Dark Souls & Other Souls-Likes

Dark Souls II: Shibuya on the gameworld, awkwardness and accessibility


One half of the directorial duo behind Dark Souls II, Tomohiro Shibuya clearly has more than a passing interest in fashion. He sports stylishly layered hair, his jeans are ornamented with faux-stencilled graffiti, and the shirt he’s got on displays a black-and-white photograph of a woman reclining on a sofa while wearing nothing but black gloves. One arm conceals her breasts, while a strategically positioned cushion keeps the image just softcore enough to ensure it remains tantalising without being pornographic. The composition of the photo is designed to tease viewers, and to kindle their curiosity.

Shibuya is here to try to accomplish the same trick with Dark Souls II, but it becomes quickly apparent that he doesn’t intend to be nearly as forthcoming as the woman on his shirt. She’s opted for black gloves, but he might as well be cloaked in the Tower Knight’s daunting plate armour.

His initial flurry of answers are vague. We’re able to establish that Dark Souls II will be a direct sequel to Dark Souls, and it will take place in an open world of similar dimensions to its predecessor but more dense with content. The game will not take place in Lordran, yet Shibuya won’t disclose the name of the setting. “The name of the world will be key to the story,” he says. “We will reveal it eventually, but not in the first announcement. If Lordran was to be an area in a world called, say, Earth, the setting of this game will be somewhere completely different. The two places won’t necessarily interact directly with each other, but, from a visual concept [standpoint] at least, it will be within the same world.”


We’re told the story will once again revolve around a character who is cursed and seeking to find the cure for his affliction, but Shibuya won’t be drawn out further. He will provide no details about how much continuity there is between the story of Dark Souls II and its predecessor, nor explain why the player has appeared in this new region. “They’ll find out right away,” he says, “but that’s something we want to refrain from speaking too much about today.”

In the preceding interview, Miyazaki stressed that FromSoftware was interested in evolving the series to keep fans surprised and engaged. So if the key alteration from Demon’s Souls to Dark Souls was providing players with an expansive and seamless open world, what’s the defining change that Dark Souls II will offer us?

“The concept of time and the existence of time is something that will be key to Dark Souls II,” replies Shibuya. When we press for more detail, he simply rephrases the word ‘time’ with ‘eras’ and leaves it there. That’s as much as he will say, claiming that he doesn’t want to spoil the surprise for players. We’ll have to wait to see just what this clue means, then, but it sounds as though time travel between different epochs of the world’s history could play a role in the game. For a series that already shares so much DNA with The Legend Of Zelda, playing with time mechanics can only serve to strengthen that bond.

Any sequel in a beloved franchise gets stuck between the competing values of preserving the core of an experience that players have loved and the desire to offer up fresh enticements. Despite his caginess, Shibuya doesn’t intend to be shy about building on the foundation of the past games and changing things up.


“Ideally we want Dark Souls players to smoothly get into Dark Souls II,” he explains, “but at the same time I am implementing a lot of different aspects as well. So there might be a sense of awkwardness at the [beginning] when experienced Dark Souls players pick up Dark Souls II. But ideally we want that smooth process, so Dark Souls II will have the same general feel in terms of the experience in the game. I don’t intend to change the controls.”

Our conversation then turns to the issue of accessibility. Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls are notorious for not just being difficult to master in a mechanical sense, but remaining staunchly inscrutable as well; the games rarely explain their systems to players. Demon’s Souls contained a feature called World Tendency that veered between pure white and pure black, changing the nature of the world depending on certain actions, but you had to flee online to the Demon’s Souls wiki if you were to have any hope of untangling the mystery of how it worked. Dark Souls has a host of different ‘covenants’, which require different actions from players to both join and maintain good standing in. The covenant system will return in Dark Souls II, but Shibuya assures us it will be easier to understand.

“I personally feel that the covenant system was something that was difficult to fully absorb and experience [in] Dark Souls, and I intend to make it more accessible to players. And that’s not just with the covenant system, but with a lot of other aspects that I felt were difficult to fully adapt to.


“I will follow the same concept as Dark Souls, but there were a lot of hidden story elements that some players may not have caught before, and I’m hoping to make some of that a little bit more clear or directly expressed to the player as well – not just in the story, but messaging. A lot of elements were very subtle in Dark Souls, and that was something that was characteristic to Dark Souls. But I personally am the sort of person who likes to be more direct instead of subtle, so I think that part of me will [result in] a difference [for] players when they pick up Dark Souls II. It will be more straightforward and more understandable.”

Despite Miyazaki telling us in an interview conducted back in November 2011 that he wasn’t yet sure if he’d have the chance to make a follow-up to Dark Souls, Dark Souls II had in fact already been in development for two months at that stage. Shibuya mentions being approached about the project in September of last year, at which point, we’re told, development was proceeding in parallel, with some of the Dark Souls team working on patches and DLC content, and staff gradually migrating over to the new game as required.

