Dark Souls 3: with Miyazaki back the future looks magical

With series creator Hideki Miyazaki back at the helm for Dark Souls 3 expectations for the latest in the notoriously difficult action-RPG series are probably higher than they’ve ever been.

While Dark Souls 2 was respected – loved, even – as a very good game, it always felt as though it was lacking something. There were elements that didn’t suit the mood, the notion always hovering about that this was a series that needed its original creator in the role of director, but Miyazaki was busy making Bloodborne.

Sitting down with Dark Souls 3 at Gamescom – even surrounded by the hustle, bustle and general loudness of Europe’s biggest gaming convention – shows one thing for certain: the Miyazaki touch is a magical one.

The detail that struck me immediately (and stuck with me throughout) was just how much smoother and quicker Dark Souls 3 is when compared to its predecessors. That’s not to say it’s now a twitch-based, reactions-heavy brawler; merely that the entire thing runs without any discernable chugging or slowdown as you make your way through the vast, gothic landscape.

What this means for the game itself is genuinely important: there’s even less excuses to be thrown about when you die – again, inevitably. The Dark and Demon’s Souls games - even Bloodborne, to an extent - suffered with some technical hiccups that could, sometimes, spoil the fun.

With the improved fluidity also comes the ability to work on your skills of taking on the armies of (possibly) undead creatures. When you’re unable to blame the game for failures, it means you really do have to hunker down and challenge yourself to improve. It’s always been true that the Souls games usually leave the blame for failure at your feet, but this time it feels even more apparent.

Little of this will matter a huge amount to the army of existing Souls experts out there; they’ll likely just be hankering for another helping of one of the most highly-respected series in recent memory. So it’s good news, then, that the central formula to Dark Souls 3 remains the same as ever.

Choosing your character – the Gamescom demo being limited to just two, but more will be available at release (along with customisation options, naturally) – you step out into an unforgiving world, light a bonfire, tentatively make your way down an ancient stone staircase, don’t notice the reanimated corpse sneaking up behind you and then … well, die.

This familiar rite of passage might make it sound like everything is the same once again, but it’s not. One big new addition to Dark Souls 3 is Arts, a triggered ability that allows you to carry out different attacks with your weapons, without having to change them. The “trick” weapons from Bloodborne are a clear inspiration, though naturally the Arts are in a form more suited to the Souls setting.

Limited to 20 uses, Arts can only be recharged at bonfires – just like life-restoring Estus Flasks, it adds an element of strategy and conservation to an otherwise straightforward element of the game, and manages to bridge the gap between feeling both new and familiar at the same time.

Familiar systems, like life-saving dodge-rolls and parry/riposte, of course make a return. And, again, the improved speed of Dark Souls 3 has an impact: you need to be ready and able to use these skills at the drop of a hat. At an even quicker drop of a hat than before, actually. Before you know it a knife-wielding beast will have chased you down and attacked, and without swift, decisive reactions you’re going to die. Again.

That’s where the feel of Bloodborne wafting about the place comes up again. While by no means the quick, aggressive play-style of Miyazaki’s other game, Dark Souls 3 has definitely taken a few pointers from its stablemate. It lands solidly in the middle of Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne, offering a quicker, more fluid game than the former but a far more defensive and considered one than the latter.

If Miyazaki and his team can truly pull off what they hope to – a game that brings together the best features of both the original Dark Souls and its sequel – then this could well be one for the ages.

But half an hour with a game that committed players put literally hundreds of hours into is simply not enough to get a good grasp of how Dark Souls 3 will turn out. It is, however, enough to see that there are a lot of neat tricks, tweaks and touches coming to such a beloved series.

There’s still another year or so before Dark Souls 3 hits, and I’d fully expect there’ll be a lot more revealed about it in that time. But even now, with such a vague grasp of what’s truly going on in the third game, I’m already hooked.