12 minutes of Dark Souls 2 gameplay, right here:
http://www.ign.com/videos/2013/04/10/dark-souls-2-gameplay-reveal-12-minute-demoThoughts:
-The overall format is seemingly identical to Dark Souls. Same UI, many of the same animations, Bonfires, heavy use of darkness and shadow...
-Same aesthetics. Grimy, discolored walls and filthy-looking crypts.
-Same dickery. One of the first nasties demo'd has an attack they only do when they're struck from behind.
-Same zany variety of enemies. Like the Chariot.
What looks different:
-Better cutaways. So for example, when you fall to your death, you're not just doing an animationless fall into nothing, you're actually rolling over and pitching around flailing.
-More lightly scripted events. So in the video he shoots an arrow at a beasty that's locked in a prison cell, and it smashes through the wall to get to the player.
-More hazards. In the "Mansion of the Dragon" what seemingly looks like a boss fight is actually a gigantic trap.
-UI looks like it has slightly more functionality. Perhaps it's just showing you what's in other slots if you were to switch weapons, or perhaps they're like sub-slots. Who knows.
-More death scenes. While it didn't show much in the video, apparently there are going to be more ways to die, and die with variety.
-A few new tweaks. Like being able to light a torch from an existing one to light dark areas of the game. (Instead of requiring a special item like the previous game.) Or the "Key Mouth" that lets you put stuff inside that creates different effects in the level. They said they want this to be a tactical choice for the player, where they decide what part of the game they want to spend their resources on to make things easier or "different."
I guess this means I need to go on a Dark Souls Jihad so I can beat the game finally.
Dark Souls is a 3rd person action RPG. In it, you play a character as they adventure their way through a mysterious ruined setting, full of castles, crypts and gut churning overlooks. Combat, while fairly simple at its core, rewards skill, timing and precision. The game is unforgivingly brutal. Major (and often minor) fights are designed much like puzzles. There's ways to beat every boss or mini-boss, but it's up to you to figure it out how and you'll die many, many times learning what to do.
The game is a mix of linear and non-linear progression, with the latter being the most prevalent. As I said above, the game intentionally doesn't tell you were to go most of the time, preferring instead to let you explore and fuck up as you will. They don't even tell you fighting this boss or that might be a bad idea at the time, because if it locked out the boss room or politely suggested you try something else...it wouldn't be Dark Souls.
The franchise rewards player skill and familiarity with the weapons/spells you've chosen to use. It does you no favors, assuming that if you're playing the game, it's because you want to play it as they designed it. It makes few if any concessions to player accessibility, difficulty level or the time investment required. But for those brave enough to sample what the games offer...they will find a deep, rich gameplay experience that lasts hours and hours, offers a multitude of "play it your way" options and challenges you in ways that games in the 21st century seemed to have completely abandoned. Mechanically the games are super crunchy, like Final Fantasy crunchy, with plenty of player and equipment stats of ogle and agonize over.
The game is very Japanese in almost every sense of the word, Japanese design aesthetics ooze from its every corner. There is no grand trumpeting Western storyline here, with cliche princesses and guys with giant signs on their shirt that say "Bad guy." In Dark Souls, it's often unclear who is good, bad or what people's motivations are. The player is often given the freedom to decide who they want to deal with, who lives and who dies. And there's consequences for every choice, the outcomes of which can range from subtle to quite overt. The only thing that's always abundantly clear in Dark Souls is what wants to kill you.
In the best tradition of older RPGs, there's tons of stuff to find and secrets galore, many of which you'd only find with a guide. While items that can be picked up may be surrounded by ghostly fire so you can notice them...that's about the extent to which Dark Souls tries to make things easily findable.
So. If you're wanting a genuine, non-derivative fantasy game that pushes your twitch skills to the limits, that is as different from a game like Skyrim as the sun is different from the moon, check out the series. Just remember to bring your balls, because you're going to need them if you want to succeed.
Author
Topic: Dark Souls 2 - PC Controls are the final boss. HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. (Read 91737 times)