ALARICE'S PROFILE

Disclaimer: I've played the Souls games for a while now. I'm not going to throw out major spoilers, but you should avoid the text below if you want to play through the entirety of Dark Souls 1 blind.

I've played both Dark Souls games to completion (multiple times). One thing I can say about the first Dark Souls is that while the plot isn't spoon fed to the player, it definitely exists. As a sort of "veteran", I wouldn't ever describe Dark Souls 1 as a directionless dungeon crawler. For a person who hasn't played the majority of the game, though, it makes perfect sense for the game to feel like it. For those of you just starting Dark Souls 1:

1.) Talk to every NPC until their dialogue starts to repeat (their dialogue is "exhausted").
2.) Every time you find a new spell, weapon, armor, item, etc. read it's description in the menu.
3.) Whenever you roll, you have a limited amount of frames known as "invincibility frames". During those frames, you cannot take any damage.
4.) Different weapons have something known as "stat scaling" -- either for STR, DEX, INT, or faith. S > A > B > C > D > E -- the higher a stat is, the more damage your weapon will do (depending on the letter and stat that scales).
5.) You don't want to invest in a weapon that has good scaling but an awkward/hard to use move set. An extra 10 or 20 points of damage may not matter as much as you think.
5.) NPCs have their own goals. NPCs that rest at Firelink and/or sell things to you may move on to their own fate as you progress through the game.

Hidetaka Miyazaki was the director for Dark Souls 1, which is currently my favorite souls game. Hidetaka didn't come back as the director for Dark Souls 2 though, and it's probably the main reason why I (and others) find the game to be a big disappointment when compared to it's prequel (but it's still better than a lot of games coming out). After the fate of Dark Souls 2 was known, Hidetaka Miyazaki took his rightful place as the president of FromSoftware. He is now the overlord of video games, and he will bring us all to gaming heaven with PROJECT BEAST.

It's been said to death already, but Hidetaka used to read western fantasy when he was young. He had some trouble understanding English at points, which resulted in some parts of the book unknown to him, so he filled in the blanks himself. He emulates that kind of experience through his lore, but he doesn't do the same with his plot. After some digging, Dark Souls 1's plot is easy to understand. I recommend playing all of the souls games if you can, and hopefully you'll be able to experience most of the lore and gameplay given to you without becoming a noodle-arms who has to play through the game with two phantoms at all times, or simply going hollow.

I enjoy making animation and combining sprites together (e.g. somebody sitting in a chair, equipment that is visible on a character). It's just satisfying for me, even if I can't go all out with it.

Another thing I love to do is change the world around the player without any strong sign or announcement--though that's from the perspective of the genre I'm working with, and the purpose is to get in the player's head as much as I can. overall, I want players to be apprehensive and/or hopeful, because I want to affect how the player feels strong enough for them to enjoy the game. The worst part about it has to be that I don't know how it's going to turn out for the majority of people, and there's always the chance of failure.

Also character development and interaction, because I'm actually a writer at heart.