You, Me, and Dark Souls III

@vinny Dude. That desk is SERIOUS. Looks great.

My car does randomly shut down :(

Game looks good other than the crashes, exactly like more Dark Souls. Shocker.

Dang I want to watch this but I can't till the 12th :(

Very nice sly Monster Factory reference from Austin right near the end! "Just like Vordt." Tip to toe, this is a Vordt.

"Squirrrrrrtle."

Scariest Misty Ever...

Early versions of Dark Souls III are not complete.

Japan already has a version out, so take that how you will.

Sheeeyit dog. Muhfukkin dragons.

Arrow pointing down.

Is it just me or do the graphics look sorta crappy. I am hoping the settings are jenked up because right now the textures looks worse than DS2 even and way worse than Bloodborne.

Really liking how much Demon's Souls there is in this one. Should have brought back the composer as well.

@matatat: Those textures are way better than DS2, and I really liked DS2 so thats not a slight or anything. You may be remembering those games through rose tinted glasses. Bloodborne similarly appeared to look better because it had a detailed aesthetic. This game actually looks pretty good, but nothing special. From Software has clearly stopped caring about innovating and they're just giving people what they want: more of the same. Not to say DS3 is going to be a bad game or anything, I still want to play it, but I don't think I've ever been as indifferent towards seeing Souls gameplay than I was during this entire video.

It's.. more Dark Souls.. for better and worse, and it's the same "worse" we've seen time and time again.

Play Misty for me...

@humanity - Yeah, I know what you mean. I've got 100+ hours in each of the previous Souls games and will be right there with III on release, no doubt having a great time.

But I've seen nothing here which actually makes me excited for the game. The trick for From will be when interest in the Souls franchise dies away and they have to come up with something new.

@dave_tacitus: Well they said this is the last one in the Dark Souls series so there is hope for innovation yet! They did it with Bloodborne - although that game had flaws and was really limited in terms of character growth, I thought the setting was fantastic. Finally a Souls game that felt so completely new! Vinny mentioned how he likes the medieval aesthetic above the victorian Bloodborne, but frankly I'm tired of swords and knights in clunky armor..

If Visceral teamed up with From Software to make some Demons Souls/Dead Space hybrid I think it would have the potential to be really amazing. Lord knows I love the sci-fi setting, and Visceral did an amazing job with the environments and art in Dead Space. To have From add their own bit of crazy and darkness to that formula would be really something!

@humanity: Nah, From and CDPR. I'll imagine The Witcher with proper DS combat then get sad for the rest of the day.

Oh, I think I just now got what they were doing with the title.

@csl316: The version we played for this has the day one patch already installed, as we said in the video. (That's why you can see notes from other players and phantoms.)

I really wish they would have used 'three' rather than 'III'

Now you just need to mod in pizza/Louie Anderson/Steve Harvey textures, and you've got a toe-to-tip Souls game here.

But the stats and stamina systems are almost exactly like DS1, but with GOOD but small tweaks!

I've been watching hours and hours of the early levels from the beta test and the pre-release streamers, and I'd say DS3 seems to be taking all the best systems and changes from each entry in the series and combining them. Which is awesome, and exactly what I hoped for.

It's Fecal Poo's.

OR... Focus Points.

Yes, you can have a fast Dex/Magic or Dex/Faith build (Dex affects the speed at which you cast, use estus, etc). You can also have swords that scale with Faith, Magic, or Luck - and upgrade items to change almost any weapon's scaling to whatever stat you want, or elemental effect, or Raw.

What do you mean about eating multiple souls? You mean the stacks of consumable soul items (Like Fading Soul, Soul of Jeebus, etc)? Cause you could do that in DS2 and BB... and yes, it is convenient!

@humanity:Yeah, I wasn't sure where it stood because at one point Austin says that it looks really good but on the other hand Alex asks if they have the setting set to low. Maybe he was just curious but at the time I was thinking he was remarking on whether or not they had the graphics turned up at all. It could just be the quality of the video to some degree too.

It's true I haven't played DS2 in a bit though so I could be misremembering what it looks like but definitely having played Bloodborne again recently I was kinda like "woah, this area looks kinda rough." To be fair I thought it started to look better farther into the video. And looking at it again just now it doesn't seem as bad as it seemed when I posted. But at the time I was a little taken aback.

