OXM has an article about Dark Souls 2. According to PR Director Lee Kirton the publisher has no qualms about marketing the game this time. Namco would like to attract Skyrim players, but previous buyers are still the main focus.

"The good thing this time round is we're investing more in it from a marketing perspective," Kirton told OXM at a preview event in London today. "With Dark Souls and [PS3-exclusive spiritual predecessor] Demon Souls it was very focused, small-scale. We're treating this as a massive, massive triple-A title."

"We're going to go guns-blazing with it, and hope to God that it works," he continued. "We're going after people who love and adore Dark Souls, while hopefully widening the net a little. I'm not saying that every Skyrim player's going to be jumping on Dark Souls, but it would be nice if some of them did. It's a different game, sure."

GameReactor spoke to Dark Souls 2 director Yui Tanimura at the recent Global Gamers Day event. Tanimura had quite a bit to say about the game by elaborating upon the design decisions he made for Dark Souls 2.

Director Yui Tanimura gives us a brief round down on the changes he's wrought to Dark Souls, and how sharing the game with other players will make for a better experience.

2D-X has an article with more information on Dark Souls 2.

We were told that Dark Souls II is using an improved graphical engine that promises greater graphical fidelity than previous titles. The demo we were presented played on a PC version of the game. According to Miyazoe and Tanimura, Dark Souls II is being developed simultaneously for all three platforms (PC, Xbox 360, and PS3).

On the subject of equipment, I asked Tanimura how equipment burden would work in Dark Souls II. The character piloted in Dark Souls II moved incredibly fluidly, despite being overburdened with full armor and six weapons. He answered by explaining that ”the relationship between weight and movement speed will be maintained. For the sake of the demo, and because we haven’t fully tuned the mechanics yet, it did seem faster than what it should be.”

Storytelling will continue in much the same way that it was presented in Dark Souls as well. In the original game, NPC dialogue and item descriptions were all you had to piece together the cryptic story of the game. Every item gave us a small nugget of information about the regions of the world and famous people who once lived there, or the gods and their relationships with one another, or the fall of the regions you explored. NPCs added their own spin on the story, giving us lore filtered through their own eyes and experiences. The beauty with this method of storytelling is how non-intrusive it is. Players who wish to immerse themselves in the world can study every piece of flavor text in the game, while those who don’t give a fig can ignore or outright murder NPCs and never read a single item description, yet still complete the game.

“In terms of our storytelling methods, we plan to continue in the same way we told story in Dark Souls,” Tanimura replied when asked about the storytelling. “We’re not going to directly communicate story to the players. What we want to encourage is for players to try and imagine and utilize their experiences with NPCs and events in the game to piece together the story.”

Forbes has an interview with with Dark Souls Director Yui Tanimura.

According to From Software’s Dark Souls II director, Yui Tanimura, challenge is one of the things that made the original game so satisfying.

But as word of a push toward more ‘accessibility’ in the new game spread across the internet, fans began to worry. News that creator Hidetaka Miyazaki was not directing the sequel only made matters worse.

Would the sequel be dumbed down? Would it be made easier? Would it go for the “Skyrim audience?”

“I would like to clarify here that we do not have any plan to make the game easier,” Tanimura tells me. “As Dark Souls focused on giving a sense of satisfaction to players, Dark Souls II is also pursuing to provide this sense. We cherish Dark Souls fans’ voices and would like to improve this game based on their voices to let them enjoy a highly challenging game.”

Along these lines, the developer has no plans to include options within the game to make it easier for more casual players.

“We do not plan on having an Easy Mode,” says Tanimura, “since we are creating this game with a thought that challenge and difficulty are core elements of the game.”

No Easy Mode should certainly come as a relief to many Souls fans.

Namco Bandai wants you to create a piece of equipment for the upcoming Dark Souls II.

Popular shield design contest returns offering players another chance of Immortality in Dark Souls II

NAMCO BANDAI Games Europe announce announces that a DARK SOULS™ II shield design contest will begin today on the game’s official Facebook page at www.facebook.com/darksouls.

Channel your inner medieval craftsman and create the best shield design; showing off your skills as a warrior artist. Then, submit your works of art, and watch the votes tally up from every corner of the globe from fellow Dark Souls II fans.

The submission and voting period for shield designs will begin on April 15^th and run through May 13^th. Beginning May 14^th no further submissions will be taken and the contest enters into a “voting only” phase until May 20^th. On May 20^th the shield designs that receive the most fan votes will be submitted for a final round of judging by the Dark Souls II development team at FromSoftware in Japan. The FromSoftware development team will select the final six winning shield designs to be included within the final Dark Souls II game. The winners will be announced at San Diego Comic Con taking place from July 18^th through the 21^st.

The six lucky winners will be able to engage in battle with their friends online while proudly bearing the shield of their own design. Other players will also be able to carry the shields designed by their compatriots into battle.

Yet again another Dark Souls 2 trailer but this time it's to show off the improved engine. This one is shorter and doesn't spoil the game.

Dark Souls 2 will utilize a new engine to bring a feeling of freshness to the series. As demonstrated in the trailer below, it has allowed From Software to make the game's areas much larger while improving texture quality at the same time. A series of new lighting effects radiate when you light your torch or find a shrivel of light within the game's wealth of dark corridors. Most importantly, the framerate problems of Dark Souls have been rectified. Along with more detailed animations the game is more smooth and stylized than the games which preceeded it.