According to Shibuya, the team working on Dark Souls II is “substantially bigger”. Though he won’t quantify the growth numerically, he points out that the studio has nearly doubled the internal team focused on world creation alone, in addition to adding new members across every other department. When asked what state the game is currently in, he estimates it being roughly 25 per cent finished. In other words, if the current pace of development holds, you can almost definitely rule out the game arriving in 2013. Is the team hoping to finish the game before the end of the current hardware generation? Shibuya politely declines to comment.

After about 90 minutes of question-and-answer jousting, we haven’t teased out many specifics. It’s just like Dark Souls to raise more questions than it answers, but we can’t help feeling frustrated. Diehard fans of the series will surely be disappointed as well. But it’s also just like Dark Souls to provide players with dizzying turnabouts in fortune. After stumbling blind and hopeless through the pitch black Tomb Of The Giants in Dark Souls, discovering that first bonfire near the base of the tall cliff-face ladder felt like reaching pure nirvana. In a cavern that dark, the illumination from even a tiny bonfire can feel as penetrating as the sun itself.

sorry paged you :x bump

Dark Souls 2 Roughly 25% Finished, May Miss 2013 Release Date
29th, Jan. 2013by Rashid Sayed

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The Souls franchise is one of the toughest to beat this generation. But that is where the fun and challenge lies. Dark Souls 2 was announced at last year’s VGA and it will be every bit as tough as it’s predecessors.

Tomohiro Shibuya, co-game director of Dark Souls 2 has revealed that the game is completed 25% till date. According to Edge, the game will be missing the 2013 release window.

When Shibuya was asked whether it will get completed before the advent of next generation consoles, he simply declined to comment.


According to an interview with Edge, Shibuya also confirmed that the team working on Dark Souls II is ‘substantially bigger’. He also confirmed that that the development team has almost doubled plus they are adding new team members.

It is interesting to note that despite such a massive team, we have to wait till next year to get our hands on. I personally think that it may land up on next generation consoles, seeing how Shibuya declined to comment on the actual release date.

Dark Souls II: Revealing a new world through concept art


There are a number of glossy printouts of Dark Souls II concept art lying on the table between us and Shibuya – the same images you’ll find illustrating this feature. With the formal interview concluded and our final minutes ticking away, we make one last push for information. Would Shibuya kindly give us a guided tour of the concept art before us so that we know what we’re looking at?

He lays his index finger on a knight dressed in a regal coat of blue and grey armour. This is the main hero, he says. We point out the grey animal fur adorning the shoulders of the armour and recount a conversation we had with Miyazaki months ago about the Dark Souls team experimenting with – and later abandoning – snowy terrain because it was too technically demanding.

“We’re not really thinking of anything to take place covered in snow or blizzards or stuff like that,” explains Shibuya. “But the aspect of snow and weather is something that we’re definitely looking into and thinking about implementing, so that this actually makes sense as well.” The idea of dynamic weather in a Dark Souls game is enticing. Can you imagine how much more evocative the mood of, say, Darkroot Garden would have been if a misty rain began pattering on the grassy turf as you traced a path in the dark between those incandescent flower blossoms?


Shibuya points out a curious-looking weapon that’s been designed for the game, which looks like a statue sitting on an upside down dome pedestal, and explains that it’s actually a bell with a thin dagger tip on the end. Ringing the two Bells Of Awakening in Dark Souls marked key moments of the player’s progression through the game. We’ll have to wait to see if this bell has any connection to those ones, or if it’s simply an answer to the question, ‘Hey, you know what would be cool?’


Next up is a sketch of ruins near a misty coastline. “This is something new that we’re trying to do. Using the ocean or the sea as a concept, that hadn’t really been [done] in Demon’s Souls or Dark Souls. The ocean aspect is something that we’re newly implementing into the game, so one of the concept artists started on this for us to use. With the ocean or the sea as a concept, the aspects that are involved are strong winds from the ocean [and] the strong waves as well. This is an area where we’re trying to express loneliness. In Japan, it’s an iconic idea that when you’re standing by the sea all alone, you’re often depressed.”

We ask about boats, one of the fantasy genre’s most familiar modes of transport. “Being on a ship or boat is definitely something we are considering,” he says, “but being able to control one is not in the works.”


Shibuya moves on to a grotesquely obese enemy wielding massive crescent-shaped sickles. Though he said earlier he wouldn’t be talking about any characters in the new game, he makes an exception. He explains that there’s a mad scientist in the world, and that this creature is the product of a Frankenstein-like experiment in which he reanimated a corpse containing the parts of various powerful creatures.


A separate image of what looks like a dwarf wielding a monstrous axe isn’t necessarily a dwarf, Shibuya points out, but it is a character that lives underground.


Another enemy that looks like a spider mutant has a far more disturbing explanation. The spider has actually attached itself parasitically to the being’s back and is controlling its movements. The hairy leg piercing the host’s cranium allegedly manipulates his brain in some way.


