FromSoftware historian Lance McDonald has uncovered a 2007 Demon's Souls prototype that reveals the influential action RPG once experimented with an optional first-person camera nearly two years before its release. As one of the games that helped establish the blueprint for the Soulslike genre, Demon's Souls introduced ideas that FromSoftware would later refine and expand upon in Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring.

A first-person perspective in Demon's Souls may sound unusual, but it actually has strong roots in FromSoftware's history. The developer entered the video game industry with King's Field in 1994, a first-person fantasy RPG built around exploration, oppressive environments, and deliberate combat. FromSoftware later moved on to other franchises, including Armored Core, before Demon's Souls launched on PS3 in 2009, followed by Dark Souls two years later. In that context, the newly discovered footage appears to capture FromSoftware during a transitional period, when ideas from its earlier first-person RPGs were still being considered alongside the third-person combat that would eventually define its modern games.

Demon's Souls Prototype Reveals Scrapped First-Person Mode

The newly surfaced Demon's Souls prototype was discovered and shared by FromSoftware historian and dataminer Lance McDonald, who documented his findings in a YouTube video. According to McDonald, the material originated from a presentation prepared for Gameshare 4, an internal Sony event held in May 2007. It includes roughly two minutes of early gameplay footage accompanied by development slides.

Several sections of the prototype feature a first-person perspective reminiscent of King's Field. The footage suggests that players could switch between first- and third-person views rather than being restricted to a single perspective. The prototype's third-person camera also differs noticeably from the one in the final game, sitting more directly behind the player character instead of providing the freer camera movement that players would eventually become familiar with.

The prototype contains far more than an abandoned camera experiment, however. An early version of the Vanguard Demon appears in the game's files and can be seen fighting in an arena resembling its final encounter. The Dragon God is also shown in a considerably more open volcanic environment. McDonald's footage further reveals unused bipedal serpent enemies, hinting at concepts that would later resemble snake-like enemies seen in other FromSoftware games.

The accompanying presentation material also provides an early look at the online systems that would become one of Demon's Souls' defining features. Among them was the ability to encounter other players as phantoms while exploring the world alone, an idea that would become a major part of the asynchronous multiplayer systems later associated with the Souls series.

Had FromSoftware ultimately committed to first-person gameplay, many mechanics now considered fundamental to the Souls formula could have worked very differently. The third-person camera in the final game makes it easier to judge distances, circle opponents, keep track of multiple enemies, and read the movements of enormous bosses. Mechanics such as dodge rolls, backstabs, shield positioning, and lock-on combat also benefit from being able to see both the player character and the surrounding battlefield.

A first-person perspective could have made those mechanics considerably harder to read. At the same time, it may have made exploring Boletaria's castles, tunnels, and other environments even more claustrophobic and atmospheric. Given how heavily Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring would later build upon Demon's Souls, a different camera perspective could theoretically have sent FromSoftware's subsequent action RPGs in a dramatically different direction.

That possibility is what makes this Demon's Souls prototype particularly fascinating. Many of the elements that would come to define FromSoftware's games—including enormous bosses, bleak environments, asynchronous multiplayer, and deliberate combat—were already beginning to take shape in 2007. Yet the studio was still experimenting with how those ideas should actually feel in the player's hands.

Demon's Souls would eventually become the foundation for one of gaming's most influential action RPG formulas. The newly uncovered first-person footage is a reminder, however, that the conventions now synonymous with the Souls series were not inevitable. Before FromSoftware settled on the formula that would influence an entire genre, the developer was still exploring what Demon's Souls could become.