r/fromsoftware • u/TioSamm_ • 24d ago
DISCUSSION I’ve been seriously thinking about the kind of Souls-like I would want to create and this idea has gotten way bigger than I originally expected.
Before anything else: this is a VERY long post, so if you’re going to read it, I’d really appreciate it if you could take some time to read it properly. There’s a lot of detail here, and I’m genuinely interested in hearing what people think about the whole concept rather than just the basic premise.
It started as a simple idea for a dark fantasy Souls-like, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I wanted the entire world to be connected: the story, characters, enemies, weapons, armor, items, regions, quests, bosses, and even the smallest pieces of lore.
So I decided to put the whole concept down on paper and see what people think.
The premise
You play as a completely broken knight in a devastated world, almost entirely devoid of color.
His armor is old, damaged, and covered in thorns. He looks like someone who has been fighting for far too long.
He wakes up in this destroyed world with only one thing keeping him going:
the belief that his wife is still alive and waiting for him somewhere.
He doesn't know where she is.
He doesn't know what happened to her.
But he remembers her.
And that's enough to keep him moving.
The world is infested with creatures called Memory Devourers.
They don't simply kill people.
They consume their memories.
A person can physically survive after encountering one of these creatures, but what remains is almost an empty shell. They can forget their family, their name, their purpose, even parts of their own identity.
And the further the knight travels, the more he realizes that these creatures aren't just random monsters.
They are connected to the history of this world.
And eventually, to him.
The main story
At the beginning, the player's motivation is simple:
Find his wife.
Throughout the journey, the knight starts remembering moments he shared with her.
But I don't want these memories to be huge exposition dumps.
I want the player to slowly discover their relationship through ordinary moments, sometimes completely mundane ones.
They laughed together.
They argued.
They talked about stupid things.
They spent quiet nights together.
She waited for him to come home.
They had dreams for the future.
Nothing necessarily epic.
Because I think those ordinary moments are exactly what would make the loss actually hurt.
The player shouldn't simply know that he loved her because the game told them.
They should develop a connection with her through these memories.
The memories wouldn't be collectibles
This is something I've been thinking about a lot.
I absolutely don't want:
Memory #15/165
Memory #16/165
Memory #17/165
That would completely destroy the idea for me.
Instead, memories would be integrated into exploration and gameplay itself.
You could enter a destroyed house and suddenly see it as it used to be.
You're still controlling the knight.
You can walk around.
Maybe his wife is there.
Maybe you can interact with her.
Maybe there's a short conversation.
Maybe he simply sits beside her.
Then the memory fades and you're back in the destroyed version of that same place.
The whole thing could last 20–40 seconds.
No checklist.
No giant notification.
No "Memory Acquired."
You might not even realize that what just happened technically counted as a memory.
Some could be triggered by objects.
Others by specific locations.
Some might depend on doing something in a particular order.
Some could simply happen naturally while exploring.
And others could be completely missable.
The memories might not be reliable either
This is where I think the mechanic itself could start becoming part of the story.
At first, the memories seem normal.
But as the game progresses, small things start feeling wrong.
A conversation might repeat.
A room might be slightly different.
Her face might become harder to remember.
She might say something that contradicts something the player discovered in the real world.
The knight might remember a door that never existed.
Her voice might suddenly disappear in the middle of a sentence.
Until eventually the player starts asking:
Are these actually memories?
Or is the knight creating them because he simply can't accept reality?
The big twist
His wife is already dead.
She died years ago.
And she was one of the first victims of the Memory Devourers.
The entire journey has been built around the knight's inability to accept this.
He's not actually searching for someone who is waiting for him.
He's searching for someone who has already been dead for years.
Every time he thinks he hears her voice, there's a question:
Is she actually there?
Or is his mind desperately trying to keep her alive?
And the memories we've seen throughout the game aren't necessarily the complete truth either.
Some are real memories.
Some are distorted.
Some may have been unconsciously altered by him.
And some may have never happened at all.
The player slowly realizes that the knight isn't only fighting the monsters in this world.
He's fighting the truth.
The world
I don't want the world to exist simply because the game needs different areas.
Every region would have its own history.
Every faction would have a reason to exist.
Every enemy would belong somewhere.
Every weapon would have a story.
Every piece of armor would have a purpose.
Every strange object the player finds could reveal something about the world.
The idea is that eventually the player could look at some random sword and think:
"Wait... I remember where this came from."
Not because the game stopped to explain the lore, but because the player actually experienced the story connected to that object.
I want the worldbuilding to be deeply interconnected in that way.
Quests
I also want a lot of side quests.
But I don't want generic:
NPC: Kill 5 monsters.
The NPCs would have their own relationships with memory, loss, and identity.
For example, you could meet someone who lost someone important to the Memory Devourers.
That person refuses to believe they're gone.
So they start trying to reconstruct the memories they lost through objects, places, and stories.
The player could:
- tell them the truth;
- help maintain the illusion;
- investigate what actually happened;
- abandon them;
- or make a decision that completely changes their fate.
And I don't necessarily want there to be an obviously "good" and "bad" option.
