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Game of the Decade: Dark Souls Laid the Foundations for a New Genre

Keihart

Member
How can you start a genre that already existed?
I think the correct term would be defining a genre instead of creating one. Games are very iterative, they ussually build up in the wisdom of the industry as a whole using what has already been proven to work. So no game ever is completely unique, there is always some heritage. But, genre defining games is what makes people start to use this new words to define some type of games.
Like "survival horror", a term coined by RE that only stuck because of how RE defined the genre even if it wasn't really the one inventing the formula.
Doom in the same vein defined FPS back in the day, and it was common to refer to similar games as Doom clones, even if they really weren't one and were more like what we would call today simply a FPS.

On a side note, this peculiar feedback of games, how fast it happens and our tendency to classify things it's what makes genres useless in my opinion. Once a formula is really understood in gaming, it usually gets torn apart and adopted in different ways in other "genres" making some games, inevitably, a mix of genres that makes every label too big for it to satisfy it.
 
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Heimdall_Xtreme

Jim Ryan Fanclub's #1 Member
Agreed, a brilliant idea and Shuhei really was excellent as the head of WWS. He really loves the Souls games and understands great gameplay.

A shame that the full potential was not understood at that early stage.

Edit: DEMONS SOULS, Demons Souls laid the foundations, not Dark Souls!

You can give it the thanks you know....the people that dont know about games, Bingo!!!... Gaming journalist Reviews <---- That thanks to their ignorance, they give low scores in demon souls, for the "Graphics, Hard and robotics moves", even the president of Sony in this time, dont give it the chance to play it for more time.
 

Heimdall_Xtreme

Jim Ryan Fanclub's #1 Member
Bloodborne with the whip is the best castlevania game ever released in 3d

Agreed, i always play with a whip and only i imagine that is actually a Castlevania.

Damn Konami, you could make a Reboot of Castlevania with Souls mechanics!!!!
 
Started this Gen hating the idea of playing a punishing game that didn't respect my time. I avoided all things souls-esq.
I picked up Prepare to die edition of Dark Souls in a steam Xmas sale for $5 on a whim figuring that if it sucked it would reaffirm my belief that their games suck but turns out I loved it.
80 hours later I finished it and picked up every other souls like game I could get my grubby mitts on.
Huge Fromsoftware fan now and I'll try any game that features interlocked maps, RPG elements and challenging gameplay.

I only just this year got into Dark Souls. I tried it a few years back and hated it. Not sure what about this year in particular made it click for me. I absolutely love the combat and the mechanics are incredible.

I started up both 2 and 3 but have only gotten in a few hours. I will probably play these 2 slowly over the next few years.

you guys missed the busiest period for the online plays, co-op, pvp, it's even more addictive with online plays
 

Keihart

Member
You can give it the thanks you know....the people that dont know about games, Bingo!!!... Gaming journalist Reviews <---- That thanks to their ignorance, they give low scores in demon souls, for the "Graphics, Hard and robotics moves", even the president of Sony in this time, dont give it the chance to play it for more time.
It was Shuhei himself who didn't give the go to publish the game in NA.
The same guy that greenlit blodborne.
He has talked about it even, accepting it as one of the times that he fucked up.

The guy ran WWS for what seems like forever, he has more successes than failures in my book tho. Making WWS what it is today, the first party machine that make playstations sell.
 
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Demon souls sold well I heard. So how it did not reached masses?

Also atmosphere of pure dread compared to occasional goofiness in dark souls make it superior to me.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
It's a (3D) Metroidvania, with its own systemic twists (just like not every FPS or RTS is identical), which some developers tried to copy a bit too exactly due to its popularity (just as they've tried to copy other genre games exactly which didn't make them new genres due to copycats). I mean, people were calling Darksiders 3 a Souls-like just because its combat was slightly more deliberate and methodical than the first Darksiders (which was called a Zelda-like, despite DMC style combo based combat) even though it was clearly roughly the same kind of game with action, light puzzles and exploration, plus its own even more obvious Metroidvania elements (like actually acquiring new skills, traits and moves that aid you in both combat and traversal allowing you to progress to new areas, when Souls generally doesn't do that, it's only key items and progress triggers enabling that).
 
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Oi you cheeky wankers. Dark is leagues better than Demon's. Stop being a freethinker.jpg because liking something that wasnt popular won't make you special. Level design in Dark was superb.
 
