Did these things even know they were alive until they were getting murdered? Covenant dragon just doesn't give a frick no matter how badly you mutilate him and seems to be a covenant leader despite himself, not because he actually wanted to raise a cult of undead dragon fetishists.
I don't think the original eternal dragons were alive in the traditional sense. They're sort of like hollows- technically alive in the sense that they are capable of movement and action, but they don't have any agency. Dragons like Kalameet I think are new births- because after the age of fire, dragons started reproducing- resulting in lesser dragons like wyverns and such
>Did these things even know they were alive until they were getting murdered?
They weren't even alive before the flame. The concepts of life and death legitimately didn't exist until then. They just existed.
I'm fully convinced the original pre cut plotline of Dark Souls 3 would have done things a lot more interesting for Dragons, since it was the first time in the series where Miyazaki used dragons as more than bosses/enemies and gave them a location, but whatever they were meant to be had to be cut
Just wait for the people who grew up playing DS1 to start making their own video games anon. I'm just personally miffed that DS1 never got a proper sequel. The interconnected world design, the methodical pace of the combat, the lore. Really that first half of the game is just perfection to me- the mossy ruins of undead burg before the architecture goes too crazy and you see the crystal caves and lava cities.
I feel like you could make a really really compelling and amazing game if you just took what work about the first half of DS1 and made it into an entire game (with some changes here and there)
Too bad From Software don't share your sentiement. Everything since DS1 has been a massive downgrade in terms of world design. It's almost like DS1 was an accident.
Well, both DS2 and DS3 got cut to shit and rushed out the door. I don't think either of those games ended up being what Fromsoft wanted them to be. I think the reason we'll never see another DS1 style game is that it would require a world/setting with a very small limited scope. And you can see how the latter half of DS1 fell apart when they started trying to introduce the further out kingdoms and such.
I'm more of a writer then a game designer, but I've been fiddling around for a few years with the idea of how to design a DS1 spiritual successor, specifically how to replicate the level/world design. And there's a lot of changes I ended up making to the design across the entire thing- basically fusing it with a lot of immersive sim elements. The hardest challenge was figuring out how to fix the lategame issue of DS1. And the way I ended up resolving it is having the game split into two distinct halves. The game overall is set on this island civilization inspired by the Minoans/Cretans, and the first half is stuff like mines, cliffside villages, Catacombs, Fortresses, aqueducts. The main goal of the first half is to find a way into the big city, which serves as the interconnected second half.
The problem with DS1's world design is that it's overall very limiting- I don't think I could make very many unique games or settings in this format, simply because it has to be dense, it has to be interconnected, it has to be vertical, and it has to have varied visuals/locations all inside that small package. Elden Ring simply wouldn't work if they tried to cram it into DS1's world size.
>The problem with DS1's world design is that it's overall very limiting- I don't think I could make very many unique games or settings in this format, simply because it has to be dense, it has to be interconnected, it has to be vertical, and it has to have varied visuals/locations all inside that small package.
And it takes a lot of effort to make it work, when you look into everything like how blight town can be seen from firelink and actually is in the correct coordinates you realize just how much you have to do to make that interconnected world work. Now that isn't say go the exact opposite like DS2 did but I think 3 has a better balance since it also does the same with skyboxes being generally accurate to the locations.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Well, the issue with DS3 is that the world is very linear and there's not a lot of interconnectivity. As for making it all work, I think a lot of that just has to do with planning and mapping out the geography and physical space of the world before you start making levels. If you generally understand where everything is in relation to everything else, it makes things a bit easier.
DS1's world design borrows very heavily from Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night. Individual areas have branching paths and secrets like Rondo of Blood levels, and the overal layout of the world is very similar to SotN. I've always said it, but Dark Souls is the only successful translation of Castelvania into 3D. If you want to understand its design, study it side by side with those two games.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Thanks for the suggestion anon. I'll check those games out at some point, 2-d games generally aren't my thing but it'll be worth examining the level design.
My ideas are very much an evolution of souls level design mixed with immersive sim elements though. I'm not trying to retread a lot of ground aside from the basic design philosophy of no teleportation and shortcuts looping back to a hub area.
This is a rough level outline I drew up ages ago, it might give you a better idea of what I'm trying to do. The parkour access idea is basically allowing players with a low equip load to be able to jump/climb and gain access to new routes through levels/world. I don't want progress to just be gated by boss encounters. For instance, the green line before the access to stonefort isn't on the legend, but that's an area you can either access from the back with low equip load- or from the front once you've found a shield strong enough to block the crossbow bolts from the soldiers on the parapets. So it's sort of a gear-unlock that gives you access to the front route into the fort.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Sounds cool Anon, stick with it and good luck. I would absolutely love to play a successor to that type of world design. And even if you don't like 2D games, I'd still recommend checking those two Castlevanias out. SotN gets all the attention, but in my opinion Rondo is a lot closer to the Souls formula. It also has the methodical movement in combat, iframe dodging via a backflip move, high difficulty for bosses, etc. Kind of funny how your map looks a little similar to this (depending on whether or not you find secret paths in a level, you will fight a different boss and progress the game in a different order).
9 months ago
Anonymous
Interesting. That seems like it has a bit of DNA in common with the secret levels you'd find in classic boomer shooters, but the secret levels actually carry over/alter your progress through the main campaign.
And thanks, I will. It's not going to be happening anytime soon, I need to actually make money with my books and writing to be able to start up my own dev studio. The nice thing is that I already basically have the game bible written for it more or less, in terms of areas, bosses, enemies, weapons etc. So when I finally get to that stage, I won't have to do a whole bunch of design work which should streamline things.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Yeah, I guess it's sort of like boomer shooters, except in Rondo all the levels feel like subsections of a bigger place. It's kind of like what would happen if each region of Dark Souls was sectioned off from each other and you could only complete the game in a linear fashion, but the alternate routes/entrances to each area were still there. For instance, level 1 would be Undead Burg/Firelink, but if you found the Master Key you could enter Blighttown and do the level in a different way than the default route, which would go through the Depths level first,etc.
