BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe announces DARK SOULSTM III for XBOX ONE, PLAYSTATION®4 and PC
A dark and brooding fantasy adventure awaits players in a vast twisted world full of fearsome beasts, devious traps and hidden secrets.
Leading interactive entertainment company BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe today proudly announced DARK SOULS™ III for an early 2016 release date for the Xbox One®, all-in-one games and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system, and STEAM® for PC.
Developed by acclaimed Japanese developer FromSoftware and directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, DARK SOULS™ III is the latest chapter in the critically acclaimed DARK SOULS series with its trademark sword and sorcery combat and rewarding action RPG gameplay. Players will travel across a wide variety of locations in an interconnected world of unrelenting challenge and deep RPG gameplay as they search for a way to survive the coming apocalypse.
“The DARK SOULS brand became a phenomenon thanks to amazing work from our dear partners FromSoftware and our very own BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment teams”. said Herve Hoerdt, Vice President of Marketing & Digital at BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe. “But above all, we are blessed to have such a supportive and loving community, and we are happy to dedicate this final episode to them!”
DARK SOULS™ III will arrive on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC early 2016.
Not yet as this is just the press release, and Namco didn't give many details in their presentation. We will probably have to wait a few more months for gamepaly footage.
We've been through this before but you don't seem to be learning.
You can, and I have, won every encounter in the first game with a level 1 character. At this skill level there is no grind.
Speedrunners win the game in under 1 hour. At this skill level there is no grind.
I hand the controller to a noob like you or joxer and you die. And die. And die. BUT you get to keep some souls from every fail and through your failure you slowly grow powerful enough that the required skill to pass the challenge becomes low enough for you to pass.
At this point you decide it must be a grinding game because for you it is.
We've been through this before but you don't seem to be learning.
You can, and I have, won every encounter in the first game with a level 1 character. At this skill level there is no grind.
Speedrunners win the game in under 1 hour. At this skill level there is no grind.
I hand the controller to a noob like you or joxer and you die. And die. And die. BUT you get to keep some souls from every fail and through your failure you slowly grow powerful enough that the required skill to pass the challenge becomes low enough for you to pass.
At this point you decide it must be a grinding game because for you it is.
Pray tell, did you win every encounter with a 1st level character during your very first playthrough?
Now, I know you think beating a completely predictable AI in a computer game is an accomplishment worth talking about - and that's sort of cute - but you could try honesty and admit you had to grind before you learned the ropes when you first tried the game.
Unless you want to pretend that you never really experienced defeating the same mobs over and over - as you and they respawned.
Maybe you want to pretend that you smiled every time you died and knew how much you had to clear again? Let's see if you can do that in a convincing way.
That's what the game is about.
Now, I grant that the more you invest, the less you have to grind - but you DO have to grind.
I also grant that you have to grind less and less as you play each new game, as they're so similar.
Difference between you and I is that you think the game is worth investing in to the degree that you'll end up mastering it.
Pray tell, did you win every encounter with a 1st level character during your very first playthrough?
Now, I know you think beating a completely predictable AI in a computer game is an accomplishment worth talking about - and that's sort of cute - but you could try honesty and admit you had to grind before you learned the ropes when you first tried the game.
Unless you want to pretend that you never really experienced defeating the same mobs over and over - as you and they respawned.
Maybe you want to pretend that you smiled every time you died and knew how much you had to clear again? Let's see if you can do that in a convincing way.
That's what the game is about.
Now, I grant that the more you invest, the less you have to grind - but you DO have to grind.
I also grant that you have to grind less and less as you play each new game, as they're so similar.
Difference between you and I is that you think the game is worth investing in to the degree that you'll end up mastering it.
I don't remember starting over at every other step and retaking pawns a whole lot in Chess. Not much respawning going on that forces you to redo content while you learn, is there?
Also, there's no AI to make it extremely predictable. The AI patterns in Dark Souls makes the grinding process that much worse for me.
That said, I also think Chess is boring - and it would feel like a massive grind to me to master it, just like Dark Souls does.
Grinding isn't bad if you're enjoying it. But it's still grinding.
Dark Souls tries to force you to focus by taking away progress, and it works for some. It doesn't work for me. Let's just say I'm not that easily fooled into believing I'm experiencing something special Keeping me away from sparse content is NOT special in my world.
In that same way, I wouldn't enjoy a game like Witcher 3 that much if I couldn't save my game - and I had to redo most content over and over, because I lost a fight. I'm sure you and SirJames would love the challenge.
Difference between Witcher 3 and Dark Souls in that scenario, is that Witcher 3 would actually have stories and content worth the effort - where Dark Souls doesn't.
Once you master a fight in Dark Souls, it offers little but one more fight. The exploration that's there is boring to me - and no amount of dreaming up your own story will make the story in the game any more interesting or coherent.
It's a game for small egos that need a boost - and people who can fool themselves into believing a staggered presentation of limited content is better because it's hard to experience it.
Not excited about this after the previous games on PC.
The first one, Dark souls: Prepare to die edition, was a horrible PC port with laughable controls and lots of graphic issues that needed an outsider (Durante) to get some of them fixed with a mod.
Dark Souls 2 was a better game but still the PC controls were not good. You could not chain fast attacks as fast as you'd like because the game had strong attack set to double click. So when you clicked fast to chain fast attacks, the system delays to check wether you will double click for strong attack even you had set strong attack to another button as i did.
Anyway…..my rant is over. It's totally off my radar.
Nah, you still don't have to grind. It's very engaging gameplay.
Now, Clicker Heroes, a single-button spammer "RPG" taking Steam by storm at the moment at #5 most played game today.... that's progression through grinding. Mindless grinding, gear check requirement....
