#FromSoftware architecture

[sahashbelvanie]

Altus & Leyndell

I’m a console player so I tend to hide in corners and turn off my hud to take photos.

[tarnussy]

Nokstella, Eternal City

[kdval]

ELDEN RING

› Nokstella

[nocturnal-hekate]

Dark Souls architecture from the official artbook

[echolesschamber]

Anor Londo, inspired by Hidetaka Miyazaki's travels around Europe and Milan Cathedral.

scan from Dark Souls Design Works

[monkele-art]

Illustration Commission

Other socials:

https://twitter.com/MonkeLe_Art

https://linktr.ee/Monkelee

[thursdaynovember]

I dont know which Tarnished was the architect behind Stormwind Castle but this roof sloping into a parapet is just ASKING for water damage and drainage problems (there are drainage holes but they're like 4ft high).

[sea-solaire]

Was nobody going to tell me how weird the canon Drangleic map is. Genuinely

(Yes I know the elevator was as a result of time cuts, I just like pointing it out because I think it’s neat)

[unicorb]

Dark Souls 3 - Scenarios

[smbhax]

Dark Souls III

[lyralu91]

It's giving Anor Londo.

Architecture Piece (Daniël de Blieck, 1658)

[doshmanziari]

Shadow of the Erdtree: Some Reflections

Well, folks, since no one asked, here are some thoughts I've had while exploring Elden Ring's add-on, Shadow of the Erdtree.

The existence of an alternate shadow realm has solidified my conviction that what Elden Ring is depicting on micro and macro scales is the phenomenology of etheric bodies -- extending even to the moon, the double of which is visible from the Moonlight Altar plateau (this is reflected by Rellana's Twin Moons spell). Each of these bodies possess a regulating function. Although each might be generally described as doppelgänger, the occult scientist Rudolf Steiner wrote of the Doppelgänger proper as its own sort of body, responsible for the tension between aspiration and temptation. It's interesting to me that this is such a major preoccupation of the game, because it indicates a layer of esoteric involvement, on the part of Elden Ring's narrative conceptualizations, that I don't think anyone in the so-called lore community has picked up on yet. The shadow realm helps explicate the otherwise inexplicable Godefroy the Grafted, too.

Various details have also strengthened my impression that the revolt against Nature we see in Elden Ring is a revolt against motility -- motility being the ultimate enemy of utopia: a human conceptualization reliant upon infinite stasis. In the base game, I think we see this revolt most profoundly in the narrative of Ranni, who first abandons her own flesh and then strives towards the realization of an Age of Stars, that "thousand year voyage under the wisdom of the Moon." Although the Seedbed Curse represents its own revolt against Nature, it remains within the organic order. Ranni's vision is of the inorganic and remote. And I don't think it's unrelated that, in certain esoteric cosmological systems, the moon stands as most distant from the Absolute.

The colors of the landscapes and sky are amazing: vivid, autumnal, and strange. These palettes have only made me dislike the game's rain effect all the more, which does not deepen the arboreal colors (as it should) but drains all surfaces of color and sets them into a depressing, bland grayscale. To say that the rain is a part of why I consider Raya Lucaria to be Elden Ring's low-point in the realm of major level design could be seen as a trivial complaint, but visual drudgery will wreck even the best schemes; and Raya Lucaria is as far as you can get from that anyway. FromSoftware has done fine with types of snow (see, e.g., the Frigid Outskirts or Painted World of Ariandel), but I think they've yet to figure out rain, among some other graphical technicalities.

The forges are among my favorite instances of discrete level design, even if, or maybe because, they tend to contain only two or three enemy types, feature no bosses, and severely scale back the level of challenge. I happened upon one yesterday that I did find a little dull, but the other two were wonderful, brief, atmospheric knots, quiet sequences of colossal architecture, that sort of evoked shades of Stonefang Tunnel from Demon's Souls. On that note, I'd call special attention to the forges' theme music. The only other piece of music from the DLC that's gotten my attention is the theme for Belurat.

Plants are People, Too.

