Dark Souls II

Important Notice start

Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura are both From Software directors who have never worked on any Capcom title or Monster Hunter game. There is another Tomohiro Shibuya on Mobygames who is a graphic artist at D.A.G., a studio Capcom contracts for graphical work on some of their games. He is not the same person. Both Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura worked extensively on the Another Century's Episode games at From Software. Shibuya is the director of ACE, ACE2, and ACE:R, and one of the producers on ACE3. Tanimura is the lead game designer for ACE and ACE2, and the director of ACE3. He did not work on ACE:R.

Important Notice end

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Edge Magazine has a blow out on Dark Souls 2 this month, and the details are out. Brace yourselves for the horror and anticipation of a brand new journey.

- Edge says they were shown a 10 minute playthrough of Dark Souls 2, and it is a huge step forward graphically. It looks on par with Watch Dogs and Star Wars 1313 in terms of "next-gen"-ness, or so they claim.

- Miyazaki is not working on the development of Dark Souls 2. He is not a director or producer, and is merely a "supervisor".

- Even as a supervisor, he isn't making any development decisions. He only tried to reinforce the team's commitment to releasing things on time, because of the bad experience they had with the patches in Dark Souls, and he also recommended the return to server-based gameplay ala Demon's Souls.

- The new directors, Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura, are indeed the From Software staff who previously directed the Another Century's Episode series. The decision to have the two directors replace Miyazaki was a company decision made by both From Software and Namco Bandai Games to help move the series forward in a fresh direction.

- Miyazaki is working full time on directing a new game. He will not disclose if it is a new IP or a sequel to something else.

- Darks Souls 2 will be a direct sequel, and have an open world of about the same size, but more dense with content.

- It does not take place on Lordran. The name of the world is the key of the story, they will reveal it at a later date.

- One thing Shibuya wants to enhance is the action in the game. He feels that he can contribute because of his experience working on action games in the past.

- Shibuya says he wants to make things like the Covenant system clearer and more accessible, and he wants to make the story and messaging less subtle.

- He promises there will still be "hidden" elements in the story and world which can be missed.

- Development started in September last year, and was done in parallel with some of the Dark Souls patches and DLC content.

- The game is 25% complete, and the team is substantially larger than Dark Souls. The world creation internal staff for the sequel is nearly double that of the first game.

- The game might not make it for 2013.

- They showed a fat grotesque creature, which Shibuya said was the result of the fusing of different creatures by a mad scientist character in the game, like Frankenstein.

- Another new enemy is a Nazgul-like black rider, who apparently serves as an executioner of evil doers. Shibuya confirms there is some sort of morality system in the game.

- They are also exploring vehicles for the game, and the potential of players controlling them. By vehicles, think things like chariots and boats instead of cars.