Do you think this game will feel like a Souls game?

I started to think about this after seeing the most recent trailer. While this remake looks great from a visual standpoint, a thought of dreed crept into my head as the wow factor wore off. What if this doesn't have that heft and weighty-ness of a Souls game's combat. Cause a lot of different studios have tried over the past ten years to reproduce that. Some got close. Others didn't. Watching that Armor Spider boss fight in that trailer just looked kind of... off to me.

Yeah, it's gonna feel like a Souls game.

Is it gonna feel like old Demon's Souls? I dunno, maybe. I hope not, we've come a long way.

Yeah the game feels like its off somehow for example the backstab sound effect doesn't sound like the original.

And seriously who plays a souls game without hud? Lol, they really should add it so that we know what is going 😂

Bluepoint is developing the game like they did Shadow of the colossus PS4. They run the original game using the same collision and animations and work on top of that. The animations, walk speed and attacks all line up but are just recaptured. You may just not be used to seeing it in 60fps lol. This stuff is all in interviews from the last couple days. Plus check out the Digital Foundry deep dive on Shadow, it’ll give you an idea how they work

I'm confused. Is this because they put out a trailer that obviously was trivializing the combat to show you walking through more environments?

Cause its just a Souls game. Its a remake of the best one also lol.

The more I've seen, the more I've realized I don't actually need to go back to Demon's Souls.

I'd fuckin do it, don't get me wrong, but it's one of those "hype for an idea but then it happens and oh god it doesn't fill the void in my soul" kind of things. Really wanna see how the Astraea moment looks though.

@arkham_91:I didn't play that version of Shadow of the Colossus. That info's comforting to a degree, but I also think it'd be harder to nail the specific feel of a Souls game. I think there's probably more wiggle room with Shadow of the Colossus. But maybe that's because I've only played that game once, and don't have a very detailed picture of that game in my mind.

@toughshed:No. I'm talking about how the game feels when you play it. I think there's a very distinct way an attack looks and feels in a Souls game. A very specific, yet nebulous thing that's hard to describe. Like there is a difference between how an attack feels in Demon's Souls as opposed to an attack in a game from another developer trying to recreate that in something like Code Vein or The Surge. I think The Surge gets closer to that then Code Vein does. I wonder how close this remake will nail that.

Demon's Souls Remake; which I'm perfectly fine with until I actually have the game and console in hand several years from now and will point out the things that I'm glad were changed (like World Tendency not having an online component, hopefully) and the things that should have stayed the same.

Just looks like Demon's Souls at 60FPS to me. Have you seen footage of the original in RPCS3?

I won't break it all out here for you in case you want everything to be a surprise, but since World Tendency was one of the more divisive features it's probably worth mentioning that Polygon's been able to break down all the changed and unchanged features from the game already and there was never any intention to change its function, other than adding an indicator that lets you know exactly where the scales are tipped at the moment.

Yea it's gonna feel different. A locked 60 fps and the changes (that you can disable) with the DualSense, camera, and color are going to make this feel different. Probably not "worse" per say but at least a little different.

@nodima said:

Well, shit.

I mean, it's technically easier to manipulate offline, but I only got Pure White when the servers were up; thus me needing to "git gud at World Tendency" I suppose.

yeah but what are you possibly basing this on? Thats why I wrote that, what else have we even seen of it?

When I look at it, my mind thinks it'll feel like Dark Souls 3. I know it won't but I see that character model and my head connects the dots.

I'll say this about remakes and the DS1 remaster, they really like to give attacks more of a visual flourish. It really helps embellish an attack's tell or explicitly show an attack's range. I'm all for that.

The trailers make the game look super easy lol. I never beat Demon souls and didn't get that far but it wasn't insanely difficult but it wasn't that easy either. It looks like they just gave the player infinite health and stamina for the trailers. Seems like they don't fully understand the souls-like market, or they are targeting new players?

