The Duskbloods' Zork Is the Weirdest Character FromSoftware Has Ever Made, and Miyazaki Loves Him

The Duskbloods, FromSoftware's multiplayer-only Switch 2 exclusive, has officially revealed its full Bloodsworn roster — and one character is already stealing the show. Zork, a man crammed into a pear-shaped diving suit who swings a chunk of undersea cable as a weapon, is exactly the kind of wild card the internet was not expecting from the studio behind Elden Ring.

The network test for The Duskbloods will feature six playable Bloodsworn. Alongside Zork, players can choose Albert — a tutorial-friendly all-rounder with a jeweled saber and SMG — and Bloodhound Jan, who wields a heavy axe and can fire columns of flame from a Stone of Sorcery embedded in his left hand. Zork's kit is considerably more chaotic: he can howl, fire a back-mounted cannon, launch his entire body at enemies, and fly around the map using a jetpack built into his diving suit. That last move can knock opponents clean off the map. His mask also sports a beak that, according to Miyazaki, extends like a straw to suck blood — which a win-screen cutscene will apparently show in full. Miyazaki described it as "probably another Ultraman reference of some sort."

FromSoftware director Hidetaka Miyazaki spoke about Zork directly in an interview, calling him "basically as far off to the side as you can get" compared to the game's more traditional Victorian Gothic characters. "I really want the multiplayer landscape of this game to almost feel like a festival," Miyazaki said. "You have all these different kinds of characters, they feel and look very different from each other, and they all come together and it feels chaotic. Zork is definitely a piece of that — just a weird guy who's in the midst of it." Miyazaki also confirmed Zork is one of his personal favorites to play in the network test build. The Duskbloods marks a significant departure for FromSoftware — it's the studio's first original game built exclusively for Nintendo hardware and its first multiplayer-focused title, drawing on the combat DNA of Bloodborne and Dark Souls but stripping out the single-player structure entirely in favor of prebuilt characters with distinct kits.

Polygon reports that FromSoftware is planning a dozen or more Bloodsworn for the full release, with the six network test characters just the opening sample. Community reaction to Zork has been enthusiastic — the internet has latched onto him hard, and based on Miyazaki's own endorsement, that seems to be exactly the intended effect. No release date for the network test has been confirmed in these sources, but the character reveals suggest it is not far off.