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Modder "Fixes" Dark Souls PC Resolution Issues

Unclear if Namco Bandai and FromSoftware approve, but it's impressive.

No Caption Provided

UPDATE: On his blog, Durante claims he was working on a DLL intercept, which is what allowed him to deliver this fix, ahead of the game's release. Thus, he was able to release the fix in such a timely fashion.

--

Dark Souls on PC no longer has a fixed resolution, all thanks to a skilled fan on NeoGAF.

NeoGAF user “Durante” managed to release the fix in less than 30 minutes, though it comes with come caveats.

“People really shouldn't order the game and expect to play the whole thing at high res just yet,” he warned players. “Again: No one knows yet how well (or if at all) this works for the entire game!”

The difference is impressive, though. Check it out:

The celebration around FromSoftware’s decision to bring Dark Souls to PC was followed by grumbling over limitations of the port that From Software outlined as development continued.

"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,” said producer Daisuke Uchiyama to Eurogamer earlier this year. “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.”

Namco Bandai hasn’t responded to my request for comment yet. Specifically, whether Namco Bandai and FromSoftware intends to patch out Durante’s resolution workaround in a future update for Dark Souls on PC.

Patrick Klepek on Google+

175 Comments

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deactivated-5945386c8a570

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heard they got cheats working too, not good for pvp.

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KowalskiManDown

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Edited By KowalskiManDown

I don't see much of a difference?

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Jazz_Lafayette

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Edited By Jazz_Lafayette

I'm pretty sure this is just the beginning of From Software's meta-game, in which they make their players suffer through as much shit in real life as they do in the game world.

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Brackynews

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Edited By Brackynews

@Dark_Lord_Spam: See, now I want to touch this guy's blood stain on NeoGAF and watch the development process. It's the FROMSOFT ARG. :)

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Zabant

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Edited By Zabant

Woooooowww these comments....

Thank god my NeoGaf account was verified last month

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arx724

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Edited By arx724

Well these comments are mostly a big pile of shit.

Looks really nice, it's a bit bad/sad FROM couldn't/didn't do this themselves. I'm even more excited to replay this game now, looking forward to it arriving on Monday!

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Humanity

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Edited By Humanity

@Packie said:

@LarryDavis said:

I still don't know why people love Dark Souls so much. It's good at first, but the developers seemed to be obsessed with just making it as hard as possible with no regard for whether it's due to dumb bullshit or not. Demon's Souls was a great balance of challenging things that still seemed fair. I played through it twice, no regrets. Dark Souls just seems to want to fuck you over at every opportunity, once you get to the swamp. Which also had the same awful framerate problem the swamp in the first game had.

What I'm saying is, it's not shocking that From Software released a totally botched port, since they couldn't even fix problems from the previous game on fixed hardware. Also Dark Souls is not good. So there's that. Here come the flames about how I'm just bad at it or whatever!

I actually agree with you. Demon's Souls was a much more balanced game in terms of design, difficulty and pacing. Bed of Chaos is one of the most awful boss fights I've ever played. Even the game's director, Miyazaki, outright admitted that. But as a whole, I love Dark Souls more despite being somewhat the inferior game from a design perspective. The Combat System, The variety of the environments and enemies, The art style, The music, The wonderful lore and world-building. Everything comes together to form this phenomenal work of art and game design.

I also think Demons Souls was much more successful in what it tried to accomplish. The hub world was perfect for the frantic style of gameplay thats associated with fearing death at any moment. The bonfires while a welcome addition always carried that weight with them of respawning everything around you. They did nothing to the combat which should have been a priority. If anything, backstabbing became even glitchier and nothing was done about the sometimes spotty targetting system. Dying because you fought poorly is one thing, but dying because your weapon continues to wiff air because the targetting isn't designed to work with certain larger body types is terrible in a game that punishes failure so severely. In terms of level design I think it took a step back for the most part. The castle segments don't feel as pronounced as Boleteria. Blighttown does not evoke the same atmosphere of decrepit decay as the Valley of Defilement. The archives are probably the most interesting area while all of Anor Lando seems completely bland and strangely out of scale. Overall I think they should have concentrated on the flaws in Demons Souls and tried to fix those rather than expanding in this whole new open world direction, leaving all previous issues present and piling on a whole slew of new ones.