The original Demons was not as combat-focused as the later games, and yes, that does worry me. I've played most of the game, with magic it's a cheese-fest and the boss battles are more puzzle-like/gimmicky. Even melee attacks don't feel that great. After playing Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne, and Sekiro, if the fights remain mostly the same as the original Demons I'm going to be disappointed. I already have the game pre-ordered but maybe I should've gone with sackboy instead (I played the LBP games and didn't enjoy the platforming that much, I know this one is 3D).

And I HATE the way sword slashes sound in the remake. It's so high-pitched and scratchy that it hurts my ears.

The music is really bad. The song in the trailer got reworked with a new melody and their take on Maiden Astraea's theme is all over the place.

@oursin_360 said:

I mean, if the trailer was made on the assumption of appealing to new players, be it new to Demon's or the Souls games overall: then yeah; the trailer is pretty misleading. Armor Spider took some attempts back in the day.

But if the trailer was made with the intention of appealing to Souls fans like myself, Armor Spider is a pushover. Enough time has passed to where Ornstein and Smough in Dark 1 aren't as difficult as they used to be.

Either way, I think I'll take this over Namco hamming up the difficulty of Dark 1 and 2, especially in 2 with the into monologue.

I hope they keep in the scraping spear for PVP

@toughshed: I'm just asking a "what if" question. It's not based in anything other than the thought I had of "Is this remake going to play like the original?".

If that means it feels/plays better than OG Demon Souls, than I'm all for it.

Code Vein and the Surge are souls-inspired games by other studio's. This is a remake of an actual Fromsoftware title done by a respected studio. It will feel fine.

I also am in favour of seeing the HUD, but quite a few people play without it - I watch ENB, the guy who first really got me into Souls properly, quite frequently and he does HUDless runs all the time. Not for the challenge of it, but because he likes how it looks.

Do appreciate them showing the two bosses I cheesed the ever-loving fuck out of back in the day.

Shoot the armored spider from the fog gate; get the flamelurker stuck in the environment. Good times.

I bet it'll feel like Demon's Souls when I'm grinding Pure Bladestone out on that 4-2 cliff.

PS, PLZ Bluepoint, keep the dupe bug.

Game Informer has a video interview with Bluepoint that's fairly detailed on their design ethos and choices; most everything is, at a systems level, the same.

Better UI is supposed to make world state clearer, among other cleanliness fixes, but that sounds like the minority of work done.

If your question is asking whether a Souls game needs jank and seams to be charming/fit the franchise...I have no idea. This will probably be the most technically-proficient Souls game, and yeah, there's a 1% of me that wonders if maybe that'll make it feel too clean, but I think that's pretty unlikely.

Say what you will about its presentation overhaul, that Shadow of the Colossus remake's control scheme felt near identical to the way I remember it being in the original. I'm sure this will feel the way it should, maybe even better thanks to the new dualsense triggers

Stockpile Thomas needs the work. Also, did they take or scale back some of the webbing in the Armoured Spider fight? It might be a case of me not paying attention but I spend most of that fight struggling against webbing.

Yes.

I mean, it's Demon's Souls, it's already fairly "swishy" and "loose" compared to the later titles. It's easy to think of these games as all being the same, but the gameplay did actually develop quite a bit from the first to last title.

Based on Bruse Greene's Twitch stream archive of this version of the game: Looks like old Demon's Souls, but with newer models, textures, lighting, and more foggy/smokey/ghosty effects. Seems to play like old Demon's Souls but with a more off-centered camera in some instances. Attack speeds, rolling, backstab and parry windows seem to be the same if not very similar. Apparently you now have the option to skip the tutorial zone, which I'm sure will be a highly contentions and controversial change which will reasonably warrant boycotting this game over. *sarcasm* Oh, and NPCs have mouth movements. BURN THIS GAME IN EFFIGY FOR REMOVING SOME OF THE JANK. *again, sarcasm*

Well, I know where my next $570 of disposable income is going.

