FromSoftware's Next Souls Game Has an Impossible Mountain to Climb (2024)

The future looks brighter than ever for FromSoftware. The famed Japanese studio has produced hit after hit, building a reputation as one of the most reliable and influential companies in the gaming industry. Each FromSoftware game is highly rated by fans and critics alike, but it's worth wondering if the developer can keep the momentum going in the years to come.

Despite the success of Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon this year, it's clear that FromSoftware is best known for the Dark Souls franchise and its spin-offs, primarily Elden Ring. These action RPGs are defined by their strong, singular sense of tone, brutal difficulty, and vague, suggestive storytelling. While the Dark Souls trilogy, originally birthed from Demon's Souls on the PS3, was always relatively successful, FromSoftware expanded its influence with titles like Bloodborne and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. This collection of games culminated in Elden Ring, which reached a wider audience than any of FromSoftware's previous releases and is often considered the best Souls-style game. However, the success of Elden Ring could be a double-edged sword for FromSoftware.

RELATED: Demon's Souls Started a Trend with the Storm King that FromSoftware Refuses Abandon

Elden Ring Left Some Big Shoes to Fill

FromSoftware took a slight detour this year with the latest Armored Core game, but it's likely that more open-ended action-RPGs in the vein of Dark Souls will continue to be the studio's bread and butter moving forward. FromSoftware has refined and remixed the Dark Souls formula several times over the years, and the results have been almost universally praised. With Elden Ring, the studio reached new heights, but new heights are always harder to summit.

Elden Ring managed to incorporate many of the best elements of the Souls games, alongside Sekiro and Bloodborne, and while there are areas where it can improve, many consider it FromSoftware's peak. The game is arguably most similar to Dark Souls, with similar combat fundamentals and a high-fantasy setting, but it offers a vastly greater scope than those games, in terms of both literal map size, build variety, and more. Other elements, like enemy design, music, and combat mechanics, are familiar to Dark Souls fans, but polished to a brilliant sheen.

So, if Elden Ring is essentially a "better" version of Dark Souls in the eyes of many players, then FromSoftware has some incredibly high expectations to satisfy with its future releases. If Dark Souls 4, for example, were to be released next year, many gamers would want it to match Elden Ring's scale, breadth, and general cultural impact. FromSoftware threw the kitchen sink at Elden Ring, and it, in some ways, made Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice look quaint by comparison.

With all that being said, if any studio could defy expectations, it's FromSoftware. Elden Ring took the world by storm, alluring an untapped market of gamers with its uncanny charm and demanding combat, and wound up becoming a phenomenon that no one saw coming. Also, while Elden Ring may have mass appeal, its predecessors still have plenty to offer; Dark Souls has a curated, impeccable atmosphere aided by its linear nature, Bloodborne offers a one-of-a-kind setting and lore, and Sekiro has a more digestible story, alongside arguably the best combat system of any FromSoftware game. FromSoftware could build its future games around one of these strengths, rather than try to compete with what Elden Ring has to offer.

Of course, Elden Ring is an extremely impressive game, the likes of which the gaming industry has not seen before or sense, so it wouldn't be surprising to see comparisons being drawn between it and FromSoftware's future games, especially those following the Souls formula. However, fans have argued that earlier games, like Dark Souls 3 or Sekiro, were the peak of the FromSoftware output before Elden Ring, so its worth waiting to see if the studio can offer more surprises in the future.

MORE: How Armored Core 6 Takes FromSoftware's Signature Replayability to a Whole New Level