#think lorian and lothric from DS3 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

through-fire-and-flame · 10 months ago

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[ i'm going to put things under a readmore after a warning

i've seen folks have perfectly justifiable irritations with the DLC's storyline, and what it implies or changes about their favorite characters

i am not attempting to be combative or difficult, and i do not mean any of this to discredit or attack your views/affection for these characters

this is chezbrain doing chezbrain things, and my interpretation is no more valid than anyone else's

so, i don't know how i feel about radahn as a fight - i had to cheese him both times i've beaten the DLC because i don't find that style of fight, getting one or two light attacks every few seconds, especially fun or interesting to work out

but this DLC did wonderful things to my brain story-wise

while i feel they got extremely loosey goosey with godhood and i flatly refuse to believe this was the planned story the whole time, i quite liked the imagery in the radahn fight and its parallel to lothric and lorian in ds3; i liked the little touches indicating that it was mogh's corpse being puppeted by radahn's soul

i think it's important to me when it comes to enjoying elden ring's story to let go of the idea of it making total, completely plot-hole free sense; the story is modeled after mythology, with larger than life figures accomplishing larger than life things - i'm sure if we took a fine toothed comb to the norse mythology that inspired much of elden ring we'd find loads of inconsistencies between stories

(that is not to dismiss the concerns of people who are upset by these; i'm explaining why i'm not, when i'm normally a fiend for plot consistency)

the DLC made marika a more complex character, in my mind - she was always more complex than much of the community gave her credit for, with what appeared to be motives and plans on top of other motives and plans, but here they answered for me a little something about her duality as radagon (as i interpreted it) and the prior role of the crucible as compared to the erdtree

the moment of finding the minor erdtree miracle and the braid in the shaman village, and all of it coming together, and reading that item description, is right up there with finding vendrick in dark souls 2 for me in terms of cutscene-free emotional gut punches

(she's still a genocidal warlord, but at least there's more there than there was before to point to as fuel for the proverbial fire)

i liked messmer as a concept but i feel he was kind of wasted as the mid-boss, and i wish he'd gotten more build up or more of a role than sitting at the top of the keep and waiting for us to show up

i am utterly fascinated by the abyssal serpent bit, and while the timeline is fuzzy and probably doesn't hold up i feel he fits best as a radagon/marika scion - he has a curse same as miquella and malenia, and it's ostensibly from an outer god, same as miquella and malenia (which outer god messed with miquella, though?) but maybe i'm wrong in that regard

one other thing stuck out to me after playing through the DLC a second time

miquella, who per the lore was in love with radahn, discarded his love - st. trina - at the bottom of the stone coffin fissure

a mound of putrescence swore to serve st. trina, herself an aspect of miquella

miquella loved a large, powerful man wielding curved swords in both hands who was famous for riding his horse

the putrescent knight, protecting miquella's love, takes the form of a large man with a curved sword riding a decaying horse

i loved figuring that one out ]

#ooc

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asleepinawell · 1 year ago

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more random soulsborne rambling

i've been noting all the revisited themes that show up across multiple games as I've been bouncing around replaying the series. most people who have played them know that from soft loves reusing concepts over and over, from characters to those poison swamps we all love so much

one that struck me this time was the character pairing that pops up several times that could be roughly classified as a version of the 'lady and knight' trope (though they're all more interesting than most manifestations of it)

in demon's souls you have maiden astaea and garl vinland at the end of valley of defilement. astraea has abandoned her faith and taken in a powerful demon soul to attempt to protect the inhabitants of the valley. while she is supposedly quite powerful, she isn't formidable in combat, leaving the fighting to her loyal protector garl vinland

the most obvious parallel to them is malenia and miquella in elden ring. the haligtree serves much the same function as valley of defilement and was created by miquella, the eternal child who is watched over by his sister, malenia. miquella, like astraea, has also rejected his former beliefs and left with his one loyal protector. also similar is the fact that both astraea and miquella have some doubt hanging around them as to the true purpose of their ambitions

