September 20, 2012

• Demon’s Soul

  Don’t read this post unless your into videogames.

   

  A few days ago I started working on a game called Demon’s Souls. Among RPG gamers, and gamers in general, it is largely considered one of the most difficult games ever created.

   

  There are several things that make this game absolutely unforgiving.

   

  When you die, you come back in “soul form.” Which has half the HP of your normal body. So, supposing you faced a really tough fight where you got killed, you can try again– but even weaker than the first time you fought him.

   

  There are lots of instances where you will simply die instantly. You could be going up a dark staircase, and someone could roll an Indiana Jones styled boulder at you. You could be walking along a bridge and engaging in combat with soldiers when a dragon makes a pass and firebombs you and your opponents to holy hell. You could get mobbed from all directions by, say, 4 grunts, but if your back is open to anybody, you’re going to die. You could accidentally walk off a high ledge. You might get the camera stuck at an angle that you can’t see who you’re fighting. (To be fair, the camera angle thing doesn’t happen too often– but when it does, it’s infuriating, because that’s not even challenging– that’s just bad design.)

   

  Every time you die, you lose all your hard earned money. Well, technically, there’s no money, there’s just souls you collect. But when you die, you lose all your amassed souls. There’s no EXP in this game– you buy your equipment, you buy your stat upgrades. So when you die, basically, you lose all your progress.

   

  Every time you die, there are no ‘checkpoints.’ You start at the beginning of the stage. Even if the beginning of the stage is a hour of fighting your way uphill from where you died, that’s where you’re going to start.

   

  You might not have the right tools for the job. Some opponents have special armors or natural properties that makes them immune or almost not affected by the weapon you have on hand. Depending on your character class, you may not be very strong and not good at carrying all sorts of different weapons with you. So sure, I guess you can go back to “town” and get an appropriate weapon, right? Well… no savepoints, essentially no teleportation, so you’re going to have to hike your way down that mountain the same way you came up. And that’s assuming that you have the weapon you need in your stash. If you don’t, you better hope you don’t die and lose all your money on the way there before you get to the shop.

   

  Which is another problem. The shops don’t stock everything. Particular types of weapons are only available in particular locations (some of which you need to fight your way to get to) of different stages and worlds.

   

  Did I mention that the game is hard?

   

  However, the battle system is pretty ingenious.  Your character has a few meters– hit points, magic points, and stamina.  Since my character is a paladin, the MP part is pretty useless– I can do one who spell before my reserves are basically gone.  That basically means one free heal.

   

  As far as hit points and stamina go though, that’s where things get interesting.  First of all, stamina goes down depending on what you’re doing.  If you’re running, it goes down.  If you attack, it goes down.  If you block, it also goes down.  Stamina regenerates gradually, depending on your endurance– but basically, you can’t just hack and slash away because your guy will get gassed out and won’t be able to deal any effective damage.

   

  The blocking mathematics are where it gets interesting.  If you’re holding a shield and someone pokes at you with a spear, and you block it, and that spear attack should have taken off 50 HP, if you blocked, it will instead take off 50 stamina.  So basically, whenever you block, you take the damage as stamina damage instead of as hit point damage.  This is okay because stamina regenerates.  However, if your stamina gets depleted, any damage that can’t be contained by your block stamina is carried over.  Your character’s guard “breaks” and you take the damage in HP.  If there is enough of a guard break, your character might even get knocked back, or you might be crushed on the spot.  So, just because you have a shield doesn’t mean you can block everything.  You get tired from blocking too many successive hits… and the problem with that is that you won’t have any energy to immediately counter.

   

  Shield also have damage modifiers– so that initial 50 points worth of damage? A shield will reduce that amount so that the actual amount of stamina damage you take, could, say, be like 40 or so.  A better shield acts as a better modifier!  However, the most protective shields are usually the biggest and heaviest ones, so they’re not good for parrying and or dodging– which are the best methods of saving stamina in the first place.  Why oppose force with force, when you can just get out of the way?

  So, the interesting thing is that while enemies can get you because they’re fast, they can also get you just by crushing your guard.  Say I’m using a really heavy weapon like a two handed polearm axe.  If my opponent is using a dagger, and there are like… 3 of them in closed quarters, I’m probably going to die.  Even if I attack first, it’s very possible that they’ll attack second and still get their hit in before I do.  Even worse, in closed quarters, my axe can (and does) often get stuck on walls or ceilings.

   

  On the other hand, if I’m deffending against a large polearm axe, and I have a shield, there are very high chances that if I don’t get the  hell out of the way, the amount of damage points a hard strike is good for will be enough to overpower my stamina and crush me altogether.  That pretty much means I’ll be knocked down, and while I’m down, he can whack me again (ergo: instant death).

   

  The interesting thinga bout this game in a sense is that you have to learn about the weapon interactions.  There is no single best weapon– it’s highly situational, depending on the opponent you face, as well as your environment.

  • 7:27 pm
  • 1 Comment