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 Ah, hello! You don't look Hollow, far from it! About Me: I love RPGs, strategy games, and RPGs tough enough that I can tackle them like strategy games. I like to talk in great depth and detail about a wide variety of topics when making a Let's Play: expert tactics, story and lore, hidden mechanics, and game design choices. Some of you may know me from my ongoing or finished LPs of the good Fire Emblem, the bad Fire Emblem, Civilization 2, Age of Mythology, Skyrim, Warcraft 3, or Advance Wars 2 About Dark Souls: Come on, you know Dark Souls. Don't lie to me. You probably know it better than I did a couple of years ago when I picked it up for the first time, long after even Dark Souls 3's last DLC was finished. At the very least you know, like I did, that it's a difficult fantasy RPG and you've heard it has a very good but hard to understand story. About this LP This will be an unusual challenge run. I've made a mod which will unlock certain powerful, interestingly-placed enemies which were theoretically always present in the game but would never appear in normal play. Even if you've seen Dark Souls videos before, a lot of the familiar zones are going to feel very different now. The developers placed these 'gravelord phantom' enemies with as much care and precision (and spitefulness) as each of the game's normal enemies. And at long last you'll learn what some of the world's mysterious dead ends were built for: containing hidden bonus enemies called Vagrants! Compounding that challenge, I'll also be setting the difficulty level to NG+6. That will make every enemy much tougher and more deadly, including those new ones. This is the hardest possible gameplay that is built into the game, unlocked with a combination of my mod and third party tools. Also importantly, I will not be using the tricks a lot of 'challenge' runs of Dark Souls use to skip past all the enemies, grab endgame weapons immediately, and then bulldoze whatever parts of the game they don't just skip. I will try to play the game as intended, fighting all enemies and playing zones in a plausibly intended order rather than a strategically optimal order. So if you've ever wondered what the developers' vision was for the hardest that Dark Souls could be, this is it! A second reason I think this LP will be worth watching is that I also know a ton about the game's famously obscure lore, its numerous secret mechanics and the math behind them, and a lot of other things. I can guarantee everyone will learn things before the end. Oh and I'm pretty good at PvP too. If the servers ever come back online, I'll show some of that. Episodes: Ep 1: Intro Lore & the Undead Asylum Ep 2: Firelink Shrine Ep 3: Undead Burg Ep 4: The Miniboss Gauntlet Ep 5: Slaying Hellkite, and Undead Parish Melth fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Oct 16, 2022 |
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Jul 6, 2022 04:50
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Here are the rules and restrictions I am currently planning on. They're a mix of things meant to create a challenge, and things meant to make for fun content and a complete experience of the game. I'm open to additional ideas or modifications to these: 1) New Game +6, Fresh Start: I'll be playing on NG+6 difficulty (the maximum) but the character starts with nothing, like it was just new game For the sake of showing more of the game's content though, I might do things later like acquire the Sunlight Spear miracle (useless but awesome) normally only available in NG+, or have both Sunlight Blade and Darkmoon Blade (either is available in NG, both at once in NG+). 2) No Summons: This one almost goes without saying, but I won't be summoning any NPCs for help with bosses. 3) Perma-Gravelord/Vagrant: I made a mod to turn on gravelord phantoms and vagrants everywhere, so there will be a lot of extremely strong new enemies to deal with. 4) Max Level 125: This is the traditional PvP level, so I'll stick to that rather than use all my extra NG+6 souls to get to an overpowered level. 5) Complete All NPC Stories: I have to complete all NPC stories fully, and I can't kill NPCs for their stuff until their questline is finished. There are several NPCs who have unique and cool, albeit not necessarily good, items that you can only get by killing them, and I'll do that in the interest of completionism. 6) Roleplay: This one is a bit fuzzy by definition, especially since Dark Souls is not a game which provides a lot of material to roleplay with. But in general I'll try to develop and play a character and make in-character decisions about what to do and where to go rather than do what I know is mechanically optimal. This is one of the main rules I use to avoid sequence breaking. I will try to go only to zones I either was told to go to or have another in-character reason to go to. This rule will be superseded by other rules sometimes. For example, completing all NPC stories (especially Siegmeyer's) is impossible without going to some bizarre locations for no reason to find an NPC at the right place. Also there are optional bosses my character would not want to fight, but I'll fight them anyway just to show the entire game. Also there are some zones (especially secret zones) which no one ever mentions, so I'll just go to those when they're convenient and make reasonable sense to visit. I won't be using the Master Key to get to any such places early though. 