Dark Souls II - Interview & New Trailer

Couchpotato

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EDGE interviews Yui Tanimura the Co-director of Dark Souls II.

The PC version of the first Dark Souls wasn’t a good port. How did that make the team feel, and what are you doing to ensure that the PC iteration is better this time around?


We understand and accept a lot of the feedback we have received from fans around the world who have played the PC version. We first decided to port over to the PC platform as a result of the petition signed by players around the world. And with our goal to release a PC version as soon as possible, it was a decision to simply port the experience over in the shortest amount of time possible. For the PC version of Dark Souls II, the game development will be based on the PC – we will make sure that the main PC game features are supported and also do our best to attend to a lot of the user feedback that we have received.
I also have a new trailer from Namco-Bandai.



Still considering to go beyond death? Watch this new trailer for a sneak peek of the mysteries and monsters you'll face in Dark Souls II. In the tormented kingdom of Drangleic, a cure to the Curse awaits to be found and countless deaths awaits to be endured.
More information.
 
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...a server-based game system will allow for more visibility on the loose connections with other players. The beta, we feel, did prove a lot of the game’s functionality, and with the results we will continue to tune for our ideal game balance with online game play.

I wish someone would ask what they're doing about cheaters. Server-side character saves, at all?
 
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Well being exclusively an offline player (for the last 24 years or so ;) ) I am more interested in seeing them commit to a PC release date and some specs at this point.

Keeping my fingers crossed that the World design and overall feeling of Discovery at least was not compromised by the change at the helm. Tanimura leaves a pretty good impression but he seems a very ambitious man and has stated that he wants to leave his mark on the series. Lets see how this pans out…
 
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Well being exclusively an offline player (for the last 24 years or so ;) ) I am more interested in seeing them commit to a PC release date and some specs at this point.

I mostly play offline myself, but I admit to rarely playing a few F2P MMO's.:embarrassed:

I'll let everyone know If I find the PC release date. I do know for a fact that it will be a few weeks after the console release.

Link- http://www.incgamers.com/2013/09/imminent-tears-dark-souls-ii-slightly-delayed-pc

It's a common tactic to sell console games first then the pc version. Ubisoft usually does this with every game they publish.
 
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I'll let everyone know If i find the PC release date. I do know for a fact that it will be a few weeks after the console release.

Link- http://www.incgamers.com/2013/09/imminent-tears-dark-souls-ii-slightly-delayed-pc

It's a common tactic to sell console games first the the pc version. Ubisoft usually does this with every game they publish.

Thanks Couch.

I don't mind the delay too much tbh. I even have the black armor edition preordered from amazon.uk so that will add at least 8 days to the waiting. I would like to have it for my Easter vacation though (a few days around the april 20th) :-/

I rarely play games the moment they are released these days anyways. I will make an exception for this one though provided the m+k controls are up to snuff out of the box ;)

P.S. I really expect them to be. Actually I am even going to miss DSfix a bit, or the ability to downsample hassle free at least. (Not that a GTX670 would be enough for that in #2 I believe. Whats taking NVIDIA so long with them new Maxwell cards dammit :mad: )
 
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I'm not too worried about a PC release personally, although I do hope there's a good one for those of you who don't have a PS3. I'll probably just get the PS3 version again unless they actually manage to make the PC port the superior version this time.
 
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You mean the framerate and the possibility to make the game look significantly better is not enough ? ;)
 
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I didn't find the visuals of the PC port to be good enough to look past the overall shittyness of the port. The higher framerate is nice, but I prefer the tighter control and dependability of the PS3 version.
 
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I didn't find the visuals of the PC port to be good enough to look past the overall shittyness of the port. The higher framerate is nice, but I prefer the tighter control and dependability of the PS3 version.


I was referring to DSfix ofcourse. After downsampling from 2880x1620 to 1980p adding smaa, ssao some subtle dof (and forcing negative Lod bias HQ 16xAF from the control panel) the difference is nothing sort of eye-popping and the framerate in Blight Town is still fluid… (although there were a couple of places were the GTX 670 suffered a bit after all that but thankfully no combat took place there)…

That said, I am starting to suspect there might be a more pronounced difference out of the Box this time with the way they tried to up the visual on those old machines. At least I am hoping that any excessive Loding in example (some shots on the posted video were a bit bad unfortunately but it was more the angles and overexposure I believe) takes into account that it is running on more powerful machines and adjust accordingly.

We'll have to wait and see for all that of course. Graphics are hardly what this game is all about after all (and the Art direction is simply top notch at any rate).
 
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I already assumed you were referring to DSfix, as the port is utter garbage without it.

Even with DSfix though, I didn't feel that the PC version was the superior one. I tried it for several hours with K+M and then several more with various gamepads. I just couldn't get the same feel I had with the PS3 version.
 
