Demon's Souls' unique online mode explained
The online mode in Demon's Souls differs significantly from the online modes in most games. One tiny difference, for example: you don't actually play with other people most of the time. You know, little details like that.
Atlus's latest Demon's Soulsblog post describes the inventive online mode, which shows other players in their own single-player games as "shades, non-corporeal entities fading in and out of your plane of existence." The only time players can actively assist other people is when dead, as "spirits." Spirits can interact with other players in order to regain their lives, either by helping to defeat a boss, or by ... killing the other player and stealing their life.
Players can also see the deaths of other players by examining bloodstains left at the locations where people have died, and can read messages left for one another.
