4Gamer: Thanks for joining us today. Unlike Demon’s Souls and the original Dark Souls where Hidetaka Miyazaki helmed development efforts, the torch was handed off to you for Dark Souls II, so to speak. Since the game’s release is quickly approaching, would you mind giving us a quick overview of what other games you’ve worked on in the past?
Yui Tanimura: Sure. More recently, I put out Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn with Bandai Namco Games. Before that, I also worked on the Another Century’s Episode series, as well as Shadow Tower Abyss. And ever since Armored Core 2 on the PlayStation 2, I’ve been involved with that series as well.
Suffice it to say that you’re quite the veteran at From, then. That being said, I’ve noticed that you’ve mainly worked on a lot of games with mecha in them. That’s a pretty unusual resume.
I guess that’s true. Actually, between you and me, I’m really into 3D dungeon-crawlers and action RPGs like Wizardry and Dungeon Master. King’s Field was what actually made me want to work at From in the first place, so when they asked me if I wanted to do Dark Souls II, I didn’t hesitate to accept the job on the spot.
Even if you were eager to do it, though, surely you felt some anxiety about developing the game going into it, no? This is the follow-up to Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls we’re talking about here, both of which are very well-regarded around the world.
Of course I felt it, I won’t deny that. I couldn’t begin to tell you how intensely I was sweating bullets while we were making Dark Souls II. I’ll definitely never forget the wave of satisfaction that hit me once we finally went gold and sent off the master copy. But honestly I wasn’t really worrying about the reviews per se as we were developing it. That all comes after you’re all done actually making the game, so I didn’t dwell on that point a whole lot while we were still making it. That’s how it always is when you’re making a sequel to something.
For me, the bigger concern was figuring out what aspects of the first Dark Souls game people liked and why they liked them. That was at the forefront of my mind during development.
What would you say was well-liked about the original Dark Souls, then?
I think the two most critical things that make Dark Souls games what they are is the satisfaction you get from triumphing over adversity and the sort of nebulous connections that players have amongst each other when they’re playing the game. That first point in particular is necessary to the identity of the series. It harkens back to old games that we used to play and how we’d just bang our heads at them until we finally won when faced with a difficulty spike.
But I think it’s the latter trait that really defines the Dark Souls series. There’s a sense of solidarity that you get when you bring in another player to help you out for a rough patch and together you manage to come out on top despite the limited means of communication you’ve both got at your disposal.
That goes as much for the actual summoning mechanics as it does the messages that you can leave for other players, I imagine.
Definitely. Those two gameplay systems are inseparable in our minds, so we made sure to preserve them for Dark Souls II.
Let’s change the conversation to the things you’ve added and changed to the game. Is there anything along those lines that you’d like to point out?
The biggest thing we prioritized while making Dark Souls II was for it to be a harsher game to play than the one while still providing more freedom to players. And when I speak of freedom, I mean that we tried to make it so that players could more readily spec and grow their characters as they like and go exploring around the game world on a whim. Things like that.
To give you a specific example, we changed up how some of the weapon upgrade systems work for this game. Not only did we make areas like material requirements and post-upgrade properties more transparent this time around, we also made it so you can revert elemental properties and just generally had the material restrictions be more lenient. We also did other things like up the sheer number of weapons you can upgrade overall.
That all makes sense. I definitely remember there being a sort of limit imposed upon how much you could upgrade in the first game because of the scarcity of some of the materials.
For sure, yeah. If you look at the mid-tier weapons this time around, you should find that they’ve become considerably easier to improve. We made it so that there are instances where you can grind certain enemies over and over to get the necessary item drops, so hopefully this means that players will be able to experiment more with the weapons that they want to use than they could before. Of course, you’ll still find restrictions imposed on the best weapons in the game, but yeah.
Could you talk a little more about the changes you made to implement that ability to explore you discussed earlier?
I guess the easiest way to put it is that there’s no one route to the end of the game that’s definitively the best one bar none. It all just depends on the individual player and how they’re equipped and whatnot. We really worked hard to limit the number of story-related choke points so you can just focus on finding a strategic route that’s right for you personally.
But wasn’t the first Dark Souls also more or less like that? The geography in that game was all seamlessly connected and it wasn’t like you inherently couldn’t go where you wanted. Technically the difficulty of certain areas just roped you in to an extent, but still…
Oh yeah, what I mean by freedom in Dark Souls II isn’t that there aren’t some clear-cut routes that are safer than others. But say that you hit an area where your magic isn’t all that useful or if you have low HP, you’re going to have some trouble getting through it. Different players and different characters by extension are going to be better at trudging through some areas than others at different points in time. We made sure that each of the various routes that you can take while playing through the game all have their own plusses and minuses like that.
I can definitely see how it’ll be fun for people to discuss how they’re progressing in the game. One person will argue that going one way is easiest and obviously the way to go, while someone else will vehemently disagree with them.
Indeed. Even internally at From, we’re split in terms of what sort of routes we ourselves prefer to take in the game.
You also mentioned something about making the game “harsher,” I think.
