Ditto. AC1 with modern graphics, deep story and a line-up of parts that are all relevant. I just want an AC game that looks and feels good to play. I have just had this deep gut feeling that the more complex they have tried to make AC, the less enjoyable it is to play. There was still a bit of an art to creating a good functional AC in the earlier games without the added fluff. Just pick the parts on their merits and go about your business. I would be down for open world too, though. You could totally play AC in a Souls open world. Single player campaign would be a continuous play through, acquiring gear as you go. Bring back the tuning like in previous games but make it unlimited - you acquire some sort of levelling currency as you do in Souls games and spend these on tuning your mech parts. If you reach peak tune for each parameter of each part, so be it! In terms of multiplayer that can be used to determine opponents like in Souls games too - what tuning level your AC is at impacts match making. If you want to go all out, enjoy the grind! Or even immerse yourself more and instead of tuning parts, you level up as a pilot, and these skills reflect on how well the AC performs (sniper rifles have parameter scaling with a dexterity trait, perhaps)? Anyway, I would play the shit out of that game. Just playing individual sorties is a really good way to make the story too stop-start to enjoy. An immersive open world game, dialled back to a PS1/2 era base of mech combat and AC mechanics would be fucking amazing. To answer your question, though, I'd probably expect no Souls influence whatsoever. I wouldn't be surprised if the next game was more old school feeling, however.