In my Mystery Blogger Award post, I mentioned that I considered Hidetaka Miyazaki as my favourite artist. Miyazaki was responsible most notably for the Dark Souls and Bloodborne games (with the exception of Dark Souls 2, which was merely inspired by him). As a brief answer to the question posed, I don’t feel it really goes into the meat as to why. So I’m going to expand on that a little (or a lot).
First of all, let us address the one thing that gets hotly discussed. Videogames are an art form. It isn’t even up for debate. Movie directors, authors, photographers, musicians etc. are all considered artists without debate. Videogames utilise all of those skill sets and more to produce their final product. Art is defined as something produced to elicit an aesthetic appeal. Regardless of the intent (commercial gain), it cannot be denied that aesthetic appeal goes hand in hand with commercial sales, without it, there would be none. What I believe Mr/Mrs/Ms Strawperson argues is that they cannot be considered ‘high’ art and would come under the ‘low’ category. The same can be said for many other art forms too, a lot of factors have to be considered with each and each has to be looked at on its own merits.
With traditional storytelling methods such as film and literature, the narrative is linear. Despite any tricksy methods (think Memento) that may be used, you start at the beginning and finish at the end as the author intends. This is often repeated in the gaming world too, with some games being a straight path from start to finish with cut scenes explaining the story as they go along. Others might have an open world format, but the crux of the tale is told by taking on missions in a set order, so the plot is not dis-jointed. Miyazaki goes for a different approach, opting for minimal cut-scenes and instead telling the tale of his entire worlds in fragments through item descriptions and sparse NPC (non-player character) dialogue. There is a lot of deliberate ambiguity in his methods, leaving some things open to interpretation, which is to mirror his own childhood. As he grew up, he was a huge fan of Western fantasy fiction, yet his English was not at a high enough level to understand everything he was reading, he would fill in the gaps himself. Everything in the Soulsborne worlds is a tribute to that childhood wonder.
Orchestral scores are used throughout the series to great effect, helping to tell a tale of tragedy or urgency that someone may not have discovered for themselves by reading every item drop or hearing the words of another person. This is also a mark of genius, a sombre choral theme can evoke an emotion that perhaps the player should not be stabbing this beast in the arse, yet feel compelled to do so as progression is important. Making the weighty choices with no penalty other than how it makes you feel as you become immersed in the world. With the open mapped area that most of these games have, it is important to throw these extra ‘clues’ in a newcomer’s direction as the world holds many secrets, easily missed nooks and crannies or obscure actions to progress a minor side-plot that reveals more. As a viewer, we go in almost as blind, as if we are the foreigners.
A lot has been said about the difficulty of these games, I won’t add to it further as this isn’t a review, but needless to say, it is an essential part of his narrative method. The world your character awakes in is always a harsh and dangerous place. The RPG (role-playing game) mechanics of purchasing upgrades to make yourself a more effective fighter, to survive the hostile attacks of enemies and be able to progress help towards this. Each enemy defeated rewards the player with souls (or blood echoes) that are the sole currency of the game. If the player dies, all of this currency is lost unless they make it back to the same spot, if they don’t it is gone forever. This creates fear in a unique way. Does the player progress further, risking everything they have gained, or do they go back, spend what they have to improve knowing that everything they have killed will be respawned? The tension can be almost unbearable at times because of this, ambient background sounds ramping it up as you progress further into the unknown. Survival horror is a term synonymous with games such as Resident Evil, but never has a game fit that description better.
Visually, as consoles improve, so do how the games look. They have architecture that is inspired by many real world locations and have distinct areas that always stick in fans memories far more than most games can boast. The level design contributes to this heavily too, as the open worlds are often labyrinthian, but it is rare a player gets lost because everywhere looks the same; a common trope in videogames. Again, the level design and visual contribute heavily to the storytelling. Opening shortcuts making a repeated journey easier helps a player have a sense of accomplishment or a brief respite from their fear. But most masterful are the details crammed into every minor piece of background. In Bloodborne, corpses can be seen hanging from their feet, arms splayed out below them, yet later discovery of a rune shows that the way the corpses hang is intentional, hinting towards a madness and collective ritualism in the world not seen since the Wicker Man. Cities are left in crumbling ruin, inhabited only by zombie-like ‘hollows’ (former people that have lost their mind through repeating a cycle of death and resurrection), yet these are often put into context by majestic cities, such as the often celebrated Anor Londo area from the original game. This contextualises how many people have come before the player, only to lose themselves as progress becomes too much for them.
There are many YouTube channels dedicated to interpreting the lore of these series of games, most notably by VaatiVidya, who tells his tales in a soft voice, which is the audio equivalent of a pillow. Even if you are not particularly into games, I recommend his videos as a sleeping aid. This kind of fervent community is a testament to Miyazaki’s genius, that it can generate this kind of response in a culture often dominate by tales of screaming online abuse and the reported hotbed of every kind of ‘ism’ you can think of. I firmly believe that history will recognise Miyazaki as gaming’s first true auteur as the debate on whichever new form of media’s artistic merit begins to hot up.
Tokyo Cowboy 
Thank you for your appreciation of art
LikeLiked by 1 person
No problem. Thanks for reading!
LikeLike