Souls combat and challenge is cool, but I don't like when games copy everything. Like your character not bring able to talk. That shit is stupid.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
I would say Souls combat system is similar to Monster Hunter series in sense that both games depending on what weapon you have there is anticipation in character's animation when they attack, this why you need to find good opening before attacking because you are completely open while attacking.
 

Sophist

Member
If i had to choose a game for this decade in terms of impact on the industry, novelty, community, ... i would probably pick Minecraft (2011).
 

cireza

Member
Okay, so difficult, open, adventure games did not exist before Dark Souls ? The first video-game I played was Zelda on NES, it is pretty much the exact same thing. Zelda II, Hexen, Dragon's Blood etc... Come on.
 
Oi you cheeky wankers. Dark is leagues better than Demon's. Stop being a freethinker.jpg because liking something that wasnt popular won't make you special. Level design in Dark was superb.


One of the downsides of Dark compared to Demon is the gameworld. If you take a break from game which you will considering the difficulty, it gets really hard to wrap your head around again. You forget all secrets, closed doors etc.

While in Demons, its much easier to jump back in. Primary reason why I finished Demons but couldn't do with Dark.
 
Does it really matter whether it's Dark Souls or Demon's Souls? It's by the same creator and same team.
Off course it matters..
If it weren't for Demon's, Dark would not exist.

Oi you cheeky wankers. Dark is leagues better than Demon's. Stop being a freethinker.jpg because liking something that wasnt popular won't make you special. Level design in Dark was superb.
I played Demon's shortly after it was released, and loved it.
After finishing it, off course I tried to get into Dark Souls, and I hated EVERYTHING about it.

First off, running around as a shitty zombie all the time. Fuck that.
That stupid humanity mechanic. Yeah, go farming sewer rats for days in one place in the game to attain that shit. How dumb is that.
The atmosphere and story is nowhere near as great as it was in Demon's. Had to wait for Bloodborne to get that right again.
In a way, Bloodborne is the real sequel to Demon's in terms of atmo and level design.
Many of the places were simply copied from Demon's, but with the twist of being interconnected. But losing a lot of it's charme in the process.

Demon's will always have a special place in my heart...
Dark Souls feels like a bland copy that doesn't deserve the fame it got.
 
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Maiden Voyage

Gold™ Member
you guys missed the busiest period for the online plays, co-op, pvp, it's even more addictive with online plays

I don't play multiplayer games very often and haven't had too much difficulty solo'ing the bosses. I am grateful there is still a community and even more grateful I have not been invaded. :)
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
I agree. After Finishing Dark Souls in 2011, most other games don't make sense but I've been replaying Dark Souls and all soulsborne games. Actually DS2 might be my fav but DS1 is what started all of this
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Maybe just maybe it had to do with the fact Dark Souls is a better game.

If that was truly the case, and there was a real degree of growth and innovation between the two, it would still be bad, because if a game proves the formula viable first its always the originator and deserving of the credit creatively.

However that in actuality isn't the case, and FROM's later, better games in the series are the ones that harken back specifically to stuff in Demon's. I could list these things out but it'd be pointless because if you've actually played every game in the series sequentially, its blazingly obvious.


So what your saying is you want Bluepoint to remake Demon Souls, its because you want the Sony exclusive one to be best?

No, what I'm saying is I want Demon's Souls to receive the credit its due for laying the foundations of the genre.

If anyone is playing platform warrior its the late-comers on Xbox and especially PC who are claiming that just because that's where they first encountered the Souls format, that's where it all began. Which is evidently untrue because Demon's predates Dark by 2 years and had that game been so inconsequential Dark Souls would never have been made.

If I was to give plaudits to a company for making the franchise a success, frankly that'd have to be ATLUS for releasing the game in the US in a luxurious but reasonably priced edition after Sony lost faith in it, and for keeping the online servers open for years. By bundling that slipcase edition with a brief but highly useful strategy guide they eased players into the harsh and then unfamiliar Souls' style, it was hugely helpful for uptake and acceptance.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
Fight me!
I actually think Dark Souls 3 was a better overall game than Dark Souls and many times better than Dark Souls 2. While DS3 didn't have the highs of the original, I don't feel it had anywhere near as many lows. Dark Souls 1 was always hurt by the sections of the game that took place after Anor Londo, Izalith in particular was pretty dull, although the Duke's Archives was excellent. For me, Dark Souls 3, aside from maybe the Farron keep sections in the swamp, never had the low points of DS1.

