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[Beelzebufo]

Looks....kinda on the easy side. Visually magnificent but it seems like they really scaled down the difficulty. That could hurt the long term.

I was thinking that too. Although if you compare it to the Asylum of Dark Souls (and even the beginning of undead burg), it doesn't seem too out of place.

Can you parry in this game? I've been trying not to spoil myself too much so I haven't been following this, but I couldn't resist and watched this and I don't think I saw this guy parryng once

I think if you shoot at the right time your oppenent is stunned like a parry.

 

[bwakh]

Going by the previous souls games, there'll be potentially hundreds of weapons spread across a number of different categories. Swords, axes, hammers, greatswords, scythes... There're a lot of weapons in these games

 

[Jarsonot]

Looks fantastic.

Do you think those loading times are really that short, or ign edited out the loads for their video?

Hard to believe they could be that quick.

 

[Phoenician_Viking]

I found the camera to be terrible. Getting attack from behind with barely seeing the enemy, and the camera was all kind of horrible when fighting the clerical beast, .

 

[Stratosphere]

Has anybody taken screen-grabs of all the UI elements?

 

[Mandelbo]

Can you parry in this game? I've been trying not to spoil myself too much so I haven't been following this, but I couldn't resist and watched this and I don't think I saw this guy parryng once

Parries have been replaced by Countershots. If you shoot an enemy just as they're about to attack you, you'll stun them and be able to perform a riposte on them where you punch them through their stomach.

 

[Mutombo]

Looks....kinda on the easy side. Visually magnificent but it seems like they really scaled down the difficulty. That could hurt the long term.

THIS IS THE FIRST 18 MINUTES PLAYED BY A HARDCORE FAN

 

[JudgmentJay]

It looks like they're already using post-processing AA in game. The fine detail shimmering is most likely due to shader aliasing, and I'm afraid only high levels of downsampling/supersampling would be effective in cleaning it up a bit.

This. Alien Isolation had the same thing.

 

[Beelzebufo]

I found the camera to be terrible. Getting attack from behind with barely seeing the enemy, and the camera was all kind of horrible when fighting the clerical beast, .

The lock on system, while useful for what it's supposed to do, is also terrible when there are multiple enemies or tall enemies.

I guess you could say the most disappointing thing about this trailer is that it looks like a lot of the DkS problems are still there.

Going by the previous souls games, there'll be potentially hundreds of weapons spread across a number of different categories. Swords, axes, hammers, greatswords, scythes... There're a lot of weapons in these games

We already have a few!

Spoiler

Weird ass cleaver thing
Axe
Cane
Pistols
Heavy Pistols

 

[Parhelion69]

The game looks amazing! I was on a media blackout, but I was tempted to look at this. My hype has gone even higher.

Definitely getting this

 

[takriel]

THIS IS THE FIRST 18 MINUTES PLAYED BY A HARDCORE FAN

Hardcore fan that died in the first 3 minutes? lol

 

[Kssio_Aug]

Looks....kinda on the easy side. Visually magnificent but it seems like they really scaled down the difficulty. That could hurt the long term.

I don't know, the guy seems to have played it more then once so he was familiar with the mechanics already. Now, there's the fact that even in D. Souls the first type of enemies is not that hard to kill when you get the hang of the controls, and at last, he did nothing to the boss.

 

[pixxxelz]

I think if you shoot at the right time your oppenent is stunned like a parry.

But you have limited amount of bullets... oh well I'm pretty bad at parryng anyway

 

[Primethius]

I was thinking that too. Although if you compare it to the Asylum of Dark Souls (and even the beginning of undead burg), it doesn't seem too out of place.



I think if you shoot at the right time your oppenent is stunned like a parry.

Haven't watched the entire video. Is the game easy or merely being played by someone competent?

 

[FF Seraphim]

THIS IS THE FIRST 18 MINUTES PLAYED BY A HARDCORE FAN

Plus he got stomped by the boss...

 

[MMaRsu]

Hardcore fan that died in the first 3 minutes? lol

I think thats supposed to happen...

 

[Neoweee]

Hardcore fan that died in the first 3 minutes? lol

You can be a fan without being great at the games. I don't think most Dark Souls 1 fans went through Dark Souls 2 without dying more than a few times.

