I sat down to see about 20 minutes' worth of Dark Souls III at E3 2015. My reaction to the first 10 minutes? "Yes, this is Dark Souls." My reaction to the latter minutes? "Yes! This is Dark Souls!"
Game players reserve a special kind of cynicism for series that oversaturate the market, and as special as Dark Souls and its cousins are, any franchise is primed for ridicule if it overstays its welcome. And seeing Dark Souls III in action initially sparked this kind of familiarity in me. I had been here before. Not the specific place, but the specific state of mind. Does the Souls series have more to say?
The answer is "yes," as it happens, though it took a short while to convince me. My first sight of Dark Souls III established the gothic medieval setting, which was lit by a fading sun that From Software's Hidetaka Miyazaki pointed out more than once. Nearby spires rose to sharp points, spiking the sky and making the rooftops look unforgiving in every direction I looked. The architecture and foliage looked more crooked than usual, as if a great being had reached down from the cosmos and given everything a slight twist. As the player walked down a nearby path, living corpses worshiped trees that looked to be made out of dead bodies that had sprouted into a kind of foliage all their own. It was gorgeous and unsettling. It was a place I wanted to be, and also wanted to desperately escape. It was Dark Souls.
The player slashed his way through a number of lamp-wielding enemies using a shield and sword combination, tumbling out of the way when possible. (Clearly, I was watching an agile player in action.) And suddenly, another image caught my eye: that of a giant dragon corpse bridging one rooftop to another, the remnants of a species almost extinct, the wind carrying away the scales that were shedding from the decaying body. What a striking sight, though it was soon left behind when the player dropped to a lower level and lit his torch. Miyazaki promises that the torch will be vital to exploring darker areas, though that is a promise we heard regarding Dark Souls II -- a promise that was broken. Based on what I saw, however, the torch was a helpful aid in navigating the blackness.