Quick Look: Dark Souls

Geeze, 1 hour 30. Must be a lot of dying.

The real Dark Souls starts at 18:20

That slow roll. This game is now a definite purchase for me.

vinny rorie and brad ER best thing ever
rorie is awesome in this

@AndrewB said:

This video is larger than Baldur's Gate*

*In HD, in terms of gigabytes and the little number in front of it denoting how many.

This video has changed my life and I haven't even watched it yet!

You have to remember that a video of someone playing Baldur's Gate would also be larger than Baldur's Gate, so its sort of a moot point.

Love it when the asylum demon jump up at them like "yeah, you're not safe from me!".

God, this game looks brutal. If I had a console, I'd totally buy this. Seems to scratch the right itch between utter frustration and achievement.

I get challenging combat and learning from experience, but there's one thing that always bothered me about Demons Souls and seems to persist in Dark Souls: the lack of documentation on game mechanics.

They talk about it for a while in the video, it's just strange that there's no in-game resource or manual to explain how the fundamentals for some of the systems work.

Gotta love a QL that has both Vinny AND Rorie in it.

Buckling that seat belt and jumping in!

Wish I had the console to play this. Seems fun.

4 mins in and Rorie is already a hoot!

What the fuck is going on...

@Fripplebubby said:

@AndrewB said:

This video is larger than Baldur's Gate*

*In HD, in terms of gigabytes and the little number in front of it denoting how many.

This video has changed my life and I haven't even watched it yet!

You have to remember that a video of someone playing Baldur's Gate would also be larger than Baldur's Gate, so its sort of a moot point.

You know, like a cowt's opinion. It doesn't matter. It's moot.

This game looks brutal...and yet I kinda want to play it.

I was pessimistic about this Quick Look at first, but it turned out great. Nice to see Rorie over here.

The game looks incredible!

The wait for 7th of October here in the UK is killing me! (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

As crazy as this sounds... I kinda wana play this now O_o

While it was a amazing quicklook, I think it's a tiny bit disappointing they didn't show the online integration. The real-time ghosts of other players in the world, the bloodstains left by players that met their end, the messages left by fellow adventurers, etcetera. I think all those features really set this game apart from everything else, it feels like you have a community behind you that is struggling through this game just like you, and it gives a sense of camaraderie when player-left messages point out hidden treasure, you see ghosts of other players resting at bonfires, they point you towards shortcuts or give you extremely helpful tips on the next encounter.

I don't really recommend anyone to play this game in offline mode. It makes the game, in a sense, twice as hard.

Invasions by other players, while sounding like a way to get griefed, are not common at all, and the odds are always stacked in your favor stat-wise. You can't ever be invaded by players above your level.

Also, the fact that you can invite fellow players to help you through difficult sections, and help out other players yourself, makes these games quite the experience. And it feels like a team effort when you finally manage to kill that boss.

Here's a video of 3 guys taking down a few difficult enemies together, and a very challenging bossfight at the end. Really worth checking out.

@Fripplebubby said:

@AndrewB said:

This video is larger than Baldur's Gate*

*In HD, in terms of gigabytes and the little number in front of it denoting how many.

This video has changed my life and I haven't even watched it yet!

You have to remember that a video of someone playing Baldur's Gate would also be larger than Baldur's Gate, so its sort of a moot point.

I know, it's just an interesting stat.

Those bonfires should be sweet. 
The thought of farming without loading in and out of the Nexus sounds sooo awesome.

I will be watching this in HD, despite coming dangerously close to Comcast's 250GB-a-month limit.

I come dangerously close every month.

I love the art style of this game, with the full suits of armor and how gothic/gloomy everything is. I really like the way it (seems to) play too and would love to get it. I just hate stat driven games and don't have the time to invest like you have to, anyway.

