Will Tuttle, Editor in Chief: Ryan, I've worked with you for a while now, and I don't know if I've ever seen you as excited to take any other demo as you were for Dark Souls. I found this pretty surprising -- especially given how late to the proverbial Demon's Souls party you were. What was it about that game that got you so pumped for the sequel?
Ryan Scott, Executive Editor: Remember when I argued for Batman: Arkham Asylum as our Game of the Year in that meeting where we somehow wrongly decided that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 should get the award? Well, it turns out we were ALL wrong! Demon's Souls should have undoubtedly won that year, because it's a fantastic, eerie action-role-playing game with an interesting approach toward things like death, narrative, and teaching new things to players. Dark Souls is basically more of that, so, boy am I excited!
Will Tuttle: Illuminate me more on this Demon's Souls game, oh wise one. All I remember hearing about the game was that it's punishingly hard, and I know you had to make spreadsheets just to get through it, even though walkthroughs already existed. Was it actually fun? Because it doesn't sound very fun.
Ryan Scott: Well, see -- as you know -- I'm the type of guy who gets angry and annoyed at super-difficult games, because there comes a point when they become frustrating instead of fun. One day, I decided to pick up Demon's Souls; I'd heard nothing but good things about it, other than its extreme difficulty, and so I figured if I could deal with this game, I could deal with anything. It turns out that yes, it is a very difficult game: Some enemies can kill you in just a couple of hits, you lose all your currency and get booted to the beginning of the level when you die (with all enemies respawned), and the entire game is just generally filled with sadistic death traps. Now, I know how that all probably sounds, but the thing I found amazing about this game is that it rewards patience and care. If you keep your shield up, don't try to rush, and treat foes like the genuine threats that they are, it's not as hard as a lot of people make it out to be. Demon's Souls is a game that teaches you to fear and respect death (as opposed to getting frustrated by it), and even when you lose, you probably learn something valuable. It's very rewarding in a way that I don't think words can quite convey -- if you like action-RPGs at all, I think you really should play it.
Will Tuttle: Alright, that actually does sound pretty cool. You mentioned above that "Dark Souls is basically more of that," but is that a good thing? I mean, I have to assume that the sequel includes some new stuff, lest fans start crying foul.
Ryan Scott: Well, to be fair, they're billing it as a "spiritual successor" to Demon's Souls (itself a spiritual successor to the King's Field series), so it's not officially a sequel, per se. I suppose that's kind of a semantic argument, because it's straight-up Demon's Souls through and through, from the interface to the level design to the odd, minimalist narrative structure. I'm told the scope of the in-game world is supposed to be a lot more ambitious; Demon's Souls utilized a central hub locations with portals to various isolated stages, whereas Dark Souls apparently has a large, much more open world to explore. It also sounds like the death system is ever-so-slightly less merciless: In Dark Souls, you can light beacon fires at various checkpoints throughout each area, and you respawn there when you die (it sounds like you can manipulate your inventory and magic loadout from these beacons, too). Of course, everything still respawns, and you still lose all your currency, and you're still playing a Demon's Souls game -- so it's not like it makes things that much easier.
Will Tuttle: How well do you think the move from a hub system to a more open world will work? Sometimes, that ends up being more annoying than anything, as it's nice and simple to hop right into a stage versus having to wander around an open area (and oftentimes "open" translates to "empty"). Outside of that, did you get a chance to check out any specific areas? If so, how did they look?
Ryan Scott: I don't have anymore context about how the game flows in terms of open vs. hub-city, but yeah, I hear you. I don't want to wander around in boring, empty fields for long stretches, so I hope it's not quite like that. The Dark Souls demo I saw was concentrated in a single area -- a ruined castle fraught with all sorts of peril. Freakish monsters (including a creepy, man-eating mimic that sprang to life when the player character tried to open a faux treasure chest) lurked around every corner, and the castle included quite a few very narrow bridges, situated across certain-death falls, with swinging blade-pendulums ready to knock slow-fingered players to their deaths. And on some of those bridges, monsters shot arrows from nearby perches. I love it!
Will Tuttle: Apparently you do! It sounds, well, punishingly brutal. So did the developers talk about the game's multiplayer component at all? I seem to remember hearing that Demon's Souls had an interesting approach to multiplayer; has that returned for Dark Souls?
Ryan Scott: The developers are holding multiplayer details for their presentation at next month's E3 Expo, but it was insinuated to me that a lot of Demon's Souls' elements would return -- stuff like the option to leave messages for other players ("Long fall ahead!"), and ghostly silhouettes reenacting the last moments of a fellow player's life. I really hope the multiplayer includes a convenient "match up online with a friend" option, as opposed to Demon's Souls' arcane co-op requirements (you have to die, then go to another player's world in ghost form, but he has to leave a note on the floor first for you to access it at all, plus you can't just select your friends from a list...). I'm guessing the player-versus-player aspect of Demon's Souls will return, too -- but hopefully Dark Souls doesn't force you to take relatively extreme measures to prevent getting murdered nonstop.
Will Tuttle: With a game this tough, I can definitely appreciate that approach to co-op. Nothing's more cooperative than saving someone's hide with a well-placed note. That matchmaking sounds extremely annoying, though; hopefully the developers learned from players' experiences with Demon's Souls. It sounds like you're digging the direction Dark Souls is heading in -- got any final thoughts? Do you think you'll be able to beat this game when it comes out, rather than waiting until the Internet beats it for you? Oooh, burn!
Ryan Scott: In all honesty, I don't think I would have been able to finish Demon's Souls without at least SOME assistance. When you encounter situations like "Oh look, this dude I just freed is now killing all the non-player characters in town -- including, say, the guy who stores all my excess items, and the guys who I get weapon and magic upgrades from -- and they're DEAD FOREVER," you kind of need help in order to keep from going completely insane. I highly doubt I'll be the person reviewing Dark Souls (I'd never be able to beat it under pressure), but I'll be damned if it isn't my most-looked-forward-to game of 2011.
