Dark Souls 2's new engine will allow for subtler expression and gimmicks, says co-director

Dark Souls 2's E3 trailer showed a game that was unmistakably Dark Souls, albeit overlayed with a hilariously inappropriate nu-metal soundtrack. What was less obvious was the enhancements made to the game's new engine. Beyond a few nicer particle effects, will it really have a dramatic difference? According to the game's co-director, Yui Tanimura: yes, it will. Of course, he would say that.

"The idea of gimmicks in the game is now doable with this new engine," Tanimura continued. "Things like representing an enemy that is perhaps off-screen but with movement of shadows, or that kind of expression in the game. It's something that [I] always wanted to do but wasn't able to do with the previous engine."

"There's a lot of ideas like that. We don't want to give everything away, but those kinds of things are small things that we wanted to express, and with this engine we think we can do that."

Dark Souls is due out March 2014.

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.