Dark Souls III Preview

From Software's Dark Souls III is the subject of another hands-on preview, and this time it comes to us courtesy of Birth Movies Death. In particular, this article focuses on the threequel's new Battle Arts system, its dragons, and the inevitability of death:

Battle arts will make you give up parrying and leave you without a shield for the most part, but some new shields have a little icon that indicate that they can be used during battle arts. They tend to be the smaller shields, ones that are easily slid to your back to allow both hands on your weapon during the smooth stance animation. This does mean that you can't parry with those shields, however - just block.

As enticing as it is to just run around performing these massive attacks, you can't simply spam battle arts. Right now there's a number that indicates how many you have left to perform, which can be replenished by returning to a bonfire somewhat like an Estus flask. That might not stay in the final game, as and it might end up being a meter similar to your health one. The number of times you can perform them might increase later in the game, again like your flask, but it's all still being tweaked and perfected.

Whatever it ends up being it's certainly exciting and dangerous, one helluva helluva risk/reward system. Anyone who's played a Souls game knows that leaving yourself open to attacks is one of the absolute worst things you can do, but these strong attacks will certainly make it tempting. Who doesn't want to take out an enemy in one swift move?