I wanted to put these together in one place for interested parties. If you have another impression just post it and I will edit it in.
Sources
Fextralife
IGN
@Peeverson
rbFrosty on Reddit
e: Brad Shoemaker on Giant Bomb (audio)
e: DaveControl on Youtube (short interview with Miyazaki)
e: Gamespot
+ Closed, invitation-only demo for the media and personalities (no public viewing)
+ Hands-on demo coming at a later convention this year (Gamescom/TGS?)
+ 30fps (this is the target fps for the final game per Miyazaki)
+ Interconnected world ala DkS1, highly explorable, no world hub, Miyazaki personally took over level design
+ No magic demonstrated in the demo
+ Hud was turned off and weapons picked up set to auto-equip for the demo
+ Kicking YES
+ Estus YES
+ Praise the Sun YES
+ DkS1 style parries/backstabs/movement
+ Roll-backstab YES
+ Summon signs YES
+ Ragdolls YES
+ Firebombs YES
+ Soul Level-based matchmaking
+ "Dedicated servers" (per rbFrosty : "Miyazaki also added that there would be “dedicated game servers” (which is how the translator described it), however I believe what they intended to say was that it'd function in the way Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 2 worked. Servers would be used to make the connections between players, and then the encounters themselves would shift to peer to peer. Actual dedicated servers for the entirety of the encounter is such a fundamentally different, and important change that I simply can't see them meaning anything other than what I just described, as you'd expect a change like this to be a big talking point or announcement or something they couldn't talk about yet, rather than just an afterthought of “oh yea, there's also this other thing”.")
+ The story concerns a Lord of Cinder, his resurrection, and a Dark Hero trying to defeat him. The world is shared with DkS1 and DkS2, it is not a new world. (per rbFrosty : "Ty asked a PVE question about the lore significance of “the lord of cinder” and whether there'd be any direct connection or continuation to the previous games. Miyazaki said that the usage of “lord of cinder” was a general term, and not referring to any one individual, and that they'd like us to save for a later update.")
Combat Mechanics & Weapons
Notable additions: Stances, Special Skills, Single-Weapon Dual-Wield (ala Blades of Mercy in BB), and Short Bow revamp
Fextralife
The combat is very similar to that of previous Souls titles, but there are some new improvements. First off is “Stances“. It seems that several weapons in the game have Stances that allow for powerful attacks when used. In the demo we saw the Straight Sword have what is called the “Ready Stance“. In this Stance the player holds the Straight Sword in a two-handed fashion (putting away his/her shield) and holds the sword up like a Samurai holding a katana. The hilt is held back by the head of the player with the tip of the blade pointing directly forward. The player was able to Guard Break two shield-wielding enemies with the attack from this Stance. This was the only Stance shown in the demo.
The Greatsword had a new move called a “Lunge” where you hold the blade in two hands and quickly lung forward about half a foot with your shoulder and then can attack quickly with a slicing uppercut that can knock enemies into the air. The Lunge allowed the player to gain iframes through the incoming attack and then punish the attacker with a devastating blow. It was difficult to tell if he actually iframed or not as no health bars were shown on the screen and the player was not staggered during the enemy's swing.
Certain weapons can be dual wielded. The ones we saw in the demo were called “Legion Scimitars“. The player could wield one and a shield or swap to one in each hand. These swords appear to only be 1 item and therefore should only take up 1 slot in your inventory, even though you can use two. It wasn't 100% clear, but it sounded like duel wielding is not unique to weapons you find this way, and that these were only one example. The player was able to use a skill called “Spin” while duel wielding that sort of looked like a mini blade tornado and effectively killed 4 enemies at once with it. But it appears to have a delay from the time you start it until the time it fires off, thus making anticipating when to use it key to its effectiveness since the player was staggered when hit on his first attempt to use it.
[...]
Bows completely got a revamp. You can now effectively use the Short Bow in close range combat. If fires quickly and is nearly instantaneous.
Miyazaki: “Using the short bow is a bit like being like Legolas in Lord of the Rings. Ok, I'm probably exaggerating a little.”
