arch4non

If that was a bloody torso of a shirtless man I bet nobody would be complaining.

After the trailers I've seen opinions of this game do a complete 180. I'm not sure how much of it is the game looking incredibly awesome or how much of it is just DmC haters latching onto something which isn't DmC, but most of what I've been reading for the last few days has been very positive.

This is totally a good idea and not at all a transparent and shallow attempt at riding on the success of Telltale's The Walking Dead series.

@JackSukeru: I'm pretty sure Miyazaki said his greatest failure with Dark Souls was the fact they had to release updates for it. He really wanted to deliver a full, 100% complete game and was initially against the idea of any sort of updates or DLC. Sort of the opposite of this year's PLEASE STOP award.

Here's the full article in Japanese, here's the translation over on NeoGAF.

What really stood out to me in this article was the following bit:

4Gamer: You spoke about already having a large fan base, but how are you planning to adjust the difficult in Dark Souls II? To be honest, I can’t help but think that the needs of your existing fans and that of new players might be conflicting.

Shibuya: Just as you say, it’s a difficult proposition. That’s why we plan on making the early parts of the game comparatively less difficult to ease new players in, and then at a certain point, we’ll tell them “this is where the real game begins.”

4Gamer: So, a “The real Demon’s Souls starts here.” type of thing?

Shibuya: Exactly. In reality, I’m sure we’ll get quite a few new players with Dark Souls II, but existing players will probably represent the majority, so we need to make sure we satisfy their needs.

It reads to me like they're just going to make the introduction to the game a lot smoother and probably teach new players how to play a bit better. I highly doubt they would add some sort of easy mode.

@Hungry said:

I don't like this video is because it is an overreaction to what was said in an initial interview.

I believe the Skyrim comparison was added in by Edge.

@Imsorrymsjackson: No fun allowed?

@Vinny_Says: Worst of all is the person who can't laugh at satire.

MOBA's, I absolutely hate everything about them. Using RTS controls on a single unit is lunacy, click-to-move control schemes are the worst.

I'm a bit worried about the direction they're taking the game in. Part of what made Dark Souls awesome is the fact you have all your abilities right out of the gate, you didn't have to talk to some NPC or fill up a skill tree to unlock parrying, it was just something you could do. You could also go wherever you wanted, you didn't have to play the game in the same order every time.

Limiting player options can mean many things, I think limiting their abilities (ie: unlocking skills) makes the least amount of sense. What makes slightly more sense would be restricting the respawning in some way similar to Demon's Souls where you're forced to get familiar with the death mechanics. What makes even more sense would be simply limiting the places you can go right out of the tutorial section. A lot of people were confused when they got to Firelink, couldn't figure out where to go, then just gave up on the game. If players were directed towards the Undead Asylum a bit better you probably wouldn't have had as many people quit playing, something the developers probably noticed and wanted to address.