Dark Souls developers contemplate difficulty setting that 'anyone can complete'

Dark Souls by FROM Software is notoriously heralded as one of the most difficult games to have come out in this generation of consoles, and very rightly so. The game punishes anyone who is foolish enough to just rush headlong into battle without taking precautions and rewards those who have the patience to not only analyse enemy movements and patterns, but also to persevere through the countless number of deaths the game will put you through. Recently, the director of Dark Souls, Hidetaka Miyazaki was considering adding a new difficulty level to the game that “anyone can complete”. Needless to say, this caused an uproar among fans of the game all over the internet. Now, according to a report by Eurogamer, the comment was just a misinterpretation.

The publisher of the game, Namco Bandai issued a statement that the comment should have been phrased as: "This fact is really sad to me and I am thinking about how to make everyone complete the game while maintaining the current difficulty and carefully send all gamers the messages behind it." The publisher added, "This revision has been made in order to inform Miyazaki-san's true intention and what has been originally posted had a mistake because of mistranslation." Whether the statement is actually a mistranslation or just backpedalling after seeing the outcry all over the internet is as of yet unknown.

Developers of the game are contemplating an easier difficulty

Dark Souls is the sequel to the PlayStation 3-exclusive RPG, Demon’s Souls. The game is a notoriously difficult one, wherein players can’t rush through a stage. Players are required to stop, observe and then assess the situation before moving on to avoid being brutally destroyed by a fifty feet tall Minotaur. Both the Souls games have severe punishment for death, such as resetting all the monsters in the world, including the ones you have killed, as you respawn. The games reward careful players and whenever the player gets damaged, it’s almost always the player’s own fault.

Both the Souls games have interesting multiplayer modes as well. The games don’t follow the traditional matchmaking or lobby systems that most other games with multiplayer use. Instead, if your system is connected to the Internet while you’re playing, you are always online. Other players can see you fight monsters and die. And if they choose to, they can also join your world to help you out in killing a particularly tough enemy, or they can even choose to kill you. There is no inherent voice or text chat in the game except for the messaging system, where players can leave messages for other players on the ground, such as warnings against foes up ahead, or requests for aid.

Dark Souls had recently made its way to the PC in the form of Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition. The game was originally meant to be a console exclusive, but was ported over to the PC because of a massive online petition that requested Namco Bandai for a PC version of the game. But, due to the fact that FROM Software isn’t very experienced with developing for the PC, the PC version of the game is plagued with problems of shoddy porting, such as the use of the much hated Games for Windows LIVE online service, along with textures that are extremely low in resolution. Though, the PC version is worth buying purely due to the fact that the Prepare to Die edition gives PC players new bosses to fight, along with the fact that the PC version fares better in terms of frame rate where the console versions had trouble keeping up, such as Blighttown.

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition is available on Steam for $39.99 (roughly Rs.2,200).