Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Demon's Souls Remake

SumDrunkGuy

Guest
I can't believe they changed Maiden Astrea's theme. I'm likely to skip over the piece of shit for that alone.
 

SumDrunkGuy

Guest
I can't believe they changed Maiden Astrea's theme. I'm likely to skip over the piece of shit for that alone.
Literally unplayable.

No not at all. But that was one of the best moments of the entire game and the music played a big part in. You don't fix shit that isn't broken. I wish death on everyone responsible for changing the tune. Absolutely disgusting.



Nothing but loud squishy sounds, bad voice acting, and a very forgettable soundtrack. This is pure decline. It's unflrgivable.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


Featuring developers from Bluepoint Games and Japan Studio, we unravel the years of work that went into remaking Demon's Souls for the PlayStation 5.

0:00 - Intro
1:49 - Who are Bluepoint?
5:29 - How to Remake a Classic
15:48 - Rebuilding Boletaria
21:35 - Design Tweaks & Changes
32:18 - Flamelurker
35:42 - Camera, Physics & Sound
48:30 - Working Smart
54:18 - Conclusion
56:41 - Credits
 

NJClaw

OoOoOoOoOoh
Patron
Joined
Aug 30, 2016
Messages
7,513
Location
Pronouns: rusts/rusty
Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
Infi, you can't scare me like this.

I need to remind you once more that you're not allowed to post in FS threads unless you have some news about DLCs and PC ports. Do you understand? I need you to tell me that you understand.
 

Ghulgothas

Arcane
Joined
Feb 22, 2020
Messages
1,598
Location
So Below


Not only making older games feel modern, but doing so in a way that doesn't alter the core feel of the game.
To reach their objective they must battle player expectations, heartfelt nostalgia, rose-tinted glasses and foggy memories.
A bad mind-set to have for a job like this.

They had some decent archives, Here's multiple pieces of (original) concept art. We had all the design documents (in Japanese)
They did have all the essential design documentation for the original, but chose to go away from it.

I think what's really interesting about Boletaria in general is the art change from the original to to the Playstation 5 version. And taking it from a kind of Roman neoclassic squared-off look to a much more Gothic-leaning kind of style.
And the reason that I was okay with that is that I think gaming trends change.
It gave the artists a lot more freedom to create this realistic world.
So much of this video reeks of "We'll Design it Better!" without grasping the tonal link underlying everything in the original and I don't anything captures that better than the shift in architecture. Demon's Souls, King's Field and Dark Souls to a degree all had a distinctly dreamlike atmosphere and felt more akin to a twisted fairy-tale or Grimm's Fable than a Gothic Dreadful.

We didn't really know how to interpret the original model for Flamelurker
What?
The PS3's models weren't that primitive. And I thought they had access to all the old design docs and concept art.

It couldn't be more obvious this team wants to make their own game. Better they do that than continue to drag their hands over the designs and aesthetic subtleties of age-old Japanese games they're not able to grasp.
 

cvv

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 30, 2013
Messages
18,074
Location
Kingdom of Bohemia
Codex+ Now Streaming!
It couldn't be more obvious this team wants to make their own game. Better they do that than continue to drag their hands over the designs and aesthetic subtleties of age-old Japanese games they're not able to grasp.

I'm not a huge fan of the visuals, especially the ghastly UI. That said DeS:R is not exactly "their own game", it's p. much identical save for the visuals. Actually I would've loved if they made their own thing, only vaguely inspired by FS games. That way we would still have the eminently playable OG plus a brand new Souls-like to enjoy.

Btw as for the visuals, the only way people would NOT have complained about the visuals is if the new ones were exactly the same as the old ones to the last possible detail (and people would complain even then, pointing out imaginary differences between two completely identical games).

Because nostalgia is a bitch and gaymers gonna gaym.
 

Lutte

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck
Joined
Aug 24, 2017
Messages
1,967
Location
DU's mom
What?
The PS3's models weren't that primitive. And I thought they had access to all the old design docs and concept art.

The original concept art wasn't diablo 3 enough for this team of super western retards is what I'd say.
TCm7Smb.jpeg


Actually inspired stuff! Western artists can't ever be this imaginative.

