In a recent interview with Gameinformer, Dark Souls III director Hidetaka Miyazaki spilled the beans on how he and his team at From Software will be cherry-picking the best parts of the two previous games for the third game in the series and making changes to those he feels didn’t work too well.
The biggest change, Miyazaki says, from past games will be the durability system, which he states has never been balanced particularly well.
I personally think the weapons in Dark Souls 2 break a little to easily. This was implemented intending for the players to try out many types of weapons, but even so, I felt they broke too quickly. However, in Dark Souls 1, they didn’t break enough, and so I’m hoping to find a good balance for Dark Souls 3.
As for those tasty hidden areas full of loot that are always hidden behind illusory walls – they’re making a return for Dark Souls III, but the way in which you interact with them will be the same as it was in Dark Souls.
This is due to my thinking behind this type of feature. I like to have coincidences happen during battles, or accidental reveals due to swinging weapons around or randomly shooting arrows. I want to implement this sort of surprise discovery in a natural way when playing the game.
Miyazaki concludes by saying many of the spells from the previous two games will be returning for Dark Souls III, but that the magic system as a whole is being expanded upon to add more diversity.
We will make sure that they are not just the same type of spells with different attributes (i.e. Spear type, lightning type) but actually have specific characteristics that can enhance the players’ play styles and strategies.
Players will be able to have more criteria to accurately choose the different types of spells to best fit their tactics and strategies. This is similar to the thinking behind the characterisation of each weapon and their specific battle arts.
Perhaps most interestingly of all though, is the reveal that fast travel will, in fact, be possible from the very start of the game like it was in Dark Souls II. On top of that, New Game Plus mode will return, but feature vast changes to enemy and item placements in a similar way to Dark Souls II: Scholar Of The First Sin did.
Dark Souls III is currently slated for an early 2016 release date on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. We’re expecting to hear more info on the game at this year’s Tokyo Game Show, so stay tuned.
