It does feel uniquely like they could have designed it using a model set.
i just think it’s a delicious little slice of Dark Souls. i might even call it my favorite level in the series, it’s emblematic.
One of my favorite levels is Nightmare Frontier in Bloodborne for similar reasons
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Yeah it’s very cool. Besides having cool fights in a cool area, they always drop stuff that upgrades your weapons to near-maximum, and they’re all really easy to parry which sets you up to fight Gwyn, who’s super weak to parrying. It’s really fair and great!
then you walk away from the bonfire like “want to make sure i didn’t miss any item-- oh hey what the game ended”
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I think the question to ask is who is doing threedee level design the best in 201X
Who has our confidence
Yeah, I was thinking of picking it up on Switch. Personally I’d have been more interested if they Scholar’ed it up even if the changes are for the worse, because I can summon the details of every level and encounter in my memory so replays feel a little rote. But I like the game and the Switch form factor enough I’ll likely go for it.
Yes, that is truly excellent. My beef is really with the level construction post-bonfire; you have the bridge encounter right away which, post-respawn, you have to question dealing with former-level-content crossbow-ers, the firebombers, and managing aggro with the heavy melee enemies in the room. It’s quite slow to handle Correctly. Then the slower, managed encounters, the mad rush at the end, and the poorly-signaled Taurus Demon fight (I dislike the direction about climbing the tower and the basic fighting space is far too narrow; I think, like with Capra Demon, this is a ‘clever’ geometry constraint that doesn’t work within the limitations of the pressure on the player especially at this stage in the game).
Honestly this is one of my biggest complaints with Dark Souls 1; to accommodate the interconnected level structure they straightened the level paths within themselves, with notable exceptions like Blighttown and Ariamis. Demon’s Souls levels feel much denser within themselves, and I buy them much more as physical spaces because of that.
Dark 2 has a handful of levels that return to this (Wharf, Lost Bastille are standouts here) and I appreciate it; Bloodborne finally returns to the complexity within individual levels while integrating the connected-world structure, and it’s magnificent.
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DkS3 also does a decent job of this and it’s the most underrated aspect of that game IMO. Personally I registered this as a pleasantly organic and subtle evolution in the later entries as opposed to a flaw in DkS1 per se though.
DkS1’s linear sections can be counted as part of its level design variety. Demon’s leaned purposely into linearity in 4-2, too.
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I think it bounces across certain player types more than others. I play these games extremely cautiously, more like a survival horror than an action game, so I’m always prodding at the edges. Restricted levels hit me hard, though the moments where Dark flowers are indeed beautiful – that lovely indecision when I trek halfway into the Dragon Vale and can’t decide whether to push forward or return, building the world map shaped by my own limited perspective.
Indeed! The big-picture ideas may be lacking but the consistency of level design is very good; I’d consider Undead Settlement and the swamp (Farron Keep) to be exemplary here, but honestly most levels are well-considered.
Problem is that same connected world structure also makes all of Bloodborne feel really same-y. I mean, it’s a well-connected Victorian Gothic world, but it’s just… always that. And Bloodborne just feels too long for that, which is why I appreciated the variety provided by Demon’s Souls.
Bloodborne’s best aspect to me was always the weapon and combat variety, the levels were always… well, what I described above. I’d ideally want a game with the distinctiveness of Demon’s Souls and the combat of Bloodborne.
Yeah I don’t really agree there’s any problem with Burg or Parish, you’re just explaining why it’s challenging and time-consuming. You’re applying an expectation that a game should allow you to progress or explore at a reasonably fast pace instead of blocking you with a mandatory gauntlet right away. I think most players did not have that same expectation when they bought a game marketed with the slogan “Prepare to die”, they gritted their teeth and appreciated it for what it is, including appreciating their own frustration if any.
