Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition Impressions, Interview and Gameplay Footage
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First, the impressions, from RPGFan:
Other talking points of the new content included several new bosses (at least one of which has a tail that can be sliced off and used as a weapon), and a number of new weapons and weapon types. All in all, the new content is estimated to make up about 4-5 hours of gameplay.
Performance-wise, the game ran smoothly in the demo footage. While the game will not offer high resolution textures, it will offer a full range of scalable settings exclusive to the PC version. Additionally, I was flat-out promised that Blighttown will run as smoothly as the rest of the game.
Which seem to contradict producer Daisuke Uchiyama's words in this Eurogamer's interview, who claims From Software is having a "tough time" porting the title to PC:
"To be completely honest, we're having a tough time doing it due to our lack of experience and knowledge in terms of porting to PC. First we thought it would be a breeze, but it's turned out not to be the case. We're still developing right now - we're crunching right now.
"In Japan there's not much of a PC market and we haven't really taken into consideration that audience before. That's one of the reasons why we haven't been able to step up on the PC platform until now."
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"In terms of the frame rate for say, Blighttown, From Software sincerely apologises for that happening [in the console version]," he said.
"In terms of the PC version, the quick answer is no, [we won't be fixing the frame rate problems]. Because we wanted to get the PC version out as soon as possible, it's more strictly a port from the console version. We haven't been able to step up into doing any specific optimisation for PC.
Polygon's Michael McWhertor has some details on the PC settings on NeoGAF:
So, since I saw the game today, I'll mention what I got to see in terms of technical details.
Yes, you can change the resolution. I'll note that at E3 From was playing the game in a window at 720p. And there were frame rate issues. :\
There was a frame rate setting, which was set to 30 FPS. I didn't see them change this and I don't know if it was locked to 30 or not or what the other settings are.
There was also a setting for screen size (FULL/WINDOWED) and anti-aliasing (ON/OFF), but I didn't see these settings in action.
I only had 12 minutes to see it in action and interview a From producer, so there are still some unknowns. I'm doing what I can to confirm technical details, but From said they're bearing down on the PC port and there are still things in flux.
And finally GameTrailers has some footage, predictably rife with death shenanigans.
