Dark Souls Dev Apologizes for Technical Difficulties

[Marshall Honorof]

Dark Souls Dev Apologizes for Technical Difficulties

A repentant creative director would love to make more RPGs like Dark Souls - if the fans will forgive him.

It's easy to forget that game developers, in spite of their impressive creative abilities, are normal folks like you and me. They laugh, they cry, and they often find it hard to admit when they've made a mistake [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115296-AMY-Doesnt-Suck-Its-Just-Hard]. Hidetaka Miyazaki, the creative director behind the ultra-challenging RPG Dark Souls, however, does not seem to have that problem. Miyazaki, while very proud of his team's creation, acknowledges that the game had its share of crippling technical issues and asks forgiveness for them. While he would like to make another installment in the series, he wants to make sure he has goodwill from his fans first.

Miyazaki makes no apologies for the game's relentless difficulty or the sometimes-cheap tactics necessary to get past the games challenges. The game's frame-rate issues, are a different story. "[There] were technical difficulties," says Miyazaki. "I don't believe that it's okay to have them, but realistically speaking, it was quite a large-scale game - even in terms of budget and expectations. So we're very sorry for the trouble we've caused." In spite of his disappointment with these aspects of Dark Souls, he believes the game's ambitious world and mechanics made perfection all but impossible. "[There] were areas where we felt our technical side couldn't keep up with the game's scope, like an increasingly growing ache."

When asked about a potential sequel, Miyazaki remains ambivalent. "We don't even know if we'll have another chance," he admits. "We have the confidence that we can improve from our mistakes this time and create an even better Dark world, but we don't know if the users will forgive us for the mistakes, so I cannot give an exact answer."

Technical difficulties aside, many fans and critics alike viewed dive off castles to evade dragons [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/9171-Dark-Souls-Review].

Source: Edge [http://m.next-gen.biz/features/dark-matters-0]


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[xitel]

Wait, "crippling"? I suppose I was just lucky, but I only had ONE small spot of slowdown in Blighttown's Swamp when it was trying to render a huge distance at one time. I didn't run into anything that actually broke the game though. Except Seath's tail getting stuck in a wall. Didn't happen to me, but I can well imagine it driving a person batshit up-the-walls insane.

 

[Korten12]

They honestly weren't that bad. Blight town was bad at first, but for some reason I got less and less lag there until now there is barely.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

bring this game to PC, and then we will "talk" about this petty thing called "forgiveness"

 

[Baresark]

Haha, you know what would fix those crippling issues? Putting that game on much more powerful hardware. The game is rendered in 1080 already, so you only need to give it a good port and you have a great PC game. You could even make the game better in all the ways you wished you could have had it in the first place. Dark Souls was ambitious with the hardware, to say the least. Now it's time to move to a better platform. Make games for the PC and then port down to consoles, it's a much better development process according to a few devs.

 

[Itsthefuzz]

I'll do anything he wants if he makes more games like Dark souls...

 

[Monkeyman O'Brien]

bring this game to PC, and then we will "talk" about this petty thing called "forgiveness"

Ninja'd.
Thats all I want. Hell, bring Demons Souls to PC as well and you can damn well do as you please Miyazaki.

NEWS: Hidetaka Miyazaki, developer of video games Demons Souls and Dark Souls is in custody after officers found he had a dungeon of slave girls in his basement and a freezer of half eaten babies.

Me: Meh, still okay with it. Whens the next game coming out?

 

[Lost In The Void]

I already have forgiven you. Give me more Souls games

 

[Korten12]

Haha, you know what would fix those crippling issues? Putting that game on much more powerful hardware. The game is rendered in 1080 already, so you only need to give it a good port and you have a great PC game. You could even make the game better in all the ways you wished you could have had it in the first place. Dark Souls was ambitious with the hardware, to say the least. Now it's time to move to a better platform. Make games for the PC and then port down to consoles, it's a much better development process according to a few devs.

I doubt they would ever do that. Well switch their whole development. They only made one pc port ever and it wasn't the best, and that was back in 2009. So not too long ago, but considering the company is 26 years old. I doubt they would suddenly make their games on PC and then port to Consoles.

That would be like asking, Nintendo to make their games on PC and then port them to Wii. (I know they don't develop for PC but that's not the entierity of the point.)

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Hey, Miyazaki, you and your team made a brilliant game, sure there are some issues, but they are far outshined by everything else.

But hey, modesty isn't a negative personality trait last time I checked, so go and make another Souls game, you magnificient bastard.

