Dark Souls Previews

Another couple of preview of From Software’s notoriously hardcore Action-RPG have been published recently.

The Guardian.

The aim with Dark Souls, explains Hirono, has been to capitalise on the three key concepts of the original game: deep, strategic sword fighting, highly explorable environments and the unique online element, which allowed participants to drop in to each other’s single-player campaigns, leaving messages, co-operating or engaging in competitive duels.

In Dark Souls, you once again get to build the specific warrior you want, customising gender, size and build as well as the all-important equipment load-out. Through the game, different forms of armour and weaponry become available, allowing the construction of extremely individual warrior types.

It’s an extension of the Demon’s Souls system, with some interesting outcomes: Hirono shows us one example the team has built, a short, rotund character in strange bulbous armour, which severely restricts speed and agility. “We call him the onion knight,” he says. “We don’t know if he’s of any use, but he’s in there!”

Destructoid

Dark Souls seems to combine the thrill of discovering secret areas and shortcuts with the suspense of exploring unfamiliar territory. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a game that better applies open-world exploration with indoor environments. The one-legged minotaur was not a boss, and it didn’t seem as though fighting him was necessary to progress in the game. His presence at the bottom of this dank pit was not explained through some long-winded backstory — he was a monster, in a pit, who you got to fight. It’s that kind of a game.

Dark Souls isn’t all inside a castle. I was told that other levels include a dark — possibly haunted or evil — forest, ice caverns, and the ruins of a village. The village and forest both piqued my interest, since those environments could offer much less rigid exploration than the dungeons and corridors that have been the norm for both games.

Linear gameplay is not always a bad thing, but considering the amount of creative freedom game designers have nowadays, it seems overused. Dark Souls does not have waypoints or bright yellow objective markers. It doesn’t have some fairy shouting (Look! Listen!) and for that, I applaud it. At the same time, it’s also not an easy game. It has rules and it has challenges. Based on what I’ve seen, it looks like an old school game that takes advantage of current technology, and this is done without dumbing itself down or putting on airs.