(Cue people calling DkS2 "fake difficulty", etc.)

 

[Stratosphere]

We already have a few!

Spoiler

Weird ass cleaver thing
Axe
Cane
Pistols
Heavy Pistols

You forgot the best of all.

Spoiler

Hammer-sword!

 

[SweetJohnnyCage]

Sinner's rise is not a level, the level is the Bastille. And the Bastille is full of secrets, shortcuts.

I agree that the various areas are disconnected and that's what i don't like but the levels are very good and there ios plenrty of exploration.

A corridor game is FFXIII, surely not DSII

About this gameplay video, it looks amazing. But i am not saying GOTY yet as many already did, i have to play it.

Sinner's Rise is a level. It has a title display and it's own warp section.

 

[Mandelbo]

I found the camera to be terrible. Getting attack from behind with barely seeing the enemy, and the camera was all kind of horrible when fighting the clerical beast, .

To be fair, you could hear the enemies approaching the player pretty clearly, if you're talking about the section with the mob. Paying attention to the audio cues and checking to see if you're about to run into an ambush were both vital in the alpha.

We already have a few!

Spoiler

Weird ass cleaver thing
Axe
Cane
Pistols
Heavy Pistols

Don't forget Shotguns!

 

[Kssio_Aug]

Hardcore fan that died in the first 3 minutes? lol

That was clearly a overpower enemy for him to fight (specially with no guns). After he dies, he goes to the Nexus, where the game continues to another location giving him access to his first equipments. So yeah... that was suppose to happen.

 

[tcrunch]

Has anybody taken screen-grabs of all the UI elements?

I posted these:

And the most important UI element:

 

[D Bo Chops]

For those that don't wanna watch it, there is an intro and then basically footage of the Alpha area you've probably already seen. Nothing too spoilery.

Looks like they changed the lighting from the Alpha area, unless there is going to be a day night cycle (which I doubt). Everything looks less...vivd/shiny.

 

[Blakynt]

Tseldora, Dragon Aerie, Shaded Woods, and Harvest Valley as "corridors"? Are you joking?

Oh, sorry, I guess I'm not viewing things critically enough!

hidden zones are not the same as alternative paths

 

[Mutombo]

I also love the charge attacks, even on the light weapons!

 

[FF Seraphim]

To be fair, you could hear the enemies approaching the player pretty clearly, if you're talking about the section with the mob. Paying attention to the audio cues and checking to see if you're about to run into an ambush were both vital in the alpha.

Talking about audio cues, you can hear the flintlock rifles trigger giving you enough time to dodge out the way. I find that little piece will be highly important.

 

[Toxi]

OH JESUS THAT BOSS'S SCREAM

 

[Hoo-doo]

Hardcore fan that died in the first 3 minutes? lol

Eh, that dude played this section before and knows he's supposed to die.

 

[Beelzebufo]

You forgot the best of all.

Spoiler

Hammer-sword!

Aww I didn't even see that. Nice!

Haven't watched the entire video. Is the game easy or merely being played by someone competent?

It looked like the latter. He did lots of different attacks and dodged out of the way a lot, and even then still died pretty quickly to the boss.

Hardcore fan that died in the first 3 minutes? lol

Spoiler

It's like the opening of Demon's Souls

 

[takriel]

I think thats supposed to happen...

Nah don't think so. You could totally evade its attacks.

You can be a fan and still die to new things.

Yeah that's true. I guess he didn't want to show us too much of the game and died there on purpose.

 

[Kssio_Aug]

OH JESUS THAT BOSS'S SCREAM

Yup! That was creepy!

 

[SweetJohnnyCage]

Tseldora, Dragon Aerie, Shaded Woods, and Harvest Valley as "corridors"? Are you joking?

Oh, sorry, I guess I'm not viewing things critically enough!

In Tseldora, you just follow the first path down the ridge, into the cave with one entrance and one exit, kill The Congregation, go down the stairs, go down each zip line, through a door, down the only path in that room, out the door, through the archway, into the building, up the left path (the right path leads to another enemy, no exit), down the webs, and then Duke's Dear Freija. Even after Freija, it's one path to Vengarl's body and the Primal Bonfire. There is no exploration.

