The release of Dark Souls II (for consoles) is now just weeks away. Fans of the series have no doubt already pre-ordered the game and Namco Bandai is now finalizing its marketing push for the sequel to one of the most highly-praised games of the past half-decade. Today the publisher released a new trailer for Dark Souls II featuring huge axes, busted armor, and a gigantic dragon.
Oddly enough, about half of the trailer is footage taken from the original Dark Souls. The theme of the trailer seems to be that the Dark Souls series isn’t just about death. This could be a reaction to recent Fox News revelation that the so-called Craigslist serial killer was a fan of Dark Souls. The new video attempts to re-frame the series as being about overcoming challenges, all while providing knowing winks to fans with iconic images from the first game:
In a way, the narrator of the video is right. Though Dark Souls was heavily marketed around its infamous difficulty (the PC version of the game was subtitles “Prepare to Die Edition”), the game itself was not about death itself. Instead, each of the many time new players saw the words “You Died” was a learning experience urging them on to complete tasks and defeat enemies that, at first, seem ridiculously overpowered.
