Dark Souls II – we never even got as far as the Mirror Knight

The sequel to the cult classic Dark Souls proves it hasn’t lost any of its teeth, in a game so hard not even those paid to play it can beat it.

For the first two days at E3 we were feeling pretty good about our gaming abilities. We aced the Bayonetta 2 demo with a pretty good ranking and without dying once, and we were apparently one of the best players at EVR all show. And then we played Dark Souls II.

There’s been a lot of concern in fan circles, following some poorly chosen comments by new co-directors Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura, that the sequel to 2011’s cult hit was going to be more accessible and approachable. Which is usually marketing speak for easier and dumbed down.



It’s not just our interview with Yui Tanimura that convinces us this isn’t true, or even the fact that we got thoroughly owned by playing the game itself. Instead it’s the fact that even the guy who is paid to demonstrate and playtest the game couldn’t beat it.


When we arrived to watch a live demo we were told it was the 18th of the show so far and that despite all those attempts – and considerable practise beforehand – the playtester had only beaten the Mirror Knight boss once. And this wasn’t the final boss, or anything close to it, just an everyday example of how Dark Souls II has lost none of its vigour.

One of the key new features of the sequel is its open world structure, with a seamless landscape that’s so large developer Form Software has had to introduce chariots and other vehicles. There was none of that in the demo though, which instead focused on an interior section that looked like it could’ve been ripped straight out of the first game.

The graphics were noticeably better though – Dark Souls II features a brand new game engine – with a particularly obvious improvement in the character animation. And to prove that this time round it won’t be treated as an afterthought all the demos were running the PC version, which also acts as the lead format for the sequel (and which makes us suspect a next gen version is still a strong possibility).

The final game will feature a freeform character generator where you’re asked a number of questions and provided with a class type that most suits your play style. For the demo though there were just four discrete choices, ranging from the Temple Knight and his single giant-sized sword to a new dual-wielding assassin type.

From Software are particularly proud of the latter as it demonstrates the game’s more fluid combat, and together with the magic-focused Sorcerer and all-rounder the Warrior proves that the freedom to play as you will starts right from the first moment.

After flicking through the choices though our guide sticks with the Temple Knight and starts to cautiously creep along the murky corridors. Caution is of course the watchword in Dark Souls, but in the sequel more than ever because even the low level zombies and skeleton warriors have a nasty habit of playing possum, and then suddenly rising up behind you as you walk past them.



The playtester knows this and yet still manages to get caught out by one who is awkwardly positioned at the end of a flight of stairs, where the Temple Knight doesn’t quite have the room to swing his sword properly. Not for the last time a new life gem is employed, which works in a very different way than the Estus flasks (which are still in the game) by only very slowly filling up your health but allowing you to use one instantly and still be able to move while it does its work.

Dark Souls II – the Sorcerer is weak but good with magic

Darkness is also used much more effectively in the new game, with one deeply suspicious stairway being pitch black until you throw a torch down it to reveal, as you’d expect, a waiting enemy. The area downstairs also includes one of the many secrets the American testers have found: explosive barrels which you can trick enemies into setting off and which then reveal a hidden bonfire behind a blocked off wall.

‘From never tell us about any of this stuff,’ admits the playtester. ‘Somebody just found it one day when they dropped a torch and blew themselves up’.

As well as improved graphics the game also sports much better enemy artificial intelligence, with the idea being that you should never get lazy and that you should absolutely never turn your back on anyone. This is particularly true of the new Turtle Knight, who despite being relatively slow will take the opportunity to stab you in the back with a pike the second you try and turn tail and run.


This is exactly how we came a cropper when we played the game, since although we were sensible enough to retreat when injured we didn’t count on the more dynamic artificial intelligence realising what we were doing and changing its tactics accordingly.

We have to admit then that we’re secretly pleased when the playtester is also killed by the Turtle Knight and only manages to get to the boss by running as fast as he can through the level and skipping through a portal at the end before anyone has a chance to catch up with him. He still takes a few hits as he goes, but before getting to the boss he arrives in a mysterious antechamber lit only by a few candles.

‘We only realised this recently, but the candles are how many times you die,’ says the playtester. ‘We had a guy back at the office who couldn’t understand why his version was lit up like a Christmas tree, and then we worked out’.

As he creeps past the 16 feeble little light sources though our hapless demonstrator doesn’t seem too confident of his chances against the Mirror Knight. At first the boss doesn’t seem too intimidating, compared to some of Dark Souls’ later monstrosities, but a giant metal warrior that can spawn assistants out of the mirror on his shield is clearly not one to be trifled with.