Torrent is just... a terrible inclusion for this game. It's maybe obvious enough to not warrant being said, but -- any design decision has to be evaluated on what it contributes to the system it's been set into, and Torrent adds nothing outside of the occasional, brainless convenience. I could maybe see an argument for Torrent's presence if he had some emotionally charged narrative integration, maybe like what Shadow of the Colossus did. Without this, Torrent is nothing but a tool which perpetually problematizes the overworld's scale (a bit too big, yet no fun to traverse at high speed) and trivializes all of its gauntlets on a potential and actual level far worse than anything the Spirit Ashes could ever do. Better to me would've been if the only way to use a mount were by defeating a mounted knight without killing their horse and then sneaking up to the runaway to gain ownership of it.

I'm finding the map much more engaging than that of the base game because of how it plays with abstractions and builds anticipation through that. One part of the map, for instance, shows a bunch of trees with red leaves. Reaching this place reveals these "trees" to be enormous red flowers. Another section shows pink, purple, and orange specks. What are these? And what are the gray, finger-like lumps erupting from the mass next to it? I've also found it tough to figure out how to progress from one plane to another because of how densely stacked and knobby the continent's features are, so consulting the map has been helpful in a way I rarely experienced with the base game's.

Love how much the Ancient Ruins of Rauh resemble The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, from the explosion of verdure, to the crude, architectural naivety defining the pseudo-Gothic structures.

With Shadow of the Erdtree, I keep coming up against an unresolvable simultaneity like the one mentioned above regarding the overworld. There's a lot of good level design to be found here among the dungeons, castles, and forts, yet the abundance and enormity of it all seems to have deprived the game of significant contrasts, and those special spatial moments, which I found much easier to locate and reflect upon with, say, Dark Souls or Bloodborne. Sure, the sky-piercing spiral of Enir-Ilim is a sight to behold; but soon enough the sequences of grand staircase upon grand staircase, great bridge upon great bridge, creates a perpetual climatic grandiosity that diminishes the very effect of a climax (and I'm not even sure that Enir-Ilim is the DLC's intended final location). Anor Londo or the Nightmare of Mensis could feel special because the qualities and features of their spaces stood apart from everything else. Elden Ring, I think, has gotten itself into a predicament by trying to one-up its internal material and all prior FromSoftware games through the enormity of its scale -- and challenge. More and more, I've been craving a new project from them that resets these terms of engagement, even while enjoying the consistency of the material at hand.

That's all for now! In time maybe I'll turn these thoughts to an essay for my Substack page, perhaps with a focus on the first two points.

[kdval]

ELDEN RING

› Nokron, Eternal City

[neverwonderneverremember]

i do know what my problem is actually and it's that elden ring is a triumph of level design (in its legacy dungeons and general world layout, at least. the caves and mines and shit are very mid)

i can't stop marveling at how well-laid-out everything is. how much thought went into the way rooms are structured, the verticality, the way enemies are placed, the sightlines. how much storytelling is done purely through architectural features that aren't remarked upon by anyone.

nothing else really reaches those heights. the only other game i've played that has come even close is dishonored 2. nobody knows how to do level design, how to make compelling spaces to move through, like fromsoftware.

(though if you know other games that meet this standard PLEASE let me know, i need more...)

[mallevsmaleficarvm]

growing up for me means finding 10-11th century norman armors better looking than 14th century full body armor, german empire style. same thing with architecture tbh. simple yet colorful, we're prejudiced against this style because it has lost its colors with time (frescos are mostly faded now, and it's hard to find textile). makes me wonder about how fromsoftware games would look if this was the inspiration instead...

[bunbunreading]

Bloodborne Graphic Novel 1-4

Bloodborne Graphic Novel 1-4

BY Aleš Kot

I have not and will never play the game Bloodborne. It is a beautifully designed game with great world building. I have watched numerus playthroughs and know that I would never ever finish it. That being said, I love the game. The many, many interpretations that can be had, the characters and the story telling and world building make this such a good game. This comic series just expands on things that you learn about in the game. You can learn more about the Healing Church, the Hunters, the scourge of the beast and so much more. If you like the world of Bloodborne and the art, architecture or characters in the game you should check these out. I think there are two other graphic novels in the series that my library didn’t have at the time I read these, so I haven’t read them yet.

My deepest thanks to @TBSkyen / @ohnoitstbskyen on youtube for my favorite playthrough of Bloodborne and FromSoftware Inc. for this beautiful game.