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[Rat Casket]

now that i know they basically started over half way through, dark souls 2 makes much more sense. aka why its trash.

[s0]

that y we should talk about bloodborne lore instead

i want to talk about the lore for a bit: so as far as i understand the blue aliens or "celestial beings" are not actually aliens? i mean as we see iosefka "creates" them in her clinic and we meet them in the upper cathedral ward so im guessing theyre actually artificial life forms created by the choir? and the insight sucking babby cthulhus/mindflayers you fight are just people with more eldritch wisdom than they could handle, or at least thats what i read. also the great ones might not be aliens either, theyre just mortal (and potentially earthly) beings who became extremely powerful and "ascended" to other planes of existence, similar to the lords in dark souls. i think what is called "the cosmos" in this game might actually be different dream planes? idk this is all very confusing giorgiotsoukalos.jpg

[Rat Casket]

"aliens" isnt the right term. they exist outside of our plane of existence, be it in space, on the moon, IN the moon, or in a dream/nightmare. think of space as just another place to inhabit rather than the blank highway between planets.

its obvious that the celestial buttnoids are people turned with paleblood. for one, the emissary is turning children into them, and isoefka turns whoever you send to her into them. she knows about the old ones and is being influenced by them/working with them. shes PROUD to be pregnant with their squid babies.

people are actively trying to "evolve" using paleblood/blood and by communing with old ones. take Micolash for example.

[s0]

rip

ohhh i just found out that only the root chalice dungeons are actually randum. that explains a lot lol

[DJFloppyFish]

i just played through upper cathedral ward for the first time. that was great, might be my favorite area. idk yet if I like receiving a chalice as a reward. might be cool once I see it in action. im kinda baffled by the amount of content that is purely optional. all of it is really good. a lot of it even surpasses the main game imo.

bloodlore:
i think the term great one actually refers to two different kinds of ultra powerful beings. there's the kind that have existed since the beginning, the ones that grant "power" and seek human surrogates (kos, ebrietas, amygdala, oedon, mensis (im unsure if mensis is a great one)). then there's the kind that used to be human but are now serving the original great ones as transformed creatures (rom, possibly mergo's wet nurse, possibly US at the end of the game). it may be possible to transcend to great one status without the aid of the original great ones, and that may be what we do at the end. however, it seems to be the case that most humans seek the original great ones to help in the transcendence, as we hear micolash do in his fight. its my theory that the great ones played a trick on us like they did with rom. we are granted power, but we lose our minds and become vacuous. 

its like this whole game is a deeper exploration into king allant's troubles lol

[Rat Casket]

Rom wasnt granted anything. Willem and Rom turned him into that through experimentation with Paleblood. Rom isn't serving an Old One. He is keeping the nightmare locked away, which is keeping Mergo contained. I would argue that the only "true" Great Ones are Oeden, Moon Presence, eventually Mergo, and Ebrietas. Amygalla obviously isnt because there are a bunch of them, and they simply inhabit the nightmare of Mensis, which is created by Mergo.

Mensis is just a school/study group that Micolash started to worship the Great Ones.

[DJFloppyFish]

Rom wasnt granted anything. Willem and Rom turned him into that through experimentation with Paleblood. Rom isn't serving an Old One. He is keeping the nightmare locked away, which is keeping Mergo contained. I would argue that the only "true" Great Ones are Oeden, Moon Presence, eventually Mergo, and Ebrietas. Amygalla obviously isnt because there are a bunch of them, and they simply inhabit the nightmare of Mensis, which is created by Mergo.

Mensis is just a school/study group that Micolash started to worship the Great Ones.

ahh i see, a cord said that mensis was granted audience with mergo, which confused me and made me think it was a person/deity.

micolash says grant us like you once did rom though. doesn't that kinda imply the involvement of a great one? i guess that could also be referring to rom in his scholar days. also something i dont quite understand (not disagreeing with you, just confused) is how rom is hiding the nightmare when we are teleported to the unseen village after we beat him, not the nightmare of mensis.

a lot of what i said is based on how the wikis have some bosses listed as great ones, which i guess is still being figured out.

[s0]

mensis is also a menstruation reference lol. lots of childbirth and menstruation imagery in this game.


anyway NOOB ADVICE: don't go into the chalice dungeons until late game. they "spoil" lots of later enemies. unless you don't mind that, then chalice away.

also i think the chalice dungeons are honestly kinda meh. i mean theyre not *bad* and some of the bosses are pretty nice but in terms of procedural level generation theyre underwhelming as fuck. rooms seem to be mostly fixed and just strung together in a random way and peppered with random loot. also the layouts it generates are pretty blah for the most part. ofc i guess its kinda silly to expect what amounts to basically a side mode in a game to have the kind of depth of a good roguelike and as an optional side thing its adequate.

i will say tho that the lore aspect of them is neat and the system for accessing (using resources) is a clever way to make them more "meaningful" than random dungeons normally are. also its nice that they thought of including a way to share levelgen seeds.

[gimymblert]

it's baby first AAA procedural dungeon, you can't blame them as AA naively tip toe in procedural generation? (isn't there first game they made (king's field I guess?) was progen?)

[s0]

it's baby first AAA procedural dungeon, you can't blame them as AA naively tip toe in procedural generation? (isn't there first game they made (king's field I guess?) was progen?)

theyre doing several things right actually. for instance seed sharing is a feature that even some "proper" roguelikes forget to include. so like, the framework/format for it is good, the content itself is mediocre. but souls isnt really built for random dungeons to begin with i think, so this was an experiment (just like the combat changes were an experiment, albeit one that was a resounding success) and its ok for what it is.

and no, kings field is 100% predesigned

[Rat Casket]

and so is Shadow Tower

either way, people talk mad shit about the chalice dungeons like they didnt know what they were doing and thats why they turned out underwhelming. but in reality, its just additional content to explore. they are good as hell and the challenges in there are pretty intense. good bosses too.

its not "AAA naively tip toe in procedural generation". you say that like only indie nerds can do proc gen, lol. besides making shitty square rooms is like 99% of proc gen that people even do.

[s0]

dude, seriously, the proc gen in the chalice dungeons is unimpressive as heck. its literally the simplest form of it that exists, taking pre-designed "modules" and shuffling them around. the chunks arent even seemlessly integrated like in e.g. spelunky (or even diablo!), theyre just pre-existing rooms connected by pre-existing corridors.

also im sorry, theyre *ok* and theyre adequate for what is basically an optional game mode but they don't hold a candle to any designed level in the game.

[Rat Casket]

im agreeing with you, you know.

[gimymblert]

video games will be scary when AAA figure out good progen, gta is still handmade but then http://delacian.tumblr.com/ and

and http://www.tmwhere.com/city_generation.html ... you mostly need more work on good crowd generation (with character agenda) to have a proto gta progen

[Dragonmaw]

i do think doing the first chalice is okay early on, it gives you a fair amount of important chalice materials, fortify materials, and insight

[Dragonmaw]

also i'm really hating how ps+ gates multiplayer, it's making it impossible to find co-op partners in any decent timeframe

[DJFloppyFish]

the way this game handles dark areas is legitimately scary. i wish there were more of them.

[Rat Casket]

Turns out the buffed the shit out of bleed on the claws in DaS 2. They are now godlike.

[Dragonmaw]

really not digging blood vials. i honestly think the way dark souls 1 handles healing items (estus recharged at bonfires) is 100% perfect.

i keep running out of blood vials and having to go back and farm in central yharnam and it's tedious as hell and wholly unlikeable, especially since it takes so long to get to a place where you can upgrade your blood vial healing so you don't have to spend so many

and yes, i know, "git gud" but you'd think that a game that requires much more aggressive and risky play would use a healing system that doesn't punish players excessively for taking those risks already forced upon them

[DJFloppyFish]

yep, its total crap. especially since you can't even rest at a lamp to respawn enemies that drop them. its just rude.