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