I'm very glad you guys gave this game the attention it deserves. Yes, there are more ways than the one shown to kill the armored boar. I encourage others to give this game a chance, the game is fair in its difficulty and if you feel stuck, you can look for new areas, items, or souls to collect. It's my most anticipated game of the year, and I didn't have the time to play Demon's Souls fully. Dark Souls has some meaningful improvements. The two big things not shown in this video are the online components and the all new (and very personally exciting) Covenant systems. To say more about Covenants would spoil them, but they are awesome.

Dark Souls multiplayer TNT! :P

I have a dilemma people: don't have a PS3 controller yet, money's tight and I owned (and beat) Demon's Souls....buy this on 360 or stick to keeping it on Ps3 but no controller?

@ProfessorEss said:

@Aishan: That's a fair argument. It is in a lot of way excessively obtuse, and there's some crafting in Demon's Souls that I'm confident I would've never figured out without a Wiki. I just found the game too fun to let this stop me, plus, that Wiki is pretty good if you feel the need to use it, which I'll admit I did from time to time.

Speaking of, I just found my first Crystal Lizard. I hated those goddamn things in Demon's Souls.

@Rorie:

Hey Rorie. You guys sometimes worry about whether it'll be boring for the viewers to watch you play a section a second or third time (such as when the dragon wiped you on the bridge). Don't. Your "job" in a QL isn't to make the game look good, it is to show us what's the game is and how it is played. In other words - if the name of the game in Dark Souls is repetition, then don't be afraid to show us repetition. We want to see how the game is played.

this looks like a fun and aggravating game definitely interested in it

Oh, god! How dumbed down is this game? The stat icons have descriptions now! What the hell??

I'm kidding, couldn't be more hyped.

Oh my god I completely don't want to play this at all.

I love how you can tell rorie is really excited for this game. Normally I get the feeling he's on the quicklook for the hell of it, but he's really into this.

I was a huge fan of Demon's Souls being completely fair and never stupidly hard or cheap, so someone who has gone through the dragon part needs to tell me what Rorie could have done instead of the mad dash he did and still got hurt. 
 
The Demon's Souls 1-2 dragon was all about timing, but that didn't seem to be the case here.

The end got really tense! So glad Rorie and Vinny were here to give this game a fair shout. Hopefully Brad liked what he saw.

@Juicebox: Being hipster has nothing to do with it.

I want to buy the hell out of this game now.. can't wait to see if it gets crapped on in reviews for requiring a remotely intelligent player on other sites

Anyone have any idea what "humanity" is all about?

@ProfessorEss said:

@Rorie: By "found" do mean killed or scared away?

Scared away once, killed it once, and now it seems to be gone permanently. Not sure if I had two chances at it, or it will just respawn until you can manage to kill it. The fact that they disappeared permanently in Demon's Souls was super lame; that basically forced me to play through with a walkthrough so that I didn't miss out on upgrades.

These guys seem to not only be less audible than in Demon's Souls, but they glow so much that they're basically indistinguishable from an item pickup at a distance. So you're running toward what you think is an item and then it up and runs. Silly.

Thank you for this GB, thank you! :)

@Rorie: I heard from a person that a crystal lizard respawned once in Dark Souls. I don't know how that happened or if he was mistaken or any more than that (such as if they have more respawns/different mechanics).

Don't you worry, Brad. The environments do start to vary very greatly in look and structure.

Oh and good job at the controls, Rorie. :)

@Rorie: I heard from a person that a crystal lizard respawned once in Dark Souls. I don't know any more than that (such as if they have more respawns/different mechanics).

@Ventilaator: Run straight to the right side stairs.

You might take a hit but it's only 1 estus flask. I think that you'll be fast enough though.

I really had no idea what demon souls and dark souls were in terms of genre and gameplay, but after watching this it looks like it could get fairly boring.

@Nihilius: Oh don't worry. It gets crazier as the game goes on.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay crazier.

woah woah all these scrolls...is this oblivion?

@ProfessorEss: The old Demon's Souls Crystal Lizard rules: http://demonssouls.wikidot.com/crystal-lizards