Dark Souls III Gameplay Footage, Previews

While the Dark Souls series is very popular in Western countries, it still originates from Japan, so the fact that a new wave of Dark Souls III coverage coincides with Tokyo Game Show should surprise absolutely no one.

First, there are a couple of previews, courtesy of Eurogamer:

Even then, it’s easy to resort to old favourites – my own being a great sword that can be brought crashing down on hollow heads – and going back to turtling larger foes. Dark Souls 3 accommodates that, but it still pushes you to play a little differently. Enemies seem keener to draw you out, and to invite you to rush in, which conspires to make for a much more aggressive game than what’s gone before in the Souls series. It’s not the out and out hack-fest that was Bloodborne – you won’t gain health back by swiping at enemies, with the character builds supplied at least, so you’re only ever a few well-placed blows away from being sunk violently to your knees – but there’s definitely a faster, more intense feel to its combat.

What Dark Souls 3 also takes from Bloodborne is the sheer density of detail. The sparse, sprawling environments of Dark Souls 2 are no more, with a return to more intimate spaces that double back on each other in mind-melting configurations. It’s a density that’s more pronounced than that of the original Dark Souls, perhaps down to the fact it’s allowed to lean hard on the current gen, something also told by the floating ash particles that seem central to Dark Souls 3’s themes. That, and there are plenty more dragons this time around.

And Polygon:

Interestingly, using miracle skills by pressing the L2 button on the DualShock 4 controller provided the player with some slightly different buffs; the more powerful L2 version of the Lighting Spear, for example, appeared to give the player an extended power-up that seemed to boost his other attacks for a very brief period after using the miracle.

Using magic skills, like weapon-based skills, consumes a portion of the player’s blue-colored magic gauge bar in Dark Souls 3. Players can now refill that magic gauge bar with a new item in Dark Souls 3: the Ash Estus Flask. Yes, players will now wield two different Estus Flasks in the game, one that refills their hit points and one that refills their magic points.

However, all this could change by the time Dark Souls 3 is released in early 2016. Just a few weeks ago, when we played the game at Gamescom, From Software had implemented a different system for limiting the number of times a player could use skills in Dark Souls 3. Now it appears somewhat governed by the use of the Ash Estus Flask, and Bandai Namco reps confirmed that these gameplay elements could change before the game ships next year.

There’s also some new gameplay footage for the game and thankfully it’s all direct-feed this time. First, the folks at All Games Beta have some B-roll footage:

Then there is also an additional 17 minutes of footage recorded from a Japanese livestream at YouTube channel RabbitFootTV Gaming. I recommend you turn off the sound, unless you either understand Japanese or are a big fan of high-pitched screams: