Dark souls 2 “plot” possibly Spoiled, and Major Flaws with the original Dark Souls (Spoilers?)

Apparently Dark Souls 2 is set in a different “place” or “time” than Dark Souls 1 according to interviews with From Software Director Yui Tanimura. The story is entirely independent of the original Dark Souls though set in the same universe. This appears consistent with speculation that your character is connected to Gwyn, the final boss from the original Dark Souls. Previously the fur adorned getup of the trailer player-character appeared consistent with the look of Gwyn.

Dark Souls had No Plot

With that out of the way, let’s take a look at some of the most serious problems with the first Dark Souls. Dark souls had no plot. Dark Souls had a lot of lore - but not plot. There was the background of the fall of the Dragons, the treachery of Seathe and the tragic misadventures of Artorias. But the actual plot was: ring two bells, then pick up a giant bowl and fill it up until a door opens. The plot was trash, no worse than trash - mere worm compost, flushed down the toilet, then re-processed with the unuseable left-overs from a sausage-factory. It was unspeakably bad.

Dark Souls re-used Bosses

Two, the game had some cringe-inducing boss-names. Centipede Demon? Ceaseless Discharge? Are you serious? Why not Fire King? Demon Monkey? Big Boss? Wait that’s from another franchise.

Three, some of the bosses were repetetive. At least a significant number were heavily influenced by bosses from Demon Souls. Gwyn was like flamelurker. The Bellfry gargoyles were obviously easier versions of maneater. Iron golem was like Tower Knight. Bed of Chaos was like Dragon God.  Most offensively Dark Souls re-used the same boss design in the one game repeatedly. Firesage demon = asylum demon = Stray Demon. Bad.

Some Settings were Redundant and Uncreative

Four, some of the settings in Dark Souls sucked hard - large uncreative fields populated by the same bad guys repeated endlessly, endless Taurus demons and capra demons in a fiery volcano expanse, giant two-legged umm-monsters in a fiery expanse etc..  Some of these settings we’ve seen before and added no new player-experience. Blight town was a lot like the valley of defilement from Demon Souls and frankly should have been cut from the game. We don’t need another poison sewer/swamp with precarious platform level design. We had it and needed to try something different. We’ve also had enough of fiery volcanoes with fire demons, another setting we’ve seen before in Demon Souls.

Did I mention the plot sucked?

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Final Fantasy 13 pretending to be like Dark Souls and a look back at one of the biggest Game-Failures of all time

Apparently producer  Yoshinori Kitase claims that Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13 will be similar in some ways to Dark Souls. Now this probably made some of you laugh and others just angry. Dark Souls was a relatively engrossing, critically claimed, challenging game. Final Fantasy 13 was one of the most overrated, awful messes of a game of all time. Final Fantasy 13 had basically no towns, no real choices, a fairly lame wannabe-action turnish-based combat system, and brutally linear maps. The slight opening up of the world happened at the end of the game and was frankly outclassed by basically every RPG in existence since the original Super Nintendo. I didn’t mind “Lightning” as the main character, but nothing was ever done with the plot or gameplay. It was mostly just some emotional up-and-down, soap-operatic, touchy-feely non-plot as we moved characters down one line after another. I would have easily given it a 4 or 5 out of 10 and was surprised that mainstream game reviewers had to give it higher ratings partly to not be contrarian in a world of Final Fantasy sheep.  Now Square has run out of a lot of its street cred it built up with games like FF6. Even the FF sheep need to be BSed a bit into thinking there is some serious gameplay design behind Square’s products.

After pumping out raw sewage these last few outings, Square has to try to ride the coat-tails of far better products such as Dark Souls. No one believes Yoshinori when he claims Final Fantasy will be anything like Dark Souls or any game with any quality, design or challenge. I fully expect the next Final Fantasy will be another 4-5/10 outing as nothing more than a shameless cash grab by the soulless corporate hacks at Square. Drawing well animated grass does not eclipse a product with thoughtful gameplay.

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Player-Controlled bosses and why it might be time to stop reading Dark Souls Previews

Those of you who played Demon Souls and Dark Souls know that these games are about personal exploration, overcoming challenges and trial and error. Each new setting, enemy, boss or weapon gives you insight into a mysterious world shrouded in mystery. The game never holds your hand or even feeds you proper directions of what to do or how best to defeat your opponents. In fact Dark Souls II is probably one of the games I am most looking forward to playing next year. I can’t wait to be surprised by weird bosses and have to try out various tactics to finally find that aha moment where I suddenly start understanding my environment and start making well earned progress.

E3 has released a short demo including a confrontation with a “Mirror Knight” boss who frankly looks absurdly difficult. What comes across as absurd is the rumor that an enemy pops out of this boss’s mirror and that this special enemy is player-controlled.  Look, I played Demon Souls. When I invaded a world as a black phantom I got the option to play as the Old Monk. The Old Monk was one of the final world bosses in Demon Souls, where players were confronted with another human player more or less playing as themselves. The thing is – I NEVER lost as the Old Monk unless I really wanted to let the other player “win” after some minor fun horseplay. Ie the player couldn’t win unless I was a good sport. I could heal, use my own spells and weapons and pretty much dominate a tired adventurer coming into my little dungeon. Honestly, I think a lot of players are going to be in for a beat-down if they have to overcome another human controlled mini-boss while simultaneously fighting a larger “Mirror Knight”.

E3 aside, I think now might be the time to stop watching previews. As too much of the game is revealed, the surprise and wonder starts to fade from one’s first playthrough of the game. Also the puzzling out starts to happen through previews and other people’s playthroughs and the magic fades from my first playthrough. Since I want to be shocked, amazed and challenged, I’m going to have to start sitting out of Dark Souls Previews. 

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