7BDnpNW.jpeg


H8pX0IV.jpeg


3JZCoO2.jpeg


OS8sE0F.jpeg


Jlgsd9r.jpeg


AVVj2sk.jpeg
 

vonAchdorf

Arcane
Joined
Sep 20, 2014
Messages
13,465
And the reason that I was okay with that is that I think gaming trends change.
It gave the artists a lot more freedom to create this much more realistic world.
So much of this video reeks of "We'll Design it Better!" without grasping the tonal link underlying everything in the original and I don't anything captures that better than the shift in architecture. Demon's Souls, King's Field and Dark Souls to a degree all had a distinctly dreamlike atmosphere and felt more akin to a twisted fairy-tale or Grimm's Fable than a Gothic Dreadful.

How is the WoW style Boletaria with the bright blue banners supposed to be a "much more realistic world"?

The Tower Knight arena was perfectly fine and realistic in the original game, while in the PS5 version it looks like something out of a Chinese MMO.
 
Last edited:

Machocruz

Arcane
Joined
Jul 7, 2011
Messages
4,318
Location
Hyperborea
Just now got around to watch someone play this.

I chose to go straight to Tower of Latria in the video. The reason being that if they fucked that most iconic of DeS areas up, I'll know they fucked up the rest.

Guess what, guys.......
 

Nathir

Liturgist
Joined
Aug 3, 2017
Messages
1,090
I also watched a playtrough of this after completing the original on emulator a week ago.

If you look at the gargoyle art posted on this page. It has a humanoid face with nails driven into its head and elsewhere. The skin also doesn't look exactly like stone but something else. It has a creepy, tortured vibe to it. In the remake the gargoyles look like classical stone gargoyles that came to life. Their faces aren't humanoid but more bestial and they don't have nails everywhere inside them. They do look good. But what is the reasoning for the changes here? They lost everything that made them memorable and creepy to become generic gargoyles. Why? There are some other changes like the fat officials who also just become less scary. A big WTF moment is when in Latria all the tattered banners are red instead of yellow. You have to be braindead to make a change like this.

Biggest changes though are the lighting effects. Everything is better lit and more shiny and smooth. It doesn't have the same vibe.
 

Machocruz

Arcane
Joined
Jul 7, 2011
Messages
4,318
Location
Hyperborea
Yeah the lighting is lol worthy. Who approved this art direction? The lighting doesn't suggest 'desolation',' decay', or 'evil', it suggests 'historical museum' lol.
 

Tyrr

Liturgist
Joined
Jun 25, 2020
Messages
2,257
Yeah the lighting is lol worthy. Who approved this art direction? The lighting doesn't suggest 'desolation',' decay', or 'evil', it suggests 'historical museum' lol.
remake = shitty lighting
Just look at Mass Effect.
 

Deflowerer

Arcane
Joined
May 22, 2013
Messages
2,052


Not only making older games feel modern, but doing so in a way that doesn't alter the core feel of the game.
To reach their objective they must battle player expectations, heartfelt nostalgia, rose-tinted glasses and foggy memories.
A bad mind-set to have for a job like this.

They had some decent archives, Here's multiple pieces of (original) concept art. We had all the design documents (in Japanese)
They did have all the essential design documentation for the original, but chose to go away from it.

I think what's really interesting about Boletaria in general is the art change from the original to to the Playstation 5 version. And taking it from a kind of Roman neoclassic squared-off look to a much more Gothic-leaning kind of style.
And the reason that I was okay with that is that I think gaming trends change.
It gave the artists a lot more freedom to create this realistic world.
So much of this video reeks of "We'll Design it Better!" without grasping the tonal link underlying everything in the original and I don't anything captures that better than the shift in architecture. Demon's Souls, King's Field and Dark Souls to a degree all had a distinctly dreamlike atmosphere and felt more akin to a twisted fairy-tale or Grimm's Fable than a Gothic Dreadful.

We didn't really know how to interpret the original model for Flamelurker
What?
The PS3's models weren't that primitive. And I thought they had access to all the old design docs and concept art.