dark souls 3 has another one in lothric and lorian, the cursed princes. while they aren't protecting a cast out people like the other two pairs, they do have a lot of parallels to malenia and miquella especially (cursed siblings, children of royalty who fucked off from their duty, older melee fighter sibling with a disability). the ds3 dlc also had the painter and gael who have a similar vibe

ds1 didn't have a notable version of this but it does have priscilla who is presiding over a world of the wretched and unwanted and whose dialogue echoes astraea's

ds2 i don't remember well enough and i can't think of one from bloodborne, so it may just be those three (i have not played most of sekiro)

the three examples above were also all fights that felt like they were meant to make you question your own motivations and morality in the game. astraea especially. the idea that your character is actually kinda shitty and whatever they're fighting for is maybe not great is pervasive in the games (this is a bit more complicated in demon's souls)

this whole post is more an observation than trying to prove a point. i just really enjoyed the way this theme was used and how each implementation had parallels but remained unique

#soulsborne #mp #when i don't have A Thing my brain is fixated on i revert to being fixated on soulsborne lol #gael and radahn's fight cinematics had a lot of parallels too #and gael and artorias #so many characters are amalgamations of others used over the series #it fits into the theme of cycles very well

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jeeplethicar · 1 year ago

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Before I begin I want something to be very clear. Play the game however you want to play it. If that looks like being blindfolded and using donkey Kong bongos or a meta build that kills bosses when you blink. It’s a game it’s not that serious, and it’s your single player game it doesn’t effect my life in the slightest.

Moving on, I recently did a ds3 run as a full pyromancer, no melee weapons at all only pyromancy. 30 something on both faith/intelligence. 27 vigor for that 1000 hp standard. I didn’t have the ringed city dlc so I used base pyromancy flame.

This was without a doubt the easiest run I have ever played. Parts of the game that I found even mildly difficult with any melee build were completely trivialized by magic and I think it’s absolutely absurd the amount of people I hear genuinely arguing magic requires skill. Especially since pyromancy is significantly shorter range than something like miracles or sorceries. The damage was absolutely ridiculous, literally deleted half of the Crystal sage’s health before she even teleported away right off the bat. Because it was ranged I could avoid 90% of most bosses movesets without even a little bit of trouble.

I would like to mention that right before this I played a bow only run using the basic longbow with a character named Spook Mcrange (they have social anxiety so they’d rather shoot people than go near them with melee weapons) and that build actually did qualify for the arguments of “you need to manage spacing, and timing your attacks” when using a bow you don’t really do any insane damage, a lot of combat encounters were not built with you using a bow in mind. And bows consume crazy high stamina just for one or two shots compared to magic.

So going into this build with my new character Chad Gaylord (named after the drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers because pyromancer making fire music haha) I expected to run into similar struggles of having to time my spells very very carefully, only I found out that casting a spell takes so much less time than shooting a bow, and you get significantly more damage for just one cast. Another thing I worried about was not having enough flasks, but I always found myself with a bit of one FP bar left and another ashen estus flask before I got to any bonfire. I did have a 24 in attunement at the very end but I played most of the game with only three slots.

I also recall asking a friend on weather or not I should run a pyro build or a caestus build first and they said pyromancer, and also asked about any fire resistant enemies and I had also figured this would be a problem. Only for me to learn that there’s only 1 (correct me if I’m wrong but I think it’s just the demon king) who’s actually resistant enough to fire for it to not be viable. But even enemies who did have a touch of fire resistance guess what? Hit them with the black flame and suddenly I’m doing 500 damage per cast.

