With the advent of the next-gen the desire to play of all the fans has started to flow again at full speed, driven by an insatiable curiosity towards the future and everything to come. The market has now accustomed us to one fundamental choice when it comes to next-gen, a choice dictated not only by taste personal and subjective possibilities e economic, but also from a whole series of fruitive implications aimed at channeling our money towards one choice or the other. Many players, for example, start immediately following their own heart, without rationalizing everything, guided by an affection nurtured and cultivated since childhood. Others, on the other hand, prefer to study carefully the situation, trying to understand which is the best choice towards which to invest all one's expectations. In all this, the so-called “launch titles” play a fundamental role, titles, sometimes only at the beginning, linked to technical console and playable right from the purchase of these. They are one of the main and primordial ones watershed to draw the very first steps of the new videogame generations, placing themselves more often in a manner iconographic and thus acquiring an importance and an out of the ordinary care. Starting from a reflection of this type, it is curious to note how with Playstation 5 a large number of consumers have been attracted to precisely by Demon's Souls, a completely new title and much discussed in the course of these pasts 10 years.
Why Demon's Souls?
Demon's Souls came out in the distance 2009, precisely on February 5, in Japan, on Playstation 3, before reaching Europe in 2010. From the beginning the title attracted a lot of attention, especially in his homeland, bringing Hidetaka Miyazaki to success, thus helping to build its fame which was later expanded. As far as Europe is concerned, however, the title did get good reviews from specialized critics, but a 'lukewarm reception general, constructing a nomination that did not help too broad an ideological standardization, reserving himself for a very first and primordial "niche". It was this niche that captured all its potential even if they remained ignored for a long time. To talk about this phenomenon, it would be more correct to make a general excursus of the historical period we're talking about. At the time, the gaming market was experiencing a tree considerable and important. The number of gamers stood aumentando exponentially, bringing the medium to completely different levels from previous years.
La massification of the medium, of course, had an impact on the market, prompting many developers to model its products according to this new wave of consumers, thus leading to a higher percentage of video games not too much challenging, which were centralized, in many cases, on the spectacularization and on the technical possibilities, at the expense of real demanding and punitive challenges (Uncharted 2 was from 2009, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, Assassin's Creed 2, Batman Arkham Asylum, Dragon Age Origins…). It is well known that the market follows the taste of the consumer, and in this case, observing what was produced, it is easy to notice and identify the trends general trend of the period, a trend drawn by the "tendency to help" rather than that of the hardest difficulty.
For this Demon's Souls immediately represented a Wall apparently impassable, if not a real labyrinth designed to disorient all those who played video games "casually", without too much effort. We are therefore talking about the broader range, of those people who do not want to experience excessive frustration or anger when they play.
The fact that this video game didn't help minimally, and that indeed he tried in every way to get in the way the advancement of the player, helped to build the famous and feared reputation of "difficult title to stay away from". With Demon's Souls, unlike all the other games of the period, you were immediately catapulted into the action. There was no real plot, replaced by a short opening video, designed to introduce the dynamics of the game world and justify the initial departure. There was no real tutorial, replaced by some "symbols" or signs on the ground to indicate what to do, but easily ignored by the most inattentive, with a mortal seal which from the beginning made the situation clear. There was no map, no help of any kind, there was no indication of what to do, where to go, how to advance. There weren't too many details about the road and the adventure he was embarking on. Everything was pitted in a manner extremely dosed little by little it advanced.
Once the game had started, the player was immediately given one choice important: which one class do you choose? This, if faced without having any awareness of what was in front of you, was immediately strong disorienting. Demon's Souls has never been too clear even with regard to its menus, presenting objects and elements that at the beginning are not accompanied by no explanation clear. The lack of guidelines was immediately condemned by most, accustomed to a completely different treatment. Once the various preparations were completed, we came launched in action, in this game world designed by redundants silences, from darkness and a lot of "wickedness". Survival immediately became a main component, especially for that range of players used to finding checkpoint along the way, or small breaks. Here the situation was far from relaxing, and death had a weight fundamental not only on the game itself, but also on the emotionality of those who held the joyopad.