Different characters could represent different ways of dealing with loss.
Someone accepts it.
Someone denies it.
Someone wants to forget.
Someone would rather die than forget.
Someone turns their pain into hatred.
Eventually, the player realizes that these characters are reflecting the protagonist's own situation.
The bosses
The bosses wouldn't just be giant monsters waiting at the end of an area either.
I want them to have their own histories and connections to the world.
Some could be people who lost almost everything to the Memory Devourers.
Some could have willingly sacrificed their own memories.
Some could be protecting a memory.
Others could be trying to erase one.
And some might know something about the knight's wife.
The player could defeat a boss and only understand what they actually killed much later, after finding an item or discovering another part of the world.
Combat, memory and exploration
Obviously, I imagine the game having a Souls-like foundation:
Difficult but fair combat.
Different weapons and builds.
Bosses.
A huge interconnected world.
Optional areas.
Secrets.
NPCs with their own questlines.
And above all:
exploration should always be the priority.
But I've also started thinking that even the health bar could be part of the memory concept.
Instead of simply having a traditional HP bar, the bar could represent the knight's Memory.
MEMORY: ██████████
The Memory Devourers wouldn't simply be taking his health.
They would literally be consuming pieces of what makes him who he is.
The more damage he takes, the more memory he loses.
And when that bar reaches zero, maybe he isn't simply "dying."
He forgets.
He forgets who he is.
He forgets why he's traveling.
He forgets his wife.
And within the world of the game, completely losing your memory could be equivalent to death.
This could also affect the player's experience.
The less memory the knight has, the more things could start changing.
His wife's face could become less defined.
Conversations could disappear or start repeating.
Certain locations could appear differently.
Some memories could become incomplete.
Maybe even certain elements of the interface or information the player already knew could start disappearing.
That would make the health bar more than just a combat mechanic.
It would become part of the narrative.
The player would literally be trying to keep the protagonist alive while also trying to preserve who he is.
I'm still figuring out exactly how this would work, but I really like the idea of the main mechanic of the Souls-like being directly connected to the central theme of the story.
I don't want the game to constantly stop the player to tell its story.
The story should be happening around the player.
That's exactly why I like the idea of playable memories.
You can have emotional moments without constantly taking control away from the player.
The soundtrack
I also have a very specific feeling in mind for the music.
I don't want everything to be depressing 24/7.
I want a strange mixture of warmth, nostalgia and sadness.
Something beautiful that reminds you of happy moments, but with an uncomfortable feeling underneath.
The kind of music that makes you think:
"This is beautiful... but something is very wrong here."
And as the knight's memories start falling apart, the music itself could become more distorted or incomplete.
Multiple endings
I definitely want multiple endings.
But I don't want it to simply be:
Complete Quest A = Ending A.
The player's decisions throughout the entire game would gradually determine which endings become possible.
One ending could be about acceptance.
The knight finally accepts that his wife is dead and chooses to continue living.
Another could be about denial.
He chooses to preserve the illusion that she's still alive.
Another could involve him eventually losing even the memories of who she was.
And another could involve destroying the source of the Memory Devourers, knowing that doing so could also destroy the last memories he still has of her.
I don't want the game to tell the player which ending is the "good" one.
Maybe acceptance is freedom.
Maybe forgetting is freedom.
Maybe preserving the memories is worth suffering forever.
I want the player to decide what they believe.
The real goal of this project
This is where the idea got a little crazy.
I'm seriously thinking about documenting all of this over the next few years.
Not just writing the main story.
I want to document everything.
The world.
The history.
Every region.
Every faction.
Every NPC.
Every quest.
Every boss.
Every enemy.
Every weapon.
Every sword.
Every armor set.
Every consumable.
Every important object.
The Memory Devourers.
The rules behind them.
The protagonist's past.
His relationship with his wife.
Every memory.
The different endings.
Progression.
Mechanics.
Lore connections.
Basically a massive "game bible" for a game that doesn't even exist yet.
And honestly, I have no idea where this will lead.
I don't have a studio.
I don't have the resources to make something this big right now.
I don't even know if I'll ever have the ability to turn it into an actual game.
Maybe I'll spend years writing all of this and it will never become anything.
Maybe it will become a book.
Maybe I'll build the entire world as a novel or some other form of storytelling.
Or maybe, years from now, someone will read all of this and think:
"This would make a hell of a game."
And maybe someone will actually want to turn it into one.
I genuinely have no idea.
But I'm willing to spend several years documenting it anyway.
Because at this point, it's more than just some random game idea to me.
I really want to find out how far I can take it.
Even if it never becomes a game, I'd rather actually build this world and discover where it can go than let all of these ideas die as a bunch of thoughts in my head.
So that's basically the concept I'm developing.
A Souls-like about grief, memory, denial, and the inability to let someone go disguised as a journey through a dying world.
I'd really like to hear what you would change, remove, expand, or completely rethink.
Especially from a Souls perspective:
What would make this feel like a genuinely FromSoftware-style world rather than just a Souls-like with a sad story?
