Dark Souls III - To be Announced at E3

Myrthos

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VG27 share the information that Dark Souls III will be shown at E3.

Namco will announce Dark Souls 3 at E3, a source familiar with the matter has told VG247.

In news guaranteed to delight fans of the series, Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls and Bloodborne director Hidetaka Miyazaki is again heading the team.

Miyazaki, the father of the Souls series, moved onto a supervisory role for Dark Souls 2. Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura co-directed the sequel.

The platform to be used for the announcement is as yet unknown, but our source guessed the title may come during Sony’s E3 press conference on the Californian evening of Monday, June 15.

We received no specific details of the game itself.
Thanks jhwisner.

More information.
 
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Kind of wish they had done something a little different. I love these games, but really, a third one?

Agreed. Part of the beauty of Demon's Souls (Sony published) was the unique nature of it, with no sequels or knock-offs. The same will probably be true about Bloodborne (Sony published).

Remember Dark Souls is Bandai Namco we are dealing with. They want sequels because people will buy! Bandai Namco isn't your friend. They are a typical publisher. They'd put out Dark Souls every year if they could.

And yes friends, I must post yet again about the total lies and downgrade of Dark Souls 2. Remember the marketing trailers and playable demo was LIES and didn't represent the final game. Watch below for a reminder, and be wary of trusting anything about Dark Souls 3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykbT03r_9Zo
 
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Well I welcome more souls games. They aren't exactly saturating the market. I would like to see it more like DS1 though as I didn't enjoy 2 as much. If they could release a quality DS game every year I'd be all about it.

As for the downgrade, I was actually happy as I wasn't digging the choose between a torch or shield thing. I could see them cheaping me at every corner with things I couldn't see because I wanted to use a shield.
 
Well my own motto is to take into account the quality of previous works and set my ambitions starting from there. It almost does feel 'too soon' for Dark Souls III, but there's no reason to assume it will be anything but good.
 
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There's no such thing as too soon for a Souls game. DS2 didn't really happen in my mind. Thank feck Miyazaki is back.

After playing (and still playing) Bloodborne the thought of having a new DS game on the PS4 gives me a fat a cat couldn't scratch.
 
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I might be interested in this one. Didn't play the other two entries, just didn't find them very appealing. If they have a system where there are no quick saves, and it is a checkpoint save system, I will probably pass again. I really dislike checkpoint save systems, they are frustrating and un-fun. I've been playing Resident Evil HD remaster recently, and I just want to be able to quick save, and not have to search for save checkpoints.

These game developers need to understand that some of us don't want to keep re-playing sections of their game, that gets real old, real fast, and we need to have the ability to save at any time, because we have other obligations to do like in real life, and we can't keep playing a game all the damn time to reach checkpoints! *Rant off*
 
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I'm quietly excited for this; mostly because of the return of Miyazaki. It's arguably clear that his influence was sadly missing from the sequel and that the cohesion of the world design suffered somewhat as a result.

I deeply enjoy writing and thinking about this series as I experience them, as well as the multiplayer potential with friends. Beating Kalameet, Artorias and Manus with my fellow budding Dark Souls mate for instance were extremely satisfying gaming experiences.
 
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Since I really loved DS1 and Demon's, and enjoyed DS2, too (but could see very well its shortcomings), I am happy to hear this piece of news.

However, having played Bloodborne, too, I'm not too sure about Miyazaki being the Second Coming and all that. BB has shown how the Big M can drop the ball too, and how he is re-iterating the same ideas over and over in these games. BB's setting is cool and the Lovecraftian horror stuff is most welcome (to me at least), but it is too obscure for obscurity's sake. The whole affair doesn't make much more sense than DS2's lore did, it has the same kind of holes and contradictions in it, so I don't think Miyazaki is the answer to the problems. Especially so because BB seems to reintroduce a lot of terrible design flaws and shortcomings that DS2 had already ironed out!

It sadly seems to me that after the admittedly unexpected cult success of the first two Souls games, FROM could not really understand what made those two games so appealing to the fans and could not repeat such coherence. I hope they can turn this tide.
 
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However, having played Bloodborne, too, I'm not too sure about Miyazaki being the Second Coming and all that.

I don't think anyone's claiming that he's the second coming; that would be an exaggeration. I agree one can easily over state the importance an individual can have, but I don't think any particular evaluations regarding Bloodborne are fully relevant given the differences in the two settings and the exclusivity of that game.

