Demon’s Souls Reveals New Details on Fractured Mode, Photo Mode, the Nexus, and More

Earlier today, we were promised a good deal of new Demon’s Souls gameplay, and we’ve certainly got it. A round of new hands-on impressions has gone live around the internet at various media outlets, not only showing plenty of new gameplay footage, but also revealing lots of interesting new details on the upcoming remake.

For starters, it looks like the game is actually going to have quite a bit of new content that wasn’t included in the original PS3 release in 2009. Speaking with Polygon, creative director Gavin Moore said, “There’s a lot of new content that we’ve added to the game and for fans to find and enjoy. And there are lots of things that I think fans are going to go, ‘Oh, that’s amazing. Great. You know, I didn’t know they put that in the game.’ I’m not going to tell you any more than that, because [I don’t want] to spoil anything.”

Some of this new content has been revealed as well. For starters, there’s the Fractured Mode, which is essentially a mirror mode that flips the entire game horizontally, which means you have to learn the placements of enemies and where attacks are going to come in from all over again. Moore calls it “the most challenging experience I’ve ever had with Demon’s Souls.”

Demon’s Souls is also going to have a photo mode, which Moore describes as “exceptionally amazing in-depth”. Apparently, there’s quite a lot of options and filters for players to play around with. Photo mode will, of course, pause the game (which is a first for Demon’s Souls), but if you’re playing online and get invaded, the game will warn you and then boot you from photo mode.

Additionally, players can also play the entire game with several different filters. One filter will make it so that the game looks closer to the PS3 original and the way that looked at launch in 2009. Another filter makes the game black-and-white, achieving a look similar to the Kurosawa Mode seen in Ghost of Tsushima.

Curiously enough, you can also change the game’s camera positioning to make it more like the original, though Moore says that players should stick with the new setting that Bluepoint Games have gone with for the remake, since it does a better job of showcasing the game and its technical achievements.

Meanwhile, some interesting balancing changes have been made as well. For instance, healing grasses now will be much less plentiful, in that unlike the original game, you won’t be able to carry hundreds of them, and will actually have to deal with encumbrance. On top of being able to carry fewer grasses, the more powerful ones will also be heavier than the others.

Meanwhile, Moore has also revealed to GameSpot that players will now actually be able to store their characters in the Nexus, change their build, and continue playing the game, free to go back to older builds at any time by accessing them in the Nexus.

“What we have done is we’ve updated the character creator and we’ve given thousands upon thousands of new permutations where you can create and you can play,” he said. “And then once you’ve chosen a character, what you can do is, after you’ve paid a number of souls for it, in the Nexus you can actually kind of store your character and then go in and change your character in the Nexus. So that’s the quick interpretation of it, I guess.”

Finally, for all of you who’ve been wondering since the game was announced (if not before that) if the remake will have the five Archstone and a brand new world to take you to- that’s not going to be the case. Moore has confirmed to Polygon that the game only has five unbroken Archstones in the Nexus, same as the original release.

Demon’s Souls, which has reportedly gone gold, will release exclusively for the PS5 on November 12. You can check out additional new gameplay footage in the recently released second gameplay trailer through here.