Dark Souls Previews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on June 14th, 2011

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"Dark Souls" certainly feels more open that "Demon's Souls," dropping some of the latter's more linear structure. You're free to move into different environments, and even to take longer routes around more troublesome enemies.

During the demo, we encountered a rather large, armored boar. Well, he was entirely armored except for one area his rear-end. If the boar is too difficult, you could always take another, albeit longer, way around. Of course, that detour is filled with even more enemies, so choose your path wisely. Either way, you're going to die a lot. "Dark Souls" is roughly twice the size of "Demon's Souls," contains twice as many items, but the publishing team also promised me "double the number of deaths." They laughed again when they told me this.

The demo started with our character, the Black Knight, running through a level called The Undead Parish. Right away the developer pointed out a Bonfire, something new to Dark Souls; it acts as a checkpoint system. In Demon's Souls you could play the game for quite a long time, die, and then be set back almost an hour or more which added to the challenge of the game, sure, but also lead to unnecessary frustration. Dark Souls' Bonfire system is completely optional, but for those that don't want to spend all of their time redoing previous content, it's there. You can also regen all of your health at the Bonfires if you wish, but again, it's optional.

Immediately after we walked past the Bonfire inside of a dark room of the castle, we stepped out on to the ramparts. The game is gorgeous, each brick and stone of the castle seemed to be placed with care. Plus, looking out over the castle you could see forests with hundreds of trees fluttering in the distance. It looked great, and if I wasn't pressed for time I would have loved to just run along the castle, breathing it all in. Unfortunately, there was a Wyvern on the ramparts waiting to get its scaly hands on me.

The big change in Dark Souls is the elimination of the Nexus, which acted as a hub world in the previous game. Now, the entire world is one continuous space, and the player uses bonfires, spread throughout the world, to restore health and level up. That may sound like a concession to dial down the game's difficulty, but visiting a bonfire respawns all the enemies you've killed, so don't get any ideas about running back to recover after a big battle.

Dark Souls also adds some new features to online play. As with the first game, you don't play directly alongside other players, but you're able to invade their parallel worlds for help or harm. In Dark Souls, I played as a Pyromancer, who has the new ability create enemies in the other players' worlds to carry out his bidding. This backfired later, when two players simultaneously entered my world to seek revenge. I managed to take down one of them before succumbing to the other. Another new type of character is more benevolent, able to heal players in other worlds if they're nearby. (You can tell by the presence of ghost-like frames in your area.)

The online experience is definitely different from its predecessor, but the specifics were not forthcoming. There aren't any dedicated servers this time around, which means no world tendencies, but there's certainly still an online component. The devs mentioned an 'oath', or 'pledge', that the player would take. This would, according to them, show your role, letting you decide if you wanted to help or compete against others. The bonfires would be part of this, letting you 'share them to a certain extent'.

There were other small notes that they let slip, such as the presence of mounts not for travel, but for other applications (I'm thinking combat of sorts, but that's just a stab in the dark). There's also an element of fast travel available, but they were, too, cryptic on this point.

Aside from the difficulty Demon's Souls featured an unique online multiplayer aspect, mainly being used as a help system or a form of tips within different dungeons. This is another thing that will be making a return in the upcoming game. Players can leave tips/help at different areas of the game. It will then appear in other players worlds as glowing symbols on the ground. They may note that an enemy ahead is for higher level players, or even that there is a great treasure ahead. This is not the only thing that can be done from within the game, though. One of the more popular features of Demon's Souls was to invade other people's game worlds, and this is once again making a return. By invading another players game world you have the opportunity to attempt to challenge their character.

The combat in the game is once again very well done. It feels a lot more fluid than Demon's Souls, and this makes dodging and fleeing a lot easier. It also makes the combat seem quicker and easier to string together attacks, so long as you can properly dodge and block your enemies attacks. For those that played the first title the control scheme is exactly the same, so there should be no issue from a control stand point.

Namco Bandai gave the Pyroclast another "ability" or perhaps I should say special item. In the E3 demo, the Pyroclast had an item that allowed him to curse another person's game. The effect is similar to changing the world tendency in Demon's Souls, but it only affects a single player chosen at random by Dark Souls. An immediate effect are larger mobs instead of a few enemies that attack cursed players. Cursed? You can break the hex by finding the item the other player dropped in your world.

Before i knew what the item was for, I used it and probably made someone else's game even more difficult. But, revenge is a dish best served cold in Dark Souls. A few minutes later someone else playing Dark Souls must have used the same item. All of the sudden my game was full of pink zombies that mercilessly tore my character apart forcing me to restart at the last bonfire I visited.

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