Since the soulslike community is quite diverse, I can imagine many different opinions to emerge here. Curious to hear your thoughts!

I’d take Sekiro 2 any day of the week. Bloodborne 2 would be amazing, but Sekiro, to me, is the pinnacle of the genre and has so much untapped potential that’s laying dormant. Bloodborne is too similar to your “standard” soulslike compared to Sekiro, even though I love Bloodborne as well.

  • djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    English
    13·
    10 days ago

    Bloodborne 2, easy. I don’t even really want most of these, let Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls rest as franchises. I’d also prefer if FromSoftware returned to the more “metroidvania” style of open worlds as opposed to Elden Ring’s “wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle” approach. It’s really just between Sekiro 2 and Bloodborne 2 for me, but I can’t actually see how FromSoft would meaningfully iterate on Sekiro’s combat system. More of it would be good, sure, but a big part of my intitial enjoyment of Sekiro stemmed from learning the combat system for the first time. I can definitely see how modern FromSoft could really spice up trick weapons though, and probably improve on the magic system.

  • Skua@kbin.earth
    7·
    10 days ago

    I think Bloodborne has the most potential for plot development. Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Sekiro have satisfying endings already (though I’m relying on other people’s accounts for Sekiro, having not yet played it). I do not know enough about Demon’s Souls to comment.

    Generally I am quite opposed to dragging stories out; endings are important to narratives, and overturning a good one can very easily weaken the entire story. I don’t want to see the significance of Gael and the Painter taken away.

    Elden Ring II could maybe work if set far in the future similar to how the Dark Souls series handled it, but we got to see a lot of the world already and the less cyclical nature of the setting of ER makes it tougher to handwave the choice of ending. I wouldn’t be against them just picking a canon ending and doing something interesting with it, but I’m not sure what that would be

    Sekiro is a more character-driven story than the setting-driven ones of the other two, and those characters got solid conclusions. If there was to be a Sekiro II then it probably shouldn’t be about Wolf, and at that point is it a Sekiro sequel or a new separate game that shares mechanics and a historical-fantasy Japan setting?

    Bloodborne’s setting, though, is very tight and limited. There is no indication that Yharnam is necessarily the cosmic epicentre of the setting in the same way that Anor Londo or the Lands Between are to their ones. That’s not a bad thing at all, I bring it up only to say that it means we can go elsewhere and encounter new Great Ones without wondering why this never came up before. It’s the place that knew the most about them, but anyone else could uncover that knowledge. Other hunters that no longer dream could take what they had learned elsewhere, and humans are nothing if not curious. None of Bloodborne’s endings get in the way of another Great One messing around somewhere. We’ve got space to work with there without ruining anyone’s closure

    • Druid@lemmy.zipOPMEnglish
      3·
      10 days ago

      Sound analysis of why Bloodborne 2 would work well. Concerning Sekiro 2, the true ending definitely leaves the narrative open as to what happens next.

      Tap for spoiler

      Kuro has been cradled by the Divine Child of Rejuvenation so they and Wolf can bring back the Dragon of West to the West - likely China, maybe Korea. Considering they harbour so much power in them and how coocoo bananas everyone went to gain the Dragon’s Heritage power, who’s to say the people at the origin of it aren’t as well? Maybe the country went into complete disarray with its disappearance? I think there’s a lot to explore left. The other endings don’t work as well, of course.

      Then there’s also the possibility of a prequel with Tomoe as the protagonist. She’s made out to be powerful samurai that’s only ever mentioned in passing. She’s the only one who could almost defeat Isshin. I feel like there’s something you could do with that premise.

      But I’d have to agree that Bloodborne 2 would make a lot of sense. Dark Souls 4 would kinda undermine the narrative portrayed throughout the series, ER is also pretty much finished, I feel like.

      • Skua@kbin.earth
        2·
        10 days ago
        Interesting points on the Sekiro ideas!

        I suppose a viable approach for a Tomoe sequel could play into her real-life namesake? Tomoe Gozen lived several centuries prior to Sekiro’s implied time period, but with the (possibly) historical person retiring from war to a life of Buddhist monasticism and the game character being involved with the search for immortality, I feel like someone more knowledgeable about Buddhism and Japanese folklore might have a good avenue to connect the two. A game playing as 12th-century Tomoe in a similarly-fantasticised Genpei War could work, yeah!

        • Druid@lemmy.zipOPMEnglish
          2·
          10 days ago

          Damn, didn’t know that. I guess it ties in quite well into the story then

  • Nikko882@lemmy.world
    3·
    9 days ago

    In my opinion Bloodborne 2 and Demon Souls 2 are disqualified for being PS exclusives, and therefore I have no interest in them.

    Sekiro I just didn’t like all that much, so I don’t really care for a Sekiro 2. I think From did well in making it; it just wasn’t my cup of tea.

    For all my gripes with Dark Souls 3 it did tie up the series nicely with a nice bow, so I don’t really want any more Dark Souls games (If anything Dark Souls it would be a proper remaster of Dark Souls 2, but that is never happenening/that already happened and is called Elden Ring.)

    So by default I guess the answer is Elden Ring. There are a bunch of story threads that I would like to know more about in Elden Ring (mainly The Gloam Eyed Queen and Melina (who is probably the prison/host for her) and what happens after the madness ending) and I like the game. But I think I’m pretty happy with where the game ended, and a sequel would need to choose which ending is canon (or be a prequel, I guess. The Shattering could be a fun time to explore) or it would need to be so distant from the game that we won’t hear anything about the questions raised in Elden Ring anyway (Dark Souls / Nightreign style).

    If I could pick freely I think I would prefer that From takes the lessons they learned from Elden Ring and makes something new.

  • redeux@lemmy.zip
    2·
    9 days ago

    Haven’t played demon souls. Didn’t love elden ring. Of the remaining DS3 is my favorite but part of that i think is just because it’s the most familiar. Sekiro and bloodborne i loved as well. If i had to choose i think bloodborne 2 because id love to see more of that story the most alongside new atrocities, and i really loved the layers of exploration/shortcut it brought.

    I’m curious, when you say sekiro has so much untapped potential, does anything in particular come to mind?

    • Druid@lemmy.zipOPMEnglish
      1·
      9 days ago

      I was specifically referring to the gameplay. The base premise of parry-based combat has been received quite well and has been adopted into many soulslikes after it like Khazan, Lies of P or even that one class in Nightreign. It’s perfect the way it is, I feel like, but Khazan showed that it can be expanded upon. I’d not be surprised if From cooked something up that builds off the very good base.

      Apart from that, similarly to Bloodborne, the world allows for more story to be told. Be it a prequel or a follow-up to the true ending - there’s potential there. Since the game is relatively grounded in reality and Japanese history, you could argue there’s less to expand into compared to the Eldritch horrors of Bloodborne, but there’s probably more. Not an expert though, can’t articulate what exactly I’d like to see outside the two possibilities I’ve outlined further up