Why I Won't be Playing the New Demon's Souls
Because I don’t have a desire to own a PS5. The end.
In all seriousness, Demon’s Souls is a special game to me for a number of reasons. Back when it first came out, it gave me an experience unlike any other modern game at the time. It was also one of the first games I ever reviewed for fun. While I think my writing skills were terrible back then, the process of writing that particular review helped lead me in the direction I’ve taken with my hobbies and career.
Demon’s Souls was one of my favorite games to come out while I was in my 20’s and it was only surpassed by its successor, Dark Souls. I was a young, optimistic fanboy who, if left to my own devices, could have ended up being one of those terrible internet Souls fans who tell you how you have to play the game and why you’re wrong if you don’t love it as much as they do. Thankfully, I matured enough to understand that I didn’t want to end up being the equivalent of a video game Tool fan—even though I am a Tool fan too. Why must my favorite things have the worst fans?
All that being said, I’ve been watching the trailers of the new remake of Demon’s Souls by Bluepoint and I can’t say I have much interest. Don’t get me wrong. Those trailers show how good the developers are at taking an older game and touching it up in a way never conceived. The new Demon’s Souls looks amazing. The particle effects, the redesigned art style, the loving attention to detail in the background textures are mind-blowing on their own. If you compare it all to how the original game looked, it’s only that much more impressive. However, as much as it might be a system-seller for the PS5 with some people, it isn’t with me. Here’s why.
Not My Demon’s Souls
Part of what made the original Demon’s Souls such a special game was the experience outside the game itself. The meta experience of the game ran counter to so many other games at that time. In an age in which game developers were determined to provide you as much information about their game as possible, with countless tutorials and icons to help guide you through the experience, Demon’s Souls took an alternative approach of not telling you anything. It didn’t care if you died a thousand times trying to figure out how to progress. It didn’t care if you didn’t understand the mechanics of the world tendency. It didn’t care if you talked to the wrong NPC and inadvertently prevented an important event from happening. You had to figure things out on your own, and you often had to do so through failure. It was a somewhat unique trait. While people remember it being the same for Dark Souls, by the time Dark Souls II and Bloodborne came out, the video-game world understood that From Software was a developer to watch and that special trait of the Souls game couldn’t work anymore.
If you aren’t familiar with the “trait” I’m referencing, let me explain. The original Demon’s Souls was a sleeper hit. It was published by Atlus, a publisher with a reputation for shipping obscure or unique games. It didn’t have much marketing behind it and it wasn’t expected to sell as well as it eventually did. Most games that had much of a marketing push at that time also had some supporting literature for you to buy. For example, many games, regardless of how good, bad, short, long, complicated, or simple they might be, had a strategy guide you could purchase. In the days of print, these things were constantly available on the shelves to give you all the hints and stats about characters, weapons, and abilities. Demon’s Souls had a strategy guide that was only purchasable with the special edition, so it wasn’t something that was easily available. In most instances, a strategy guide wouldn’t be extremely useful with other games, because they were very transparent about everything. It’s almost ironic that a game as difficult and obtuse as Demon’s Souls would not have a strategy guide that anyone could find.
The fact that the Souls franchise hadn’t yet been established also meant there wasn’t someone waiting in the wings to write a wiki. Access to information about how to traverse the world and fight the enemies in the game was limited. This was a Souls game before anyone knew what that was. It was intentionally obscure and it made the meta experience of Demon’s Souls more unique than perhaps any other Souls game that would follow. Nobody knew anything. You couldn’t just look up a boss strategy or an item description on the internet and find it in a few seconds. You had to figure the game out on your own, or get information from people who were just as confused as you were. You could do so in person, or you just had to follow the notes on the ground from other players and hope they weren’t wrong or lying.
It was reminiscent of the experience kids had before the internet. I distinctly recall sharing tips on how to perform Fatalities in Mortal Kombat or how to unlock special paths in Super Mario World with my friends. That information was still something that could be discovered in a magazine, but it was not easily available. Demon’s Souls mysterious nature with its information and the fact that it wasn’t a franchise that had pages of data available on the internet recreated this nostalgic, child-like experience that many games didn’t have in 2009.
