Dark Souls 2 Trailer Analysis/Thoughts

So the new Dark Souls trailer and a 12 minute gameplay demo with the director was released yesterday. After watching it about 20 times now, I wanted to share some thoughts on it:

So obviously the graphical vitality of Dark Souls 2 is much improved. The textures look better, the lighting is amazing, and just in general the game looks aesthetically more pleasing than Dark Souls 1 did. I'm also getting sort of a Demon's Souls vibe from the game right now.

At 00:52, the UI seems to change after certain period of time. Not sure it that a natural thing that the game internally does or if you need to push a button in order for the UI to collaspe but either way its a nice change. There's also no humanity counter that I could see, which is a big gameplay if there is no humanity in this game. I'm guessing that will be reveled later on but I haven't heard any news on it either way. That does bring up the question as to how online play will work since humanity was way you were able to co-op or do pvp. Maybe their going back to using stones like in Demon's Souls? I guess that's something we'll have to find out later. It also seems like magic has its own slot instead of occupying a slot in your rh/lh which i think is probably more useful. No estus, but they have already said that estus will be in Dark Souls 2 but that does bring up the question as to what the new healing is. Maybe it will function similar to humanity or a divine blessing? Not sure as of yet.

At 1:18, bonfires are back in the game. Honestly, not sure how I feel about this. I liked this better than the hub world in Demon's Souls where you have to start back at the beginning of the level if you die but I was hoping for something new and inventive like the bonfires were but then again if it ain't broke don't fix it and this is a sequel and Dark Souls 1 wasn't.

At 1:39, we get a look at combat. The combat looks to be faster but still seems to have that souls feel to it and duel wielding. And the duel wielding actually looks effective and not a hinderance like it is in Dark Souls 1. It looks like theirs more of an emphasis on attack combos, particularly when he was dual wielding, to finish off enemies. I wonder if there's some sort of hidden attack modifier bonus to finishing off a combo similar to how rapiers get a hidden modifier bonus on critical's in Dark Souls 1? He also was dodging pretty quickly though he was wearing mediumish armor. So I wonder what the equip burden is like to be able to fast roll like that or is that medium roll and fast roll is like ridiculously fast? If mid roll is that fast, that would kind of make wearing light armor pointless if you could mid roll that fast unless you were rping or something. I think they may have gotten rid of poise. The character is wearing medium armor but still got stun locked by those pretty weak enemies. That wouldn't happen in Dark Souls if your poise was 40 or higher unless it was heavy two handed attack and even then some enemies( like the hallows in the burg) couldn't stun lock you if you had decent armor on. Guess its something we will have to wait and see on.

At 3:10, it looks like lighting may play a big role in DKS2 since there adding a torch for you to use. This could be really interesting to see how this idea plays out.

At 3:40, new enemy with a way to counter backstabs. Looks like the ai may be more adaptive to your actions and how you tackle them than in DKS1. In DKS1, it was just so easy to just run around and get backstabs, you were almost stupid not to do it. It looks like there is going to be answer to people always backstabbing enemies.

At 4:50, looks like there are keeping with giving you multiple routes to explore an area which I think is a good thing. That was probably my favorite part of the souls series.

At 5:28, it looks like you can equip three weapons in your weapon slots instead two. I wonder how that effects equip burden and now their's a deflection mechanic. It looks interesting but I wonder how its useful. You could parry away arrows and even magic in DKS1 but there was really no need to, so I'm wondering what the usefulness of this will be. It looked like the enemy ran out of axes to throw at you, so maybe there's limitation in enemy resources/equipment like the player character? That would be interesting.

At 7:36, I like the mechanic of finding items that unlock new areas. Its seems like a blending between DeS and DKS1 in terms of exploration. They want you to explore but without feeling like you have to. I think the last two games, particularly DeS, you felt like you had to do certain things in order to get things that wanted for your character.

At 8:42, so similar to DKS1, you can use enemies to manipulate the environment. You can also backpedal while shooting a bow. Not sure how I feel about that tbh. Maybe if it was a thing were you can fire off a quick shot while back pedaling but it does significantly less damage than standing still and firing the bow I wouldn't mind that. It also looks like when he used the heavy attack with the greatsword it missed. Not sure if that was just faulty hit detection or if that's a mechanic in the game. It would be interesting as a mechanic in the game. Sort of like a risk-reward type thing. I should also mention how good these animations look.

So I think that's about it. I think I was a little concerned about them making the game easier or putting in an easy mode or whatever they said in that interview with Eurogamer. But I think I feel a little bit better about it now that I've seen this demo and read some more interviews etc. Still a little bummed about no Miyazaki but I think I'll get over it eventually. Anyway, what do you guys think? Agree? Disagree?

I think it's a little early to do too much analysis of the gameplay. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the things in the video were just there for demo purposes, like having three weapon slots and the speed of the character. The only things I really took away from it were the increased graphical quality and better looking HUD, which is good because I always thought the HUD looked like crap in the other games. I'm looking forward to seeing more.

Well most of the stuff I said was just speculation but i think its fun to speculate on how the game will play before it comes out : )

The hud reminded me a lot of demons souls. Getting a big Demons Souls vibe from it so far but that could possibly change.

analses: i wanna play that shit

I hope easy mode makes the game harder.

Even outside the area where they showed of the torch thing you can clearly see the new engine making huge differences in lighting. If you look at Dark Souls the lighting is pretty much entirely consistent over each area, while in the footage they showed there were several rooms that had very light and very dark areas. While it's great for atmosphere I fear it might quickly become a gameplay problem.

Interesting. In what ways do you think it would be a gameplay problem?

@basm321: haha. It would be funny if they put in an easy mode and just trolled everybody by making it twice as hard.

@gogosox82: having an inconsistent experience where you're constantly moving from a dark to a light environment can quickly become distracting. It can also turn in to a scenario where fighting in the light is such a superior option that you end up doing some pretty boring stuff just to make your life easier (sorta like poisoning the archers in Anor Londo). There are certainly opportunities for good ideas to come from it too, like bosses based around light-sources etc. Mostly I'm just thinking of how insanely different Dark Souls would've been if it actually operated with a system where light only came from real light-sources.

Just imagine how it would be playing through tomb of giants if you had no light source on you and there was a few torches spread throughout the area. How would you play to get through that ?

I never thought about it like that and I could see how that could be annoying but I think from will give you multiple options on how to tackle it given their track record. I'm more interesting in seeing how light will effect either the player character or the enemies sort of similar to how the skeletons can only be killed with a divine weapon until you kill off the necromancers in the catacombs in dks1. I'm thinking more along the lines of that than you need to a torch to even traverse an area.

My analysis - It'll probably be Awesome.