Bring out the confetti, Dark Souls' arriving.

[Kevin]

I'd like to know a great place to put this out to reach the widest possible viewership:

"Pirates, for the love of god and all that is sacred and holy: Do. Not. Pirate. This. Game.

We PC gamers have finally proved that we can have nice things if we politely ask, now we have to vindicate that kindness in return. Let's take this opportunity to prove to devs and publishers that they're wrong about PC gamers as a whole."

And if you have that attitude of 'Well, it's just one pirated copy, that can't really hurt From and Namco Bandai,' let me be the first to tell you 'Small drops make an ocean.' Have a sense of principles and stick with them. My dad once told me 'Even if the world leaves you with nothing, they can't take your integrity from you; only you can give that away.'"

[LGM]

Even better!

Does anyone think this will have Steamworks/be on Steam?

Pretty sure it will be a Steamworks title, as Namco Bandai's Ridge Racer Unbounded is on Steam. As long as Dark Soul's isn't a GFWL title it's a guaranteed buy for me!

Also, now that Namco Bandai is bringing games to PC, perhaps we can FINALLY get Pac Man Championship Edition? Like, pretty please and stuff? We should start a petition for it too! (if you haven't played it, Pac Man CE is fucking epic)

[alset85]

What's the dirt on [1]Demon's Souls vs. [2]Dark Souls?

Well they are structured differently: 1 has a central hub with NPC's, 2 is more open world with NPC's scattered about. 1 also has harsher death penalties with the game becoming harder the more you die. In 2 you just lose your souls and mobs respawn. I think 2 also doesn't have an inventory weight limit because there's no stash in town? There's more if I can remember.

[Henke]

In Dark Souls you can buy a "bottomless chest" or whatever it's called that you can stash your things in at the campfire. But it's really just for keeping your inventory clutterfree. There's no weight limit to your inventory, just a limit to what you can have equiped at any one time. Of course wearing light armor lets you move faster and conserve your stamina better.

Anyway, really happy for PC gamers about this news. DS was my second favourite game of last year(after Frozen Synapse). It's not a game for everyone but if you like it you'll really like it. It's addictive as hell, but don't expect to beat it the first time you play it. First time I played it I only made it about halfway through, 54 hours in, before I gave up. A few months later I started up a new character and beat the game in about 50 hours.

[Jockie]

Well they are structured differently: 1 has a central hub with NPC's, 2 is more open world with NPC's scattered about. 1 also has harsher death penalties with the game becoming harder the more you die. In 2 you just lose your souls and mobs respawn. I think 2 also doesn't have an inventory weight limit because there's no stash in town? There's more if I can remember.

There's no inventory weight limit, but you can buy a stash to store items. However regarding death, there's two states you can be in, hollowed (basically like a rotting zombie) or human. When human you can summon occasional npcs or other players to enter your world (until you kill the area boss) and you have a higher chance of finding items. The downside (depending on how you see it at least) is that other players can invade your world and kill you. When hollowed, you can't summon and have a lower chance of finding items, but you're safe from invasion. It ties in with the whole risk/reward thing basically. You have to spend humanity to become Human, and you can also use it to kindle bonfires, meaning they give you more Estus flasks (healing potions), when you die you drop your humanity and become hollow (same as souls you can pick your humanity up if you can reach it without dying).

There's also a bunch of covenants (kind of like guilds) that weren't in Demon Souls, most of which have something to do with the online aspects. for instance there's a covenant where you're more likely to be summoned by other members for co-op play and there are ones that are more focused on pvp.

[DaftPunk]

You can't prevent piracy,you should learn that by now. But if the port is going to be any good,game will get good sale numbers.

[Drake Sigar]

I have faith that the majority who signed the petition will buy the game. I don't have faith that the publisher will focus more on the sales numbers than the piracy numbers though.