Seems like more people are mad about the art direction than how it plays.

Which, I dunno, Demon's Souls looks like shit 90% of the time to me. But I guess there's a lot of secret deep meaning to the look the old game I'm finding out.

@facelessvixen: I watched a developer commentary video where they say they used the existing framedata so every attack and roll is using the exact same timing as the original game - they just put a shinier coat of paint on top of it.

@efesell: I like the grimy/shitty look of old Demon Souls, but if I'm forking over $70 for the same game, then it better look fantastic.

Watching Brad play it on that launch stream, it sure looked like it played like a Souls game. Looked quite impressive. I forget who pointed it out, but it was super weird how human some of the enemies sounded.

I get what ppl are saying. The old game had an eerie vibe about it that I don't get from some of the stuff they've done here. Seems more dark fairy tale or something. Still looks great though, it's just different (which of course is worst of all, right? lol)

Whatever, this is a remake, so let em do their own thing with it. Tbh, some of the stuff in here captures the vibe of old Demon's Souls and just straight-up makes it better. Storm King is fucking AMAZING in the remake.

I was thinking last night why it looks so weird to me. This remake looks like a target render.

Anybody else feel that? Anybody else look at this and feel like it's PS3-era bullshottery made manifest?

@dudeglove: The Souls community strikes me as one that would be way angrier if you fixed the bad things of the game than if you changed any of the good.

@dudeglove: I watched Pineapple and his conclusion is fucking insane. He recommended that people should play the game but because of the pricepoint of the game + console (even bloating the price due to scalpers which is unfair). He rather recommended that people should play it on the original or PC emulation, completely ignoring that a PC capable of emulating a PS3 costs more than 1k... and that people should play it in ways that give no money to either developers. I also love how he just lightly brushed away the online component of the game as some unimportant thing when it's one of the most charming things about the original and in some ways vital for a "true" experience.

I feel like the negativity around this game is WAY TOO BIG. Not in like people don't have legitimate criticisms, but rather, it feels like there are waaayy too many people that say that they "played" the first game... Very much like the negativity around TLOU2 were a large chunk of the "critiscism" came from people that never played the first game or the new one and just joined on the hate train for... fun?

I'm a huge fan of the original Demon's Souls and I'm speaking from a very limited perspective here as I've only seen various screen shots and bits of Boletaria. Frankly I don't agree with the aesthetic direction Bluepoint decided to take in the context of that original game. The original game felt austere, it felt like you were roaming the remains of lands that fell so far from grace but are still clinging to their legacy. The atmosphere is eerie, almost ethereal. That being said, the remake seems to tend toward more dark fantasy bombast which works fine but just doesn't evoke the same atmosphere that I felt was a core part of the first game.

The first thing that struck me was the castle architecture being in a completely different architectural style than it was in the original game, going from a very utilitarian medieval style with flat stone walls to a more overstated gothic style which I just don't think fits the unique mood that the original game had. Some of the changed boss designs don't sit right with me either.

Having dug a bit deeper, I am deeply disappointed by the direction they took the soundtrack. The soundtrack in Demon's Souls is incredibly unique, the instrumentation is sparse which contributes to these moody pieces that emphasize that feeling of trying to grasp at some grandiosity that doesn't exist anymore, but they elected to re-record the whole OST with a full symphonic orchestra.

The first song I wanted to here the remake of was the Adjudicator's theme, which in the original uses brass instruments brilliantly to create a murky contrast with the strings accentuating the eerie fairy-tale atmosphere in that area of the game. Now the song just kinda sounds like a standard symphonic piece. Then go to the Tower Knight theme, where we've gone from what sounds like no more than 4 or 5 people chanting to a full choir going nuts.