Having said that I still think Demon's Souls had the absolute best and most difficult level design to get through. I am watching FightinCowboy do his emulated Demons playthrough and I am reminded that the level was a bigger enemy than many enemies.
 

pr0cs

Member
you guys missed the busiest period for the online plays, co-op, pvp, it's even more addictive with online plays
I never had any problem in any of their games. Got invaded a number of times, some exciting some frustrating.
Lots of funny and useful player messages, co-op available for bosses that I was stuck with. You might underestimate how active all the soulsborne games still are
 

mcz117chief

Member
I played Demon's shortly after it was released, and loved it.
After finishing it, off course I tried to get into Dark Souls, and I hated EVERYTHING about it.

First off, running around as a shitty zombie all the time. Fuck that.
That stupid humanity mechanic. Yeah, go farming sewer rats for days in one place in the game to attain that shit. How dumb is that.
The atmosphere and story is nowhere near as great as it was in Demon's. Had to wait for Bloodborne to get that right again.
In a way, Bloodborne is the real sequel to Demon's in terms of atmo and level design.
Many of the places were simply copied from Demon's, but with the twist of being interconnected. But losing a lot of it's charme in the process.

Demon's will always have a special place in my heart...
Dark Souls feels like a bland copy that doesn't deserve the fame it got.
I also didn't like Dark Souls nearly as much as Demon's Souls but I did enjoy Dark Souls 2 about as much, if not more, than Demon's Souls.
 
I think the correct term would be defining a genre instead of creating one. Games are very iterative, they ussually build up in the wisdom of the industry as a whole using what has already been proven to work. So no game ever is completely unique, there is always some heritage. But, genre defining games is what makes people start to use this new words to define some type of games.
Like "survival horror", a term coined by RE that only stuck because of how RE defined the genre even if it wasn't really the one inventing the formula.
Doom in the same vein defined FPS back in the day, and it was common to refer to similar games as Doom clones, even if they really weren't one and were more like what we would call today simply a FPS.

On a side note, this peculiar feedback of games, how fast it happens and our tendency to classify things it's what makes genres useless in my opinion. Once a formula is really understood in gaming, it usually gets torn apart and adopted in different ways in other "genres" making some games, inevitably, a mix of genres that makes every label too big for it to satisfy it.

Alone in the Dark defined the genre, RE used the Survival Horror tag as marketing material and fans made it stick since no one started using that term for their own games until years later when journalists and magazines started using it for every horror game including ones that you could argue don't fit the tag.

Doom was not the first FPS game, the term existed even before the game came out, that's was the point I was making. You can't really say Doom defined it either as we already had many cases of FPS before Doom, the only thing Doom added was a quicker engine and better 3D physics and movement, although the game was still primarily 2D. Through Shareware it eventually blew up and got clones but that took awhile it would be revisionist to say otherwise.

I will agree that Darksouls defined a gameplay style that wasn't popular before, but I wouldn't call it a genre.
 

ethomaz

Banned
Demon's Soul is the better game most due having better environments, atmosphere and characters that matter a lot in these games, plus the World/Character tendencies (I can't believe From never used it again).
Dark Soul was clone to fit the multiplatform deal with enhancement combat system.

Demon's Soul laid the foundation for that "sub-genre" in 2009.
 
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Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
How can you start a genre that already existed?

Because the genre didn't exist in any meaningful way. Doom made it happen and established a lot of the conventions that everyone else copied and iterated on.

Demon's Soul is the better game most due having better environments, atmosphere and characters that matter a lot in these games, plus the World/Character tendencies (I can't believe From never used it again).
Dark Soul was clone to fit the multiplatform deal with enhancement combat system.

Demon's Soul laid the foundation for that "sub-genre" in 2009.

Sure enough, although I do think the seamless world design and bonfire system of Dark Souls was a significant enough addition to be considered the originator of the sub-genre. I'm fine with giving credit to Demon's Souls, too.
 
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bobone

Member
Dark Souls was a vast improvement over Demons Souls.

I got Demons Souls day 1 and enjoyed the hell out of it.
But it wasn't until Dark Souls that the "genre" really came into its own.
I think FROM needed that first game to experiment a bit; and they nailed it on their second try.

The Demons Souls hub world was clearly inferior for this type of game, the characters and cryptic story elements weren't as flushed out, and the gameplay and graphics were heavily refined in the sequel.

If we are talking about Game of the Decade then Dark Souls is the one. Just because its predecessor came first doesn't mean it automatically wins. Dark Souls was the better game, and it started the MASSIVE following of the series and the genre in general.
 

