• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Edge 249: Dark Souls II. To be more "direct," "straightforward," and "understandable"


(I don't have my issue they just decided to hype it without spilling their guts. Will update when it arrives.)

Reviewed
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 - 8
Far Cry 3 - 8
PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale - 7
Natural Selection 2 - 8
Call of Duty: Black Ops: Declassified - 2
Scribblenauts Unlimited - 7
Epic Mickey 2 - 5
Fallblox - 7
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed - 7
Little Inferno - 6

Previewed
Tomb Raider
Aliens: Colonial Marines
Metro: Last Light
Gone Home
Company of Heroes 2

Features
Dark Souls II
Born again (on game reboots)
Edge Awards 2012
The making of... Velocity

---
Edge awards
Game of the year: Dishonored
Runners up: Spelunky, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Trials Evolution, Super Hexagon, Guild Wars 2, The Walking Dead, Borderlands 2, Journey, Far Cry 3.

Best visual design: Journey
Best audio design: Beat Sneak Bandit
Publisher of the year: Ubisoft
Studio of the year: Arkane

Alternative awards
Sharpest pitchforks: Mass Effect 3 fans
Best credits sequence: Thirty flights of loving
Emptiest promises: Peter Molyneux
Most undeserved F2P cataclysm: Punch Quest

---
Dark Souls II

"Dark Souls II, by contrast, looks effortlessly ready for the next generation of consoles, on a par with the fidelity of say, Watch Dogs and Star Wars 1313 [...] Even at this nascent stage of production, it's obvious that Namco Bandi is going all in with its investment in Dark Souls II, lumping unprecedented resources behind it."

Miyazaki is on as a supervisor, but Edge speculates this is a generous description of the role. Suggesting that he simply set the ship off guaranteeing two things: that the game is not rushed out, and that there are dedicated servers as a response to fan criticism.
Shibuya and Tanimura are in the director role. This was a company decision by From and Bandai Namco. Miyazaki is directing a new game, no comment on what it is. "Sometimes I'd like to work on a warmer game - not necessarily casual, but warmer in terms of the atmosphere and environment". It's unlikely he will interview regarding the Souls series for a while.

Roughly same size as previous game, denser. Multiple mentions of series evolution. Doesn't take place in Lordran. Shibuya says "the concept of time and the existence of time [as in eras] is something that will be key to Dark Souls II". No plans to change the controls. Development team has nearly doubled. Game is 25% complete, 2013 is unelikely. They're considering snowy environments. Coastlines are an environment. There is a Dr. Hyde like character, you will fight his creation. There is a moral system. Experimenting with vehicles, not player controlled.

"I will follow the same concept as Dark Souls, but there were a lot of hidden story elements that some players may not have caught before, and I'm hoping to make some of that a little bit more clear or directly expressed to the player - not just in the story, but messaging."
---
subscription info, or here which may be cheaper.
Next month page says eda, lowercase in yellow on a grey background, with a matrix of grey isometric box silohuetes.
 

Danielsan

Member
Please put your acceptability where the sun don't shine. Please. :(

Love that armour with the fur though. Another case of outstanding armour design.
 

UrbanRats

Member
That paragraph reads like damage control.

I don't mind accessibility if they manage to keep the core experience intact.. somehow.
Maybe a covenant to not get invaded but able to summon.
 

AniHawk

Member
Accessibility... I don't like that word.

with the smartglass or vita, you can earn experience when you're not playing it on your home console. use the dark souls ii app and upload game-specific pictures to facebook and twitter to get even more experience points, and unlock clothes, weapons, and hairstyles for your character.
 

Cartman86

Banned
As long as they don't tell you where to go at all times, keep death important, and leave the combat alone I don't really care how accessible they make it. Sure make it easier to understand how different systems work. I have to look those up anyways. The rest can be figured out by the player.
 
with the smartglass or vita, you can earn experience when you're not playing it on your home console. use the dark souls ii app and upload game-specific pictures to facebook and twitter to get even more experience points, and unlock clothes, weapons, and hairstyles for your character.

Gross. Pls stop ;_;
 
Hmm, those comments definitely sound like they will be divisive. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing as long as they include some sort of hardcore mode.
 

linko9

Member
with the smartglass or vita, you can earn experience when you're not playing it on your home console. use the dark souls ii app and upload game-specific pictures to facebook and twitter to get even more experience points, and unlock clothes, weapons, and hairstyles for your character.

Hell, at least that shit would be optional. I'm worried they're going to dumb down the overall difficulty, or put in a bunch of tutorializing, or in some way make the game progression more linear.
 

NeoUltima

Member
If 'accessibility' just means making the systems more clear and understandable, I have no problem with that. It would be for the better. I shouldn't have to go to a wiki page to understand how covenants work.

Just don't dumb down the difficulty of the core gameplay.
 
Please put your acceptability where the sun don't shine. Please. :(

Love that armour with the fur though. Another case of outstanding armour design.

People were worried Dark Souls would be too accessible as well, and we all know how that turned out!

Maybe two difficulties isn't out of the question?
 
We sympathise if that sort of statement concerns you, but at the same time, we can surely agree that we would all like to see Dark Souls attain as great a presence as The Elder Scrolls.
I hope that doesn't mean they're looking to Skyrim for inspiration. As much as I like Dark Souls and Skyrim, I'd like to keep them separate.
 
I think accessibility would be a good thing as far as some of the random events in the game go. A lot of the important stuff in dark souls it's pretty much luck whether you figure it out or not if you're not reading a guide (like
giving the lord vessel to the abyss serpent before you give it to frampt, etc..
).