None of these things are bad per se, but they are significant changes that significantly alter the overall mood of the game. It's what separated Demon's Souls from Dark Souls to me, where Dark Souls is more epic in scope Demon's Souls felt smaller and sadder. I don't know, it's hard for me to be too critical without having played the game myself; and I doubt I'll be able to afford a PS5 anytime soon so unless it comes to PC I won't be playing it.

Hm, really? I haven't been seeing a ton of the negativity, but the Souls games got kinda huge (and at Dark Souls, no less, just one game out from Demon's Souls). It's not implausible that a lot of people would've gone back to play the original.

But I wonder how things would be for those are are actually upset about the game if Sony actually went ahead with a PC port. If the goodwill there would have been far and away more exciting for them.

Ooh, yeah, the music's actually pretty disappointing. Went straight to see how the Maiden Astraea fight sounds, and oof. It's not at all as striking a moment.

I mean, ultimately these aren't huge quibbles with the game (for me, anyways, except for the Astraea fight), but they're notable as odd standouts presentation-wise in what seems an otherwise incredible experience.

This might occupy the same spot as The Twin Snakes for me. I can respect the work but the atmosphere that Demon's has is gone in favour of something more .... traditional.

And Stockpile Thomas coming geared with actual stuff is a bit depressing.

I bought my PS3 slim back on Black Friday 2009 specifically to play Demon's Souls, so I've been anxious to play this. I managed to secure a PS5 order on launch day during the third restock window at Walmart, but it's not supposed to be here until November 25th, so I still have yet to play it.

Of course it's impossible to say how I'm going to feel about the whole thing until I actually experience it for myself, but as someone who still has their PS3 and can go back and play the original game whenever I want, I'm glad Bluepoint went through all the effort they did to make a true remake and didn't just take the usual route of doing an up-res. So I haven't wanted to be overly critical about it until I try it for myself.

But with all that being said, after seeing this comment I looked up a video for the remake's Maiden Astraea fight, and wow, yeah, you're right, the music there is super disappointing. Frankly, that's the only track in the whole OST that I actually cared deeply about, because it anchored the most emotionally affecting moment in the entirety of the extended Souls franchise. I still go back and listen to the original song all on its own now and again and it still gives me the feels. But the music in the remake... ugh. Not so much.

I'm still really looking forward to playing it, and I still think that for the most part I'm going to have a great time with it. But this is the first concrete change I've seen where I'm prepared to agree with the naysayers that they done screwed up.

Yikes I just looked it up for myself and you're right about the Astraea music, what a colossal disappointment that is for what is what is such a beautiful haunting track.

Oh, it's a Souls game alright.. This mother ****ing black phantom at the start of the Storm area. It's infuriating. I died to the boss, got black world tendency without realizing it, and this black phantom spawns right at the start. Satsuki I guess?

I'm level 26, using the Dark Silver armor because whatever, and this dude just one shots me unless I'm in physical form and full health.. Which I'm obviously not because I'm dying ten thousand times. I can backstab him a bunch but it takes awhile because he's flopping all over the place. I can parry but it's extremely risky because of the one-hit kill. And he heals to full when he gets below 30% I guess. And you can't move out of the tiny start area or the stupid skeleton will join. And you can't run past any of this because the roller skeletons will catch you and kill you. And even if you get past the first one, there are 6 others just past it, more because the black world tendency. And since I can't get anywhere other than the start, I can't find a cliff or terrain to try and cheese it.

Ugh this shit feels so hopeless. Typical Souls game. I'm not a controller chucker but I really want to.

Have you played Demon's before? If you're only 26, there are a bunch of other levels you could do before having to deal with 4-1.

@ajamafalous: Yea, I finished it way back around it's original release.

Stuck on Flamelurker. Cleared the whole swamp archstone, so that unlocked 1-3, which immediately rocked my shit. I've avoided Tower of Latria. And can't get through this phantom in the Storm area.

I understand this thread isn't really referring to this particular "feel" I'm talking about.. but I was so pissed I had to vent somewhere haha