He can also shoot lighting out of his sword, and although the playtester ducks and dives around him in what looks like a practised manner he takes one too many sword strike to the face and the life gems can’t heal him quickly enough.


Considering we never even got that far though we can hardly chastise him. Although what we can say, with great relief, is that Dark Souls II has not been dumbed down at all. In fact everything we saw and heard about the game (including our interview, conducted before we played the demo) convinces us it will be even better than its predecessor, and probably even harder…

Formats: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC

Publisher: Namco Bandai

Developer: From Software

Release Date: March 2014

GC: Dark Souls seems such a bizarre game to try and turn into a mass market proposition, considering the entire appeal of the original is that it bucked current trends and that people enjoyed being confounded and frustrated by the experience. Where there no qualms that you would destroy what made the original great by trying to expand its appeal?

YT: Our intention is not to design or create the game aimed at the mass market. Our main intention is to take care and create the game for the core audience and the core fans of Dark Souls I, so that people who are fans of the Souls series are able to enjoy the game again at the same level – or even at a higher level – in terms of what they experienced with Dark Souls II. So there’s no real intention to make the game easier or attend to the casual players, that’s not the intent.

We’re hoping that as long as we keep driving the game design aimed more at the core audience, and make sure we take off more of the fat, and make sure we try and deliver more of the pure essence of the challenges and the difficulty of the game more players will try and join onto this core fanbase and try and pick up the game for themselves. And hopefully they will join the same sort of experience that the core fans enjoy.

GC: That’s very good to hear, but you must be aware that your comments about improving accessibility have very much worried fans who think you’re going to dumb down the game. Were you at all surprised at the nature of the reaction and have you changed your approach at all since those initial press comments?

YT: There was not really any surprise to the user reactions, it was mostly our miscommunication in terms of what we intended to say and how it turned out in words. Again, there was no intention of making the game easier. The word accessible sort of come up because we tried to communicate that we wanted to get rid of a lot of the tediousness and the time-consuming aspects that drove players’ attention away from the actual challenges and made the game a little bit more time-consuming or tedious.

So again it all comes back to carving away a lot of the fat, to again deliver a more lean, pure essence of the game. It was more our misuse of words in trying to communicate what we were trying to do.

GC: OK, that’s fair enough. But one other aspect I was a little confused on from the game’s initial announcement is why Hidetaka Miyazaki is involved only in an advisory role in the sequel. That seems a very strange reward for creating such an unexpectedly successful game.

YT: So the role of Miyazaki-san, the previous director, is he’s still in a sort of supervisor role. So he does periodically provide advice and gives his thoughts in terms of the project. But he too is a creator and he doesn’t really try to direct what I’m doing on Dark Souls II, but the advice is still there. There’s this sort of light involvement of him, but the reason why we changed from Miyazaki-san to myself and Shibuya -san was as a company creating sequels to certain games we want to add a new perspective on the series.

We’re obviously going to retain the core essence of what Dark Souls is, but by having a new director we feel that the game can continue to evolve and become perhaps that much better of a game by the introduction of a new set of eyes. But as a company the core aspects of any of the games we create will remain.

GC: Just taking things back a step I’m interested in your more general thoughts on the concept of difficultly in video games. In previous times one of the primary focuses of a game was learning a new skill and being tested on it, but that’s almost entirely fallen away now – most games want to be beaten. Is that a bad thing or have things just become unbalanced, and do you feel Dark Souls is leading the charge to correct that balance?

YT: With games becoming a little bit easier and story-driven, I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s the trend and I think it’s necessary. But I think there are players out there that want the difficultly of a challenge, the old style of gameplay. We’re not in a position really to judge which is good and which is bad, but we believe there are fans of both and even somewhere between as well. So we’re hoping that the games we provide, and the challenges we provide, are enjoyed by the core fans and more the… niche fans I guess.

I think that those fans are the people that also support the gaming industry, maintaining it and even growing it. So it’s difficult to judge which is good and which is bad but I think there’s a market for both, and for all types of games. So we just try to do what we feel we do best.

GC: Is there something specific in the way that Japanese developers approach game design that many of the hardest games still come from Japan? Or is it because your home audience is more likely to enjoy a game with a stronger challenge?

YT: Not all Japanese developers create games in the old challenging style, I think whoever the developer is they should develop the game however they want and dependent on the sort of audience they’re targeting. If they’re trying to appeal to a large audience then making games easier is fine, if you’re targeting a more hardcore audience then make it as difficult as you need to.

