wait, you’re going to beat the game at 26 hours? wtf.
dark souls 2 took me like 60+. looking at walkthroughs and my playtime I doubt I’ll be too much lower on this one
Nice post! I feel bad for pigeonholing you now.
Certainly I’d never say that any game is beyond criticism. Having not played Dark 3 I can’t comment on your specifics, but let me ask: did you prefer Dark 2 to 1? It certainly was more mechanically polished, which contributes to its identity as the pvp-centric, “competitive” game in the series.
It’s just when I hear words like “polish” and “consistency” my hackles immediately raise. The whole reason I loved Demon’s and Dark above the generic AAA 3D-action mishmash game that currently dominates is precisely because they lacked polish and consistency.
2 isn’t even really “polished” in a way that contributes to an overall impression of the production values; it just received a whole lot of Diablo 2 esque balance patches.
I mean, shaded woods. and those hitboxes!
I play games pretty quick I think? almost all single-player RPGs, of all stripes, take me ~30 hours, I’m not sure if that’s by design or what.
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forgot my lighter on the way into the office today and the first guy I saw smoking had a dark souls shirt on
Thought better of asking him to link my flame
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Thanks for keeping so many things in the Spoiler tags everyone. I’ve been reading this thread without having played the game, and I feel like I have a good general idea of what people think without having much of the game’s surprise ruined for me. It’s nice!
No!!!
I’ve always seen PvP in this series as a narratively clever gimmick and DkS2’s balancing certainly doesn’t go far enough to actually change that fundamental fact. When I think of my favorite Dark Souls PvP moments I actually think more of when I invaded in the catacombs a bunch in DkS1. There were great moments like mages playing hide and seek across the chasms, one guy who cast the slowing spell while I approached the ladder under the lever and then one-shot me with a plunge attack (I could only shake my head in appreciation for how much I was outplayed there), and one time when I actually pulled off the Patches bridge spin victory (which almost never works) and then saw the message, “You were indicted.”
(Although, when I think of my least favorite PvP/co-op moments I mostly think about all the waiting around for the unreliable, slow matchmaking. I certainly have no problem with DkS2 fixing that and also with the improvement continuing in Bloodborne in DkS3.)
[quote]It’s just when I hear words like “polish” and “consistency” my hackles immediately raise. The whole reason I loved Demon’s and Dark above the generic AAA 3D-action mishmash game that currently dominates is precisely because they lacked polish and consistency.
[/quote]
Hmm, I understand where you got those negative associations, but I don’t think the problem that raises your hackles is really intrinsic to polish. There is a great passage in Derek Yu’s new Spelunky book where he says one of his core values in game design is that the game world should be “indifferent” to the player, it should be a logically contained system with its own rules that the player is invading and infering with. Derek has also said that he appreciates games that have some minor bugs and quirks, that gives them richness and character and enhances the feeling of indifference. On the other hand, Derek was extremely committed to world consistency in the unlock flow for the Hell secret area. Almost every item in the Spelunky Hell unlock chain actually has its own mechanical usefulness in the game – for example the Ankh gives a one-time resurrect which is obviously very useful even if not going to Hell, and allows a narratively logical self-sacrifice action as a later step – as opposed to simply being a passive key macguffin.
When an AAA designer smooths down each hard edge and difficulty spike they are improving experiential consistency – they will each player in their playtests will move smoothly through areas in about the same amount of time – but they may be reducing the internal consistency of the game world within its own logic.
That said, I don’t think any of the Souls games really go as far as Spelunky in committing to that philosophy, the Souls game do have a very player-centric, player-reactive universe, although they are certainly not afraid of seeming hostile and indifferent and of letting each player’s experience vary.
Anyway, since you mentioned Demon’s, in one of the types of consistency that I’m talking about, Demon’s is one of the most consistent games in the series and that’s primarily what I admire it for. Each of Demon’s areas has an airtight spatial, narrative, and artistic logic. In many technical aspects it’s a bit all over the place which does undermine it though (e.g. the Old Monk fight is only compelling in theory, almost never in practice – usually the networking fails to connect entirely, or sometimes you just kill a player who doesn’t want to be there, possibly just standing there instead of bothering to fight). DkS3 I see as partly aiming to reintegrate Demon’s good qualities, it brings back its rigorous area spatial consistency while succeeding in interconnecting them.
