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Dark Souls 2 news. Apparently it was recently shown at an event in San Francisco, so there are some new tidbits.
1. Tweaks in invasion mechanics. It was announced months ago that in the new game, you can be invaded even while hollow/undead. But it looks like they're making some changes to mitigate this. Not only will your life meter drop by 5% every time you die down to 50%, but frequently invading other players will raise your "sin" level and reduce your life even further... eventually all the way down to 10%,
if Keza MacDonald has it right. Additionally, other factors will now contribute to how often you're invaded besides just your level. The factors I've heard that will increase your chance of being invaded are: a) you're human (rather than hollow/undead), b) you're playing with blue phantoms helping you, c) you've logged more hours in the game.
2. At least some enemies can be killed permanently. From Gamespot: "certain enemies will only respawn near each bonfire a certain number of times, which the PR rep estimates to be about 15. However, you'll need to actually kill them rather than simply respawn at the bonfire for this counter to increase. The developers made this change to stop you from grinding; with no enemies to gather souls from to then spend on levelling up, you are eventually forced to venture into dangerous, unknown territory. This also makes repeated runs to a boss encounter less frustrating." I'm definitely a bit annoyed at this; I've always felt that if players want to grind, they should be allowed to grind. But they did say "
certain enemies," so maybe this won't be a real problem. I already knew from the beta test that black phantom NPC invaders don't respawn.
3. The world is more open than before. By this I mean that there appear to be fewer "barriers" between low-level and high-level areas. Apparently you can head right to a high-level area from the very beginning if you want -- it's just not particularly recommended. Apparently the game is going to let you figure out for yourself which areas to tackle first and which ones to avoid until you can return at a higher level and with better equipment. Personally, I love this change.
4. Bonfires and levelling up. I think it had been confirmed previously, but you can teleport between bonfires from the very beginning of the game. But one unannounced thing is that you no longer level up at bonfires, but instead with one specific NPC back in the starting town. Considering the bonfire teleportation, this shouldn't really make much difference, more of a style thing (remember the Maiden in Black from
Demon's Souls?). Also, there's apparently going to be a way to re-spec your character -- no idea yet how costly this will be.
5. There is now opt-in voice chat. That's right. By default voice chat is off, but apparently now if both players want to opt-in, it's available.
6. There's actually a tutorial. On the other hand, die-hard Souls fans need not be annoyed, as it is completely skippable. One player mentioned that he walked right by the tutorial without even realizing it was there, so it's not going to be obtrusive, just something to help out new players if they care to seek it out.
I think that's about it for new stuff that I discovered from the recent slew of preview articles.
Dark Souls 2 is very close now -- March 11, or about a month and a half. I can't wait.