Tseldora gives the illusion of exploration because it appears to be a vast mining colony, but there is pretty much one single path to follow and you cannot get lost. This is unlike Huntsman's Copse that has several paths to take, which lead to different places (Earthen Peak or Undead Purgatory).

 

[thewhitehawk]

While I understand that they had a limited amount of time to demo the game, the amount of distraction the person playing the game had was really off putting.

My "spider sense" went tingly on many occasions in which I'd expect them to design an ambush and in each and every one them the player just completely walked into it.

First boss seems awesome, and quite high on the difficulty for a first boss. I'm sure people will get better at him but previous Souls games bosses seem like a cake-walk compared to him. He's much more agile than Taurus Demon, Vanguard or Phalanx and seems to do a lot more damage than Taurus and Phalanx can, by comparison.

I like that the heals are not renewable and seem to be relatively scarce but part of me wonders if that won't make the game a bit too easy for people who just farm until they have enough heals to tackle whatever challenge troubles them. It seems like a backwards decision compared to the careful balance they had with Dark Souls.

Combat seems very fluid though. Not sure how much I'll enjoy the power-up mechanic, but I love how fluid and fast you can dodge moves.

 

[Dominic_Shade]

To be fair, you could hear the enemies approaching the player pretty clearly, if you're talking about the section with the mob. Paying attention to the audio cues and checking to see if you're about to run into an ambush were both vital in the alpha.

Indeed. With enough experience, a player can plausibly build up the reflexes to react instantly to an audio cue belonging to an attack or an approaching enemy, even from off-screen. The invincibility frames of your dodge roll will do the rest to keep your health bar safe.

In theory, anyway. We'll see how it actually turns out in the full game.

 

[Neoweee]

In Tseldora, you just follow the first path down the ridge, into the cave with one entrance and one exit, kill The Congregation, go down the stairs, go down each zip line, through a door, down the only path in that room, out the door, through the archway, into the building, up the left path (the right path leads to another enemy, no exit), down the webs, and then Duke's Dear Freija. Even after Freija, it's one path to Vengarl's body and the Primal Bonfire. There is no exploration.

The large open camp area has quite a bit of exploration, as does the zip-line area since you can just drop down to various larges, meeting the bird lady, do the Pate sidequest part, etc.

Even the room before Freja has a bunch of paths down and out of the way ledges to explore.


If people are being that reductionist, then most of Dark Souls 1's areas could also be viewed as being corridors. If Tseldora is a corridor level, then so are the Demon Ruins, Lost Izalith, Crystal Caves, Tomb of Giants, etc. Even Anor Londo is a giant corridor in that regards, except some short off-shoots that lead to gates to other zones.

 

[JudgmentJay]

I like that the heals are not renewable and seem to be relatively scarce but part of me wonders if that won't make the game a bit too easy for people who just farm until they have enough heals to tackle whatever challenge troubles them. It seems like a backwards decision compared to the careful balance they had with Dark Souls.

Based on http://i.imgur.com/stnengw.jpg it looks like you can hold a max of 20, and they look to heal a very small amount compared to estus so it seems like they're just there to supplement the regain system. I do feel that 20 is pretty liberal though... we'll see.

 

[thewhitehawk]

In Tseldora, you just follow the first path down the ridge, into the cave with one entrance and one exit, kill The Congregation, go down the stairs, go down each zip line, through a door, down the only path in that room, out the door, through the archway, into the building, up the left path (the right path leads to another enemy, no exit), down the webs, and then Duke's Dear Freija. Even after Freija, it's one path to Vengarl's body and the Primal Bonfire. There is no exploration.

Even though the path to the boss is relatively straightforward and could be considered linear, since you're basically going through a ravine with houses on the side, there are still a number of things to discover and find and multiple paths that you must follow to be able to do so.

With that said, unlike previous Souls games, I find Tseldora to be poorly designed because you have to revisit the area multiple times in order to reach all of the areas. I don't believe it's possible to obtain everything on your first run through the area whereas in previous Souls games, I can't recall many, if any instances in which if you failed to reach a certain location/platform on your first attempt, you couldn't revisit and try again after.

