Core experience to remain intact in Dark Souls II, assures former director

By: Jason McCarthy

  |   December 20th, 2012   |  

News

Mind behind Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls assures fans that protection of core experience in upcoming sequel a priority.

From Software and Namco Bandai Games’ action role-playing open world adventure game Dark Souls is all set to have a sequel, announced during the 2012 Spike TV Video Game Awards show earlier this month.

Even though the director of Demon Souls and original Dark Souls Hidetaka Miyazaki has moved from the director role to a supervising role for Dark Souls II, he promised that the upcoming game will stay close to the true spirit of the brand.

During an interview with Famitsu magazine earlier this week, Miyazaki said that Dark Souls II will not be completely different from its predecessor.

He noted that while the original Dark Souls does not have a very compelling storyline, the game has a certain core that made the experience so enticing and contributed significantly to earning the game critical acclaim.

Miyazaki said that elements such as the game’s mechanics, difficulty and level design define the experience and will therefore be kept intact.

“If we’re going to announce this as a sequel to Dark Souls then I think there’s certainly a core that we need to protect,” Miyazaki said. “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 this core, however, he has left it to the discretion of news directors of Dark Souls series Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura to decide what they want to adjust and fix.

“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,” he stated.

Shibuya has already made his intentions to make some personal touches to the Dark Souls experience known. He has also conceded that the game’s accessibility is one of the key points that the development team is concentrating on.

Irrespective of their ideas for Dark Souls II, one thing that nearly everyone attached to the recently announced sequel agrees on is the fact that core experience should be protected.

Released for Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 in 2010, before coming to the PC earlier this year, Dark Souls is a hardcore gamer’s wish come true, putting their skills and perseverance to test while making every minute of survival an accomplishment in itself.

The sequel to the game is expected to offer a pretty similar experience and that is exactly what the fans would be hoping to come across once the game comes out for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

From Software and Namco Bandai Games have no plans of bringing the game to the Wii U, something that has not gone down to well with the Nintendo enthusiasts, who have already begun a campaign for the game to be made for the dual-screen gaming console as well.