At Gamescom 2018, Bandai Namco announced today that they are releasing the entire Dark Souls Trilogy in one package. This announcement was made via an official Dark Souls Trilogy trailer. The collection includes all three games and DLC, including the recently released Dark Souls Remastered. As such, the Dark Souls Trilogy includes Dark Souls Remastered, Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin, and Dark Souls II: The Fire Fades Edition. It is the perfect time to jump into the Dark Souls series for those new to the genre, as developers FromSoftware revealed more details for their next IP, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. The Dark Souls Trilogy will release on 19th October for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

The Dark Souls Trilogy marks the second time Dark Souls II and III will be rereleased, and the fourth time Dark Souls will be rereleased, including the upcoming Nintendo Switch port releasing on the same day as the Dark Souls Trilogy. While this seems excessive, especially considering Dark Souls Remaster was only released in May this year, the demand for Dark Souls persists. The Dark Souls series was universally praised for its crushing difficulty, tight controls and subtle storytelling, with the first of the trilogy receiving a score of 89 on metacritic.com. The overwhelming popularity of the trilogy spawned a number of spin-offs, such as 2015’s Bloodborne, and derivative titles, like Nioh and Lords of the Fallen.

As a result, a new genre was created, dubbed the “Souls-like” by Dark Souls fans. The Dark Souls Trilogy is the perfect collection of these important and influential games. The one package serves as the foundation for what has become an entirely new genre. Considering the genre is built on extreme difficulty and players’ skill, it also serves as a crash course on how these games function.

The next game from developers FromSoftware, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, will take the genre to the feudal Japanese setting, first seen in Nioh. It is available for Xbox One, PS4 and PC on 22 March, 2019.