Demon's Souls

[keurig]

Honestly it feels a bit like they're trying to hide the weirdness of the game a bit so not to scare off non-Souls fans who need something to play on launch week.

If there *is* an "original soundtrack" option that would be huge for me

I 100% feel that you're completely right. almost seems like they're trying to hide what Demon's Souls is to not scare away potential casual customers. Honestly feels like how Sony would have advertised Demon's Souls if they had published it worldwide in 2009.

Also, yeah, I'd totally be down for an original soundtrack option. Liking the new arrangements but I honestly prefer the original OST significantly (not hard, considering it's one of my all time favorite soundtracks).

 

[Adrenaline]

Looks good. I'm not a big fan of the original but I might play this.

 

[Juno]

I do not like the Maneater redesign. I generally haven't cared too much about the aesthetic changes I've seen so far but this sticks out to me as being bad. Might as well just call it something different.

Spoiler: Maneater

 

[keurig]

Maneater's face looks really ugly, and not in a way that seems intentional.

Really odd decision to say the least, as I felt like the other designs were nowhere near as rough as this, it practically looks like a different boss now.

 

[pudik]

lol what in the world were they thinking? what is the point of that

 

[keurig]

is this new or is it from the reveal montage a few months ago?

if it's from the reveal, I'm kinda wondering if they've improved its design since, as they improved Flamelurker significantly.

 

[estragon]

I do not like the Maneater redesign. I generally haven't cared too much about the aesthetic changes I've seen so far but this sticks out to me as being bad. Might as well just call it something different.

Spoiler: Maneater

(from Steve Kim)

 

[Peklo]

The wardens in Latria are worse off, for me. The original design heavily emphasized a cephalopod beak, lending the visage a cute/comical element that then made their menace more unsettling by contrast. The new look is tonally as any given scowling Cthulhu illustration tends to be.

 

[keurig]

I can't get over how much they've lit up the Maneater's boss room too. What made it truly terrifying before was how little brightness you had in the boss room, the torch was the sole light source, thus you had no idea the Maneater was even approaching you sometimes, their design was practically hidden in the shadows until it lit up ready to attack.

Or at least that's how it was on my crappy TV lol

 

[pudik]

The wardens in Latria are worse off, for me. The original design heavily emphasized a cephalopod beak, lending the visage a cute/comical element that then made their menace more unsettling by contrast. The new look is tonally as any given scowling Cthulhu illustration tends to be.

i hadn't really gotten to check that recent footage in earnest until now and yea that's pretty bad. Taking out character and quirk for what is essentially the en vogue detailing. Which is kind of funny because the entirety of the cthulhu/old ones theme that people seem to be trying to take is about being put off and being unable to really reconcile the image. Taking the same tentacle faced humanoid and pasting it on everything is kind of the opposite. If you pitched the maneater change to me blind i think I'd be vaguely interesting. instead it looks like a bioshock boss.

 

[estragon]

Also, this is the concept art:

You could do some changes to make the concept come across better, but instead they went for something out of Diablo 3.

 

[ASandoval]

My best guess at what happened here is they saw that bit in the concept art about it being 'an old man's head' and went for a... very different interpretation. And completely ignored the part about it becoming a mask.

Anyway I've been very positive in this thread overall but it's hard to come up with anything to say about this other than I don't like it. It's not a dealbreaker but it does make me worry about some of the other creature designs we'll see later on.

 

[Regulus]

It's not the only Latria enemy that features that face, either:

I wonder what they've done to the Man Centipedes?

 

[YangusKhan]

I apparently continue to be some kind of outlier fan because that Maneater design is completely inoffensive to me.

 

[keurig]

It's not the only Latria enemy that features that face, either:

I wonder what they've done to the Man Centipedes?

i wanna imagine that its Maneater's new face copied and pasted over the Centipedes' model, making it some stretched fleshy monstrosity.

true horror

 

[liquid]

Pretty interested in seeing if they still allow invaders to attack enemies, which as far as I recall is something you can only do in Demon's Souls.

Wonder if people are still going to leave "lever" messages on every dead horse.

 

[Ludendorkk]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1326110213162807297

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1326122498023415809

 

[spines]

a remake, updated release, etc. of a game which isn't explicitly an emulation of the original on a new platform is inevitably, in some sense, a derivative work. and while in some cases it's fairly easy to interpret such a product as a kind of "fanfiction" or analogue thereof (particularly those which make plain an intention to not merely reassemble the original), the word "remake" tends to be associated more often with a concept akin to translation, to recreate some "essence" of a work in a new context.