7) Complete Zones Before Moving On: Basically I can't just go from zone to zone cherry-picking the best items before coming back to fight a boss. In each zone I go to, I have to kill everything (including the boss) and collect every item before moving on. There will be a couple of exceptions forced by the roleplay or NPC story requirements though, where I will need to visit a zone before it can be completed. Or where it wouldn't make sense for my character to complete it. In that case, I'll just do whatever makes roleplay sense and then leave to return at a more appropriate time. 8) Farming: I won't be farming for stuff like souls or rare drops of crafting materials or humanity items early. However, there are a lot of cool, unique weapons and items and whatnot which are rare drops. I'm just going to skip the boring farming and generate a copy of those so I can show them. Likewise, showing off a wide variety of weapons means I'm going to need a large supply of titanite. My policy will be that I'm not allowed to farm any of that- but once I reach whatever location it becomes easiest to farm in, I'll just generate as much as I need. For example, White Titanite chunks are most easily farmed from the skeleton towers near the start of the Tomb of the Giants. Once I reach that area, I can just give myself 99 white titanite and skip the boring grind which would give me a huge number of extra level ups anyway. 9) Different Weapons?: This is one I just thought of and am not sure about. I might have a policy that I use a different weapon against every boss. This would encourage variety and creativity, though sometimes it would clearly be sub-optimal. 10) Beat the bosses the hard way: Kill Smough first, don't parry Gwyn, A couple of things I'm still pondering: Should I fight the Havel Knight and acquire Havel's Ring while in the Undead Burg zone? That enemy is mechanically part of the Undead Burg zone and accessible there with the master key, but normally he's accessed from the later Darkroot side. Also, what about the first bit of New Londo? It's accessible right from the start, there are no enemies there, and it basically functions as an extension of Firelink Shrine. And there are a few fun things available there. Is this fair game to go to at the start to pick up those initial items even though it can't be completed yet? Do I have to wait until the crestfallen warrior happens to randomly recommend I check it out? Even then it still can't be completed and there won't be a roleplay reason to do so for a long time. Melth fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Jul 6, 2022 |
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Jul 6, 2022 04:51
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Running downstairs and getting repeatedly turned into mashed potato by Havel until getting his ring is an essential part of any new dark souls run
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Jul 6, 2022 11:23
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If it's reachable, it's reachable, go for Havel's ring. And you can't go poke around in New Londo, it's easily reachable from Firelink and shares a lot of the same physical structure, makes perfect sense to check out the basement.
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Jul 6, 2022 18:07
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Oh, this should be good. Your challenge runs never cease to amaze.
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Jul 6, 2022 20:25
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The encumbrance system of DS1 is pretty brutal without the early Havel's Ring, imo. Get it.
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Jul 7, 2022 23:17
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I’m buckled up and ready! Break a leg!
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Jul 8, 2022 04:00
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Booties posted:I’m buckled up and ready! Break a leg! Any particular leg? If it's my choice, I'll go with the left leg on the Iron Golem!
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Jul 8, 2022 04:15
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Ep 1: Intro Lore & the Undead Asylum Time for the first episode! I've been looking forward to this all week.
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Jul 10, 2022 18:54
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I have a lot of thoughts about various failings that Fromsoft games have (that they handily compensate for) and I can see you've already brought up a few. I have also never seen a vagrant, ever, and I've played DaS1 for hundreds upon hundreds of hours. (EE: Actually thinking back on it, I did see as many as one (1) vagrants total. And it almost murdered me.) (Also I'm going to say that limiting yourself to SL125 will not allow you to show off a number of the fancy things you'll pick up, which makes me sad.) E: Oh, yeah, the Dark Souls pen and paper RPG (Japanese edition) has a couple rules for hollowing: getting killed can damage your memories and that's what eventually gets you. It does not imply at any time that that's all that can do it. SIGSEGV fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Jul 10, 2022 |
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Jul 10, 2022 21:46
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Okay, I was expecting amazing gameplay but what really cinches this LP for me is all the attention to details. Can't wait for the next update! e: Actually, based on these prompts - are you playing this with keyboard and mouse? anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Jul 10, 2022 |
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Jul 10, 2022 23:24
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This is so well put together, researched and presented. I can't wait for more. I have never had the time to sit and get into any of the souls games (though I have Elden Ring waiting for me when I finish Forbidden West) and I am really keen to follow you through this game.
