Demon's Souls - State of Play - PS5

[hanselthecaretaker]

Spoiler

Bluepoint lacked the dignified aesthetic of the soul games. And they really messed up with the atmosphere of the boss battles. They shoehorned in lots of unnecessary noises and background music that goes against the somber tone of the original. They messed up on the fools idol, Maiden Astrea, False King Allant, and Adjudicator jsut to name a few. I will still get it and play it, but

it is a shame that from software didn't give them guidance.

Spoiler

Judging from everything I've seen from it thus far, my interest in this game (which was only slight to begin with) has actively plummeted with the new gameplay videos. I watched one video which said the game has "a gorgeous new coat of paint", and that's what it looks like, and not in a good way. The approach Bluepoint seems to have taken with this remake is "warts and all", which is truly baffling considering how the original had some serious issues that were later ironed out with Dark Souls and Bloodborne.

• Keeping item weight and inventory limit. WHYYYYYY??? This is easily the most aggravating aspect of Demon's Souls and it was gone by Dark Souls for a good reason. Who in the world asked for this to remain?
• Health is still halved upon death, meaning most players will spend the game with half (or 75%) health. This is one of those aspects that never felt like it added anything to the game, instead feeling like a constant middle finger to the player. What makes it worse is that DS3 did essentially the same thing with Embers giving you extra health, yet it never felt aggravating.
• Grasses are still the healing system, but I don't know if there's a cap to carrying them now. Still, it was a clunky system at best and borderline broken at worst in the original, so keeping it unaltered after so many better systems were implemented seems totally bonkers.
• The absence of the Land of Giants, which was cut from the original. This would have been the perfect opportunity to see the "true Demon's Souls" as it was originally intended, but again, the approach here was "warts and all", so no snowy mountains for any of us.
• The darkness, as in literal lighting conditions. I replayed Demon's Souls this year, and realized that the reason why so many of the environments are so hard to remember is that they're literally too dark to see anything. Stonefang Tunnel and Prison of Hope being the worst offenders. Here they seem to have taken it a step further and reduced the player's field of vision to about 3 feet in front of you. Which is just stupid. The game looks gorgeous as hell, so why are we barred from appreciating the visuals?
• World tendency is back, and again I ask: why? It remains one of the most obtuse and confusing mechanics in gaming history, and there's no reason its effects couldn't have been implemented into sidequests with NPCs or something. The only thing I've heard thus far is that it's easier to tell what tendency the worlds are in now, which is definitely damning with faint praise.
• The XP balancing seems to remain exactly the same as in the original, ie. fucked. In the same area mob enemies grant single digits worth of souls, while others grant triple digits, leading inevitably to farming the few enemies that grant XP worth a shit.

So yeah, this definitely isn't a console seller for me. Gonna wait at least a while, and maybe pick it up like a year from now if I decide to get a PS5.

Edit: God, I even forgot about them keeping even the absolutely awful upgrade system!

Seriously, did anybody on the dev team even play the original???

It’s ironic where the point apparently wasn’t to go in and change the game, but they still ended up doing so in the dumbest ways with some of the characters’ appearances as well as the music. They should’ve just reproduced the original score with an orchestra, and took the original artwork to a higher quality.

At least they got the 8 way rolling in there, which will help more than anything. The rest of the game - tendencies, inventories, item/equip burdens, etc. is best left alone though imo. Getting rid of it all or making it more like Dark Souls means it wouldn’t feel like Demon’s Souls anymore. And also without FROM’s involvement, I’d kinda cringe to think of how they’d handle the broken 6th arch stone world, considering FROM doesn’t even know since they never finished it themselves.

 

[Shadyside]

I like the classic filter, but the UI needs to gtfo.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I like the classic filter, but the UI needs to gtfo.

How difficult would it have been to just have the original HUD?

*screen grabbed from google images not mine in case emulator police are on patrol*

The differences are subtle but still it looks like they (FROM) at least tried to care there.

 

[Bartholen]

The rest of the game - tendencies, inventories, item/equip burdens, etc. is best left alone though imo. Getting rid of it all or making it more like Dark Souls means it wouldn’t feel like Demon’s

I vehemently disagree. Removing the equipment burden was an absolutely necessary quality of life improvement, I'd say comparable to the omnidirectional rolling. Kind of like how covenant functionality was made easier in the Dark Souls remaster. Same goes for the halving of health, ie. forcing one ring slot to be taken up by the Cling Ring. Preserving the spirit and feeling of a game does not mean also preserving every shitty, aggravating and unpolished quality about it.

And on the subject of preserving the spirit of the original, this remake seems to have also gone a way different direction with the environment design in Boletarian Palace. Playing the original I always got the sense that Demon's Souls's backstory had happened relatively recently compared to the rest of the Soulsborne continuum, maybe a few decades at most. King Allant who's the culprit behind the events if still very much alive and known, he's not some mythic figure like Nito or Seath. Ostrava's Allant's son for god's sakes! Boletaria felt like it was on the edge of total collapse with a few strongholds still holding out. But here the decay and decrepitude has been turned up to a degree comparable to Dark Souls, where nearly everything is a mere ruin, falling apart and overgrown. Instead of the aftermath of a collapsed kingdom, it looks like ruins of a civilization that crumbled centuries ago. It feels like it might be a) a conscious, weird choice that ends up recontextualizing a lot of the story in a more confusing way or b) an unintended consequence of wanting to add more detail to environments that were admittedly pretty barren and empty at times.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I vehemently disagree. Removing the equipment burden was an absolutely necessary quality of life improvement, I'd say comparable to the omnidirectional rolling. Kind of like how covenant functionality was made easier in the Dark Souls remaster. Same goes for the halving of health, ie. forcing one ring slot to be taken up by the Cling Ring. Preserving the spirit and feeling of a game does not mean also preserving every shitty, aggravating and unpolished quality about it.