Sounds like you've got a pretty good plan. One thing I'd advise is to get your hands dirty with game design as soon as possible rather than wait for the perfect moment or the perfect storm of circumstances, because you can always tweak and adjust as you go. You don't need to have everything perfectly planned out before you start, and it's easy to never start because your plans don't seem good enough to you yet. You already seem to put way more thought into design than most people who start to gamedev, so I'd say it's always best to just do your best with what you currently have, and you'll continue to grow as you go.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Thanks for the advice anon. I definitely do want to get hands on with the game dev process at some point. My focus right now is on my various writing projects, and because I'm very autistic about authentic worldbuilding and planning things out in advance, I have a ton of work I need to get through before I can even think of making video games.
It'll happen when the time is right, and I intend to cut my teeth with a smaller game first in any case because nobody does a great job their first time. Less waiting for perfect circumstances, and more me having made way too much work for myself.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>I've always said it, but Dark Souls is the only successful translation of Castelvania into 3D
I had always heard the idea but man does it really click after you play SotN after playing through DS1. It even has a lot of those things where you just wonder what is really going on since the castle has a lot of unexplained details.
>I don't think either of those games ended up being what Fromsoft wanted them to be.
At one point it might have made sense to blame Bandai Namco for rushing them to get the games out the door, but there's no excuse after Elden Ring, the epitome of "when it's done." When even ER launched with missing/broken quests and dialogue, and shit from the network test was drastically altered in the span of mere months before the final game, the problem becomes obvious: They come up with a bunch of grand ideas, then later realize some things don't make sense or don't work very well from a gameplay perspective, and so they just chop them out and come up with new shit on the spot, repurposing anything possible. They will do this until very late in development, so late that we are left with an unusually high amount of cutting room floor content buried in the data.
Ultimately, Fromsoft is never really "finished" with a game until a deadline comes along, regardless of who imposes it. They will just continually change the story, rerecord voice lines, remove entire gameplay mechanics, etc. Even in DaS2, the base game stuff they moved around for SotFS shows this process in action. When Miyazaki downplays the idea of a remakes and never wanting to revisit old games, it's because he knows the temptation is too strong to just wholesale rip and replace shit to the point that the "remake" would be virtually unrecognizable. Ultimately, no amount of time, money, goodwill or general success will get Fromsoft to release a game that doesn't have boatloads of cut content, because that's just part of their natural development cycle.
The reason you got the teleport is because things fell apart. Or rather, there was no way to interconnect the four final areas of the respective lord souls. You'd pretty much have to re-work the entire structure of the game to have DS1 work without teleportation.
Apparently Miyazaki was inspired by Ico, which only came out 10 years prior to Dark Souls. So if there are game devs inspired by DS, they better get started already.
Eh, good things take time. I'm curious what other people end up making, because I've been fleshing out my own concept on and off for about 5 years now. And if I'm being honest, it's probably going to be another 10 years before it actually releases realistically. Not due to dev time, but there's a bunch of other stuff I need to finish before I can start setting up/funding a game studio.
I find it hard to believe that an entire game like DS1's first half could work, at least when talking about the non-teleporting bit. Firelink Shrine -> Undead Burg -> Depths -> Blighttown and back was the highlight of the game in so many levels but imagine you had to do that every time in the 2nd half after you beat each big boss (Nito, BoC, 4Kings etc)
Fromsoft themselves have not been able to make a game that was just the first half of ds1 without shitting it up later on. So yeah, I'm not seeing it happening to soon again, since ds1 itself is heavily flawed and people really love saying "the first half" when this game is the subject.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>Fromsoft themselves have not been able to make a game that was just the first half of ds1 without shitting it up later
I just said that King's Field does that though.
9 months ago
Anonymous
It doesn't though. Ds1 doesn't do it all game either. Hence you "first half" qualifier. You knew you couldn't bring up lost izalith or crystal caves and still sell this "interconnected world for a whole game" crap.
My solution was splitting the game into two halves, and then giving each half it's own hub area with NPC's, shops etc, and having the various interconnected levels and areas branching out and looping back to the hub.
>Just wait for the people who grew up playing DS1 to start making their own video games anon.
Vidya game development hasn't worked liked that for over 10 years.
The choices for young passionate males interested in game development is low budget indie slop or soul crushing wageslavery with no say in anything.
Only drastic global wide change can save humanity from this hell.
Demon's Souls first stood out to me because I noticed that the threads were the only ones on Ganker where the people actually were discussing the game, and they were filling each thread to the limit with insightful, non-repetitive comments and original artwork. Demon's Souls was basically integral for maintaining good quality on Ganker.
I think it was a combination of it being niche, PS3-exclusive, and casual filtering. Dark Souls is my favorite in the series, but something special was lost when Xbros and PCgays came into the fanbase and brought all their low IQ shit with them. Especially when it hit PC and people started treating it like a primarily multiplayer game or some shit.
yes, the system most owned by basketball americans was DEFINITELY where all the high-iq discussion was happening
9 months ago
Anonymous
You obviously weren't alive during the PS3/360 era. For the first few years, the only people who owned PS3s were weebs and a few home theater enthusiasts.
I erased my memory of playing souls games but it caused my unborn son to play them and realize I was moronic. I bought him Demon's Souls and he blue screen'd
Gwyn, like the rest of the soul beings all represented change (as in disparity came into existence), so they were all in agreement that the age of dragons was to end.
