Dark Souls 3 Die Already

King of Posters
#283

I got the usurp the fire ending. [spoiler]I’m kind of confused why I’m supposed to rebuild londor, since that place is all about god’s and fire and same old shit and I’m supposed to be taking the fire away and doing some new thing, unless they mean new londo. why is londor just up on the roof of some other town anyway.

I looked up the other endings. how come for the end of fire ending the firekeeper specifically says this will lead to a world with no more fires and linking, then during the actual ending cutscene talks about how there will still be embers out there to someday start this whole thing over again etc. make up your mind, which is it. the boss soul guy sitting on the throne has some interesting things to say about her and her ending. he says he became a lord of cinders because he had a vision of endless water after the age of fire. he mentions betrayal though so maybe that’s only if you kill her.

I’m always pro dark and humanity and anti fire and gods in these games.

I don’t know if this was explained in the ds2 dlc or somewhere, but I guess I assumed that somebody always relinked the fire, because otherwise that would have stopped the cycle, this game seems to imply people have chosen to not link the fire but it doesn’t do anything to break the cycle, because there’s always embers left or whatever.

what’s with the second firelink shrine behind the consumed king’s place, suspended in a void. is it time travel? gundyr is described somewhere as being a champion who “missed the festivities” and there was no fire to link. was he a guy who was just starting his game just as somebody picked the dark lord ending and that’s what’s we’re seeing. the shrine looks kind of ds1 kiln-ish with the knights there. [/spoiler]

the crestfallen knight guy just said the exact same beginning shit the entire game until I beat it, then while I was doing stuff post game in firelink suddenly he ran through all this dialogue about different bosses like I had just beaten them.

#284

That’s definitely a bug. Never had that happen on my playthroughs.

As for the endings, I agree that they’re incompatible but my assumption is that they each confirm their own cognitive biases. So the usurpation of fire ending is internally consistent, just as the end of fire or the linked fire, even if they aren’t coherent taken together. Totally spitballing though, this is just my best guess as to why the endings seem to contradict one another.

#285

My interpretation is that the Untended Graves area is the true version and the two other Firelinks are in some kind of dream/spirit plane, like Hunter’s Dream. The dream Firelinks aren’t connected with Lothric, in common only with Archdragon Peak, and aren’t visible in the distance from anywhere. Flameless Shrine can’t be seen from the Kiln proper if you look back in the right direction; you also can’t see Firelink from High Wall (although the view is obstructed anyway).

#286

that actually makes sense and is a better justification in hindsight for why the game makes you teleport to the first real area after the shrine (which made a bad impression on me at the time). I wish that could’ve been better handled, though. I’m still not on good terms with the starting area of this one.

#287

As a tutorial, I’m not sure Undead Asylum was very good. It was more in the spirit of “fuck tutorials”. DkS3 has an actual tutorial area that takes things slow and simple, with no rolling boulders, unwinnable boss fights, ladders or hidden keys or equipment menu navigation. That makes it a bit dry, sure, but it seems weird to hold it against the game so much.

As for narratively not making a big deal of waking up undead, why should it? Everybody is undead. I even kind of like how nonchalant it is. There is a tiny sliver of narrative: the fading ring of the bell mentioned in the intro dialogue as you rise from your grave.

#288

I want to see some kind of map overlay the lines up ds1 londor with ds3 londor and see if anything else lines up

1 Like
#289

Really? I think it does very nearly everything a tutorial would need to do, right down to showing how different levels of water affect your movement. The only thing I’m iffy on is the ball that’s pushed down the steps. It’s one of the very few cheap situations in the game and it doesn’t really prepare you for anything, except the one barrel that’s pushed down the steps close to the Taurus Demon, which imparts no lesson of its own either. Uninteresting anomalies.

#290

This game is working for me in a way that Dark Souls 2 didn’t. I think it’s partially due to polish, and partially to what Brocco was saying – I really appreciate how coherent the world is. I love looking around in the background to see both where I’ve been and where I’ll be going.

I think I appreciate these games mechanically, but the sense of place is what really drives me to play them.

#291

I’m really wanting a costal area in this game now that it’s been mentioned. Make it a shrine of storms throwback or something.

Want to beat this soon but I’m not gonna have a lot of time for it this week, drat.

