This week’s Famitsu has leaked a bit early, with reports confirming Namco Bandai and FromSoftware‘s Demon’s Souls successor as being officially titled Dark Souls.
The game was announced at the Tokyo Game Show last year under the tentative title Project Dark. A, literally dark, trailer was shown during its announcement. Other than that, we didn’t receive much in terms of detail.
This week’s Famitsu provides us with our first real look the game. Here’s what early leaks are saying:
- There’s been a great difficulty spike in comparison to Demon’s Souls.
- Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls share the same theme: trial and error, basically.
- It has no connection with Demon’s Souls in terms of story.
- As featured in Demon’s Souls, there will be character creation, weapons, items, leveling, etc.
- Area of exploration is the biggest change, according to director Miyazaki Hidetaka. Players will explore a large, seamlessly-connected field, and are able to walk off to areas seen far in the distance.
- Rather than the Nexus, you’ll start your journey from a large base of operations, and find smaller bases along the way. All maps are connected, so there’s no selecting and teleporting.
- There are more areas with complex land formations and varying height.
- There is no job concept during character creation. The goal in character development is to get rid of the elements that may hinder the character’s freedom of play.
- There are a great number magic and item types. Weaapons come in a variety of motions and capabilities.
- Hidetaka couldn’t share too many details on networking. The game will have co-op and competitive multiplayer components, though. Like Demon’s Souls, you’ll be able to call in friends for aid.
- Indirect online elements, like the messages seen on the floor in Demon’s Souls, are also in Dark Souls. Though, the game will not have its own servers this time around, so elements reliant on that (such as Soul Tendency) will not be present.
- More online elements will be detailed in future updates.
Dark Souls is scheduled to release in 2011 for Japan on PlayStation 3. Namco Bandai will be publishing the game in the west for both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Thanks, Andriasang.