Newly surfaced footage from a May 2007 prototype of Demon’s Souls shows that FromSoftware experimented with a first-person perspective nearly two years before the game launched. The early build also lacked the lock-on combat system associated with the finished game and contained cut areas, an unused enemy, and a substantially different version of the Demon God encounter.
The footage provides a rare look at Demon’s Souls before many of the mechanics that would later help define FromSoftware’s Souls games had taken their final form.
FromSoftware Experimented With First-Person Combat
The prototype footage was uncovered by Lance McDonald, a content creator known for investigating and documenting cut content and development material from FromSoftware games.
The material appears to originate from a presentation shown during GameShare IV, an industry event held in Tokyo in May 2007. The exact circumstances surrounding how McDonald obtained the footage have not been detailed.
Its most striking feature is a functioning first-person camera.
The footage shows Demon’s Souls being played from the character’s perspective rather than from the familiar over-the-shoulder viewpoint used in the final release. The same prototype also includes an early third-person camera positioned more rigidly behind the player, indicating that FromSoftware was testing multiple approaches to how the game should be viewed.
The footage suggests players could switch between the two perspectives during development.
Another major absence is the target-locking system. Instead of locking onto enemies and circling them during combat, the prototype player attacks without the targeting mechanic that became central to the final game and many of FromSoftware’s later action RPGs.
Early Demon’s Souls Build Includes Cut Areas and Enemies
The prototype also contains environmental material that did not survive into the 2009 release.
One sequence takes place in a section connected to Demon’s Souls’ tutorial area that was ultimately removed. FromSoftware-focused content creator Illusory Wall has noted that traces of the location can still be identified within the finished game’s environment, even though players cannot normally enter it.
An unusual enemy also appears in the footage: an apparently ordinary alligator.
The creature stands out against the demons, undead enemies, and other supernatural threats that eventually defined Demon’s Souls. The footage shows the player fighting and killing it, but the enemy was removed before release.
Together, the cut content demonstrates how different the project’s enemy roster and world design could have been during its earlier development stages.
Demon God Was Originally a More Traditional Boss Fight
The prototype’s Demon God encounter is another major departure from the final version.
In the 2007 footage, Demon God appears to function much more like a conventional boss battle, allowing the player to engage the creature directly.
The shipped version takes a substantially different approach. Rather than fighting Demon God through a traditional back-and-forth combat encounter, players navigate the arena and rely heavily on its scripted mechanics.
The prototype therefore shows that FromSoftware experimented with a more conventional version of the fight before redesigning it around the environmental encounter found in the final game.
That shift is particularly notable in retrospect, as unconventional boss mechanics would become a recurring part of the studio’s later games.
Presentation Shows How Demon’s Souls Was Positioned in 2007
The recovered material also includes slides offering insight into how FromSoftware and Japan Studio were thinking about Demon’s Souls as a project.
Part of the presentation compares traditional single-player role-playing games with MMORPGs. One slide reportedly references South Park’s famous World of Warcraft episode, “Make Love, Not Warcraft,” as an example of how deeply players could become invested in persistent online games.
Demon’s Souls was presented as a single-player RPG while contrasting its experience with MMORPG design.
The original GameShare IV presentation was reportedly delivered by Daisuke Ishidate, who was working at Japan Studio at the time. The newly surfaced footage recreates material associated with that 2007 presentation, providing another glimpse into how the project was being pitched internally well before release.
The Prototype Predates the Souls Formula Players Know Today
Demon’s Souls ultimately launched in Japan on February 5, 2009, before expanding to other markets. Its combat, level structure, multiplayer elements, death mechanics, and demanding boss encounters became the foundation for ideas FromSoftware would continue developing in later titles.
The studio subsequently expanded many of those concepts through Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Elden Ring.
Seen from that perspective, the 2007 footage is particularly revealing. Features now closely associated with Souls combat, including its lock-on system and familiar third-person presentation, were not always guaranteed parts of the project.
The first-person mode, unused environments, discarded alligator enemy, and early Demon God battle show a game that was still searching for its final identity. Nearly two decades later, the prototype offers an unusually direct look at the experimentation that took place before Demon’s Souls established the design language that would shape much of FromSoftware’s future work.
