Lies of P director loves FromSoftware and respects the Soulslike tag, but says "I'm really serious, I'm not lying, I'm very truthful, our focus is to create our own style of game"

Lies of P drew some deserved comparisons to Bloodborne when it was first revealed and later released, generally to the delight of game director Jiwon Choi, but the distinct mood and atmosphere of the game – a piano and string-heavy soundtrack accentuating robot puppet smackdowns – helped it make a name for itself. As Lies of P's massive Overture expansion approaches, with a sequel already in the works, Choi says he remains a big fan of FromSoftware's works and respects the Soulslike label that so many fans use, but he's got his eyes set on crafting something meaningfully different.

I brought up the old Bloodborne comparison at an interview at GDC 2025, and asked how Overture's mood compares to the base game. "The easier path for us is to explain to you what sort of mood we wanted to evoke among the fans," Choi responded (via interpreter). "However, I'm going to control myself and tell you that we will leave that to the fans to experience."

"I am a big fan of Bloodborne, and we believe that it's actually a very attractive game," he added. "I'm a fan of FromSoftware as well. But I wouldn't say I'm particularly inspired by a specific game. I'm a fan of many, many types of games, and that variety of different experiences and inspirations that I pick up with many different games I love, I sort of mold it into my own Lies of P experience. In the end, it's a combination of diverse inspirations that I get from many games that I love, and then I'm trying to transform that into a Lies of P experience that I'm developing for the fans of Lies of P now."

There can be a tendency in games, partly because of how games are experienced and recommended, to associate things one-to-one and treat surface-level similarities as direct emulations. The esoteric ball of mechanics that defines a Soulslike, a genre term I've simply come to accept, is just one example. Good, recognizable, popular games can be useful reference points for players as well as devs in different ways – what worked here and why – but art builds on art and inspiration comes from everywhere, so you can't really pin ideas to one or even a few games or works. I discussed this iceberg of ideas with Choi, who said he never thinks of making games as following a pattern.

"You're right, we are not particularly approaching anything to sort of copy certain things or certain games at all," Choi explained. "Really, for me, I'm focusing on, how do I best tell the story that we composed through all the things that we love about games? So that's constantly how we think about it. And then, once we actually create our expression to tell that story most effectively in that development journey, then the game comes together.

"We never really think about it in a way that, hey, I'm following a certain pattern, at all. So while we are doing that with all the inspiration, with all the love that we have for many different games that we love, in an effort to combine it into a storytelling process, we believe that we are crafting our own game experience. And of course, in addition to that, we are constantly getting user feedback from around the world. And that actually is what we are layering on top of our creative process. So in the future, we believe, and I'm really serious, I'm not lying, I'm very truthful, our focus is to create our own style of game as a part of the byproduct of that process."

On the Soulslike label itself, which Lies of P still uses in many marketing materials, Choi said he respects the intention of the term.

"The concept of genre and how it comes to be in the market, yes, it can be crafted by certain developers, obviously, but also, Soulslike, as you mentioned, the genre gets almost organically formed by the opinions of the gamers together, and it's a representation of their experience after they play certain types of games," he reasoned. "So I really respect that. So for me, then it's a sort of representation of certain expectations. That kind of indicates to me that those are the components that the fans do look for. So yes, I definitely use that as a reference in developing our game."

I've played a billion Soulslikes and Lies of P is still the best one – now I even want FromSoftware to steal from it.