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[TeeGee]

My friend who played MH Tri with me, and for whom it was the first encounter with the series, also picked the hammer. I think hammer is actually pretty user friendly. Only slightly less powerful than the greatsword, but you can run around with it, and even charge it while running. And once you become good and can strike the monster's head consistently, the stun is a big help too.

[AshfordPride]

- Edge says they were shown a 10 minute playthrough of Dark Souls 2, and it is a huge step forward graphically. It looks on par with Watch Dogs and Star Wars 1313 in terms of "next-gen"-ness, or so they claim.

- Miyazaki is not working on the development of Dark Souls 2. He is not a director or producer, and is merely a "supervisor".

- Even as a supervisor, he isn't making any development decisions. He only tried to reinforce the team's commitment to releasing things on time, because of the bad experience they had with the patches in Dark Souls, and he also recommended the return to server-based gameplay ala Demon's Souls.

- The new directors, Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura, are indeed the From Software staff who previously directed the Another Century's Episode series. The decision to have the two directors replace Miyazaki was a company decision made by both From Software and Namco Bandai Games to help move the series forward in a fresh direction.

- Miyazaki is working full time on directing a new game. He will not disclose if it is a new IP or a sequel to something else.

- Darks Souls 2 will be a direct sequel, and have an open world of about the same size, but more dense with content.

- It does not take place on Lordran. The name of the world is the key of the story, they will reveal it at a later date.

- One thing Shibuya wants to enhance is the action in the game. He feels that he can contribute because of his experience working on action games in the past.

- Shibuya says he wants to make things like the Covenant system clearer and more accessible, and he wants to make the story and messaging less subtle.

- He promises there will still be "hidden" elements in the story and world which can be missed.

- Development started in September last year, and was done in parallel with some of the Dark Souls patches and DLC content.

- The game is 25% complete, and the team is substantially larger than Dark Souls. The world creation internal staff for the sequel is nearly double that of the first game.

- The game might not make it for 2013.

- They showed a fat grotesque creature, which Shibuya said was the result of the fusing of different creatures by a mad scientist character in the game, like Frankenstein.

- Another new enemy is a Nazgul-like black rider, who apparently serves as an executioner of evil doers. Shibuya confirms there is some sort of morality system in the game.

(This is from the EDGE article, via neogaf, not me being a douche again.)



Also look at these lil' guys.

[Tumetsu]

Shibuya says he wants to make things like the Covenant system clearer and more accessible, and he wants to make the story and messaging less subtle.

Depending on what this will mean worries me a bit, though I guess some people would like to know a bit more what there is going on in the game...

One thing Shibuya wants to enhance is the action in the game. He feels that he can contribute because of his experience working on action games in the past.

I'm not sure what to make about it this...

Still, too little information to get too worried though. Concept art looks great anyway.

“I personally am the sort of person who likes to be more direct than subtle,” he tells us.

http://www.edge-online.com/news/introducing-edge-249-dark-souls-ii-unveiled/

[Ben_Hurr]

inb4 minimaps, quest markers, and no stamina bar. 

[Tumetsu]

Don't forget action filled "epic" 1 vs 20 battles with combo counters and cinematic storytelling 

I also read that Miyazaki was disappointed for not having greater role in DkSII.

[deathtotheweird]

only thing that disappointed me in that article was the release date. seems like it won't be out until 2014. damn.

[HöllenKobold]

btw guys, when he says action games, he means the mech games he worked on.
so there probably wont be anything like the action game you're imagining.

also since they're mech games, you probably cant derive much from that anyway. the another century's episode games are still more based on spatial control than combos anyway.

[Tumetsu]

Good point. Besides Miyazaki had also worked on mecha games before Souls.

[HöllenKobold]

if anything, it's frustrating to find what the director did besides ace because there's another person with the same name except they worked at capcom around the same period so it's unlikely that it's the same person.

welp, i guess if anything, the director just worked on ace.