And on the subject of preserving the spirit of the original, this remake seems to have also gone a way different direction with the environment design in Boletarian Palace. Playing the original I always got the sense that Demon's Souls's backstory had happened relatively recently compared to the rest of the Soulsborne continuum, maybe a few decades at most. King Allant who's the culprit behind the events if still very much alive and known, he's not some mythic figure like Nito or Seath. Ostrava's Allant's son for god's sakes! Boletaria felt like it was on the edge of total collapse with a few strongholds still holding out. But here the decay and decrepitude has been turned up to a degree comparable to Dark Souls, where nearly everything is a mere ruin, falling apart and overgrown. Instead of the aftermath of a collapsed kingdom, it looks like ruins of a civilization that crumbled centuries ago. It feels like it might be a) a conscious, weird choice that ends up recontextualizing a lot of the story in a more confusing way or b) an unintended consequence of wanting to add more detail to environments that were admittedly pretty barren and empty at times.

I stand by my previous post but as a concession they should’ve handled rings and gear slots like DS3.

 

[Ezekiel]

Ruined like the best song in the game.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Ruined like the best song in the game.

Original -


You instantly get a sense of what’s happening when you hear it in game. It’s like a mix of Castlevania, Halloween and something else entirely its own. It’s brilliant.

It really bugs me when they keep saying, “Oh for sure one of our main goals was to respect the original, yada yada.” and then we get a bunch of whacked out looking characters and an OST that literally sounds like Michael Bay decided to take up composition.

It’s too late now but rhetorically what would’ve been so difficult about again, reproducing the original models with higher quality assets, and reproducing the original score with an orchestra.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

For all the complaints about npc models and music though, it’s good to see my favorite boss from a thematic perspective looks amazing.

Spoiler of course.

 

[Shadyside]

How come from software didn't join with bluepoint to make the game? I do hope that in the future we will get the 6th archstone as DLC.

 

[Casual Shinji]

How come from software didn't join with bluepoint to make the game? I do hope that in the future we will get the 6th archstone as DLC.

Probably because they're busy with Dark Souls 4, Bloodborne, and whatever the hell Elden Ring is supposed to be. That's not even mentioning the possibility of a Sekiro sequel.

 

[Shadyside]

Probably because they're busy with Dark Souls 4, Bloodborne, and whatever the hell Elden Ring is supposed to be. That's not even mentioning the possibility of a Sekiro sequel.

They should just stop with Dark Souls. It is getting redundant with the theme of cycles and just embracing the inevitable. I would actually want them to reboot Armored Core.

 

[Ezekiel]

Probably because they're busy with Dark Souls 4, Bloodborne, and whatever the hell Elden Ring is supposed to be. That's not even mentioning the possibility of a Sekiro sequel.

I thought they were done with Namco Bandai. Where did you read about another Dark Souls?

Also, agree with Shadyside, repeating the same cycle over and over is uninteresting.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I thought they were done with Namco Bandai. Where did you read about another Dark Souls?

Just assumed, seeing as DS3 still sold well and was well liked, making a sequel pretty inevitable.

Also, agree with Shadyside, repeating the same cycle over and over is uninteresting.

Isn't that basically what they've been doing since Dark Souls 1? The people who go for these games certainly don't seem to be tired of them yet. Hell. youtube channels have created entire careers out of it.

 

[sXeth]

They should just stop with Dark Souls. It is getting redundant with the theme of cycles and just embracing the inevitable. I would actually want them to reboot Armored Core.

Funnily I was discussing this with a buddy amidst PS5 launch interest. And worked it out.


Since 2010 there's effectively been 9 Souls games put out, or 8 if you want to leave off Sekiro.


The regurgiation is kind of getting absurd. (And thats without also adding in the non-FROM properties hanging on there like Surge, LoF, Mortal Shell, etc)

 

[CriticalGaming]

Just assumed, seeing as DS3 still sold well and was well liked, making a sequel pretty inevitable.

Isn't that basically what they've been doing since Dark Souls 1? The people who go for these games certainly don't seem to be tired of them yet. Hell. youtube channels have created entire careers out of it.

Im not ruling out the possibility of a Dark Souls 4, but Miazaki and Fromsoft have stated that the series is done.

We dont know what Elden Ring is going to be. But its likely a different twist on their gaming formula. Say what you want about Sekiro, but the game played far differently than any souls game before promoting stealth and parrying skill over patient slow and varied combat. It was not a souls game despite appealing to the same fans though not even all of them.

Much the same way Nioh is not a Souls game.

I think we are at the point where games are going to start evolving that Souls formula more and more. Here's hoping it goes well.

 

[BrawlMan]

The regurgiation is kind of getting absurd. (And thats without also adding in the non-FROM properties hanging on there like Surge, LoF, Mortal Shell, etc)

It's a good thing I could never get in to these games. Fuck, I would take a new Tenchuor Ninja Blade at this point. Ninja Blade!

​

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Best demo I’ve seen of the game yet.

 

[Shadyside]

If there is going to be Dark Souls 4, then at least it should be about the dark age of man. And show what that looks like while stopping people who want to link the fire again.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

 

[Dalisclock]

If there is going to be Dark Souls 4, then at least it should be about the dark age of man. And show what that looks like while stopping people who want to link the fire again.

We allegedly get a hint of that in the Untended Graves of DS3. It's very dark and silent, apparently.