Elden Ring is "the limit" for From Software project scale, says Miyazaki - multiple, "smaller" games may be the "next stage"

I mean it was absolutely enormous and its absolutely understandable that they want to do smaller things again.

There's hope for me yet, then. Though I think FS have long since sailed from what I liked about Soulslikes into something else entirely.

It's my limit too lol. The expansion goes too far in openness

As open as it is, it still feels the same as DS1 but bigger with how you're still funneled into.1 or maybe 2 paths to the actual end game. Which, yeah, wasn't as cool as it sounded on paper. No random events, the actual open areas are pretty barren unless you want to fight trash mobs that you can just run by on horseback. They've always employed empty areas/dead ends with nothing in them to make actually finding something worthwhile better, but it falls flat when that detour takes 15-20 minutes instead of 15-20 seconds.