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does the lothran skyline give anyone else some very uh how do you say yharnham like vibes or is it just me, really those two first areas in general remind me a lot more of bloodborne and demon souls than anything explicitly DVRK SOULS
High Wall of Lothric is more Boletarian Palace than anything else, yeah. I have come across some spots that are pretty much straight out of Bloodborne, but I think that the environments generally retain an identity that’s separate from Yharnam and its satellites. Bloodborne was decidedly Gothic; this is some sort of Romanesque.
Speaking of Lothric, I wonder if there’s some intentional linguistic thread linking all of these disyllablic words beginning with “Lo.” Lordran, Londo, Loran (from Bloodborne), Lothric, Londor. Lothric feels like a compound of Lordran and Drangleic, which is sort of neat. Once again, I wonder who is behind the naming of these games’ places.
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Yeah, for all the defending I’ve done this thread, I guess my gut feeling is also still that DkS1 and Bloodborne are better. DkS3 fits together as a whole the best, but it has less of the wow moments. The game is on a tight leash, it’s generally kind of restrained and I sense it holds back from expressing exuberance.
I mean, as one example that comes to mind for some reason, Chaos Witch Quelaag. Or how about Sif, the sword-wielding wolf. Where is there a character as gleefully ridiculous?
Note that my opinion of Bloodborne went up a notch after the DLC and I’m not sure I would still be claiming that it’s better than DkS3 if it didn’t exist. Likewise From might have some really cool stuff in store for the inevitable DkS3 DLC that might yet inject the additional awesome. Games aren’t just static things nowadays.
Wrapped this up last night at ~57 hours. Good game, prob. best souls game. Secret wish for next From game: Happy Blue Skies Adventure with Large Outdoor Areas Souls.
http://zkjellberg.github.io/dark-souls-3-cheat-sheet/ Here’s a handy checklist of stuff to do in every area if you want to see all of it; apparently I missed all the stuff with Leonhard and Sirris.
weirdly it seems like I found virtually everything in this one on my own over the course of a normal playthrough with the exception of that last hidden area I’ve just had confirmed for me, which I’d never have found.
so is the whole thing with oceiros and lothric just supposed to be bearing out the curse of Priscilla and seath, trapped in a cycle they can’t escape? Or is there something more to it that I’m not getting? It’s pretty good in isolation, it just doesn’t seem enough to hang the climax on.
Likewise w/ aldritch and all of the lords, really. The echoes are there, but… so what? A few too many of the narrative beats seem to be extrapolated from the margins of the first game, like everything having to do with gwyndolin and the super duper optional boss basically being written around an old item description.
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Woah we might need a new bloodborne thread so broco and I can argue about the dlc.
Wish this game did more with the idea of repetition, cycles, revisiting. It is all there in it just it is just there. You can connect the threads but then what?
I do still think about @broco headcanon for demon’s.
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I also wasn’t hugely enamored of bloodborne dlc. The first dark souls’ was great though. Four solid gold boss fights and puppy sif. What more could you want?
Bloodborne’s DLC is great, even if the bosses scream too much.
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Found an area that I’m not sure I’m happy about finding. This game is real good, but it’s starting to feel like a greatest hits album with one or two new singles on it.
okay, maybe the old tracks are re-mastered extremely well, but yeah.
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I think these things are like silent hills and the more of them they make the more it’s just going to lose it’s mystique and whatnot no matter how much new shit might be in it
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[quote=“Rudie, post:376, topic:1250, full:true”]I do still think about @broco headcanon for demon’s.
[/quote]
Nice, glad someone remembers that. I don’t even remember my own headcanon anymore that well anymore though, and I now that I try to reconstruct it, it just reminds me of FFX. Actually, several things in the Souls universe remind me of FFX!?
I think I know what place you’re referring to, but I actually am into it. Right now, anyway. It also strengthens my opinion that Heide’s Tower wasn’t a future Anor Londo, as many people seemed to be intent on insisting.
you take that back
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