Story of a saga video games... If the Dark Souls series managed to seduce players and journalists, it was mainly by word of mouth. It was such a great success that Dark Souls 2 was named “Game of the Year” 2014 by the vast majority of gaming magazines and websites. To date, this saga is one of the most important in the gaming industry. The odd thing is that these games are well known for their difficulty and their cryptic universe. This publication narrates the epic success story, but also describes its gameplay mechanics and its specific lore across more than 300 pages. Characters, plots and the scenario of the three Souls (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Dark Souls II) are deciphered by Damien Mecheri and Sylvain Romieu, who spent a long year studying these dense and enigmatic games down to the smallest detail. The serie Dark Souls and her spiritual father Demon's Souls will not have secrets for you anymore! EXTRACT In May 2014, Hidetaka Miyazaki succeeded Naotoshi Zin as president of FromSoftware, after the studio was purchased by Kadokawa Shoten. This was a highly significant promotion for the person who had led the company’s most successful project, Dark Souls. And yet, he did not lose from view what had attracted him to the field: an insatiable creative drive. In spite of his new status within the studio, one of the conditions he requested and was granted was to remain creative director of his new project: Bloodborne. This allowed him to successfully design this spiritual successor to the first Souls game, while also assuming his new responsibilities. Given his drive to work and create, it is not surprising how quickly Miyazaki moved up through the ranks. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Passionate about films and video games, Damien Mecheri joined the writers team of Gameplay RPG in 2004, writing several articles for the second special edition on the Final Fantasy saga. He continued his work with the team in another publication called Background, before continuing the online adventure in 2008 with the site Gameweb.fr. Since 2011, he has come aboard Third Éditions with Mehdi El Kanafi and Nicolas Courcier, the publisher’s two founders. Damien is also the author of the book Video Game Music: a History of Gaming Music. For Third Éditions, he is actively working on the “Level Up” and “Année jeu vidéo” collections. He has also written or co-written several works from the same publisher: The Legend of Final Fantasy X, Welcome to Silent Hill: a journey into Hell, The Works of Fumito Ueda: a Different Perspective on Video Games and, of course, the first volume of Dark Souls: Beyond the Grave. Curious by nature, a dreamer against the grain and a chronic ranter, Sylvain Romieu is also a passionate traveler of the real and the unreal, the world and the virtual universes, always in search of enriching discoveries and varied cultures. A developer by trade, he took up his modest pen several years ago to study the characteristics and richness of the marvelously creative world of video games. He writes for a French video game site called Chroniques-Ludiques, particularly on the topic of RPGs, his preferred genre.

Discover an analytic work of Sekiro, a game that spectacularly marked the 2010s. Few video game series can boast having marked the 2010s as much as Souls. FromSoftware mainly owes this amazing and unexpected success to the talents of the now-famous Hidetaka Miyazaki, whose radical vision of video games was quick to charm and win around players. In May 2014, the director was promoted to president of FromSoftware. He could have continued to create Souls forevermore, but instead chose to develop new franchises. The first true representative of this new era was Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, a game with unprecedented richness and flawless thematic consistency. This book will discuss the work’s development process, an analysis of the storyline and characters, the soundtrack, themes, and its historical, cultural and artistic influences. It will also present an analysis of the problem with Sekiro’s difficulty—which saw a lot of ink spilled at its release—and take a look at the evolution of Miyazaki’s games. This book will provide you with an analysis of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice : it will discuss the game creation process, as well as the themes, the storyline, the characters, the soundtrack and its diferent influences. The book will also present an analysis of the problem with the game's difficulty and the evolution of Miyazaki's games. ABOUT THE AUTHOR It is by exploring the world of Super Metroid at the age of seven that Ludovic Castro finds himself for the first time captivated by a world of video games. A big fan of Japanese RPGs, he later became passionate about the background stories about his favorite games in Gameplay RPG magazine. Now a doctor of theoretical chemistry, he sometimes manages to find enough free time to write about his favorite series, Megami Tensei.

