Dark Souls
| Dark Souls | |||||
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| Original title | ダ ー ク ソ ウ ル | ||||
| transcription | Dāku Souru | ||||
| Studio |
 From software
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| Publisher |
Bandai Namco Games
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| Senior Developer | Hidetaka Miyazaki | ||||
| composer | Motoi Sakuraba | ||||
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
PlayStation 3, Xbox 360: September 22, 2011 October 4, 2011 October 7, 2011 Microsoft Windows: October 25, 2012 August 24, 2012 August 24, 2012 PlayStation 4, Xbox One: May 24, 2018 May 25, 2018 May 25 2018 Nintendo Switch: October 19, 2018  |
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| platform | PlayStation 3 , Xbox 360 , Windows , PlayStation 4 , Xbox One , Nintendo Switch | ||||
| genre | Action RPG | ||||
| Game mode | Single player , multiplayer | ||||
| control | Gamepad , mouse , keyboard | ||||
| medium | Blu-ray Disc , DVD-ROM , Download , Game Card | ||||
| language |
Audio: English Subtitles: German, English, French, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Korean, Chinese (traditional), Japanese |
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| copy protection | Steamworks | ||||
| Age rating |
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| PEGI content rating |
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Dark Souls (Jap. ダークソウル Daku Souru ) is a fantasy - computer role-playing game of the Japanese developer From Software . It was released in 2011 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles ; a Windows version appeared in August 2012. In May 2018, versions for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One came onto the market. In October of the same year a version for the Nintendo Switch was released . The game is considered the spiritual successor to Demon's Souls by the same developer.
action
In contrast to most other video games, Dark Souls does not have a tightly narrated plot, but instead challenges the player to find out the story of the game world and the meaning of his actions for himself. Small background stories and information about the game world and its inhabitants are told through descriptions of objects or short dialogues with NPCs . The game deliberately leaves many details open, so that the player is challenged to draw his own conclusions from the plot fragments.
prehistory
Long before the game began, the world of Dark Souls consisted of nothing but a gray wasteland. Only through the unexplained emergence of fire and the souls contained in it, humanoid forms of life emerged, which could cultivate the world with the power of four princely souls ( age of fire ). From this point on, the plot roughly divides the humanoids into normal people and rulers. The most important people are the ruler, Prince Gwyn (founder and builder of the Lordran game world ) and the stealthy dwarf who once found the dark soul in the fire and initially does not seem to play a role.
Game plot
The title takes place in the kingdom of Lordran, which is haunted by the curse of the undead. The player starts himself as the undead and wakes up in the asylum of the undead in a dungeon cell. He will be helped to escape and he can travel to Lordran. Now it is up to the player to ring the two bells of revival to learn more about the curse that lies upon the world.
The curse of the undead allows the player to rise again at beacons after death, but the curse has turned almost all people in Lordran into senseless, aggressive beings, which are called shells and no longer have humanity in them. After the two bells have rung, the snake King Seeker Frampt explains to the player that the cause of the curse is the extinction of the primordial fire and thus the end of the Age of Fire threatens to herald. Lord Gwyn once sacrificed his life as food for the primordial fire, so that his Age of Fire could continue. To do the same as Gwyn and save the world from the curse, the player must find the ruler's vessel, fill it with the four lordly souls and defeat Gwyn in battle.
Another snake, Dark Stalker Kaathe , tells a different story about past events: The end of Gwyn's Age of Fire is necessary for the Age of Darkness / Humans to be ushered in. The player and all humans are descendants of the stealthy dwarf , who carry a part of the dark soul within them (humanity). Gwyn, fearing for his inheritance, tried to prevent this outcome through his sacrifice.
To what extent one is deceived by both snakes remains unclear. After Lord Gwyn has been defeated at the source of the fire, the player can either leave the area, whereupon he will usher in the Age of Darkness and will be crowned Prince of the Undead by the serpents, or light the last beacon and extend the Age of Fire.
Gameplay
At the beginning of the game, the player creates a character whose appearance and gender he can customize. In addition, he selects his character from the character classes warrior, knight, vagabond, thief, bandit, hunter, magician, pyromancer, cleric and beggar. The only difference between the classes is the player's starting equipment and, in some cases, talent points that have already been invested according to the class. Since the player has a free choice in improving his talents, he can still change his mind afterwards and thus find his own way of playing. The "gift" that the player can choose can also have greater significance. While some of the gifts are simple consumables that add a little benefit initially, there are some a. there is also the option of choosing the “master key”, which opens many doors in the game right at the start of the game and thus allows considerable shortcuts to be used. However, this is not advisable, especially for beginners, as it opens up very advanced areas that can overwhelm inexperienced players.
The game world of Dark Souls is open and consists of partially interconnected areas. The player fights his way through a variety of opponents and meets a few boss opponents. For each monster defeated, he receives souls, which are used both to increase talents and as a means of payment at merchants. In addition, objects such as weapons, armor or consumables such as bombs and throwing knives are scattered around the world. However, there are no healing items, only "Estus bottles", of which the player has a predetermined number available. In some places the player also meets NPCs who lead short dialogues, teach him skills or sell items.
