Why FromSoftware Should Give Open-Worlds a Break With Its Next Soulslike

For over a decade, FromSoftware has revolutionized gaming by popularizing the Souls-like genre with its hub areas like Dark Souls’ Firelink Shrine or Dark Souls II’s Majula. These hubs are basically sanctuaries for players. Much like a modern-day multiplayer lobby. But instead of the teammates planning, chatting, and having fun, a hub is a place where you can heal, upgrade your character, and take a breather. While everything else in the game might be dangerous or hostile, this hub feels like home.

However, with the studio’s expansion into open-world design, best brought to life in Elden Ring, these intimate, familiar spaces have evolved. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it does leave fans yearning for the original signature centralized hubs. Now, with hints, rumors, and speculations suggesting that FromSoftware may pivot back to a non-open-world setting for its next Soulslike title, circling back to these hubs wouldn’t be a bad choice.

The Role of Hub Areas in FromSoftware Games

Since the release of Demon’s Souls, hub areas have been central to the player experience in FromSoftware’s games. They are meticulously crafted environments that provide a balance to the game’s intense difficulty, allowing players a moment to breathe, regroup, and engage with NPCs who offer both lore understanding and guidance. Plus, hub areas serve a dual purpose. They are both narrative focal points and gameplay safe zones.

As players return to these spaces every once in a while, they gradually build an emotional connection to the hub and its inhabitants. It creates a sense of progression and belonging. NPCs who join or inhabit these spaces add to this feeling, often tied to their unique backstories that unveil new layers of the game’s lore. Firelink Shrine, for instance, holds various NPCs with intricate, interwoven stories that reveal the world’s history and moral ambiguity.

This type of storytelling becomes harder to maintain in
open-world games
, where the vastness of the world can make hubs feel more like transient checkpoints than familiar, central locales.

The Challenges of Recreating Hubs in Open-World Settings

With the release of Elden Ring, FromSoftware ventured into open-world design, effectively broadening the scope of exploration and immersion. While the hit game brought new forms of freedom and discovery, it altered how hubs functioned within the game. Roundtable Hold, the central hub in Elden Ring, for instance, operates as a semi-detached location.

It is accessible only through fast travel rather than being integrated within the game’s main world. This separation makes Roundtable Hold feel less like a lived-in space and more like a detached checkpoint that players use only when necessary. One reason for this disconnect is the open-world design itself where players are encouraged to explore freely without a spot anchoring them back to it.

The Next FromSoftware Title Might Not Necessarily Be a Soulslike Addition

Recent speculations suggest that FromSoftware’s next title might break from the open-world formula of Elden Ring. The studio might possibly opt for a more focused, linear Soulslike structure. If true, this shift could mark the return of traditional hub areas. Miyazaki has already hinted that he wants to explore “abstract” and “warm” themes, which could pave the way for a hub inspired by Miyazaki’s interest in traditional JRPGs too. It could feature a small village or temple garden with a sense of tranquility that starkly contrasts with the perilous world outside.

Perhaps themes like steampunk or a retro-futuristic hideaway where players gather, craft weapons, or interact with NPCs with complex backstories rooted in a blend of fantasy and industrial history could be another way forward. With the Soulslike genre becoming saturated by other studios, the signature yet fresh hub-centric approach could help FromSoftware maintain its status as a leader in atmospheric, character-driven world design. And while the studio is at it, it might just end up producing a new classic in the process — a place that ends up becoming just as memorable as Nexus, Firelink Shrine, or Majula.