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Jul 11, 2022 04:28
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SIGSEGV posted:I have a lot of thoughts about various failings that Fromsoft games have (that they handily compensate for) and I can see you've already brought up a few. I have also never seen a vagrant, ever, and I've played DaS1 for hundreds upon hundreds of hours. (EE: Actually thinking back on it, I did see as many as one (1) vagrants total. And it almost murdered me.) Interesting, the memory loss thing definitely seems in line with Dark Souls 2 but not at all with 1 and 3. Is that pen and paper RPG any kind of officially sanctioned product where the lore is to be taken as canon? I remember that there was a comic book made called the Age of Fire which I was trying to find despite my usual disinterest in comic books- until I found out it wasn't canon. So I didn't bother. As for capping at level 125, it's true there are a few things I won't be able to use. But I'm going to do a build which will be a jack of all trades capable of using almost everything quite well. anilEhilated posted:Okay, I was expecting amazing gameplay but what really cinches this LP for me is all the attention to details. Can't wait for the next update! Thanks, I'm glad you're liking it so much! And yes, keyboard and mouse. For whatever reason, I always found keyboard and mouse best for Dark Souls 1. I need a controller for 2 and 3 though. Phrosphor posted:This is so well put together, researched and presented. I can't wait for more. I have never had the time to sit and get into any of the souls games (though I have Elden Ring waiting for me when I finish Forbidden West) and I am really keen to follow you through this game. Thanks! It's nice to know the effort that goes into making a video like this is appreciated.
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Jul 11, 2022 07:10
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Melth posted:Interesting, the memory loss thing definitely seems in line with Dark Souls 2 but not at all with 1 and 3. Is that pen and paper RPG any kind of officially sanctioned product where the lore is to be taken as canon?
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Jul 11, 2022 07:42
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I would argue that finishing every zone completely is neither intended by the developers nor something an Undead that will eventually succeed at their goal would do. After all, there's two zones you can reach right from the get-go that are both unreasonably difficult for a starting character and dead ends until way later anyway. There's a lot of "transitory" zones that will end up being almost hub-like, with clear "open later" doors. I generally get what you're going for, a thorough completion of each zone, and I think that's mostly a good idea to keep the LP structured and organized. But I think allowing yourself a few exceptions is reasonable both from a "game as intended" and a roleplay perspective. Consider: the first thing you do in the game is run away from a boss into a side passage. Unless your character was smart enough to bring Firebombs (previous knowledge) or is being wielded by someone with more stubbornness than sense (experienced challenge-runner), you are explicitly following a "sometimes running away and coming back later with a better weapon is the best course of action" philosophy. The first hint towards where to go is go to the Burg above OR Blighttown below, which are both valid at first glance, and you might not even trust the hint considering how...interested...the source seems in your success. Your character OR a first-time player might reasonably think "I'll just weigh my options, thanks" and find two options to be extremely bad ones, smartly retreat and look for the path of least resistance. So imo, poking your head into dangerous places and then leaving, possibly with at least some neat loot to show for it? A-ok, if you're not doing it for a powergaming reason. You could for example play it like this: go into the graveyard, have surprising success with your mace, pick up the first item next to a massive gravestone you see - which should be the Winged Spear - get spooked by the giant skeleton you clearly have no business fighting, and run. This is not gamebreaking and shows off what a sensible player AND character would and should be doing. I tried to be judicious here - what's your spoiler policy in general?
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Jul 11, 2022 12:31
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Simply Simon posted:I would argue that finishing every zone completely is neither intended by the developers nor something an Undead that will eventually succeed at their goal would do. After all, there's two zones you can reach right from the get-go that are both unreasonably difficult for a starting character and dead ends until way later anyway. There's a lot of "transitory" zones that will end up being almost hub-like, with clear "open later" doors. My policy is MAXIMUM SPOILERS for all 3 games. Go ahead and spoil whatever. The one thing I ask is that people make sure that any lore they 'spoil' is real lore rather than spreading incorrect information! One reason I'm doing this series in the first place is my simmering frustration with the amount of false lore people spread! I agree with you that the developers definitely intended some skips, and in roleplaying terms it can certainly make sense to start a certain zone, poke around a bit, and then leave. But in terms of challenge, there are a lot of things that will be too easy if I just go around harvesting the good items before tackling any bosses. For example, the bell gargoyles fight is terrifyingly difficult on NG+6 with weak weapons. That will make for a pretty epic challenge! But it would be much easier if I just took an easy detour into nearby Darkroot and came back with the Stone Giant armor to keep me from dying in 1 shot, the Oolacile Ivory Catalyst to let me blow the gargoyles away with powerful spells, etc. Let alone if I saved the gargoyles till I had the Large Ember or something and clobbered them with upgraded weapons. I do think you're right though that I should sometimes compromise on that rule and visit some areas and then leave if I have a roleplaying reason to do so. I'll just try to do that rarely.