[Blademasterbobo]

the covenants are impossible to 100% figure out without a wiki, and the main pvp one being so hidden was stupid, so that doesn't sound too bad

[Raptor85]

the covenants are impossible to 100% figure out without a wiki, and the main pvp one being so hidden was stupid, so that doesn't sound too bad

I stumbled on all of them but princess guard my first few times through the game without the wiki (i never thought to talk to gwenevere again after getting the lordvessel), so no, they're not "impossibly" hidden, they're hidden in ways that any reasonable player would eventually try anyways.  For instance, my second playthrough I was wondering why the lordvessel my first time only unlocked THREE of the four lord areas, and why 4k wasn't locked at the start like all the others were, so I attempted it early....and was absolutely SHOCKED at how it kinda "branched" the game when you did that, I don't remember ever stumbling across such a cool secret since the doom and duke3d days, I hate it when games feel the need to hold my hand and make sure I see absolutely everything, takes all the flavor out of discovering stuff like this yourself.  Most memorable covenant to find though was definitely the dragon one, I stumbled on ash lake and the great hollow making my standard "mimic-check" and have to say i was blown away by it, i wasn't expecting to find something like that down there, most other people I've seen find it have pretty much said the same thing, finding stuff like that  that you didn't really expect is part of what made dark souls so memorable and not just "yet another action rpg"

[Blademasterbobo]

i don't mean where they are, aside from the pvp one, i mean what the fuck they actually do. for example, the first covenant making invasions happen less often, or what giving them stuff does (eg the shortcut to bed of chaos), etc. and i don't like how it cuts you off from the main pvp covenant if you don't realize you have to sequence break a bit. i don't like things that force you to replay the entire game if you fuck up a little bit. if you think obscure shit like that is the only reason the game is better than other arpgs, then you're dum.

[Derek]

Making some parts of DS a wee bit less esoteric could be good, although the overall tone they seem to be taking is worrisome.

Right now I'm kinda more interested in this:

- Miyazaki is working full time on directing a new game. He will not disclose if it is a new IP or a sequel to something else.

[Bandages]

Right now I'm kinda more interested in this:

- Miyazaki is working full time on directing a new game. He will not disclose if it is a new IP or a sequel to something else.

I don't know if it's just a matter of taste or not, but I've been less than pleased with the content of Miyazaki's works over the past few years. His art and design is still impeccable but his stories are just not there.

[gimymblert]

I think that the recent release of skyrim in japan did shake them up (I think it got a perfect score on famitsu too, rare for western games if not a first), Monolyth's (xenoblade) designer are also chasing the bethesda model, as they said in a recent interview about their next game on WiiU.

[HöllenKobold]

Miyazaki actually listed Oblivion as one of his favorite games. But I'm cautiously okay with the influence. They seem to branch off in directions far away from the things that stigmatize the Elder Scrolls series. Even something as tepid as Dragon's Dogma is still relatively fresh.

As much as the comment about making a series as grand as Elder Scrolls worries me, I also realize that Souls itself was the creation of someone foreign trying to interact with western stories. But welp, with the new director, all of his comments can be taken into so many different ways, especially unappealing ones.

His art and design is still impeccable but his stories are just not there.

so like what type of story do you even want

[Blademasterbobo]

Miyazaki actually listed Oblivion as one of his favorite games. But I'm cautiously okay with the influence. They seem to branch off in directions far away from the things that stigmatize the Elder Scrolls series. Even something as tepid as Dragon's Dogma is still relatively fresh.

As much as the comment about making a series as grand as Elder Scrolls worries me, I also realize that Souls itself was the creation of someone foreign trying to interact with western stories. But welp, with the new director, all of his comments can be taken into so many different ways, especially unappealing ones.

His art and design is still impeccable but his stories are just not there.

so like what type of story do you even want

he's making a bad joke

Hayao Miyazaki

[Bandages]

His art and design is still impeccable but his stories are just not there.

so like what type of story do you even want

His earlier animated films were adventurous and mature and challenged things like industrialization and war.

Then we started getting Ponyo and The Borrowers, stories without conflict or a larger context to draw from.

Again, personal opinion, but it seems as though he's lost a bit of his Bite.

[HöllenKobold]

he's just on a whole other level from you

he has forsaken the eurocentric concept of conflict
away with the implicit violence of storytelling inherent in the western canon
and in with the moe

[Raptor85]

Makes me sad if they're trying to make it more like elder scrolls, I havent even half-enjoyed an elder scrolls game since morrowind, and even then I only thought of it as "good, but not great".   And yes bobo, i LOVE blind exploration and discovering secrets myself, and you learn the covenent traits the same way the people who WROTE the wiki did...by TRYING them, not everything needs a line by line "do this to win" instruction booklet attached to it, they're all optional anyways.  If you want to call me "dum" for enjoying a game that offers a challenge not only to "beat" it but to also uncover it's secrets then so be it though, I could care less what you think of me because of the games I enjoy.  

If i did have any complaints about the covenant system though it's the lack of any ability to give multiple items at once, should prompt how many humanity/medals to give when you select it so when you want to give 10-20 it doesn't take forever repeating 3 button presses.