Everywhere in the game world there are beacons that, after activation, serve as reset points when the player dies, refill the Estus bottles and allow the player to invest souls received from monsters in talent points and later upgrade or repair weapons. When using a beacon, most enemies (but not bosses) come back to life; this also if the player has to return to a beacon due to death. In addition, the player loses all collected but not yet spent souls and these remain as a green cloud at the position of his death. He then has the opportunity to pick them up again by getting to them without another death. However, if he dies again on the way there, the souls are lost.
Another element of the game principle of Dark Souls is the so-called humanity. With it, the player at a beacon can transform himself back into a person until his next death. Some of the game's online features can only be used in human form. So other players can penetrate his world and force him to a PvP fight. In return, he also has the option of inviting allied players into his world through runes placed on the ground, who can then support him in the fight. In addition, regardless of whether the player is human, he can read messages that other players have left for him in the world. The messages can be put together from predefined sentence fragments so that no language barrier can arise between players. There is also the possibility to rate messages in order to e.g. B. protect other players from false information.
development
The game was originally only released for consoles. In response to customer inquiries in the official forum of the publisher Bandai Namco, an employee of the company indicated the possibility of porting, provided that sufficient support was noticeable. This led to an online petition that found several tens of thousands of supporters within a few days and, according to the same employee, also attracted attention at the publisher's management level. In April 2012, Bandai Namco finally announced a PC version with additional content under the title Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition . From Software's Creative Director Hidetaka Miyazaki cited the high demand for a PC version as one of the reasons .
While the Prepare-to-Die Edition for the PC already contains new opponents and areas, the additional content has also been confirmed for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The DLC is called Artorias of the Abyss and was released on October 26, 2012. In addition to new bosses, enemies, PVP arena and online matchmaking system, the expansion also offers additional weapons and armor.
reception
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The game received mostly positive reviews.
A report by the weekly newspaper Die Zeit described Dark Souls as a game that is not aimed at the general public, but rather at a "narrowly defined target group capable of suffering", who draw their satisfaction from coping with particularly difficult tasks.
According to Bandai Namco's annual report, by March 2012 the game had sold 1.19 million times in the United States and Europe. By April 2013, sales increased to 2.37 million copies worldwide.
The Gamestar praises the beautiful game world and the precise and sophisticated combat system, which can be well controlled with a gamepad. On the PC version, the limitation of the frame rate to a maximum of 30 frames per second, a native image resolution of only 1024 × 720 and a catastrophic mouse and keyboard control where the mouse pointer is constantly in the picture are criticized. There would also be frame rate drops again and again.
successor
The successor Dark Souls II was released in mid-March 2014 for the two consoles PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the Windows version was released on April 25th of that year.
The third part of the series, Dark Souls III , was officially announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2015 in Los Angeles for spring 2016 and was released in April of that year in Germany. The series was completed with the third part.
Web links
- Dark Souls at MobyGames (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Announcement of a PC implementation of Dark Souls
- ↑ Review of Dark Souls with a description of the narrative style on GameStar.de, accessed on August 24, 2013.
- ↑ Dark Souls PC petition has 46,000 signatures and counting
- ↑ Dark Souls PC petition at nearly 70,000 signatures, Namco listening
- ↑ Dark Souls Confirmed for PC
- ↑ a b Test on Dark Souls on 4Players.de, accessed on February 23, 2012.
- ↑ a b c Jörg Luibl: Test: Dark Souls - Schandstadt, Meine Perle ... May 25, 2018, accessed on November 30, 2019 .
- ↑ a b Florian Heider: Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition in the test - Dying can be so beautiful! In: GameStar . September 8, 2012, accessed November 30, 2019 .
- ↑ Dark Souls Review on videogameszone.de, accessed on April 25, 2012.
- ↑ a b Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition for PC Reviews. Based on 42 reviews. In: Metacritic . Retrieved November 30, 2019 .
- ↑ a b Dark Souls for PlayStation 3 Reviews. Based on 54 reviews. In: Metacritic . Retrieved November 30, 2019 .
- ↑ a b Dark Souls for Xbox 360 Reviews. Based on 66 reviews. In: Metacritic . Retrieved November 30, 2019 .
- ^ The game of a thousand deaths , report in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit , October 12, 2011.
- ↑ PS3: Namco Bandai Touts Dark Souls Sales, Over 1.19 Million in US and Europe. Playstationlifestyle.net, May 8, 2012, accessed December 8, 2012 .
- ↑ Tom Phillips: Dark Souls worldwide sales total 2.3 million. In: Eurogamer . Gamer Network, April 12, 2013, accessed April 12, 2013 .
- ↑ Dark Souls 3 announcement and reveal teaser analysis ( Memento of the original from May 20, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on wikisouls.com, accessed July 1, 2015
- ↑ Dark Souls 3 - Now the last part of the series on gamestar.de, accessed on May 7, 2016