They better not dumb down the combat or make the game easier though..
 
I don't like the sound of those comments at all. It sounds like they're going to go for a more straightforward story instead of telling the story like they did in the previous two Souls games.
 

Sid

Member
As we find out in issue 249, the answers to these questions are in the hands of game directors new to the Souls series, Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura, who have taken the reins from Hidetaka Miyazaki. Their descriptions of how they intend to mould Dark Souls II into a more approachable form seem reasonable. But Shibuya admits that their approach will be influenced by their individual characters. “I personally am the sort of person who likes to be more direct than subtle,” he tells us. “[Dark Souls II] will be more straightforward and more understandable.” We sympathise if that sort of statement concerns you, but at the same time, we can surely agree that we would all like to see Dark Souls attain as great a presence as The Elder Scrolls. How it gets there is a worthy matter for debate, but it’s certainly a noble task.
What the ?
 

Pookmunki

Member
If 'accessibility' just means making the systems more clear and understandable, I have no problem with that. It would be for the better. I shouldn't have to go to a wiki page to understand how covenants work.

Just don't dumb down the difficulty of the core gameplay.

Yep, this is the best we can hope for, I hope they don't make it too transparent though - the mystery of the Souls games are 99% of their appeal to me.
 
So now 2 RPGs series are after that Skyrim cake:

-BioWare with Dragon Age 3
-FROM with Souls 3

We all know how this very chase ended for FPSs games chasing dat Call of Duty pot o gold...
 

Corto

Member
Good luck From. There is indeed a lot to improve in terms of accessibility in Dark Souls maintaining the overall difficulty but It will be very hard though to be able to achieve that keeping the player base of the past Souls games pleased. Good luck From.
 

UrbanRats

Member
so much vitriol over a word. fucking gamers.
iInQ5iwn2MhSZ.gif
 

linko9

Member
we can surely agree that we would all like to see Dark Souls attain as great a presence as The Elder Scrolls

No I would not. Because that would mean changing the core of the game in order to appeal to the type of audience that loves Skyrim. The tastes of the population at large are not going to undergo a massive change.

Anyway I'm a bit worried about this new director... my main concern about his statement is that they'll add in a bunch of story sequences that are forced on you. The way the story was handled in Dark and Demon's Souls was excellent; I really hope that doesn't change.
 

Eusis

Member
I think the Elder Scrolls bit was just Edge's statement.

... but doesn't this Skyrim fixation seem sort of odd? Oblivion was a big deal, but it seems like Skyrim's suddenly become the de facto standard developers and the press want to hold RPGs to, and while I like it it's not as if it's so wildly different from Oblivion (which was also very successful) to be so noteworthy. Hell, I expect the times they hit in the generation (within the first year of the 360 versus when the 360/PS3 were matured) and simply slowly building up a fanbase are the biggest factors.
 

Alex

Member
I'd imagine accessibility concerns would be largely focused at the system and UI design more than taking away from the marketing point heritage of the game. As good as the Souls games are, they could indeed stand to lose a bit of the cryptic FAQ diving for what should be simple explanations and character building layouts.

Also, no one even mentioned Skyrim but Edge in passing.

A game like this would have been ideal for the Wii U. The miiverse would be extremely useful.

Yeah, I can see how hand drawn sketches of Goombas and Link all over the place would greatly improve the atmosphere. Really, what could they do with the Miiverse that they don't already do with their own in-game systems, especially when they do not want direct player communication?
 
I think the Elder Scrolls bit was just Edge's statement.

... but doesn't this Skyrim fixation seem sort of odd? Oblivion was a big deal, but it seems like Skyrim's suddenly become the de facto standard developers and the press want to hold RPGs to, and while I like it it's not as if it's so wildly different from Oblivion (which was also very successful) to be so noteworthy. Hell, I expect the times they hit in the generation (within the first year of the 360 versus when the 360/PS3 were matured) and simply slowly building up a fanbase are the biggest factors.

Skyrim came at a time when every single publisher was telling everyone that you have to stick multiplayer and social elements into every fucking game or else they won't sell and if they do, they'll get traded in so you need that online pass. Then it killed it in the marketplace and everybodys like "oh wow"
 
I think the Elder Scrolls bit was just Edge's statement.

... but doesn't this Skyrim fixation seem sort of odd? Oblivion was a big deal, but it seems like Skyrim's suddenly become the de facto standard developers and the press want to hold RPGs to, and while I like it it's not as if it's so wildly different from Oblivion (which was also very successful) to be so noteworthy. Hell, I expect the times they hit in the generation (within the first year of the 360 versus when the 360/PS3 were matured) and simply slowly building up a fanbase are the biggest factors.

Skyrim sold over 10M copies (and it's old data!). It's the genres Modern Warfare now.
 

sixghost

Member
I'd imagine accessibility concerns would be largely focused at the system and UI design more than taking away from the marketing point heritage of the game. As good as the Souls games are, they could indeed stand to lose a bit of the cryptic FAQ diving for what should be simple explanations and layouts.

Also, no one even mentioned Skyrim but Edge in passing.

As much as I like Dark Souls, things like the weapon stats page, or crafting system could have been explained better. Luckily I had the strategy guide, but I think it's stuff like that which turns people away rather than the difficulty or pace.
 

raven777

Member
the cover is amazing.

isn't the previous director still working on the game? just not as the director?

Also, how is this new director? has he made some good games in the past?
 
Top Bottom