Dark Souls Preview

Another preview for From Software’s Dark Souls surfaced recently online, courtesy of PAL Gaming Network, giving us good reasons to keep tabs on the spiritual successor to Demon’s Souls. Sampling ahead:

The build we played demonstrated a lot of different things. We played around with the character creation tool, going through the various customisable features and such, and they look pretty robust and will certainly allow players to create their own unique looking character.

We then went into the first area of the demo build, a dark dungeon-like catacomb, which was dark, gritty, wet and looked horrid. We came across what looked like zombies…but were in fact starved and malnourished slaves. We killed them before realising it, but then again, that’s how life is in Dark Souls. Stuff like this happens. The area gave us a good feel of the controls and the skill set of our character. The game mechanics will likely feel at home to anyone who’s played Demon’s Souls, featuring an action game style combat system.

The game is set to feature a large near seamless world scattered with abandoned castles infested with the undead, labyrinthine catacombs, sunken ruins, haunted forests, vast dungeons, magical lakes and several other locations, each offering a brutal and unforgiving journey. Like the previous title, there will be plenty of options to customise characters with different equipment, weapons and spells. One noteworthy addition in Dark Souls is the inclusion of ‘˜The Beacon of Fire’. These are essentially save points scattered throughout the game world, and allows players to save, recover and restart. Included to make the game a little more forgiving, perhaps to the disappointment of Demon’s Souls purists.