They're basically a representation of the void before the creation of the world, or alternatively the titans from greek mythology. They had to be defeated in order for the world to be created
Gwyn is Zeus. The dragons are the Titans. The other lords are meant to be like his siblings helping him supplant the old order with a new one. Gwyn is petty and does everything to stay in power like Zeus. Only Zeus stays in power, Gwyn knows something bigger is going to happen so he fights back and makes things worse.
>Gwyn is Zeus. The dragons are the Titans
No. The dragons represent the previous world order. The titans are directly related to Zeus with Cronus being his father. Gwyn's parents are not the dragons.
NTA but both the dragons and the titans represented the previous order of the world. Just because the dragons aren't literally Gwyn's parents doesn't mean the metaphor doesn't fit.
Overthrowing a world order appears in all world mythologies which there are dozens. Just look at Germanic mythology with Aesir overthrowing the giants.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Yes, but Gwyn is a direct analogue to Zeus in more ways the one- both the god of lightning, both the head of the pantheon of gods. You're just being pedantic.
9 months ago
Anonymous
That's not the argument you were making though. You were calling the dragons a representation of the titans as if they were a direct representation. I'm telling you that's rubbish. Fromsoft take ideas from mythological works and make them their own. If the dragons were a direct representation of the titans, then you would also be taking Cronus' backstory into account where he castrated his father Uranus for raping his mother Gaia, and the omen that he too would be overthrown like he overthrew is father. The dragons have none of that shit.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Okay, so I'm going to read back what I said verbatim
>both the dragons and the titans represented the previous order of the world
Now, are you going to continue having an autistic fit, or can we agree on the very simple and very plainly obvious fact?
9 months ago
Anonymous
I no longer care anon, you clearly set in your ways.
9 months ago
Anonymous
set in my ways of believing things that are plainly obvious?
9 months ago
Anonymous
I no longer care because I can see you've got it in your mind that the dragons are the titans even though I've explained the discrepancies between the two.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Did I say that the dragons literally are the titans? Or just that there are similarities in that both of them represent a prior order of the world, that the current pantheon of the gods killed in order to take power?
Are you actually fricking braindead? How can I lay something out any more plainly for you? I don't think the dragons are LITERALLY the titans or even that they're similar beyond the fact that they occupy the same mythological role as the prior order of the world. Got it? Got it through your dense, autistic fricking skull?
9 months ago
Anonymous
>Did I say that the dragons literally are the titans?
You did
Gwyn is Zeus. The dragons are the Titans. The other lords are meant to be like his siblings helping him supplant the old order with a new one. Gwyn is petty and does everything to stay in power like Zeus. Only Zeus stays in power, Gwyn knows something bigger is going to happen so he fights back and makes things worse.
>Gwyn is Zeus. The dragons are the Titans.
I will now show the train of conversation.
>They're basically a representation of the void before the creation of the world, or alternatively the titans from greek mythology. They had to be defeated in order for the world to be created
>Me: The age of dragons is pretty much a representation of our age of dinosaurs. How in the hell haven't you been able to see that.
>Gwyn is Zeus. The dragons are the Titans. The other lords are meant to be like his siblings helping him supplant the old order with a new one. Gwyn is petty and does everything to stay in power like Zeus. Only Zeus stays in power, Gwyn knows something bigger is going to happen so he fights back and makes things worse.
This is why I don't care anymore.
9 months ago
Anonymous
That's not my post. I literally began my first reply to you with NTA (Not That Anon)
Learn to read you absolute frickwit
9 months ago
Anonymous
Then why bring this up.
Yes, but Gwyn is a direct analogue to Zeus in more ways the one- both the god of lightning, both the head of the pantheon of gods. You're just being pedantic.
>Yes, but Gwyn is a direct analogue to Zeus in more ways the one
Oh that's right, you're being pedantic.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Did you think that was an own or something? You made a mistake, now take your L and move on
I don't know why you're so autistic about this. Literally everyone has known that gwyn shares a lot of similarities to zeus since forever. Dudes both throw lightning. It's not exactly fricking rocket science. You seriously need to get your autism diagnosed and medicated before it tears apart your personal life. If you behave like this towards random internet strangers, I'd hate to know how you treat those around you.
Seek help, please.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>Literally everyone has known that gwyn shares a lot of similarities to zeus
That was never my argument, only yours.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>That was never my argument, only yours.
Okay, so when I said that gwyn shares lots of similarities to zeus, what part of that made you think that I was ascribing that argument to you?
I'm actually so fricking curious how your mind works. 10 odd years of browsing this site and you are the most autistic, nonfunctioning moron I have ever seen. You can't even read words properly. It's astounding.
9 months ago
Anonymous
I don't care, you're just trolling at this point.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Your brain is literally incapable of reading and processing word. Do you have worms in your brain?
It's actually insane. Just an FYI- when someone tells you something... they aren't claiming that you believe that thing. When someone makes claim, they are not ascribing that claim to you. Unless someone explicitly says "you believe x" then they are not ascribing their belief or argument to you. How the frick are you actually this autistic. How can someone as stupid and fricking moronic as you exist on this earth? Do you have a guardian or something? Does your mom know you're posting on Ganker?
9 months ago
Anonymous
You forgot to account for their 'tism. You monster!
>Assisted in killing the dragons >While the other gods did dumb bullshit (like Gwyn enslaving entire species and dooming the world, Furtive Pygmy sowing the seeds of the Abyss, or the Witch of Izalith creating hell and demons), Nito just staid home to sleep and chill >Only did his job as the bringer of death and didn't bother anyone otherwise >Lets you visit him >Gives you a top-tier early-game weapon for free >Only fights you later because you're breaking into his home like a fricking burglar to take his soul
Why was he so based?
Because DS2 and DS3 were both rushed out the door by publishers lmao. DS2, Bloodborne and DS3 all released back to back one year after another, which is an insane workload for such a small company.