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Jul 11, 2022 18:12
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Just don't forget to find the eggs and solve riddles
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Jul 11, 2022 18:19
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Melth posted:My policy is MAXIMUM SPOILERS for all 3 games. Go ahead and spoil whatever. The one thing I ask is that people make sure that any lore they 'spoil' is real lore rather than spreading incorrect information! One reason I'm doing this series in the first place is my simmering frustration with the amount of false lore people spread! I mean there is a balance between "better explore the Darkroot basin before going down to poison town" and "rushing with your cleric to get the Astora SS and say hello to your good buddy Patches in the Catacombs before those downer grumps from Thorulund even show up". OutofSight fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Jul 12, 2022 |
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Jul 11, 2022 18:41
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OutofSight posted:I mean there is a balance between "better explore the Darkroot basin before going down down to poison town" and "rushing with your cleric to get the Astora SS and say hello to your good buddy Patches in the Catacombs before those downer grumps from Thorulund even show up". Fair! I'll try to hit that balance
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Jul 12, 2022 05:57
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Lovely first video. Looking forward to more!
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Jul 12, 2022 20:17
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Booties posted:Lovely first video. Looking forward to more! Mara and I just finished recording the next one, so now the editing begins!
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Jul 16, 2022 06:44
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Melth posted:Mara and I just finished recording the next one, so now the editing begins! Can't wait!
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Jul 18, 2022 02:07
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I have never played Dark Souls, only Elden Ring, but I've been following your Hjalti Montrose adventures and I enjoyed the first video in this series
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Jul 22, 2022 05:46
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CommonShore posted:I have never played Dark Souls, only Elden Ring, but I've been following your Hjalti Montrose adventures and I enjoyed the first video in this series Thanks! I'm looking forward to showing the second one this Sunday. Probably another Hjalti in a couple of weeks too, assuming I can get it to be a bit less glitchy. In my opinion, both Skyrim and Dark Souls are excellent games and I like both of them for some of the same reasons. I think I would say that Dark Souls is substantially better on the action side of things, and Skyrim better on the story and roleplaying.
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Jul 22, 2022 17:03
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I can't actually disagree with that last point, which I find pretty funny, I do appreciate the way most from games manage to not have to pretend to have a living world, by having it already half dead. (I am still annoyed at the lack of villages and similar in Elden Ring though. I wasn't looking for population, I was looking for evidence that there once were as much as "some, at all" agricultural activity around.)
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Jul 22, 2022 17:09
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Melth posted:Thanks! I'm looking forward to showing the second one this Sunday. Probably another Hjalti in a couple of weeks too, assuming I can get it to be a bit less glitchy. I think that Dark Souls will be a much better fit for your playstyle. Unfortunately Skyrim Legendary Hardcore is difficult in pretty much all of the least interesting ways. Dark Souls, on the other hand, has a lot more relevant stuff going on in its systems.
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Jul 23, 2022 01:19
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Qrr posted:I think that Dark Souls will be a much better fit for your playstyle. Unfortunately Skyrim Legendary Hardcore is difficult in pretty much all of the least interesting ways. Dark Souls, on the other hand, has a lot more relevant stuff going on in its systems. I do think that's mostly true. On the plus side for Skyrim, I think it had a much better and more interesting magic system (and an AI that responds better to ranged attacks). And one sort of good thing about the absurdly tanky enemies on legendary is that it encouraged strategies other than blasting.
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Jul 23, 2022 04:52
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Ep 2: Firelink Shrine Time to fight some endgame skeletons!
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Jul 24, 2022 19:01
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I like your editing. Also I don't think I ever heard that line from the toothpasteless warrior, I just found the nest and saw the action prompt and, well, it seemed stupid and I am stupid, so I did curl up in a ball.
