IGN has put together a short but fascinating video showcasing the somewhat hidden history of Dark Souls, stretching all the way back to the Playstation 1 days of Kings Fields. The rise of the series has been a slow, challenging grind much like the success gamers may, if up to the challenge, find within the games themselves. It’s an intriguing and rare look inside the history of the generally mysterious company and the pseudo creator Miyazaki.

What the game only hints at is the fact that the original Dark Souls, Demon Souls, started out as a very different, failing experiment from, From Software. Miyazaki stepped up and reworked the game from the ground up into what we know as Demon Souls today, saving the game and practically creating a new genre from it’s ashes.