In fact, most games were determined to keep their players informed at all times. There were “follow” icons above important NPCs. There were minimaps. There were compass points that would highlight the path to take to the next objective. There were screen tips and cut-scenes that would make sure you were always headed in the right direction. Developers didn’t want their players to get lost or miss anything they had created for their games. While this likely reduced frustration for most players, it also made the experiences very stale and similar. Demon’s Souls respected players enough to force them to think for themselves and discover things on their own. This gave the sense of discovery an extra sensation of glorious satisfaction. When you completed an area, you could revel in the fact that you did it without the help or guidance of an omnipotent developer. Then, when you went through the game again and found an area you had completely skipped the last time, that sense of discovery could wash over you, despite having completed the game’s story. Not many other games at the time were willing to hide entire areas of a map or let players figure things out on their own in such a way.
Dark Souls would inevitably come out and have a similar experience because the developers intentionally withheld information leading up to its release. However, it was a game that was so successful that, by the time Dark Souls II came out, that feeling was quickly disappearing. The new Demon’s Souls, beautiful as it looks, cannot capture that experience—I don’t think that’s the developers’ intention, anyway. Without that specific experience I had with the original, what benefit would I have by playing a new version of the same game? This leads me to my two other points.
This is Not Shadow of the Colossus
The first game that introduced me to Bluepoint was their remaster of Shadow of the Colossus. SotC was another classic game that I really enjoyed back when it came out. It had already been remastered once, but with only some minor touches; nothing substantial was changed. When Bluepoint got a chance to work on it, the quality of the presentation was incredibly better. Everything performed extremely well, even in the most intense moments. The textures were all brilliantly detailed. The individual bosses looked incredible. I could tell that the developers at Bluepoint had a loving appreciation of SotC. It was clear that they put a great deal of effort into keeping the gameplay of the original, while doing what they could to make the game look better than it ever did.
However, Shadow of the Colossus never had any sequels or true spiritual successors of the same style. It was a single release with a gameplay experience that was never really replicated in the same way. A remaster of SotC was perfectly reasonable as an idea, because it would give people an opportunity to play the game who never got a chance to do so in the past. The developers at Bluepoint made it a point not to mess with the gameplay and focused primarily on improving the graphics and performance, which was probably the right choice.
From what I can tell with Demon’s Souls, they’ve taken a pretty similar approach. There’s nothing wrong with that. I wouldn’t want them to completely change the way the game is played when it’s presented as a remaster. However, there have been five similar games that From Software has made since the original release of Demon’s Souls. While Shadow of the Colossus was something that you could miss if it was never remastered, the gameplay of Demon’s Souls has been duplicated many times since its release. In fact, you might say it had been improved since then…
Souls Have Changed
Video games are a somewhat unique entertainment medium in that there is a good chance that a sequel will be an improvement upon the original. This certainly isn’t always the case, but video games have a better track record of improving upon an idea than things like books and movies. After Demon’s Souls, From Software built upon their ideas with Dark Souls and its sequels, along with Bloodborne. Lessons were learned by the developers to the point that, by the time Dark Souls III was out, a lot of things had changed. While I may not consider the latter games in the list “better,” I think it’s undeniable that the original Demon’s Souls would feel quite dated by comparison.
Considering how Bluepoint has focused on improving the graphics and performance, I don’t suspect that the remaster will provide the same level of variety that later Souls games did. They’ve confirmed that they’ve added new animations for the characters and weapons. However, from the trailers I’ve seen, I can tell that the enemy placement on the maps and the enemy attacks are pretty similar to the original. Even the bosses they’ve shown off seem to behave just as they did back then. This is to be expected, as they’re still using the same code and AI of the original game as a foundation.
While this is good as a way of recreating the classic and holding true to the original’s vision, this tells me that the dated nature of the game is going to likely be present in the experience. Obviously, I wouldn’t be able to confirm that for myself unless I played it. Nonetheless, I feel pretty comfortable just watching a streamer play it instead and judging from afar.
TL;DR (Conclusion)
Despite the original being one of my favorite games of that generation, the burning desire to play Demon’s Souls for myself simply isn’t there. I don’t even really have a desire to replay the original, and the trailers for the remaster, beautiful as they are, do not inspire me to participate. I’m happy that some people who missed out on the original game will get to experience it for themselves in some capacity and I hope it delivers an experience that is compelling enough to make them fans of the franchise like it did me—without turning them into SoulsTool fans who suck, of course. I wish all the new players the best of luck, but I will not be jumping into the fray this time.
And, as I said at the top, I have no desire to get a PS5.
