A 2007 internal presentation for Demon's Souls included a playable first-person mode, according to newly unearthed footage, images, and slides discovered by FromSoftware dataminer Lance McDonald and reported by Eurogamer.

The prototype footage, dating to a May 2007 developer showcase, shows a player fighting enemies entirely through a first-person view. McDonald explained that this was a selectable mode at the time — not a glitch or a mod, but an option the development team was actively testing.

The presentation was built in PowerPoint by Japan Studio PD#3, the game's producer, and already carried the name "Demon's Souls," though it was described as a working title. At that stage, the game's third-person camera — the perspective the final release shipped with — followed the player automatically rather than allowing free rotation, with the left stick used for strafing and backsteps. McDonald suggested the control scheme was deliberately similar to The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, the open-world fantasy RPG from Bethesda that had been released the previous year.

The 2007 slides also revealed content that was cut from the final game, including snake-headed enemies that later resurfaced in Dark Souls' Sen's Fortress — a notorious area in FromSoftware's 2011 follow-up. The presentation touched on the ghost mechanic, which lets players see the phantoms of others online and survived into the released game, becoming a series staple.

One slide used a screenshot from South Park's "Make Love, Not Warcraft" episode — the one where the boys become hopelessly addicted to Blizzard's MMO — as an example of what the team called the "stereotype image for MMO RPG gamers" they wanted to avoid. Demon's Souls, of course, went on to define its own identity: a punishing action RPG with online elements that felt nothing like the genre's conventions at the time.

McDonald, known online as @manfightdragon on X/Twitter, previously uncovered an unused Elden Ring cutscene that added new context to that game's lore. His track record of digging through FromSoftware's files has made him a trusted name among fans who treat the studio's cut content as a window into its design process.

The revelation comes amid a bittersweet moment for Demon's Souls fans. Sony shut down Bluepoint Games earlier this year — the studio behind the 2020 Demon's Souls remake for PlayStation 5 — despite acknowledging the studio's exceptional work. Bluepoint's remake faithfully recreated the game in third person, the perspective FromSoftware ultimately settled on.

What makes this find compelling is the window it opens into a game that nearly looked and played nothing like the one millions eventually encountered. The first-person mode, the Oblivion-style controls, the snake enemies — all of it was on the table in May 2007. The Demon's Souls that shipped in February 2009 in Japan was the product of choices, not inevitabilities.