Sony took to the PlayStation.Blog this morning in order to bang the war drum for the first beta round for From Sotware’s unforgiving sequel, Dark Souls II. The much anticipated follow-up to the 2011 RPG is poised to launch in March, 2014 on Xbox 360, PC and PS3; but owners of the latter platform will have the opportunity to partake in the closed beta by downloading the registration ticket from the PlayStation Store under the ‘Latest Releases’ tab.
Namco Bandai, the publisher behind Dark Souls II, confirmed that the preliminary beta itself will go live on October 12th for North America, Europe and Australasia, before a second round of testing commences two weeks later on October 27th. Fans of the series can download the aforementioned registration ticket from today, before being notified if they’ve qualified to enter the beta at a later date.
Next month’s closed test not only provides users with an early glimpse of the game, it will also allow players to “contribute to the game’s optimisation,” and to likely have a say on the end product. After all, exposing potential flaws and highlighting technical issues is what a beta is all about; it just so happens that From Software’s merciless genre piece hosts an environment wherein you’ll die numerous times – game-breaking bugs or not.
Blending old-school sensibilities with a perpetually dark aesthetic, the new iteration in the Souls’ series promises an incredibly challenging affair. Crucially, the game won’t make an appearance on next-gen consoles – namely the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 – as Yui Tanimura, Dark Souls II’s director, believes there is still “a lot of potential to deliver Dark Souls II, and we wanted to get Dark Souls II out as soon as possible to the fans.”
From Software’s intense property has been confirmed for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC for March 2014. Until then, though, do you plan to take advantage of the beta opportunity on PlayStation 3? Give us your thoughts below.