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kyrieee

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Edited By kyrieee

@neverdeed said:

editing an ini file and slapping on a d3d9 processing dll is not "modding" and it wasnt 23 minutes, he had the pirated version and clearly was using an illegal copy for atleast a day

If you want attention then do something noteworthy instead of shitting on the people who already have

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divakchopra

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Edited By divakchopra

the PC version will always the best version, no matter what generation

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MrKlorox

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Edited By MrKlorox

Does anybody know if this works with the Subpixel Morphological AA Injector? Or will Durante have to include SMAA in his injector for it to work?
 
edit: The answer is that no, it seems that no other d3d injector/interceptor dlls can be used along with this one. To get both to work, they would have to be combined into one dll.

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connerthekewlkid

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Edited By connerthekewlkid

@Zabant: TAKE ME WITH YOU :{

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Bubbly

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Edited By Bubbly

Just another one of the reasons I love PC gaming. If a dev puts out a broken/subpar/half-assed (I would say the Dark Souls port falls into this category) product then the community will take up the job to fix it. Big kudos to Durante.

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AssInAss

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Edited By AssInAss

@Mysh said:

You guys that're calling him a pirate, and saying that he just copied in a dll and edited an ini file, where did you get that from?

If you click the third link in the story - "thanks to a skilled fan on NeoGAF", he pretty clearly explains that he began work on the mod a week before the game was due out. Essentially he built a generic framework in the dll to intercept the D3D calls affecting framebuffer resolution, ie. the hard part, then once the game was out all he had left to do was some small edits specific to the actual game (identify the exact D3D calls that it makes, i would guess). That's why he was able to mod it so quickly after the midnight unlock of the game files on GFWL.

The short of it is, maybe, read the story properly and attempt some research before making wild claims? I think the bloke deserves serious kudos for being so prepared, being smart enough to do it, and sharing it with everyone too.

Thank you for this.

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Turkalurch

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Edited By Turkalurch

@Leptok said:

@Turkalurch

I hope they welcome the mod support from the community.

This could be a good thing if From Software handles this the right way.

They are Japanese, do you really expect them to?

No expectations. Just would be nice.

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tim_the_corsair

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Edited By tim_the_corsair

I am truly glad to see the "don't be a jerk" rule being enforced as well as always

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vinsanityv22

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Edited By vinsanityv22

Meh, grumbling over nothing. Game resolution has been fine ever since we hit 720p. I mean, higher resolutions are always going to be great. But c'mon; we all lived through consoles like the N64, and that late 90's era of PC games. If you were to play a game like Jedi Knight in it's native resolution in a window on your current desktop, it'd be the size of a postage stamp. AND WE PLAYED GAMES THAT LOOKED LIKE THAT! This is silliness.

However, a modding community coming together to redo the textures in Dark Souls would be great. A true HD texture pack... that would be amazing. Can't wait until artists tackle this thing. I'm sure From Software would be fine with it, since they are inexperienced on PC.

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bybeach

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Edited By bybeach

DAMN! I feel so ENTITLED..so much I may deign to actually buy Dark Souls(Especially since I already have it for the PS3) Come to think of it.. I may just wait for a deep Steam sale like I did for Alan Wake, which is a wonderfully well done port for another game I already own. In fact it's time for some more AW,.. boy you can tell some real pride was put into that PC version of the game.

And Thank You modder for doing the dev's job for Dark Souls. But not to get too dickish, Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl needed a ton of work by modders, and that was one of the best pc games I have ever played.

I guess I'm just irritated because if you scratch deep enough here, I sense the undercurrent of jealousy for pc gaming rising up lately again. Don't worry console denizens, the new models are on the horizon......looking forward to it myself. Though I am no longer happy about the 360's current dashboard, or the PS3 continued difficulties to to be worked with well. Hopefully these will be changed and improved..

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SatelliteOfLove

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Edited By SatelliteOfLove

This story was, is, and will be a cocktail of wierd viewpoints that clash.

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rollingzeppelin

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Edited By rollingzeppelin

@hakunin said:

@RollingZeppelin said:

@neverdeed said:

editing an ini file and slapping on a d3d9 processing dll is not "modding" and it wasnt 23 minutes, he had the pirated version and clearly was using an illegal copy for atleast a day

Oh look, another fucking troll. I'd just like you to know that you suck.

Good day.

Oh look, another one jumping on the bandwagon.

Quality posting on GB

So he's not a troll? That's a great post, yourself. If someone is commenting like a dick I'm gonna call him out for it. You can go on defending trolls, makes no difference to me.