>DS1's giants
Hawkeye Gough and the Blacksmith. Big, green-grey skinned humanoids that are almost as intelligent as humans >DS2's giants
Huge humanoids with grey-black skin and gaping holes in the middle of their faces. They at least have the intelligence to wield weapons but can't talk and seem to groan and roar like beasts >DS3's giants
Most of them are similar to DS1's, but there's also the DS2 Giants' tree, and there's also Yhorm (the Giant), who has a human face and is three times taller than other giants.
I've read some theories which talk of Lordran being the same as Lothric (duh), just centuries to the past, and Drangleic existing on a different continent altogether. DS2 takes place between DS1 and DS3's timeline, and "The Land of the Giants" referred to in that game is actually the continent where Lordran/Lothric are, although that doesn't explain the differences in the giants lmao
I guess it's just the effects of retcons between different writers/designers that were adapted into people's headcanons
DS2 giants are completely distinct from the other giants. Drangleic is pretty explicitly in lore supposed to be built on the ruins of Lordran- hence the lord souls, the kiln, etc.
DS3 is definitely more in line with DS1 than DS2 is- DS2 is sort of just doing it's own thing that's loosely similar to DS1. Though of course, the ringed city was a massive retcon.
My favorite theory, and the one that makes the most sense to me, was that anon who posted about Drangleic taking place is a mirror world/underworld. This would explain the mirror knight in greater detail, the dreamlike atmosphere and how everything is "similar, yet different."
Demon's Souls first stood out to me because I noticed that the threads were the only ones on Ganker where the people actually were discussing the game, and they were filling each thread to the limit with insightful, non-repetitive comments and original artwork. Demon's Souls was basically integral for maintaining good quality on Ganker.
That artist had an amazing style. I wonder what he's up to now.
>Drangleic taking place is a mirror world/underworld
The opening cutscene shows you on a lake, approaching a ruined gate, and the reflection in the water shows Drangleic Castle.
Then you fall into a vortex in that same lake and wake up in Things Betwixt, Drangleic.
Whatever is happening in DaS2 is happening outside of the traditional world, in some kind of compressed, mirrored dream.
Nothing changed regarding the dragons, they just keep becoming lesser and lesser after the First Flame's creation. The giants are consistent as well, save for DS2's giants, who ultimately seem to be an off-shoot.
Okay, there's a lot to explain and I'll lay it out chronologically to help you understand it.
Because dragons existed before disparity they effectively represent everything. It's not so much being a dragon that makes them immortal, it's their stone scales that are an aggregate of minerals such as crystals that do. When disparity happened, these crystals came forth from this stone aggregate. Seath, being scaleless uses the crystal to prevent himself from dying. The reason this crystal is of significance appears to be some extreme mineral concentration. I don't think we're supposed to know exactly why it stops Seath from dying, just that it does, hence everyone going mad trying to figure it out.
If I was ever to remake DS1, I feel like it's a game that would benefit a lot from a lot of structural and mechanical changes. Like reworking the structure of the lategame areas so they're more interconnected.
If they just sat around doing nothing, then yes. If they automatically mutated with the First Flame and became rampaging animals, then Gwyn and the Witch of Izalith had reasons to fight them.
Souls lore is just white noise to me. Like Kojima games or Final Fantasy. The difference is FromSoft is usually pretty good at keeping the lorewanking characters confined to prologues and epilogues.
No, Miyazaki (a massive westaboo) created this game. Literally nobody cares about your pathetic obsession with east vs west, PLEASE fricking have a nice day right now.
Miyazaki is a jap, obviously he's going to include some japanese stuff in his games. Did you think I was claiming there was no japanese influences in his games? No, LITERALLY NOBODY HAS SAID THAT.
YOU FRICKING moron
have a nice day
YOU DUMB
AUTISTIC
FRICK
Literally one of the major things that makes souls lore interesting is how Miyazaki takes western fantasy concepts and interprets them through a japanese cultural lens. Nobody here is playing your moronic east vs west game. Nobody cares. Nobody is saying Dark Souls or it's lore is only based on western mythology or concepts. Nobody here is snubbing japanese mythology or culture. You are a sad, autistic freak who is ruining our nice DS1 conversation. PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE have a nice day right fricking now, and never ever again post in a lore thread. Thank you.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Did it ever occur to you that From Software can use both western and eastern ideas? Not even in equal amounts, just in some combination?
They did nothing
I wish I could be so great.
They were right. We have to go back.
>be immortal
>exist
>this causes the seething that leads to their inevitable downfall
Lifelets, when will they learn?
seathing?
I'm at work, so I don't have my funny reaction images
Did these things even know they were alive until they were getting murdered? Covenant dragon just doesn't give a frick no matter how badly you mutilate him and seems to be a covenant leader despite himself, not because he actually wanted to raise a cult of undead dragon fetishists.
He was probably a relatively young dragon as well considering he was in a nest and his tail was very short.
I don't think the original eternal dragons were alive in the traditional sense. They're sort of like hollows- technically alive in the sense that they are capable of movement and action, but they don't have any agency. Dragons like Kalameet I think are new births- because after the age of fire, dragons started reproducing- resulting in lesser dragons like wyverns and such
All the dragons from the cinematic appear to be elemental in nature. I bet becoming more fleshy and biological is seen as weakness to them.
I think it's less weakness, and more a result of them being born in a world that has life in it.
>Did these things even know they were alive until they were getting murdered?
They weren't even alive before the flame. The concepts of life and death legitimately didn't exist until then. They just existed.
and they did it wrong
>think of this exact post when the thread has 0 replies
>ignore it, look back hours later
>an anon made the post for me
fp truly bp
I'm fully convinced the original pre cut plotline of Dark Souls 3 would have done things a lot more interesting for Dragons, since it was the first time in the series where Miyazaki used dragons as more than bosses/enemies and gave them a location, but whatever they were meant to be had to be cut
a brazilian is cooking up some cut content mod for ds3.
