“Disbelieve” is a really cool game mechanic. I loved it in Chaos Reborn.
Perhaps the meaning would come across better with a contextual tooltip “ Disbelieve”? Er, wait a minute…
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Figured out that the undead settlement church’s tower elevator is a double-lift elevator and finally solved the Mystery of Archer Giant. Then I ran across Epic Dark Souls Fanservice Meme (who somehow had been waiting in the tower for 500 years) and ruthlessly killed him right after he helped me defeat the Fire Demon. Destroy All of the Memes.
Man diplo you have a real problem with small fun.
Meanwhile invading in this game is gank squad 100% of the time. Increase your chance of invasion so you and 3 friends can definitely murder anyone stupid enough to come to your world.
Haha you set a trap so the invader would be immediately murdered.
I think invaders appreciate our dumb bullshit. We just have parties and hang out.
If any of you are involved with Dr Pepper ICED or SSJTabFan6969 thats your Rude.
I’m currently trying to find motivation to keep playing. I feel like I’ve exhausted the builds I really wanted to try at this point and will likely occasionally come back to do some Farron Greatsword PvP.
Sorcery in this game is exceptionally strong but also has no tracking. I’ve yet to hit anyone with Soul Stream… I want to hit someone with my Kamehameha. I suppose I could do the lazy thing and do the Affinity build but I’m not sure I care that much about Sorcery in this game, which is a first. The Farron sword just seems to be what I want to use whenever I’m using Sorcery and Sorcery right now feels like going through the motions in a really big way. Lightning in this game is pretty disappointing and Fire is fun but feels too direct (Fire feels like the “Shotgun” of Dark Souls 3 PvP). I normally make a Lightning build as my second but the damage is so nothing that I gave up on it when I was doing around 300 damage with 50 FTH.
I’ve been struggling with this. Do I hate these parts of the game simply because other people like them? Do I hate Fromsoftware for putting them in their game instead of thinking up newer, cooler characters that I can hate later after everyone memes them?
And then I’m like, maybe I should just make peace with this stuff and let it be what it is.
(I’m still down-voting every “praise the sun!” message though.)
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Honestly my only real exposition to Dark Souls memes is by diplo, just saying
let it be is the only real answer, otherwise you are somehow perpetrating them anyway
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Can we please not do the thought-terminating ‘u just h8 fun’ thing itt? Thanks. if you don’t want to think about these things, don’t make snippy comments that try to shut down the other people who do. Keep it to yourself.
I could live with the Fan Favorites if they were limited to single games, but the way the most vocal parts of the fandom have seemingly come to dictate certain directions the series has taken, for the worse, is really frustrating and depressing, and it actually undermines the universe’s scope. Looking out on those series of bastions next to Firelink Shrine and the foggy landscape beyond in Dark Souls gave the sense that here was this enormous world, full of more history and mystery than you could ever imagine. That, plus the implied subjectivity of the Chosen Undead’s quest, even led me to wonder if Dark Souls’ supposed cosmogeny was in fact regional, rather than global.
When the Greatest Hits reappear, and in the most unimaginative, unelaborative way, it shrinks that world. No matter how wide this landscape is, no matter how many years pass, everything is ultimately reducible to a few key players who are now key because the teams at From have realized which elements the fandom liked most. It reminds me of how MGS2’s ending implied a depth to the narrative’s mechanical underpinnings, and then MGS4 destroyed all of that depth by revealing that every historically major thing led back to Important Metal Gear Solid Characters.
I could maybe – maybe – live with Siegward if his name didn’t start with “Sieg”, if he didn’t hum “Hmmm…”, if he weren’t stuck and trying to figure out how to proceed. Nothing is happening in that resurrection. It’s reminding players that they played another game with another character who did the same things, and it’s a character all of them are explicitly aware of. I can’t understand how it’s gratifying to anyone, even the most uncritical sort of fanatic.
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Last night, I somehow managed to find Archdragon Peak on my own. It’s very cool, and the snakepeople who rolljump into the air are extremely cute. I just wonder how you’re supposed to deal with the giant ones wielding axes and chain-whips, aside from finding an upper spot to snipe them from. Shields are useless, and they can kill me in two hits.
After Dark1 and Dark2 I never thought the series needed closure. Most of the covenenants in this game don’t even have any meaning. You are turning in a collectible to a bone pile, an old statue, a dead fatman, a nontalking NPC that functions like drive through plastic surgery.
I’m jusssstttt about ready to fully abandon my first miracle build. I get destroyed every single time in multiplayer and get no bonuses. like if they had made miracles more about support and buff-debuff it would have made sense. Trying out wrath of gods there is no situation one on one where it would be useful. especialy how late you get it in the game and that it is soooo slowwwww. Lighting Spear does too little damage and the windup is slower than a crossbow or just throwing knives. Those seem like better options.
I actually agree with you diplo about your annouance about reusing old characters. but if you removed that element from this game it might as well had taken place in textureless white boxes where you went to floating exclamation points to do everything. When they aren’t bringing back an old character that had some personality the new characters barely have any. I don’t think it had to do with fandom. It is laziness in writing.