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kariyanine

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Edited By kariyanine

@AhmadMetallic: game isn't actually broken, at least no more than the console versions were.

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Terramagi

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Edited By Terramagi

@vinsanityv22 said:

Meh, grumbling over nothing. Game resolution has been fine ever since we hit 720p. I mean, higher resolutions are always going to be great. But c'mon; we all lived through consoles like the N64, and that late 90's era of PC games. If you were to play a game like Jedi Knight in it's native resolution in a window on your current desktop, it'd be the size of a postage stamp. AND WE PLAYED GAMES THAT LOOKED LIKE THAT! This is silliness.

However, a modding community coming together to redo the textures in Dark Souls would be great. A true HD texture pack... that would be amazing. Can't wait until artists tackle this thing. I'm sure From Software would be fine with it, since they are inexperienced on PC.

Do you know what 720p looks like from 2 feet?

It's not as good as does when you're lounging on a couch with...

...

Fuck, how do I make the little TM marker. There's probably an alt command for it. I need it to look a proper entitled PC gaming elitist.

@bybeach said:

I guess I'm just irritated because if you scratch deep enough here, I sense the undercurrent of jealousy for pc gaming rising up lately again. Don't worry console denizens, the new models are on the horizon......looking forward to it myself. Though I am no longer happy about the 360's current dashboard, or the PS3 continued difficulties to to be worked with well. Hopefully these will be changed and improved..

I hope for console gamers' sakes that the new console come soon, because with each passing year of stagnant hardware, PC gaming grows stronger.

Another year, and I can almost assure you that the "rebound" as people go "back" to consoles won't be as strong.

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gulroth

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Edited By gulroth

@vinsanityv22 said:

Meh, grumbling over nothing. Game resolution has been fine ever since we hit 720p. I mean, higher resolutions are always going to be great. But c'mon; we all lived through consoles like the N64, and that late 90's era of PC games. If you were to play a game like Jedi Knight in it's native resolution in a window on your current desktop, it'd be the size of a postage stamp. AND WE PLAYED GAMES THAT LOOKED LIKE THAT! This is silliness.

However, a modding community coming together to redo the textures in Dark Souls would be great. A true HD texture pack... that would be amazing. Can't wait until artists tackle this thing. I'm sure From Software would be fine with it, since they are inexperienced on PC.

A resolution of 720p is very low for PC standards even in the late 90s (at the time I was playing at 1280x1024) it was the mass introduction of LCD monitors that reduced the resolution a lot.

Anyway, not having the option to change resolution when is one of the simplest things to implement is lazy, and the excuse that PC gamers where begin for it is not applicable, the game is far from free. If a copy was given for free to each person that bought it for another platform it would be tolerable, but intending to pay 40€ for a product that does not incorporate the most basic functionalities of PC gaming is preposterous.

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Tordah

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Edited By Tordah

What I don't understand is how From Software couldn't have done this from the start? If they lack the skills to do a PC port properly then perhaps hire some help, if only temporarily?

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Terramagi

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Edited By Terramagi

@Tordah said:

What I don't understand is how From Software couldn't have done this from the start? If they lack the skills to do a PC port properly then perhaps hire some help, if only temporarily?

One of three possibilities:

1. Ignorance - "Nobody is going to buy this thing on computers. What the fuck is Steam? Everything in Japan is on a console, it can't be different elsewhere. Just... I don't know, slap it together."

2. Incompetence - "EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE!"

3. Calculated Cunning - "Why do it ourselves when somebody is probably going to patch it 30 minutes after the game comes out?"

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Tordah

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Edited By Tordah

@Terramagi: All of those possibilties sound just as likely to be true. I guess we'll never know.

Anyway, good work by the guy that made the fix.

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pyide

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Edited By pyide

@vinsanityv22 said:

Meh, grumbling over nothing. Game resolution has been fine ever since we hit 720p. I mean, higher resolutions are always going to be great. But c'mon; we all lived through consoles like the N64, and that late 90's era of PC games. If you were to play a game like Jedi Knight in it's native resolution in a window on your current desktop, it'd be the size of a postage stamp. AND WE PLAYED GAMES THAT LOOKED LIKE THAT! This is silliness.

However, a modding community coming together to redo the textures in Dark Souls would be great. A true HD texture pack... that would be amazing. Can't wait until artists tackle this thing. I'm sure From Software would be fine with it, since they are inexperienced on PC.

