Demon’s Souls almost had an option to play the game in first-person, as shown in newly-discovered footage from a 2007 presentation brought to light by famed Elden Ring dataminer Lance McDonald.
McDonald shared the early gameplay footage, images, and presentation materials on August 7, 2026 — nearly two decades after it was shown at Gameshare 4, a Sony Computer Entertainment event where developers exhibited their current projects to get feedback and share progress updates.
The slideshow, created by Japan Studio PD#3 in Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, lists the game’s working title as Demon’s Souls, something that remained the same throughout development up to its launch. It dove into the game’s premise, promising an environment full of “ruined castles, lone wastelands, and other cursed locations,” fraught with “enemies, twisted mutants, and creatures.”
While several game mechanics remained mostly the same and made it into the final product, a few stand out as starkly different from what Demon’s Souls ultimately ended up being — particularly, its camera system.
In Demon’s Souls, players control their character in third person with an unfixed camera, meaning they can turn it any direction they choose to get a better look at their surroundings and keep track of enemies in battle, though they can lock on to opponents if they want. However, footage recorded within the game’s prototype state shows a player fighting enemies in first-person, with McDonald saying this was an option that could be chosen to switch up the experience.
Additionally, the game’s third-person mode originally had a fixed camera, which followed the player in whatever direction they turned. The left stick was used for strafing and backsteps in what McDonald called a “deliberate” similarity to The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion’s third-person control scheme, though this eventually changed.
It also showed off creatures that didn’t make it to the final version of the game, which included men with snakes for heads – who would later appear in Dark Souls locations like Sen’s Fortress – and a regular, plain old crocodile, as well as delved into the ghost system that the studio ended up keeping and has appeared in subsequent Souls titles.
However, one of the more interesting tidbits from this presentation didn’t have anything to do with gameplay mechanics — instead, it’s a hilarious reference to South Park that Japan Studio PD#3 seemingly included in the slideshow. The slide used a screenshot from ‘Make Love, Not Warcraft,’ which depicts an overweight, acne-ridden Eric Cartman addicted to World of Warcraft.
Japan Studio apparently used the screenshot as an example of a “stereotypical image of MMORPG gamers,” which they hoped to avoid by combining elements of both offline and online RPGs for a more balanced experience.
This is just the latest gem uncovered by McDonald after he discovered an unused cutscene in Elden Ring’s game files that shed new light on its plot, growing the award-winning title’s already expansive lore even further.
Image Credits: Lance McDonald, YouTube / FromSoftware
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.