enter our hub of exclusive content rolling out throughout the month to learn more about Dark Souls III and the team behind it.
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