Let me make myself clear about that so nobody gets the wrong idea about what I have in mind. There’s more to raising the difficulty level as a developer than just being out to get the player. The idea behind that sentiment is that we want to imbue players with a sense of responsibility in how they carry themselves during exploration and character building segments. We want them to make an effort to try out different ways of playing as they figure out how to make their way through the game.
Can you give an example of what you mean?
The elemental switching you can do with weapons this time around that I mentioned early is a good example. By enabling players to swap out elements, our hope is that they’ll find out which ones work best for them in different situations and use them accordingly. And then if they fail to make a good decision, they’ll feel the implications of that mistake firsthand.
So basically Dark Souls II is harder on you if you don’t actively try to branch out in your strategies?
Yep, that’s the long and short of it. To give you another example, there’s an item in the game called a “Human Effigy,” which reverts you back to your Human form when you’re Undead. But there’s a catch: there are only a limited number of them that you can acquire within the game. So unless you’re careful about managing when you use them, the later parts of the game could prove to be rather troublesome to clear.
But again, we didn’t implement this system with a purely malicious intent in mind. Like I mentioned before, the point is that we want people to be conscientious about how they play and make do with what they have. That’s the basic message we want to convey when we make players go through those sorts of things.
Speaking of being Undead, when you’re in that state this time around, your health slowly drains with each successive death, right? I’ve seen a lot of people who played the previous game argue that such a move is excessive, but I’d like to hear what your take is on why that feature was introduced.
The biggest reason is that we wanted to more clearly delineate the differences between being alive as a Human and playing as an Undead. In the first Dark Souls game, there really isn’t that much of a practical difference in terms of how you play as a Human versus Undead. But in Dark Souls II, though, we wanted emphasize the fact that being Human is, in fact, superior to remaining Undead and ensure that players endeavored to revert to that state when possible. We noticed that a lot of people simply just preferred staying Undead in the previous game and we tried to make sure that didn’t remain the case in II.
Staying Undead was definitely a valid playing style in the last game, I agree. You couldn’t get invaded by other players and save for the fact that you looked pretty hideous in that state, I’d wager there weren’t really that many downsides to playing that way.
That’s how I feel, too. By making it so that your HP goes down bit by bit the more you die as an Undead, ideally people will therefore actively want to return to their Human form. When you become Human in Dark Souls II, you’re able to battle cooperatively with other players and it’s another way that we try to instill players with that sense of accomplishment we were discussing earlier. Since you can now get invaded in Undead form in this form, I feel there’s a much greater incentive to become Human in this game than what was there in the last game.
Hypothetically speaking, though, couldn’t you potentially end up in real trouble if you manage to run out of Human Effigies before finishing the game?
In that sort of worst case scenario, that could definitely be the case, sure.
Oh wow.
To be certain, we debated amongst ourselves as a team whether to provide a means to assist players in that sort of situation. But if we went about that in an overtly direct manner, we’d risk sacrificing that sense of accomplishment that’s integral to the series, so we decided against implementing anything of the sort in the end.
That being said, we made sure there were contingencies in place to avoid things being completely soul crushing, so if you find yourself in that situation, the game is still designed to be beatable.
Contingencies, huh? Can you explain that a little bit in more concrete terms?
So one simple idea we have that’s in the game is that there are items designed to soften the blow of being permanently Undead. There’s a ring you can equip, for instance, that raises your maximum health.
You could also argue that the way we handle Estus Flasks in Dark Souls II makes things tougher than before since we only give you one at the start of the game and then you have to pick up more one by one as you go about your journey. But on the flip side, to offset that, we made it so that there are also consumable healing items that you can use as well this time around, allowing you to readily compensate for your shortage of Estus.
I see. That way, if you wind up going somewhere that has an enemy giving you trouble, you can still ably take them on as long as you’re good about stocking up on those other healing items.
Yeah. Another way you can mitigate some of the hardships in the game is by joining a covenant called the “Way of the Blue,” which will summon in other players to aid you during invasions. If you choose to burn a Human Effigy at a bonfire, that will also prevent any invaders from entering your game for a limited stretch of time. Those are the sorts of things we have in mind in helping the player not feel excessively overwhelmed when they hit tough spots in the game.
When we’ve shown Dark Souls II off to members of the foreign press, some people have questioned how the game would turn out because of how we changed things like the invasions, thinking we might have taken things too far in how we tuned the difficulty. But the reality is that we ensured there are various safety nets present in the game in some form or another. There are even more beyond the ones I’ve described already, but it’s probably best if I don’t spoil that part of the game more than I already have.
So what you’re saying is that you made sure to balance the difficulty increase with the countermeasures you can take in response?
Exactly. By making it that way, players can come away feeling really pleased with themselves when they manage to achieve something major in the game. That’s what we’re hoping they come away feeling, at least.
Is there any aspect of Dark Souls II in particular that you hope players pick up on and enjoy?
There are a lot of potential answers to that question, but if I were to pick just one, then I’d hope it’s the sense of discovery that’s to be experienced as people enjoy their newfound freedoms in Dark Souls II. That act of discovery is something that we made integral to the gameplay experience. You’ll come upon things whose meaning and significance aren’t made immediately apparent to you at first glance, but as you keep playing, you’ll have revelations about them and get what they’re there for. That’s one of the design tenets we developed the game around.