which is to say, hey, good on them for acknowledging that something has to be defined as the "essence" of a game for the purposes of adapting it, even if i wouldn't necessarily agree what that should be; maybe less good that i still can't entirely tell what they're actually trying to imply with that. this isn't necessarily bluepoint's fault. dark souls and its successors have a strong cultural association with a mentality focused on mechanical mastery, though, and to describe the mechanics as the "essence" of this game lends itself to a similar implication that the point of the remake will be for players to "get good", or whatever. i'm a little skeptical that what they actually mean is stuff like "invaders can become the monk boss and backstab you as you walk through the fog gate", "the warding spell makes you almost unkillable", "you can carry around 300 healing grasses", or "a bunch of the bosses have safe spots you can shoot them from till they die" since those elements don't exactly feel like things the target audience for this version would enjoy or be seeking from a "souls" game.

i'd love to be proven wrong though. and i'm just a stubborn idiot about these kinds of things..."can you really call it 'world of warcraft classic' if the boats never despawn incorrectly and kill people? that's not what i remember at all!"

 

[Issun]

The one definite positive about this remake is that a version of Demon's Souls now exists where you're not spending 25% of your play time looking at loading screens.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

just popping in to say i saw a photo of the maiden in black having white wax all over her face instead of black wax and i feel like that's not the aesthetic choice i personally would have made

 

[4-So]

Hour long but might be worth a looksee.

 

[Wolf]

The one definite positive about this remake is that a version of Demon's Souls now exists where you're not spending 25% of your play time looking at loading screens.

This got me thinking about a potential issue with the series. It isn't really a problem for Demon's Souls, but from Dark Souls onward, there's a substantial amount of lore that's dispensed via item descriptions that display while you're loading, either for a respawn or entering a new area. With the much faster loading times games are supposed to experience on the newer hardware, I wonder how that's going to affect this form of passive storytelling in the Souls games.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Hot take: the mechanics and combat performance really is the "essence" of the Souls games in general, to the point where a game without Souls in the name and completely different aesthetics is universally acknowledged as a Souls game to the point that it expanded the name of the series.

Or, in other words, a remake that plays the same and looks different is still "Demon's Souls with fucked-up aesthetics"; a remake that looks the exact same but plays differently is a weird take on Demon's Souls.

Which is not to downplay the importance of aesthetics in games - they're extremely important! And this remake may end up suffering because the mood and tone imparted by the changed aesthetics doesn't quite gel. OR, maybe, it's just a different aesthetic than players of the original are used to. I'm interested in playing it partially because I never did play the original, so I don't quite have the preconceived notions of how it used to look to clash with what I'm seeing. (That said, the comparison shots I've seen do seem like a definite step down, at least with monster design.)

This got me thinking about a potential issue with the series. It isn't really a problem for Demon's Souls, but from Dark Souls onward, there's a substantial amount of lore that's dispensed via item descriptions that display while you're loading, either for a respawn or entering a new area. With the much faster loading times games are supposed to experience on the newer hardware, I wonder how that's going to affect this form of passive storytelling in the Souls games.

I was playing Bloodborne recently and almost never had time to read the descriptions that popped up during loading screens - I'd have to go doublecheck them in my inventory anyway. I don't think it'll be a huge deal?

 

[Regulus]

I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm an artist myself, but they way they keep expressing such reverence for the original mechanics while changing the art so drastically is really unsettling. Like the art is somehow disposable.

 

[Peklo]

The real loss with the elimination of load times are the wonderful character renders the original Demon's Souls had, which endowed the game's cast with a mystique and gravitas before you ever even saw them--another series anomaly that was never repeated.

On said load times, playing the original again, the hyperbole expressed by people attempting to contrast the advances of the remake in that field is definitely a thing that's affecting those recollections. The longest level loads have been around 20 seconds, and there's huge variability with that--sometimes a level respawn after death will take as little as four seconds. They're not these mythic minutes-long epics sometimes suggested, or hazily remembered.

 

[Wolf]

It feels like forever when you've just been ganked for the Nth time and are chomping at the bit to get back to the action, and every second feels like an unnecessary delay. I'm sure that colors the perception somewhat. Likewise the probability that you're seeing them so often.

I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm an artist myself, but they way they keep expressing such reverence for the original mechanics while changing the art so drastically is really unsettling. Like the art is somehow disposable.

It may be that they view the art less as being disposable and instead as being an element more clearly limited by the hardware. They may also be using the aesthetics to put their own stamp on the game. Like someone said up above, the mechanics tend to be the defining aspect of a game in the sense of making it what it is. Side-scrolling platformers, roguelikes, search action games, FPSes, RPGs, etc. are not identified as such by their aesthetics, but rather by their mechanics. Whatever genre a Soulslike is, it's the mechanics that make it so.

I hope this doesn't come across as minimizing the importance of aesthetics to this game (or any other). I think aesthetics are hugely important. But they don't (for me, and I suspect for many others) define what kind of game a title is.

 

[estragon]

Whatever genre a Soulslike is, it's the mechanics that make it so.

I don't think anyone disagrees that the Demon's Souls remake is "a soulslike."

