Some fans credit 2009 action role-playing game Demon’s Souls with establishing many conventions now considered synonymous with its developer FromSoftware, like crumbling Gothic kingdoms, dark fantasy monsters, and challenging gameplay to make you cry like you’ve ingested a whole lemon. But before it became some discerning masochists’ medieval horror of choice, Demon’s Souls was an experiment by defunct Sony developer Japan Studio and FromSoftware.
Video game cut content kingpin Lance McDonald gives rare insight into these infant days of Demon’s Souls with a previously lost prototype presentation Japan Studio put together in 2007, to show off at a conference called Gameshare 4. Company notes indicate the publisher introduced developer FromSoftware as the brain behind “real-time 3D classic” King’s Field – the 1994 graveyard quest that’s the true grandfather of Dark Souls – which emphasizes how much time has passed. This is decades before Elden Ring, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls itself.
The presentation also shows off the 2007-era “photorealistic quality” of Demon’s Souls lorn wastelands and mad, mutated enemies, many of which didn’t make it to the final version of the game – like a serpent knight with a squiggly neck and tall boots.
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A video demo of Demon’s Souls prototype’ also shows an optional first-person perspective – like King’s Field – that would have put your face right in the middle of bosses’ formidable, scaly bellies.
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Otherwise, Japan Studio distinguishes Demon’s Souls from other RPGs by calling online games too time consuming – and the company literally includes a screengrab from that South Park World of Warcraft episode to demonstrate a “stereotype image for MMO RPG gamers” – and it calls exclusively offline RPGs limiting. It emphasizes the importance of Demon’s Souls network connectivity and those ghosts the Souls games continue to proudly flounce around – those see-through phantoms of other players who were killed in battle, or who can be summoned to help you with your own problems.
So I’m struck by the clear parallels between this baby Demon’s Souls and the games FromSoftware is still making. A piece of early concept art, for example, shows a luxurious grass field haunted by a large ring of stone in the middle, which looks so much like a Stonesword Key boss area in Elden Ring’s verdant Limgrave.
Other concept art of a gnarled dragon stuck in a black pit glowing softly with red magma – Flamelurker, maybe – is reminiscent of several FromSoftware bosses from over the years, like Demon Firesage in Dark Souls.
According to McDonald, Japan Studio’s notes emphasize that, while you may feel lonely in Demon’s Souls’ solitary journey, you are not alone because of all the other people playing, too. And after all this time, I think FromSoftware is still prioritize this heady mix of fear and belonging in its titles.
“Like watching the mona lisa being painted,” agrees one comment on YouTube.
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