No Rest for the Wicked Dev Suggests Dark Souls Would Have Benefited from Early Access

No Rest for the Wicked Dev Suggests Dark Souls Would Have Benefited from Early Access

• Creative director Thomas Mahler defended early access for No Rest for the Wicked, claiming games like Dark Souls could have benefited from the practice.
• Despite launching recently, No Rest for the Wicked’s early access already has major features like multiplayer and a new region planned for its next few updates.
• Early access is growing in popularity, even for top-selling games like Palworld and Baldur’s Gate 3.

One of the developers behind No Rest for the Wicked recently talked about the usefulness of early access releases, suggesting that even well-regarded titles such as Dark Souls could have benefited from this practice. Early access is becoming increasingly popular in gaming, and No Rest for the Wicked is just one of the many recent projects to use this release model.

No Rest for the Wicked entered early access last week and has already released a road map detailing future updates. The first major update will bring multiplayer to the action RPG. The second one will be called “The Breach” and will focus on bringing more content, including a new region, enemies, and more narrative.

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Now, Moon Studios’ creative director, Thomas Mahler, talked more about the company’s experience with early access for No Rest for the Wicked. According to Mahler, this was one of the best decisions the studio could have made, as games are getting “more complex and sophisticated,” and gaining data from the public is vital for a satisfactory 1.0 release. Mahler even claimed that classic games such as the first Dark Souls could have benefited from early access. The creative director defended that if FromSoftware had released its game at early access, the devs would have more time and could polish otherwise rushed late-game Dark Souls areas such as Lost Izalith, for example. The No Rest for the Wicked developer also defended that even companies like Sony and Nintendo could embrace this practice, helping more AAA devs polish their products before 1.0 releases.

Thomas Mahler’s statements will likely be deemed controversial by many gamers. Dark Souls is one of the most influential games ever made and is often considered a masterpiece. However, some gamers would likely remember that Dark Souls had plenty of boarded doors and broken bridges, indicating that more content could have been planned at a time, and was never finished due to time constraints.

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Early Access Is Becoming Increasingly More Common in Gaming

It’s no secret that early access releases are getting popular even for big hits. Palworld is an early-access release and is one of the best-selling games of 2024. Baldur’s Gate 3 was the GOTY of 2023, and it spent years in early access. Some games are going even further, though. For instance, the developers of Hades 2 recently announced a technical test period before early access, allowing a very small number of gamers to test the content before any public release.

No Rest for the Wicked

From Moon Studios, creators of the Ori franchise, is an ARPG-style game called No Rest for the Wicked. The plague Pestilence has swept over the land and King Harol has died, leaving the land in turmoil. Players become a Cerim, a member of a group of holy warriors sworn to take up arms against Pestilence and cleanse the land.

Platform(s)Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS5, PCDeveloper(s)Moon StudiosPublisher(s)Private DivisionGenre(s)Action RPG