A new and accessible history of the crusades, covering the nine Middle-Eastern crusades along with the less-well-known European ones

We thought we had gone through the topic in the first volume, those two games opened new pists of reflexions. The in-depth analysis of Hidetaka Miyazaki's Dark Souls saga continues with this volume 2, decoding the Bloodborne and Dark Souls III episodes. An indinspensale ebook for all the fans of the game Dark Souls ! EXTRACT The project, christened Project Beast, began soon after the Astorias of the Abyss DLC was released in August 2012. At the time, FromSoftware was also beginning to build Dark Souls II, its cash cow. Miyazaki kept his distance from this sequel, which was handed off to Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura, with support from the FromSoftware president and creator of King’s Field, Naotoshi Zin, who supervised the game system. On his end, Hidetaka Miyazaki formed a trusted team of regular collaborators, such as lead programmer Jun Itô (who had already filled this role for Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls), composer and lead sound designer Tsukasa Saitô (Armored Core games), and most of his regular artists: Daisuke Satake, Masanori Waragai and Hiroshi Nakamura. The success of Demon’s Souls, and the even greater success of Dark Souls, allowed FromSoftware to grow its ranks significantly. In total, no fewer than fifty programmers participated in the project, along with around twenty game system designers and fifty people working on visual creation (animation, scenery, characters, etc.). Thanks to financial support from Sony, many Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese studios were sub-contracted during the production to help with graphics and visuals. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Passionate about films and video games, Damien Mecheri joined the writers team of Gameplay RPG in 2004, writing several articles for the second special edition on the Final Fantasy saga. He continued his work with the team in another publication called Background, before continuing the online adventure in 2008 with the site Gameweb.fr. Since 2011, he has come aboard Third Éditions with Mehdi El Kanafi and Nicolas Courcier, the publisher’s two founders. Damien is also the author of the book Video Game Music: a History of Gaming Music. For Third Éditions, he is actively working on the “Level Up” and “Année jeu vidéo” collections. He has also written or co-written several works from the same publisher: The Legend of Final Fantasy X, Welcome to Silent Hill: a journey into Hell, The Works of Fumito Ueda: a Different Perspective on Video Games and, of course, the first volume of Dark Souls: Beyond the Grave. Curious by nature, a dreamer against the grain and a chronic ranter, Sylvain Romieu is also a passionate traveler of the real and the unreal, the world and the virtual universes, always in search of enriching discoveries and varied cultures. A developer by trade, he took up his modest pen several years ago to study the characteristics and richness of the marvelously creative world of video games. He writes for a French video game site called Chroniques-Ludiques, particularly on the topic of RPGs, his preferred genre.

"Black Metal - Beyond the Darkness aims to look past the much-discussed Second Wave spearheaded by groups and artists such as Mayhem, Burzum, Darkthrone and Emperor, with a new focus on a number of the form's lesser-reported international scenes; developments in the selling and distribution of Black Metal through labels, stores and distros; idiosyncratic aesthetics and inherent notions of theatricality; Black Metal's relationship with the world of Fine Art; and oral recollections of the genre's development, amongst other topics."--Publisher's description.

An official visual guide to the fantastical worlds and legendary characters of Magic: The Gathering The various realms of Magic: The Gathering’s storied Multiverse have served as host to countless epic battles and dramatic cataclysms—and each plane is richly and uniquely populated with its own fantastical creatures, iconic characters, and legendary Planeswalkers. In Magic: The Gathering: Planes of the Multiverse, author Jay Annelli presents a visual guide to the history behind lore-defining events from the Phyrexian Invasion to the War of the Spark, as well as character profiles for Karn, Narset, Vraska, Sorin Markov, and other fan-favorite Planeswalkers. Planes of the Multiverse pairs original artwork—in many instances reproduced for the first time outside of the card frame—with detailed primers on each plane. This collection offers exclusive insight into the art and mythology of some of Magic: The Gathering’s most popular and enduring locales—and the characters that inhabit them.