Just last week, a very select group of people were invited to play a near-completion build of Dark Souls III, the third and final entry to the Dark Souls series developed by From Software. The people who attended the event include series veterans like Lobos, Peeve, Cowboy, and Vaati. On March 2, the content embargo was lifted and these people were finally allowed to reveal their experiences with the game. To save you a bit of time, here’s the full rundown of everything we’ve learned from the March content drop.
Do take note that this article will contain spoilers for some areas and the early bosses of the game. If you wish to experience the game blind, it would be wise to avoid this article altogether.
– The starting classes in Dark Souls III are as follows: Knight, Mercenary, Warrior, Herald, Thief, Assassin, Sorcerer, Pyromancer, Cleric, Deprived
– You can choose from three types of voices for your character: young, mature, and aged.
– You can give your character chest hair. There are two options: standard and thick. Female characters can also have chest hair. Joy…?
– As expected, poise is back in Dark Souls III and can be seen as a stat on your character screen.
– There is no Adaptability/Agility stat.
– Stats and what they do:
- Vigor: governs HP and resistance to frost. Frost is a new status effect that affects your stamina. It’s similar to bleed in Dark Souls II, but seems to be much more deadly.
- Attunement: governs FP, determines number of attunement slots
- Endurance: increases your stamina, governs lightning and bleeding resistance
- Vitality: increases your equip load, physical defense, and governs poison resistance
- Strength: governs resistance to fire, improves attack strength
- Dexterity: governs attack speed, reduces spellcasting time, reduces damage taken when falling
- Intelligence: increases spell potency, increases magic defense
- Faith: increases spell potency, increases magic defense, increases dark defense
- Luck: increases item discovery, increases bleeding and poison capabilities, governs resistance to curses
– You can put weapons in your off-hand, and they will have slightly different functions compared to when they’re in your right hand.
– When you retrieve your souls after death, the text displayed is ‘Souls Retrieved’.
– Bosses will have different phases, as they did in Bloodborne. They are much more improved than in previous Souls games.
– The game starts off with your character appearing to rise up from his or her own grave.
– You can find an Ashen Estus Flask on the corpse of an Elite Knight. It could be a nod to Oscar from Dark Souls.
– You can get a Uchigatana in the tutorial area of the game.
– You play as an Unkindled one. You are not worthy to become a Lord of Cinder like the Chosen Undead, but you are worthy enough to hunt them down.
– Firelink Shrine will be your main hub in Dark Souls III.
– Firelink Shrine looks a lot like the Nexus from Demon’s Souls, in terms of level design and the gathering of NPCs and merchants in the area.
– You level up by talking to the Fire Keeper at Firelink Shrine. One of her dialogue lines is “Touch the darkness within me.” It feels like a callback to the Maiden in Black from Demon’s Souls, where she tells the protagonist to touch the demon within her.
