Demon’s Souls’ Color Filters Drastically Alter the Game’s Tone
While console launch lineups normally have their fair share of lackluster games, the PS5 made it to market with a few heavyweight titles. The Demon’s Souls remake is just one of these major players, offering up a profound RPG for early adopters of the console. It remains true to the first but brings the match forward to an entirely new generation of gamers, showing off the early etchings of the Souls franchise. It also just so happens to be among the finest looking games ever produced.
If fans needed an indicator of how big a generational jump the PS5 is, Demon’s Souls is a crystal clear example. The quantity of detail seen in its surroundings, either from a distance and up close, is outstanding. Best of all is the simple fact that the dark fantasy aesthetic is on full display in any way times, and it makes for one of the very defining appearances of the ancient PS5 life cycle.
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Being a film, fans likely already know what to expect out of Demon’s Souls visually, but the game shakes things up in a few interesting ways. The detail is that the nearest fans have seen yet to the Unreal Engine 4 demo Epic Games shown a couple of months back, which packed an insane amount of minutia to its surroundings. That isn’t all that Demon’s Souls accomplishes, however. Actually, far from it, as Demon’s Souls’ use of filters in gameplay may drastically alter the design of its environments.
The setting is comparatively easy to miss, hidden away in the Demon’s Souls menu settings with no real mention of it in-game. Rather than incorporating simple photo style filters, the game allows players to change the whole experience’s color palette. This might not look like a huge deal, but its effect on the game’s visuals is profound.
Souls games have developed a reputation for their appearances, typically evoking images of grotesque enemies and Gothic spires, intending to convey environmental storytelling effectively. This provides each title a constant tone, and it’s simple to learn how Demon’s Souls have now inspired recent entries. From the box, Bluepoint’s Demon’s Souls match features a similar tone, but upon applying filters, all that changes.
Take, for example, the”Summer” filter. It transforms the drab grays into brighter mixes of orange colors, making the game feel strangely lively. For a game like Demon’s Souls, it gets the entire experience to feel radically different, even if the core gameplay is the same. Plus, there are quite a few alternatives, and while they are not a dramatic change, it is interesting to see the impact a shift in colors could have on a game.
It’s reminiscent of Ghost of Tsushima’s Kurosawa mode, which gave the match a grainy, black and black aesthetic. It also changed the game’s tone, which makes it feel like an old-school Samurai film. Demon’s Souls even offers a Monochrome mode that makes the game black and white, though there’s no audio filter to bring it all of the ways, according to Ghost of Tsushima. Still, the filters may make the game feel more composed, which can be a strange feeling for a Souls match.
