Newly Discovered Demon’s Souls Prototype Footage Shows Scrapped First-Person Option
Dataminer Lance McDonald has uncovered the earliest known gameplay footage of Demon’s Souls, revealing a scrapped first-person camera option in the original prototype. The footage originates from a presentation displayed at Gameshare 4, an internal Sony Computer Entertainment event held in May 2007—nearly two years before the game’s initial Japanese release. The presentation deck, created by Japan Studio using Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, documents the game’s development at a crucial stage and shows the working title remained “Demon’s Souls” throughout production.
The most striking discovery is the presence of a first-person perspective mode in the early build, a feature that was ultimately removed from the final release. The two-minute gameplay trailer represents possibly the earliest action footage ever recovered from Demon’s Souls development. This find provides invaluable historical insight into FromSoftware’s seminal title, which became the foundation for an entire subgenre of challenging action RPGs and directly influenced the Dark Souls series. The documentation surfaced nearly two decades after the presentation, thanks to McDonald’s investigative efforts—he is known for uncovering detailed development information about FromSoftware games through datamining.