Dark Souls 2 may be released in March 2014

It's been almost half a year since From Software announced the sequel to its brutal open-world RPG Dark Souls. Now a picture has popped up on the Internet courtesy of Twitter user VaatiVidya and All Games Beta that shows a billboard advertising the sequel, dubbed Dark Souls 2. The most interesting thing about the billboard, however, is the fact that it shows a possible release window – March 2014.

The release window begs a big question – will Dark Souls 2 be released on current-gen consoles or will it be seen on the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4? So far, the general assumption has been that the game will be making it to the PS3 and the Xbox 360. However, previous statements from the developers stating that the PC version of the game will be used as the base for the console versions does make more sense in the context of next-gen consoles, considering the PC-like x86 architecture in the PS4 and the Xbox One.

March 2014 seems like a very likely release window for the game (image credit: All Games Beta)

Developer Yui Tanimura had revealed back in April that the PC version of the game will run at a stable 60 fps. This is in stark contrast to the sloppy port of Dark Souls that was released last year and ran at 30 fps. Development on the different platforms is going on simultaneously. The console version of Dark Souls 2 will run at 30 fps.

The game will also have a completely new graphics engine which is said to not have any elements from the previous games' engines.

Dark Souls Director Hidetaka Miyazaki and Dark Souls 2 Director Tomohiro Shibuya had revealed back in January that the focus of Dark Souls 2 will be on having a better, more realistic atmosphere. The game will be set in the same world, but in a different area with different people.

Speaking about building a new world for Dark Souls 2 and how he'd like to evolve the experience of the previous games, Shibuya said, “Rather than focusing on shading and lighting technologies, I believe that having a more realistic atmosphere while showing better details of the monsters and their expressions would definitely have a bigger impact.”