Bartski
Member
A newly uncovered 2007 internal Sony presentation (from Gameshare 4 in Tokyo) of an early Demon's Souls prototype and planning materials. The video walks through the original PowerPoint slides with the accompanying English voiceover script, plus a short prototype demo movie that was meant to be shown during the presentation.
Key points from the content
- Presented by Daisuke Ishidate of Japan Studio PD3.
- High concept: "In the depths of lone darkness, feel the warmth of life." Solo exploration of dark ruins to recover souls of dead companions, with photorealistic environments, twisted enemies, and gigantic bosses.
- Core innovation highlighted early: the ghost/network system. Death scenes of other players appear as reusable guides; dead players continue as phantoms that can be summoned for help and potentially revived. The goal was a single-player action RPG that still feels shared and unique per player ("Game 3.0").
- Contrast with pure online MMOs (too time-consuming/group-dependent) and pure offline RPGs (more linear/story-following).
- Prototype demo footage shows:
- An option for first-person perspective.
- A different control scheme (character always faces the camera direction; left stick for strafing/backstep, similar to Oblivion third-person).
- Unused creatures and enemies in what later became the tutorial area.
- Early "Prototype Knight" armor and other visual differences.
- Graphics described as 60–70% of final quality at that stage; prototype phase had just finished in March 2007, with room for regional feedback.
