Dark Souls 2 announced

ENB has an analysis of the trailer. It's useful to watch the vid alongside it because stupid copyright claims shit all over his video.

I have some reservations about this. When I think of the level of complexity in my decisionmaking that would be necessary to go from normal enemies to something more plausibly AI-driven (as opposed to the RE4 style "timing and positional risk management" approach they've got now), I think you're looking at a fundamentally different experience.

For instance, I find both Bed of Chaos and Lautrec relatively frustrating when I don't get lucky, and I think in large part that's because it's not my player error that drives their success so much as their random selection from an unusually broad set of actions that happen to be a lot more dangerous to me. In contrast, when a knight shield bashes my parry or the damned archers shoot me off the ledge, I can see exactly which tell I missed and which robotic "STICK WITH THE PLAN FRANCES IT WILL BE FINE" reflex of mine got me killed. It's sussing out things in that second category with a diverse set of tools and solutions that really makes the combat for me (along with its "feel" of weight and visceral impact). Obviously, Bed (especially) and Lautrec (less so) are not representative of what true upgrades to AI might look like, but I just think that to go far in that direction would require a different kind of game. I'd like to see that game, just because I'd like to see the melee combat style go in different directions, but I'm not sure it fits with the mold the Souls series has worked in so far.

That segues nicely into my wishlist (of one): that it wasn't Dark Souls 2. From have proved they can make Dark Souls, and I don't need them to prove it again. Streamlining and little improvements might improve the quality of the game but they are essentially giving us more of the same game. Which isn't a bad thing at all, quite the opposite, except I think From are better than that.

So I want to see the next Souls game, even if it requires major changes. I want to see From go beyond Dark Souls, not simply refine it.

I'll probably be burned at the stake for this but I'm not very fond of the magic system in Dark Souls. It's the best and awesomest damn melee sim in the history of mankind and this is where it shines imo. So for me, feel free to throw the magic, miracle and pyromancy out the window and do something else with that. Yes, I float if you throw me in the pond.

*drool*

Makes me tempted to go check out the original, except I'm never going to use a controller and from what I gather that means it's not worth it. Doomed to be forever on the sidelines I guess.

Is that music composed for trailer or from something? I loved it.

Yeah. Don't play Dark Souls without a controller. Completely impossible. Can't be done. Don't even try. (I'm being subtly sarcastic here.)

This is very, very good news!

Especially since magic becomes so overpowered by comparison...

Sorcery, in particular, is uninteresting variations on shooting the same projectiles. Not that this stopped me enjoying the hell out of hitting things in the face with homing crystal soulmass.

Really untrue, and you even mentioned a spell that is definitely not "the same projectiles" as most of the projectile spells. Don't use magic if you don't want you guys, but for my part I'm glad that From will not be taking that particular suggestion.

Okay, but what level of playable? Advice I saw before I stopped reading the Dark Souls thread was stay away unless you have a controller. On the flip side I've read advice like that for Psychonauts and Beyond Good and Evil and I call bullshit.

There is a mouse smoothing mod. It is completely terrible without it. It is playable with it.

I hate controllers for most things except these kind of 3rd person action games. Arkham Asylum, Darksiders, Dark Souls. It's worth having a controller for these, as well as for things like emulation.

The problem with that is that I've spent the past 15-20 years gaming with a mouse and keyboard; they're an extension of my body. When I use a controller -- something I have a few hours experience with -- I'm not playing the game I'm fighting the device. There would need to be games I'm interested in from here until the foreseeable future that require it for me to bother with that learning curve and the on-going frustrations I would have whenever I needed to turn.

Well no one who's telling you it can't be done has even tried it with the mouse + keyboard mod so I have no idea why they keep on saying it. I have over 100 hours in Dark Souls without a controller and I've yet to see any reason why I won't be able to play PvE at least for a 100 more. But they sure sound like they know what they're talking about, even if they don't, so I understand your hesitation. I'd be very surprised if you didn't like the game.

Re-cut trailer to show the scenes continuously. I'm sure it will get taken down soon but it's pretty cool now.

I still don't see what ENB was talking about in terms of it seeming more "heroic player centered" than the previous entries. The arrow thing seems more a product of resignation than traditional badassness, and it doesn't seem like he survives the experience long term.I thought of painting guardians, or possibly Vega from SF2, but not so much Ciaran.

Homing soulmass is a bit different, but it's still balls of light flying at the enemy.

And sure, there are other interesting support sorceries, but the direct damage ones are all pretty similar. White Dragon Breath is the only oddball I can think of.

I haven't gone deep into pyromancy, but it seems to have a much more varied set of damage options.

Heh. After my first successful SL1 run with a pyromancer, I think I'm going to try another, this time with a hunter. Since hunter's have zero attunement slots, and can't ever buy the Bellowing Dragoncrest Ring, (Griggs won't sell anything to you if your int is below 10) I'm about to see if pyromancy is, in fact, required for a SL1 run.*

*Yes, I know that plenty of people have completed SL1 runs with every class. But those people are *insanely* good, whereas I.... am not.

