The experience of Dark Souls is a unique one. On the one hand you are alone. Crushingly alone. But on the other hand you are never alone. There are messages from other players scrawled on the path in the actual game and then there is the community itself. Whenever someone starts Dark Souls there is a group of players cheering from the sidelines — on twitter, on forums. Fans want other people to play it, to understand it, to get it.
It’s for this reason that I completely understand Shuhei Yoshida, President of SCE Worldwide Studios, when he discusses how Dark Souls and Demons Souls influenced the design of the PS4.
The PlayStation Blog ran a really interesting podcast today and managed to get Shuhei Yoshida onboard to talk all things PlayStation 3. After naming his top 10 games of that generation, he went on to discuss how Dark Souls influenced some of the ideas of what Sony wanted to bring to the PS4.
“Lots of things these games – Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls – did, like leaving the message to other people asynchronously, so you feel connected, but not really connected at the same time, all of these things inspired us when we were designing the system features for PS4,” he explained.
“I enjoy so much watching people play Dark Souls on YouTube. These games still have a special place in my memory.”
I loved that feeling. You are completely alone in this harsh unforgiving world then, a message. Someone has been here before. This person understands my position. We know one another. We’ve felt the same things. Messages in Dark Souls were a connector. Usually in video games encounters with another human mean battle. We are used to fighting to the death, not helping and empathising with one another. It was a different, alien connection, but a beautiful one all the same.
And just for reference, here are Yoshida’s favourite PS3 games…
1. Journey
2. Demon’s Souls/Dark Souls (tie)
3. Demon’s Souls/Dark Souls (tie)
4. The Last of Us
5. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
6. Sound Shapes (Favorite PS Vita game)
7. Persona 4: The Golden
8. LittleBigPlanet
9. Grand Theft Auto V
10. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Decent choices!
You can listen to the podcast in its entirety here
Via NeoGAF
Comments
10 responses to “Yoshida Gives His Top 10 PS3 Games, Explains How Dark Souls Inspired The Design Of The PS4”
Damn! Dark Souls has touched so many people in the heart! Most importantly it touched all the cynical gamers who thought the industry had moved away from gamers to focus on dudebros, then this game(s) comes out to let them know that developers still love gamers.
I don’t like this ‘dudebros’ term, it kind of sets up the opposite as some sort of elitist snob and then its a slippery slope to segregation amongst gamers that isn’t necessary. Besides, it’s probably a definition that applies to me because I enjoy a lot of dudebro games like BF4 and halo, and people who don’t like those games are wrong.
DudeBro
noun
1. The collective term for the highschool sports cliques i.e. jocks, that own and play BF and COD and sports games. They have no idea that other genres exists, and wouldnt play them as that would make them nerds.
Dudebros are definitely a thing though. There’s a vast portion of people who will only ever by the latest COD/Battlefield and sports game of their choice, be it fifa or madden or whatever else, and those people are dudebros.
There is no segregation, they are simply a separate demographic. They are for the most part not interested in Journey or FTL or probably even Bioshock Infinite, because they treat games in a different way to the average person trawling Kotaku Aus. Nothing wrong with that, but they are absolutely a different kind of gamer.
I’ve heard so much talk about Demon/Dark Souls lately and I’m beginning to feel ashamed that I had no idea it even existed.. TO YOUTUBE!
DON’T YOU DARE!
You are going to purchase the games yourself and see them first hand what they have to offer. A simple youtube clip does not reveal what they truly have to offer. Seeing some guy get hit by a boulder and fall off a cliff does not carry the same impact as it happening to yourself.
Well then I guess I’m lucky that I found it on my PS+ account then!!
Don’t ruin it with YouTube!
Just grab a copy of each and play! They should both be quite cheap now.
I feel the same, I started noticing it last year, I think Mark did it for his shamless gaming or something and the murmur has grown into a roar of people declaring its praises. Part of me now wants to play it just for the experience but I think I’d most likely be wasting my money and I wouldn’t be that into it.
Praise the sun!