FromSoftware Would Get a Lot of Mileage by Tackling Its Next Soulslikes in One Way

Highlights

• The Shadow of the Erdtree expansion for Elden Ring doesn’t have a release date yet and is unlikely to match the base game’s immense open-world.
• Fans have expressed their desire for FromSoftware to develop a linear Soulslike game after Elden Ring to create some distance and diversify its offerings.
• Staggering open-world and linear Soulslike games could be a potential formula for FromSoftware to maintain creativity and avoid feeling stale in the future.

Elden Ring enthusiasts are still waiting for the announced Shadow of the Erdtree expansion, which doesn’t have a release date yet. Because it’s an expansion, there’s likely little chance that it will compete with Elden Ring’s base game in terms of how immense its open-world is, and nor is it confirmed that the expansion will take place within such a setting. It seems obvious that it might since Elden Ring is an open-world game and translating its crafting and exploration mechanics would only be natural, though, and that lends itself to another potentially rich experience while searching every nook and cranny.

Ever since Elden Ring came out, FromSoftware fans have been vocal about their hopes that the studio will return to developing linear, tighter Soulslikes.

Of course, FromSoftware’s entire history of Soulslikes before Elden Ring operated within claustrophobic yet engaging environments that players could get lost in, unlike how Elden Ring’s Lands Between is a sprawling vista. No matter what, FromSoftware’s next Soulslike game will disappoint fans on either side of the fence whether it is open-world or linear, but pacing itself between both genres could help satiate both in the long run.

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FromSoftware Should Follow Elden Ring with a Linear Soulslike

If FromSoftware followed Elden Ring with a linear Soulslike game like Bloodborne, it could help to create some distance between Elden Ring’s influence. It might also make sense from a logistics standpoint for FromSoftware to take some time before its next open-world game, particularly because conjuring such an enormous world for one game may have taken a toll that another open-world game immediately after would only exacerbate.

Unless FromSoftware’s next open-world game also took place in the Lands Between that Elden Ring established, that would understandably take a lot more development time between releases. Instead, a linear Soulslike would obviously feel much smaller and shorter in comparison, but fans would probably enjoy that distinction for the sake of convenience.

Elden Ring can be played infinitely with new quests, endings, or interactions to discover after 100 hours, and that might not be as appealing now as it was when Elden Ring was a novelty for FromSoftware. The studio has demonstrated it could put out an extraordinary open-world Soulslike game, but returning to that genre so soon might make it feel a bit stale.

FromSoftware Could Stagger Open-World and Linear Soulslikes Equally

The formula that might best accommodate FromSoftware’s talents could be to stagger open-world and linear Soulslike games for the foreseeable future. This would mean that a linear title follows Elden Ring with an open-world title following it, and so on. This too could become formulaic and stale, but for the next decade at least it could be a decent way to diversify what FromSoftware decides to put out, especially if it also plans to continue its newly refurbished Armored Core IP in the meantime.

FromSoftware certainly doesn’t seem like the kind of developer to lean too heavily into an established pattern, with some games receiving a lengthy franchise of sequels and others only having a single entry to their name, and it’s anyone’s guess what its direction will be once Shadow of the Erdtree launches. Until then, other Soulslikes will attempt to achieve that same favor, and it will be interesting to see how the subgenre progresses.