Dark Souls Previews

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Written by Brother None on May 12th, 2011

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Demon's Souls conventions were in full effect in Dark Souls as I witnessed a heavily-armored knight fight his way through a castle-like location known as Sen's Fortress. Fending off a variety of lizard creatures with snake-like heads was the least of our poor knight's concerns. Many of these conflicts took place on thin corridors suspended over gigantic chasms. One wrong move, whether made by the knight or forced upon the knight by an enemy, would mean failure. And all the while, hanging blades swing like pendulums over the pathway, forcing you to time your movements. If you did happen to fall and survive (which happened during the demo, as the PR representative was using a ridiculously buffed-out character to avoid an untimely death), you'll be greeted by even more powerful enemies below. You know typical Demon's Souls stuff.

Even treasure chests can be dangerous. While sometimes full of precious materials, one treasure chest in particular turned on our knight, surrendering loot once it was destroyed. Like Demon's Souls, Dark Souls is about risk-reward. But it's also about a measured approach and patience. If you lack either, Dark Souls might frustrate you just as much as Demon's Souls did, if not more-so.

As soon as I sat down for our latest look though, I noticed that Dark Souls has more color. There were hues of blue in the knights armor, and he was wearing bright gold gauntlets. Granted, this knight was the over-powered, maxed stats, demo-only knight. Walk down a corridor, and you'll see the torches on the wall are bright, guiding you in vibrant orange. The game is still very much the literally dark game you expect. There is plenty of gray and variations of gray, especially in the castle levels, but there is a noticeable addition of more colors.

Once the knight started going through the level, he immediately stepped on a raised tile. Spikes shot at the knight; he was unable to get away. If the knight didn't have an advanced health bar, he surely would have died. Death number one.

Between the combinations of gear and weapons to be equipped there should be a number of tactical options for fighting. Against the snake-men a well-timed parry with the shield proved invaluable, leaving them vulnerable to stabbing kill move. Later in the demo the hero came up against one of the best-looking treasure chest mimic monsters I've ever seen. When he went to open it, the chest sprouted arms and pulled him head first into the gaping maw its opening lid had become. Once the hero pulled free and came back to attack, the chest surprisingly sprouted long legs and moved quickly to snap back at him.

Despite being horrendously evil in its intentions toward the player, Dark Souls tries to keep things fair a keen-eyed player would be able to see the hole in the stairs for that first arrow trap. Later, the hero came to a junction with another corridor, but the ground looked different. In fact, it gave a clue to what might happen: whereas the floor was nice flat brick everywhere else, in the upcoming corridor the floor had been worn into a long, curved groove. Awesomely, we were able to guess based purely on that detail what the next trap would be: a giant Indiana Jones rolling boulder. But of course this was Dark Souls, so just one boulder wouldn't cut it. The hero had to time his sprint down the corridor to narrowly avoid the next oncoming boulder. Eventually he found his way to a giant room full of rotating gears where boulders would drop from above, land on a huge stone pedestal, and then a massive wooden piston would shove the boulder off down its deadly path. The cool twist was that the player could rotate the mechanism, changing where the boulders go, not only opening up safe passages but even blasting a hole in a wall to expose a secret area.

The castle is guarded by snake warriors. They're humanoid from the neck down, with long serpentine necks that stretch their height to eight or nine feel tall. Those snake-men attack with sword and shield, moving quickly and relentlessly.

Dark Souls sometimes throws in a cobra guard variant, a four-armed soldier with a wide hooded neck, a curved sword in each hand and the power to spray poisonous venom clouds. Lovely.

While fighting those snake guards, it was clear the combat in Dark Souls is near identical to that of its inspiration. As in Demon's Souls, players can strike one-handed, with light or heavy attacks. They can switch to a two-handed mode, putting away one's shield, for braver battles. Parry, riposte, critical strikes, blocks and rolling dodges they're all here, all seemingly unchanged in their effectiveness. Demon's Souls players should feel at home in this game's hand-to-hand fights.

Take even a passing glace at Dark Souls' gameplay, and it's immediately apparent that it's very, very similar to Demon's Souls. Sure, it's set in a completely different world, but most everything else is familiar, from the graphical effects, the animations, and even the menus. Some folks might be concerned about that, but with this game, there couldn't possibly be enough detractors for it to matter. This is a spiritual sequel where changing too much from the original can only work against it, for me and the thousands of others that fell in love with Demon's Souls. We wanted more, and it looks like we're getting it.

What is most obviously new in Dark Souls is a lot of "external" stuff, which is is appreciated as much as what's returning. You get a new world with new locations in a somewhat more seamless linking (hidden passages can take you to a neighboring area, like "zoning" in an MMO or the last few Final Fantasy sequels), as well as new, varied enemy forces instead of the same zombies or evil knights, and of course, new starting classes and a host of brand new equipment to flaunt. It's all icing on the cake -- or new icing on a cake that everybody scooped the icing off of. The ragdoll physics are back, too, because why would the developers want to deprive us of the comedy of watching enemies walk off platforms to their death like a bunch of dopes?

Will Tuttle: Alright, that actually does sound pretty cool. You mentioned above that "Dark Souls is basically more of that," but is that a good thing? I mean, I have to assume that the sequel includes some new stuff, lest fans start crying foul.

Ryan Scott: Well, to be fair, they're billing it as a "spiritual successor" to Demon's Souls (itself a spiritual successor to the King's Field series), so it's not officially a sequel, per se. I suppose that's kind of a semantic argument, because it's straight-up Demon's Souls through and through, from the interface to the level design to the odd, minimalist narrative structure. I'm told the scope of the in-game world is supposed to be a lot more ambitious; Demon's Souls utilized a central hub locations with portals to various isolated stages, whereas Dark Souls apparently has a large, much more open world to explore. It also sounds like the death system is ever-so-slightly less merciless: In Dark Souls, you can light beacon fires at various checkpoints throughout each area, and you respawn there when you die (it sounds like you can manipulate your inventory and magic loadout from these beacons, too). Of course, everything still respawns, and you still lose all your currency, and you're still playing a Demon's Souls game -- so it's not like it makes things that much easier.

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