Dark Souls 3’s DLC will be the end of the franchise ... for now

On Oct. 25, Bandai Namco and From Software will launch Ashes of Ariandel, the first of two planned downloadable content additions to Dark Souls 3. But since the game’s initial announcement at E3 2015, where a press release referred to it as "the final episode," fans have wondered if this is really the end for Dark Souls.

Polygon had the chance to speak with From Software president Hidetaka Miyazaki, who also directed both the original Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3, at the Tokyo Game Show. We asked him directly if the two DLC packs from the latest game will mark the conclusion of the series as a whole, and he responded with an immediate, no-hesitation "Yes," before laughing.

"It’s time to move away from the Dark Souls franchise," Miyazaki said. "As president of From Software, I’m not completely denying the possibility of bringing back the franchise in the future. There could be someone else in my company who wants to work on new installments. But we believe that the series will end after the two DLC."

While not shying away from the potential for an inevitable resurrection of Dark Souls at some point in the distant future, Miyazaki went on to suggest that what we’re most likely to see are "HD remakes" of older games in the series on newer consoles. It’s unclear if From Software would envision these as simple ports of the existing games to new hardware or more full-on remakes with new or revised content.

Either way, for fans of the Dark Souls style of gameplay, Miyazaki promised we have nothing to worry about.

"I’m not saying I won’t work on a Dark Souls-like game or a dark fantasy game," he said. "We’d like to carry over some of the good things from the franchise to new products. As new technology is introduced, we would like to take what we learned from Dark Souls and use it in future IP."

You can read lots more info about the upcoming Dark Souls 3 in our full report here.

Dark Souls 3: Ashes of Ariandel, will launch on Oct. 25 for PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One. It will cost $14.99 on its own, or $24.99 for a season pass that includes a second DLC pack. That second piece of DLC — and, apparently, the last bit of new Dark Souls content we should expect for the foreseeable future — will be arriving some time in "early 2017."