Demons Souls Rom
Merlina Magobet
Demon's Souls[b] is a 2009 action role-playing game developed by FromSoftware for the PlayStation 3 under the supervision of Japan Studio. It was published in Japan by Sony Computer Entertainment in February, in North America by Atlus in October, and in PAL territories by Namco Bandai Partners in June 2010. The game is referred to as a spiritual successor to FromSoftware's King's Field series.
Demon's Souls is set in Boletaria, a kingdom consumed by a dark being called the Old One, following its release through the use of forbidden Soul Arts. Players take on the role of a hero brought to Boletaria to kill its fallen king Allant and pacify the Old One. Gameplay has players navigating five different worlds from a hub called the Nexus, with a heavy emphasis on challenging combat and mechanics surrounding player death and respawning. Online multiplayer allows both player cooperation and world invasions featuring player versus player combat.
The game's early development was troubled due to a lack of coherent vision. Despite such issues, FromSoftware designer Hidetaka Miyazaki was able to take over the project and helped to turn the game into what it eventually became. The game's difficulty was intended to both evoke classic video games and provide a sense of challenge and accomplishment for players. This aspect proved demanding for Miyazaki, partly because of his fear that Sony would ask the team to lower the difficulty in order to make the game more accessible.
Announced in 2008, early reactions to the Demon's Souls demo were seen as negative, and the game's high difficulty prompted Sony to pass on publishing the game outside of Japan. While the game met with middling reception and sales in Japan, it became a commercial and critical success in the West. The game was praised for its difficult combat and addictive gameplay, subsequently winning several awards. Demon's Souls introduced many of the core elements that would define the eventual Soulslike genre and it has since been cited as one of the greatest games of all time. Its success led to the spiritual successor Dark Souls as well as a 2020 remake.
When a player is killed during a level, they are sent to the beginning of the level with all non-boss enemies re-spawned, while the player returns in soul form with lower maximum health and the loss of all unused souls.[3][4] If the player manages to reach their bloodstain at the point where they were last killed, they regain their lost souls. However, if they are killed before then, the souls are lost permanently. Upon defeating a boss, the player can choose to re-spawn back to that location, marked in the form of an Archstone. When not exploring a level, players reside in the Nexus, a realm that acts as a hub where players can exchange souls, store items and travel between regions. After completing the initial portion of the first region, players can choose to progress through any other of the newly available regions.[6]
Demon's Souls takes place in the kingdom of Boletaria. In ancient times, due to the misuse of magic known as the Soul Arts, Boletaria was attacked by a being called the Old One. The world was nearly consumed by the magical "Deep Fog" and the soul-eating demons it created. The Old One was eventually lulled to slumber, saving what remained of Boletaria, while some survivors became long-lived Monumentals to warn future generations. In the game's present, Boletaria's ruler King Allant restored the Soul Arts, awakening the Old One and its demon army. Boletaria is now being consumed by demons, with those humans without souls turning into insane monsters. Players take the role of an adventurer entering the fog engulfing Boletaria. After being killed, the player wakes up in the Nexus and meets a benevolent demon called the Maiden in Black, as well as various other characters.
If the Slayer of Demons leaves the Old One, they are hailed as the hero of a restored, though damaged, Boletaria, becoming a new Monumental to support the world as the knowledge of Soul Arts is lost. If the Slayer of Demons kills the Maiden in Black, the Slayer becomes a new, powerful demon in service to the Old One to sate their hunger for souls as the fog continues to spread.
