Back in October, FromSoftware announced that Elden Ring would be delayed from its initial release in January, to the new one we know now which is on February 25, 2022. Creative Director Hidetaka Miyazaki has now spoken up a bit about the delay, and even some of the game design choices that the team is focused on.

• Related Reading: Elden Ring Datamine Reveals Info About Weapon Classes, Status Effects, Model Renders & More (Spoiler Warning)

Speaking in the latest issue of EDGE magazine (Feb. issue, #367), Miyazaki was asked what prompted the game’s delay from its original release date.

Q: What prompted the decision to push back the game’s original release date?

Miyazaki: The level of freedom that we wanted to ultimately achieve in Elden Ring exceeded what we were initially planning for. This [complexity] gradually built up, and the time needed to debug and QA in particular took a lot more effort.

In the same interview, Miyazaki mentioned that the dev team did a lot of trial and error in terms of game design, and how they focused on game tempo in order to keep the player from getting bored.

Q: Given the scope and complexity of the project as a whole, were there any particular mechanics or gameplay systems that were particularly difficult to get right?

Miyazaki: There were a number of challenges that, of course, came with the scope of this game and of the world. There are a lot of areas in which we’ve had to use trial and error since creating the Dark Souls series, iterating on those mechanics and formulas, expanding on them in this new sense of scale. A lot of it was related to the game tempo – the rhythm and the flow of the game, to keep the player from getting bored, to keep them interested, exploring and having fun. And, of course, in this brand-new huge world that we’ve created, we wanted to prioritise that fun and level of player freedom more than anything. So with that comes a lot of characters, a lot of events that you’re trying to incorporate, and you don’t want anything to tread on the toes of anything else – you want it all to mingle and to mesh nicely with the player and their own motivations as well. But you want it to be there, and you want it to provide that stimulation for progressing forward and exploring. So that was probably one of the biggest challenges.

If you’re looking forward to Elden Ring, you might want to check the issue out, as it dives deep into the game’s ties with Game of Throns scribe George RR Martin, and more.

For more on Elden Ring, check out our hands-on impressions of the game right here. Bandai Namco also released 15 minutes of official gameplay that fans should check out, too.