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Even with DSfix though, I didn't feel that the PC version was the superior one. I tried it for several hours with K+M and then several more with various gamepads. I just couldn't get the same feel I had with the PS3 version.

Can't make a comparison there ofcourse as I really have only used a controller like twice.

I am ok with the way the game handles with DSmfix though. It is still a bit too sensitive the way I have tweaked it (i.e it might jitter a bit when getting down the steps from the aqueduct down to the Firelink Shrine bonfire at least) but the added camera speed and responsiveness have saved my bacon quite a few times (and I rarely have a problem with adjusting camera angles even in Blight Town).

That said I am a pretty adaptable creature (and usually forgiving in UI or control issues). If from manages at least a DSmfix level of decency in the controls out of the box I will be pretty Ok with that (and good to go)…
 
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I haven't actually been thinking about that PC release delay. Come March 14 I'm sure I'll be getting a bit restless since I do own a xbox360, but since it could hardly run Dark Souls to begin with I'm wanting to get the PC version.

With the extra effects dsfix added to the PC version, Antialiasing, Ambient Occlusion and resampled texture resolution, etc, the PC version looked and performed BY FAR the best. I couldn't comment on the PS3 "native" version, though. I hear it still suffered from framerate issues, but could be good since From are pretty much 100% Playstation developers.

As for the GTX670 and DarkSouls2, I'm absolutely certain it will run it flawlessly and leave plenty of room for dxfix style bonus'. It's still a last-gen game, after all, and the 670 absolutely destroys the xbox360 with its 512mb RAM for the WHOLE system. Video and all. Dark Souls 2 has better graphics in parts because it's not wasting as much processing power on silly things like ragdoll corpses. Kill a monster, no corpse, freed up memory!

And while we're on the topic of Xboxes and 670s… the shader processing units, which do most the fancy effects like Ambient Occlusion (SSAO, HBAO, VSSAO, etc) are extremely limited on the old gen systems, but the new gen systems are not really that impressive, either. The gtx670 has 1384 of these cores. The gtx580 had 512, the 760 has 1100…. The Xbox One has 768 and the PS4 has 1100. Meanwhile, the 780ti has about 2900!

So, Nvidias new Maxwell GPUs! I want one! Be that as it may… What good are they, since "next-gen" games are only targeting current-gen PC hardware power? Most the big "AAA" commercial releases will be targeting the consoles, as always. So there's really no reason for Nvidia to launch their new cards. The 780ti and Titan are still BEASTLY Kepler gpus that anyone would be very happy with.

Also, if you follow current trends with Nvidia card releases…. You have the 760, 770, 780.The 770 is almost exactly a 680. So will the 870 just be a 780? If that's so, the Titan was from the 600 series and beat all the cards until the 780ti, which only lost to the Titan in floating point 64 calculations, which, to my knowledge, games are not even using! So the 800 series will probably be relabeled high end 600 series with only the flagship card actually having a Maxwell GPU. Nothing will make good use of its power unless you want to run super high res. But to quote Crytek, "next gen isnt about resolution". Ryse is 900p, a 19" monitor does 1440x900p. That's your ideal "next gen" res. Use this res with a 1100+ shader core videocard (beating both consoles) and you'll be set for the next 8 years! (by my calculations, anyway).

Also, I don't mention the next gen consoles CPU? theyre 8cores @ 1.6ghz. Xbox version comes factory overclocked @ 1.75ghz, giving them about 1ghz extra power in there, but with a lot less power than the PS4s videocard for fancy effects. Considering current PC AMD 8core CPUs running MUCH faster than 1.6 are still out-performed by "old" Sandy bridge 2600k cpus, I don't think these cpus will bring much to the table. It wont be a case of "well, the consoles GPUs are lesser than PC, but what about that rad CPU!?".

I gotta dash! Was gonna say something else, but I forget. It's so damn hot today I keep zoning out. Nevermind!

edit: oh, wait! It was something about the consoles getting most their extra performances from those parts through the lower level API. Then I was gonna say something about AMDs Mantle API, probably.
 
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As for the GTX670 and DarkSouls2, I'm absolutely certain it will run it flawlessly and leave plenty of room for dxfix style bonus'. It's still a last-gen game, after all, and the 670 absolutely destroys the xbox360 with its 512mb RAM for the WHOLE system.

I mostly meant Downsampling. Man that really sharpens the visuals/textures and makes any alliasing disappear. Very nice. Unfortunately (and while the game stays locked at 30FPS 95% of the time) there are bits when you notice the rate dropping especially after forcing the AF from the panel (i.e. when exiting the lift to New Londo. Disappears when you are over the bridge and into the city proper though). The card should be enough and then some for the game (#2) at 1080p and for all other effects of course…

So, Nvidias new Maxwell GPUs! I want one! Be that as it may… What good are they, since "next-gen" games are only targeting current-gen PC hardware power? Most the big "AAA" commercial releases will be targeting the consoles, as always. So there's really no reason for Nvidia to launch their new cards. The 780ti and Titan are still BEASTLY Kepler gpus that anyone would be very happy with.

