Demon's Souls' 2007 Materials Reveal First Person Camera Mode & More
Check out how FromSoftware's RPG could have looked according to its early prototype.
FromSoftware
Lance McDonald, known for digging up peculiar details in video games, shared curious insights about FromSoftware's 2009 action RPG Demon's Souls.
McDonald unveiled materials from the presentation from Sony Computer Entertainment's Gameshare 4 held in Tokyo back in May 2007, which show Demon's Souls prototypes and documents. According to the materials, some mechanics stayed the same in the final game, while others underwent major changes.
The notable change is that in Demon's Souls, which at the time still was the game's working title, players could reportedly toggle into a first-person perspective. The RPG's third-person mode, which made it to the final product, was also different: it used a camera that automatically trailed the player rather than allowing free rotation, and the lock-on mechanic now associated with the series had not yet been implemented.
Apart from this, the early materials showed creatures that weren't included in the game, like men with snake heads, which later appeared in Dark Souls' Sen's Fortress, and mentioned the ghost mechanic, which ultimately made it into the released game and later became a recurring series feature. Along with the Demon's Souls materials, the presentation seemingly included an entertaining South Park reference: Japan Studio reportedly used a screenshot from 'Make Love, Not Warcraft' episode to illustrate the kind of MMORPG player stereotype the studio hoped to steer away from.
Check out Lance McDonald's findings below:
Earlier, McDonald explored Bloodborne's Iosefka’s Clinic in the release version and compared it to what FromSoftware had long before the launch:
As for Demon's Souls, check out a mod that gives the game an old-school PS1-like style by modder thegreatgramcracker:
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