Pejo

Member
As much as I love Dark Souls, I still feel that Demon's was robbed of this title. When you read about just how unlikely of a game Demon's Souls was to even be released, and then localized, it's incredible. Dark did improve on quite a bit of the formula, but I think there are 2 key points differentiating the two.

  • Focus on interconnected world instead of hub + levels
  • Multi-platform instead of platform locked
I certainly can't hate Dark Souls, but Demon's will always be a magical experience in gaming for me personally. The atmosphere still hasn't been topped (though Bloodborne came close).
 
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Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
As much as I love Dark Souls, I still feel that Demon's was robbed of this title. When you read about just how unlikely of a game Demon's Souls was to even be released, and then localized, it's incredible. Dark did improve on quite a bit of the formula, but I think there are 2 key points differentiating the two.

  • Focus on interconnected world instead of hub + levels
  • Multi-platform instead of platform locked
I certainly can't hate Dark Souls, but Demon's will always be a magical experience in gaming for me personally. The atmosphere still hasn't been topped (though Bloodborne came close).

Yeah, man Demon's was such a special game. I just went and dug up my posts from the original thread when I first discovered it. Crazy that it's already been over 10 years since then.

 
Because the genre didn't exist in any meaningful way. Doom made it happen and established a lot of the conventions that everyone else copied and iterated on.


Why are you making a statement you know you yourself don't have enough information to make? You clearly don't know the history of FPS, FPS was a common term before Doom, there were already a bunch of them before it came out, Doom came out in 1993, to pretend that Doom made the genre meaningful and it wasn't before hand is pretty ridiculous I must say.

I would understand this point of view for a game like Wolfenstein or Virtua Fighter, which weren't the first but basically set up what to follow opinions aside, but Doom? Doom was important for what came after but it rolled with a ball that was already in the court.
 
As much as I love Dark Souls, I still feel that Demon's was robbed of this title. When you read about just how unlikely of a game Demon's Souls was to even be released, and then localized, it's incredible. Dark did improve on quite a bit of the formula, but I think there are 2 key points differentiating the two.

  • Focus on interconnected world instead of hub + levels
  • Multi-platform instead of platform locked
I certainly can't hate Dark Souls, but Demon's will always be a magical experience in gaming for me personally. The atmosphere still hasn't been topped (though Bloodborne came close).

But it’s just a game, you can’t hurt a game’s feeling. Do you hear Demons Souls complaining that his little brother get this title instead of him? ............no I don’t

The creators don’t care, they created both games
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Dark Souls was a vast improvement over Demons Souls.

I got Demons Souls day 1 and enjoyed the hell out of it.
But it wasn't until Dark Souls that the "genre" really came into its own.
I think FROM needed that first game to experiment a bit; and they nailed it on their second try.

The Demons Souls hub world was clearly inferior for this type of game, the characters and cryptic story elements weren't as flushed out, and the gameplay and graphics were heavily refined in the sequel.

If we are talking about Game of the Decade then Dark Souls is the one. Just because its predecessor came first doesn't mean it automatically wins. Dark Souls was the better game, and it started the MASSIVE following of the series and the genre in general.

Ummm, no.

Its ironic to me that every subsequent Souls game basically resurrects the same spoke system for its third act, you know the whole soul vessel jigalig. The only difference is that the archstones in Demon's only connect to each other via the nexus, which remains the best classical hub-area in the series.

The Tower of Latria has never been topped for atmosphere despite repeated attempts to duplicate its claustrophobic terrors, Old Monk is still the best player summon boss-fight, nothing has the pathos of Astreia and Vinland, and it has the best and most well voiced cast in the series with the most behavioral interplay between them in the nexus.

The Maiden in Black and Stockpile Thomas have the most iconic dialogue in the entire series. Its also the only game in the series with a genuine climax to its core campaign with the final summoning of the Old One.

Talking about fleshed out, the character and world tendency systems make Demon's World far more interesting and interactive than anything in Dark Souls, and in truth was only arguably topped in Dark Souls 2.

The sad truth is that in many ways Miyazaki has been treading water since Demon's, rehashing and repackaging the same tropes and setups whilst adding precious little apart from minor revamps to the core combat systems whilst retaining the same core philosophy of stamina control as the key element.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
And it's not even hard.
giphy.gif
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
Ummm, no.

Its ironic to me that every subsequent Souls game basically resurrects the same spoke system for its third act, you know the whole soul vessel jigalig. The only difference is that the archstones in Demon's only connect to each other via the nexus, which remains the best classical hub-area in the series.