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Jul 24, 2022 23:21
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SIGSEGV posted:I like your editing. Also I don't think I ever heard that line from the toothpasteless warrior, I just found the nest and saw the action prompt and, well, it seemed stupid and I am stupid, so I did curl up in a ball. That's clearly why the crow takes you back to the asylum if you curl up like that- only a crazy person would think it was a reasonable thing to just walk into a giant bird's nest and then curl up there and pretend to be an egg.
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Jul 25, 2022 17:35
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Haven't started/caught up yet but the idea of a Dark Souls RP/lore-focused LP has me delighted.
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Jul 25, 2022 23:14
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Off to a great start, you managed to fill in that fairly tedious bit of skeleton murder with some good ongoing discussion! Also looking forward to you getting into the game proper.
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Jul 26, 2022 02:37
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What is that place you can see from the spot where you get the binoculars, the rest of New Londo?
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Jul 26, 2022 14:12
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anilEhilated posted:What is that place you can see from the spot where you get the binoculars, the rest of New Londo? Those are other 'undead burg' type towns! Lordran seems to have been ringed with numerous densely packed human/giant/possibly other species towns. In the upcoming zone, we'll explore just one of them, but it looks like there were lots of others. This place was bustling back in its day! bike tory posted:Off to a great start, you managed to fill in that fairly tedious bit of skeleton murder with some good ongoing discussion! Also looking forward to you getting into the game proper. I'm looking forward to it too. Undead Burg is always a lot of fun, and there's a lot of cool stuff to talk about. Melth fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Jul 26, 2022 |
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Jul 26, 2022 17:10
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Are you able to discuss any links between Dark Souls and Elden Ring? I will admit I am a scrub and I have only played Ring and I am not very far into it yet. But I can see similarities especially with the trees.
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Jul 27, 2022 00:47
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I'm fairly sure all the connections between both are mostly reference and structure rather than Actual Text, sure, they have many similarities, in both you are some late arrival in the world who's role is to see the mess that is a half dead world, and then eventually decide if it deserves to go on longer or if it needs to end and be remade anew right now. While there's a number of connections such as similar items and concepts playing similar roles, both as ways not to lose the players and as in jokes, fromsoft valued the ability to make something new and not be trapped by their own past in ER, things are different around here.
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Jul 27, 2022 11:46
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SIGSEGV posted:I'm fairly sure all the connections between both are mostly reference and structure rather than Actual Text, sure, they have many similarities, in both you are some late arrival in the world who's role is to see the mess that is a half dead world, and then eventually decide if it deserves to go on longer or if it needs to end and be remade anew right now. While there's a number of connections such as similar items and concepts playing similar roles, both as ways not to lose the players and as in jokes, fromsoft valued the ability to make something new and not be trapped by their own past in ER, things are different around here. I haven't played any Elden Ring, but I've definitely noticed that a lot of elements in Dark Souls are carry-overs from Demon's Souls (sometimes they made more sense in Demon's Souls). And when I dug into the code to make this mod, I found a lot of other things which seem to be built onto elements of Demon's Souls rather than built fresh, even if they work differently. For example, the New Game+ difficulty increases are actually called world tendency and seem to be built in as a version of the World Tendency mechanics from Demon's Souls. I wouldn't be surprised if they did the same thing with Elden Ring, building onto their old engine and re-purposing things rather than doing everything from scratch.
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Jul 29, 2022 19:43
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Oh, it absolutely is, but they have changed a couple things, it's the same engine, updated a lot, of course, but a lot of things get recycled, for example the lever pulling animations are the same since demon's souls, but they've changed the lever model so they no longer clip through your character's head. Then there's conceptual and gameplay stuff that worked so well it was kept, even without adding a setting justification, like fog doors.
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Jul 29, 2022 21:37
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A lot of the themes and story beats are basically the same too. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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Jul 30, 2022 00:49
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bike tory posted:A lot of the themes and story beats are basically the same too. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Honestly though, that's one of the reasons I don't feel that interested in Elden Ring. When I heard that they had an outside writer helping with their lore (not an author whose work I liked very much, but I did think his lore and history was his strong suit), I was quite interested to see how some of the good elements of Dark Souls would be without some of the things I'd gotten tired of. But it sounds to me, at least from what I've superficially heard about the game, that it would be retreading a lot of the same themes.
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Jul 30, 2022 01:27
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