Dark Souls II director Yui Tanimura has become the public face of the title at this point, simply by virtue of giving so many interviews to the press, the latest being a video interview from the folks at Computer and Videogames. In the 4:28-minute video, Tanimura covers the online aspects, the devs approach to difficulty and balance, and the "freedom of exploration", as he calls it, a concept he already mentioned before.
All in all, it's not the most enlightening watch, but it's still a useful sample of the core principles the team is keeping in mind while working on the title.