Project Dark is Demon's Souls Follow-Up, 'Dark Souls'
If unlike us, you breezed through From Software's Demon's Souls without breaking a sweat, then you're in for a treat, as this week's Famitsu reports in a big exclusive that Project Dark - previously announced at the Tokyo Game Show last year - is officially a spiritual Demon's Souls follow-up, entitled 'Dark Souls'. And it's going to be tougher than the previous game.
Andriasang has rounded up all of the supposed Dark Souls details leaked from the magazine and listed them. Here they are for your viewing pleasure:
First of all, the difficulty has been increased greatly over Demon's Souls, which - as fans will attest - will make Dark Souls harder than diamond-coated, titanium nails.
Dark Souls shares the same themes as Demon's Souls: learning from your mistakes and the joy of discovery.
There's no connection with Demon's Souls in terms of story or world. Dark Souls is a spiritual sequel rather than a direct one.
As with Demon's Souls, the basic gameplay is based on classic RPGs and dungeon crawlers, retaining key aspects like character creation, obtaining weapons and items, levelling up and so on.
The biggest change, according to director Miyazaki Hidetaka, is in the area of exploration. The action-battle component is an important element, but on top of this, exploration of a large, seamlessly connected field is also integral. You can walk to areas that you can see far off in the distance.
All the maps are connected, rather than having you move to each area from a shrine. This time, you head off on a journey from a large base of operations, and find smaller bases along the way as you progress further and deeper into your adventure.
There are far more areas with complex land formations of varying height.
The goal in character development is to get rid of elements that may hinder freedom of play style. This is why there's no job concept during initial character creation.
Weapons have a great variety of motions and special capabilities, and there are a great number of magic and item types. This will allow players to play in their own style.
Regarding network play, Hidetaka said that he can't share too many details, but the game will have co-operative and competitive multiplayer components. You'll also be able to call upon people to help you out when you're stuck.
The game will also have indirect online elements like the original, such as seeing the ghostly apparitions of other players, messages from the dead, and so-forth. The game will not have its own servers this time however, so elements like Soul Tendency from the original will not be present in Dark Souls.
There are other online elements that will be detailed in future updates.
Dark Souls is set to be released in Japan later in 2011, with the game's overseas release being handled by Namco Bandai once again.
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