“Long ago, in a walled off land”: architecture between concept and level design in FromSoftware’s video games

Abstract

This essay analyses the ludic function of the architectural elements in some of the video games produced by the Japanese software house FromSoftware. The aim of the essay is to reconstruct the ways in which the developers have progressively negotiated between the various elements involved in the creative process: the declared inspirations drawn from real architectures (such as the Duomo of Milan), the preparatory phase of the concept art, the cut and the re-employment of semi-finished contents and the actual use of those elements in the video game, in which their architectural and ludic function are combined, responding to the needs of level design. The process summarised here is common to many video games, but the works produced by FromSoftware – such as Dark Souls (2011) and Bloodborne (2015) – are frequently cited both for their level design and for the fascination of their settings.