Long before the release of Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition, we knew that the PC port would be troubled. The developers admitted that they wouldn't be upgrading the resolution, or fixing the frame rates, or preparing the necessary wards to keep Games for Windows Live from haunting the game. Now, in an interview with Edge , Dark Souls 2 producer Takeshi Miyazoe has explained the problems facing the first game, and reassured that they won't affect the sequel.
"This is going to sound bad but our main priority was to get the game onto the PC as fast as possible, because people wanted it on the PC," Miyazoe said. "The PC market in Japan is so minimal that originally there were no plans to make it on the PC, but with the strong petition from the North American and European fans, even with the lack of experience of working on a PC platform we still did our best to try to get it out as fast as possible. [The problems] were expected to a certain extent.
"We did know there were PC-specific features like key-mapping and use of the mouse and keyboard, high resolution and higher frame rate, stuff like that, but… It's not that we ignored it, but it would have taken too much time for us to implement it, test it and get it up to the level people expected. It was more of a publisher (Namco Bandai) decision to say, 'Guys, don't worry about this – let's just get it out and see how this works on PC.'"
It's hard not to bristle at such a frank admission, but in fairness to From Software, they were entirely up-front with why they were porting Dark Souls, and how much of a direct and unoptimised port it would be. And the annoyance of the time has faded somewhat, because ultimately, Dark Souls PC was spruced into a much more pleasing state thanks to the work of modders.
PC is much more in the minds of the development team this time around, with From Software hoping to release our version just a few weeks after the consoles. "For Dark Souls II we are developing on PC from the beginning," Miyazoe said. "We realise what PC games typically require, and I can assure you that the PC version of Dark Souls II will be a good PC experience for PC gamers.
"The current plan is [to allow] players to choose whether they want to use keyboard and mouse or a controller," he said. "Both options will be available. Me being a console gamer and not a PC gamer, I would recommend a controller, but if you're a PC gamer I'm sure you'd have a different opinion."
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