FromSoft need to be worried.

[HoloDust]

LegitHyperbole said:

HoloDust said:

Nah - they keep doing their own thing and they are best at it - their "Souls" ares not defined by combat, but superb level designs and worldbuilding that no one has managed to match.
They are evolving in their own pace - long ago they said they are not ready to do full blown open world RPG - so they focused on making open world Souls, aka ER.
Eventually, they will get to full open world RPG, that still incorporates same basic Souls design.

Hopefully they never change that mindset - they got where they are by doing their thing and not caring about industry trends.

So their end goal is to do what they set out with Demons Souls to do and make a Skyrim game but they iterate on the combat first and then add in the rest. When you put it that way, that's actually a fantastic idea. Hopefully they take questing inspiration from CDPR and do what Larian does with characters when they get to that point. 

I'm not sure what Miyazaki's end game exactly is - he has one, he talked about his "ideal fantasy RPG" on many occasions, but only he knows what's in his head.

He also said that Elden Ring is "not quite it, it's pretty close. It's getting close".

He was raised on RuneQuest and D&D, so he is well versed with TTRPGs and said himself his design is influenced by the excitement of exploration and immersion of old TTRPGs. So he is really that guy - medieval fantasy, dungeon delving, monster killing - said so himself, so he makes such games. But he also grew up reading LotR, and Moorcock's "The Eternal Champion" novels, with Elric of Melniboné being most famous character from that universe (and, arguably, what Targaryens and Valyria are modeled after, and even Geralt to some extent) and that influenced his work quite a bit. And there's lot more than fighting in those novels.

So with that in mind I'm not sure they will ever go as far as narrative heavy RPG with chatty NPCs and non-combat solutions to problems. Though I do hope to see some type of evolution toward faction based open ended world in which you choose your sides, while retaining core Souls experience of exploration in deadly worlds.

Then again, he said he wants to make classic JRPG at some point, so who knows. So maybe not him personally, but some of younger developers in FromSoftware.