RPS Feature Sins of the father
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
Dark Souls > Bloodborne > Dark Souls 3 > Demon’s Souls > Dark Souls 2.
But if you like the rest, you should still play number 2. It’s good. Being good just isn’t quite enough when you’re born into a family of geniuses. Read the rest of this entry »
Whatever Dark Souls maestros From Software have planned for their next game proper is an only slightly-teased mystery, but here’s some fine news to make our own souls ache less during that wait. Dark Souls, the original and greatest in the series (Bloodborne excepted) and also one of the best PC games ever, sez us, is getting a remastered edition.
Update: confirmed for PC on May 25 via Steam, with 60FPS 4K support. Hurrah!
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A bone, a ratchet, a bloody rope, parchment – these are the clues in this short teaser-trailer for the next project from Dark Souls studio From Software. What do they mean? Oh, probably a metaphor for death and the afterlife – it usually is. In terms of what game could it be, well, knee-jerk reactions leaned towards Bloodborne 2 (for my money it’s From’s finest, but, o tragedy, the first game remains a PS4 exclusive), but that might be simply because of the aforementioned bloody rope. BB is generally a more gory sort of horror than DS, y’see.
Some, however, are looking deeper into From’s past, theorising that the ‘Shadows Die Twice’ text after the footage could imply a return to Shadow Tower, From’s 1998 PS One game which laid some of the groundwork for Souls.
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RPS Feature A cold, dark and gentle place
I finally completed Dark Souls III [official site] last week, a world that I have been dipping in and out of between bouts of listlessness since its release in April last year. It didn’t grip me like the first revered Dark Souls, but it still made me sad to know it was all over. Where could I go now for my Souls fix? The answer, it turns out, is loads of places. The games industry is quietly reverberating with the series’ influence. From small games boasting “souls-like” combat, to bigger games doing weird things with death and player messages. Meanwhile, our PlayStation brethren got Nioh, which took the “pocket full o’ souls” idea and simply renamed them “Amrita”. There is a popular complaint that everything in the industry is now being compared to Dark Souls, and it’s easy to forget that games embraced difficulty and strangeness long before the Bed of Chaos made you weep with frustration. Nevertheless, the mechanics and the tone of Miyazaki’s magnum opus is leaking into games everywhere.
That there’s an influx of Soulsian disciples out there isn’t a problem to me. My problem is that they are learning all the wrong lessons. At least, they are neglecting the most important one. But first let’s look at what sly tricks are being lifted from the series, and who is lifting them. Read the rest of this entry »
Dark Souls has now concluded. Dark Souls 3 [official site] today launched its second expansion, The Ringed City. Barring a secret change of heart from the developers, this is the final expansion for the final Dark Souls game. The Ringed City delves into a lost city at the crumpled edges of the world to find… ah, you don’t want me to tell you. Read the rest of this entry »
This is nearly the end, one of my few friends, nearly the end. Tuesday will bring the launch of The Ringed City, the final DLC for Dark Souls 3 [official site], the final Dark Souls game. I can forgive publishers Bandai Namco for slinging out The Ringed City’s launch trailer four days early because heck, what a run it’s been. In a series about the endless ends of the worlds, this last one’s sure to be a biggun. Spoilers follow, obvs.
A new patch is out today too, paving the way to The Ringed City. Read the rest of this entry »
If you fancy going back through all Dark Souls before the series wraps up with the final DLC in March, now’s a great time to return to Dark Souls 2 [official site]. Today sees the start of Return to Drangleic, an unofficial community-run event to draw players back and revitalise multiplayer. Souls just isn’t the same without online invasions, summonings, ghosts, and messages bringing life to the world, so players are returning en masse to rekindle that spark. Fancy joining them? Read the rest of this entry »
Bandai Namco have released a new trailer for the final Dark Souls 3 [official site] DLC, The Ringed City, and I don’t think you should watch it. It combines a load of gameplay clips showing locations, enemies, bosses, and other things that would surely be a lot more fun to discover yourself in-game. This is the end, my friend. The very last bit of Dark Souls as far as we know. Why flick a few pages ahead? I’ll post it, for people who refuse to know better, but I suggest you instead brew a cup of tea. Don’t click “Read the rest of this entry »”. Off you go. Bye now. Ta ta. Read the rest of this entry »
The Dark Souls saga will conclude with the second and final Dark Souls 3 [official site] DLC expansion, The Ringed City, on March 28th. That’s the release date Bandai Namco announced today. The Ringed City venture into a lost city at the end of the world, through a mish-mash of merged lands, with new enemies, new bosses, and at least one ↑ fancy egg. Here, have a peek at what awaits in this first trailer for The Ringed City: Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Monster Munch
Warning! There are plentiful spoilers ahead for all Dark Souls games.]
You’ll meet his acolytes first – giggling ogresses in matted, sagging corsets, their belts jingling with torture implements, and red-cloaked porters who shoulder cages full of chopped-up bone and flesh. Deep in Undead Settlement – an area you’ll reach, in a portentous reversal of a key moment from the original Dark Souls, when two gargoyles carry you down the cliff from Lothric Castle – you’ll find rooms hung with carcasses, neatly bundled up in sackcloth for transportation.
