Can a videogame trailer hate? I’m almost entirely convinced that this latest trailer for From Software’s Dark Souls wants me dead.
Let’s rewind to a point right about two years ago. Atlus decided to publish an uncharacteristically Western-style PlayStation 3 RPG created by From Software entitled Demon’s Souls. The game was a hit, drawing rave reviews from critics around the world, and attracting a dedicated fanbase.
A dedicated fanbase that never got past the first world.
For you see, Demon’s Souls was hard. Very hard. Actually “hard” doesn’t even begin to describe how unmerciless this game was in tearing out a player’s entrails, sneering like some kind of murderous Billy Idol, then throwing the still warm corpse from the top of a tower to a hungry crowd of dogs assembled below.
There are games that beat you, and then there are games that actively hate your sense of self-worth. Demon’s Souls was the latter.
Back here in the present, a trailer has slipped from Cologne, Germany’s Gamescom 2011. Demon’s Souls has a successor. Though not a true sequel, Dark Souls is every bit its mother’s child, if the moving pictures embedded above are anything to go by.
This time around, the game is being published by Namco Bandai, and will appear on both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on October 4. Despite the expanded audience, the game appears to be every bit as bloodthirsty as its predecessor. The environs are gorgeous, granted, and the beasts inhabiting them are every bit as fantastic and dark as those seen in Demon’s Souls, thus I’m forced to assume that they too subsist entirely on a diet of crushed dreams and tears.
As much as I’ve painted this series of games as a harbinger of all the pain in the world, I should also note that they are capable of eliciting the greatest feelings of accomplishment in almost any game you’ll ever play.
Actually, forget I said that. Forget the gorgeous trailer too. None of you are capable of beating this thing, so you should probably just forget about it. Stay home, play Candyland and forget that Dark Souls is only a month and a half away.
You’ll be saving yourself from a world of suffering.