I naturally agree with you there is much more to creating a game than one single creative mind or vision and that Fromsoft will need to find new ways of innovating within their now well established style and "formula" to keep it from repetitive stagnation. Some of the boss fights especially in Dark Souls 2 felt occasionally quite derivative of mechanics established by earlier games. Where and how much further they can take this well trodden tradition remains to be seen.

Still, my love for the series makes me almost inherently optimistic that they can build another world to enthrall and captivate which will improve upon the weaknesses of both games. We'll just have to wait and see what they have in mind. :)
 
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Especially so because BB seems to reintroduce a lot of terrible design flaws and shortcomings that DS2 had already ironed out!

I beat DS2 and though while still ok it was the worst of the souls games. I haven't had a chance to play bloodborne yet though so what design flaws and shortcomings did you find?
 
Well, let's see:

- The dropping of shields and a defense mechanic altogether instead of trying to improve upon it was really hurting the overall experience. While developing BB, FROM somehow thought it a brilliant and modern idea to have players solve every problem in game with rolling and i-frames. Because supposedly it's "visceral" and "flashy" and "encourages you to attack" and "liberates you from fearing a fight". Complete bullshit imho. I know the setting would work badly with shields, but they could have provided some other mechanic (weapon block, etc). So there's no block or bash, and nothing at all to substitute two fundamental mechanics. And this jumpy over-the-top style of play is just not cool at all.

- Covenants are nonexistent. DS2 I believe managed to, for the most part, improve on the half-baked covenant system of DS1 quite well. Now in BB you have 3 "covenants" that require only a single run (read: ring) to equip. There's no covenant levels, no rewards, no lore, no dialogue, no tokens, nothing, apart from some minor bonuses on the rune and 2 covenants of the 3 being mutually exclusive in multiplayer.

- Healing. In BB, you heal by Blood Vials. You can carry 20 initially (runes let you carry 24ish max). Monsters drop them very often and the ones in excess to your 20 vials go into a storage. You can retrieve from the storage in the HUB area (you do so automatically upon death). Healing takes about 1.5 seconds, so almost instant, with vials and restores about 75% health. This makes the game very, very, very easy imho. We're back to Demon's Souls again with the broken 99 healing grass mechanic basically. DS2 did healing very well I believe, the best solution from the series.

- Multiplayer itself also suffered a huge blow. Now don't get me wrong, Soul Memory was a nice idea that got terribly botched in execution, but this BB invasion/coop system seems even worse. You can only get invaded in areas where there's a bell maiden (2 areas in the game), but you can track them down and kill them. If you try to summon, however, no matter what area you are in a bell maiden spawns. This means you will never ever get invaded really, except for when summoning coop friends. This kills coop, because you are constantly invaded if you try to play with friends (and they even provided password-coded games to improve coop), and it kills invasions, because the invader will always be outnumbered and has to resort to hiding behind enemies and other stupid cheesy methods. Add to that the Blood Vial healing, with all players having 20 insta max heals and it's almost impossible to interrupt, so you'll have drawn out, annoying fights that no one thinks is fun.

- No poise. Neither on players, nor enemies. This means everyone can be stunlocked if you have the right stamina. Enemies, who have infinite, can stunlock you to death very simply. And in order to prevent you from R1 mashing through all of them like this, they sometimes get hyperarmor (ie they become immune to stun and attack you during your animations), which is totally unpredictable and causes 90% of deaths. Why not drop health mechanics as well and make it a 1-hit-kill affair? =/

- Items. Very few weapons, armor, and items in general. DS2 may have had too much, but I'd rather have that than have this few. This also unfortunately ends up ruining exploration for the most part, because there's nothing to find anywhere, really. No ranged combat at all, since pistols and guns are only for parrying in close range.

- Magic. It is non-existent in BB. Yes, there are about 6-7 "spells" that are really items you can use again and again with Silver bullets (another 20 max resource). Most take so many bullets you can cast them 1-2 times and neither are useful sadly. The only stat that improves them is Arcane, which is otherwise pretty useless, so few people bother raising it. Caster-builds are therefore obsolete.

- Stats. In DS2 you had about 3 times as many stats, most being useful for one build or the other. Here you have Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, Vitality, Arcane, and Bloodtinge, with the latter two being very obscure and about 10% of players ever level them beyond 10. This sadly means a lot of mechanics disappeared that were tied to stats, and the game is really more Action than Action-RPG.