Also, if you follow current trends with Nvidia card releases…. You have the 760, 770, 780.The 770 is almost exactly a 680. So will the 870 just be a 780?

Oh I agree that most games (and definitely the ones I play, as I am mostly anticipating the Kickstarters I backed in addition to DS2) should be more than fine with even my 670. The thing is I like to tweak/mod some games and I need extra juice for that (also The Witcher #3 might actually need it at vanilla too).

Actually something at vanilla 780 (or maybe 10% more) performance will be more than enough for me. I need it to be more power efficient than the OCed 780s though and also not cost an arm and a leg. So I am actually hoping that the 870 is indeed a 780 with a power draw closer to my 670 than the 780ti and cost less than say 500 Euros (absolute tops). They do claim a much more efficient architecture in Maxwell anyways…

It does look pretty unlikely though at the near future despite some rumors surfacing here and there. It would really make their current product lineup weird indeed (and with a 6GB 780ti coming soon too :S ). I guess I'll have to wait a few more months at least…
 
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Also, if you follow current trends with Nvidia card releases…. You have the 760, 770, 780.The 770 is almost exactly a 680. So will the 870 just be a 780?

Idk about that. Most of the benchmarks I saw showed the 770 to be faster enough than the 680 to not be considered almost exactly the same. If the current trend continues, the 870 will be both faster and cheaper than a 780.
 
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Looking forward to DSII.

However, one preview from RPS got me a bit worried. In addition to making tweaks to the combat (e.g. narrowing the backstab area which I am fine with), the RPS reviewer noted that rolling or dodging speed is now 'independant' of the weight of the armour. He tested that by removing all his armour and rolling, without affecting the speed of his roll.

I hope that this is just in the preview build and that they will correct the movement speed according to the weight of the armour. That was one of the brilliant highlights of Dark Souls for me which added more strategic depth and choice to the player.
 
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I doubt it'll be like that in the final version, it'd make wearing light armour pointless.
 
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Not only that but they may factor in stats for the speed of doing some things (Agility iirc ?) in a novel way. Even spell casting.

At any rate they have recently said that they are still tweaking a lot of things (difficulty, bonfire spacing, lifegem drop etc etc) and the beta should not be considered a final indication for anything…
 
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Idk about that. Most of the benchmarks I saw showed the 770 to be faster enough than the 680 to not be considered almost exactly the same. If the current trend continues, the 870 will be both faster and cheaper than a 780.

I'm just a PC gaming enthusiast and "unimpressive" overclocker - not an Nvidia engineer, so I might be a bit off… Also dying of heat, atm. :S Remember when Voodoo2 cards blew everything away?! Remember that Diamond Viper TNT2 Ultra 32MB that shat on my voodoo2? I've been here a while. :)

680 and 770 are both the same "GK104" Kepler GPU with 1536 shader processors or "CUDA" cores. The 770 core was slightly overclocked, but you could find factory overclocked 680s clocked 200MHz faster still! The main upgrade was with the 770s faster RAM settings. (192 vs 222GB/sec)

The Kepler cards had the GK104, GK106, GK107 and the GK110.

The gk104 was actually MORE powerful than the gk106 (used for the GTX660) and gk107 (used in the GTX650ti )

The GK110 was used in the Titan and 780, but I'm not sure what they tweaked to lower its fp64 calcuations while keeping it a "gk110".

So, you could say the 770 was different enough to warrant being called a different card, but it was really more to do with the settings of the hardware than the hardware itself.

Maxwell and Volta, 800 and 900, series won't use "gk" cos those are Kepler GPUS! So the 600 and 700 series all being Kepler isn't really a true new generation. The Titan from the 600 series rivals the best of the 700 series. Titans huge price was to do with how long it would last as king. These cards were good enough to keep on the production line another year. Meanwhile AMD skipped releasing any new cards for a year and only just released their new cards recently. We're still waiting on their new Mantle API to unlock their true potential too.


SpoonFULL said:
the RPS reviewer noted that rolling or dodging speed is now 'independant' of the weight of the armour. He tested that by removing all his armour and rolling, without affecting the speed of his roll.

Yeah, I'd like to know more about this too. It seems at the moment like movement revolves around Agility, and Resistance raises Poise.

I noticed in one video my favourite chest armor - simple "Knights" was 16 poise and not 20. There were a few 16 poise chest pieces in Dark Souls 1 which made me ignore them.. Dark Wraiths armour or Bronze armor or Solaires iron set, etc. In the end that 20 poise combined with the ~10 weight made Knight chest the best armour in the game. (as far as weight: poise is concerned)
 
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