Dark Souls 2 is out and we’ve given it a verdict in our Dark Souls 2 review.
The early days of a Something Souls game are completely unique. There are no wikis to consult, nor spoilers to overhear. Players stumble through graveyards of one palette or another for the first time, sacrificing themselves to learn the monster movesets others will come to memorise.
It’s a bit of a shame PC gamers have been robbed of that period for Dark Souls 2, which launched on the consoles this week. We’ll have to wait till – my goodness, is that right – April 25 to enter the land of the soon-to-be-dead.
But better late, as in the late Dent Arthur Dent, than never. Producer Tak Miyazoe says the delay has ensured Dark Souls 2 will be better on PC than its “half-assed” predecessor.
Miyazoe told GamerHub TV that a PC version for Dark Souls 2 had been in the works alongside its console brethren – and that consequently we could expect a fully-fledged experience to take advantage of the platform’s strengths.
“We apologize for the delay, but we did spend time working on the PC version, making sure that we do attend to higher resolutions, higher framerates, and also keyboard mapping most controls and all that stuff,” said the producer.
“The biggest difference for Dark Souls 2 is that we had the PC version in mind from the start. That was a big step for us. We wanted to provide a good PC game. Hopefully players will be able to enjoy it to the standards of the PC market.”
And there’s something else to look forward to: Miyazoe noted that Dark Souls 2’s server-side online systems allow From Software the possibility of worldwide events – though they don’t have any planned just yet.
“One of the main reasons why we wanted to revisit the game server system was for that added level of role-playing in the online world,” Miyazoe added. “Based on the beta we had last year, we noticed that there’s a lot of online activity, a lot of players leaving blood messages, a lot of ghosts being seen. It obviously adds a new level to the online system itself.”
I’ve always liked the idea of that – these interconnected but primarily single-player worlds that the PC seems a natural home for, though they’ve mostly existed on the consoles. Is that what you’re excited about in Dark Souls 2? Or is it mostly the being murdered, over and over?
Thanks, Shacknews.