The Tower of Latria has never been topped for atmosphere despite repeated attempts to duplicate its claustrophobic terrors, Old Monk is still the best player summon boss-fight, nothing has the pathos of Astreia and Vinland, and it has the best and most well voiced cast in the series with the most behavioral interplay between them in the nexus.

The Maiden in Black and Stockpile Thomas have the most iconic dialogue in the entire series. Its also the only game in the series with a genuine climax to its core campaign with the final summoning of the Old One.

Talking about fleshed out, the character and world tendency systems make Demon's World far more interesting and interactive than anything in Dark Souls, and in truth was only arguably topped in Dark Souls 2.

The sad truth is that in many ways Miyazaki has been treading water since Demon's, rehashing and repackaging the same tropes and setups whilst adding precious little apart from minor revamps to the core combat systems whilst retaining the same core philosophy of stamina control as the key element.
When it comes to atmosphere here is my ranking:
1. Bloodborne
2. Demon's Souls (really 1A)
3. Dark Souls 3 (yes, I do rank it higher)
4. Dark Souls

Although they are all pretty close for me.

and a distant

5. Dark Souls 2 (light years behind the other 4.
 
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Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Why are you making a statement you know you yourself don't have enough information to make? You clearly don't know the history of FPS, FPS was a common term before Doom, there were already a bunch of them before it came out, Doom came out in 1993, to pretend that Doom made the genre meaningful and it wasn't before hand is pretty ridiculous I must say.

I would understand this point of view for a game like Wolfenstein or Virtua Fighter, which weren't the first but basically set up what to follow opinions aside, but Doom? Doom was important for what came after but it rolled with a ball that was already in the court.

Wolfenstein 3D was not what caused the genre to take off in any meaningful way, though. It was impressive at the time, but Doom blew it away and established all kinds of standards that other developers quickly copied and ran with.

I do not agree that FPS or "first-person shooter" was a common term before Doom. I was barely on the Internet back then and only a young kid, but everyone described the genre as "Doom Clone" for years. I don't think I really started hearing a lot about "FPS" until Half-Life.

Not sure how much this will serve as evidence, but Doom Wiki has an image showing the usage of the terms on Usenet and "Doom Clone" was far more common than "FPS" for a few years.


https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Doom_clones?file=Doom_clone_vs_first_person_shooter.png
 
Wolfenstein 3D was not what caused the genre to take off in any meaningful way, though. It was impressive at the time, but Doom blew it away and established all kinds of standards that other developers quickly copied and ran with.

I do not agree that FPS or "first-person shooter" was a common term before Doom.

This is a hard issue to debate if you reject historical fact.

Wolfenstein was a major success and had tons of clones, Doom becoming a bigger game later on doesn't erase that. W3D's success is what made the publisher even publish Doom in the first place. There isn't anything you can not agree with, there were plenty of FPS games before and during the year Doom released in 1993 and the term was used, that's not something you can't agree to because it historically happened.

Halo was more successful than doom, using your logic Doom wasn't meaningful and didn't cause the genre to take off since Halo caused higher growth and made FPS games much more accessible than Doom ever dd. As you can see that logic doesn't work. Doom's legacy isn't erased because Halo was more successful, yet that's what you are dong with W3D.
 
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Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
This is a hard issue to debate if you reject historical fact.

Wolfenstein was a major success and had tons of clones, Doom becoming a bigger game later on doesn't erase that. W3D's success is what made the publisher even publish Doom in the first place. There isn't anything you can not agree with, there were plenty of FPS games before and during the year Doom released in 1993 and the term was used, that's not something you can't agree to because it historically happened.

Halo was more successful than doom, using your logic Doom wasn't meaningful and didn't cause the genre to take off since Halo caused higher growth and made FPS games much more accessible than Doom ever dd. As you can see that logic doesn't work. Doom's legacy isn't erased because Halo was more successful, yet that's what you are dong with W3D.

There are not "plenty" of FPS games before and during the year Doom released. What games are you talking about when you say this?

When it comes to establishing a genre or sub-genre, the things that came before are not erased, but they are also not given full credit when they themselves were not what triggered the explosion in popularity and copy-cats. Winback does not win over Gears of War, for example, when it comes to 3rd-person cover-based shooters.

Wolfenstein 3D sold 200,000 copies in its first year. Doom, thanks to the shareware model, was installed in some form of another on over 10 million computers, and by the end of 1995, was said to be installed on more machines than even Windows 95, prompting Microsoft (and a team led by Gabe Newell) to really prioritize native gaming on Windows 95, starting with a Doom port.

