Dark Souls II Co-director on VR, Series’ Future, Scholar of the First Sin

During a recent chat with IGN’s writer Jenna Pitch, Dark Souls II’s co-director Yui Tanimura commented on the possibilities opened by the more powerful hardware now available for the series’ future, and whether he sees a Dark Souls virtual reality experience as feasible. While it doesn’t sound like a possibility that has been carefully considered, Tanimura argues that VR would probably mesh well with the series’ due to its “visceral element”:

(It’s mostly sort of on the realistic side, so I think that experience with the headset is something that would go well with Dark Souls as content,) Tanimura adds, agreeing when we mused that taking part in Souls combat using a VR headset in conjunction with motion controllers would be an outrageous experience.

In a second article Tanimura and Bandai Namco localization producer Daniel Markoff go over the improvements and changes that have been implemented in the upcoming Game of the Year-style re-release of the title, Scholar of the First Sin, which will also be coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. To be honest, most of his answers are non-committal and fairly vague, though there’s still new information to be found. A quote on the game’s updated graphics, the PC version of the re-release, and the new story additions:

While there’s no extra content or new maps, there is a new experience in the existing maps with the reshuffling of the enemies and the NPC. The new NPC is the subject to expand and broaden the depth of the Dark Souls 2 story but From Software wasn’t quite ready to give up meaty details on the character and his role.

(So there is a lot of stuff that we are not revealing quite yet,” Tanimura explains. “Basically the idea for him, is he will give the player a new path to proceed on in the game, as well as broaden the story, also to give the player an opportunity to reflect on the story of the game.)

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As for his identity, players will have come across him in the original game. (I think people will look at the videos and screenshots and make their own judgments but that’s up to them,” Tanimura explains. “He’s an already established character in the lore, he’s there you don’t notice him in the original game. It’s an interesting unfolding I think. This goes for players who haven’t played the game as well players who pick up Scholar of the First Sin as their first Darks Souls experience, they are going to be much more involved in the lore because of that.)

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The higher specs of new-gen consoles and DirectX 11 PCs introduces better graphics, framerate and texture resolution, along with improvements to sound, lighting, shadows, cloth and other effects into the overhauled version.

(if you look at the game, its very obviously made for PS4 and Xbox One. I think that players will be satisfied with it and also those on DirectX 11,) Markoff says. Existing PC users of the game will have to pay for these upgrades.

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With the higher memory afforded by the new hardware, FromSoftware were able to include elements they wanted originally wanted to do. For instance, models of some existing bosses are replaced with larger-scaled models with a higher polygon density count and the number of creatures in swarms are increased.