I also don't think anyone is discounting that the art of the PS3 game was limited by hardware. The criticism is not that the PS3 game was the perfect manifestation of its creators' intentions, but rather that the aesthetics in this remake are if anything even more limited by hardware due to its role as a technical showcase.

 

[Regulus]

This is a remake, not a new Souls game made by a new team. The aesthetics are obviously important. If you'll forgive a bit of hyperbole, would it be the same game if they kept the mechanics and level design intact but replaced the art with steampunk theming? Or replaced the soundtrack with licensed music? What if they left functionally everything the same visually, but they rewrote the lore entirely? Some parts of the aesthetics are even inextricably tied to the gameplay! Maneater(s) would be an entirely different fight if it took place at high noon. The "kind" of game would be the same in all of these scenarios, but I'm sure all of these changes would be seen as indefensible.

I'm not saying that they shouldn't be trying to match the gameplay so closely. I'm glad they are! But I completely disagree that it's somehow more important to the soul of the game.

I also think it's somewhat irrelevant that the original art was informed by the hardware. Yes, hardware limitations and budget were likely a big influence even from the concept stage. It's entirely possible that enemies like the Fat Officials had inhuman, permanently affixed grins and cloudy, death-like eyes because they didn't have the resources to bother with facial animations. The relative lack of vegetation in Boletaria proper is probably another one (though it is worth noting that the outskirts in the tutorial area had a lot more greenery even in the original game). But, to me, all of that is part of what made the game what it is. I'm not sure why better hardware means the Fat Officials are grumpy and covered in pustules now. Or why Boletaria is overgrown and appears to have fallen into decades of disrepair despite the collapse being relatively recent.

 

[estragon]

If you'll forgive a bit of hyperbole, would it be the same game if they kept the mechanics and level design intact but replaced the art with steampunk theming?

I think a thorough reskin like this would be a lot better than Demon's Souls by way of Blizzard, honestly, because it wouldn't invite so many unfavorable comparisons.

 

[Wolf]

I don't think anyone disagrees that the Demon's Souls remake is "a soulslike."

I also don't think anyone is discounting that the art of the PS3 game was limited by hardware. The criticism is not that the PS3 game was the perfect manifestation of its creators' intentions, but rather that the aesthetics in this remake are if anything even more limited by hardware due to its role as a technical showcase.

Sorry, this is what I get for typing on my phone while distracted. The point I meant to make was simply that I think the defining nature of the mechanics is why they preserved those as the essence of the experience, and felt free to reimagine other aspects in a way that suited them, rather than leaving the aesthetics as they were and reworking the game's mechanics instead.

This is a remake, not a new Souls game made by a new team. The aesthetics are obviously important. If you'll forgive a bit of hyperbole, would it be the same game if they kept the mechanics and level design intact but replaced the art with steampunk theming? Or replaced the soundtrack with licensed music? What if they left functionally everything the same visually, but they rewrote the lore entirely? Some parts of the aesthetics are even inextricably tied to the gameplay! Maneater(s) would be an entirely different fight if it took place at high noon. The "kind" of game would be the same in all of these scenarios, but I'm sure all of these changes would be seen as indefensible.

I'm not saying that they shouldn't be trying to match the gameplay so closely. I'm glad they are! But I completely disagree that it's somehow more important to the soul of the game.

I also think it's somewhat irrelevant that the original art was informed by the hardware. Yes, hardware limitations and budget were likely a big influence even from the concept stage. It's entirely possible that enemies like the Fat Officials had inhuman, permanently affixed grins and cloudy, death-like eyes because they didn't have the resources to bother with facial animations. The relative lack of vegetation in Boletaria proper is probably another one (though it is worth noting that the outskirts in the tutorial area had a lot more greenery even in the original game). But, to me, all of that is part of what made the game what it is. I'm not sure why better hardware means the Fat Officials are grumpy and covered in pustules now. Or why Boletaria is overgrown and appears to have fallen into decades of disrepair despite the collapse being relatively recent.

Generally, I think the "identity" of any particular game is in the combination of mechanics and aesthetics. The mechanics sort the game into a broad category so that we have a basic idea of the kind of experience we're going to have, and the aesthetics are responsible for creating theme (beyond what's suggested by the mechanics), story, character, setting, etc.

Also, I'm not trying to defend these decisions so much as I am trying to find the reason for them. As I believe I said, I think aesthetics are highly important. But if you're going to remake Demon's Souls, changing the mechanics completely alters the genre, which makes it not a Souls game any more. Changing the aesthetics doesn't necessarily do that.

And I'm curious about the threshold for changes that would be acceptable. Any alteration of the graphics, even just to adding details to the existing objects and environment (say, refining the detailing of bricks in a wall) is a matter of interpretation of the original intent to some degree. I'm not sure where to draw the line, and I'm not comfortable staking out a position.