Obviously there are a million Souls clones now, but I have to wonder. Why were there so few games where you're playing as a knight in a suit of armor fighting shit? It's such an obvious and common fantasy premise that you'd think it would also be extremely common in video games, but aside from other FromSoft games, I can hardly think of any.
there are tons
its coming out soon bro, trusthttps://store.steampowered.com/app/1774880/Blight_Survival/
>>720538208>>720538256There ARE tons now, yes. My question is why there weren't any before Dark Souls made the concept popular. Because I feel like it should have been popular long before then
>>720538293dark souls made knights in video games popular? what a ridiculous claim
>>720538346I'm noticing that you still haven't named any other knight video games, so
>>720538389which genre would you prefer to have your knights in?
lack of talent + pain in the rear systems to dev forand armor generally not cool looking until the ps2 generation
>>720538054in general I'm (pretty sure) there are many even before souls, but if you're talking about big studios, AAA only invest in ideas that have already 'proved' themselves
>>7205380543D first/third person and it's just one guy is what you mean?You'd have Gothics, TESs, Neverwinter Nights, Ultima 9 , MMOs, action RPGs like Diablo + clones, Fable, Dark Messiah.Like ???
>>720538523Just mention one (1), you fucking loser.
>>720539852medievil
>>720539873See, how fucking hard was that?
Are you retarded OP? Did you already forget about the hundreds of medieval games and especially runescapeeven now with all the bullshit faggotry added to OSRS the best melee armor still looks like a knight you care about so much
Not just the aesthetic, but the overall approach to game design, and what it says about the industry that no one tried something so obvious in hindsight. Devs just follow established formula and don't question anything. It's true for most genres.Plenty of fantasy hack-and-slash games before but made without much thought. On PS3 there was another dark fantasy title that got forgotten, when it released alongside Demon's Souls people compared the two but had no way to describe what Demon's Souls actually was.Fantasy as a genre had always been tied to RPGs, rooted in D&D and tabletop traditions. RPGs became defined not by combat but by systems and social elements: parties instead of lone characters, dialogue trees, lore dumps, choices and branching narratives, and eventually open worlds. Main focus and only viable design prism.Idea of making a fantasy game focused entirely on combat, with purposeful absence of social/statistical abstractions, and with depth, was something western developers never even considered. They generally put little thought into designing eep combat systems, especially real-time melee, and defaulted to either first-person or isometric views without questioning it. That lack of thought extended to level and world design too, especially once the open-world fad took hold.There are western ancestors you can point to: dungeon crawlers like Ultima Underworld (which inspired King's Field and Arx Fatalis), hack-and-slash titles like Blade of Darkness, Die by the Sword, Rune, Heretic, Enclave, Might and Magic, or RPGs like Gothic.But when you look at Demon's Souls, its influences are very different. Beyond King's Field, it draws more from Zelda and Monster Hunter for combat, ICO and Shadow of the Colossus for artistic direction, Castlevania and Metroid for level design principles, 8 bit classics like G'n'G or Faxanadu for challenge. Distinctly Japanese influences you would never have seen Bethesda, Bioware, or CD Projekt acknowledge back then.
Another crucial difference was storytelling. Souls took a stripped-down, minimalist approach: mystery, implication, fragments of lore. The closest cousin was Ueda’s games. The western trend was the opposite: exposition-heavy, dialogue-driven, obsessed with explaining everything. If you understand game design, you know text isn’t gameplay. Text distracts from gameplay. RPGs had degenerated into gameplay existing only to serve storytelling, instead of storytelling serving gameplay. You can still see the symptom online: players will argue for hundreds of posts nitpicking lore details, but almost never discuss mechanics. That’s a kind of brain rot, and it’s a fundamental problem for video games.Demon’s Souls cut all of that away. What mattered was pushing forward into the unknown, overcoming danger and obstacles. Simple, primordial. And that simplicity naturally returned to timeless archetypes: Herculean trials, Arthur pulling a sword from the stone, the chosen relic as weapon. Not "orcs as metaphor for racism" or "political intrigue in the queen’s court." But the knight in shining armor facing a dragon on a bridge, surrounded by an army of skeletons, exploring a dark tomb or maze. The knight in shining armor is an image, an archetype, doesn't need to be a fleshed out character with a convoluted life story and tragic moral dilemmas, he is simply defined by how he acts when faced against obstacles. As straightforward and evident as it sounds, no one was doing that anymore at the time, in any meaningful way. Adventure! That’s the root of it. Look back at the fantasy art books or game covers of the 80s and 90s, or even at heavy metal album covers. They weren’t meant to be novels. They were meant to be visually evocative, to strike you instantly with atmosphere and imagery. That was the hook. Demon's Souls carried that spirit into game form. That and essentially being "Zelda for adults" at a time when infantilizing casualization was the trend.
>>720538054>Obviously there are a million Souls clones now,like whateveryone always says this but i never hear of any
>>720542965>but i never hear of anyBecause most of them are low effort shitSomeo of the more popular souls clones are like Wuchang, Nioh, The new Lords of the fallen, Lies of P but thats more like a bloodborne clone and I didnt like it at all
7th gen babby.
>>720538054There wasn't a clear winning formula to make it play good. The trend back in 2000s was first person rpgs
>>720540068>conceded like a trannydamn that was easy
>>720542965I can't believe its not From Software tier:Salt & SanctuaryHellpointFun Gimmick:AshenSurge 2Lies of P(really good)Undercooked but good:Steel RisingRemnant: From the AshesWuchangUndercooked tier:ThymesiaMortal ShellChronos: Before the AshesCode VeinImmortal UnchainedLords of the Fallen 1Lords of the Fallen 2Surge 1Bleak Faith Different genre tier:Nioh 1, 2, Final Fantasy OriginAll the fucking Metroidvania's people keep mentioning because they are completely starved for Adventure gamesOutwardTunicDead CellsSeverance Blade of DarknessThat is what... 17? Its not a lot, considering we are just 16 years after Demon Souls. I think its similar to LoZ clones, where a lot of them realize they physically can't make more than 1-2 dungeons, or they struggle to put in some QoL in the combat to make the progression of harshness good.
>>720540980>>720541217Simply based.The Faustian Spirit within.
>>720544334>Button mashing loot machine for retardsWow you truly got hin there, how could anyone forget exciting knight gameplay like M1 M1 M1 M1 M1...
>>720546254Stop throwing a tantrum when someone points out that you're a zoomie.
>>720540068Lmfao pussy
>>720546562Op asked for knight gameplay
>The OG rollslop
>>720548469>OP asks for game where you play as a knight>post game where you play as a witch???
>>720548560Geralt was knighted.
>>720550569Oh the I would like to submit Guitar Hero 5 as knight kino because you can cover Elton John
ahem..
>>720540068Ghosts n' Goblins
>>720544968Great list but I'd move Mortal Shell and LotF2 up a few ranks.Hellpoint is seriously underrated.
>>720538054can't believe this game is 15 years old now
>>720548469Demon's Souls was already out for 2yrs.
