[SOUND]
Okay, Mary Kish here.
Mary, you're on the couch.
Oh my god.
Great, what's going on back there?
Josh is on his own.
No, Dan is with him.
Nothing is on fire, don't worry about it.
Down the horse putting out fires, we can have you here five, ten minutes.
Because Darksoul 3, to you got to play it this week, or have been playing it since Monday.
And I know you're kinda in the same boat as me because you play Bloodborne.
Yep.
But you're not a big Soul's fan.
Correct.
And, not to say for me but Mary, you're a fan of the series and you've been playing them all.
Just the Darks Souls ones.
I didn't play Demon Souls, but yeah.
So, I guess the question is, what is your initial impression of Dark Souls 3?
What's new, first of all, Mary?
Yeah.
There's a lot of new stuff that they're adding to try to revamp it.
First of all, you're way faster.
They've increased your stamina, and stamina regen's faster.
So, I think they're taking a little bit from Bloodborne And they're trying to get you to move around and dodge a little bit more, although it is still very focused on using a shield and then attacking.
Although that's not Tay's way, Tay likes to dodge.
[LAUGH]
But you'll find in a lot of these fights, I can easily run away and I can kind of
Dodge.
I can run past enemies really quickly.
Which you weren't able to do in previous games.
I think they're encouraging it more.
They want it to be moving around a little bit more.
So the stress test was on, was it just Monday?
Last week.
Yeah, it was Friday to Sunday at specific time periods.
We had about three hours each day to try it out.
There were four new classes, well I mean like there's four classes that are playable and I think there was only two.
To before this stress test.
So the two new ones is the Academy Assassins
And the Herald of White.
And the Herald of White.
And they both have magic.
The Herald of White is kinda more, I wouldn't call him a cleric paladin, but he has the ability to buff himself, his attack, and his defense.
As one of his spells, and then the other one allows him to heal, and then he also has lightening strike.
And then the academy assassin is very magic based.
They have three magic moves.
There's a dagger which is really quick.
There's a longer move, that kind of does a little more damage.
And then there's this giant Circular sword move which is really rad.
So another new thing is there's a mana bar and they're letting you regen your mana at bonfires and then they also have an ash estus flask which is similar to a regular estus flask, it just regens your mana and because of that estus flask.
You can just burn through your Mana.
You can just go, go, go, and pretty much do magic tricks all day.
Mm-hm.
Which I thought, they always tried to not let you do a lot of ranged attacks in Dark Souls.
Yeah.
They want you to be up close.
They like that close combat.
But with Well with the magic man, you can.
[LAUGH] Just rain down Hogwarts [CROSSTALK]
You can run train on pretty much everyone from a long distance.
I found it a little OP but the problem with judging this is that it's a stress test.
This isn't a demo, this isn't a preview build.
A lot of this stuff isn't final yet.
I even asked-
Well, it's not gonna be out until March, so presumably a lot of this is-
That's right, there's still some stuff that they're working on here.
I asked them about the cap on your health.
In previous games, when you die you lose your max health, and it goes down and down and down until you Until you get your humanity back.
Yeah.
And in this demo that doesn't happen.
And I asked them about that, and they said they hadn't decided yet.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
So there's now way to know how your health is, actually.
And that's a huge change, right?
So there's-
So does it feel like there are big changes?
Cuz the other problem I always feel with these games Is that whenever, I'm not a massive fan so I don't speak to it personally, but listening to conversations of the authors, it always feels like the real changes in these games aren't really apparent until like a week or two weeks afterwards.
And people are like diving into it.
I'm like figuring out how each game plays differently.
So when, did it just feel like a different Dark Souls experience when you compare it with, like to two specifically?
I would say that it's in the same realm, they've made minor tweaks, there's a little bit more speed, there's arts now, there's weapon arts in which you can change your stance.
Those are great tweaks.
But it is very much in the same vein as the first two.
I found it, the locations, the dilapidated areas, even the bosses.
They kind of just have a similar feel to them.
I wouldn't say that this is a huge negative I think for a beloved fan you might find that, "this is what I wanted!
I want more of what I love and that seems to be what you are going to get.
How about difficulty, because these games have obviously prided themselves on being
For being punishing but fair.
Presumably now we've had so many of this games that people have kind of figured out how to play them.
So, does it feel harder than previous games in that respect or does it feel like the same, or?
It feels easier.
Oh, easier, really?
For me, going into it first again, I haven't played Dark Souls, so you and me it's the same playing Bloodborne.
Just kind of getting used to the pace, it is faster so I'm definitely going to play this when it comes out.
But, I was getting punished in the beginning because I was just so used to, you know, either having my gun and being able to stagger or like, I was using the dodge a lot even though you have a shield and you can block.
And that's a very Darksoul thing to do, right, but I was playing it like Bloodborne.
You know it's like, I'm gonna dodge everything.
And I think the first time you go through Bloodborne, it's kind of a struggle getting through each part of it.
But then you learn and you get better.