I largely used great combustion/black flame for bosses, mostly because I prefer to play more in the bosses face very aggressively. But from time to time I’d throw a few fireballs at bosses and used them all the time for regular enemies. There’s a pyromancy for all situations and it allowed me to just kind of have a walk in the park with pretty much everything. It even staggered the nameless king, his dragon, Lorian and lothric, and soul of cinder. Nothing could really fight a few fireballs or combustions

I want to note that I did have a blast it’s a really fun build to play, especially when you get into finding times when you run out of magic and are just punching with your pyromancy flame. However, I think it’s absolutely insane to say magic is difficult, it’s straight up not true. There’s so many spells for every situation you’re never going to be in a position where you can’t kill something with a tool at your disposal. If you want to say a ranged build is hard, try a bow. Also a fun build but that one punishes you for playing poorly.

Again, play however you like, hell I even suggest trying it out if you haven’t. But don’t try to say it’s harder, and also the argument of “oh but there’s one hit melee builds too” yeah but guess what they do to boost that damage? Magic, also I’m not going to measure the difficulty of something based on what it’s like when it’s insanely minmaxed obviously that’s going to be out of line.

But melee builds make you have to actually learn how to deal with a bosses movesets, do less damage in general. Require better resource management other than “when blue bar gone drink blue drink” I have clips of me collecting footage for an edit fighting lorian with no hud barely ever getting hit despite playing at melee range for most of it.

Overall I will probably do pyromancy builds for ds1 and 2. I basically already have done that for ds1 when I did a sl1 run but still. Probably won’t ever run a sorcerer I don’t really like the vibe sorry guys. But overall full magic build was really fun and I think everyone should try it at least once. However for first time players pick up a sword and level strength like a man/j

I just feel like dark souls was built around melee in general so going a magic free or only supporting spells is a much better way to play. That’s all I’m done now.

#dark souls #ds3

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theukon-dos · 2 years ago

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Great analysis from the both of you. But there are a few more puzzle pieces that I think we can insert into here.

First, in regard to Melina’s age, I think we can get a good idea of when she was born by looking at who she’s associated with. Specifically, she has some very heavy ties to the twin prodigies, Malenia and Miquella.

First, the names. It’s no secret that both Fromsoft and George R.R. Martian like to group associated characters together by giving them closely related names.

On From’s side, Gwyn named at least 2 of his kids after him, Gwyndolin and Gwynevere. Siegmeyer is the father of Sieglinde and the ancestor of Siegward. And the twin princes in DS3 are named Lothric and Lorian respectively. These are just off the top of my head, there are probably more if you look a bit deeper.

And meanwhile, Martin flat out said that he likes giving related characters similar names. In a blog post from March of 2022, he wrote, and I quote:

“Oh, and as long as I am setting stuff straight, there’s a weird story all over the internet about how I “hid” my initials in ELDEN RING because… ah.. some of the characters have names beginning with R, or G, or M. To which I say, “Eh? What? Really?” This was news to me. I have been writing and publishing stories since 1971, and I suspect that I have been giving characters names beginning with R and G and M since the start. Along with the other twenty-three letters of the alphabet as well Coming up with names is hard, especially since A SONG OF ICE & FIRE uses so many of them, and I am fond of giving family members and close kin names that have something in common… but really, why would I have to hide my name inside the game? My name is right there ON the game, as one of the creators. Hey, ELDEN RING is exciting enough, no need to make up stuff.”

So in this in mind, we can look at how it manifests in Elden Ring.

Marika’s first born where the twin Omens Mohg and Morgott.

Her union with Godfrey also resulted in Godwyn, and later Godefroy and Godrick.

Renalla and Radagon had 3 children, Ranni, Radahn, and Rykard.

And Marika’s final confirmed batch of kids where the twins Malenia and Miquella.

Needless to say, when you look at Melina’s name, it is very, very close to Malenia and Miquella. To the point where Melina and Malenia are very frequently mixed up. And knowing how names are used in Elden Ring, this seems to imply that they’re the ones she’s Melina’s closest related too.

There are also the butterflies of the lands between. In particular, there are three butterflies the player can find and collect.

First, we have the Aeonian Butterfly. And the game ties these so heavily to Malenia that it feels redundant to even explain it.