As I'm sure others have already said, it's not nothing. There's a big difference between native resolution on a PC and an lower one that's being upscaled or stretched to fill the native res. Doesn't matter if it's a game, program, or the OS itself. Running anything in non-native resolutions is going to be blurry and muddy and not desirable since LCDs replaced CRTs in the PC space. Go drop your computer down to 1280x720 (or 800 if it's 16:10) in Windows or any game and compare the results to the native res.

It's a bit different on an HDTV w/ consoles where better hardware scalers are involved and you aren't sitting 2 feet away from the screen to see the ugliness up close and personal. PC monitors generally don't have the best scalers built into them, and there's sometimes an option for GPU scaling via video drivers. But when a game has forced software scaling built in like Dark Souls does, it's always going to look worse than those other solutions, especially when it's that much lower of a res than your LCD's native.

It's hard to believe until you see it running first hand, but default Dark Souls PC without the hack on a high resolution LCD looks much worse than if you were to output the game (either from the 360 or PC) at the standard 720p on an HDTV.

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ronindrummer200

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Edited By ronindrummer200

Why do we all have to hate?

Can't wait for the dlc to hit my ps3 version. I'd get the pc version too but, dumping out 120+ hours of play for a higher resolution doesn't fit in my schedule.

I want to kill more bosses that look and are metaphors for lady parts.

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envane

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Edited By envane

@ronindrummer200: 120 hours lol im at 16 hours and just started the new content (tho extremely undergeared for whats to come after the firts boss)

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Edited By zels

Amazing work and as someone who is perfectly happy to have the game on PC at all, I will be sure to install and use it.

Don't understand the hate coming from either side - it's a product with a price on it, you either consider it worth the price and get it or move past and never look back. People are strange.

EDIT: I just tried it and it's an amazing difference in quality. Highly recommended to anyone who's on the fence about this. It's also easy to install and remove. Might donate to the guy, amazing effort.

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thepantheon

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Edited By thepantheon

This is why the PC community will always be the best.

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Ronald

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Edited By Ronald

@thefriend said:

@neverdeed said:

editing an ini file and slapping on a d3d9 processing dll is not "modding" and it wasnt 23 minutes, he had the pirated version and clearly was using an illegal copy for atleast a day

Someone doesn't know what the definition of modification is. Also Patrick, you have a "come" in the first sentence that should be "some".

He just got back from his honeymoon, so this misspelling is understandable.

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cikame

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Edited By cikame

If you modify anything it's a mod ok.

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MrKlorox

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Edited By MrKlorox

Guys, the game is NOT 720p by default. 720p is 1280x720 in progressive scan. The game's default framebuffer is 1024x720. It is 25% smaller in width than 720p. You don't just take the vertical resolution and add a p next to it.

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Lysergica33

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Edited By Lysergica33

@Humanity said:

@Packie said:

@LarryDavis said:

I still don't know why people love Dark Souls so much. It's good at first, but the developers seemed to be obsessed with just making it as hard as possible with no regard for whether it's due to dumb bullshit or not. Demon's Souls was a great balance of challenging things that still seemed fair. I played through it twice, no regrets. Dark Souls just seems to want to fuck you over at every opportunity, once you get to the swamp. Which also had the same awful framerate problem the swamp in the first game had.

What I'm saying is, it's not shocking that From Software released a totally botched port, since they couldn't even fix problems from the previous game on fixed hardware. Also Dark Souls is not good. So there's that. Here come the flames about how I'm just bad at it or whatever!

I actually agree with you. Demon's Souls was a much more balanced game in terms of design, difficulty and pacing. Bed of Chaos is one of the most awful boss fights I've ever played. Even the game's director, Miyazaki, outright admitted that. But as a whole, I love Dark Souls more despite being somewhat the inferior game from a design perspective. The Combat System, The variety of the environments and enemies, The art style, The music, The wonderful lore and world-building. Everything comes together to form this phenomenal work of art and game design.