Beyond that there’s the Road of Sacrifices, with its mutant carrion birds and its lone madwoman in rags armed with a butcher’s cleaver, a road that takes you via the Crucifixion Woods to the grounds of a befouled cathedral. And then there are his rings, obtained from the colossal fusions of wolf and spider which haunt that cathedral – magical artefacts that impart a little of the master’s terrible hunger to the wearer. Aldrich, Saint of the Deep. Aldrich the man-eater.
RPS Feature The great cold ones
Ashes of Arandiel is the first of two DLCs for Dark Souls III [official site], making it quite possibly the penultimate Souls adventure. We sent intrepid Robert Zak into the cold wastes of the Painted World of Ariandel to see how well it lives up to the mighty legacy of the series, and he returned a short time later stricken with frostbite. And wolfbites. Here’s wot he thinks.
RPS Feature First-person mode, armour sets & brilliant beards
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock lizard for the past several months, you’ll know the wonderfully twisted and challenging action role-player Dark Souls returned to our PC telly boxes earlier this year. With series director Hidetaka Miyazaki reinstated at the (knight) helm, the third installment isn’t necessarily the best but is probably the most realised, and like its forerunners – and console cousins Demon’s Souls and Bloodborne – it’ll swallow you whole if you don’t know how to handle it. And even when/if you do it rarely shows mercy.
Out next week, Ashes of the Ariandel marks Dark Souls 3 [official site]’s first of two proposed DLCs before the series is laid to rest, which seems like a good time to explore the mods which might, just might, make reading the words YOU DIED over and over and over again that little bit easier to stomach. If not, they should at least help you have fun doing so. Git gud or die trying.
We’ve already had a peek at the singleplayer side of the first Dark Souls III [official site] DLC, which launches later this month, but what about the PvP? Along with a new hunk of singleplayer story, Ashes of Ariandel will add a bit to multiplayer too. Here, have a peek in this new trailer, which includes some serious-looking 3v3 arena action: Read the rest of this entry »
Dark Souls III [official site] will be the end of Dark Souls, as far as director Hidetaka Miyazaki is concerned, but we’ve still got two DLC story add-ons to come before it wraps up. The first of these will be Ashes of Ariandel, which is due on October 25th, and… do you want to know more about it or enjoy a surprise? If you fancy going in fresh, probably don’t watch the new trailer released today. Its four minutes of gameplay show not much, really, until they show exciting spoiler-ish things that honestly I’d rather have seen fresh while playing. Be warned. For the bold, onwards:
We’ve known that two big story add-ons were coming to Dark Souls III [official site] and now the first is officially announced. Ashes of Ariandel will send the Ashen One to a new land to do the usual stuff: fight new monsters, duff up new bosses, jab at new lore, put on new hats, and learn a few new magic tricks. It’ll launch on October 25th and, until then, here’s a trailer introducing Ariandel:
Hallo there! Planning a spot of Dark Souls III [official site] this weekend, are we? Here, things might have changed a bit since your last go. From Software pulled a patch on Monday to fix hitches and freezes it caused, then re-released it on Wednesday, then today brought a brand new patch. This new one is mostly a balance patch, but does also improve matching for players in the Blue Sentinel and Blade of the Darkmoon covenants – good news if you want to scrap this weekend?
A Dark Souls III [official site] patch released on Friday, intended to combat online hackers, has been pulled as it was also making framerates stutter. That wasn’t intended, obviously. Wasn’t another devious twist from those scamps at From Software. The stuttering wasn’t tapping out a rhythm to reveal a secret boss, which players needed to repeat by bashing the Firelink Shrine bonfire with a broken straight sword. Nah, it was simply a bug. So From Software have pulled the patch, and plan to release a new anti-hacker update once this is sorted.
RPS Feature The grand finales
Dark Souls has always been an incredibly obtuse series, and Dark Souls III [official site] is living up to that tradition beautifully. With a cast of characters who intersect your journey and a backpack full of indecipherable items, only the most observant players will be able to put together Dark Souls 3’s subtle clues to unlock the more interesting endings.
That’s where I come in. Armed with spoilerific knowledge, I’m going to cast back the mist and lay bare all of the ways your unkindled self can find some kind of resolution in the transitory lands of Lothric. Deciphering what each of these endings mean is going to be up to you, I’m just the one who will show you the way.
“Dark Souls isn’t about difficulty, y’know?” they say, backing you into a corner. “It’s about mysteries and secrets, about observation and deduction.” You consider smashing your bottle over the bar and driving it into their guts but ach, you’ve still a few sips left. “Do you know about… poise?” Ah what the hell, you need another anyway.
The poise statistic in Dark Souls III [official site] has been a mystery. Is it meant to, like in the first two, stop enemy hits making your soul man flinch? Why doesn’t it? And how come folks can re-enable the old way by hacking settings? Is it bugged? Bandai Namco now say nah, it’s meant to be this way.
RPS Feature Lost in Lothric
Dark Souls III is a favourite here at RPS, but it hasn’t lit a fire in the hearts of the entire team. Recently, Alec jumped into the game, having observed the series from afar for some time, and shared his thoughts. He, Pip and Adam gathered to discuss the appeal of the series, and talked about its divergence from traditional RPG systems, the intimidation factor and the complicated nature of its much-debated difficulty.
Adam: Dark Souls III is probably going to be in my top three games of the year, despite the thousands of good games coming out this year. I’m continually surprised to see it selling quite as well as it does though, because so many people that I recommend the series to treat those recommendations as a form of sadism.