We don't know enough about it sadly
Dark Souls 3 was supposed to be the first main Dark Souls making Abyss and Dragons story-centric
>cooking up
uma delicia
I wish I could erase my memory of ever playing the souls games. So good.
Same
Specifically Dark Souls 1. What a weird, magical place
Just wait for the people who grew up playing DS1 to start making their own video games anon. I'm just personally miffed that DS1 never got a proper sequel. The interconnected world design, the methodical pace of the combat, the lore. Really that first half of the game is just perfection to me- the mossy ruins of undead burg before the architecture goes too crazy and you see the crystal caves and lava cities.
I feel like you could make a really really compelling and amazing game if you just took what work about the first half of DS1 and made it into an entire game (with some changes here and there)
Too bad From Software don't share your sentiement. Everything since DS1 has been a massive downgrade in terms of world design. It's almost like DS1 was an accident.
Well, both DS2 and DS3 got cut to shit and rushed out the door. I don't think either of those games ended up being what Fromsoft wanted them to be. I think the reason we'll never see another DS1 style game is that it would require a world/setting with a very small limited scope. And you can see how the latter half of DS1 fell apart when they started trying to introduce the further out kingdoms and such.
I'm more of a writer then a game designer, but I've been fiddling around for a few years with the idea of how to design a DS1 spiritual successor, specifically how to replicate the level/world design. And there's a lot of changes I ended up making to the design across the entire thing- basically fusing it with a lot of immersive sim elements. The hardest challenge was figuring out how to fix the lategame issue of DS1. And the way I ended up resolving it is having the game split into two distinct halves. The game overall is set on this island civilization inspired by the Minoans/Cretans, and the first half is stuff like mines, cliffside villages, Catacombs, Fortresses, aqueducts. The main goal of the first half is to find a way into the big city, which serves as the interconnected second half.
The problem with DS1's world design is that it's overall very limiting- I don't think I could make very many unique games or settings in this format, simply because it has to be dense, it has to be interconnected, it has to be vertical, and it has to have varied visuals/locations all inside that small package. Elden Ring simply wouldn't work if they tried to cram it into DS1's world size.
>The problem with DS1's world design is that it's overall very limiting- I don't think I could make very many unique games or settings in this format, simply because it has to be dense, it has to be interconnected, it has to be vertical, and it has to have varied visuals/locations all inside that small package.
And it takes a lot of effort to make it work, when you look into everything like how blight town can be seen from firelink and actually is in the correct coordinates you realize just how much you have to do to make that interconnected world work. Now that isn't say go the exact opposite like DS2 did but I think 3 has a better balance since it also does the same with skyboxes being generally accurate to the locations.
Well, the issue with DS3 is that the world is very linear and there's not a lot of interconnectivity. As for making it all work, I think a lot of that just has to do with planning and mapping out the geography and physical space of the world before you start making levels. If you generally understand where everything is in relation to everything else, it makes things a bit easier.
DS1's world design borrows very heavily from Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night. Individual areas have branching paths and secrets like Rondo of Blood levels, and the overal layout of the world is very similar to SotN. I've always said it, but Dark Souls is the only successful translation of Castelvania into 3D. If you want to understand its design, study it side by side with those two games.
Thanks for the suggestion anon. I'll check those games out at some point, 2-d games generally aren't my thing but it'll be worth examining the level design.
My ideas are very much an evolution of souls level design mixed with immersive sim elements though. I'm not trying to retread a lot of ground aside from the basic design philosophy of no teleportation and shortcuts looping back to a hub area.
This is a rough level outline I drew up ages ago, it might give you a better idea of what I'm trying to do. The parkour access idea is basically allowing players with a low equip load to be able to jump/climb and gain access to new routes through levels/world. I don't want progress to just be gated by boss encounters. For instance, the green line before the access to stonefort isn't on the legend, but that's an area you can either access from the back with low equip load- or from the front once you've found a shield strong enough to block the crossbow bolts from the soldiers on the parapets. So it's sort of a gear-unlock that gives you access to the front route into the fort.
Sounds cool Anon, stick with it and good luck. I would absolutely love to play a successor to that type of world design. And even if you don't like 2D games, I'd still recommend checking those two Castlevanias out. SotN gets all the attention, but in my opinion Rondo is a lot closer to the Souls formula. It also has the methodical movement in combat, iframe dodging via a backflip move, high difficulty for bosses, etc. Kind of funny how your map looks a little similar to this (depending on whether or not you find secret paths in a level, you will fight a different boss and progress the game in a different order).
Interesting. That seems like it has a bit of DNA in common with the secret levels you'd find in classic boomer shooters, but the secret levels actually carry over/alter your progress through the main campaign.
And thanks, I will. It's not going to be happening anytime soon, I need to actually make money with my books and writing to be able to start up my own dev studio. The nice thing is that I already basically have the game bible written for it more or less, in terms of areas, bosses, enemies, weapons etc. So when I finally get to that stage, I won't have to do a whole bunch of design work which should streamline things.
Yeah, I guess it's sort of like boomer shooters, except in Rondo all the levels feel like subsections of a bigger place. It's kind of like what would happen if each region of Dark Souls was sectioned off from each other and you could only complete the game in a linear fashion, but the alternate routes/entrances to each area were still there. For instance, level 1 would be Undead Burg/Firelink, but if you found the Master Key you could enter Blighttown and do the level in a different way than the default route, which would go through the Depths level first,etc.
Sounds like you've got a pretty good plan. One thing I'd advise is to get your hands dirty with game design as soon as possible rather than wait for the perfect moment or the perfect storm of circumstances, because you can always tweak and adjust as you go. You don't need to have everything perfectly planned out before you start, and it's easy to never start because your plans don't seem good enough to you yet. You already seem to put way more thought into design than most people who start to gamedev, so I'd say it's always best to just do your best with what you currently have, and you'll continue to grow as you go.
