In just over a month, we’ll all dying in Dark Souls 3. A bunch of media people have played the first four hours, and came back with footage and new details to get us through the next few weeks. Some of it’s pretty interesting.
Kotaku UK‘s Keza Macdonald was one of those people, and wrote up two different pieces, including a look at the gameplay and a look at the lore.
Keza, who’s about to publish a dang book on Dark Souls, had this to say about the player’s role in the story:
There are references in Dark Souls 3 to the fact that you are “unfit to become a Lord.” This interests me, because at the end of the first Dark Souls you did become a Lord: you could either offer yourself to the flame, like Gwyn, or walk away and become the Lord of Darkness. This seems to be contrasting you directly with the Chosen Undead of the first Dark Souls game: you’re not here to save the world. You’re not worthy for that. But, it seems, you are worthy of defeating the Lords of Cinder in their various realms.
If there’s a definitive Dark Souls source, it’s VaatiVidya, and he’s produced a slick 18-minute commentary about his hours with Dark Souls 3. I watched about half of it before I decided to try and contain myself for the full game.
Over at Polygon, they have a video straight up showing the first 30 minutes.
I’ve also read a bunch of the previews — IGN, Polygon, Eurogamer — and these are the nitty gritty tidbits I found the interesting for longtime fans:
- The game no longer punishes you for dying, outside of losing collected souls. In other words, the “hallowing” mechanic has disappeared.
- There’s a new Firelink Shrine, ala Dark Souls, but it’s level-based, ala Demon’s Souls. (The two series are not connected narratively.)
- It appears characters are returning from the original Dark Souls, suggesting From Software is laying down explicit links between games.
- Don’t worry, there’s even a reference to Dark Souls 2.
- The quantity of each estus flask — one for HP, one for MP — can be altered, based on your playstyle. Not a magic user? No problem.
- Bow ‘n arrows look kick arse. Check it out:
Video Credit: VaatiVidya
Is it April 12 yet?
Comments
11 responses to “Dark Souls 3 Connects To Its Predecessors In Some Surprising Ways”
Yeah, YOU’LL be the one dying. I’ll be going for my ‘under 30 deaths’ playthrough again.
Losing the hallowing effect sounds cool, maybe the popularity of the 75% ring made From Software realize we all viewed it as far to deep of a handicap especially when we were so pragmatic with our humanities.
I never found it to be an issue…although I did find Dark Souls 2 to be way too easy. Killed the majority of bosses on my first try, of the remainder most of the rest only took two tries. Something like 2 or 3 bosses took more than 2 attempts…
Compare that to DS 1 and there was 2 or 3 bosses that I killed on my first try…
Hard to put my finger on exactly why DS2 was so much easier. Could just be that I was accustomed to the control scheme by that point. I found the difficulty curve in DS1 was focused around how long it took you to get used to the controls. Once you had that down it became much easier.
So…yeah. The Hollowing made very little difference for me personally.
Hopefully illusionary walls are found by hitting them instead of pressing A/X
That crystal demon looks really easy, super telegraphing moves… please be a mini boss
Main bosses usually have the big health bar along the bottom with their name above it, so i think its safe to say its just another enemy in the game.
Good call, I looked at it super quick.. Reminds me a lot of the Titanite demon.
My biggest takeaway is the Demon’s Souls level stuff.
I want to ask questions but then I don’t want to know much more about it until I play it.
There’s less of an overworld now and it’s 1-1, 1-2, 1-3 etc progression? But you can choose ‘worlds’ at will from a hub?
I’ve always liked that to a ‘Mario’ style rather than a ‘Zelda’ style like Dark Souls 1 had.
There’s no HOLLOWING mechanic, but you can consume an ember (pretty sure its an ember) which gives you a hp boost and makes you look like an ember. Im guessing that’s going to be useful for tough boss fights. Bit disappointed the hub isnt connected, apparently the areas aren’t even connected but everything else looks great. Seeing some familiar faces is gold
What the – not connected?? What are they doing? That was the best thing about the first Dark Souls
That’s what I’ve heard but it might not be true, apparently the areas are mastercrafted pathway wise though so its not going to be another Dark Souls 2 design.. the hub is like the Nexus from Demon Souls
Yes it does look a lot like the nexus (I haven’t played Demon Souls but I have watched videos of it
I watched a video of this last night I note how the hub is called Firelink Shrine and there’s even a blacksmith that looks exactly like the dude in the undead parish!