Famitsu revealed some juicy details on From Software’s new game: Dark Souls. Details are as follows stolen graciously (and shamefully) from GAF thanks to duckroll:
This is the official title of what was previously Project Dark
This time they want to increase the amount of field exploration in the game.
All fields are seamless, so whatever you can see, you can reach and explore. If you see a fortress or castle walls in the distance, you can eventually get there.
There will be no map display in the game, just a position display marker.
They aim to make the game just as challenging than Demon’s Souls, but also just as rewarding when you succeed. The sense of achievement is important.
The gameplay will be similar to Demon’s Souls in concept, where it’s about trial and error and learning from your mistakes to play better.
The game does not share the same world and story as Demon’s Souls.
The game will not use the same format as Demon’s Souls in terms of having 5 worlds connected via a hub.
Instead all maps in the game will be linked seamlessly in a connected world. The pace of the game will feel more about exploration and discovering locations, which you can then go inside into a dungeon or whatever and explore the interior further.
There will be more complex level designs in the game using more vertical design in areas and such.
The world setting is based on medieval dark fantasy, and will contain themes like “high fantasy of kings and knights”, “death and the depths of the earth”, and “the flames of chaos”.
The character creation process will not be class based.
The play style of the player character will have much more freedom this time.
There will be many more spells and items, and the animation and uniqueness of weapons will also be increased.
The online elements are very similar to Demon’s Souls. There is cooperative and PvP.
You can still leave messages, and see players who died at various places.
There will be no Soul Tendency this time because they don’t want to have to use dedicated servers to handle that shit again.
Instead this time there will be more features allowing players to engage in “mutual role playing” which they say are still under wraps. They’ll reveal more when it’s time.
I love the idea of a seamless world and can’t wait for this game!
Not playing Demon’s Souls at all in 2010 has made me really wish I had played it again. I was down on it when I finished it but have slowly come to consider it as great as all that Asian-import hype generated.
Sounds great. Simplifying the Tendency, even if it’s for technical reasons, is a good idea.
If they’re emphasizing exploration and an open world, I would really love it if they included some kind of randomization, even if it’s just enemy placement. If nothing else, it would allow a little bit of surprise and discovery even after the first play through.
Of course, a seamless world is kind of inherently less repetitive than the hub of the first game, because there’e more ways to get from A to B, so it might not even be necessary.
Yeah. I wish it had been a bit more accessible. And by this I don’t mean it should be easier; I mean having things like a better/clearer UI, a pause function, and a better tutorial. I was pretty turned off by it the first time I played it because the game was just so damned obtuse.
I’ll admit I’m not the target of this, though; I hate replaying sections in games, so the death penalty in Demon’s Souls was too strong for me to have fun with it. I thought it was a decent game, but not a great one. It’s not for me.
Agreed. I don’t mind replaying bits, but I do mind that the part where I die repeatedly is on the puzzle boss (learn by error), but I have to repeat the entire section. I just don’t have that kind of time anymore.
(really, I could do away with the bosses entirely; the best part is the exploration and terror of the unknown; after you’ve done it the umpteenth time all that remains is frustration)
So yeah, I’m happy with the focus on exploration this time. :)
I only wish that there were more shortcuts in the game. 1-1 had two shortcuts and it was great, but the few that I did didn’t feel like they had real shortcuts like that. Hopefully shortcuts return going forward.
Some short cuts don’t cut out quite as much as in 1-1, and once you unlock them all getting to the boss in 1-1 is trivial. That’s not really the case in most other levels. It’s still shorter mind you, but some can still be very challenging.
2-1 had a very good shortcut, 3-1 had one that I would put in the ‘shorter but still challenging.’ I didn’t see any sort of shortcut in 4-1 (I did use the bugged one from the wiki mentioned, though), 5-1 or 1-2. I’m currently in 2-2 and haven’t ran across a shortcut yet.
I found the bosses to be one of the weakest parts of Demon’s Souls. Some of them were awesome, but some of them I just “cheesed” through, using large amounts of consumables during the long obvious pauses in their attack cycles.
I was much more fond of fights against things like Black Phantoms or NPCs, fights which tended to be easier but left no easy times to use moongrass.
you can skip all the tunnel in 2-2, by jumping down the big gaping hole, you have to know where to jump though.
you can run through 2-2 from start to boss in less than 2 minutes, it’s not a typical shortcut since you don’t have to unlock anything, you can use it right away, but it’s fairly dangerous since you just fall to death if you don’t know where to drop.