Curiously, one of the relatively pedestrian-looking enemies on display, a blind, bandaged zombie with a gaping open rib cage, who seems a little like something out of a Resident Evil game, cannot be discussed at all. Shibuya simply informs us “This is top secret.”


The black rider in the chariot, who looks like one of Tolkien’s Nazgûl, is in fact an undead who acts as an executioner if you commit evil deeds. So does this mean there will be some kind of moral system underpinning Dark Souls II? “Yes, definitely,” Shibuya confirms with a grin. “If you’re unlucky enough, you’ll be able to meet them.”

The undead executioner’s chariot also points to another feature that hasn’t been explored in the series previously: vehicles. The player’s vulnerability in Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls was reinforced by the lack of vehicular assistance. You were always the footsoldier on the front lines wading into certain death, never the horseback cavalry charging in with the upper hand. Shibuya describes vehicles as something the team wants to implement in Dark Souls II as a new element for players. “We want to constantly think of something new that hasn’t been tried before, so that’s where that idea [of the chariot] came up.”


Shibuya didn’t offer any insight on the next few images, so you’ll have to draw you’re own conclusions on how they fit into Dark Souls II’s world.

My god Kali, you don't mess around.

Kali being bored = does more work in an hour than I've ever done in my life.

Is Dark Souls 2 actually Demon's Souls 3?

Right Click > Properties > Local Files > Verify Integrity of Game Cache then restart steam
I'd probably contribute this to a steam bug more than anything.

Prepare to Casual Edition

Demon's Souls was a PS3 exclusive. From Software wanted to reach out to more fans who don't own a PS3, so to do that they had to make a different game called Dark Souls.

The lore for it is slightly different, but there are obvious similarities.

where can I upgrade a random curved sword to +10 so I can make it into something with my qeelag's soul? all I'm getting is it up to +5 and then it doesnt even show in the upgrade list and I have all the large shards needed to +10, I'm at the giant blacksmith

You can also revert weapons from ascended form back down to +10's.

I needed a +10 spear and I just un-upgraded a lightning spear. Useful if you accidentally pissed a bunch of npc's off and can't pay off your sins cause you accidentally hit the dood who does it...

next question! where is a good place to practice parrying @_@ I've done literally 1 parry in my entire game experience so far

The Kiln is pretty good, but that's the end of the game. You can also practice parrying with the undead in the Undead Parish. The rapier one will parry back though, beware.

http://darksouls.wikidot.com/parry

ahh this has what I was looking for, I swear I tried searching for parry before and couldnt what I was interested in

parryable mobs

I personally learned how by spamming undead parish. The zombie warriors / knights will have delayed swings so you have to look at what they do and practice timing.

There are even monsters you can parry, but can't reposte.

I'm pretty good at parrying offline, but absolutely terrible online. I'm just not good at timing with the latency issues.

PvP is completely different, it's more of an instinct thing than what you see.

the only pvp I really do is this cat ring :s and most of the people there seem way stronger than I am, are those people potentially on NG+++++?

Forest has no level requirements, and the majority of the people you're going up against have played since 2011.

thats what I figured, do they have to be human to get invaded while seiging the catboss hq?

You always have to be human to be invaded, it is what flags you for wanting to PvP against others even if your intent is just to summon someone else for help.

It's about balance mostly~

wasnt sure if that forest specifically worked differently

yeah they probably are NG+ and really confident in their builds, because essentially that means they're willing to pvp against basically anyone of any level and potentially 1 on 2.

I was taking 2 people on the other day, and I was so certain that I was going to die.

I have this rule that I refuse to heal in battle against someone else. I won't do it, I'll always start the battle with capped HP but once we start fighting then that's it. I don't care if you try and run to heal, but I'll be on your *** if you do.

So the other day two people invaded me at once, so I topped my HP and went after the first person I saw. I got his HP down to about 50% and mine was at 100% when the 2nd guy came in trying to backstab me, missing and hitting me. Then the first guy got a hit off of me knocking me down to 40% HP, then I parried and reposted him being immune from dmg for a few seconds moving my attention to the second guy waiting to backstab me. I rolled out of the way, he hit me during my invincible frames so I took zero dmg except I had no time to cap my HP for the 2nd battle.

His main focus was to backstab me with his rapier, was very obvoius, so I came at him with my GA and took him down to ~10% while he got me to about 5%. We both were going to die in 1 more hit, so I went 2 handed and went after him, he ran and tried to use a humanity when he thought he was safe from me, except I pulled off the backstab he was trying to do to me and took him down /o/

I don't really win 2 on 1 fights but it's pretty fun when you do.

It's definately tricky, but from the video's I've seen from people much better at it than I am, I guess you have to anticipate a 2nd swing and hit the parry button as soon as you see them begin the motion for the 2nd attack.

This video kind of gives you an idea of just how early you have to do it.

Ah ha, Victory was mine... I ended up using a couple humanity to heal because I can't dodge sometimes but I am proud of myself regarless. Will have to try with out pyromancy in the first half if I get around to new game+ now >.>

Feel free to watch me get smacked around.