When Dark Souls 2 was announced there was excitement. Almost immediately thereafter when the game’s director, Tomohiro Shibuya, stated that the game would be more accessible, many of the franchise’s fans started to worry about what that actually meant for their beloved and wickedly difficult series. Now we have some more specific answers on exactly what that means.
Immersion, not drowning
The directors of the game, Shibuya and Yui Tanimura, have said that the emphasis of the game is on, “not immediately throw(ing) (players) into Dark Souls” and giving them a chance to more naturally adjust to the game’s world, story, and difficulty.
This is not a particularly revolutionary idea. The idea of easing the player into a game gradually is generally standard practice, with part of the growing experience of most games being steadily-increasing difficulty and access to new mechanics or gadgets in waves to give the player a chance to get used to each in sequence, allowing them to master the techniques they will need for the truly difficult section of the game.
Shibuya and Tanimura hope that this will allow new players to get hooked on the game without being put off by the complexity and difficulty.
Dark-ish Souls
Despite it being standard, this is different for Dark Souls, which has a dedicated fanbase that takes pride in the game’s inaccessibility and difficulty, as well as its sometimes vague, sometimes pointedly obtuse plot.
Shibuya made a point of saying that he felt aspects of the first game’s story seemed to be missed and that he wanted to correct that with the new game, to ensure that the plot is either clearer or even directly expressed to the player. This will definitely mean that the community is going to lack plot-based elitism. It’s hard to feel superior about understanding a plot when everyone else does as well.
And vehicles, too
In other news on the game, Shibuya confirmed that there will also be vehicles, confirming at least a chariot as one of them. He mentioned that boats are something they’ve looked at, but that there are no plans to make them player-controlled.