[Kadayi]

I'm up for this (though I won't be getting it until Christmas due to no new games hiatus). But yeah, let's hope it sells great guns in order to encourage further releases.

[NathanH]

Might get it if the mouse and keyboard controls work well. I don't usually like action games but I'll give it a try.

[TailSwallower]

Really looking forward to this. If they don't fuck up the port I'll be buying it as soon as I'm back in Aus and on my proper computer. And hell, I've already got a wired Xbox 360 controller, so I'll probably play it with that anyway.

[EBass]

I dont own a console and not many of my mates are big gamers, I've heard a lot of praise for this game but very few details. I understand its a Japanese "Western" RPG, but whats the big deal about it?

[Flint]

but whats the big deal about it?

It's difficult. Might be an oversimplification, but the challenge is ultimately what the praise and hype boils down to.

[Ravelle]

I have this game on the Playstation and will also purchase it on the computer, new bosses and features, maybe some graphic updates and a more stable co-op is something I look forward too, let's hope it comes to steam.

[Shane]

So how much of an open world is this game?

[Goateh]

So how much of an open world is this game?

It depends on what you want from an open world. It's no Elder Scrolls style world with a wide open space, masses of npcs to talk to and a million quests on offer at once.

Dark Souls is as combat focused as Demon's Souls and everywhere you go is filled with things that want to kill you. There are friendly (well, they don't kill you outright) npcs around but it's not a game of conversation and long dialog. When you play it you could go nearly anywhere in the game from the start and complete the objectives of those areas. There's no hub like Demon's Souls.

You don't get complete choice - a few areas are locked at the start and others will just kill you until you get some better gear - but it isn't a long corridor. Your first goal is to ring two bells for unclear reasons and the game won't give you any hints other than "they're in that direction." You'll need to do a lot of exploring to proceed and it's normally up to you to work out which of the available paths will lead to where you need to go.

Unlike Elder Scrolls and similar games, learning enemies is as much part of the game as exploring locations. It's one of the few games where I can clearly remember every enemy, their attack patterns and how to counter them. Even a simple corridor can be an evening's exploration of new mechanics and ways to avoid dying until you can successfully pass the corridor 9 times out of 10.

[JackShandy]

I dont own a console and not many of my mates are big gamers, I've heard a lot of praise for this game but very few details. I understand its a Japanese "Western" RPG, but whats the big deal about it?

"It's hard" is oversimplification, yeah. Dark Souls is legit; as in, hard enough to be legitimately scary, dangerous, and mysterious, rather than a theme park ride through a place they tell you is all those things. That's what sets it apart from other modern games.

So how much of an open world is this game?

It's a bunch of branching paths rather than a big open oval.

Maybe this won't help anyone, but it's just a classic DnD megadungeon. You go into a dark scary place that works by weird unknown rules, you slowly master those rules, then you use them to kick the scary unknowns right in the balls. Very classic.

[cosmicolor]

http://imgur.com/a/k9DnE

Pics of the new bosses that will be in the PC version. They look sufficiently tough for bosses.

Another thing that makes these games unique is the multiplayer aspect. Even if you're one of the many people on these boards who just hate playing with others for some reason, it's still worth dealing with. Players can leave messages for other people on their regional server to read, often warning them of traps ahead. Also some bosses are much easier with a couple of summoned players to help, but I believe Dark Souls has NPCs that will do that job if no players can be found. There is a PvP aspect, but there are level limits in place to stop a max-level character from invading a low-level game and killing the player, and if it's anything like the previous game, a way to avoid PvP entirely.

[coldvvvave]

I wonder if there is going to be quicksave or just checkpoints.

[cosmicolor]

If it's really 1:1 with the console version there won't be quicksaves.

[Jams O'Donnell]

This is Mrs Jams' only experience of Brian Blessed, and she absolutely loved it in HIGNFY. Now I have it in gif format to amuse her with for all time. Thanks!


Oh, also. Dark Souls. Yay!