Shacknews reports a fan petition successfully convinced publisher Namco Bandai, and developer From Software to bring Dark Souls 2 to PC.

"A lot of it was not very well done, sort of half-assed," Dark Souls 2 director Yui Tanimura told Shacknews via translator (Tak Miyazoe), while promising a much better experience for the sequel.

"Yes, we will definitely put more priority on the PC. Last time, we started working on PC after the console version was complete," Tanimura explained. "This time, because we are considering the PC from the beginning, you can be sure there will be more care put into PC development."

IGN has a 12 minute interviw of Dark Souls 2. I know from personal experience the first was in my opinion a very good game. Given the sales on the pc it's likely that the second game will have a pc release. Enjoy.

Edge Online talked to Dark Souls producer Hidetaka Miyazaki to learn that amongst others he is only involved in it's follow up Dark Souls II as a supervisor.

“I will not be involved in the actual development of Dark Souls II,” he says matter-of-factly. “I want to clarify that I will be a supervisor, not the actual director or producer.”

This is a crushing revelation for any hardcore fan of Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, akin to a cinephile learning that Pulp Fiction 2 is in production, but that Quentin Tarantino isn’t attached to the picture. The strong personal tie between Miyazaki and the two dark fantasy RPGs he’s created to date has been well established. He explained to us in a previous interview, for instance, that the veil of ambiguity hovering over the Souls games grew out of his experiences as a child poring over western fantasy literature. Due to his patchy comprehension of English at the time, there were large chunks of each book he couldn’t decipher, leaving him to fill in the details with his imagination. He set out to create that same sense of awe and bewilderment in his games, letting players fill in the gaps with their imagination instead of having every plot point and objective clearly articulated through in-game text or cutscenes.

Kotaku has penned a piece titled Here's What the Developers of Dark Souls II Can Do To Make it Better:

Accessibility

Finally—and this may not be a popular opinion right now—a more accessible Dark Souls II might not be a bad thing. The new director's recent statements on the subject enraged fans, and understandably—no one wants Dark Souls to turn into Skyrim. But seriously, let's talk about this for a second. Imagine if you didn't have to check the Dark Souls wiki every time you wanted to upgrade an item, or if plot details were doled out through dialogue and character interactions instead of static in-game descriptions of shields and rings. As long as they retain a similar sense of wonder and sometimes desperate isolation, it can still be great. Hell, it could be even better.

VG247 offers a gallery of a dozen concept arts from the recently-revealed Dark Souls II.

Polygon has some comments on Dark Souls II from Hidetaka Miyazaki, the previous project director, in Japan's Famitsu magazine. Dark Souls II will be set in a different region of the same world and he believes they need to protect the "core":

"If we're going to announce this as a sequel to Dark Souls then I think there's certainly a core that we need to protect," Miyazaki said. "I'm talking about how we think about the difficulty level and how you achieve things in-game; about the concepts behind the mechanics and level design. Outside of that core, though, I think it's better to leave things to the discretion of the director. There's a lot around that core that we need to fix or adjust, besides, and individual touches always tend to come out in the world setting and artwork, so I'm not meddling in that very much."

Two editorials have been penned expressing concern over changes to the formula of Dark Souls II. Let's start with IGN's 4 Reasons I'm Worried About Dark Souls 2:

1. No Miyazaki

From Software's Hidetaka Miyazaki was the director of both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls and his influence is everywhere in those games. He's an exceptionally sharp and unusual character, utterly uncompromising in his vision and fastidious about realising it. He takes an extremely active role in everything from art design to player feedback, from the intricacies of the game's mechanics to the overarching themes of death and hopelessness that permeate every tiny element of it. And he's not directing Dark Souls 2. Instead we've got Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura, both of whom are a mystery. Shibuya's MobyGames profile shows games from Resident Evil Outbreak to Monster Hunter, but I don't know how long he's been at From.

This really concerns me. When we interviewed Miyazaki in 2011, he gave the impression that he wouldn't do another Souls game unless he knew it was breaking new ground once again. Miyazaki is apparently staying on as an advisor, but if he's no longer in charge of Dark Souls, does that mean he can't think of where to take it next? Frankly, if Miyazaki can't take Dark Souls in brave new directions, I'm a bit sceptical that anyone can. A Dark Souls rehash would definitely not be the worst thing in the world, but it also wouldn't be in the spirit of the series.

...and Joystiq's The real danger in Dark Souls 2 is not 'accessibility':

The fear, I think, is that Dark Souls 2 is moving toward appeasing mainstream audiences and losing some of what made it so special in the first place. It's a valid concern, especially considering the venue the game was announced at. But being more straight-forward is not a bad thing. Both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, if you'll recall, featured some pretty obtuse level design (screw Blighttown, seriously). There's a middle ground that can be reached here.

What actually worries me is the fact that Dark Souls just keeps getting bigger and bigger. In noting Shibuya's comment about accessibility, Edge indirectly gave voice to those fears by suggesting that "we can surely agree that we would all like to see Dark Souls attain as great a presence as The Elder Scrolls."

Well no. Not really.

Xarg sends word that Bandai Namco and From announced Dark Souls II at the VGAs.  A teaser site has been launched and the PC is listed as a platform - let's hope including the PC from the start means better support. Gametrailers has the footage from the VGAs (skip to 2:20 unless you really want to listen to Jessica Alba).