Dark Souls 3 E3 Preview

I remember the first time I ever played Dark Souls. It was 2013. And like most of the internet, I discovered it on an Imgur thread.

My high school best friend Matt used to come over every weekend. We were both hardcore gamers, and our weekly ritual consisted of getting heavily inebriated and 100% completing difficult games. We had just finished the Gears of War trilogy, and we were looking for something new.

“Have you heard of Dark Souls?” he asked. He was lying on my couch, laptop across his stomach, browsing Imgur.

“No,” I said. “What is it?”

“Looks like an RPG. Looks Japanese. People online are calling it the ‘hardest game ever made.’”

He showed me a couple gameplay GIFs (scenes of ridiculous deaths); they fascinated me. We drove to Gamestop and bought Dark Souls for $13. Then we drove home, popped another stout, and dropped the game into the tray. Then we sat on the couch and experienced it.

I mention this moment because it was, perhaps, the single most influential gaming moment of my life. I have never, in over twenty years of gaming, felt so immersed, invested, and enamored by a game. I have never felt so cheated, annoyed, and insignificant, either. Those first minutes I spent watching the opening cinematic (feeling completely lost), creating a character (I chose the Pendant as my starting item--because no item truly has ‘no effect’), and fighting the tutorial boss (really?) were incredible. I was alone and lost, and I loved it. Most stories tell you how to feel; Dark Souls makes you feel it. And despite its flaws, it remains one of the only games I would ever give a perfect 10.

Until now. From what I saw at the hands-off gameplay demo at E3, Dark Souls 3 might be the most perfect release of 2016, another perfect 10.

Dark Souls 3

To be honest, I was slightly disinterested in seeing Dark Souls 3 gameplay at E3. I loved the original game, I enjoyed Demon's Souls, and I appreciated Bloodborne, but Dark Souls 2 had (more or less) ruined the franchise’s magic for me. It corrupted the original title’s brilliant meta-story, negating ‘New Game’ as a direct result of the Undead Cycle and nullifying ‘Hollowed players’ as Chosen Undead that had finally quit the game. I also found the game somewhat unoriginal, recycling old themes and copy/pasting boss battles. When I finally beat Dark Souls, I felt accomplished. When I beat Dark Souls 2, I felt cheated.

Let me be clear--Dark Souls 3 is a direct sequel to Dark Souls in every sense of the word. It is the game Dark Souls 2 wanted to be--as complex, frightening, and awe-inspiring as the original. During their presentation, Hidetaka Miyazaki and his interpreter Atsuo Yoshimura focused on three points: world scale and immersion, apocalyptic setting and historic lore, and evolving and progressing the series. By focusing on and developing these three points, Dark Souls 3 expands the overall story and further polishes the series’ near-perfect gameplay.

World Scale and Immersion

One of my biggest problems with Dark Souls 2 is the world map. Dark Souls became popular, partly, due to its expansive, windy landscape. The world feels whole and maze-like (with the exception of the Undead Asylum), constantly folding in on itself. Almost every area of the game is accessible from the very beginning; if you can see it, you can go there.

Dark Souls 2 feels much more linear: see a path, walk down it, beat the boss, rinse, and repeat. Everything operates from a central hub (Majula), and there is a specific and obvious order to things (starting with the Forest of Fallen Giants or Heide’s Tower of Flame). Maps contains little overlap with other areas, and players find themselves splitting time between killing bad guys and backtracking. The sense of exploration, independence, and trial and error established in the first game had been lost in the second one.

Dark Souls 3 returns to Dark Souls’ windy world map. At the beginning of the demo, we find ourselves standing at an outcropping, overlooking a castle.

“In Dark Souls 3, we have greatly increased the world scale,” Miyazaki says. “There are no aesthetic background pieces. Everything is functional. If you see something, you can visit it. That castle, for example--we will go there.”

Dark Souls 3 also greatly improves upon its predecessors’ aesthetics. Miyazaki specifically emphasizes the game’s dynamic light sources and wind-blown ash and cloth effects during the hands-off demo, but there is something else there, too. The game is darkly beautiful. The “faded sun” casts a dim shadow over the world which is both eerie and alluring. When I see it, I am instantly immersed.

Apocalyptic Setting and Historic Lore

Dark Souls 3 does depart thematically from Dark Souls, though. Where Dark Souls is a Gothic fairytale, Dark Souls 3 is a post-apocalyptic fantasy. There is no Anor Londo in Dark Souls 3; there are no sharp buildings or shiny marble floors. Instead, there are ruins--cracked and crumbling bricks and weathered cathedrals. A lot of time has passed since the first game; the world has fallen apart. Miyazaki pauses briefly to talk about aesthetics in Dark Souls 3. He stands in front of the presentation screen like a painter and surveys his work:

“I wanted to recreate the beauty of Doomsday or Armageddon,” he says finally.

But not everything has changed since the first installment. The Lord of Cinder has returned, and he poses a bigger threat than ever. Though Miyazaki and Yoshimura are tight-lipped about specific plot details, they do confirm that Dark Souls 3 will continue the tale of a lord-slaying hero and an incarnation of the original game’s antagonist.

The Faded Sun will also play a pivotal role in the game. While the Chosen Undead fights waves of mindless ghouls, we see men and women praying to a life-sized effigy in the background.

“They are praying to the Faded Sun,” Miyazaki says cryptically.

Are these people an evolution of Solaire--a degradation of the Warriors of Sunlight? Or are they something else, something darker and much more sinister? Miyazaki offers no answers. He simply smiles.

Evolving and Progressing the Series

Furthermore, Miyazaki and his team have added a couple new gameplay mechanics to Dark Souls 3, hoping to deepen and diversify combat. Ready Stance, specifically, is revolutionizing combat. Most of the game’s weapons feature special moves that can only be accessed by first triggering Ready Stance. Unlike Dark Souls 2’s Power Stance, Ready Stance feels less like an add on and more like a necessary and fluid extension of the existing combat system. It expedites combat with Special Attacks and forces openings for basic attacks. During the hands-off gameplay demo, we watch the Chosen Undead fight an entire wave of undead with Special Attacks triggered by Ready Stance. He gracefully moves from each enemy to the next, killing two or three undead with each hit.

Not all weapons have Ready Stance at the moment, Miyazaki admits. We watch the Chosen Undead fight with a longsword and a greatsword (inspired by Kentaro Miura’s Berserk series). The final game will feature several weapons with Ready Stance abilities.

Dark Souls 3 also deepens and expands ranged combat. In past installments, shortbows and longbows were differentiated by damage and draw times. This has changed. Shortbows can now rapid fire, and the controls for all bows are much more intuitive than those in past installments, resulting in a much more fluid combat experience.

Conclusion

Two years ago, Dark Souls changed the way I perceived and rated video games. My first few minutes with it were among the most influential and memorable gaming moments of my life. I never thought I would ever experience something similar ever again, especially not with a sequel. But Dark Souls 3 perfectly captures the essence of the first game and improves upon almost everything.

I’m glad The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Fallout 4, Arkham Knight, and Star Wars: Battlefront are releasing this year; next year will be dominated by Dark Souls 3.