Demon's Souls was developed by FromSoftware, a developer noted for creating the King's Field and Armored Core series.[11] The project was first proposed and supported by Japan Studio.[1][12] Demon's Souls was directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, who had joined the company in 2004 and worked as a coder on the Armored Core series.[13] The game was co-produced by FromSoftware's Masanori Takeuchi and Sony's Takeshi Kajii.[14][15] The concept of reviving a "lost breed of action game" was first proposed by Kajii.[1] Due to the team lacking a coherent vision, the original project had run into difficulties. Hearing about a high fantasy role-playing game which was considered a failure within the company, Miyazaki decided that if he took over the project, he could take it in any direction he wanted. Since it was already flagging, it did not matter if his own efforts failed.[13] Including this early work, production of the game took approximately three years.[13][16]
The initial concept for Demon's Souls came from FromSoftware's King's Field series, with Miyazaki citing its dark tone and high difficulty as the main inspirations for the game.[17] Despite these inspirations, Miyazaki did not want to connect Demon's Souls to King's Field, and despite his urging otherwise many have termed the game as a spiritual successor to King's Field,[11][17][18] while USgamer also notes similarities to FromSoftware's Otogi: Myth of Demons (2002).[19] Miyazaki hoped to take gaming back to its basics, creating a challenging gameplay-based experience he felt was dying out in the gaming market of the time.[17] He wanted to create a game which would recreate the dark fantasy and hardcore feel of classic RPG titles (such as the King's Field and Wizardry series) on modern consoles, along with incorporated online elements.[16][20][21] Miyazaki acknowledged some similarities to other video games such as Monster Hunter and Bushido Blade, but said the team did not have any specific video game influences in mind when creating Demon's Souls.[1] After the first design documents were created, the game concept changed little during development.[1] The final game did not come together in a playable form until very late in development, and even then there were network and framerate problems.[22] The team were given a high amount of creative freedom, only possible due to what Kajii called "fortunate timing and release schedules".[1]
The Souls system was a frequent subject of discussion during development, with the current system being decided upon as there being no risk of loss for souls would rob the game of any accomplishment for players.[18] The unconventional death mechanics forced Miyazaki to carefully phrase the Soul mechanic during design document pitches to Sony, as he was worried they would insist on changes if they knew the full details.[16] When creating the high difficulty, Miyazaki kept quiet about that aspect when talking with Sony, as he was sure they would insist upon the difficulty being lowered. He talked it over with Kajii, who agreed to keep that aspect quiet until release.[23] Despite its reputation as a hard game, Miyazaki never intended the game to be hard, instead aiming for a challenging and rewarding experience for players.[18] One scrapped idea was to introduce permanent death, but this was seen by staff as going too far.[1] Variety was added to combat by changing how different weapons affected the character's movements, similar to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.[16] All the bosses were designed based on a simple premise, in addition to being "varied and exciting".[18]
The multiplayer mechanics were inspired by Miyazaki's experience of driving on a hillside after some heavy snow. When cars ahead stopped and started slipping back, they were deliberately bumped into and pushed up the hill by the cars behind them, thus allowing the traffic to flow. Unable to give his appreciation to the drivers before leaving the area, he wondered whether the last person in the line had made it to their destination, thinking that he would probably never meet those people again. Miyazaki wanted to emulate a sense of silent cooperation in the face of adversity. This gave birth to the Phantom systems, with the implementation of Black and Blue Phantoms designed to increase the variety of experience of players.[17] The messaging system was intended to be nonintrusive, with Miyazaki comparing them to text messages.[17] This system proved difficult for Miyazaki to explain to Sony, with him eventually comparing his messaging to the brevity of an email over a phone call so executives could understand it.[16] The team wanted to avoid the formation of questing parties between players; the multiplayer was designed more to enhance the single-player content rather than be a separate mode.[1] The Old Monk battle, which involved summoning another player as a Black Phantom during the boss battle, caused trouble due to the high number of bugs the team needed to sort out.[24]
Describing the narrative, Kajii said the team's aim was to "sidestep preset narrative" to focus on gameplay.[1] The world view and tone of the world drew from that of King's Field.[25] The tone was influenced by both Miyazaki and Kajii, who were both fans of dark fantasy.[24] When creating the world, Miyazaki drew inspiration from European folklore and mythology, contrasting with the trend of Japanese action RPGs to use Japanese folklore. Direct influences included Arthurian and Germanic folklore, the fantasy movies Conan the Barbarian and Excalibur, and the artwork of Frank Frazetta.[17] The team were also influenced by old gamebooks.[24][25] This darker art style was partly influenced by their goals with the gameplay. The art style was also influenced by Western titles more than those from Japan.[17] The Maiden in Black was put in at Kajii's request as he wanted a heroine as part of the narrative. As she would be seen in close-up and eyes were the weakest aspect of character models, the team designed her without eyes.[24] Miyazaki had several more worlds in his early design, with the latest to be cut being a world called the Library and an outside area for the Nexus. The Tower of Latria and Valley of Defilement were built around the respective themes of man-made and natural evil.[18]
7fc3f7cf58