The Long Bow on the other hand, will have a longer draw, will hit harder and be more effective from range. There were no skills or Stances shown with this weapon so I do not know what they are.
[...]
One important thing to note here is that enemies can use Skills and Stances just like the player.
Peeve
Also you could move freely with the bow...so much so that there's a rolling R1 for it.
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the rolling R1 with the bow looked very similar [to Bloodborne rollshots].
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Bows now look more viable as a primary weapon rather than a sidearm/after-thought.
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[The scimitars] stance move is a series of fancy twirls, reminiscent of DkS1 "dancing" movements.
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Think of stances as BB weapon transformations. When activated, your char takes a different stance and has a new moveset.
rbFrosty
The first example of this was the straight sword weapon which has a feature called “ready stance” where the character holds the weapon like this. So there was the normal 1h stance, then the normal 2h stance, then a new “weapon art” they called the “ready stance”. When the character was in the ready stance it got some really cool new moves. They had this different effect on them, and honestly it reminded me a lot of the unique, special attacks of the silver knight straight sword of dark souls 1. One of the special moves allows players to break the block of defending players. The guard break wasn't like dark souls 2 where you got a free critical, instead you just stagger the opponent for a free hit.
Next weapon was the Greatsword. The weapon arts for it was pretty cool. The character kind of lunges forward with the sword raised vertically in a blocking type stance (Miyazaki made a reference to guts from berserk) and then from there the character was able to issue another attack. It kind of looked like the animations here were cancelable but I think it is done in two parts, and I'll talk a bit more about it in a bit.
[...]
the loading screens had a button layout, and the R2 attack said “hold – charge attack”
[...]
Animations, character feel, everything I saw has me convinced that this game will feel like controlling a Dark Souls 1 character. There was none of that floaty kind of movement from Dark Souls 2, or slower startup for attack and roll animations etc. The game just looked fast. Equivalent to Dark Souls 1 if not faster in some regards.
Demo Area "Wall of Lodeleth"
IGN
a crumbling stone fortress similar to the first game's Undead Parish. Cobbled bridges, basements, and walkways both vast and dangerously narrow made up the interwoven environment. From the bonfire at the start to the boss room at the end, you got the sense that paths branched and overlapped; that there was more to the level than might immediately be apparent.
[...]
another new feature were small gravestones. When standing near one, you can press the action button to “offer flame,” which illuminates the gravestone in a blue light. After lighting it up, an epitaph on the tomb read: “Grave of nameless retainer. Raised his sword for the Lord of Cinder.”
This isn't a huge feature of the game, according to Miyazaki, who explained how they can be used as landmarks, torches, or simply a way to learn bits of lore. They'll be hidden throughout the game for the player to find.
rbFrosty
The hands off demo started in a giant neo-gothic esque castle. They kept saying that all the buildings in the scenery were subject to exploration, even the ones in the distance. I'm skeptical it's as “open” as they were trying to make it, but at the very least it should be easy to expect a big comprehensive world like dark souls 1.
Gamespot
Nearby spires rose to sharp points, spiking the sky and making the rooftops look unforgiving in every direction I looked. The architecture and foliage looked more crooked than usual, as if a great being had reached down from the cosmos and given everything a slight twist. As the player walked down a nearby path, living corpses worshiped trees that looked to be made out of dead bodies that had sprouted into a kind of foliage all their own.
Demo Enemies & Boss
Fextralife
The undead warriors were very similar to those in Undead Burg in Dark Souls, and the knights were wearing shiny silver armor that and fought somewhat like the Black Knights from Dark Souls.
[...]
A new enemy type with a familiar trick: his torso distorted into a black cobra in an ultimate merge between Sen's Fortress enemies and Bloodborne's Vipers.
[...]
The boss stood hunched over, almost like an invisible manikin wearing armor. It wielded a flame scimitar and its moveset will remind Game of Thrones fans of a “Water Dancer”. A silhouette trailed behind her marking her swings – I can honestly say she wasn't like any other Souls boss I have seen. The environment effects were impressive: everything struck by the flame scimitar was set on fire, even the pillars in the area, including the player. [...] at around 50 percent health the Dancer added an “Ash Scimitar” to her offhand: pulled from right out of the ground and started to spin with them in a flowing whirlwind, absolutely annihilating Miyazaki's assistant.
