A newly uncovered prototype of Demon’s Souls offers a striking look at how differently FromSoftware’s landmark action RPG might have played. The early build uses a first-person viewpoint alongside a much more rigid third-person camera.
The footage appears to come from May 2007, when the prototype and an accompanying presentation were shown at GameShare IV, an industry event held in Tokyo. How the material was obtained remains unclear, but its presentation and development details strongly suggest an authentic piece of the game’s history.
A very different vision of Demon’s Souls
The prototype appears to let players switch between first-person and third-person perspectives. It also predates the lock-on system that would become one of the defining features of the wider Souls series.
One particularly unusual sequence shows the player character killing an ordinary-looking alligator. There is no apparent magical or undead twist: it is simply a normal alligator encountered and attacked during the prototype footage.
An unexpected MMO comparison
The presentation also makes an unusual comparison between solo role-playing games and massively multiplayer online games. While promoting Demon’s Souls as a single-player RPG, the presenter displays an image from South Park’s World of Warcraft episode, Make Love, Not Warcraft.
The image shows the characters absorbed by their computers, accompanied by the joke that becoming hooked on an MMO could leave someone “like this”. The segment begins at 3:58 in the recreated video, which explains the context around the presentation.
The original 2007 presentation was delivered by Daisuke Ishidate, who worked at Japan Studio at the time. The recreation appears to involve John Linneman from Digital Foundry.
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Cut content hidden in the prototype
Illusory Wall, a creator known for examining FromSoftware games, pointed out that part of the footage shows an area from the tutorial that was removed before release. The corresponding location can reportedly still be identified in the finished game, although players cannot reach it.
The prototype also presents the Demon God encounter as a conventional boss fight. In the released game, the battle functions more like an interactive cutscene, making the early version another notable example of how the design changed during development.
There is considerably more to examine in the presentation, from its abandoned camera options to its cut environments and unexpected wildlife encounter. Together, the footage provides a fascinating snapshot of Demon’s Souls before the formula that players know today had fully taken shape.
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