Greetings Shogunites! I was lucky enough to get some private time with the developers for Dark Souls, NAMCO BANDAI’s upcoming “spiritual successor” to Demon Souls. The playable build they had on the floor was compiled especially for E3, and it definitely has the Demon Souls feel to it.
The player begins the game as a tortured soul, a person cursed with being undead. The goal: to lift the curse, of course! Unfortunately, you seem to have been caught and locked away, so step 1 is to escape the dungeon. You can select one of six classes, and we were shown the “sun knight” (names for the sunburst on his shield) though that name may change once the game gets closer to release.
Demon Souls had a reputation for being incredibly difficult, and the developers prided themselves in making Dark Souls even more so. That said, defeating major enemies is more akin to solving a puzzle, rather than getting lucky in combat. In the portion of the game shown to us, the player came up against an armored rhinoceros- like creature that was covered in plate armor. The only place the creature was unarmored was its … ahem… hind quarters. The player had to get behind the rhinobeast and ram his sword up the beasties butthole! I’m pretty sure that would take down just about anything.
Graphics were detailed, though certainly not cutting edge. Dark Souls will be released October 4, 2011 for the Xbox and PS3.