Thanks for the advice anon. I definitely do want to get hands on with the game dev process at some point. My focus right now is on my various writing projects, and because I'm very autistic about authentic worldbuilding and planning things out in advance, I have a ton of work I need to get through before I can even think of making video games.
It'll happen when the time is right, and I intend to cut my teeth with a smaller game first in any case because nobody does a great job their first time. Less waiting for perfect circumstances, and more me having made way too much work for myself.
>I've always said it, but Dark Souls is the only successful translation of Castelvania into 3D
I had always heard the idea but man does it really click after you play SotN after playing through DS1. It even has a lot of those things where you just wonder what is really going on since the castle has a lot of unexplained details.
>I don't think either of those games ended up being what Fromsoft wanted them to be.
At one point it might have made sense to blame Bandai Namco for rushing them to get the games out the door, but there's no excuse after Elden Ring, the epitome of "when it's done." When even ER launched with missing/broken quests and dialogue, and shit from the network test was drastically altered in the span of mere months before the final game, the problem becomes obvious: They come up with a bunch of grand ideas, then later realize some things don't make sense or don't work very well from a gameplay perspective, and so they just chop them out and come up with new shit on the spot, repurposing anything possible. They will do this until very late in development, so late that we are left with an unusually high amount of cutting room floor content buried in the data.
Ultimately, Fromsoft is never really "finished" with a game until a deadline comes along, regardless of who imposes it. They will just continually change the story, rerecord voice lines, remove entire gameplay mechanics, etc. Even in DaS2, the base game stuff they moved around for SotFS shows this process in action. When Miyazaki downplays the idea of a remakes and never wanting to revisit old games, it's because he knows the temptation is too strong to just wholesale rip and replace shit to the point that the "remake" would be virtually unrecognizable. Ultimately, no amount of time, money, goodwill or general success will get Fromsoft to release a game that doesn't have boatloads of cut content, because that's just part of their natural development cycle.
The purest problem is being able to teleport from the start. There's a reason things fall apart once you get it in 1.
The reason you got the teleport is because things fell apart. Or rather, there was no way to interconnect the four final areas of the respective lord souls. You'd pretty much have to re-work the entire structure of the game to have DS1 work without teleportation.
Apparently Miyazaki was inspired by Ico, which only came out 10 years prior to Dark Souls. So if there are game devs inspired by DS, they better get started already.
Eh, good things take time. I'm curious what other people end up making, because I've been fleshing out my own concept on and off for about 5 years now. And if I'm being honest, it's probably going to be another 10 years before it actually releases realistically. Not due to dev time, but there's a bunch of other stuff I need to finish before I can start setting up/funding a game studio.
I find it hard to believe that an entire game like DS1's first half could work, at least when talking about the non-teleporting bit. Firelink Shrine -> Undead Burg -> Depths -> Blighttown and back was the highlight of the game in so many levels but imagine you had to do that every time in the 2nd half after you beat each big boss (Nito, BoC, 4Kings etc)
I don't see why not. From what little I've played, King's Field in general seems to have a lot of that interconnected/looping design.
>I don't see why not
Fromsoft themselves have not been able to make a game that was just the first half of ds1 without shitting it up later on. So yeah, I'm not seeing it happening to soon again, since ds1 itself is heavily flawed and people really love saying "the first half" when this game is the subject.
>Fromsoft themselves have not been able to make a game that was just the first half of ds1 without shitting it up later
I just said that King's Field does that though.
It doesn't though. Ds1 doesn't do it all game either. Hence you "first half" qualifier. You knew you couldn't bring up lost izalith or crystal caves and still sell this "interconnected world for a whole game" crap.
My solution was splitting the game into two halves, and then giving each half it's own hub area with NPC's, shops etc, and having the various interconnected levels and areas branching out and looping back to the hub.
>Just wait for the people who grew up playing DS1 to start making their own video games anon.
Vidya game development hasn't worked liked that for over 10 years.
The choices for young passionate males interested in game development is low budget indie slop or soul crushing wageslavery with no say in anything.
Only drastic global wide change can save humanity from this hell.
Lol, maybe it'll just be me then. That's a different feeling than exploring a new world for the first time though.
This place was magical when Demon's Souls new. Ganker became such a gatekeeping bullshittery board after it was released.
Demon's souls threads when it was first released was my favorite period of time to be on Ganker. Threads were amazing.
Demon's Souls first stood out to me because I noticed that the threads were the only ones on Ganker where the people actually were discussing the game, and they were filling each thread to the limit with insightful, non-repetitive comments and original artwork. Demon's Souls was basically integral for maintaining good quality on Ganker.
I think it was a combination of it being niche, PS3-exclusive, and casual filtering. Dark Souls is my favorite in the series, but something special was lost when Xbros and PCgays came into the fanbase and brought all their low IQ shit with them. Especially when it hit PC and people started treating it like a primarily multiplayer game or some shit.
yes, the system most owned by basketball americans was DEFINITELY where all the high-iq discussion was happening
You obviously weren't alive during the PS3/360 era. For the first few years, the only people who owned PS3s were weebs and a few home theater enthusiasts.
I haven't played a single souls game 🙂
I erased my memory of playing souls games but it caused my unborn son to play them and realize I was moronic. I bought him Demon's Souls and he blue screen'd
goddamn i wish i still had my "erasing into games" machine
Just become an alcoholic. Doesn't work well for puzzle games I've found.
They had stone scales and somehow lost to a lightning caster, they did everything wrong
they bullied seath
So did the serpents convince gwyn and friends to take on the dragons?
It was probably just a consequence of existence. If you represent aspects of conflict you couldn't co-exist with beings of stagnation.
