Namco Giving From Software Complete Control Over Dark Souls
Dark Souls producers Daisuke Uchiyama and Kei Hirono are giving lead director Hidetaka Miyazaki full reign to develop the upcoming action role-playing title. Hidetaka was the big brain behind Demon’s Souls, and has been credited with much of its success. As such, don’t expect Dark Souls to be any more forgiving than its brutally difficult predecessor.
In an interview with Gamasutra, Hirono explained the importance of preserving the franchise’s difficulty.
We are bringing this game to a new stage, making this game more difficult and having people feel more of a sense of achievement or accomplishment. Actually, we wanted people to feel the sense of achievement or accomplishment — a ‘Yes!’ feeling. That was the reason why we increased the difficulty level. And I believe that this is the only game that people can feel that much sense of achievement.
It is clear that Namco is confident in Miyazaki’s abilities and values his creative direction. In the end, the producers are counting on the development team to create ”what they think is best.”
Look out for Dark Souls when it hits store shelves on October 4.
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5 Responses to “Namco Giving From Software Complete Control Over Dark Souls”
Ok, difficulty yes, but all the pain in the ass mechanics are still there too, such as the inability to pause the game, or to play co op with a friend of your choosing. I’m all for difficulty, as long as its still fun – but Demon’s Souls really rode the fence on that one, and I still hesitate to put it in because of infuriating design decisions which made it more annoying to play than difficult.
I disagree with the “annoying” part of your comment. Demon’s Souls’ mechanics are very predictable, and all difficulty is based around learning the behavior of each level and enemy. I found it extremely satisfying to learn the weaknesses of everything and then exploiting it.
Demon Souls is the embodiment (or disembodiment) of “trial by fire”. You will become good at the game, or die trying, but all the while into the frying pan. There’s no “difficulty curve”, not really. You are constantly tested and it’s up to you to find the best way to approach the challenges. No pause button makes all the more sense, ’cause it serves to keep up the tension, that sense of inevitability and heat of the moment. I never gave it much thought, but if you could pause the game it would lose A LOT of its personality. It wouldn’t be right, for example, to be caught in a pinch, pause the game, and think things through, collect yourself, make mental notes of what your very next actions should be and whatnot. It wouldn’t work while online either, since you are supposed to be available for enemy player invasions among other things.
The increase in difficulty is welcome for Dark Souls, but I very much expect and would appreciate a progressive increase of difficulty AND rewards after the main playthrough. It was really discouraging to continue past the first New Game+ and find the difficulty and Soul gains increased very little each subsequent playthrough.
HahHAHahHAah thats a awesome feeling!!!
Nice!!!