Wolfenstein 3D was a basic corridor shooter that barely qualified as 3D. It was impressive at the time, but there were numerous key differences with Doom that were the main cause for it becoming the genre-definer that Wolf was not. Altitude differences, non-orthogonal walls, full texture mapping of surfaces and varying light levels to create environments that actually had atmosphere and overall just far less static architecture than Wolfenstein. That's not even getting into the enemy and weapon variety and other gameplay differences.

Possibly most importantly in terms of Doom's legacy was the introduction of the multiplayer deathmatch concept, which really became the staple of the genre going forward.

Also, less about establishing Doom as a genre perhaps, but Doom and its underlying Id Tech 1 also really introduced the concept of engine licensing.
 
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Wolfenstein 3D sold 200,000 copies in its first year. Doom, thanks to the shareware model, was installed in some form of another on over 10 million computers, and by the end of 1995

Comparing first year sales to 2nd year Doom sales and also doesn't know that W3D did have a shareware model. It even helped popularize the model

There are not "plenty" of FPS games before and during the year Doom released. What games are you talking about when you say this?

There is no continuation of this conversation until you educate yourself on game releases in 1993 and before. Why would you make such a bold statement if you're not even sure about it? `1992-1993 is filled with FPS games thanks to W3D, and anyone who had a PC, Mac, Commodore, or Atari knows this, Doom didn't have a full release until DECEMBER 1993 leaving a whole year for game releases before it so you really don't have any idea what you're talking about.

You're whole argument is that W3D doesn't count as a meaningful FPS because in your mind it didn't sell well, didn't have a shareware model, there weren't many releases, and that it didn't have clones. All of which are wrong.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
Is it a new genre or just a particular style of action rpg?

I haven't played the games, btw, just wondering.
The combat takes inspiration from both Monster Hunter and 3D Zelda games. We had difficult games before Demon's Souls but the way FROM approached with its difficulty was different from other games out there. It was less pure skill and more about careful play and patience and I would say online system was very unique at that time.
 

TTOOLL

Member
I don't know about new genre, but it has ruined any other kind of combat and level design for me, though I didn't enjoy all areas in both Dark Souls and Bloodborne, the only games I've played so far.
 
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Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Comparing first year sales to 2nd year Doom sales and also doesn't know that W3D did have a shareware model. It even helped popularize the model



There is no continuation of this conversation until you educate yourself on game releases in 1993 and before. Why would you make such a bold statement if you're not even sure about it? `1992-1993 is filled with FPS games thanks to W3D, and anyone who had a PC, Mac, Commodore, or Atari knows this, Doom didn't have a full release until DECEMBER 1993 leaving a whole year for game releases before it so you really don't have any idea what you're talking about.

You're whole argument is that W3D doesn't count as a meaningful FPS because in your mind it didn't sell well, didn't have a shareware model, there weren't many releases, and that it didn't have clones. All of which are wrong.

Which games? I did a cursory search and found like two others that could qualify in 1993. You claim to know of so many, so it should not be hard to list a few.

I wasn’t aware if W3D having a shareware model at launch, but either way, it did not set the world in fire (despite being quite popular) and lacked many key components that Doom pioneered a year later and defined the genre. Wolf was the seed no doubt, but it was Doom that inspired a generation of developers and set the course forward for the FPS genre.
 
Which games? I did a cursory search and found like two others that could qualify in 1993.

I know you're lying.

Just typing in FPS 1993 in google gives you a list of 5 games alone at the top of the screen above the results, and there's more than that. You're going to tell me with a straight face you searched and only found 2 results? I don't by that.
 
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Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
I know you're lying.

Just typing in FPS 1993 in google gives you a list of 5 games alone at the top of the screen above the results, and there's more than that. You're going to tell me with a straight face you searched and only found 2 results? I don't by that.

I was looking at the Wikipedia article for First-person shooters, but you’re right that a simple Google search of “FPS 1993” turns up more. A few games there that I hadn’t heard of (including some hits for stuff that is definitely not FPS). Anyway, you should stop assuming the worst of people. It would have been a lot easier if you just listed the games you were referring to. I think it’s still debatable to say there were “plenty” even though the number is greater than 3.
 
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It's not really a new genre, just an action RPG with a slightly differing take on progression, stat progression and a wonderfully engaging online system.

I say this as a big Souls fan, it's a great series but isn't a new genre as such. Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are just fantastic games, but i find DS2 to be very lacklustre and feel DS3 basically removed any real feeling of exploration or venturing on a journey.
 
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