I also think Demons Souls was much more successful in what it tried to accomplish. The hub world was perfect for the frantic style of gameplay thats associated with fearing death at any moment. The bonfires while a welcome addition always carried that weight with them of respawning everything around you. They did nothing to the combat which should have been a priority. If anything, backstabbing became even glitchier and nothing was done about the sometimes spotty targetting system. Dying because you fought poorly is one thing, but dying because your weapon continues to wiff air because the targetting isn't designed to work with certain larger body types is terrible in a game that punishes failure so severely. In terms of level design I think it took a step back for the most part. The castle segments don't feel as pronounced as Boleteria. Blighttown does not evoke the same atmosphere of decrepit decay as the Valley of Defilement. The archives are probably the most interesting area while all of Anor Lando seems completely bland and strangely out of scale. Overall I think they should have concentrated on the flaws in Demons Souls and tried to fix those rather than expanding in this whole new open world direction, leaving all previous issues present and piling on a whole slew of new ones.

There are reasons for Anor Londo being out of scale. There's lore stuff that hints at Lordran being the land of the giants (the 6th archstone in Demon's Souls.) Pretty much everything in the Dark Souls world seems to point to this, everything's just a tad oversized, Anor Londo being the most potent example.

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Terramagi

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Edited By Terramagi

@Lysergica33 said:

@Humanity said:

@Packie said:

@LarryDavis said:

I still don't know why people love Dark Souls so much. It's good at first, but the developers seemed to be obsessed with just making it as hard as possible with no regard for whether it's due to dumb bullshit or not. Demon's Souls was a great balance of challenging things that still seemed fair. I played through it twice, no regrets. Dark Souls just seems to want to fuck you over at every opportunity, once you get to the swamp. Which also had the same awful framerate problem the swamp in the first game had.

What I'm saying is, it's not shocking that From Software released a totally botched port, since they couldn't even fix problems from the previous game on fixed hardware. Also Dark Souls is not good. So there's that. Here come the flames about how I'm just bad at it or whatever!

I actually agree with you. Demon's Souls was a much more balanced game in terms of design, difficulty and pacing. Bed of Chaos is one of the most awful boss fights I've ever played. Even the game's director, Miyazaki, outright admitted that. But as a whole, I love Dark Souls more despite being somewhat the inferior game from a design perspective. The Combat System, The variety of the environments and enemies, The art style, The music, The wonderful lore and world-building. Everything comes together to form this phenomenal work of art and game design.

I also think Demons Souls was much more successful in what it tried to accomplish. The hub world was perfect for the frantic style of gameplay thats associated with fearing death at any moment. The bonfires while a welcome addition always carried that weight with them of respawning everything around you. They did nothing to the combat which should have been a priority. If anything, backstabbing became even glitchier and nothing was done about the sometimes spotty targetting system. Dying because you fought poorly is one thing, but dying because your weapon continues to wiff air because the targetting isn't designed to work with certain larger body types is terrible in a game that punishes failure so severely. In terms of level design I think it took a step back for the most part. The castle segments don't feel as pronounced as Boleteria. Blighttown does not evoke the same atmosphere of decrepit decay as the Valley of Defilement. The archives are probably the most interesting area while all of Anor Lando seems completely bland and strangely out of scale. Overall I think they should have concentrated on the flaws in Demons Souls and tried to fix those rather than expanding in this whole new open world direction, leaving all previous issues present and piling on a whole slew of new ones.

There are reasons for Anor Londo being out of scale. There's lore stuff that hints at Lordran being the land of the giants (the 6th archstone in Demon's Souls.) Pretty much everything in the Dark Souls world seems to point to this, everything's just a tad oversized, Anor Londo being the most potent example.

The mental image of somebody shattering the archstone in Demon's Souls to destroy access to Lordran out of fear is amazing.

"Well, we've got an undying god who has returned and is stealing the souls of everybody via a fog. Also demons are killing everybody. And if you go in, your soul will be trapped by the Nexus FOREVER unless the Great Old One is taken care of."

"So where's this archstone go to?"

"OH GOOD LORD, I FUCKING FORGOT ABOUT THE FUCKED UP SHIT THAT GOES ON THERE."

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Lysergica33

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Edited By Lysergica33

@Terramagi said:

@Lysergica33 said:

@Humanity said:

@Packie said:

@LarryDavis said:

I still don't know why people love Dark Souls so much. It's good at first, but the developers seemed to be obsessed with just making it as hard as possible with no regard for whether it's due to dumb bullshit or not. Demon's Souls was a great balance of challenging things that still seemed fair. I played through it twice, no regrets. Dark Souls just seems to want to fuck you over at every opportunity, once you get to the swamp. Which also had the same awful framerate problem the swamp in the first game had.