It’s more of a design decision I think, not necessarily a Japanese thing. But I think a lot of the Japanese developers focus on trying to create a game aimed at the audience that they’re looking at. So we don’t really focus on making a game difficult, just something that we believe is a good game.

Dark Souls II – outnumbered but not outmatched

GC: I assume you’ve already started focus testing so what is the reaction when you show casual gamers Dark Souls or Dark Souls II? Are they shocked that the game is so difficult, or are they perhaps intrigued?

YT: We’re not really afraid of the reactions casual gamers may provide, but we do understand that at first glance Dark Souls, being as challenging as it is, there might be some reactions from casual gamers saying that they won’t be able to dive deep into the total experience – just because it is as challenging as it is known to be. But the reason we make the game as challenging as it is is for the sense of satisfaction when overcoming the challenges, and once players experience that we hope that that sense of satisfaction will be realised and be a hook towards even allowing casual gamers to experience the essence behind why we make the game the way we do.

But it would be pretty sad for us for casual gamers to purchase our game just because they’ve heard a lot of rumours that it’s a fun game, and they might face difficulties and give up right away – which is not our intent, but we understand that that may happen. But hopefully, eventually, down the road they might be able to pick it up again and try again after they’ve improved their skills with other games.

GC: What would you say are the most important new features of Dark Souls II, I would assume the open world aspect world is key amongst them? But what difficulties has that introduced, particularly as you were talking about trimming the fat and yet an open world often introduces a lot of back-tracking and relatively uneventful travelling. How have you tackled this issue?

YT: I think that’s an important point and I think it’s a difficult question to directly answer so that it’s totally clear. We are in a streamlining process, but we also feel that with this open world and exploration, that not knowing necessarily where to go is an important aspect of the game concept itself. I think that exploration and trying to figure out what you have to do to overcome the obstacles is something that is important for the satisfaction when you realise that you’ve done the right thing, or that you realise when you’ve been able to conquer the exploration aspect.

It’s a tough dance that we’re trying to achieve and I take a lot of care in taking each circumstance, each situation trying to balance what is necessary and what is not. What we mean by actual streamlining is more the time-consuming aspects. As an example, we intend to allow players to warp from one bonfire to the next regardless of which bonfire you are at – assuming that you’ve been there once before. Which will allow you to cut away the re-travelling route that you’ve gone through before.

If it’s a new route then obviously exploration is something that’s important, but we wanted to cut away a lot of the tediousness of just having to travel back and forth in routes that you’ve seen and you know what’s going to happen. I think we think that doesn’t lead to the happiness or the satisfaction, that’s just a task that has to be done. So a lot of that stuff we try and carve away as much as possible, so that we can get the true essence.

GC: I think it’s fair to say that the first game didn’t get the balance between challenge and frustration exactly right, and certainly in terms of the curses they seemed unnecessarily punishing. Is that an example of something that will change in the new game?

YT: That’s a good point. There is that line that I think maybe we did cross at times, and there are things in the new game we are trying to look at again and try and balance a little bit better. I’m not saying that curses in Dark Souls I were too extreme, but I do understand that it was… not necessarily a difficulty but a slightly tedious task in that you had to travel so far back to be able to un-curse. And that is something we are trying to revisit.

We feel that in Dark Souls I the balance there wasn’t perfect. So in Dark Souls II that will be something we will continue to refine so that you’re not tired, you’re more relived and satisfied by being able to un-curse or being able to get over a certain hurdle.

GC: The original Dark Souls was also highly innovative in its approach to online, but have you been tempted to change the sequel to make it more traditional in that regard? There were concerns over the PC version for example, which allowed more specific matchmaking. This seemed to run against the original nature of the game, which made in-game interactions much less straightforward and avoided direct communication that could spoil the atmosphere.

YT: For the online aspect I’m glad that you brought this up, and I’m glad that you feel that the online interactions with other players was enjoyed for Dark Souls I. We don’t intend to change the online aspect to that degree where you’re able to fully challenge other players or anything. We feel that this loose connection with other players, and sort of barely being able to be connected is something important to this game.

As an analogy if online games these days are using the phone we plan to use email. So that you’re able to reply if you want to, but you don’t have to necessarily if you don’t want to. So that sort of loose connection on the online space is something that’s important for the Dark Souls series and something we plan to maintain.

GC: And just quickly, can you say categorically whether there will or will not be any next gen versions of Dark Souls II?

YT: At this point, no! [laughs]

GC: [laughs] I thought you’d say that! But thank you, thank you very much.

YT: Thank you!

Darks Souls II – easier to get into, but not to play

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