It couldn't be more obvious this team wants to make their own game. Better they do that than continue to drag their hands over the designs and aesthetic subtleties of age-old Japanese games they're not able to grasp.


Soulless hacks.
 

Villagkouras

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2014
Messages
1,022
Location
Greece
I'm playing this and it's excellent. For me, it's still atmospheric and I couldn't care less about flags should be painted yellow or red due to some deep lore.

Too bad they changed the Astraea fight, though. It's a gaming highlight, but maybe it wouldn't work here with all this fidelity and decided to change approach.

Anyway, this thing is HARD. I don't get people who say that DS3 is the hardest souls game, for me DeS is the hardest. Apart from bosses which are piss easy, granted I fight like a pussy sometimes, because I didn't want to re-fight my way to the boss in 4-2, Jesus. The levels now are much easier, then the levels were the real boss. Probably why to me this game feels like an actual adventure (and a dungeon crawler).

The game doesn't have half a bad level. Come on. You cannot but overlook some of its flaws, what you get is too good to nitpick.

Graphics and sound are top. Loading times are sweet and the controller adds much in the experience. Overall, I'm happy with my new toy. I also want to play Returnal after this.
 

TheHeroOfTime

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2014
Messages
2,879
Location
S-pain
Bloodborne and Dark souls 3 bosses are harder than the ones from the rest of the series IMO. They're faster, more agressive, have more moves and sometimes they even have transformations or different phases. Yes, they are all Artoriases 2.0 AKA dodging simulators, and I do believe the approach and design of Demon's souls bosses is more interesting and unique. But in terms of challenge it is what it is.
 

perfectslumbers

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 24, 2021
Messages
1,198
They're faster, more agressive, have more moves and sometimes they even have transformations or different phases.
Also many of them have windups that can go into multiple attacks so they can't be predicted. And many have attacks that are about 10 frames from startup to hit, which is faster than the average human reaction speed. (Pontiff Sulyvhan has both of these.) Oceiros even has an attack that has 0 frames of startup and turns his entire body into a damage hitbox.
 

Andnjord

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2012
Messages
3,027
Location
The Eye of Terror
Original by a mile. It even manages to be more harmonically complex despite being less elaborate.

Fucking hell I'd expect this from dildos who don't know jackshit about music but coming from you? You know full well the original orchestration was a budget-driven slapdash mix of a handful of real instruments and cheap electronics while the remake OST is a proper orchestra deal. It'd be like saying Beethoven's 5th performed by two dudes with digital Yamaha keyboards at a wedding party was WAY better than a concert at La Scala.

You should be ashamed for pandering to ignorant nostalgiafags for K-points.
Sorry to bring up such an old discussion, but one major point you both are missing is the artistic intent of the music within the context of the boss fight, which is something worth discussing even without going into the quality of either pieces of music.

You have Flamelurker, the boss itself, who is a fast, aggressive boss with explosive fiery attacks constantly running at you with animations similar to those of a wild animal. The remade soundtrack is a straightforward transposition of these themes in musical form, it's there to heighten precisely what you are seeing in front of your screen. In essence, it's rethorical. The original soundtrack though goes in a diametrically opposed direction from the visuals, it's slow, ponderous and as mentionned is more akin to a grim funeral march than a frantic action sequence. It's there to add an entirely new layer of meaning to the fight on top of what is directly present of your screen. The result will vary from player to player, but for me at least the kinetic sensation was less adrenaline filled but more ominous, more dangerous. My impression after beating him was of the accumulated tension and fear of the entire level finaly lifting, the long term memory was that of utter terror but one of my most memorable moments in gaming. Which was more coherent with my overall impression of Demon's Souls, that of a slow burning, tension filled dungeon crawl where the danger was in my ever decreasing ressources rather than any single potential one-shot encounter.

I recently watched the movie Accattone, so let me bring it up as an example of contrasting visuals with music. In this movie, there are several utterly mundane and profane scenes superimposed with the finale from Bach's St Matthews Passion, a 'divine' music if there ever was one. One in particular is a brawl between the main character and another guy over some vacuous insults; had it had a normal fight music with fast-paced percussions it would have never transcended the mundane event you see on screen, but Bach's music elevates it to an entirely different realm, transforming the meaning of the visuals on screen. Without getting into comparing the metophorical meanings of this contrast, the orginal Flamelurker fight uses that same device of contrasting music and visuals to convey meaning, or rather in the case of a video-game, transform the player experience. The remake doesn't.