In dark souls you learn from your mistakes, study the enemy movements and carefully time your strikes and defensive maneuvers. You think outside the box about how and when to take on an encounter almost like a puzzle game.
who blocks your path with his breath weapon. Most people who played dark souls would have got this far. You can get past this encounter a number of ways. Careful timing and you can just run past. You can bait him down to you with an arrow or by standing behind a wall near him. You can shoot off his tail to get a sword.
What won't get you past this encounter is grinding trash mobs.
Yes, it was worth investing the time to play. It's a thinking mans ARPG; slow and deliberate. Not a button mashing grinder.
I'm sorry for being aggressive but you shouldn't go online and misrepresent a game you haven't really played. Dark Souls games are awesome.
I don't remember starting over at every other step and retaking pawns a whole lot in Chess. Not much respawning going on that forces you to redo content while you learn, is there?
I did exactly that when I used to learn chess with a computer! I will start the game again with the same setting and play it the exact same way up to a point where I thought I made a mistake and then try something else. In fact I did similar thing with friends as well to learn the game.
Anyway I think chess is a "grindy" game but I don't think "grind" is bad as people make it out to be provided there is reason or pay off for that grind.
Nah, you still don't have to grind. It's very engaging gameplay.
Now, Clicker Heroes, a single-button spammer "RPG" taking Steam by storm at the moment at #5 most played game today…. that's progression through grinding. Mindless grinding, gear check requirement….
In dark souls you learn from your mistakes, study the enemy movements and carefully time your strikes and defensive maneuvers. You think outside the box about how and when to take on an encounter almost like a puzzle game.
who blocks your path with his breath weapon. Most people who played dark souls would have got this far. You can get past this encounter a number of ways. Careful timing and you can just run past. You can bait him down to you with an arrow or by standing behind a wall near him. You can shoot off his tail to get a sword.
What won't get you past this encounter is grinding trash mobs.
Yes, it was worth investing the time to play. It's a thinking mans ARPG; slow and deliberate. Not a button mashing grinder.
I'm sorry for being aggressive but you shouldn't go online and misrepresent a game you haven't really played. Dark Souls games are awesome.
You don't have to apologize for being aggressive, that's your persona, and I'm used to it. It has no effect other than you being somewhat harder to take seriously.
As for misrepresenting the game, that's not really what's happening. What's happening is that you like the game a lot, and I don't think it's all that good.
I'm not saying grinding is what you need to do to defeat all the encounters - I'm saying grinding is what you need to do - period.
I know all I need to know - and I mastered more than half of Demon's Souls before I had enough of its dreary formula. I probably mastered it before you even played it? I played the imported japanese version.
Not that it matters, it's just amusing you think that because you bothered to invest so much into it, it means I can't know how the game plays.
It's your ego that won't allow other people to be different from you without being wrong. It's petty and ignorant, really.
It's essentially the same game - and I really don't care about how it's no longer hub based or has this or that subtle difference. It's the same game and the same formula.
I can't say what makes the game so special to so many people, I can only say what the game is clearly about.
I don't think it's interesting enough or worth it. I'm not into constant combat no matter how good it is.
I concede the combat is good and the game plays fair, because it makes no secret of what it's about - which is forcing you to invest if you want to progress. There's really no mystery to it.
In the end, what makes a game truly special is its content - at least to me. I don't care how great the gameplay is, if the content isn't interesting. That might work for competitive multiplayer games, but that's not how I play games like this.
I did exactly that when I used to learn chess with a computer! I will start the game again with the same setting and play it the exact same way up to a point where I thought I made a mistake and then try something else. In fact I did similar thing with friends as well to learn the game.
Anyway I think chess is a "grindy" game but I don't think "grind" is bad as people make it out to be provided there is reason or pay off for that grind.
I don't remember starting over at every other step and retaking pawns a whole lot in Chess. Not much respawning going on that forces you to redo content while you learn, is there?
It's a game for small egos that need a boost - and people who can fool themselves into believing a staggered presentation of limited content is better because it's hard to experience it.
Anyway I think chess is a "grindy" game but I don't think "grind" is bad as people make it out to be provided there is reason or pay off for that grind.
At the highest level this is true; because it takes more than mere tactics to win, you need to implement positional technique in converting small advantages. However, "grinding" in chess is often a question of player style and aptitude towards ways of seeking an advantage. Most games at least at moderate club level, tend to be won by tactics or blunders which have absolutely nothing to do with grinding.
On Dark Souls, I have to largely agree with Sir James. I'm playing my third character now in the original game on and off (a dex heavy thief build) and are still having an absolute blast with it. The early boss fights played in a multiplayer context are now much easier compared to the first time and yet there is still often more to be learned about encounters and the usefulness or viability of gear. Overcoming the once perceived incredible obstacles still brings both tension and fun.
I enjoyed the trailer too; very foreboding and grandiose. Makes me more inclined to want to know more, much more than the F4 trailer did, truth be told. Thanks for the post Couch!
At the highest level this is true; because it takes more than mere tactics to win, you need to implement positional technique in converting small advantages. However, "grinding" in chess is often a question of player style and aptitude towards ways of seeking an advantage. Most games at least at moderate club level, tend to be won by tactics or blunders which have absolutely nothing to do with grinding.
What I meant there was that the more you play chess, the better you get since you will learn from your mistakes and improve your skill level. Obviously this is subject to diminishing returns but this process of playing lot of games can be considered "grinding" by some people. The main point I was trying to make there was grinding in such cases can be very enjoyable to some people since they see their skill level improves and that lot of fun Therefore grinding in DS games can be fun too since the more you die the better you get subject to diminishing returns.
Just thought I'd share that ... before heading back to play the Witcher.
