A week ago, I spent an hour playing an early build of Dark Souls 3 on PC, exploring the same outskirts of a medieval castle I saw at the E3 demo back in June. Let’s stop and reflect on just how amazing that is. In August 2012, a year after its console release, Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition hit the PC. It was a mess of a port, locked to a low resolution and 30 fps. Dark Souls 2 was vastly improved. Now, a mere three years later, it’s the version Namco Bandai shows to the press.
“The plan is for it to be day and date,” Bandai Namco community manager J. Kartje told me at last week’s preview event. “I don’t think we’re calling out and saying ‘this is lead’ or anything like that ... we have PC builds, so that’s what we’re working with right now. That’s what’s easiest for the dev team to use at this moment.”
The hour I spent with Dark Souls 3 wasn’t quite the stellar experience of Dark Souls 2’s port. It was running at 30 frames per second (mostly consistently, though one rooftop area sent the framerate dipping into the teens) and a locked 1080p. The 27-inch monitor that was two feet from my face didn’t do the game any favors, either—that’s too big a screen, too up-close, for 1080p to offer a sharp picture. Dark Souls 2 ran smoothly at a locked 60 fps and could handle just about any resolution you threw at it.
But Dark Souls 3 is still months away from its early 2016 release. I asked Kartje if we can expect it to match Dark Souls 2’s performance when it’s released.
“That’s what we’re all hoping for,” he said. “From Software’s gotten better since Dark Souls 1. That’s the plan, that it’s always better.”
I’m excited to see the PC become an increasingly important platform for the Souls series, though at the same time, I came away from Dark Souls 3 feeling like this may be the installment that triggers series fatigue. Every time someone asked me about the demo, my first thought was, simply, 'It’s Dark Souls.'
I’ve played both Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2, but not with a level of expertise (or a good enough memory) to immediately tell how different Dark Souls 3 feels in comparison. At E3, co-director Hidetaka Miyazaki said the game moves a little faster, with more responsive controls inspired by Bloodborne. A little faster sounds right, but it felt like Dark Souls to me. Combat was still deliberate. Animations take their time to play out. Movement on the Warrior I played felt slower than a light-as-possible Dark Souls 1/2 character. I’d have to play the game side-by-side with its predecessors to differentiate the supposedly more responsive controls.
New to Dark Souls 3 are the special attacks unique to each weapon type, now called Battle Arts. We saw them at E3, and in the build I played they were mapped to left trigger. My Warrior had an axe as his default weapon. The axe’s Battle Art was a damage buff, which Kartje told me also serves as a small AOE stun.
The other Battle Arts are more direct. The greatsword's is a lumbering step forward followed by a massive upward strike that sends enemies soaring into the air; with the dual katanas, it was a spinning whirlwind attack. I discovered that I could follow up that Battle Art whirlwind with a heavy attack, which is a slightly less potent spin, for a nice combo.
Another thing that’s new, at least to my recollection: enemies that change stances. When I faced off against one of Dark Souls 3’s knights, he stalked towards me with sword and shield in hand. When I backed away, he decided to switch gears from 'let’s dance' to 'get fucked,' tossed his shield to his back, gripped his sword with both hands, and charged right at me. It was terrifying.
I died.
Still, while some enemies were vicious and moved quickly, I didn't feel like my play session was quite as frenetic as this Gamescom trailer. Or as pretty as these perfectly framed, perfectly lit screenshots courtesy Namco Bandai. The style may be there in the real game, but the image quality certainly wasn't (at least not at 1080p).
Dark Souls 3 remains challenging in exactly the same ways as its predecessors, though I think part of my lukewarm response to the hour I played came from the limitations of the demo session. The menu was disabled, so I couldn’t see my stats, play with equipment, or level up. That means souls didn’t matter, which meant dying didn’t matter. Being human or undead to summon other players wasn’t a concern. And the demo was obviously locked to a single area, meaning the wonder of discovery and exploration of a huge interconnected world just wasn’t there.
Having said that, I was surprised and pleased with just how layered the area we explored turned out to be. There were multiple paths through stone buildings, across ramparts and rooftops, with at least two shortcuts to be unlocked (a door and an elevator) and chests and secrets to find in out-of-the-way locations. If this area is a representative microcosm of Dark Souls 3’s world, it’s going to be as dense and interconnected as the original.
I hope that’s true. I can’t say that Dark Souls 3 felt new and exciting, but I can imagine some small tweaks to the formula pulling me into this one for another hundred hours next year. Miyazaki has already said that From Software plans to increase the number of viable character/weapon builds, which would be great for repeat playthroughs. And online play has always been something special in Dark Souls; I want to see how co-op and PvP will evolve this time around (better netcode for PvP would be a good start).
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