Would the Elden Ring Developer Be the Same if They Never Made Made Demon Souls?

Last year, FromSoftware took the gaming world by storm with the release of its latest title, Elden Ring. The game was, like all of their games, an instant success, but thanks to the involvement of George R. R. Martin, it gained a lot more traction than it should have.

It first won a lot of praise from critics and fans alike, then went on to win numerous awards, including Game of the Year 2022. One wonders, though, would it be any different if they never started this series with Demon Souls all those years ago?

Where would Elden Ring creator FromSoftware be if it weren’t for Demon Souls?

Long ago, when FromSoftware was under completely different leadership, they decided to work on a game called Demon Souls. This game was going nowhere, and Hidetaka Miyazaki had to take control of the project and guide it in the right direction.

He even once told the Guardian in an interview, “The project had problems, and the team had been unable to create a compelling prototype. But when I heard it was a fantasy-action role-playing game, I was excited. I figured if I could find a way to take control of the game, I could turn it into anything I wanted. Best of all, if my ideas failed, nobody would care; it was already a failure.”

He turned it into his passion project and gave it a narrative that he claims was inspired by his younger days. He used to be an avid reader but was not too good at English, so whenever he read an English book, he only understood parts of the story; the rest he had to create himself in his mind. And that’s how he formed the narrative of these games.

A hard game with dark fantasy elements and a story that was broken for some and intriguing to others. Sony saw it during TGS 2008 and just acted like it did not exist. The game’s showcase was considered a disaster. Atlus published it and gave it a limited physical release in Japan as a PlayStation 3 exclusive. The game gained excellent word of mouth, and people everywhere started buying it, and it became a cult hit.

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The developer and the director followed it with a new series called Dark Souls. This series was published by Namco Bandai and created the history everyone knows of. The game was then followed by the likes of Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring; all of those were easy GOTY winners. In a sea of generic software made to please an easygoing crowd. These games offered a necessary challenge backed up by an intriguing narrative. Later on, even Sony accepted this game as their own and released a complete modern remake for the PlayStation 5.

So, the question remains: would all this happen if they had never created Demon Souls? It probably would, because Miyazaki always had this idea in his mind, and he would have made a game out of it sooner or later.

What matters today is the fact that this company actually made those games. And millions around the world are enjoying them as hardcore fans. Giving people relief from yearly franchises that are basically a copy-paste of each other.

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