VIDEO Dark Souls II

Praise the Sun!

Prepare to die again in what appears to be a sequel to one the best role playing games I've ever had the privilege of playing.

It was announced, straight out of the mouth of Jessica Alba, at the 2012 Video Game Awards with a trailer included. It starts at 2:26.

If you don't already know. Dark Souls is the spiritual successor to the highly praised and critically acclaimed Demon's Souls developed by From Software. Both games have received so much attention because the level of difficulty is what makes the game fun, rage inducing, and at the same time rewarding once you've learned to master it. Dark Souls is the most recent installment and one that creator, Hidetaka Miyazaki, put a great deal of work into. Miyazaki is known to be somewhat eccentric and puts plenty of secrets and hidden gems in the game, some only accessible through multiple play-throughs.

The most recent update on Kotaku states that Dark Souls II will introduce a new hero in a new world and will have a new director. It looks like Miyazaki is going to take on supervisor role for this one.

Here are some of the questions I have.

What's your take and opinion on Miyazaki's role?

Is it really a sequel if the setting is in a new world?

WIll the lore tie into what occurred in Lordran?

Do you think they'll push it off until the next generation of consoles is released?

So any fellow Souls' fans out there? Please feel free to chime in.

 

Just so you know, 'RPG' refers to tabletop/pen and paper RPG games, not RPG video games. I've changed the tag.

I've always heard good things about these games but never played them. They scare me a little.

 

Haha thank you! I appreciate that.

I'd recommend them to anyone. I was a little intimidated at first too, but once I got past that it became wonderfully immersive gaming experience.

 

Dark souls was a collection of all cheap tactics ever concocted and dispersed evenly between every major enemy.

I knew this game was difficult. I can do difficult, the game was fun until boss battles came, then it's a case of checking out YouTube to pick up the tactic.

If I hadn't resorted to farming souls in the woods area I would have chucked it in the bin

 

Dark Souls is a game that can best be described as "Capcom 'hard'" which basically means in the beginning of nearly every mini boss/boss encounter you will die a lot and then you'll die some more followed by another death. Until you figure out the pattern and by then the encounter will be piss easy.

 

I had no idea Miyazaki was interested in creating video games.

 

If Mayazaki insists on a cat bus being in the game then I might get it

 

Sadly there's nothing as awesome as a cat bus in the game, but they got these do cats.

 

Four gameplay videos showing off various builds and movesets:






Mmm. Those capes!

 

Just thought this thread deserved a little bump, what with the game's console debut being in a matter of days and the PC version finally having a release date. (April 25th can't come soon enough.)

Despite getting the first game at launch I was a bit late to jumping on the Dark Souls hype bandwagon. I thought the game did a lousy job at introducing players to the core mechanics, which was a very off putting experience. However once I got past the initial brick wall of frustration I was very pleasantly surprised by the depth on display, and the refusal to hold your hand makes the exploration and combat feel a million times more rewarding than in Skyrim. It's also got some really great art design within it, and every pore of the game just oozes atmosphere. Throw in a smattering of really well realised lore that the player is allowed to uncover at their own will and what you end up with is a truly compelling experience that I'd argue is the best game of the generation.

So consider me incredibly excited for the sequel. I hear my main problems with the first game have been fixed, namely that the covenant system is actually explained to players so that all the game's mechanics can be explored to their fullest, while the game retains the meat that made the first one a classic.

 

I'm planning to pick this up on Tuesday as well. I really loved the first game, having played through it half a dozen times. The only hard part will be dividing my playing time between this and the new South Park game.

 

I'll probably wait a year or so until most of the game has been picked apart and wiki'd so I don't have to ask the incredibly awful online Dark Souls community for assistance when I inevitably hit a snag. That's doing wonders for my current playthrough.

 

Will this one have a pause button?

 

The first one did if you played while you're offline...

 

As I have been playing offline - no, no it does not.

 

Yeah, I was offline the entire time I played the first one, and it never let me pause once.

 

I have the 360 version, and yes, you could pause while playing offline.

 

Seeing as I'm playing the 360 version, there is no pause button, the game continues to run while you're in the dashboard navigation, and the PC users had to mod in a pause option - please, enlighten me.

 

All you need to do is not be signed into Xbox Live. Then pressing Start (or Back, I forget which) will pause the game.

 

It's impossible for me to be signed in to Xbox Live, so I can assure you that does not work. You'll access the menu, but the game doesn't pause while you're accessing the menu.

 

I don't know what to tell you, then. It worked just fine for me.

 

I literally just googled the question and every result is "You cannot pause" or "WTF why can't I pause?"

 

Well they must have released a patch fixing that problem since the last time I played it. Because I distinctly remember being able to pause while in offline mode. My wife remembers it too, because until I discovered how to pause, she got annoyed when I played and wasn't able to pause it.

 

There is no pause button in Dark Souls. However you can't be attacked while resting at a bonfire, so they act as the game's equivalent of a pause.

 

Ahhh, my first death came at the hand of those three little piggies in a corner of Majula. And here we go!