What I'm saying is, it's not shocking that From Software released a totally botched port, since they couldn't even fix problems from the previous game on fixed hardware. Also Dark Souls is not good. So there's that. Here come the flames about how I'm just bad at it or whatever!

I actually agree with you. Demon's Souls was a much more balanced game in terms of design, difficulty and pacing. Bed of Chaos is one of the most awful boss fights I've ever played. Even the game's director, Miyazaki, outright admitted that. But as a whole, I love Dark Souls more despite being somewhat the inferior game from a design perspective. The Combat System, The variety of the environments and enemies, The art style, The music, The wonderful lore and world-building. Everything comes together to form this phenomenal work of art and game design.

I also think Demons Souls was much more successful in what it tried to accomplish. The hub world was perfect for the frantic style of gameplay thats associated with fearing death at any moment. The bonfires while a welcome addition always carried that weight with them of respawning everything around you. They did nothing to the combat which should have been a priority. If anything, backstabbing became even glitchier and nothing was done about the sometimes spotty targetting system. Dying because you fought poorly is one thing, but dying because your weapon continues to wiff air because the targetting isn't designed to work with certain larger body types is terrible in a game that punishes failure so severely. In terms of level design I think it took a step back for the most part. The castle segments don't feel as pronounced as Boleteria. Blighttown does not evoke the same atmosphere of decrepit decay as the Valley of Defilement. The archives are probably the most interesting area while all of Anor Lando seems completely bland and strangely out of scale. Overall I think they should have concentrated on the flaws in Demons Souls and tried to fix those rather than expanding in this whole new open world direction, leaving all previous issues present and piling on a whole slew of new ones.

There are reasons for Anor Londo being out of scale. There's lore stuff that hints at Lordran being the land of the giants (the 6th archstone in Demon's Souls.) Pretty much everything in the Dark Souls world seems to point to this, everything's just a tad oversized, Anor Londo being the most potent example.

The mental image of somebody shattering the archstone in Demon's Souls to destroy access to Lordran out of fear is amazing.

"Well, we've got an undying god who has returned and is stealing the souls of everybody via a fog. Also demons are killing everybody. And if you go in, your soul will be trapped by the Nexus FOREVER unless the Great Old One is taken care of."

"So where's this archstone go to?"

"OH GOOD LORD, I FUCKING FORGOT ABOUT THE FUCKED UP SHIT THAT GOES ON THERE."

We don't go to Ravenholm Lordran anymore...

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zeforgotten

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@Terramagi said:

@Tordah said:

What I don't understand is how From Software couldn't have done this from the start? If they lack the skills to do a PC port properly then perhaps hire some help, if only temporarily?

One of three possibilities:

1. Ignorance - "Nobody is going to buy this thing on computers. What the fuck is Steam? Everything in Japan is on a console, it can't be different elsewhere. Just... I don't know, slap it together."

2. Incompetence - "EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE!"

3. Calculated Cunning - "Why do it ourselves when somebody is probably going to patch it 30 minutes after the game comes out?"

4. Namco Bandai - "We're not gonna give you any funds to help you out with this so just make it a straight port. What's that? How would you guys hire anyone without money? get real"
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dyong

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Oh well I guess it wouldn't be as fun to be a sunbro under lower resolutions.

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sthusby

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@neverdeed said:

editing an ini file and slapping on a d3d9 processing dll is not "modding" and it wasnt 23 minutes, he had the pirated version and clearly was using an illegal copy for atleast a day

Mr. Buzz Killington. We meet again.

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Wendschlag

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Crap software is a no purchase for a consumer.

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sickVisionz

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@neverdeed said:

editing an ini file and slapping on a d3d9 processing dll is not "modding" and it wasnt 23 minutes, he had the pirated version and clearly was using an illegal copy for atleast a day

I think the important thing is that it took him one day to give the game a 1993 level of functionality that the professional developers couldn't figure out after throwing a team of people at the issue for months.

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mdnthrvst

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@Lysergica33: Oh, come on. It's not that hard if you're either extra careful or are good with the controls (the only conclusion I can draw of the Bomb Squad from their torturous accounts being that they aren't whatsoever - seriously, dying to Havel?), with the only exception being near the end. Namely Izalith.

Demon's Souls fed you mostly fodder enemies everywhere except for World 4 and part of 5, and then had extra-fucked bosses to balance it out. Dark Souls is more consistent - mobs are challenging and demand your full attention, and the systemic changes they made to health restoration and such are for the better.

