Drama.
That word kept coming up when I sat down with legendary game director Hidetaka Miyazaki to discuss From Software’s next game, The Duskbloods. Announced last year, the Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive has been shrouded in mystery. The prevailing label that’s been thrown around since its reveal is PvPvE, a term Miyazaki himself used in an interview with Nintendo.
However, after spending nearly eight hours with the network test in From Software’s Tokyo office, calling The Duskbloods a PvPvE game feels limiting. Even Miyazaki told me, “Maybe that wasn’t the best way to refer to [The Duskbloods].”
So what exactly is The Duskbloods then?
A Festival of Sorts
The closest comparison I can make is to board games. Eight Bloodsworn–the player-controlled characters–drop onto a map and are tasked with a series of free-from objectives that are rewarded with Virtue points. Each match is split into four phases, and as it progresses, players with the least amount of Virtue are culled until only three remain. The final three are transported to an arena to duke it out for “First Blood,” the mysterious substance that the Bloodsworn are vying for.
As you explore the map and complete objectives, you may run into other players. However, intentionally killing another player doesn’t typically yield any Virtue. There are exceptions to this, but focusing solely on PvP might get you culled early on. Instead, you could form a temporary alliance with another player. This gives the friendly player an outer glow and prevents you from accidentally targeting or attacking them while fighting enemies. That partnership ends if you and your new friend make it to the final phase.
So how do you earn Virtue? In any given match there are a handful of goals players can chase. Probably the most straightforward of the Bloodfang Commendation which awards Virtue to the players with the highest enemy kill-count. This includes basic enemies you might find wandering the world. Another routinely rewards the players who’ve scooped up the most items.
There are more direct ways to earn Virtue, too. Players can hunt down bosses marked on the map or seek out corpses adorned with purple flames that reward Virtue for each one found. These objectives are less competitive by design. If you initiate a boss fight, every player in the match is notified, and they are given the option to warp directly to you and join the fight. Within these boss arenas players cannot lock on or attack each other, keeping the focus solely on the boss. If you manage to defeat the boss, the Virtue is split among the victors and those who warped there will return to their last location.
These avenues exist so players aren’t boxed into PvP in order to survive the culling. From Software wants to strike a balance between the PvE and PvP mechanics in order to give players options.
That said, there are instances where engaging with and killing other players is not only encouraged but can shake up the leaderboard. At the end of phase 2 and phase 3, ritual sites appear on the map. Glowing pillars randomly appear within the specified area, and players compete for control. Claiming and holding onto one of these pillars nets you Virtue points, but so does dispatching other players. In one game I shot up the leaderboard and cinched my spot in the final phase because I abandoned these pillars altogether and killed as many players as I could. Of course, you could just ignore these bouts and focus on other objectives, but you might find yourself way behind the competition if you do.
Phases are quick and matches last roughly 30 minutes, so this time-management aspect injects a lot of strategy into The Duskbloods. In any given round you have multiple ways to accrue Virtue, but you need to make quick judgments on how to best spend your limited amount of time. After a few matches, I found that killing basic enemies during the first phase was the best use of my time. I’d level up my character and–if I was particularly aggressive–could claim the Bloodfang commendation.
In any given round you have multiple ways to accrue Virtue, but you need to make quick judgments on how to best spend your limited amount of time.
In phase 2 and 3, I would take down tougher enemies and bosses until a few moments before the ritual sites appeared. After that, I took down as many Bloodsworn as I could. In another round I spent phases 2 and 3 looking for the purple flame corpses and barely made it into the final phase. For as many options as there are to make it into that final phase, it always comes down to a clash with other players. From Software did tease that there may be variations on the final showdown when The Duskbloods launches, but for the network test, it all culminates in a nail-biting PvP match between the three remaining survivors.
In between matches you return to the House of Night, a hub area where you can test out different Bloodsworn, presumably chat with characters, and look over tutorials and lore tidbits. This is where a majority of The Duskbloods story unfolds, but entire wings of the house are locked off in the network test so it’s hard to say exactly what you’ll be doing in here.
Fear the New Blood
I won five games out of the dozen or so matches that we played, and every time I made it into the final phase I could feel my heart pounding outside of my chest. Fundamentally, The Duskbloods plays like Elden Ring or Dark Souls, but these are tense duels that almost feel like a three-dimensional Super Smash Bros. The Bloodsworn can jump incredibly high, each armed with short- and long-range attacks, and winning comes down to exploiting attack-recovery animations. You can even win by knocking players out of the arena. Zork, a Bloodsworn fitted with a bulbous suit of armor, has a skill called Human Rocket that lets him fly across the map and crash into enemies. I witnessed one player get knocked out of the arena because he wasn’t keeping an eye on Zork.
