FromSoftware worried King's Field might confuse players, says developer

Shinichiro Nishida, a longtime FromSoftware developer who still works at the studio, reflected on the creation of the company's original RPG in an interview published in the King's Field Verdite Trilogy Perfect Guide in 2001, recently translated by shmuplations.

Even then, King's Field stood out for dropping players in with little explanation, and Nishida admitted, "We were worried, but at the same time we genuinely didn't know how people would react. We weren't expecting people to just freeze up after being dropped into the game… I mean, you can swing your sword, you'll figure it out.

(laughs)" Nishida said the team avoided copying existing games and instead built interactions around common sense. "RPGs shouldn't inherently have rules like 'you must do this,'" he explained. "We approached it based on common sense – what feels natural.

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