• Posted December 19th, 2012 at 17:28 EDT by Timothy Nunes
• 3 Comments

Dark Souls 2 director Hidetaka Miyazaki today told Famitsu that he intends to retain the concepts of the series that make it such a memorable series.

One of the many dangers to creating sequels, the gameplay of the first game can be compromised to appeal to more players. However, Miyazaki wishes to remain true to the core concept amidst the changes and enhancements:

"I'm talking about how we think about the difficulty level and how you achieve things in-game, about the concepts behind the mechanics and level design. Outside of that core, though, it's better to leave things to the discretion of the director. There's a lot around that core that we need to fix or adjust besides, and individual touches always tend to come out in the world setting and artwork, so I'm not meddling in that very much."

The multiplayer component of Dark Souls was one of the few weak points to the overall experience, but it never hindered the game. Nonetheless, the team from From Software has intentions to make that part of the game more workable. Fellow director Tomohiro Shibuya spoke on the matter:

"Setting up a dedicated server lets you retain your data, making it easier to share it with other players. We'd like to evolve the asynchronous message-oriented online support from the previous game; we're imagining a framework where players are able to directly interact with each other. The concept behind online play in Demon's Souls and Dark Souls was pretty plain to gamers, so I'm hoping we can evolve on that concept here without removing ourselves too far from it."

Ever since the announcement of Dark Souls 2 at the Video Game Awards, fans have been excited for another opportunity to get beaten into the ground by one of the hardest video game series in the industry, and Miyazaki, Shibuya, and the rest of the crew at From Software looks to maintain the difficult standard that the series has set for itself.

In case you missed the trailer for Dark Souls 2, the video can be found below to make waiting that much more difficult.

Via Eurogamer, Polygon