#292

Well, siegmeyer just pulled his weight in a big way. And there sort of was a shrine of storms throwback! But not in the way you’d expect.

As for my issues with the starting area here – I guess I just have a big problem with hallways that don’t pretend to be anything but, and I also have an extremely high opinion of iosefka’s clinic and the undead asylum and even the demon’s starting area. The series has set a really high bar up to now, so having a starting point that was only adequate kind of stung.

#293

We clearly have a very different idea of what a tutorial is supposed to be, a dumping ground for every mechanic in the game is precisely not a tutorial, it sounds like a level that should be in the mid-game to me. Dark Souls controls are really complex and there is already a lot to get comfortable with with respect to locking on, blocking, trying out the R1 and R2 attacks, rolling and backstepping. Asylum doesn’t give you that much practice in those fundamentals and instead it puts you in situations like learning to equip a weapon for the first time while hiding from a guy that’s shooting at you, and emphasizing the gimmicky plunge attack.

#294

I guess!

#295

yeah, I know the souls series has a bit of a problem with dick-waving “git gud” but I find it hard to believe you can’t see the value in the asylum being at least a little deliberately cruel.

that damn dancer boss took me way longer than it should. Harder than Aldrich for me.

#296

Interesting. Aldrich took me a good five or six tries but I remember beating the Dancer on my first try. Played a Sorcerer though and Dancer was so slow compared to the bosses I had fought just before. Working through a melee and a fire build right now and it’s interesting how different the styles are.

I’ve now seen many more tests to basically confirm my working hypothesis that miracles aren’t very good offensively. Only Wrath of the Gods does decent damage, but at 40FP it’s not viable as a primary offensive spell. Dark spells are still good, but better as supplementary abilities rather than primary offense (mostly due to damage output and efficiency - their cost, both stamina and FP-wise is fine, but they pale in comparison to Sorceries or Pyromancies in terms of damage output).

#297

Yeah it took me more than an hour too, and I didn’t have any significant problems with any prior boss. The arena’s a bit too small and I would get cornered and comboed down quite a lot. Like you think she’s just going to do a regular 2 or 3-hit combo, but then it turns into the ultimate dance routine from hell and I’ve now rolled back into an alcove and I’m dead. I did quite a lot of white phantoming (great to observe patterns) and it was pretty rare for hosts to survive there too.

1 Like
#298

the abyss watchers still took me much(?) longer (which was delightful), and there were a few others I had to take several runs at after dying with one or two hits left to land (aldrich and the demon king), but the languidity of that one really threw me.

anyway, if DkS2 is any indication, I have no idea how much of this game I have left, now that I’m nominally into the end stretch. there still hasn’t really been a single weak area.

#299

the crystal sage is a bitch, god damn

#300

Another problem I had is that it would sometimes laterally dodge my halberd’s poke, and the poke also forced me into lock-on style, and no-lock-on is probably better against dancer to avoid that cornering problem. I finally decided halberd sucks in DkS3, switched to Exile Greatsword and beat dancer soon afterwards. Also my upgrade level was only +6 and I realized later it would’ve been possible to get +7 by then.

So a bunch of small things can add up to make a boss fight tough. It’s kind of like when I spent 100+ tries fighting Orphan of Kos with a Kinhunter blood gem, getting him to <10% health multiple times in there, only to eventually realize that Orphan is actually not Kin and I could’ve had a vanilla +15% attack gem in there all along.

I’m currently working through all of those small things for Nameless King who is the hardest fight in the game at least for me. I’m pulling out all the stops to beat this guy, I just splurged on a Lothric Knight Shield +10 just for him (yes) (I regret nothing).

#301

I never did beat orphan of kos after getting him down to like two hits with four heals remaining on my thirtieth try and blowing it. Haven’t played bloodborne since.

#302

I got to the same point, but a few months later I started another character from scratch, got back to Orphan and decided not to let him go this time. I don’t know if it was worth the trouble or what I had to prove really. I still never got past Defiled Amygdala so I can’t even say I beat 100% of Bloodborne not that anyone gives a crap. Anyway, Orphan is a really good fight even though it still gets old after the 200th healthful dollop of natural alternative medicine.

1 Like