• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Dark Soul 3 Early Gameplay Footage

It obviously draws a lot of aesthetic and gameplay elements from Bloodborne, but the interesting thing for me is that those elements bring the franchise closer to Demon Souls. It really is triggering memories from that game more than Dark or BB games.

Personally I hope there are at least a few high-fantasy/coloured areas alongside these dreary Demon-like ones.
 
It won't look as good as Bloodborne but that was obvious, but what you really can see, that it is not that bland as Dark Souls 2 in a lot of places.
 
Every time I see this same footage (some of which was shown in the reveal trailer), I can't help but think how utterly bland and drab the world looks. It suffers from "Bloodbornitis" where architecturally it might be somewhat impressive, but the textures are boring as hell and most areas suffer from "sameness". The entire initial area almost appears to only have four different colors. I don't want some cartoony looking game, but the first two games at least looked lived in and the enemies stood out from the backgrounds.

I really hope this is just an issue with it being beta, and that a lot of texture work is going to be done before release.
I agree.
 
That is sooooo fast paced compared to previous DeS and DaS games. It's actually kind of jarring/unsettling. Especially when they are able to move at suck crazy speeds even whilst wearing heavy armor. Did they just completely do away with the encumbrance mechanic altogether?
 
That's not really a good excuse. If the lighting is causing all of the stonework to look exactly the same color, it's going to look exactly the same color without it too.



I've just spent the last two weeks replaying Demon's and Dark Souls just about every day. Neither of those games have areas that are that consistently monochrome aside from maybe the Catacombs. Undead Burg isn't so flat looking, even if the stonework might lean towards a particular color, there are lots of other textures dispersed throughout. Granted, all we've seen is an extremely small section, but it still looks off to me.

Like the other poster said its just how theyre doing the lighting. Its not the same as it was in Dark Souls 1 where the sun/light source was as vibrant. Here its subdued and it shows in how light is cast off of stonework. The entire burg has a very consistent aesthetic the only difference is there's bits and pieces of green in the textures. Here that green is muted and doesnt stand out as much which fits with what theyve said about a dying sun.

At the end of the day its Souls fantasy and not Gothic Bloodborne so I expect there to be more vibrant areas. A forest of some sort is a lock, and maybe we'll get something as unique looking as Shrine of Amana.
 
I was very pessimistic about DKS3, but the pace of combat, attack mechanics and speed of the game look very promising--very refined and fast for a souls game. The aesthetics are a bit too much into the fantasy theme that DKS 2 had. I hope that the level design, enemy placement and actual characters (and the lore overall) are great as combat looks.
 
21N6Pus.jpg


UAZHSlO.gif

trumpfaces.gif
 
That is sooooo fast paced compared to previous DeS and DaS games. It's actually kind of jarring/unsettling. Especially when they are able to move at suck crazy speeds even whilst wearing heavy armor. Did they just completely do away with the encumbrance mechanic altogether?

No just for demo purposes. Although the gameplay for Ds3 will be slightly sped up.
 
Ehh sure looks like Dark Souls. Loved the series but after BB I can never go back to that old style. The fatigue is real.
 
Looks cool, but the speed of the game is wack. Full plate of armor rolling around and walking like Sonic the Hedgehog, come on now.
 
Looks like a fair amount of assets from Bloodborne are being reused, which would help explain how they can churn these games out so quickly
That's what I thought tbh

But watching this has made me want to play through the others before this is out, I adore Bloodborne but I've never been able to get into the other ones. Might try and fix that soon.
 
Is that box art for real?

It's the Japanese boxart. Typically, the international boxart is inferior. Japanese boxarts are usually great. If my calculations are correct, the international boxart will look worse than Dark Souls 1, so it will be made using Microsoft Paint.
Looks like a fair amount of assets from Bloodborne are being reused, which would help explain how they can churn these games out so quickly
I believe that they've done this from the start of the series.
 
Looks cool, but the speed of the game is wack. Full plate of armor rolling around and walking like Sonic the Hedgehog, come on now.
Yep, rolling is stupid.

That said, I don't think it's the speed that needs changing. I've long disdained the the increasing speed of the Souls series, but I'm come to terms with the fact that it's what it's going to be because it's a simple solution to make things more exciting. I'd prefer the combat be slowed down and there be greater emphasis on defensive mechanics like parrying, blocking, positioning, poise, armor, but I think it's clear doing so would take more work and more time to produce these games.

Dodging would be so much more pleasing visually if they removed rolling and made it purely dashing and sidestepping instead.
 
Yep, rolling is stupid. It would look so much more natural if they changed it to always be a dash or sidestep.

That said, I don't think it's the speed that needs changing. I've long disdained the the increasing speed of the Souls series, but I'm come to terms with the fact that it's what it's going to be because it's a simple solution to make things more exciting. I'd prefer the combat be slowed down and there be greater emphasis on defensive mechanics like parrying, blocking, positioning, poise, armor, but I think it's clear doing so would take more work and more time to produce these games.

Dodging would be so much more pleasing visually if they removed rolling and made it purely dashing and sidestepping instead.