- New game cycles. They provide nothing at all besides monsters with ridiculous HP and damage output. A complete joke, especially because DS2 improved upon this vastly, with new enemy placement, enemy movesets, boss abilities, and item locations in NG+ and beyond.

- NPCs. When I say NPCs are even shittier than in DS2, you can image how bad it is. None of them are remotely interesting, and none have a longer questline or any depth to them.

These are just off the top of my head. The list goes on and on. Had BB not a remarkable atmosphere and lore with a strong Lovecraftean and body-horror theme, I think I'd really be disappointed in it. It proves to me that FROM kinda lost its touch somewhat.

Also, this is their second game in a row that later they admitted was rushed out to release and had to cut tons of content. Now with BB they are adding it back with an expansion pack. DS2 got the meaty DLC kingdoms. But still tons of basic mechanics got cut. One game had Sony as a publisher, the other had Namco Bandai. This proves to me that there are serious problems in leadership at FROM, either because they agreed to terms that could not be held, or because they could not make the dev team work efficiently enough to finish on time.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I think it could be informative to Soulsborne fans, and maybe show the shape of things to come for DS3. I'm not happy with the announcement entirely, I'd really rather have them make a new, fresh, in a new interesting setting to explore. But Namco will have none of that, they want to cash in on the franchise. So I'm cautious with this one.
 
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Wow that is a wall of shortcomings, thanks for the detailed response.

No poise and tons of health sound awful. I assume they did away with poise because there's not a lot of armor due to the setting?

I heard that there was 1 shield in the game but you find it so late it's useless. It's that true? Also I thought guns were supposed to be a form of blocking but it doesn't sound that way how you describe it.

I'm glad to hear the atmosphere is good. That was what really endured me to DS1 and I thought DS2 kind of got away from that.

Worse npc's, is that possible?

I saw no agility listed what stats govern IFrames?

Few weapons, armor and magic sounds terrible. What about rings? And exploration not rewarded? WTF, that was a strong point of DS1.

I'll still play it but I much less enthusiastic now.
 
Sorry for the wall of text, but I think it could be informative to Soulsborne fans, and maybe show the shape of things to come for DS3. I'm not happy with the announcement entirely, I'd really rather have them make a new, fresh, in a new interesting setting to explore. But Namco will have none of that, they want to cash in on the franchise. So I'm cautious with this one.

I don't think you need to be worried about what Bloodborne hints at for Dark Souls III. Graphics quality, maybe, but Sony could have made Demon Souls 2 and not even involved From Software if they wanted to steal souls formula. Instead, From was hired to make something as deliberately different as it is similar and the Demons IP stays hidden in the Sony vaults being guarded by top men while Dark Souls III is free to flourish with no real competitor.

Bloodborne is the new, fresh setting, but that doesn't mean a dark high fantasy setting can't have interesting new locations to explore. Dark Souls II was set in the same land only so far into the future that no one even remembers the name of the old kingdom so where/when Dark Souls III is set could be anything.
 
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The only people I've seen complain about Bloodborne are people who were huge fans of Dark Souls, which is understandable, but then again, this isn't strictly a Dark Souls sequel, it's an entirely new product which has been laid upon the foundations of a previous title for the sake of ease of production.

I'm not really sure how far you can take criticisms of it by means of comparison to Dark Souls. It is, first and foremost, a console game and has no ambition to be a PC game for a start. Yes, I can understand the worry of someone who wants FROM to make another decent PC game and that this worry might be a reason to criticise BB, but the details of the differences are irrelevant for this argument, all you need to do is moan that's it's a console game rather than try to argue XYZ mechanic is better or worse.
 
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I'm all up for a new one - if they bring something fresh to the table. The Japanese devs are buggers for reiterating to death, which I think is what gave jrpgs a bad name.
 
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VGLoggers revealed the leaked release date of Dark Souls 3 from an official artwork.

In a recent development on Dark Souls 3, an unreleased, official artwork of the game has been leaked just days before E3 2015 where it was expected that we’d get to know the release date of Dark Souls 3.

The artwork is emblazoned with ‘EARLY 2016′ that clearly shows the game to be released next year in the first quarter. It seems like it’s not really a good time for the makers of Dark Souls 3, just few days back some screenshots were leaked and now the release date.
 
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Nice, that's earlier than I would have thought. The question is though, how much later will the PC version drop if at all?
 
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