Their description states that it’s believed they came from the Goddess of Rot herself, the name “Aeonian” is a clear reference to Malenia’s scarlet Aeonia. And in phase 2, Malenia creates so butterflies that it would put the margarine industry out of business. I really don’t need to go on.

Next, we have the Nascent butterfly.

While not as heavily associated with Miquella as the Aeonian butterflies are for Malenia, the description for this item does mention that they “look like they’ve just emerged from their cocoon for their entire lives”. So they always look young, Similar to how Miquella was cursed with eternal youth.

And finally, we have the smoldering butterflies.

These butterflies are said to be always on fire, similar to how Melina is “burned and bodyless”. And the description mentions that they’re used as kindling, just as Melina is a kindling maiden to light the giant’s forge.

So we have 3 butterflies, each with ties to a specific character, all these characters having a similar name, all these characters are cursed in some way, and 2 of the characters being known siblings. It doesn’t feel like much of a assume that all 3 characters tie closely together.

The butterfly theory might also explain why Melina’s in the state she’s in. Both Malenia and Miquella where cursed because their parents, Radagon and Marika, are the same person. And incest tends to cause a lot of issues in general. So if Melina’s also the daughter of Radagon and Marika, then her curse must be one of flame. Her butterfly is always on fire just as the others are rotten and forever young. It explains why she’s “burned and bodyless”, her curse burned it away leaving her a spirit. And explains her heavy associations with fire in general.

And while on the topic of fire, it’s worth looking into that more aswell. Becuase Fire in Elden Ring is most frequently associated with the concepts of Death and Destruction, particularly to the gods.

Fire as a concept is considered taboo by the Golden Order. Prophets who see visions of flame are banished by the order. Probably because, y’know. Tree.

The God Devouring Serpent lives on a volcano, and Rykard; who sought to fight against not just the golden order but the Erdtree itself developed magma sorceries from the volcano.

Fire is an effective countermeasure to Scarlet Rot, a plague manifested by the God of Rot.

The concept of chaos and Entropy manifests as the Frenzied Flame.

The Flame of the Fell God was feared by the Golden Order due to being powerful enough to Burn the Erdtree.

And most importantly, unlike Maliketh who channeled the power of Destined Death through his blade, The Gloam-Eyed Queen and her Godskins channeled it through their Black Flame.

So with that in mind, Melina bearing a curse of flame alone puts her in tense contention with the Golden Order, and puts her a step closer to the GEQ And her Black flame.

And finally, I’d like to mention that prophesy you mentioned.

“The one who walks alongside flame, Shall one day meet the road of Destined Death.“

This does seem to be a prophesy, as it hasn’t happened yet by the time we can hear these words. But I don’t think Melina’s the one to walk along side the flame. Rather, she is the flame, and the rest of it is talking about us, the tarnished. We travel with Melina who eventually uses herself to burn the erdtree, and then we end up in Farum Azula where we find destined death.

But the thing about prophesies is that they often have a lot of different meanings or possibilities. In this case, “the flame” could also be the Frenzied Flame, as you can also use it’s power to burn the Erdtree instead of Melina. And continuing off that could result in “Shall one day meet the road of Destined Death” could be referencing Melina’s promise to deliver it upon us shall we become the Lord of Frenzied Flame. Which would make her a Godslayer ala the Gloam-Eyed Queen.

So to recap the important stuff:

>Melina associates herself with Destined Death a lot if she’s alive for the Frenzied Flame ending. >There is significant evidence suggesting that Melina is another birth-cursed child of Marika and Radagon. >Fire is heavily associated with death, particularly the death of the gods. And Melina is associated with fire.

There is a lot of room for interpretation here, obviously. It’s a Fromsoft game. But me? I don’t think that Melina is The Gloam-Eyed Queen. Just her reincarnation or successor. Possibly as a consequence of Marika and Radagon’s union.

