When can we expect to see the Dark Souls 4 release date? The possibility of a Dark Souls 4 2019 launch is fleeting, although a Dark Souls 4 E3 2020 reveal may still be a possibility. Then there’s the matter of what Dark Souls 4 gameplay could be like. In this guide, we’ll explore everything we know about this (hopefully) upcoming game!
Dark Souls 4 release date and rumors
Miyazaki has said that he’s pretty much done with Dark Souls, but that doesn’t mean that we’ll be seeing the end of the franchise. Fans of the Dark Souls franchise are very dedicated and they’d be quite keen on seeing a Dark Souls 4 release date announced.
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There have been a handful of whispers and rumors about the potential for a sequel. Among these was the announcement that FromSoftware had two new games in the works as of late 2018, but it doesn’t seem very likely that a Dark Souls title is going to be one of them. Unfortunately, there hasn’t really been anything firm that makes us think that we’re going to be getting a new Dark Souls game.
While we have no concrete details just yet, that doesn’t mean that the chances of a fourth Dark Souls game are zero. The fans love the franchise, and that kind of dedication is practically a license to print money.
Dark Souls 4 Gameplay | What would it be like?
What will Dark Souls 4 gameplay be like? While a Dark Souls 4 release date hasn’t yet been announced (nevermind the game itself), we can use our knowledge of the previous titles in the franchise to speculate on how a fourth entry in the series could play. The easiest way to show off the growth of the series is by taking a look at what’s changed in the remastered edition of the first release.
Dark Souls Remastered brought with it several improvements over the original version of the game. Healing items were removed from PvP, to start. Online play got beefier with support for 3v3 and six-player free-for-all game modes, and the servers have been switched from peer-to-peer to dedicated machines.
Of course, the graphics had improved, and plenty of other quality-of-life changes were made. No longer were you restricted to playing multiplayer with randoms. You are now also able to change Covenants you’ve discovered at a bonfire and use more than one item at a once.
Fundamentally, though, the gameplay of Dark Souls changed very little in between the original and the remaster. The transition from the first game to the third, however, has seen an overall increase in pace and a heavier reliance on dodging. A Dark Souls 4 release date is likely to bring with it a faster-paced game rather than a slower one, if only to emphasize a broader appeal to fans who don’t want to stay hunkered down with a shield all the time.
Aside from a (likely) faster overall pace than the earlier games, we’ll probably get all of the great Dark Souls 4 gameplay that we’d expect: Tough boss fights, tough monsters, and deadly, sapient fungi that will smack you across the map.
Dark Souls 4 2019 | Will we see it premiere in 2019?
In late 2018, FromSoftware said that it had two unannounced games in the works, and this was after Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice had already been announced. Presumably, one of those two unannounced titles was Elden Ring. It is also possible that the other one was Metal Wolf Chaos, which launched in August 2019, but we can’t be certain that it “counted” as one of the two games.
The clock is ticking down for 2019, and the odds aren’t looking good for the announcement of a Dark Souls 4 release date before the year is out. Game developers typically like to have several weeks (if not several months) of advance notice to let the hype build up, and Dark Souls isn’t exactly an indie franchise that’s going to buck standards like that.
It’s pretty safe to say that we won’t be seeing a Dark Souls 4 2019 launch, although that doesn’t rule out the possibility of the game being announced before the end of the year for a release date sometime in the next year. Could we, perhaps, see the game at E3 2020?
Dark Souls 4 E3 2020 possibilities
The first Dark Souls was announced as Project Dark way back in September 2010. Dark Souls 2 was subsequently announced two years later in December 2012, and Dark Souls 3 was confirmed in June 2015. While the first two games were announced towards the end of the year, the third game wasn’t officially confirmed until right around the time of E3.
That leaves us with two possibilities for a Dark Souls 4 release date announcement. The first is that we get to hear something before the end of 2019. While the team would certainly benefit from the press of E3, the franchise is well-liked enough that such an announcement would be big enough news on its own; the developers might not want it to get lost in the fray of other big announcements at one of the industry’s biggest conventions.
However, it’s also entirely possible that they may just wait until E3 2020 before dropping the hammer on a Dark Souls 4 announcement. They did it for the third game, and the same reasoning behind not announcing it at E3 also applies to announcing it at E3: It’s a big enough game that it can stand out on its own.
Will we eventually see Dark Souls 4? Even though Miyazaki may be done with it, that won’t stop another talented developer from taking a crack at exploring this universe. We may yet see a continuation of the franchise, although they’ll be facing off against some tough competition.