And then your second playthrough, you start going okay, how do I refine all those things I did?
And then you're trying to pull off all these visceral attacks, all these backstabs, all those things.
And I think that's gonna come with time, especially with this game.
So I think it's still hard.
Like how hard?
I didn't play Dark Souls 2, so hard to say.
But I think there's still like a slight learning curve because you're still learning enemy types' attacking, right?
That's really what these games are about.
It's like learning how they are gonna attack you.
Like, what are their attack patterns?
But then that's probably a lot of this is probably new for you.
So did you feel like that Mary or did you think you had all The enemies figured out largely cuz they're similar to the previous game.
He's right.
There is a learning curve.
That boss takes a lot of time to take down.
I felt in general though because I am familiar with a lot of the way you would see a generic skeleton guy, that I knew how to take him down.
But again there's a lot of fine tuning, so there's a lot more to it that what we see.
And then this is invading someone else's world, right.
Yeah.
That's another live player, that's a whole other can of worms, that guy is hard and I
This is, this was a tough one for me.
How was that lag?
It's real.
[LAUGH]
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Is that a third person involved?
It is, in fact I don't know if I look up, there's about four other people there watching and cheering us on.
[LAUGH] So we're all fighting each other.
Does this happen just randomly during the
You play through?
Well you decide to do this, use a red guy or man and there's like an item that you can use as many times as you want.
In like a specific area?
Well yeah, in this area at least for this demo it's took me here.
Right.
And you got to find, if you're red then you want like kill the white guy and if you're white you want to kill the red guy.
So it's kind of like a multi player mode as opposed to this sort of
Kill or be killed.
Constant, persistent multiplayer thing that we've known in the Dark Souls like offhanded leaving notes and what not.
Definitely
This is just like you drink something and you're in a multiplayer match.
It changes it up, right.
And it's aggressive.
This [UNKNOWN] me.
Yeah, I did not.
Come on, three one one.
[LAUGH] I did not survive.
Oh yeah, the messages are still there.
So most of them, at least from the tests when we played, were pretty legit.
There were some trolls, like I read one where it was like, illusionary wall ahead.
And it was like literally right in front of you and I was a dumb **** and I tried to walk forward.
[LAUGH] And then like wait that didn't work.
And tried hitting it and it didn't work.
But there is still co-op too, so that's pretty fun from what I've seen.
You're supposed to vote those down or up based on how legit they are.
I totally voted that one down once I, [LAUGH] I praised it with a negative.
[LAUGH]
Right when I walked into the wall.
I've been doing the same in Assassin's Creed Syndicate, yeah.
Mm.
Two stars.
Good.
Oh yeah we're talking about that.
Talking about that.
Yeah, that's coming up.
Hey Tim but yeah I think in terms of another thing that you want to see from a Darkfools game.
Darkfools one that had these really wonderful intricate levels that when you went into an area you came out maybe back at the beginning where you started.
They would have these wonderful ways of,
Weaving the worlds in and out so you always felt like you were in this labyrinth that never ended.
It was really beautifully done.
I was a big fan of that.
Dark Souls 2, not so much.
You kind of went to the end and then you turned around and came back.
In this demo, even though it was very small, this stress test, everything warped back.
Cool.
And there were parts where it wouldn't let me go forward
But if I looked off out in the distance, I could see where it was going.
And it was coming back around.
So it looks like the level is more intricate.
And it's more about weaving it back to where you began which is really exciting for me.
Because I'm excited to see how they do that.
There's nothing better.
And getting to the end of an area and taking an elevator and finding out that you just saved yourself 20 minutes.
[LAUGH] Yeah [CROSSTALK]
Exactly yeah.
[CROSSTALK]
Yeah those came back in [UNKNOWN] as well.
And it's a good feeling to know that even if, like how do you know that you've progressed in a game like that?
You know?
Yeah.
You always feel like you don't progress.
But when you get to a bonfire, or you get or you use your souls and level up, or you get one of those elevators and you unlock a door, like I've done something I've accomplished
Yeah
a lot and I've saved myself a lot of time, so it's good to
To see that those are making returns
Excellent.
So you guys optimistic, then, about Bloodborne going.
Sorry, not Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3. It's crazy to think it's another game to look forward to, but it's not there for another six months, or more?
[CROSSTALK]
That's good.
That's good.
Yeah, it is.
You know, we got time to play all our winner titles.
You know got the Fallouts, the Tomb Raiders of the world.
Bloodborne expansion on its way.
Yep.
Halo obviously and Assassin's Creed, so we have all that time to play that stuff and then right around the corner next year, we'll have a Dark Souls game but I'm excited.
It looks good.
Again, I haven't played a Dark Souls game but Bloodborne totally got me hooked, got me into it and after playing the stress test, I'm ready to play this one.
Excellent!
All right, we better let you go get back to directly running the show before it all Before the fire, cuz this was all.
Eric and Kate, thanks so much for coming on and talking to us about Dark Souls 3.
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