After first playing the Dark Souls demo at E3 earlier this year, I had to admit to myself, reluctantly, that I was a little disappointed. Demon’s Souls had been revolutionary to me, its regression to the style of an era of gaming that predated the first time I picked up a controller drawing me in, like countless others, to the near-painful struggle to the end – and the overwhelming sense of satisfaction that accompanied victory.
Dark Souls felt comfortably familiar, too familiar in fact. It lacked the same sense of fear and bewilderment that possessed the player throughout their first few hours of Demon’s Souls, presenting the same challenges and near predictable pitfalls. The gameplay was for all intents and purposes, identical. A few new moves here and there, the most notable being a running leap that could be used to bridge gaps for potential exploring, but nothing ground-breaking. In fact, the final fight in the demo content was a redux of the infamous Maneaters, one of Demon’s Souls more iconic battles. Playing the same demo again at Gamescom really drove my concerns home, despite seeing so many people leaving the booth somewhere between frustrated and crestfallen, those who had experience with Demon’s Souls found the Dark Souls demo a proverbial walk in the park – albeit one that required a little patience and care.
This meant that I went into my three hour session of playing the final build of Dark Souls with more than a little apprehension, desperately wanting the game to meet my expectations and those of the community of players who still clung to Demon’s Souls. From the very start of the final game, my fears were proved to be misplaced. The game began with a more refined character creation system, fan-requested features seamlessly integrated with the more familiar slider-based system, still allowing for a huge variety of characters. Responding to some criticism of the models in Demon’s Souls, there are now dozens of extra customisation options for the body shapes and other features, allowing players to differentiate and personalise more easily.
The opening cut-scene only added to my thirst for more things Dark Souls, the teasing hints at the more in-depth story enough to draw in any RPG fan with the promise of a more fleshed out, less ephemeral tale. This time, your goal is clear cut from the very beginning. As an undead, cast out from society and imprisoned in an asylum deep in the northern lands, your character’s quest to restore themselves to humanity and save both themselves and others by ringing the ‘Bells of Awakening’ seems simple and yet impossible.
Exploring the tutorial as a Wanderer, there were surprises in store for even a seasoned Demon’s Souls player, the content a perfectly balanced blend of references and new mechanics, engineered to catch out those with expectations of how things will unfold but still completely transparent to new players. Upon being deposited at the base camp by one of the new crow-like NPCs who operate as a form of fast-travel, it became immediately clear that this game was more than just an evolution of Demon’s Souls. From my clifftop starting-point, there were more than half a dozen potential paths to take, each leading to new areas to explore, and no guidance whatsoever in what direction to take. Quite simply, it was just the experience I’d been looking for. In my searching for loot, I found a graveyard, just a few minutes away from the beginning of the game, from which I was promptly forced to run for my life from its skeletal inhabitants. Choosing to head towards the area that looked the most familiar instead, the ‘Undead Bourg’, I was almost immediately set upon by the dragon that has been menacing people from the trailers, as it belched fire and smoke across my path, and then flying off, almost certain to be a nightmarish obstacle the next time I came across it.
Very quickly the difficulty even in this slightly less punishing area began to ramp up. Trying to navigate the winding streets of a town populated by hollow soldiers was an exercise in caution, to say the least. Every encounter with even the simplest of foes could end in death, with enemies proving faster, stronger, more numerous and somehow smarter. It was rare to be engaged from one range at a time, every group of spear or sword wielding undead being reinforced by ranged attackers from a distance, or another group of melee enemies ready to ambush from the shadows.
My first encounter with a Dark Knight was memorable, his imposing form towering over me in close quarters, blocking my path to a chest. Luring him away and dodging past him, I was able to get to the chest, to find it was empty, left with an angry undead knight bearing down upon me. Running to the nearest fog gate-like passage, I managed to trap myself between the Dark Knight and the first mini-boss I found, a minotaur-like ‘Taurus’ demon. With nowhere left to run on the tight battlements, I decided to climb the tower behind me to try and get the jump on the boss, one of the new mechanics taught in the tutorial. However, I was too slow, and the Taurus demon promptly leapt straight onto the tower, crushing me in a single blow, mocking my pitiable attempt at defense.
The second time I was better prepared, and I fought the beast on the battlements, just about managing to survive the battle through use of the wide variety of consumable items, explosive firebombs staving off its attacks long enough for me to inflict some considerable damage.
Reaching the ‘Undead Parish’, I was a little disappointed that I’d wandered into the demo area. However, this time I entered from a slightly different point, and found a few surprises in store. Determined that the demonstration content wouldn’t make things easier for players in the final version, things had changed dramatically, with From Software living up to their promise to me and the other five people who beat the E3 demo that things would be as difficult as possible in the real thing. Despite having already been through this area a dozen times before on the demo version, a combination of the vastly increased waves of enemies, their cunning repositioning and my almost total lack of supplies made the area impassable.
Realising that most of my time had passed already, I decided to abandon this character and try out a few more creation options, making a female thief with a much crazier body shape and hair colour, and skipping the tutorial. Determined to see as many of the environments as I could, I rode an elevator-like contraption from the starting campsite to an underground lake, eerily lit by lanterns. The undead enemies here ignored me entirely, shambling around in the shadows, apparently afraid to tread on the path across the lake. Stepping out onto the wooden platforms above the water, I came face to face with another nightmarish creation of From Software. Banshee-like spirits, with scythe-like arms, hovered above the water. Clutching my shield a little tighter, I tried my best to land a hit on them as they slowly advanced towards me, but nothing would work — my attacks simply passed right through them, with even magic proving ineffective. Reaching me, the nearest reached out with her arms, the scythes extending to embrace my character, pulling them in to an instantaneous, painful death.
Understandably deciding to try a different path, I explored the clifftop ’New Londo Ruins’ searching for treasure and something that wouldn’t reduce my character to shreds. Traversing the environment was very different with the use of the running leap, allowing me to reach areas that I didn’t think were accessible – the game does seem to live up to its claim that everything you can see, you can touch. With a little clever navigation, I climbed to the top of the ruins and found a few new pieces of Cleric armour to play with, and some interesting new consumables. Lloyd’s Talismans created an area within which Esflasks couldn’t be used, impairing both the player and the enemies. Even the telescope from Demon’s Souls had received an upgrade, a pair of binoculars allowing me to scout the areas ahead. Finding a cave I could enter in the ‘Valley of Drakes’, another potential route from the starting point, the environment was reminiscent of Demon’s Souls ‘Valley of Defilement,’ complete with club-wielding undead trolls, which made short work of my Thief who lacked the base requirements to use her shield effectively.
At this point I ran out of time, and somehow managed to put down the controller without Namco Bandai’s producers wrestling it from my grasp. The open-world has made all the difference with Dark Souls. It offers a layer of depth that Demon’s Souls couldn’t, while still providing more than enough challenge for even the seasoned gamer. The game makes no attempt to hold the player’s hand, gives little in the way of direction and progression is dictated by how far you can get without dying. The bonfires are few and far between, making traversing the areas between them a gamble at the best of times. I couldn’t ask for more from From Software; they’ve managed to find a way to preserve as much of the experience that players loved in Demon’s Souls, and yet update the game to meet the expectations of both old fans and new.
Article by Matthew Whisker