Which is something I actually didn’t touch on in my article. During development, From allegedly either overestimated the power of last gen consoles or overestimated how much time they had to finish their game. The early demo build and videos showed off a much more detailed game. Specifically the lighting was much better. And this reveals more of the troubled development because the lighting was supposed to factor in as an integral part of gameplay. Dark areas would require torches to be held in your shield-hand, sacrificing defense for easier navigation. But in the much scaled down retail version, the lighting makes it so that you barely need the torches at all. It’s too easy to see in the dark in the more washed out environments. And worst of all is that this represents a visual downgrade from the PREVIOUS game. Character models, lighting effects on armor and the environment in general all took a noticeable hit in DS2 for some reason. It’s a real shame, and any hopes of the PC version correcting the issue seem to be for naught.

Fantastic editorial. I don’t even play Dark Souls, but I still enjoyed reading this.