Alongside their bespoke weapons, each Bloodsworn has two unique skills tied to a cooldown meter. One is available at the beginning and the other is unlocked after hitting a certain level within the match. Zork’s basic skill is Human Rocket, and his advanced skill lets him fire mortar-like missiles. Albert, the slender, silver-haired fox in the trailer, packs a sword and a machine gun while his basic skill lets him launch blood projectiles similar to the Reduvia dagger in Elden Ring. Meanwhile, Trang Lanh has Chakrams that can be used as melee weapons or thrown at enemies. Her basic ability lets her turn invisible, and her advanced skill summons a giant white snake.
There are six playable characters in the network test, and each fits into a different playstyle we’ve come to expect from Dark Souls and Elden Ring. Albert and Trang Lanh align closer with dexterity builds while Zork and his massive articulating sword is a strength build through and through. Each character can be tweaked and customized, but these options aren’t available in the network test.
One particularly interesting Sigil has you find your lost love who also happens to be another player and propose to them.
The only customization options we could enable were Sigils. This is one of The Duskbloods’ most fascinating ideas. Upon choosing a Bloodsworn, you can equip them with a Sigil that alters their backstory and tasks them with a specific quest during the match. Rival Bloodsworn are assigned passive Sigils based on your Sigil and unknowingly play a role in your quest. For example, one Sigil marks another player as your sworn enemy, and hunting them down will earn you extra Virtue. Another one tasks you with tracking down an old friend and forming an alliance with them. One particularly interesting Sigil has you find your lost love who also happens to be another player and propose to them. It’s not the first time a FromSoftware game has touched on the theme of betrothal, but it’s never done it quite like this.
This is where The Duskblood’s “drama” starts to take shape. Inspired by tabletop RPGs, these Sigils incentivize players to play out specific roles in the middle of a match. In one game I was marked as someone’s sworn enemy. As the match went on, I noticed that one Bloodsworn wouldn’t stop following me. Every time I’d stop to clear out some enemies or pick an item, he’d try to get in a few swings. Considering that PvP is deemphasized for most of the match, I couldn’t understand why he was so tenacious. It turns out I was marked as his sworn enemy and I had to adapt. Eventually he did kill me, but, thankfully, there’s no penalty from death aside from wasted time.
“We wanted to develop a system that creates unexpected drama and excitement, alongside role-playing,” Miyazaki tells me. While I wasn’t able to complete all the Sigil quests, the inclusion of these player-specific objectives certainly shakes up matches. One Sigil had me play as an inquisitor hunting down heretics. By using a specific emote, a temporary trail would materialize that led me to the Bloodsworn branded as such. It completely shifted my priorities for the rest of the match.
According to Miyazaki, the Sigils available in the network test are relatively simple, but they will get more complex. Either way, I suspect these Sigils are tied to The Duskbloods’ story and its progression: two aspects that remain a mystery right now.
Castles, Trains, and Diving Suits
Despite not knowing what The Duskbloods is about, its tantalizing art direction has me excited to learn more. The gothic aesthetic will certainly drum up comparisons to Bloodborne, but The Duskbloods has its own distinct vision that pulls from different eras and timelines. This is best represented in its cast of Bloodsworn. Each character comes from a different time period and region, but they all fit nicely into that overarching gothic style.
Perhaps the biggest outlier is Zork. His bulky suit of armor looks more like a diving suit than the plated cuirasses we’ve come to expect from Dark Souls, and his helmet features an extendable beak to help him drink blood, almost like a mosquito. Fascinated by his design, I grilled Miyazaki on how this oddball came to be.
“The original design prompt [for Zork] was ‘a Bloodsworn risen from the deep sea […] though [he] looks quite different now,’” Miyazaki said. “[I] love Ultraman and Ultra Seven specifically featuring monsters rising from the ocean depths.” As Zork started to take shape, the diving suit evolved into an industrial-era, steampunk-inspired unit.
Despite the wide range of styles and influences, The Duskbloods’ world feels cohesive. These characters are pulled from different eras, but they all come from the same universe that Miyazaki conjured up. When I asked him how From Software manages to uphold this visual and design consistency, he told me that he personally oversees both aspects, ensuring that the experience feels seamless.
However, Miyazaki welcomed a tinge of chaos:
“I really want the multiplayer landscape of this game [to] almost feel like a festival. You have all these different kinds of characters, they feel and look very different from each other, and [they all come] together and it [feels chaotic]. Zork is definitely a piece of that—just a weird guy who’s in the midst of it, right?”
Despite the wide range of styles and influences, The Duskbloods’ world feels cohesive.