Whether or not you like one soundtrack or the other is irrelevant to the fact that the artistic intention behind their composition is utterly different and speaks of a much more one dimensional approach taken by Blue Point. Take what's already on screen, make MOAR of it and damn the original intent as opposed to From's multilayered approach.
 

cvv

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 30, 2013
Messages
18,074
Location
Kingdom of Bohemia
Codex+ Now Streaming!
The original soundtrack it's slow, ponderous and as mentionned is more akin to a grim funeral march than a frantic action sequence. It's there to add an entirely new layer of meaning to the fight on top of what is directly present of your screen. The result will vary from player to player, but for me at least the kinetic sensation was less adrenaline filled but more ominous, more dangerous

Yeah, it's subjective. I see the fondness for the original soundtrack as mostly nostalgia driven. I think if people played the game with the Remake OST for 10 years and THEN got the original they'd be horrified. The original OST has it's shining moments, like the Astraea fight - the Remake version is p. terrible - but the Flamelurker theme is not among them in my book.

Look, I'm fine with counterintuitive music - accompanying viscerul action sequences with slow, fragile themes - the Astraea fight shows that it can work, sometimes, under the right conditions. But usually a tense, frantic fight simply needs an epic score.

Imagine the triumphant ride of the Rohirrim in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in the third LotR movie being accompanied by a plaintive wail of a tiny violin. You could talk about artistic intentions and entirely new layers of meaning but for me it'd just be a pointless, eye-rolling attempt to subvert our expectations at all costs, something seems to be very much in vogue these days.
 

Jasede

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2005
Messages
24,793
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut I'm very into cock and ball torture
I think the new theme sounds crap and I think this because it sounds like every other Dark Souls 3 song. They're all the same.

It's like what happened to Jeremy Soule after his very good TA and his decent TES3 OSTs.

The original soundtrack is full of flaws. It's so real and... Adventurous. Exciting. It uses many different techniques and yet remains tonally consistent. This isn't true for the remake for me. It's all been sent through a ... A filter. To make it "better." Now it's polished and shiny. But like with a gem, a beautifully polished artificial gem is worth a lot less than naturally mined gem with inclusions and imperfections.

The Japanese have always known that it's imperfections that draw the eye to that which is beautiful, and that help break up the monotony. In that sense this new remake is a complete failure.
 
Last edited:

Andnjord

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2012
Messages
3,027
Location
The Eye of Terror
Imagine the triumphant ride of the Rohirrim in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in the third LotR movie being accompanied by a plaintive wail of a tiny violin. You could talk about artistic intentions and entirely new layers of meaning but for me it'd just be a pointless, eye-rolling attempt to subvert our expectations at all costs, something seems to be very much in vogue these days.
Bro, that's my point. Your example is also a case of blatantly changing the intention of the original music. The original intention, the one that should be respected if someone was to hypothetically do a remake of that scene, is that of the soaring, uplifting soundtrack, replacing it with a tiny violin would be going against Peter Jackson's vision (regardless of whether you consider that a good or a bad thing). The Flamelurker had a somber and slow soundtrack which got transformed into a frantic 'epic' version of itself. It's the opposite direction from your LOTR example but still the same process. I was specifically commenting the details of the change, but the crux of the argument remains that the biggest sin that the remake commited in my opinion was going against the intent of the original in terms of that soundtrack.

Personaly I prefer the intention of the original, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a change of direction whose merits are debatable. And sticking to the personal I played the game once about 7 years ago, so I had to look up the original soundtrack since I couldn't remember what it sounded like, I pretty much approached both soundtracks without much in the way of preconceptions as they both sounded new to me.

accompanying viscerul action sequences with slow, fragile themes
Come one, you're being disingeneous here. Flamlurker's OG soundtrack is nothing like a fragile theme, it's deliberately heavy and ominous.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom