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Rare Demon’s Souls prototype shows off first-person perspective, unused enemies that could have rewritten Dark Souls history: “Like watching the mona lisa being painted”
A newly surfaced 2007 prototype presentation for FromSoftware’s Demon’s Souls reveals that the game was once planned with first-person gameplay and an Oblivion-style third-person control scheme. The footage matters because it offers an unusually early view of a game that established many ideas later associated with Dark Souls and the wider Soulslike genre.
The presentation, shared by Souls researcher Lance McDonald, includes planning documents, concept art and gameplay clips featuring altered maps, enemy designs and mechanics absent from the released 2009 PlayStation 3 game. Among the cut material are hostile creatures whose ideas appear to foreshadow elements in later FromSoftware titles, while the prototype already seems to contain versions of the series’ distinctive asynchronous multiplayer systems.
In short
- A 2007 Demon’s Souls prototype has surfaced.
- It shows first-person gameplay and cut content.
- Early multiplayer ideas were already present.
Explained simply
Demon’s Souls is an action role-playing game made by FromSoftware and released for PlayStation 3 in 2009. Players explore dangerous areas, fight enemies and bosses, and can encounter traces of other players’ activity, such as messages or signs that someone has died.
The game helped shape the style later associated with Dark Souls and games inspired by it, often called Soulslikes. FromSoftware’s designers developed Demon’s Souls over several years, changing its controls, locations, enemies and online features along the way.
Lance McDonald researches and documents FromSoftware games, including material that did not make it into the finished releases. Early design material can show how the studio’s ideas changed and help explain connections between Demon’s Souls and its later games.