They could have easily remedied this with a ladder, like they did in one location in Tseldora close to the bonfire, but they didn't and as a result the entire area, among many others, feels half-assed and has honestly one of the most frustrating enemies in the form of those spellcasters that just constantly spam homing balls of light. If you compare Tseldora to what was the "equivalent" lore part of Dark Souls, which is probably the Duke's Archives / Crystal Cave, the whole area is just very underwhelming by comparison.

Even with its weaker levels, Dark Souls 2 is still a really great game, it just seems lackluster in comparison to its predecessors. No one has nailed gameplay, setting, and lore as well as the Souls games have. The weakest Souls game is still leaps and bounds better than the next best action-RPG in my humble opinion.

 

[Beelzebufo]

Nah don't think so. You could totally evade its attacks.

Yeah that's true. I guess he didn't want to show us too much of the game and died there on purpose.

I don't think that's it at all haha. A new player at least is clearly supposed to die there. If he was super hardcore I'm sure he could punch him to death, but that would take up the whole 18 minutes just through the same doorway he went through later.

 

[aravuus]

Couldn't not watch it

The game looks fucking amazing, I can't wait

Nah don't think so. You could totally evade its attacks.

Umm, he got his weapons after dying the first time. I think it's pretty obvious you're supposed to die here. The way you're supposed to die in the Souls games' tutorials.

 

[Facism]

ohh one of the UI icons looks like a brand, like in Berserk ;p

 

[AngryMoth]

Well, I watched. I am weak willed.

Heart beating out of my chest, hype levels at maximum.

 

[Otakumegane]

Those youtube comments oh man.

Also, are the bodies laying there in the 1st scene just copies of you that died before considering the health bar of the enemy is already down and he's always eating someone?

 

[thewhitehawk]

Based on http://i.imgur.com/stnengw.jpg it looks like you can hold a max of 20, and they look to heal a very small amount compared to estus so it seems like they're just there to supplement the regain system. I do feel that 20 is pretty liberal though... we'll see.

You can store 99 and hold 20. That seems reasonable enough to me. I'm guessing there will be more than one type of healing item though. There will probably be something more potent, but scarce and expensive, if you really need it, similar to humanity in Dark Souls (I know, I know, if you knew what you were doing it wasn't hard to get a hold of humanity, but it was still harder than feeding a bonfire with multiple humanities)

 

[Kazuma Kiryu]

Man, it looks so good. Can't wait.

 

[Toxi]

Yup! That was creepy!

It was shit your pants and then change them for a clean pair and then shit your pants again terrifying.

I think that might be the scariest sound I've ever heard in a video game. The sound design for Bloodborne is incredible.

 

[Pound_lb003]

Really confused by all the UI stuff that seems to have cut out two stats from both Dark Souls games.

Dark Souls

• Vitality
• Attunement
• Endurance
• Strength
• Dexterity
• Resistance
• Intelligence
• Faith

vs
Bloodborne

• Vitality
• Endurance
• Strength
• Skill
• Bloodtinge
• Arcane

Could Arcane encompass Intelligence, Faith and Attunement?

Who knows.

 

[Hoo-doo]

Nah don't think so. You could totally evade its attacks.

Yes, and you can actually kill the big demon in the Dark Souls starting area too if you're really dedicated. Wouldn't really make sense in a 'regular' 18 minute playthrough though, i'm guessing beating that wolf with just fists and no armor is no cakewalk.

 

[Afrodium]

Do we know if the entire world is connected outside of the hub, or are there specific areas? From what I saw, it looked like the tombstones in the hub act as archstones, and each one pertains to each area. The areas look much more open than Demon's Souls though, and there isn't a linear way of going through them. To give an example, it would be like if an archstone in Demon's Souls led to a self contained area containing Undead Burg, Undead Parish, and Lower Undead Burg from Dark Souls.

Basically, each tombstone leads to self contained areas (like in Demon's Souls, as in there's no way to get from Boletaria from Latria), but the structure of those areas is more similar to Dark Souls than Demon's Souls.

 

[Primeau31]

Hardcore fan that died in the first 3 minutes? lol

he...had no weapons. you were "meant" to die there to pick up weapons

 

[FantasticMrFoxdie]

motherfucking NOPE at the dark room and Boss


That music tho