The Firelink staples sure don’t have a lot of dialog this time around either. Makes it feel like a theme park or sigh. a video game. Oh blacksmith I need to get estus shards? great. Maybe you could tell me a story about a sward. Oh miracle girl you come from Carim and tell stories. Maybe you could tell me a story? no. Handmaiden you’re just looking for ashes and then ask me to bring more? Pyromancer is my teacher because he is a menu that lets me buy spells. I’m not even sure why you’re here Patches. Seriously. I didn’t catch why you came to my firelink shrine and I didn’t know why I should have apolgozied to you. your history with the other thief is so vague to as to be unnecessary. you just said “we have history”. whoop-di-do.
Onion is at least pleasant company.
I think it’s both. There were a lot of reactionary narrative and design decisions in DS2 that couldn’t have come from anything else other than From being aware of what people who were playing the previous game were doing and thinking, and that reactionary response is also in DS3 (“Oh, you thought the Silver Knights were some of the most easily parryable enemies? Not anymore!”). Some of it’s good, and some of it’s bad. It’s impossible for these games to be designed in a vacuum separate from the fandom any longer. They’re too big, and this interrelationship between makers and audience is just a fact of modern life. The trick is for the developers to know what’s worth being listened to, and what’s worth leaving alone. Hitting us over the head with reductive resurrections is just not a good idea.
It’s hard to believe how poorly the camera serves the fight with the King of the Storm – and then the designers had the gall to make it a two-parter. Seriously? I cannot understand how bosses like these get past the QA process. How does anyone do this without half of the fight being a disorienting flurry of fire of feathers? From really needs to realize that the body-hugging camera is, more than anything else, what makes these large-scale fights difficult.
This thread is making me happy I haven’t bought this game yet. Here’s to Demons’ remake I guess?
poise owns
The Big Serpentpeople aren’t as much of a nightmare as I thought, but King of the Camera is still bad.
F.I.N.A.L. S.H.O.W.D.O.W.N.
KotC moves more predictably than most bosses once you know what ranges to keep and don’t get greedy. I only stick to its head, staying directly in front of it (from a distance, waiting for explicit post-attack openings to sprint in and get in 1-2 hits) while staying locked on. It only breaks lock when it jumps directly over you in which case you just turn 180 towards your back and click to reorient or run forward a bit first if you’re worried about an immediate attack. Once you’re locked it’ll stay even when it leaves the ground, you just have to be consistent about staying at range.
If you want to be Pro you can switch targets when you see the windup for an attack coming which makes it a little easier to keep exactly what you want onscreen, but there’s fussiness there that may not be worth it unless you’re a heavy build.
It’s definitely the babby of the two parts when you know what’s up.
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I mean, all that was mostly criticism of NPCs and covenants. I agree with most of it, but keep it in perspective. It’s very ignorable.
I dislike most of all the firelink merchant’s ye olde dialogue, and that’s a new character. I also dislike Andre who is a generic blacksmith both in DkS1 and this game, and as far as I know not a fan favorite, so why did he return? I feel like they skipped some lore writing design stage or lost their best writer or something (and also the English translator was poor this time round).
Siegward I am totally OK with him returning, if it had been him in isolation. He is another character similar to Patches and Crestfallen Knight. He is funny and has a gameplay role (getting stuck and needing help to advance). That role was played in Demon’s by Ostrava.
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i do think it’s sort of funny that siegman couldn’t figure out how to game the elevator, when gaming elevators has always played a prominent role in these games, maybe in bloodborne most of all
also the blacksmith seems like some kind of (unnecessary (but maybe not that offensive)) accessibility concession. he doesn’t even say anything at all that makes sense in the game’s world, really. isn’t he literally almost like “spend titanite shards to level up your weapons and deal more damage”? i like that working through weapon upgrades and stuff has always been such a fumble in these games, in a way, and i’d like it if he wasn’t so instruction-manual about it, but maybe it’s not so bad
on the other hand this game’s weapon upgrade situation is definitely the most comprehensible yet, so
The sole cool things about Andre in Dark Souls were that he was the only human NPC with moving lips and that he had a unique kickboxing fighting style if you attacked him. i hope he’s not the only blacksmith in the game because he is indeed generic niceguy blacksmith, and what’s a Souls game without irascible, obsessive smithies who insult you even as they forge your crucial weapons.
Boldwin/Ed were the best smiths in the series, lets be real. though a lot of that comes down to their VA being top of the pops. love the way that guy says “It’s very simple: bring me all the souls you can.” He was also Biorr of the Twin Fangs and Hawkeye Gough, who are also some of my favorite NPCs in the series. Dude rules. (oh shit imdb tells me he was also Jabba’s creepy twi’lek underling in Return of the Jedi, that’s neat)
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did you guys notice that if you look down at the swamp from the point where you raise the banner early in the game the three flames still show up as if you never snuffed them out??
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A land of illusions and magic