In an interview with IGN, Hidetaka Miyazaki took the time to discuss the most controversial entry in the Dark Souls trilogy. Miyazaki served as the game director for all games in the Souls series, starting with Demon's Souls and up to Elden Ring. Dark Souls 2 was the exception. According to fans, it was the Japanese game director’s limited involvement that caused the low quality of Dark Souls 2. Miyazaki stated that if not for the second Souls game, Elden Ring would not have become what it is known as today:
“As for Dark Souls 2, I personally think it really was a great project for us. And I think that without it, we wouldn’t have had many of the connections and many of the ideas that we carried forward and that pushed the rest of the series ahead. In Dark Souls 2, we got different ideas, and we were able to create different connections that we might not have had otherwise. There’s really no telling whether the series would have continued in the same vein if not for Dark Souls 2.”