Thanks to a Guardian interview we know that Miyazaki views Elden Ring as "the limit" for FromSoftware and that they're focusing on smaller projects in future.
That sounds good to me, especially if they go back to Dark Souls style world design. I love Elden Ring but the size of the world made it feel sort of empty at times
I agree, and the fact that you just run past most of it on Torrent really makes it feel pointless. The corridor design made it so you at least had to try to run past all the enemies. The limited scale also made every location feel more meaningful. That isn't to say there isn't amazing design in Elden Ring, but there's also a huge number of essentially useless locations.
Elden Ring was great, but I like the other games better. I really hope they do another fully connected world like Dark Souls 1 again.
I attempted a maiden less run, and it made the game world a lot more enjoyable. Even on a normal playthrough I forget about Torrent half the time. I like running around exploring. I suck at fighting on a mount anyways. I rarely remembered to ride a horse in Breath of the Wild too.