[...]
[Fextralife specifies that the dragon showing up in the demo is a Stone Dragon, but don't say whether this name was given to them or if it was their conclusion based on its appearance]
rbFrosty
The first area in general reminded me very much of 1-1 in demons souls. There were lots of shytty useless enemies, and then some crazy strong, really interesting knight enemies.
[...]
The next big thing was that one of the enemies on a church roof (where a bunch of other enemies were praying) turned into this crazy black goo like creature. It was kind of similar to the snake balls in Bloodborne and the Centipede Demon from Dark Souls 1. It was just this big mess of swirling black goop that formed into these arms / tentacle things. It was really, really interesting. From a story / lore perspective it wouldn't surprise me if this was something to do with a coming darkness, and it was humanity going wild (think of manus or whatever). Either way the enemy went abso-fukking-lutley nuts and killed the other NPCs and the player controlled character fairly quickly.
[...]
There was also an encounter with two big, fast, scary as shyt knights. Firstly, they look incredible. The armor shines in a very dynamic way, and overall just looks really fukking good with the cloth physics and their little tuffs of red fabric poking out of their plate armor. As for how the encounters were, it reminded me of the red eye knights of demons souls. They were just so aggressive. There was the standard sword knight and spear knight. The spear knight would attack behind the shield and poke, but then would swap into a 2h mode then what seemed like a “weapon art” stance for the weapon where it had some attacks similar to the pikes running attack from Dark Souls 1.
[...]
[The boss] had very skinny and very long limbs (all fully plated in shiny metal that had some pretty awesome dynamic lightning). The weapons itself was a flaming sword. The boss's name is Dancer something (unfortunately I don't remember the actual name) but it's been described as moving around like Voldo from Soul Calibur and that's honestly not a bad description in the sense that it had this very slithering-esque movement to it. It had this veil / cape thing that was very spectre like in appearance that just kind of floated around. Think of seeing cloth or ribbons moving around in liquid (shytty description I suppose but it's what comes to my mind). Either way, Miyazaki mentioned that each boss has at least two phases, and the second phase of this enemy was to pull out a second sword and dual wield it. The second was an “ash” sword. The boss had these really odd looking attacks. They were hard to predict because the movement was so foreign, but it looked really interesting both from a gameplay standpoint as well as a visual standpoint. One of the other really interesting things about the fight was that the fire sword started igniting the boss area. The pillars caught fire, the floor and carpets caught fire, and a little while into the fight the area was more or less engulfed in flames.
Peeve
Enemies & combat seem faster. I'd say it's due to the aggression of certain enemies, ultimately looks fast as DkS1.
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Boss: giant woman w/ dual blades, but hunched over swirling strangely. Odd movement, similar to Moon Presence delayed attacks
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this concept art is the boss we saw.
Graphics
Peeve
Armor we saw was the char youve seen in promo. Looks amazing, and the cape was singed, the edge glowing orange as if burning.
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Ragdolls return. @DreadedCone almost busted out laughing as Miyazaki spoke bc an enemy was stuck in ground shaking its butt in air
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Amazing cloth physics are back...I'd say more like Bloodborne.
IGN
Miyazaki described the visual style they were going for as a kind of “withered beauty.” There was a moment in the demo that captured this perfectly. The player stood before the corpse of a dead dragon and watched as particles of dust and ash were swept off its body by the wind, illuminated in the rays of dying sunlight above.
rbFrosty
They also talked about Dynamic light sources as well as particle effects of ash and the physics of clothes / cloth. Basically it's going to have graphical fidelity very, very, very similar to Bloodborne (but themed more medieval fantasy, obviously). Next the translator was talking about how the map is more complicated and bigger than ever. The game is taking place in an apocalyptic setting, but is not just dark. They are trying to reproduce very unique visuals within the game.
they can take my money, Dark Souls was never about the single player to me anyways the game truly opens up once you start pvping