 

[ResonanceGames]

bring this game to PC, and then we will "talk" about this petty thing called "forgiveness"

Indeed. Plus, a PC release might be the only hope for this game not to go extinct in a few years once they shut the servers off. You know how PC gamers like to keep ancient games alive with hacked/custom servers...

 

[Baresark]

Haha, you know what would fix those crippling issues? Putting that game on much more powerful hardware. The game is rendered in 1080 already, so you only need to give it a good port and you have a great PC game. You could even make the game better in all the ways you wished you could have had it in the first place. Dark Souls was ambitious with the hardware, to say the least. Now it's time to move to a better platform. Make games for the PC and then port down to consoles, it's a much better development process according to a few devs.

I doubt they would ever do that. Well switch their whole development. They only made one pc port ever and it wasn't the best, and that was back in 2009. So not too long ago, but considering the company is 26 years old. I doubt they would suddenly make their games on PC and then port to Consoles.

That would be like asking, Nintendo to make their games on PC and then port them to Wii. (I know they don't develop for PC but that's not the entierity of the point.)

You are right, they would never switch their development around, I was more being funny (or failing to be in this case). I just want the game on my PC so bad, haha. I played the living hell out of both Souls titles and would gladly rebuy them on the PC. Though, I am not holding my breath on a port of any of the current Souls titles. Brings a little tear to my eye.

 

[Lunar Templar]

bring this game to PC, and then we will "talk" about this petty thing called "forgiveness"

this.

plus, i have friends i might be able to con into to playing with me >.> they'll buy its not as hard and hateful toward the player as every one in the world says right?

 

[AlternatePFG]

Crippling technical issues? Sure, there was a bit of slowdown in Blighttown and some minor glitches here and there, but nothing major. Not to mention Blighttown was a impressively sized area if you think about it. The whole swamp area at the bottom, not to mention the bridge and walkways up above. The game doesn't have loading screens between areas, making the game's rather large world seamless. By standards of other recent RPG's it was relatively bug free.

Sheesh, the way he talks it's like they released the game as a total fucking mess and they're still patching up the issues. Compare that mentality to that of Bethesda when it comes to glitches and technical issues in their games.

 

[Rad Party God]

A potential PC version could be entirely abscent of such technical troubles... if the port is well optimized of course.

 

[Burst6]

Mr. Miyazaki, I am very dissapointed with you. The lag was horrible. I had to run through blighttown slightly hindered every once in a while by a small amount of lag. I didn't have any other problems, but the 5 seconds of lag i experienced in blighttown was unforgivable.


If you truly want to make it up to me, make a dark souls 2, and continue the story. Give us a chronicle of what happens after

Spoiler

Our main character becomes dark lord. Ignore those guys who rekindled the flame. They're losers

Also let Priscilla teach us cryomancy. Make it scale with int because sorcery sucks for PVP.

And i want less weapons with cripplingly slow and useless r2 attacks. That ruined the Greatsword of Artorias for me.


And i want better crossbow varieties. Perhaps a crossbow version of the dragonslayer greatbow that you can aim. Maybe crossbows that fire short-ranged firebombs.








Also i want more pretty dresses.

 

[robert022614]

I only lagged in blight town and only for a few seconds and would be all for a sequal.

 

[Simonoly]

Wait, what? The technical issues are really not that bad at all. Sure there is a drop in framerate when you first enter New Londo or in the swamp area of Blight town. But this happens in very specific places and is only a minor distraction at first. I didn't find it to be a problem at all. There are some annoying clipping issues which cause quite a few unnecessary deaths, but still quite insignificant in relation to how vast this game is.

I would love to be able to play the game on my PC, but I don't think that will solve the framerate issue in Blight town. It's such a complex area, with lots of different lighting effects and a huge amount of enemy pathfinding (those darn respawning giant mosquitos that follow you across the entire swamp). There is of course no loading screens either which puts even more strain on this already complex area. Even so, a PC port would be great - although I'd still be playing it with a controller as I don't fancy trying to find my way across all the narrow walkways in the game with a mouse and keyboard (I actually shudder at the thought).

 

[Tanis]

Personally, I think it takes some MAJOR balls (or just good PR department) to say stuff like this when you're part of a niche game like this.

Then again, it takes some major balls to play this game as it is.

 

[burningdragoon]

Oh Hidetaka Miyazaki, you've already won us over. You didn't need to apologize at all.

I do really like your attitude about it though. Bring us more Souls!