I know I've been an ass about it in the past, and I am sorry to the people that had actually put thought into the theory and weren't echoing YT videos. But if anyone still wants to share, I'd like to hear why folks think Melina is the Gloam Eyed Queen.

If the argument is simply that her closed eye colour is gloam-y, I'm sorry, I'll need some more reasons accompanying it to take it into account.

#Elden Ring #Melina #malenia #miquella #malenia blade of miquella #gloam eyed queen

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rwby-redux · 2 years ago

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In the Redux, do the gods have names that aren’t just the Younger Brother and Older Brother or the Brothers Grimm?

They do, in fact.

The Younger Brother is called Kvetch, and the Elder Brother is called Indohyon.

Their names are pronounced /kvɛt͡ʃ/ and /ɪndoʊhaɪjɑn/.

#asks #anon #i speak #renaming #the brother gods #the younger brother #the elder brother #together they serve as the final boss of the redux #think lorian and lothric from DS3

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witch-renna · 3 years ago

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I'm just hoping the Elden Ring DLC doesn't pull a DS3 and doesn't make the DLC about the most obvious thing, which is Miquella. Like, Idk. I don't think it could be about anything else personally? Mostly bc Miquella is such an enigmatic character and has so much lore and iirc he has the most cut content to date.

(TL;DR he has a cut quest about sleep and his Great Rune(Abundance) was in the game and used to be able to create a sword with Malenia's rune a la Lothric and Lorian.)

Like, am I alone in this? I feel like the best DLC option is Miquella and his dream. At least, one of the DLC's assuming we get multiple story DLC's like DS3 and 2. Because I can't believe they didn't just make a Londor DLC despite all the importance drawn to it, instead making up a new place that's never been mentioned and introducing like 50 characters they've never talked about. Which, I hope Elden Ring doesn't do solely. I believe Elden Ring has a good story but some parts are obviously unfinished, like Miquellla's story, the Carian Family and others. Like, I don't tell From what to do but I'm hoping they decide to follow up on something that would be incredibly intriguing and would make a lot of sense.

#ranting bc i want elden ring to make a smart move #also we need to see miquella fully transformed

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girlvinland · 4 years ago

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Is it sad that I’ve only ever completed Bloodborne? It’s so weird! This is my first time playing DS all the way thru and it’s mostly blind minus me knowing some chars and bosses. I only made it to Bell Gargoyles the first time I ever tried to play it years ago. I have played some of DS3 as well but not much. I really want to play DS3 tho sometime too bc Zeke initially got me more into the DS side of FromSoft by showing me Lothric and Lorian bc I have some OCs that were a lot like them lol. I still prefer BB but I am actually enjoying the game this time. Oh yeah I have played some of Sekiro too but idk if it’s really for me. I think I made it to the horse rider boss and beat him and got a bit past him. Just don’t love how it feels to play but I might try again someday. I was terrible at the whole posture thing. I keep thinking about Paige saying that it’s super hard to go from BB to DS if you played BB first bc compared to DS, BB makes you feel like you’re flying. That’s so true. I much prefer games with faster playstyles like that.

#by bug #I just beat the butterfly this afternoon #it was so beautiful

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some-creep · 5 years ago

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Creep Ranks: The Dark Souls Trilogy

Because I finally beat all three of them.