Right, I heard you guys note that so the IGN article confused me a whole lot. So the Japanese version is complete, your version has the patch, but apparently the region-adjusted early access users don't have the patch? It's in some nether realm between the two?

Austin, you probably have a better understanding of this, but how do they role out patches between different versions in different regions? If you have a Japanese account here, are you basically out of luck? Will a different patch hit Japanese accounts in America on the 12th for their version? Is there an additional Day One Patch Mk.II coming for your version?

Ah, my head!

Unless you have to play this game for review then you shouldn't care right now. If it's still like this on release then yeah that's shit.

@zombievac: ah cool, haven't played Dark Souls 2 yet so i didn't know that they changed the soul consuming with that already.

You're either mis-remembering, or it's the quality of the stream (the streams record at a lower bitrate than usual GB videos, and it makes it look extra muddy).

I can confirm, this game looks fantastic on PC, and runs great even on average hardware. It's it's own way (considering the art direction heavily), in many ways this is one of the best looking games ever, IMO. I played the hell out of the other 3 Souls games, and this certainly has the best graphics and the game really does seem to take all the best parts of the previous games. I'm SO excited to play more on US release.

YES! Sci-Fi Souls! That could be SO KILLER. Oh man, now I hope they do something like that instead of Bloodborne 2 next.

I like what I'm seeing, but I feel DS fatigue is setting in for me. I'm just not enthusiastic about it like I was with DS 1,2 and Bloodborne. I think I might wait on this one and pick it up later... :(

This time. This one. This is the one I'm gonna get at release rather than months afterwards... now someone tell me if its good or not.

prepare to crash

I'm feeling like now may be the time for me to get into the Souls series. Dark Souls didn't grab me when it was new and I bounced off 2 in a rough way, but since 2 came out I taught myself how to play Monster Hunter and loved it and what this is doing now seems very appealing, I will have to pull out Dark Souls and give it another chance.

Damn it, GBeast. I had no plans to buy this game as there is too much coming out over the next few months. I wanted to wait and play this later, when there would be a bit of an internet safety net. Now I kinda really want to play this, but there is so much else coming out over the next couple of months. Still never finished the first Dark Souls or even touched 2 or Demon Souls.

THIS is it, the perfect GBeast quick look formula! everybody doing what they do best. austin in charge of the controller (at this point, i think he's probably the best player on the team, only rivaled by jeff) and dropping knowledge, and vinny and alex in charge of asking the right questions and making most of the jokes... and also dropping some knowledge. the desk is killing it, too, of course.

This looks reeally nice at 60fps.

just like vordt

I love it that it took the guys 5-6 hours to get this game up and running but still they always claim how PC is the best place to play games. It might be the best place but it definitely not the most comfortable place.

Thats not a PC problem, thats a problem of sloppy developers.

Desk Souls

So it's a Dark Souls game? I think above pretty much all other games this is going to be a growing problem here. The whole mystique and obtuse nature of DS is what made it so fascinating to begin with, Therefore once several of them have been put out it just loses something every time they do it.

Unfortunately that "sloppy developers" problem trickles down, or rather, pours down onto the consumer.

As I always say, PC gaming is great when it works, but boy is it awful when it doesn't.

@austin_walker: ooooh, thanks! (PS: obviously can't be legit angry when ya'll had been doing QA for hours)

I can't play Dark Souls with shields anymore. Dodging is so much more fun

That guy that is cutting his own head off has a backwards hand on the sword. This might just be Bloodborne 2.

The difficulty level on this so far seems...real low. Which is a sentiment I've seen put forth a lot since streamers got their hands on it.

It's a bunch of people who have played a lot of these games and gotten really good at handling what they throw at you. They should go back and take a look at how difficult the opening stages of Dark Souls are now that they aren't stumbling around through the systems and pacing.

Yay at edgy-ironic-whatever-humor SEO obfuscation attempt in Title and Hook. Not.

Yay at edgy-ironic-whatever-humor SEO obfuscation attempt in Title and Hook. Not.

And so did the Ashen One Austin fall to the Chaos that is Vinny.