Development
Demon's Souls was developed by FromSoftware, a developer noted for creating the King's Field and Armored Core series. The project was first proposed and supported by Japan Studio. Demon's Souls was directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, who had joined the company in 2004 and worked as a coder on the Armored Core series. The game was co-produced by FromSoftware's Masanori Takeuchi and Sony's Takeshi Kajii. The concept of reviving a "lost breed of action game" was first proposed by Kajii. Due to the team lacking a coherent vision, the original project had run into difficulties. Hearing about a high fantasy role-playing game which was considered a failure within the company, Miyazaki decided that if he took over the project, he could take it in any direction he wanted. Since it was already flagging, it did not matter if his own efforts failed. Including this early work, production of the game took approximately three years.
The initial concept for Demon's Souls came from FromSoftware's King's Field series, with Miyazaki citing its dark tone and high difficulty as the main inspirations for the game. Despite these inspirations, Miyazaki did not want to connect Demon's Souls to King's Field, and despite his urging otherwise many have termed the game as a spiritual successor to King's Field. Miyazaki hoped to take gaming back to its basics, creating a challenging gameplay-based experience he felt was dying out in the gaming market of the time. He wanted to create a game which would recreate the dark fantasy and hardcore feel of classic RPG titles (such as the King's Field and Wizardry series) on modern consoles, along with incorporated online elements. Miyazaki acknowledged some similarities to other video games such as Monster Hunter and Bushido Blade, but said the team did not have any specific video game influences in mind when creating Demon's Souls. After the first design documents were created, the game concept changed little during development. The final game did not come together in a playable form until very late in development, and even then there were network and framerate problems. The team were given a high amount of creative freedom, only possible due to what Kajii called "fortunate timing and release schedules".
The Souls system was a frequent subject of discussion during development, with the current system being decided upon as there being no risk of loss for souls would rob the game of any accomplishment for players. The unconventional death mechanics forced Miyazaki to carefully phrase the Soul mechanic during design document pitches to Sony, as he was worried they would insist on changes if they knew the full details. When creating the high difficulty, Miyazaki kept quiet about that aspect when talking with Sony, as he was sure they would insist upon the difficulty being lowered. He talked it over with Kajii, who agreed to keep that aspect quiet until release. Despite its reputation as a hard game, Miyazaki never intended the game to be hard, instead aiming for a challenging and rewarding experience for players. One scrapped idea was to introduce permanent death, but this was seen by staff as going too far. Variety was added to combat by changing how different weapons affected the character's movements, similar to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. All the bosses were designed based on a simple premise, in addition to being "varied and exciting".
The multiplayer mechanics were inspired by Miyazaki's experience of driving on a hillside after some heavy snow. When cars ahead stopped and started slipping back, they were deliberately bumped into and pushed up the hill by the cars behind them, thus allowing the traffic to flow. Unable to give his appreciation to the drivers before leaving the area, he wondered whether the last person in the line had made it to their destination, thinking that he would probably never meet those people again. Miyazaki wanted to emulate a sense of silent cooperation in the face of adversity. This gave birth to the Phantom systems, with the implementation of Black and Blue Phantoms designed to increase the variety of experience of players. The messaging system was intended to be nonintrusive, with Miyazaki comparing them to text messages. This system proved difficult for Miyazaki to explain to Sony, with him eventually comparing his messaging to the brevity of an email over a phone call so executives could understand it. The team wanted to avoid the formation of questing parties between players; the multiplayer was designed more to enhance the single-player content rather than be a separate mode. The Old Monk battle, which involved summoning another player as a Black Phantom during the boss battle, caused trouble due to the high number of bugs the team needed to sort out.
Describing the narrative, Kajii said the team's aim was to "sidestep preset narrative" to focus on gameplay. The world view and tone of the world drew from that of King's Field. The tone was influenced by both Miyazaki and Kajii, who were both fans of dark fantasy. When creating the world, Miyazaki drew inspiration from European folklore and mythology, contrasting with the trend of Japanese action RPGs to use Japanese folklore. Direct influences included Arthurian and Germanic folklore, the fantasy movies Conan the Barbarian and Excalibur, and the artwork of Frank Frazetta. The team were also influenced by old gamebooks. This darker art style was partly influenced by their goals with the gameplay. The art style was also influenced by Western titles more than those from Japan. The Maiden in Black was put in at Kajii's request as he wanted a heroine as part of the narrative. As she would be seen in close-up and eyes were the weakest aspect of character models, the team designed her without eyes. Miyazaki had several more worlds in his early design, with the latest to be cut being a world called the Library and an outside area for the Nexus. The Tower of Latria and Valley of Defilement were built around the respective themes of man-made and natural evil.
The fully orchestrated music was composed by Shunsuke Kida, who had worked on few video games but was famous for composing music for several Japanese television series. He was brought on board due to his skill at orchestral composition. The music was dark in tone, with many pieces for solo violin or piano, while other tracks made use of a full orchestra. The vocal work was all choral, maintaining the game's dark atmosphere. Three tracks included vocal work from Japanese singer Kokia.