Dark Souls 1: I got Prepare to Die like. When it first came out. I was terrible at it so I stopped playing. I beat the Taurus Demon and that was it. I didn’t start playing them again until quarantine when I decided to give it another shot as genuinely as I could. And I was terrible at them again. But instead of giving up I kept trying. Anyway, DS1 was a game I was always hesitant to play because I’m very bad at navigating large, sprawling, interconnected worlds. I am TERRIBLE at games like Castlevania and Metroid because of this so I don’t play them. I didn’t think I’d be able to handle the navigational stuff especially because you don’t get fast travel until midgame. But it wasn’t as hard as I thought. In fact, most of the game wasn’t as hard as I thought. Most of the difficulty of these games is in your head. Like sure, they’re difficult, but you get better and they’re not so scary. Anyway. I used NPC summons a lot because I wasn’t very good at handling bosses on my own (O&S anyone?). Sen’s Fortress and whatever the area before Seath is called with the invisible platforms were horrible and I hated them. I DID them, but I hated them. Those bits in Anor Londo too. You know the ones probably. The amount of thin platforms you have to navigate in this game was more than it needed to be. The HUD is also very ugly. I really liked the game though and decided I wanted to play the others. I initially skipped 2 and went straight to 3, beat 3, then went back to 2. As you do. Anyway DS1 is a great game and if you’re interested try it. I hear the remaster sucks but its the only one you can buy now. Weirdly the switch version of the remaster uses the old graphics, which are better because the lighting is better. Do with that what you will.

Dark Souls 2: I got Scholar of the First Sin, again, around the time it launched. Again. Horrible at it. Got no where. Gave up. At the time of writing this I have not yet done the DLC. I should mention I didn’t do the DLC in 1 either, but started NG+ before doing it so I’d probably have to restart… whatever. DS2 is… I don’t think I can say anything that hasn’t been said before. Mechanically this game just is not very good. I played this AFTER 3, so it felt shockingly easy by comparison. You are showered in souls, levels are insanely cheap, bosses are incredibly slow. Most of the bosses I beat w/o summons, (and none of them took me more than 3 tries...and I SUCK at these games) although I used them for Watcher and Defender because that boss was kinda lame. The final boss was… Yeah. Maybe the DLC has better bosses and I’ll see later. The lock on in this game is broken. Even if you lock on in a 1v1, once you kill them, chances are it’ll zip to an enemy above you that hasn’t seen you yet. This happened more than once. It also tends to favor enemies behind you over ones in front of you regardless of how close they are. If not for all of the weird mechanical hang ups, this game would be the easiest in the franchise. It still is if you can get over them. I installed a mod to make the weapons not degrade twice as fast but I don’t think it worked because they still seemed to degrade incredibly fast. Can’t say for sure. Also there are so many dudes in any given area which I think was done to encourage you to kill them over and over until they stop spawning but that’s also kinda dumb. I don’t know. If you didn’t play 1 or 3 you might not notice some of this. Or maybe you’ll find it even worse. ADP controlling your i-frames while dodging and how fast you drink estus was a bad choice. I probably didn’t hate this game, but I found it to be the weakest. This game got rid of leveling up at any bonfire which also sucks. Wish DS3 hadn’t kept that but oh well. Losing part of your max HP when you die was bad and feels like it only exists to punish new players. But going hollow doesn’t prevent invasions? This game felt like it had a LOT of NPC invasions too. Maybe 1 and 3 do too but I didn’t spend a lot of time human. Hm.

Dark Souls 3: Not long after beating 1, I got this game. It’s the Dark Souls of Dark Souls games. Okay maybe it’s not that bad, but the jump (for me) to 60fps made everything much, much faster. And smoother. Going from PtDE to DS3 is like. Wow. Anyway everyone in this game is incredibly fast and hates you and wants you to die. It also had to wean me off of using NPC summons. Because I didn’t do one of the quest lines, I missed out on summons. So I was forced to just git gud. Lorian and Lothric were very difficult. I found Soul of Cinder to be hard too but I think people disagree with that (I couldn’t summon for either of those bosses so it was just me improving til I won). At the time of writing this I beat the first DLC (streamed beating Sister Freide, that was fun :) ), and started going through the other. Beat Dancer on my first try which I am still very proud of, and the consumed king in two. Did not yet beat Nameless King but I probably will. I think I had the most fun with this one because I was used to the souls formula by now and understood what to expect from things. However, in terms of exploration, this game is the weakest. It’s incredibly linear compared to 1 and even 2. That didn’t bother me because my favorite part is the combat, but I know a lot of people think this game was too boss focused. I dunno. 3 might be my favorite of them all. It certainly has the best looking HUD of the trilogy.