Do you mean to tell me you deliberately put things into the game that won’t make sense at first?
You got it. But again, we didn’t do that out of malice. That communal aspects of the Souls games where people exchange information with each other is one of the most fun aspects about the series and we wanted to make sure that was still upheld. That sort of information gathering by way of in-game messages that players leave for each other and external resources like forums and wikis has just become a fundamental part of playing these games. We figured that if we could introduce some unknown elements into the mix to keep people busy for a while, that would be one of the ways that the game could remain entertaining.
Basically you want to ensure that websites with strategy guides and whatnot don’t have all of the answers, that players will still have to go out and make some of those discoveries on their own. I can see that also being a solid way to encourage people to try out different ways to play the game. Not everyone is guaranteed to see the same things as they go along.
When I was a kid growing up, I used to go to the arcade to play Tower of Druaga and I’d swap information with other people playing the game. What we have going on with Dark Souls II is pretty similar to that, but on a much larger scale. That exchange of information will help people get a grasp of the things that they do and don’t really understand about the game. Obviously, not everything is going to be that obtuse and there are some things that will just make sense upfront. But even so, right now there are things that people totally have yet to find and discuss, let alone figure out, and hopefully running into those sorts of things will be fun for players. For instance, there’s a way to get your hands on a Titanite Slab at the beginning of the game despite it normally being one of the more important items you can find in the series.
But isn’t it useless to give that item to players right off the bat?
At the time it doesn’t serve much of a purpose, sure. People will probably look at it and just be confused about why they have it, but eventually they’ll realize just how important it really is. Moments like that are where some of the fun in the game lies.
Similarly, in most games, progression is pretty linear. You start off by fighting weak enemies and raiding easy dungeons and then as time goes on, both of those things get progressively harder and harder.
Naturally.
But in Dark Souls II, you play as a cursed character that’s just thrown into this world that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense upfront and told to go off and cure yourself and it’s just all very brusque. If we were to give everything on a platter to players like other games like to do, everything would be rendered meaningless.
So to motivate players to play through the game and make them feel comfortable at making mistakes as they go along, we feel that there’s no other way than to just throw them in head-first. By doing it that way, the thinking is that they’ll just naturally want to find a way out of their predicament. And then when they encounter something hard and manage to deal with it, they’re rewarded accordingly. That’s why it’s so fun to get something like a major item early in the game, because there’s a justification for going off the main path and checking things out up close along the way.
I know I’ve said this before, but it still really does sound like you made Dark Souls II harder compared to the first one.
Like I mentioned a while ago, we weren’t actively trying to make it harder than the last game, but there are definitely people within the company who feel as much. But as a sequel, just repeating what we did before and emulating the original game is pretty boring, so the difficulty factor is there. It’s just that now it’s a different sort of difficulty compared to what we’ve done in the past. If you feel it’s a harder game, I’d argue it’s less because it was explicitly designed to be that way and more just because there are new things you haven’t gotten acclimated to yet.
When you put it like that, I get where you’re coming from. It’s like how in the original game, there’s enough that’s set in stone on the game world that you can reliable count on certain things being around when you turn a corner on repeat visits.
Yeah and this game isn’t any different in that regard. Once you get to know the new parts, they become pretty manageable to deal with. They’re not such a big deal in the end.
I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say they’re “not a big deal” myself, but…. (Laughs.)
Okay, maybe I overstated it a little bit. (Laughs.) But when we were developing Dark Souls II, we didn’t fuss that much over how we were going to fine-tune the difficulty. Instead, we shifted our focus to balancing the game to make sure people really feel like they’re making substantial achievements and it’s how we hope that players will derive enjoyment out of playing it.
During February and March, From was holding demo events for the game throughout Japan where people could come and try out the game. What were the reactions from those who played it?
We got a lot of people who more or less said they felt right at home again once they started dying repeatedly from the start of the game. From what I could gather, a lot of people had their worries since we’ve shaken things up a good amount for something that’s ostensibly supposed to be a sequel, but it looks like that sentiment is disappearing.
Only in Dark Souls would someone say that dying makes them feel at home. (Laughs.)
Actually, we also ran beta tests online in September and October last year and we got a lot of good feedback about things like the controls and user interface. They gave us a lot to think about and influenced how the final product feels. Hopefully those people who came away from it feeling unsure about the game will give the final retail version a chance to see how it turned out.
Before we wrap this up, I have one last question for you. Compared to the first Dark Souls, how much content do you think you wound up making for II?
During development, we were aiming for around 1.2 times the amount of content, but when I add up everything we did with things like the covenants and new ways you can strategize, I’d say that the total feels closer to about 1.5 times. If you play to the very end of Dark Souls II, I feel that there’s an unparalleled sense of satisfaction you’ll get from beating it compared to other games, so I hope everyone out there who plays it, both existing fans and newcomers alike, won’t lose heart when the going gets rough and find it in themselves to fight through to the bitter end.
XI Wiki
Originally Posted by Tymon
...lol
