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— DOOM (@DOOM) 7. März 2016
Dark Souls 3: Cowards and newcomers need not apply
FromSoftware and Miyazaki weave together the best bits from Souls and Bloodborne.
by Andrew Williams (UK)
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People can’t seem to get enough punishment. That’s what the 10-million-plus sales of the Dark Souls series and Bloodborne say, anyway.But as Dark Souls III’s April 12 release date nears (or March 24 if you’re lucky enough to live in Japan), questions remain. As much as fans may consider each of the Souls games to be unique crystalline ornaments of tense action role-playing, all four are roundly similar. And as Ars found out at Gamescom last year, Dark Souls III is going much the same way. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course—after all, these are fine games with a large and enthusiastic fan base—but I wonder if there’s something, anything, in Dark Souls III that might attract those who haven’t already got a taste for developer FromSoftware’s work.
Even before I get into the game—the first four hours of which I played—the creaky facial models, the obscure expositional cut-scenes, and the ’90s-grade UI are strikingly familiar. As too are the visuals, which bear the murky style of the earlier Dark Souls games, albeit with some of the visual sheen and sharpness seen in Bloodborne. What seals the deal, though, is the 30 minutes I spend trying to kill the first boss, during which I feel the familiar despair-tinged stress bubble of a good Dark Souls fight fill to bursting before the inevitable happens and the game, in blood red writing, says “You Died.”
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And we’re back. Suffice it to say, if you’ve tried previous Souls games before and have ended up turning off your console or hurling a controller across the room in a fit of rage, never to return, I’d suggest you give Dark Souls III a miss. For those that want to stick it out, there are some changes this time around, with much influence from the PS4-exclusive Bloodborne to have made its way across.There’s an important thematic distinction to make between the two games, in that where Bloodborne’s roots are in horror, Dark Souls’ are in high fantasy. “This is where knights and wyverns used to live, but now it is decayed and facing doomsday,” Hidetaka Miyazaki, director of the first Dark Souls and Bloodborne, tells Ars in an interview, referring the castle city of Lothric, one of Dark Souls III’s early areas.
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Combat does, however, gain something from Bloodborne. In Dark Souls II, even the faster character classes start off as sloth-like, lumbering things, taking time to recover from even a simple roll move. It’s a reminder you’re in a world in which you shouldn’t be able to survive. As a result, timing is everything. Bloodborne sped things up, turning combat from a case of “wait and react” to a more immediate series of reactions. Aggression paid off because you could earn back any lost health with quick successive hits at your enemy, and there were no shields to fall back on anyway.Dark Souls III has some of the speed of Bloodborne, but keeps the shields of Dark Souls II, sitting in a happy middle ground. Conscious that I only had four hours to play with and that—despite playing these games for hours at a time—I’m not very good at them, I played as the knight. He’s not a “speed” class character, but he still lets you dash away from enemies rapidly, and isn’t subject to the sort of inertia you see in Dark Souls II. This is good news for those frustrated by the slower rhythm of the earlier games
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Miyazaki admits Dark Souls III combat is “pretty similar to Bloodborne” in other ways too. The game introduces weapon skills to the series. These aren’t the stats that increase each time you level-up your character, but are specific abilities linked to different weapons, much as each weapon in Bloodborne has secondary attacks. Their use is a little different here, though. Miyazaki says they’re out to provide a “distinct role-play interaction,” with weapons linked to the classic RPG classes. “The thief has the quick stab skill. The player can launch the skill when using short knives,” Miyazaki tells me.While it seems your ability to use specific weapons only rests on your stats, not your class, playing with a distinct character style is more viable than in Bloodborne. For example, there are more opportunities for stealth, and while I didn’t use any magic at all in my play through, I did see other players casting projectiles just as you can in Dark Souls II. “The intention is to let players challenge difficulties at any [level]” says Miyazaki. Expect to see mind-boggling YouTube videos of players finishing the game without levelling-up their characters once before too long.
Miyazaki said this skill-led approach is “part of the excuse in setting the higher difficulty level” of Dark Souls III. I don’t yet have a clear view of exactly how hard the game will be from the off, though, as in my demo Miyazaki admitted the difficulty had been toned down a little in order to avoid us press spending too long trudging through early battles. I hope for all players’ sakes that the boss battles won’t be any harder, though. As ever, they’re not so much a stumbling block so much as agonisingly drawn-out stumbling obstacle courses. Miyazaki says each boss has a “heat-up mode,” too, where their attacks change to make sure just a single strategy won’t win a fight.
It clearly works. It took me almost 10 tries to get through the first boss. Other players must have hit 20-plus attempts before breaking through. A few were visibly upset. I don’t claim to be any good—I’m not—but my word, is this game exhausting at times. Towards the end of my four hours I was shrugging away from trying to progress, battered down by a boss I just couldn’t seem to get past.
However there’s an often-cited honesty to these games that keeps many coming back. They are concrete, unmoving, but there’s always a way through.
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The world structure of Dark Souls III reverts to that of the original Dark Souls—almost as if the non-Miyazaki produced Dark Souls II never happened—with the return of the Firelink Shrine, a safe area at the start of the game you can roam freely. I didn’t get far enough to see whether there are more shrines, but this suggests you won’t be able to travel to any game area simply by heading to the one safe zone, much like in Dark Souls. This was a reminder the world wasn’t made for your convenience, but a convincingly coherent place of death and doom. It also gave the impression of a world that made sense geographically, where Dark Souls II’s levels could end up seeming like random spokes popping out from Majula.It may be well-established enough to have carved out its own subgenre, but FromSoftware doesn’t seem to be taking any major risks with Dark Souls III. Instead it has weaved together its favourite bits from Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, and Bloodborne, while offering far better graphics than Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin.
Does it have any great new ideas of its own? That’s harder to answer. The somewhat class-led weapon skills thing is pretty traditional, so it seems Miyazaki’s proudest moments may come in the form of the new level designs we’ve not yet seen. Expect plenty of expansive fantasy vistas, and areas that fold back on themselves in ways you wouldn’t predict—if you make it though without having a breakdown, that is.
Quelle: arstechnica.com