Dying meant start over from the beginning, dying meant losing all souls, dying meant seeing the life bar decrease, dying meant arming oneself with patience and find your way back to what you had left behind. All penalties that drew a clearly visible line e hardly comparable to all the products on the market at that time. But this was the main vision of a title that did not even excel from the point of view technical, having a graphics which made many fans and critics turn up their noses, graphics that boasted a fairly polygonal construction back for the times and a general "woodiness" that was able to amplify the frustration, placing itself in sharp contrast with what was published in that period. One of the characteristics of Demon's Souls that not everyone managed to grasp, going beyond all this, was its "authorial identity", that special touch, that fascination that made the first niche of fans fall in love, pushing them to continue, defeat after defeat, test after test, in that overwhelmingly inhospitable world.
However, it remains factual the importance of this title, especially towards the subsequent works by Miyazaki, works that benefited from all the experiments that the designer carried out within this first attempt, an attempt that still today houses many ideas later better developed in the saga of Dark Souls.
Why son of Dark Souls?
But if then Demon's Souls has come before, laying the foundations of From Software's future projects, why define it son of Dark Souls, what came next?
Returning to the present day. The Playstation 5. This means step forward, evolution towards the future, towards change. The term "evolution" by itself is etymologically linked to something moving in a direction. Yet this console, among other titles, was launched from a remake of Demon's Souls, currently collecting a success unheard of, with votes by stellar criticism and a massified response positive by consumers, by enthusiasts. How do you explain all this? How do you explain the fact that a title, which came out busily ignored for so many, he is now receiving treatment practically opposite to, finding itself on the mouth and on the Facebook message boards of all, while remaining fundamentally identical in its game structure?
How do you explain the excitement of those people who did not even touch him at the time and who have now found themselves in hype since its very first announcement?
To try to explain this response on the part of the masses, one could easily start from two fronts: on the one hand we find the enormous success that made the saga of video games next one by Miyazaki, that is Dark Souls (his spiritual following, even if only from the point of view of some elements and structures), a success that raised even more the fame of Miyazaki himself, and which, contrary to all expectations standardized all from us too. On the other hand we find the "visibility", advertising and the fact that with this new saga a whole series of social dynamics fundamental to increase their fascination.
I'm talking about the community. With Demon's Souls there still wasn't enough community great, broad, determined and strong like the one that was born with the Dark Souls. This is precisely the beating heart of all the fascination of these games. We are talking about stories that inevitably lead to comparison with the others, who push to research, to study, all in function of the so-called Lore, an element as much loved as it is hated. Therefore, we do not speak only of cooperation or pvp challenge, with Dark Souls people began to deepen the "culture" of the game world, becoming passionate about all those legends that hovered everywhere, in every object, weapon or glimpse that you had in front of your eyes. They began to frame the way events were told, and they realized that it was up to them to gather all the pieces to justify that hard journey. The study and speculation on the lore of the game, led to a whole series of interactions between fans intent on discovering more and more, contributing to the birth of something bigger and more united.
With the general study also came thesupport mutual in game and thelove towards these new titles it grew exponentially, obviously also thanks to the contribution of youtuber who developed their work trying to deepen and present what was in front of them in the best possible way. This amplified even more so, making the saga a mass phenomenon, a saga that still maintained the same character as its predecessor. These are not easy adventures, but now there difficulties was perceived no longer as a nuisance or a limitation, but as something stimulating, as something that finally hit the average simplifications of the other games, sawing a change also important from the point of view of the market and the average consumer.
So Dark Souls had a success unheard of, contrary to Demon's. This success went beyond the limits of the saga even going so far as to establish one terminology gender: the so-called "Souls Like" yes spread like wildfire, scoring a real cultural evolution of the medium and the market itself, thus opening their eyes to what the players were looking for at that time. If initially games of this type were avoided regardless of the "casual", now everyone was fascinated by closely following the developments. This pointed to a gigantic one transformation general and it is precisely from this transformation that the current one derives welcome of the new Demon's Souls on PS5, as well as, of course, the curiosity towards the potential of the new Sony home console.
If Dark Souls hadn't done what it did, it probably did DON'T there wasn't even a Demons' Souls remaster. For this reason it could be safely said that the latest project of Blue point be a direct descendant of fame of the Miyazaki trilogy and not vice versa, a little son for a long time ignored, but now found. It is a welcome that is expressed precisely through the love that i fan of Dark Souls and all of his casual gamers they have built over these years, years in which the medium has changed, yes it is evolved, years in which curiosity about the future is slowly opening up before our eyes, years in which projects like this seem lord it over on a market that, in addition to advancing, always keeps an eye on past, ready to fish out, enhance or resell, refresh and centralize old titles through commercial operations studied ad hoc that can be as fascinating as boring, filling or disgusting ...