I wonder how Gwyn and his buddies constructed armor, a civilization, language, weapons etc before even conquering the dragons.
The opening cutscene is widely believed to be a dramatisation. Who knows how much of what we're shown actually happened.
>this and happy souls
dare i say, soul?
Gwyn, like the rest of the soul beings all represented change (as in disparity came into existence), so they were all in agreement that the age of dragons was to end.
They're basically a representation of the void before the creation of the world, or alternatively the titans from greek mythology. They had to be defeated in order for the world to be created
The age of dragons is pretty much a representation of our age of dinosaurs. How in the hell haven't you been able to see that.
Gwyn is Zeus. The dragons are the Titans. The other lords are meant to be like his siblings helping him supplant the old order with a new one. Gwyn is petty and does everything to stay in power like Zeus. Only Zeus stays in power, Gwyn knows something bigger is going to happen so he fights back and makes things worse.
>Gwyn is Zeus. The dragons are the Titans
No. The dragons represent the previous world order. The titans are directly related to Zeus with Cronus being his father. Gwyn's parents are not the dragons.
NTA but both the dragons and the titans represented the previous order of the world. Just because the dragons aren't literally Gwyn's parents doesn't mean the metaphor doesn't fit.
Overthrowing a world order appears in all world mythologies which there are dozens. Just look at Germanic mythology with Aesir overthrowing the giants.
Yes, but Gwyn is a direct analogue to Zeus in more ways the one- both the god of lightning, both the head of the pantheon of gods. You're just being pedantic.
That's not the argument you were making though. You were calling the dragons a representation of the titans as if they were a direct representation. I'm telling you that's rubbish. Fromsoft take ideas from mythological works and make them their own. If the dragons were a direct representation of the titans, then you would also be taking Cronus' backstory into account where he castrated his father Uranus for raping his mother Gaia, and the omen that he too would be overthrown like he overthrew is father. The dragons have none of that shit.
Okay, so I'm going to read back what I said verbatim
>both the dragons and the titans represented the previous order of the world
Now, are you going to continue having an autistic fit, or can we agree on the very simple and very plainly obvious fact?
I no longer care anon, you clearly set in your ways.
set in my ways of believing things that are plainly obvious?
I no longer care because I can see you've got it in your mind that the dragons are the titans even though I've explained the discrepancies between the two.
Did I say that the dragons literally are the titans? Or just that there are similarities in that both of them represent a prior order of the world, that the current pantheon of the gods killed in order to take power?
Are you actually fricking braindead? How can I lay something out any more plainly for you? I don't think the dragons are LITERALLY the titans or even that they're similar beyond the fact that they occupy the same mythological role as the prior order of the world. Got it? Got it through your dense, autistic fricking skull?
>Did I say that the dragons literally are the titans?
You did
>Gwyn is Zeus. The dragons are the Titans.
I will now show the train of conversation.
>They're basically a representation of the void before the creation of the world, or alternatively the titans from greek mythology. They had to be defeated in order for the world to be created
>Me: The age of dragons is pretty much a representation of our age of dinosaurs. How in the hell haven't you been able to see that.
>Gwyn is Zeus. The dragons are the Titans. The other lords are meant to be like his siblings helping him supplant the old order with a new one. Gwyn is petty and does everything to stay in power like Zeus. Only Zeus stays in power, Gwyn knows something bigger is going to happen so he fights back and makes things worse.
This is why I don't care anymore.
That's not my post. I literally began my first reply to you with NTA (Not That Anon)
Learn to read you absolute frickwit
Then why bring this up.
>Yes, but Gwyn is a direct analogue to Zeus in more ways the one
Oh that's right, you're being pedantic.
Did you think that was an own or something? You made a mistake, now take your L and move on
I don't know why you're so autistic about this. Literally everyone has known that gwyn shares a lot of similarities to zeus since forever. Dudes both throw lightning. It's not exactly fricking rocket science. You seriously need to get your autism diagnosed and medicated before it tears apart your personal life. If you behave like this towards random internet strangers, I'd hate to know how you treat those around you.
Seek help, please.
>Literally everyone has known that gwyn shares a lot of similarities to zeus
That was never my argument, only yours.
>That was never my argument, only yours.
Okay, so when I said that gwyn shares lots of similarities to zeus, what part of that made you think that I was ascribing that argument to you?
I'm actually so fricking curious how your mind works. 10 odd years of browsing this site and you are the most autistic, nonfunctioning moron I have ever seen. You can't even read words properly. It's astounding.
I don't care, you're just trolling at this point.
Your brain is literally incapable of reading and processing word. Do you have worms in your brain?
It's actually insane. Just an FYI- when someone tells you something... they aren't claiming that you believe that thing. When someone makes claim, they are not ascribing that claim to you. Unless someone explicitly says "you believe x" then they are not ascribing their belief or argument to you. How the frick are you actually this autistic. How can someone as stupid and fricking moronic as you exist on this earth? Do you have a guardian or something? Does your mom know you're posting on Ganker?
You forgot to account for their 'tism. You monster!
HOW DOES IT FEEL SEATH?
They were in the way
Neither did Gwyn and the others
They were pricks.
>Assisted in killing the dragons
>While the other gods did dumb bullshit (like Gwyn enslaving entire species and dooming the world, Furtive Pygmy sowing the seeds of the Abyss, or the Witch of Izalith creating hell and demons), Nito just staid home to sleep and chill
>Only did his job as the bringer of death and didn't bother anyone otherwise
>Lets you visit him
>Gives you a top-tier early-game weapon for free
>Only fights you later because you're breaking into his home like a fricking burglar to take his soul
Why was he so based?
he has the best character design in all of gaming too
Why does GoyslopSoft keep retconning and changing the lore about Dragons and Giants every single Dark Souls game?