Demon's Souls was faster than Dark Souls 1 and 2, right? They started fast and then slowed down. Thankfully they're speeding back up. Also, I don't see how slowing combat down specifically puts more emphasis on defensive mechanics, especially in the case of blocking in which you're just holding down a button any way. You can still be defensive at this speed.

As for rolling in heavy armor, it's been stated in this thread that apparently encumbrance is turned off in this build.
 
Yep, rolling is stupid.

That said, I don't think it's the speed that needs changing. I've long disdained the the increasing speed of the Souls series, but I'm come to terms with the fact that it's what it's going to be because it's a simple solution to make things more exciting. I'd prefer the combat be slowed down and there be greater emphasis on defensive mechanics like parrying, blocking, positioning, poise, armor, but I think it's clear doing so would take more work and more time to produce these games.

Dodging would be so much more pleasing visually if they removed rolling and made it purely dashing and sidestepping instead.

My problem with the roll specifically, besides it looking incredibly stupid, is the distance and speed combined make it way too good, unless there are only like 5 frames of invincibility. I'd be all right with low iframes as a tradeoff for the speed and distance, although that doesn't help how visually stupid it looks. If the roll is as good as Dark Souls, then this might be the easiest game in the series for me yet.
 
Environments feel a bit cold vs Bloodborne but obviously much development time left and this is but one area. The differences in smoothness between walking (especially small strafe steps), attack and rolling animations is a bit jarring. Sword strikes specifically looked absolutely instantaneous and I hope some "weight" gets added. That boss design is great, and I specifically notice that the swiping attack ate up enough endurance that just eating it with a shield wasn't enough. I of course welcome shields back but I hope that we don't automatically return to a system where you can just turtle in and absorb almost anything, so this is good.

This is a very petty creative gripe, but I'm really sick of the "dragon spits fire across a bridge and fries everything standing on it, including the baddies" trope in this series. And in an early level again, no less!
 
This is a very petty creative gripe, but I'm really sick of the "dragon spits fire across a bridge and fries everything standing on it, including the baddies" trope in this series. And in an early level again, no less!

That's Miyazaki's thing. He has said as much in multiple interviews. Let the man have his fun. ;)
 
The colors look a bit more washed out compared to BB, even in similar lighting conditions.
Could be just a contrast thing, or maybe they're two different engines altogether?
 
As for rolling in heavy armor, it's been stated in this thread that apparently encumbrance is turned off in this build.
Tumbling around in metal armor is still stupid. Dash or sidestep. It'd look better.
Demon's Souls was faster than Dark Souls 1 and 2, right? They started fast and then slowed down. Thankfully they're speeding back up. Also, I don't see how slowing combat down specifically puts more emphasis on defensive mechanics, especially in the case of blocking in which you're just holding down a button any way. You can still be defensive at this speed.
You're right, it's not "speed" per se. However, there's a progressively stronger emphasis on offense. In Bloodborne your defensive options are particularly weak. Sure, blocking can be just holding the button. But how complex is dodging, really? There's more timing involved. But there can be an equal (if not greater) amount of timing involved in parrying too. The direction I think it'd be cool these games go with is shield positioning, more significant differences among armor types, blocking using more of the stamina gauge, more stances, that sort of thing. Before Bloodborne there was and there wasn't a hard precedent for an emphasis on defense or offense. At that point rolling got better and better, yet shields were still usable and tanking was still doable. The direction it's gone is the direction it's gone though.
My problem with the roll specifically, besides it looking incredibly stupid, is the distance and speed combined make it way too good, unless there are only like 5 frames of invincibility. I'd be all right with low iframes as a tradeoff for the speed and distance, although that doesn't help how visually stupid it looks. If the roll is as good as Dark Souls, then this might be the easiest game in the series for me yet.
Exactly. It's way too good. In favor of emphasis on offense, the defensive mechanics boil down to roll away, run away, or get between its legs.
 
That's Miyazaki's thing. He has said as much in multiple interviews. Let the man have his fun. ;)
The ironic thing is, were this any other series, these sorts of stunts would be an absolute highlight of terror and intimidation. It's barely a blip on the radar of "things worth getting scared about" or "things likely to get you killed" in Souls games.
 
Looks very Demons Soulsy. I really suck at these games but if this is of the same caliber as DeS and DaS I'll buy it. Love using the shield, couldn't stand Bloodborne...
 
First Souls game I'm not hyped for at all.

Don't get me wrong, it's probably my favorite series, but at this point it's like gaming comfort food for me. I'm still going to get it day one and play the living fuck out of it but I have zero interest watching footage beforehand or engage in any sort of hype cycle activity.

Twenty seconds of this video was enough for me.
 
First Souls game I'm not hyped for at all.

Don't get me wrong, it's probably my favorite series, but at this point it's like gaming comfort food for me. I'm still going to get it day one and play the living fuck out of it but I have zero interest watching footage beforehand or engage in any sort of hype cycle activity.

Twenty seconds of this video was enough for me.

Then this might be the best souls game for you. Hype train only diminishes the enjoyment one gets from the final product.
 
Top Bottom