E3 2015 - Dark Souls III Dev Demo

It was a little bit of a surprise when Dark Souls III was announced at the Xbox Press Event on the Monday before E3 started, not because I never thought they would make it, I just assumed that after Bloodborne, they might be a little tired and such, but after hearing the devs speak, I can assure you, they are full of energy.





Dark Souls III is being helmed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, much to the joy of fans of the series as for Dark Souls II he was in a supervisory role. But as Dark Souls III (DS3) is the first game to be built from the ground up for the new consoles, the team have been able to leverage the power of the consoles to create a world for players, unlike anything they have seen before, a world on the edge of doom.

The world is not facing Armageddon like the same as other games, the team are hoping to be able to create something that really inspires and surprises players like never before.  Fans of the series will know about the Lord of Cander, with the story for DS3 being centred around him, though they were coy on just what would happen. One thing they did talk about was that with the power of the new consoles, not only would the game look better than ever, the game worlds would be significantly larger than before, meaning players will have a lot of exploration ahead of them.

The game will also feature a revised combat system, meaning fans will have to learn the mechanics of this new system if they want to survive the world, some of the changes to it involve being able to charge up your light and heavy attacks to deal more damage, or even taking direct hits in order to counter-attack with greater force. Different weapon types will also affect combat in different ways meaning that players will have to change not only how they attack, but also how the play overall, depending on the weapons they use. Even the character you choose will have more of an impact on how play, as the variable character types will mean that your very first decision will impact the rest of the game.

Campfires were a big part of the series in the past, but this time around it is all about the fountains, you may have even seen the one they built for the show, players will have a choice when they use these fountains, will they sacrifice somethings to gain more power or will they choose death and see if it helps them, while they did not go into any more detail about just what it would do, a few faces in the room had perked up at the news.

The one element that the developers wanted to get through to people was that for fans of the series, this would not be just like the others, the core tenants of the game would still be there, but they would evolve to in order to provide more of a challenge. Players would be able to feel a sense of accomplishment through the difficulty that the game will provide, so that when you finally defeat a challenging boss, you will be able to feel proud of that fact.

Dark Souls has not been a series I have ever given much time to, it takes a level of patience that I simply don’t possess and more so it takes time, but hearing the developers talk about what they want to do, to not only innovate the series, but also challenge the players, I might have to keep an ear to the ground going forward.