Prepare Yourself For Dark Souls III In-Game Footage
Meet the monstrosities
If I hadn't already played Dark Souls III [official site] (and what a wonderful experience that was), I'd probably be avoiding any screenshots or videos. A self-imposed media black-out. Because I am a small part of the media, however, that'd involve knocking myself unconscious and staying that way until April 2016. I'll understand if you want to skip the four minutes of in-game footage below though. I'll understand if you want to be surprised by the new horrors on show.
The first Dark Souls did a number on me. It beats the crap out of everyone who plays it, sure, but I seem to be the only person who struggled with giant moth-bastard, the Moonlight Butterfly. I'm still not sure if I should refer to it as a moth or a butterfly, but I've always thought moths were just caterpillars that emerged into an enduring goth phase.
Being killed by mushroom people was fairly embarrassing as well, and I'm waiting to see how far Dark Souls III will go in its efforts to humiliate me. Death by giant guinea pig perhaps? Or a boss creature that looks like a happy pug?
The video suggests I'm going to be frightened of a tree. That's a very silly thing to be frightened of but at least it's definitely a very horrible tree, with humanoid limbs and a gut that looks like a wound.
Beyond that new terror, you can also see lots of regular combat in the video. I can't tell if it looks faster and more fluid to me simply because that reflects my own experience with the game, but I went into plenty of detail about the changes to the controls and responsiveness in my preview earlier this year. The boss creature in the section I played looked like it had fallen out of Silent Hill; it felt like the kind of thing that would kill me. This new boss looks like a respectable sort of abomination as well, even if it is a tree. No doubt there'll be a lovable capybara somewhere in the game and it'll almost certainly cause me more problems than it should.