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Doom Goon posted:Probably. I wouldn't mind a light-hearted "what if" thread to kill some time I've been in the dark about this since the DS1 thread was speculating about riding around on a giant clay spider, while being attacked by swarms of infinitely tessellating smaller spiders. I have weird feelings about this game.
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Apr 4, 2014 16:11
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I'm in the Shrine of Amana, is this Ash Lake? It looks like it. Drangleic Castle might be the most perfectly designed area in any videogame. I love every last piece of it. The journey to it through the Shrine of Winter is long, without being arduous, it feels a long way away. Especially as the geography starts to break down - before you walk through the tunnel you can see the tower clearly in the distance, but once you walk through it, the tower moves! It's subtle, but the whole journey feels uncanny, like space is warped. The approach up the stairs sets the theme pretty early on - those Mastodon statues are visible a mile off, and anybody who's played any videogame before knows that they're going to come alive and attack you. Sure enough, they do. The rest of the level is an exercise in paranoia as I leap and dodge round every corner whenever I see a statue. But the game is nice, it's fair, it teaches me the statues - horsehead knights are statues, tortoise knights are statues, spearmen will try and stab me. I can live with that. The doorway room has a nice obvious strategy - approach from the side, try and only wake up two at time, and pray to god that nothing triggers those very ominous doors . But the statues are so well placed that killing them fast guarantees they'll trigger a door - the apperance of the first ruin sentinal is a bit of a shock, but after taking on three at once it's satisfying to just dunk on one solo. The rest of the room is gloriously tense - since the basic rule of Dark Souls is that if I die, those doors are staying open and that room suddenly gets a whole lot harder. I die a few times, aggroing multiple sentries at once, but that room remains one of my favourite fights. Moments of quiet stalking, punctuated with bursts of extreme violence. The ballista-room is a similar idea - all the pieces are immediately visible, but with some subtle trickery. There's three ballistae, a chest, and a conspicuous lever by a portcullis. I bumbled into the first ballistae trap in the forest of fallen giants and got shot to pieces. But I'm onto you, game. I know how this works. I look around carefully, there's no obvious pressure-plate or trip-wire. I drop my armour so I can move fast, and gingerly step in front of the ballistae and immediately throw myself back. Nothing happens. I try again. Still nothing. Alright, so clearly the chest is trapped. I run up, hit it, and hurl myself to the ground. I open it, and roll the side. I pick up the item and dive away. Nothing. That leaves the lever. I know I can't roll back far enough once I pull that lever. So I put on all my armour, two hand a greatshield, and prepare to tank the hits. Even if I die, at least that door will be open. When I eventually lower my shield, I walk over to the ballistae. They're not loaded. Eventually, I reach the approach to the fog door. I see a huge golden knight at the end of a corridor, lined with horsehead knights. It's a literal dark-and-stormy-night, and I am ready for a brawl. I set my sword on fire, and sprint down the corridor as lighting throws my shadow across the columns. This is what games are made of, this is why I play Dark Souls, I will take this bastard down! That's when the horsehead knights decide that they aren't actually statues after all. Motherfuckers That level played me like a violin.
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May 4, 2014 12:50
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Captain Oblivious posted:It's not, no. Ash Lake is much lower and, if Dark Souls 1 is to believed, the entire Dark Souls world more or less rests on the boughs of the Ash Trees. This morning it was the lowest point I'd been to (wasn't expecting that lift to go down to take me to the Crypt). It is still a giant lake extending in all directions, intertwined with a vast mass of tree roots, accompanied by a haunting wailing. The Tower of Flame looks like a ruined, partially submerged Anor Londo and given how what little plot I've gleaned so far shows the corrupted descendants of the original Great Souls so at least I'd say it's meant to evoke Ash Lake.
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May 4, 2014 15:37
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Elissimpark posted:For a second, I was wondering why Hayao Miyazaki, director of My Neighbour Totoro, would care how I played DS2. Either he doesn't, or none of my letters are getting through.
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Nov 18, 2021 11:04
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