Dark Souls II Interview

I recently spotted an interesting Dark Souls II interview on Total Xbox with Namco Bandai’s producer Tak Miyazoe. During the course of the Q&A various elements of the game are discussed in somewhat more detail than usual, including covenants, PvP, and a new boss-type creature. Here’s a snippet:

Can you talk us through the decision to have Dark Souls II show more emphasis on PvP elements?

Sure. We wanted to, I guess not necessarily enhance the PvP alone; we want to encourage or enhance the covenant system. What that means is, we wanted to get players to really take on their role within the world, and we wanted the covenants to help them to do that. By enhancing the covenants, that sort of naturally led to more PvP, summoning, and the online aspects of the game. That was an underlying concept from the beginning; we’ve always wanted to implement a dedicated game server for Dark Souls II, so that matching is more frequent. The goal of the game is not just to play from start to end, but to sort of live in the Dark Souls universe, to continue on after you’ve finished the story. To live in the world, and really take on the role of influencing other players who are facing the same difficulties in the game.

So are there more covenants this time, or is it around the same number?

Roughly the same number, but there are a couple more. But the way we’ve proposed the covenants is a little bit different from Dark Souls I in that, I’m sure the covenants in Dark Souls I were a little bit unclear in terms of their purpose in the game, and I think the covenants in Dark Souls II will have a deeper meaning I think; a bigger influence on things.