Count me in on the flexibility of classes.  It's one of my favorite things about the game, from a design perspective.  Unless you're really min/maxing a build, what you start with doesn't really matter.

Xtal I think you hit on some of the things that were bothering me.  Some of the effects seemed too gimmicky.  Also count me in on enjoying combat against humanoids more, to some degree at least.

If they stick to, and expand on, the excellent variety of weapon and play styles, all based upon that simple, elegant framework, I'll be happy.  The challenge is doing that while avoiding gross imbalances.  I'm sure there will be problems that will get patched out, just like there were in Dark Souls.

Argh! I'm going to grind my teeth and skip that video. I went into Dark Souls knowing only basic stuff - that it was an open world, how bonfires basically worked, etc - and I think I'll do the same this time around. Surely someone who works professionally in the games media can manage a seven month media blackout... right?

That's an interesting question, Botch, though when I say "interesting" I mean "interesting to people like me who make money analyzing and speculating on such things."

I've seen conflicting reports. There's a good chance I misspoke earlier when I said that PhyreEngine would power DkS2 - some outlets are flatly saying that From has dropped Phyre completely and is using something proprietary - but for the hell of it I'll ruminate on why I'm less sure.

On one hand, a case could be made for a big company like From to develop their own engine. Assuming it's a wide-deployment effort (versus something created explicitly for Dark Souls 2), in the very long run they'd probably save some money and possibly have something they could license out to other developers for a profit.

On the other hand, it makes little business sense for them to build a proprietary engine, especially if it was done specifically with Dark Souls 2 in mind. The cost of developing an engine from scratch is staggering - almost certainly greater than the sum of Dark Souls 1 profits - and the technical challenges are considerable; far more so if the engine is a wide-scale tool suitable for many types of games. With their technical prowess, From could readily do it, the question (to me) would be why.

PhyreEngine is free for licensed Sony developers, beastly powerful, and routinely updated. The 3.5 version came out in March and it's gotten a lot of praise. Assuming it's also open-source for licensed developers (it does ship with its source code), I suspect that Dark Souls 2's "new engine" is Phyre at its core, just so massively customized that FromSoft can reasonably say it's theirs. That's not uncommon, and seems a lot more realistic than creating something from the ground up, particularly when we're talking about a company like From that everyone praises for fiscal smarts.

DkS2 director Tomohiro Shibuya has often mentioned "new engine technologies," lighting especially, that he's been developing to take DkS2 lighting beyond "just" shaders. That's sort of a strange thing to say - the just part - but it also makes sense that they'd want to extensively customize some subsystems for their game. There's a very good chance I'm totally off base, but from what I've seen and heard, my guess is that Dark Souls 2 will be powered by the PhyreEngine, just one so tweaked and massaged that it's unrecognizable under the hood.

Depends on the developer, really. "Engine" is a bigger marketing thing here in the West than it is in Japan - you rarely hear about Japanese games' technology, because it's less of a selling point for the PR people. Engines have been fetishized a bit, and any developer will tell you that there's no real formal definition of what one is. Technically, if it's anything at all, it's just a renderer, the framework that translates graphics calls and tells the hardware what to display and how. It wasn't really until Doom that the concept was popularized. Today some commercial engines are still just renderers, while others (like Unreal) are entire ecologies with every subsystem you can imagine - physics, AI, shaders, lighting, logic, audio, pipeline, scripting, etc. Though even with all that stuff built in, many developers prefer to custom-make their own subsystems or license others, which is why you see middleware like Havok and Kynapse used even in engines that come with their own physics or AI systems.

Lighting is a perfect choice to focus on for the Souls games. They're so moody already, the more control they have over the dynamic lights, the cooler things they should be able to do. It'll be really interesting to see how much 2 improves over 1 visually - will it be a pretty significant change, like Demon's to Dark, or will it be more modest? Either way, like you said, the graphics are easily good enough. You won't find me complaining!

Eurogamer Expo is nearly upon us! I will bring a stick and beat away anyone who stands in the way of my playable demo. Then I will give a live report!

GASP

Libelous charges! Obscene insults! Hurled against the Daughters of Chaos, a fine and upstanding Covenant of which my spunky redheaded pyromancerette is a proud if low-ranking member. 

I see my Covenant as not dissimilar to the Church of Scientology, in that we are expected to make certain, ah, financial sacrifices in exchange for spiritual clarity. And it's true, certain Covenant staff members are less than customer-focused. But Eingyi and the pus  lady are just a tiny shaving of the whole organization.

Though honestly I'm only in it because I'm a pyromancer, and because that Demon Ruins shortcut is hella convenient. And because I haven't gone to Ash Lake yet (I want a dragon head). I'd join the Forest Hunters just to get a Dark Wood Grain Ring, but it seems like a character violation. Pyromancers and forests, you know... only you can prevent forest fires!  Or start them.

I'm glad they're fixing Covenants in 2. It's the most underutilized aspect of the game. It'd be fun to see more integration of equipment or buff spells with the multiplayer, too, if they could balance it. A ring that extends the range of summonable Soul Levels? A hat that allows you to summon three White Phantoms instead of two? Socks of Can't-Be-Invaded? It might be neat.

I am heroically bad at PVP, so in a way GFWL's awfulness is a boon to me. I was grinding phalanxes in the Painted World and the campfire would go out, like, every eighteen seconds. Again and again and again. But the connection never held long enough for the invader to actually transfer. When a Black Phantom finally arrived, it was King Jeremiah. That guy I can handle.

Yowza, invaded while Hollow? Always vulnerable? I like it, but I fear it. They'll have to do some mechanical work - the campfire thing was amusing this afternoon, but it could get damned irritating if it's constant. But man does it ever ratchet the danger level. I think I might have to practice my PVP skills.