u/PhantomBraved

State of Play broadcast will be 60+ minutes long.

SotE was surprisingly empty in many areas and felt too big for its own good at times. It made me miss the smaller ARPG expansions that felt more cohesive in structure and tone.

Dark Souls 1-3 DLC, and The Old Hunters felt like the pinnacle experiences of their retrospective games, while Shadow of the Erdtree feels like it's destined to forever remain in the shadow of the base game. No pun intended. The ending was incredibly anti-climatic as well, "That's it?..."

Masarau Yamamura and multiple Sekiro/AC6 leads have been unaccounted for since 2023, I'm very excited to see what they've been cooking up. Hopefully a spiritual successor to Sekiro, FromSoft loves to evolve their combat systems.

Sekiro was in development for 3 years and a half. It feels almost time for the next game. Project FMC in 2027 is the hope.

FromSoftware has released a new project every single year since 2022.

2022 - Elden Ring

2023 - Armored Core VI

2024 - Shadow of the Erdtree

2025 - Nightreign

2026 - The Duskbloods

2027 - Project FMC

- From the MP1st report, we we know the the project is "Deep Into development" with signs pointing to a late 2026-2027 release. It will be multiplatform as well.

- Hidetaka Miyazaki has expressed interest in cranking the offense/defense combat flow of Bloodborne and Sekiro to "another level". The godfather of Sekiro's combat system, Masaru Yamamura has been unaccounted for since 2023, as well as multiple leads.

- Project FMC could stand for - Fantasy Mecha Combat. Miyazaki has wanted to make a game with themes similar to Escaflowne and Aura Battle Dunbine. Works that combine Dark Fantasy + Sci-fi mecha

Hidetaka Miyazaki - “You know, we actually released a Dreamcast game pretty similar to that concept, named Frame Gride. It’s a mix of fantasy and mecha genres, both of which I love working on."

"I’d love to work on a game that evokes the same themes as anime series like Aura Battler Dunbine and The Vision of Escaflowne, but it would be incredibly difficult to do so. I want to work on a game like that."

When Cloud gives Sephiroth's physical body the Black Materia, summoning meteor, and all the Weapons awaken at the Northern Crater. That combined with Hojo's clone revelations made this the darkest moment of the game for me, especially since it happens so quickly after losing Aerith.

Everything felt so bleak.

I want a prequel game or movie about the arrival, rise, and fall of Jenova. This was very interesting to uncover.

- The game happens in Hotel Samsara, a luxury lunar resort that never made it to the opening day and had mutated into a illegal experiment zone for methematicians, geneticists, savants and theologians, free from Earth's regulations

- The lobby of Samsara works as a central hub and the overall structure of it took inspirations from other games for their interconnectedness, notably Lordran from Dark Souls and Resident Evil's Spencer Mansion

- Samsara differs from Rapture, Ishimura or Pathos-II, the lights are on, people still live here, and you may as well find working toilets and spare rolls of tissue paper

- Samsara is a "fully realised and totally coherent" place and the scale is on a different level compared to past Frictional Games' quasi-open, self-contained, explorable worlds (e.g. Amnesia: The Bunker)

"ONTOS is an immersive narrative with a tactile, systems-driven gameplay experience. Ingenuity and research are your greatest weapons. You'll scavenge materials, manipulate intricate machinery, and engage with analog systems requiring careful calibration and hands-on interaction. Planning is key, choose wisely or suffer the consequences. There's no 'one solution'; instead, the goal is what you can make of a situation."

- You play as a young woman named Aditi Amani, come to the moon for your late father who disappeared many years ago to pay respects and get emotional closure

- Each mad scientist you meet in Samsara represents a new ethical and philosophical problem, and you have to decide whether to help and how to help them

- For example, a neurologist named Dr. Crombie transferred his consciousnees into a rodent-powered... device, he wanted to prove consciousness can only exist in one place at a time. The semi-conscious human body begs for help, but the rat network tells you to ignore

- Such experiments are like puzzles with multiple solutions that challenge your morals, emotions, attitudes towards humanity and reality

- Help, or not, you also have the invisible third option to just pick up what you need and leave

- Frictional Games describes ONTOS as an immersive sim, in which you explore Samsara at will, choosing whether or not to help its habitants. Every interaction has residual effect, the route you take and the order you meet people will lead to different understandings and outcomes

- There's combat, and hostile entities in various ways. You'll have to do some resource management, and use various tools to solve problems (e.g. distract security camera with a piece of metal, or use a tool to shut down its power)

- ONTOS is "horror through environmental and thematic circumstances"