I agree that those encounters shouldn’t be out of bounds for the game, but they would be better-served much later, when the player has more tools to deal with them and they’re grounded in the world; contrast the Dark 1 crossbows/fire bombs/heavy weapon aggro situation with the optional archer encounter in Dark Souls 2’s Forest of Fallen Giants: a rooftop battle with several archers, easily visible, with very strong, slow tells, and clumps of melee enemies to deal with. It’s much better placed at that point in the game.
Or really, contrast with the construction of 1-1 in Demon’s, which is masterful in its escalation of aggro groups and introduction of ranged weapons and fire bombs. Just the placement of that first left turn, the crossbowman, and the floor pit as mystery/surprise – sublime
Isn’t that art direction? Dark Souls 1 uses that structure but manages radically different level concepts. I think the restricted level palette is mostly due to a more grounded setting, lacking some of the excesses of fantasy (giant crystals, lava pools, etc).
What is the point of only playing games that follow Correct Design Principles? I don’t only want to constantly be following carefully calibrated escalations and feeling the same mildly satisfying, not too extreme push/pull of frustration and mastery in every game that I play.
What you’re saying is that games should follow a particular 2010s ideology of the ideal experience and ideal methods to deliver it. In 20 years this ideology will appear just as dated and era-specific as the early 2000s tutorial-and-handholding ideology, I predict. (But it will retain more fans, because of course if you are going to have an ideology at all, this is a pretty good one.)
A confounding factor is that DkS1 was a key part of the cultural process that helped establish this way of thinking, so you find it natural to evaluate it in those terms. And even From has fully bought into it in DkS3. But DkS1 was more experimental so it’s a larger, better game than that, and it will better stand the test of time.
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To some degree yes, but the structure also contributes to it in a major way. Art and structure are intimately intertwined.
I think that a lot of this has to do with what I can best describe as summits and payoffs. Like, Valley of Defilement has an excellent payoff in Astraea, acting as a “peak” to those levels. It’s one of those situations where most of the Souls games are like a consistently graded slope with a few bumps here and there, whereas there are also situations where they hit a peak - maybe it’s one of challenge, one of world development, character arcs, etc. But because Demon’s Souls does the idea in the form of levels it’s much clearer where those peaks are going to typically be. You get some of that in all the Souls games, but it’s never really more clear than it is in Demon’s Souls, for reasons that are pretty obvious from a design perspective. Don’t get me wrong, all the Souls games have these - Quelaag, Ornstein and Smough, Ruin Sentinels, Abyss Watchers, Gascoigne. But the placement of them - like, when you’re supposed to hit them, when you’re aware you’re actually going to be running into them, is typically after the fights in the interconnected world games.
You know where the peak of a mountain is, but how to get there is the real challenge, and those last 1,000 feet are going to be tougher than the previous 10,000 combined.
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firing up the interwebs and seeing 90 new posts in one (of several!) of our years-old dark souls threads is the most select button thing ever
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We can distinguish between conventions used to teach a player, such as tutorial boxes and special levels and the like, and pacing and escalating intensity/difficulty, elemental foundations. The rhythm of escalation is mirrored in other media and has survived for eons; in games, it stretches back to the earliest arcade titles. Games have the additional burden of requiring dialogue with the player and are thus more locked in to eased pacing at the start.
Dark violates this compact heedlessly and for little benefit in those early levels. Where Demon’s elegantly runs through its situations, remaining formidable while subtly pulling its punches, Dark appears to be less tuned. And it matters – despite beating Demon’s, I hated the opening dozen hours of Dark (the cold blue filter on everything doesn’t help).
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Or, we’ve recently seen smart investigations of challenge and pacing, but both Celeste and Getting Over It still care about the ramp and implement the early stages in a classical way.
This, very much this. In terms of “3d areas with several overlapping paths that converge and diverge in interesting ways” DS3 might be home to some of the strongest design in a series known for this, and it is shrugged away because instead of new names old names were used.
The problem with our collective appreciation of the Souls series isn’t that we’re too hard on DS2 and realize it to a degree, it is that we’re too hard on DS3 and don’t.
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