Because DS2 and DS3 were both rushed out the door by publishers lmao. DS2, Bloodborne and DS3 all released back to back one year after another, which is an insane workload for such a small company.
How so? Just ignore any lore from the second game and it all makes sense.
>DS1's giants
Hawkeye Gough and the Blacksmith. Big, green-grey skinned humanoids that are almost as intelligent as humans
>DS2's giants
Huge humanoids with grey-black skin and gaping holes in the middle of their faces. They at least have the intelligence to wield weapons but can't talk and seem to groan and roar like beasts
>DS3's giants
Most of them are similar to DS1's, but there's also the DS2 Giants' tree, and there's also Yhorm (the Giant), who has a human face and is three times taller than other giants.
I've read some theories which talk of Lordran being the same as Lothric (duh), just centuries to the past, and Drangleic existing on a different continent altogether. DS2 takes place between DS1 and DS3's timeline, and "The Land of the Giants" referred to in that game is actually the continent where Lordran/Lothric are, although that doesn't explain the differences in the giants lmao
I guess it's just the effects of retcons between different writers/designers that were adapted into people's headcanons
DS2 giants are completely distinct from the other giants. Drangleic is pretty explicitly in lore supposed to be built on the ruins of Lordran- hence the lord souls, the kiln, etc.
DS3 is definitely more in line with DS1 than DS2 is- DS2 is sort of just doing it's own thing that's loosely similar to DS1. Though of course, the ringed city was a massive retcon.
>although that doesn't explain the differences in the giants lmao
They are just two different species that happen to be called giants.
My favorite theory, and the one that makes the most sense to me, was that anon who posted about Drangleic taking place is a mirror world/underworld. This would explain the mirror knight in greater detail, the dreamlike atmosphere and how everything is "similar, yet different."
That artist had an amazing style. I wonder what he's up to now.
>Drangleic taking place is a mirror world/underworld
The opening cutscene shows you on a lake, approaching a ruined gate, and the reflection in the water shows Drangleic Castle.
Then you fall into a vortex in that same lake and wake up in Things Betwixt, Drangleic.
Whatever is happening in DaS2 is happening outside of the traditional world, in some kind of compressed, mirrored dream.
i fricking love gough
big blind bro sniping dragons out of the sky
tubular
Nothing changed regarding the dragons, they just keep becoming lesser and lesser after the First Flame's creation. The giants are consistent as well, save for DS2's giants, who ultimately seem to be an off-shoot.
why did the dragons have that sick ass crystal that makes them double immortal for some reason
I thought that crystal was seathe's or whatever
he stole it from the dragons
Okay, there's a lot to explain and I'll lay it out chronologically to help you understand it.
Because dragons existed before disparity they effectively represent everything. It's not so much being a dragon that makes them immortal, it's their stone scales that are an aggregate of minerals such as crystals that do. When disparity happened, these crystals came forth from this stone aggregate. Seath, being scaleless uses the crystal to prevent himself from dying. The reason this crystal is of significance appears to be some extreme mineral concentration. I don't think we're supposed to know exactly why it stops Seath from dying, just that it does, hence everyone going mad trying to figure it out.
Does this game need a Remake to fix some late arena
Yeah sure, just like how Bluepoint's DeS remake put back and expand the cut content.
If I was ever to remake DS1, I feel like it's a game that would benefit a lot from a lot of structural and mechanical changes. Like reworking the structure of the lategame areas so they're more interconnected.
If they just sat around doing nothing, then yes. If they automatically mutated with the First Flame and became rampaging animals, then Gwyn and the Witch of Izalith had reasons to fight them.
wut rings u got bich
>wut rings u got bich
Havel's ring, FAP Ring.
STAMINA, HEALTH, ENDURANCE
EVERYTHING YOU COULD EVER WANT
>OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. *pause* aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
No, but they were representations of the lack of change, a thing not compatible with the burning fire that is a soul. They were destined to die
Souls lore is just white noise to me. Like Kojima games or Final Fantasy. The difference is FromSoft is usually pretty good at keeping the lorewanking characters confined to prologues and epilogues.
>the did nothing wrong!
The lost the war thus they must do something wrong, my dear.
Gwyn also shares qualities with Izanagi, even having 3 children that represent the moon, sun, and storm
nobody knows who that is, and nobody cares. If you care so much about mythology go study it in university instead of shitting up souls threads
b***h please, Japan knows its own myths, and the Japanese created the game.
No, Miyazaki (a massive westaboo) created this game. Literally nobody cares about your pathetic obsession with east vs west, PLEASE fricking have a nice day right now.
>Literally nobody cares about your pathetic obsession with east vs west
???
Miyazaki is a jap, obviously he's going to include some japanese stuff in his games. Did you think I was claiming there was no japanese influences in his games? No, LITERALLY NOBODY HAS SAID THAT.
YOU FRICKING moron
have a nice day
YOU DUMB
AUTISTIC
FRICK
Literally one of the major things that makes souls lore interesting is how Miyazaki takes western fantasy concepts and interprets them through a japanese cultural lens. Nobody here is playing your moronic east vs west game. Nobody cares. Nobody is saying Dark Souls or it's lore is only based on western mythology or concepts. Nobody here is snubbing japanese mythology or culture. You are a sad, autistic freak who is ruining our nice DS1 conversation. PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE have a nice day right fricking now, and never ever again post in a lore thread. Thank you.
Did it ever occur to you that From Software can use both western and eastern ideas? Not even in equal amounts, just in some combination?
>Gwyn also shares qualities with Izanagi, even having 3 children that represent the moon, sun, and storm
I'll have to remember that.
>theme starts playing
>Hydra going full beast mode in mute mode
>Mushrooms and clamps going bonkers
What a magestic view
>that one prick who's intent on shitting up the thread
Frick off.
>super strong
>immortal
>job to fricking lightning and fire powers
Lol.