Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice indirectly influenced Elden Ring's mechanics and storytelling, according to director and FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki.
In a new interview posted on the PlayStation Blog, Miyazaki discussed how some ideas from Sekiro rubbed off on Elden Ring. Work on these two games "overlapped to an extent," so Miyazaki says there wasn't anything that "directly came through from that project," but he did point to a few features and ideas that share design DNA.
Sekiro's posture system, for example, helped shape Elden Ring's stance mechanic. Staggering enemies is less of a central objective in Elden Ring's combat, but stances do add some depth to critical hits compared to the Dark Souls approach of fishing for backstabs or parries, as breaking an opponent's guard or stance also allows for devastating finishers.