Also, greatswords broke Demon's Souls. I beat that game with a Cleaver and then a Dragon Bone Smasher, and the humanoid-or-smaller enemies that formed most of the challenge in Boletaria couldn't deal with it. Dark Souls has better enemy behavior and resilience to counteract this.

The worst thing about Demon's Souls that they fixed was the stress of simply being in a level - at any moment you could lose World Tendency and your Body form, which you needed to maintain both of if you wanted an easy time of playing, so that even going into a place was nerve-wracking. One giant hub of safety separate from the game's world, as opposed to pockets of safety within it.

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Deusx

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I love watching people suffer through this game. It isn't hard you people, it just takes time to master.

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MURDERSMASH

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@hakunin said:

@LarryDavis said:

I still don't know why people love Dark Souls so much. It's good at first, but the developers seemed to be obsessed with just making it as hard as possible with no regard for whether it's due to dumb bullshit or not. Demon's Souls was a great balance of challenging things that still seemed fair. I played through it twice, no regrets. Dark Souls just seems to want to fuck you over at every opportunity, once you get to the swamp. Which also had the same awful framerate problem the swamp in the first game had.

What I'm saying is, it's not shocking that From Software released a totally botched port, since they couldn't even fix problems from the previous game on fixed hardware. Also Dark Souls is not good. So there's that. Here come the flames about how I'm just bad at it or whatever!

I disagree. The Valley had some framerate dips, but nothing on the level of Blighttown on consoles.

Also - again - when did "It's exactly the same as the other versions, with extra content and consistent framerate" equate "botched port"? This just irks me.

Mechanically, the port is just fine. GFWL doesn't get in the way, the frame rate is fine, and there are KB/M options. The reason people are calling it a botched port is because of the awful graphics and poor mouse support. Seriously, the game looks fucking TERRIBLE with the default internal 1024x720 resolution. Most computers run a 1920x1080+ resolution these days, so the upscaling makes the game look blurry, chunky, and jaggy.

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GioVANNI

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I don't remember why I thought reading the comments might be a good idea.

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hakunin

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@RollingZeppelin said:

@hakunin said:

@RollingZeppelin said:

@neverdeed said:

editing an ini file and slapping on a d3d9 processing dll is not "modding" and it wasnt 23 minutes, he had the pirated version and clearly was using an illegal copy for atleast a day

Oh look, another fucking troll. I'd just like you to know that you suck.

Good day.

Oh look, another one jumping on the bandwagon.

Quality posting on GB

So he's not a troll? That's a great post, yourself. If someone is commenting like a dick I'm gonna call him out for it. You can go on defending trolls, makes no difference to me.

No I'm not seeing anything about neverdeeds post that constitutes "trolling".

BUT

Now let's assume neverdeed is a genuine "troll"... that he submitted that comment willfully knowing it was false/inflammatory/etc well then, he's a pretty good one considering all the responses he's getting, including yours. In that case, congratulations you're just one in a line of me-too posters here feeding the "troll".

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laserbolts

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I hate you all but I do love Dark Souls.

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rollingzeppelin

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@hakunin said:

@RollingZeppelin said:

@hakunin said:

@RollingZeppelin said:

@neverdeed said:

editing an ini file and slapping on a d3d9 processing dll is not "modding" and it wasnt 23 minutes, he had the pirated version and clearly was using an illegal copy for atleast a day

Oh look, another fucking troll. I'd just like you to know that you suck.

Good day.

Oh look, another one jumping on the bandwagon.

Quality posting on GB

So he's not a troll? That's a great post, yourself. If someone is commenting like a dick I'm gonna call him out for it. You can go on defending trolls, makes no difference to me.

No I'm not seeing anything about neverdeeds post that constitutes "trolling".

BUT

Now let's assume neverdeed is a genuine "troll"... that he submitted that comment willfully knowing it was false/inflammatory/etc well then, he's a pretty good one considering all the responses he's getting, including yours. In that case, congratulations you're just one in a line of me-too posters here feeding the "troll".

Whatever man, the guy was posting like an asshole so I called him out for it, if that makes me the bad guy then, fuck it, I'll be the bad guy. I'm glad other people are calling him out for it too.

If he likes getting shit flung his way then that's just another reason why he sucks. Anyway, I'm not going to get into another pointless circular internet argument, this is the last I'll say on it.

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Buttmad consolebabies starting shit because they don't get increased res on their version.