From Software has confirmed that they will be developing a follow-up to Dark Souls (the spiritual successor to Demon’s Souls). Due to the challenging nature of the Souls series provides, it has gained a decent following of hardcore RPG fans and now they’re assured another game to add to the collection.
When asked about the future of the series, From Software’s R&D head Masanori Takeuchi responded with the following:
Of course, it’s not over yet. We’ve always been enamoured by dark fantasy action RPGs. That’s just been our core DNA and I think we’ll continue to utilize that.
Eiichi Nakajim, From Software’s executive producer, chimed in and added that the next game may be taken in a slightly different direction.
We’ve always been about making games for the core gamer, and they weren’t necessarily games that did well financially, which is too bad. The success of both Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, which have each sold over a million [units] per title worldwide, has made us shift our thinking internally to not just core gamers, but to globalize our products, that they can be successful on a worldwide scale. That’s now one of the key pillars we consider when we develop games in the future.
Hopefully their goal to “globalize” their products doesn’t mean that they will sacrifice the difficulty that Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls are notorious for. We’ve seen many other games (ex: Ninja Gaiden 3) drop down their difficulty to open themselves up to new audiences and the reception was less than favorable. For now, let’s remain optimistic and assume that From Software will be able to open their new game up to more people without sacrificing the core values of the Souls titles.
