Dark Souls II director talks changes and constants in video

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Control and connection

Dark Souls II director Yui Tanimura says he has to make sure his game does two things: provides satisfying challenges for stalwart players to overcome, and compels novel connections between those players. In this Namco Bandai interview he discusses how he's balancing those tenets with creating a new and improved game.

Allowing players to interact with each other briefly and anonymously online, like two potentially murderous ships passing in the night, has become a trend thanks to Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, and Tanimura said he'd like to expand on that. He's particularly interested in the fellowship players develop as they struggle through the game together.

The closed beta scheduled for October is largely designed to test those network features in the wild, before Dark Souls II releases on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 in March 2014.

Connor Sheridan
Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar.