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[InfiniteStateMachine]

Finally past where I was the previous time I played DS2 and stopped.

A lot of the really nice world design apparently doesn't begin to show until late game. Drangellic castle is really beautiful.

[s0]

Drangleic castle looks exactly like the bathroom tiling in my dad's old apartment.

[InfiniteStateMachine]

Drangleic castle looks exactly like the bathroom tiling in my dad's old apartment.

That sounds like a cool but unnerving apartment

[s0]

welp it was like very dark blue tiles. like this but with a rough texture. i.e. exactly like the outer walls of drangleic castle.

to be honest, i kinda don't like the castle that much. it always looked a bit "dead" to me in comparison with other souls castles. why is there no furniture anywhere? also the room layout doesnt really make sense other than as an obstacle course. boletaria palace and gwyn's keep felt more "lived in" :/

[InfiniteStateMachine]

The deadness is one of the things I liked but I haven't faced the king yet so maybe I'm filling in the story blanks myself to justify the decor. I see it as one of those castles that was once alive but was later corrupted, the family still lives there and the castle is kept immaculate but it's otherwise uninhabited. The ghost butler really adds to that too.

The view towards the castle as well from it (gargoyle perch) are both quite nice.

I prefer boletaria too (that's one of my favorite areas across the whole series) but my main point is given the precedent set in the earlier parts of DS2 this was a nice surprise. A lot of the uglier areas of DS2 seem to be at the earlier parts of the game.

[s0]

hmm iunno about that. what areas did you think were ugly? i thought forest of fallen giants was one of the better looking areas for instance. the (imo) ugliest are probably harvest valley, aldia's keep, black gulch (looks like the morning after a 90s rave down there with all the green glowstick juice) and iron keep. the nicest looking ones are (again, imo) dragon airie, dragon shrine and shrine of amana.

spoilered some of these areas because you haven't seen them yet lol

[s0]

btw, small detail in bloodborne: i like how in the old hunters, the fight between the cthulhu executioner and those 2 huntsmen at the cathedral entrance is seemingly unscripted. it plays out slightly differently everytime i see it. sometimes the executioner just oneshots these 2 guys, but ive also seen them get him down to almost half health.

i wonder if it has anything to do with how close the player is. maybe being within the executioner's line of sight screws up his AI somehow, enabling the huntsmen to get more hits in?

[TeeGee]

Nah, it's just the general randomness of monster AI/attack patterns.

[Thomas Finch]

Personally I felt like most of the areas in Dark Souls 2 had a much lazier design to them. Black Gulch was short and ugly but they put tons of poison spitters everywhere so you usually take it super slow your first time. I wouldn't say Harvest Valley was ugly in design, but it's definitely ugly in appearance. I think that's the point of Harvest Valley. It's decayed and there is poison everywhere. The best areas by far are the DLC areas. All of them. The way they're designed is so much more like Dark Souls 1. They're complex and interesting and have great environment design. Shortcuts loop back in ways you wouldn't expect at first just like in DS1 and Bloodborne. The enemies and bosses are much more interesting as well and seem to have much better lore behind them. Most of the bosses in the base game of DS2 are just a big guy who's duty is to protect that spot.

[s0]

the first dlc was good, but eleum loyce is pretty awful tbh. i never finished that area.

[Thomas Finch]

I loved Eleum Loyce. The design, the enemies, everything....... except the optional blizzard area. Fuck that shit.

[InfiniteStateMachine]

hmm iunno about that. what areas did you think were ugly? i thought forest of fallen giants was one of the better looking areas for instance. the (imo) ugliest are probably harvest valley, aldia's keep, black gulch (looks like the morning after a 90s rave down there with all the green glowstick juice) and iron keep. the nicest looking ones are (again, imo) dragon airie, dragon shrine and shrine of amana.

spoilered some of these areas because you haven't seen them yet lol

So the ones that stick out to me are the areas that had very obviously repeating textures and kind of rough terrain work. The first area that comes to mind is after you get through the misty forest and end up in the area with a lot of curse vases (I forget the name). Harvest valley is pretty ugly technically but I do like the risky artistic/design direction they went with it.

In fact all the outdoor areas emanating from that cylindrical hub (misty area would be on the right of the fire) are fairly ugly.

Disclaimer : I'm speaking in relative terms to demons/dark souls

[s0]

FINALLY had the time to beat laurence. the player beast form unfortunately looks pretty stupid lol.

[s0]

btw i wanna do a lore recap because ive been wondering about about somet things (BBORNE DLC LORE SPOILERS): what exactly is the significance of kos? what we know is that people from byrgenwerth (probably the same group that later became the healing church) apparently killed kos and somehow transformed the inhabitants of innsmouth the fishing hamlet into deep ones fish people. we also know that the orphan placed a curse on the hunters for killing his mother.

so anyway, i think the kos episode was probably an experiment by byrgenwerth to breed humans with great ones which was not further pursued for obvious reasons. then sometime after that some byrgenwerth scholars discover ebrietas, another great one, beneath yharnam, lock into a dungeon and harvest her blood, which is what causes that group to split off from byrgenwerth and establish the healing church as a front to experiment on people with old blood infusions (as seen in the research hall). so that means the whole blood thing is just one branch of research into the great ones, as are the nightmare explorations conducted by the school of mensis, who are apparently a secret chapter of the healing church that kidnaps people to experiment on them.

ok, now the things im wondering about are: 1. why does the school of mensis apparently worship kos (micolash's dialog) and even attempt to revive her (the one reborn!)? 2. what is the nature of the orphan's curse?(because "breaking" it doesnt seem to do much other than ease gehrman's conscience).

[s0]

btw, difference between lovecraft and bloodborne: lovecraft's gods are indifferent to humans and treat them like insects, bloodborne's gods are "sympathetic in spirit" but bear a grudge against humans for being jerks to them.

[SousaVilla]

I think bloodborne storyline is too murky to be able to order things chronologically, so I don't even attempt to do it. But some things to keep in mind:

- There's no explicit evidence that Byrgenwerth killed Kos. The kos parasite description actually states that her body "washed ashore" full of parasites, so it's highly possible that she washed already dead.

- We don't know what caused the transformation on the villagers. It could have been their diet on the parasites that you can see all over the hamlet. (they're not fish, if you look closely). The parasites could be related do Kos, somehow. That would explain why the scholars searched their skulls for eyes (Accursed brew description), since it would make no sense to search the skulls of normal humans.

- Ebrietas had conversations with the choir, that we know for sure, but I don't think we can link her to the time before the foundation of the healing church. The Great isz chalice description says that it was: "the first Great Chalice brought back to the surface since the time of Byrgenwerth, and allowed the Choir to have audience with Ebrietas". So its after the schism, it seems.

- Micolash even asks "do you hear our prayers?" maybe he's pondering if a dead great one still lives and can communicate with humans?

- The name of "the one reborn" in japanese would be better translated as a plural "the ones reborn". So i dont think it means kos or any individual but all the people kidnapped by the school of mensis. (I saw that in the latest vaati video)

[s0]

i do think that byrgenwerth at least had some kind of hand in the death of kos and what happened with the fishing village. else, the speech from the guy at the beginning of the fishing village makes no sense.

also remember that the nightmare represents the collective memory of the old hunters. why would the hunters remember kos and the fishing village if they had nothing to do with it.

[SousaVilla]

One theory is that they murdered the orphan, not kos and the speech of the guy at the beginning refers to the horrible things byrgenwerth did to the villagers because they think they had eyes on their skulls.

Things would go like this:

1- Kos washed ashore dead on the fishing hamlet carrying the orphan and a bunch of parasites.
2 - The parasites transformed the villagers AND/OR the orphan did it. (optional)
3- Byrgenwerth discovers that a great one appeared dead on the beach of the hamlet and goes there, examinating every individual in search for eyes in the inside. They take the carcass for experimentations and end up killing her son inside of her body.
4 - The spirit of the son creates the hunters nightmare to punish the hunters for what they did to himself, his mother body and the people of the hamlet.

As usual in bloodborne thing are not clear enough to be sure about how things transpired. The problem with the "byrgenwerth killed kos" theory is that it appears to contradict the kos parasite description. Also, it contradicts Maria when she says "a corpse should be left alone" . She's refering to a dead corpse, like herself, but it also refers to the dead corpse of kos. (in the japanese is even more explicitly, saying "corpse fishing") One way way to account for that is to say that Byrgenwerth killed kos in a naval battle, hence all the ship masts in the nightmare, but that is going too far into speculation.

[s0]

maybe byrgenwerth did something to kos that caused the parasite infection. the reason i think villagers may be the offspring of some child of kos (probably not the orphan) is because that is pretty much story behind lovecraft's deep ones who the villagers are obviously based on. but ofc bloodborne != lovecraft mythos so maybe inferring too much.

i do think that at least the orphan is part human tho. i mean he looks a LOT more humanoid than his mother who is some sort of bizarre fish creature and can evidently survive on land whereas kos appears to be aquatic.

welp no obvious answers to any of this i guess. this IS souls lore after all.

[TeeGee]

Kos actually has a human face, though.



She's rather humanoid overall - with her face, posture, two human arms, etc. - definitely more than the other Great Ones. Now that I think of it, she's oddly similar to Doll/Maria too.