I have more to say about The Duskbloods and the state of FromSoft in general. Here is my post about my misgivings from yesterday. This will be the last post…for now. Someone in the Discord I’m in said that it seems that the game won’t be an exclusive forever. People guess that it’s six months–I think it will probably be more than that. At least a year, if not forever. That person also said they weren’t sure they’d play it, even if it wasn’t a Nintendo exclusive.
I kiiiiiinda feel the same. I mean, if it comes to the PC, yes, I would buy it. And I would try it, of course, but I have a hunch that if it’s what it says on the tin, it will not be my thing. I’m trying to convince myself that’s ok (and, again, FromSoft, of course, can do wahtever they want. They don’t need any approval from me), but I can’t help but feel disappointed and letdown. And I think it’s ok for me to say that out loud. I don’t need to keep it to myself.
It’s interesting. Even people who are hyped for this have noted the mixed feelings in the community. In the post, I have included below a video by Fighting Cowboy, a FromSoft content creator (he does more, but that’s mostly what I watch from him) who articulates many of these mixed feelings.
Here are some of the concerns. One, there is a core group of FromSoft enthusiasts who don’t play on consoles. I know that most people do play on consoles, but we exist. In fact, when Demon’s Souls became a surprise hit and Dark Souls came out, the latter was not released on PC. After much agitation from the PC crowd, FromSoft finally released a PC port. That suuuuuuuuucked. You have to have the dsfix in order to make the PC port run at all.
The resistance against PC ports got a little less with each game, but even with Elden Ring, the PC port has been a hot mess. I did not have much trouble with Elden Ring (and still do not execpt for an occasional crash), but I’m not someone who cares much about graphics. I mean, I want it to look pretty, be smooth, and no visible tearing, but that’s about it. Pop-ins don’t bother me and fuck ray tracing.
In Fighting Cowboy’s intial reaction to The Duskbloods trailer, he said that he had not been planning on getting a Switch 2 because he barely touches his Switch, but with a new From game that is heavily implied to be the spiritual successor to Bloodborne, he will have to get it. He’s very matter-of-fact about it, but he does mention he’s a little disappointed that the game is a Switch 2 exclusive. He winced and added, “It is what it is.” Which is what people say when they don’t want to say something is a sack of shit. That’s my interpretation, by the way, not anything he said.
He mentiones in the video above that he had some hesitations about the game. A big one was Miyazaki saying that the PvE could be avoided by people who did not want to do it. Fighting Cowboy basically laughed at this statement. He said that if he’s told that getting rid of other players is going to give him rewards or better position, he’s going to pick off the other players–especially those he considers the weakest.