Dark Souls Game Design Book

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Top reviews from United Kingdom

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 January 2014

Verified Purchase

A must have for a Dark Souls fanatic, like myself, but be wary of the cost to content ratio.

I have bought UDON books before and this cover art is probably up there with the likes of the Okami book. It even comes with a reflective sleeve that you can take off and still get a nice cover, which is black and red, rather than black and white. The art inside is great with both big and small images, but not a lot of text. You only get the names of what it represents, so it might say the name of the enemy in the drawing, or the area for example. Funnily enough, there was an error. I am not sure if it's due to the translation or the original write up of the Japanese book. The error was getting the labels for 2 enemies mixed up, it's nothing major to me, but a perfectionist might want to take note.

I primarily buy these books for the text so to only have information about the art in an interview, a very lengthy one at that (about 9 full A4 pages) was a bit disappointing. But the interview is really good and gives quite a lot of information on the design of Dark Souls throughout the development of the game, and it taught me that Miyazaki has a great sense of humour and learns from the mistakes he made producing this game. Sadly, the book ends after the interview at only 128 pages long. At 30 pounds, really consider how much you want it. After 1500 hours poured into the game, I saw it as a no-brainer.

Some of the art you may have seen already, but it's still nice to have it in a physical format. So thank you very much UDON for translating this, and many others.

Highly recommend, but just consider the price.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 March 2021

Verified Purchase

Overall, as a fan of the game and its design, this book is really cool. The weapons and equipment section is the highlight for me. However, it suffers from a lack of descriptive text and I noticed no mention of some key areas and bosses. Plus, some of the pictures in the first section are particularly low resolution, especially one that depicts Anor Londo, however its not the strong section of the book anyway so doesn't matter much. The interview at the end is excellent, and seeing the joking diologue between the designers is great. DLC is barely mentioned.

7/10 A must have for fans of Dark Souls, especially those interested in design. Could have been better with more text and equal content for each aspect of the game, especially the DLC.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 January 2014

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I received my copy of the Dark Souls Design Works today and I am very impressed. Having been very tempted to import the original version when it was released in Japan but never did end up getting it, I was thrilled to see that it was being translated into English. It was certainly worth the wait because this book is absolutely gorgeous, I was actually quite reluctant to remove it from the plastic packaging because of how nice the cover looks. Content-wise, there's 128 pages of artwork with a nice interview with the game's designers at the end. It's fascinating to see the concept art and how it evolved into the finished product we got in the game. The artwork is stunning and varied from environmental sketches, to equipment and everything in between. The interview at the end is a nice flourish and gives a good insight into the vision that the creators had for Dark Souls.

My one gripe with this art book is the price, you don't get a great deal of content in relation to the price tag, but I can assure that anyone that is a big fan of the Souls games will find value in the Dark Souls Design Works despite this.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 August 2017

Verified Purchase

Beautiful quality to the print and cover. The art of Darks Souls is special due to its sense of death, decay and isolation and the fact that its rich story lies within the environment and characters design, rather than being explained to the player. An extended interview with Miyazaki is included in the last pages, giving extra value to this book from an artist's point of view.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 January 2021

Verified Purchase

I own many Art books of video games and this is by far the worst, the quality of the Art itself is great, but the amount of content, the way its laid out, the sizing choices all make everything rather lacklustre and at times unpleasant to look at. It was also a bit more expensive than most Art books I own and at best half their size. Very disappointing for a game that is so visually rich and aesthetically stunning.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 March 2014

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Dark Souls: Design Works is slightly underwhelming, for a game as big as Dark Souls I would have expected this book to be thicker. There are many video game art books in the same price range that have a considerable amount more content. The biggest issue I have how ever, is that the book lacks some key elements from the game, namely concept art for a very popular boss. How ever, from a design point of view the book is beautiful. The sleeve as well as the hardcover are both a treat to look at and the quality of the pages and the printing is top notch. As far as art direction is concerned, very few games in my opinion even hold a candle to Dark Souls. For that reason this book, if you're a fan of the game is worth owning.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 February 2014

Verified Purchase

This is a great book and you should definitely buy it if you are a souls fan, especially if you have not read the excellent interview with some of the key members of the development team. The art is great, although lacks some basic labelling and annotations in places, but it expands greatly on the "free" artbook that came with special editions of the game.

I was disappointed by the lack of environmental artwork as the world of Lordran is truly the star of the show. Still, highly recommended for fans of the Souls series.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 March 2014

Verified Purchase

So you know the art books you get with preorder games? This is like that apart from not a piece of half developed plastic crap from taiwan. Expect full design drawings and work in progresses for every area, enemy, boss and equippable item in the game. The ultimate dark souls aesthetic product. 6/5 stars