New Dark Souls II Concept Artwork illustrates Giant Spiders, Dragons, Stranded ships and more

A nice batch of concept art from Dark Souls II has emerged online, illustrating several of the environments, monsters and other characters in the upcoming third-person action-RPG game from Namco Bandai and From Software. There are some vastly appealing locales the images seem to portray in the open-world multiplatform title, ranging from a green mountainside whereupon several windmills are located to a lakeside settlement, while one of the illustrations also depicts a beached ship stuck between two mountains. So it seems that the developers have decided to move away from the dark and gloomy-looking atmosphere that has been a trademark in the series, to at least something a bit more varied.

Of course, the franchise is incomplete without the presence of dragons, and if the images are apt portrayals of the game, then we can expect them in spades. There are also numerous other monsters to tackle, including giant spiders, headless armoured knights, a multi-armed monster wielding flaming swords, and a huge creature that seem to be a chimera consisting of scorpion and crab-like attributes. Dark Souls II is currently in development for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, and you can view the first ingame trailer as well as some screenshots right here.