

It’s an uncommon gesture in Demon Souls, used only when a character casts a miracle while wearing the Ring of Sincere Prayer. In Demon’s Souls, praising the sun only makes a guest appearance and isn’t referred to as “praising the sun.” Just like the rest of Dark Souls lore, it’s been there longer than anyone knew to look for it. Of course I told him I'd get rid of it but I secretly kept it in the game. When I presented the game to the rest of the company, I showed them that pose and one of the higher ups told me it just wasn't cool enough. Best of all, if my ideas failed, nobody would care-it was already a failure.” I figured if I could find a way to take control of the game, I could turn it into anything I wanted.

But when I heard it was a fantasy-action role-playing game, I was excited. “The project had problems and the team had been unable to create a compelling prototype. In a 2015 interview with The Guardian, he explains how he took over the failing project: It’s commonly considered Hidetaka Miyazaki’s original creation that led to its popular Dark Souls offspring, but the genre, and the sun gesture with it, might not exist at all without Miyazaki’s rebellious spirit. Early lightĭemon’s Souls was the foundation for the mechanics that we now think of as the souls-like genre-abstract multiplayer, maddeningly opaque lore, and soul-crushing difficulty. This cultural takeover, the permeation of celebration through a game that intentionally restricts communication, is all according to Miyazaki’s grand design-and it began long before the kindling of the first flame. Chances are you’ve seen it in an all-caps Reddit comment, scrolled past the ‘praising intensifies’ gif somewhere on Twitter or Facebook, or watched convention-goers praise the sun for photos like it was the new planking. You don’t need to have played Dark Souls to be familiar with praising the sun.
