New Dark Souls 3 gameplay footage shows off the quick-stepping Thief class

If you’re a fan of Bloodborne’s quickstepping feature, as well as its quick and fluid combat, some new footage of Dark Souls III is bound to please you.

The gameplay footage surfaced on YouTube following a livestream by Dark Souls developers FromSoftware, which showed off the new Thief class found in the series’ third entry.

While Dark Souls titles have tended to have slower and more block-based combat, the footage appears to show a combat system closer to that of Bloodborne than of Dark Souls II. The Thief class, shown off in the video, is able to quickstep to dodge enemy attacks – a mechanic first introduced in Bloodborne. However, instead of sapping stamina, quickstepping appears to drain a player’s mana ever so slightly with Eurogamer speculating that this could be one of the new “weapon arts” that FromSoftware have teased in the past.

Alongside the quickstep, players can also utilise a backstab attack, very similar to the visceral mechanic found in FromSoftware’s last outing. It appears that in Dark Souls 3, players will be able to backstab at any time instead of having to sneak up on enemy, like in Bloodborne. The gameplay footage comes after a plethora of new high-definition screenshots were released last week, showing off new bosses and environments.

You can find the video above. Dark Souls III is set for release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on March 24 in Japan, and April 12 in the rest of the world.