The maps are just as diverse as the cast of characters. As Miyazaki cryptically put it, each one takes place at the “dusk of humanity” as these various worlds are falling apart. The theme each map shares is that sense of ruin: a theme that From Software is no stranger to. But, because there is no fixed era, the team is able to explore a wide array of regions, each with their own style and architecture.
The only map available in the technical tests is Lowanro City, which mostly adheres to the well-established vampire mythos: gothic castles, foreboding clock towers, and grimy sewers. According to Miyazaki, there was a reason for this:
“We went with Lowanro City for the network test [because] it’s very symbolic and matches the aesthetic of vampires. But it’s just one era, [and] aesthetic. Some of the other maps that will be available in the final game are from completely different eras [with] completely different overall architectural styles, so there’s quite a bit of variety to show multiple different eras of humanity’s dusk.”
Lowanro City might feel like an obvious location for a vampire game, but it still has that From Software flair. The bosses that roam the world feel plucked out of some of Miyazaki’s worst nightmares, and the labyrinthine city streets give way to some incredible views and a blood-red moon.
What’s really surprising about Lowanro City, though, is its verticality. The Bloodsworn are far more agile than the Nightfarers in Elden Ring Nightreign, and the map has been designed around their heightened mobility. At the lowest point there’s a foggy swamp (it’s not poisonous, luckily) home to these inky jellyfish creatures, and as you ascend, you start to see more and more of the ornate gothic architecture that looms over the surrounding areas. It’s not quite as big as Nightreign’s Limveld, but there’s a lot to explore.
Part of the reason The Duskbloods, and other From Software games, manage to sidestep a lot of obvious tropes is how Miyazaki uses his inspirations:
“From a personal standpoint, whenever I see something very interesting that I’d like to reference, it never really stops at that point. There’s always things I look at and think, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if it was like this?’ It changes shape in my mind into a constant flow of new ideas coming together and coming apart. Even without intentionally trying to make it original, it just becomes original because of all the other things I want to do with that idea.”
Vampires and gothic castles are well-trodden ground at this point, but it takes just a few minutes of playing The Duskbloods to see all the different directions Miyazaki and the team have taken this familiar concept.
The First Bite
Candidly, The Duskbloods is not the From Software game I wanted.
Coming off of Elden Ring Nightreign, I hoped the team would return to its single-player roots, but it’s hard not to admire what From Software is doing. Taken as a whole, I’ve never played anything quite like The Duskbloods. It borrows ideas from PvPvE games and previous From Software titles, but it’s impossible to pin down. It’s not built on any pre-existing franchises, there is a lot going on in any given match, and there appear to be more tutorials in The Duskbloods than any From Software RPG before it.
That no-so-gentle learning curve might throw some folks off. The abundance of tutorials certainly threw me off, but once I settled into a rhythm and started piecing together its many mechanics, it became harder and harder to put down. The randomized variables within the map ensured that I couldn’t rely on one specific strategy, the differences between Bloodsworn forced me to consider how certain matchups could play out, and the final showdown had my heart racing every time. This is all steeped in a moody art direction that seemingly breaks common vampire tropes at every turn. With more maps, more Bloodsworn, and more lore to pour over, I could see myself spending dozens of hours exploring this world.
After my preview wrapped up, I found myself thinking about the “perfect” From Software game. I dreamed up a game that would have Bloodborne’s gothic aesthetic, Sekiro’s white-knuckled boss fights, Elden Ring’s expansive gameplay options, and Dark Souls’ layered world design. A multiplayer component like The Duskbloods’ never even crossed my mind. But the more I got to thinking about this imaginary game, the more I realized that I don’t really want it. Distilling all those experiences down to one specific thing in order to Frankenstein them together shaves off so much of what made those experiences special.
The Duskbloods represents From Software’s penchant to upend expectations and chart new territory.
Perhaps The Duskbloods isn’t the From Software game I was hoping for when I first sat down with it, but that’s what makes it so exciting. Despite Miyazaki and the team’s extraordinary pedigree, they never seem satisfied or interested in resting on their laurels. I didn’t think I’d like Elden Ring Nightreign or Sekiro, either, but I ate my words on both accounts and sunk 200 hours into each.
The Duskbloods represents From Software’s penchant to upend expectations and chart new territory. Regardless of the risks, it always seems willing to push its design and, in turn, its players in new directions. After all, that willingness to take risks is how Demon’s Souls reinvented the action-RPG genre. I don’t anticipate The Duskbloods doing the same for PvPvE games, but I think that desire to chase new ideas and experiment with off-the-wall mechanics is what I truly want out of a From Software game.
