FromSoftware's Complete History: Why Dark Souls 4 Was Never the Plan

The Studio That Refuses to Do Sequels

I have been following FromSoftware since 2011. That was the year a friend handed me a used copy of Dark Souls on Xbox 360 and said, with a weird grin, "you are going to hate this." He was completely wrong. What struck me then, and still strikes me now, is how this studio operates in a way that makes no sense by normal AAA standards.

Most developers find a hit and they milk it dry. Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry. Annual releases, diminishing returns, familiar formulas tweaked just enough to justify a new number on the box. FromSoftware found their massive hit with Dark Souls and then immediately started building something else. Then something else again. Then something else again. And again.

This timeline explains why Dark Souls 4 was never part of the plan. And honestly, why that is the best thing that could have happened to this studio.

The Pre-Souls Era: 1994 to 2008

FromSoftware started in 1994 as a business software company. Not kidding. Their first game, King's Field, came out the same year on the original PlayStation. It was a first person dungeon crawler. Slow as molasses, deliberately obtuse, punishing in ways that modern players would riot over. And it had atmosphere so thick you could chew on it.

Sound familiar? It should.

The King's Field series ran through four main entries plus spinoffs across the PS1 and PS2 eras. These games are basically the primordial soup that Dark Souls eventually crawled out of. The Moonlight Greatsword that appears in every FromSoftware game started in King's Field. The interconnected world design where areas loop back on themselves started in King's Field. The cryptic NPC dialogue where every character speaks in riddles started in King's Field.

They also started the Armored Core series in 1997. A fast paced mech action franchise that ran for 15 entries before going dormant after 2012. The fact that one studio could simultaneously maintain a bleak fantasy RPG series and a hyperkinetic mech action series tells you everything about their creative restlessness. This was never a company that wanted to do one thing.

The Souls Era: 2009 to 2016

Demon's Souls in 2009 almost did not happen. Sony commissioned it, then lost faith in the project mid development. Hidetaka Miyazaki took over as director when the game was already considered a failure internally. He realized a wonderful thing: nobody would fire him from a doomed project. So he could make whatever he wanted with zero executive interference.

The result was a game so unusual that Sony refused to publish it outside Japan. Atlus picked up the North American release. Bandai Namco handled Europe. It sold over a million copies through pure word of mouth with essentially no marketing budget.

Dark Souls in 2011 was the breakout moment. Multiplatform from the start, published by Bandai Namco worldwide. The interconnected world design remains unmatched to this day. You could see Blighttown from Firelink Shrine. You could descend through the Depths, emerge in the Valley of Drakes, and circle right back to where you started. Even Elden Ring, for all its staggering scale, does not achieve the same "everything connects to everything" density that DS1 had.

Dark Souls 2 in 2014 is the black sheep of the family. Directed by Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura rather than Miyazaki, who was busy directing Bloodborne at the same time. It made some genuinely interesting changes. Bonfire ascetics that let you reset areas to NG+ difficulty. Power stancing that let you dual wield any two weapons of the same type. The best PvP in the entire series, no contest. But the world design is nonsensical in a way the other games are not. The infamous elevator from Earthen Peak up to Iron Keep, a lava castle that apparently floats above a poison windmill, became a meme for very good reasons.

Bloodborne in 2015 was the first major pivot away from the Souls template. Victorian gothic horror that transforms seamlessly into Lovecraftian cosmic horror. No shields at all, just a gun in your left hand and a trick weapon in your right. The rally mechanic that lets you regain health by counter attacking rewarded the exact kind of aggression that Dark Souls spent years punishing. It is still trapped on PS4 in 2026. Sony has somehow, inexplicably, refused to port or remaster it.

Dark Souls 3 in 2016 brought Miyazaki back to close the trilogy. It is mechanically the best Dark Souls game. Fast combat with weapon arts, beautiful environments, some of the finest bosses FromSoftware has ever designed. But narratively it leans so heavily on Dark Souls 1 callbacks that it occasionally feels like a greatest hits album. Anor Londo again. Andre again. The Soul of Cinder using Gwyn's exact moveset in phase two with the piano theme swelling. The Ringed City DLC in 2017 fixed this by giving the series a definitive poetic ending. The entire world reduced to ash, two nobodies fighting over the last drops of the Dark Soul at the literal end of time.

The Post-Souls Era: 2019 to Now

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice came out in 2019 and proved Miyazaki could leave the Souls formula behind completely. Fixed protagonist named Wolf. One weapon the whole game. No RPG stats whatsoever. No multiplayer. No character creation. A posture system that replaced health bar chipping with rhythmic deflecting. A grappling hook that made vertical movement central to every part of exploration and combat. It won Game of the Year at The Game Awards and is arguably the most mechanically tight action game anyone has ever made.

Elden Ring in 2022 brought back the Souls RPG framework but expanded it to an open world that felt genuinely limitless. This is the game that made FromSoftware a household name. 25 million copies sold. Game of the Year. A genuine cultural phenomenon that people who had never touched a Souls game were suddenly obsessed with. It is the spiritual completion of everything Dark Souls was building toward, with George R.R. Martin contributing the worldbuilding mythology that underpins the entire setting.

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon in 2023 revived a franchise that had been dormant since 2012. Mech action that was fast, vertical, and completely customizable. It sold over 3 million copies, which is not Elden Ring numbers but proved the studio can still surprise people with projects nobody asked for.

The Duskbloods is coming in 2026 as a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive that absolutely nobody predicted. Vampire themed. Victorian aesthetic. Multiplayer focused, though details are still scarce. The reveal trailer makes it look like Bloodborne's gothic horror filtered through a Dishonored lens, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.

Why Dark Souls 4 Does Not Fit

Look at that timeline again. FromSoftware has not done a direct numbered sequel to anything since Dark Souls 3 in 2016. That is ten full years of new IPs, revived forgotten franchises, genre bending experiments, and spiritual successors that push the formula in unexpected directions.

This is not an accident or a coincidence. Miyazaki has said repeatedly that he does not want the studio to become a Dark Souls factory. The creative energy that produced Bloodborne's cosmic horror pivot, Sekiro's posture combat revolution, and Elden Ring's open world gamble does not come from iterating on the same formula. It comes from solving completely new problems in completely new worlds.

Would Dark Souls 4 make money? Of course it would. A stupid amount of money. Would it be a good game? Almost certainly, given this studio's track record. Would it be more interesting, more surprising, more creatively vital than whatever completely unexpected thing FromSoftware makes next? I seriously doubt it.

The studio's stubborn refusal to take the easy path, the sequel path, the franchise path, is exactly why their games keep mattering to people. Every project is a genuine risk. Not all of them work for everyone. I personally bounced off Armored Core VI pretty hard despite wanting to love it. But the alternative is a world where FromSoftware is on Dark Souls 7, each one slightly less essential than the last, each one a little more tired.

I will take The Duskbloods over Dark Souls 4 any day of the week. And I say that as someone who considers the original Dark Souls the best game ever made.