The latest Dark Souls trailer reveals its release date, along with some of the many, many violent ways to die.
From Software’s Dark Souls is looking like an amazing spiritual sequel to 2009’s dark, hardcore action-RPG Demon’s Souls, and the game now has a release date of October 2011. Much like Demon’s Souls (and likely Dark Souls) which raised players spirits before utterly crushing them beneath a spiked boot of poisoned eternal death and fire, the happiness of knowing that the game will be out in five months is countered by this trailer that shows off how brutal it’ll be.
It starts off with the light of a campfire, one of Dark Souls‘ new gameplay mechanics designed as a respawn and health-replenishment point. Then it shows why the nearby knight needs the campfire and should never have left it.
He ends up getting burned, mauled with a bladed pendulum, shot twice in the back and once in the front with crossbow bolts, covered in a ball of ooze, attacked by a mutated rat, rammed off a ledge by a boulder, and thrown around like a rag doll by a massive knight. The trailer also shows off a few of the game’s new bosses, including an overweight, giant hammer-wielding freak and his nimble, armored spearman partner. Tag-team bosses? That’s just wrong.
As if everything else we’ve seen of Dark Souls didn’t already convince us the game was going to be messed up, this trailer confirms it a little bit more. And I can’t wait, because Demon’s Souls was a hell of a lot of fun for a super-challenging game. I also want to find out why the dragon shown at the beginning sleeps like that. He’s going to have a major crick in his neck in the morning.
As the trailer confirms, Dark Souls will be released in October 2011 for the PS3 and Xbox 360.