What do you dislike about magic? It seems to me like it meshes with the melee system they've designed *extremely* well.

I sympathize with the "all sorcery spells are the same" complaint, though. There really are just two offensive sorcery spells: the beam of light that you directly aim & shoot, and the balls of light that float around your head & find the enemy for you. Personally, I really liked learning the precise timing variations between, say, Soul Arrow & Heavy Soul Arrow. But yeah, at heart, all the Soul Arrows & Crystal Spears are the same damn spell.

It doesn't, really. Pyromancy also has, essentially, two spells:

1) Throw a ball of fire at the enemy

2) Quickly breathe a mist of fire at the enemy. (i.e. Combusts)

Sure there are the chaos whips, but they're completely useless, near as I can tell. They have a longer wind-up time, and don't even do as much damage as the combusts. And there's Fire Surge, but it's also useless for pve. (I dunno about pvp) And I can't, for the life of me, figure out a use for the cloud spells (toxic, acid, etc.) I mean, there are a couple gimmicky uses for 'em: killing the chaos bug for the Solaire quest w/out opening the shortcut door, or killing mimics w/out triggering them to change into their dangerous form, etc. But really, they aren't that useful either.

Oh... wait. There are also the widescale aoe spells like Fire Tempest. So I guess that's three basic types of useful pyromancy spells.

Please note that I'm NOT advocating a system without "magic" (then it would be a completely other game which would also be awesome), I'm just open to the idea of FROM revamping the current system completely, if they want to.

There are four templates for projectile sorceries: Soul Arrow/Spear, [Crystal] Homing Soulmass, Pursuers, and White Dragon Breath. I don't understand why that wouldn't be enough, since only one of those categories has more than two spells in it and those are for use mainly in the early game. Depending on how high you take your intelligence, you're probably using spells from three or all four of those categories as a high-level sorcerer. Plenty of variety.

Dark Bead is really a fifth; aoe cone "centered" on a target. Also, Dark Orb is a nice variant on the spear, as it actually has pretty good homing.

Yeah, good call, I forgot about Dark Bead.

The new Xbox comes out November 2013 right? If DS2 is targeting the current gen, it can't launch later than like March. Or, perhaps this is a launch title for the new Xbox, and those trailers images aren't pre-rendered!

I can dream, can't I?

What? Is the next Xbox even announced? Regardless games still come out for the previous console generation for at least a year after the next one comes out.

True, but aren't they doing themselves a disservice if they release a game for an old gen console when the new one is out?

How is it a disservice to themselves to release it to the largest possible user base? Maybe to MS, but they would have to pony up some bucks, I think.

I doubt it. New consoles don't have large install bases, and also the first wave of games for them usually aren't the greatest. Plus they'd probably have to rewrite the engine, figure out more netcode, etc. At most I'd say making it cross-generation might make sense, but probably not even that much since they're already doing at least three versions.

Nevermind everything else - I'm pretty sure there's a zero out of zero chance that this would be on a next generation console anyway. That's kind of a lot of development work, and I don't get the impression that FROM is the most gigantic outfit in the business. Besides - if I have to choose between a solid game on not the latest console and a game on an engine that's been retrofitted to entirely new hardware, I'm going to go with the former. I mean, hell - look at Persona 4.

Can't you just switch the target framework in Visual Studio when you build the game and run it through the Conversion Wizard? This is Microsoft after all.

/ducks

Here are the press release images for marketing, in one big collection.

Hello my new wallpaper!

If it makes any difference I apparently and unknowingly at the time, told the person who made the decision NOT to publish Demon's Souls in North America how much of a dumb decision it was to their FACE! I got an endless amount of shit for it afterwards from my peers who knew who I was talking to at the time, but dammit - DARK SOULS!

More stuff leaking from the Edge article and it does sound a bit worrying.

Based on what, in particular? Here and here are what I've seen of the Edge stuff. For instance, the quote about "wanting the Skyrim audience" that is giving the internet heartburn is apparently from Edge, not from anyone connected to the game. Depending on context it could be a reasonable thing to say.

This sounds a lot like what world tendency did, if not how it was driven.

Again, this can mean a lot of things, and it's tough to tell. Magic and pyro are practically gated in Dark Souls, along with many other tactical options. It could just mean a lot more transparency about your starting options in the tutorial level (OH BY THE WAY POISE AND STABILITY ARE IMPORTANT IN THIS WAY, HERE'S WHAT YOU CAN SEE ON YOUR CHARACTER RIGHT NOW).

The return to a multiplayer server instead of P2P is heartening, at least, as is the proposed size of the world. It's also interesting to see how Miyazaki arrived at his notions of mythology as a child by using incomplete or untranslated mythology from around the world and filling in the blanks himself.