TL;DR: DS1 - Most exploration, some difficult navigational things caused by the environment and not just enemies. Bosses hit hard but GENERALLY weren’t overly fast (but I havent played the remaster) 8/10 DS2: Less exploration, but fast travel from the start. Fewer instances of dangerous walking but a few miserable sections overloaded with dudes. And poison statues. Bosses are slow and it’s easy to upgrade your weapons and yourself. Could be a good place to start if not for all the mechanical jank. 6/10 DS3: The least amount of exploration probably. Fast travel from the start. I can’t remember any sections with pits and dangerous walking. Enemies are incredibly fast and dangerous. Most bosses are incredibly fast too. 9/10

#dark souls #they're all fun #probably just play 1 if you dont know where to start #i hear the remaster is fine if its all you've played #its just more that it doesn't have a reason to exist since it changes so little?#or just play code vein as that was the first souls-like i actually dedicated any time to #didnt beat it though #got very close

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cometcalloway · 6 years ago

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008.011. 016.

008. What is their favorite fairy tale?

Dark Souls doesn’t really flesh out the universe, it just throws you a bunch of item descriptions like, ~imagine.~ From what the series gives us, I’d say Lothric looks up to Flynn the Thief, a folk hero from the item description of ‘Flynn’s ring,’ and Lorian looks up to various historical figures from Dark Souls 1 and 2 (with their stories warped through the lens of his father’s authoritarian bullshit regime).

There’s lore that says or implies that Gwyn, the king from the first game, had a disgraced eldest son who sided with dragons, Gwyn’s hated enemies from the prologue of the first game. And Gwyn’s firstborn is the founder of the sunlight covenant, and you can find the sunlight covenant (a broken statue of Gwyn’s firstborn?) in Lothric Castle in DS3. And the Lothric bloodline is seen to raise combat dragons like that’s perfectly normal and fine, and the twins’ dad was so obsessed with dragons that he turned into one (like you do). So I figure, as a headcanon, that Gwyn’s firstborn was on good terms with the earliest Lothric ancestors as they founded a place that did, in fact, support dragons, and not hate them like Gwyn would. And maybe the earlier Lothrics were at least somewhat less evil, because Gwyn’s firstborn seems like a genuinely cool guy for not hating dragons just because, and I don’t think he’d support what the kingdom turned into. (And maybe Gwyn’s firstborn’s beef with his dad got distorted throughout the years into the twins’ dad’s obsession to create an heir that could replace Gwyn, the bad guy?).

All of which is to say, I bet Lorian looks up to that Gwyn’s firstborn dude huh.

Dark Souls writers are Like This because the game Makes Us be Like This.

(also, I don’t love Dark Souls all that much, so I don’t want to debate lore with strangers who are legitimately invested, & I definitely don’t want this post reblogged with commentary)

011. How would your character court the person of their dreams?

Lorian would get them gifts and write them letters and do all that traditional romantic stuff & be a Gentleman, & I’m getting secondhand embarrassment just thinking about it. Lothric would be more like, if you can’t accept me at my falling asleep on the couch in my clothes with a box of chicken wings on my chest, you don’t deserve me at my… [data not found].

016. What is their choice of weapon?

For Lothric: words > magic > scratch them

For Lorian: he is a weapon

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yaza-con-queso · 3 years ago

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I swear I am going hollow from grinding in ds3 just to fight lothric and lorian. It's getting to ridiculous extents of time I may just pay for one month ps plus just out of necessity. Ut I may continue this hateful endeavor out of spite to just to pull that birdie on all the nonbelievers who didn't think I could make it which includ we me.

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cinderflower · 7 months ago

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💚ds3 💜💛er

💚: What does everyone else get wrong about your favorite character? I don't really see many takes about ds3 these days but years ago when I first played the game the forums were littered with takes about Lothric being utterly helpless in every way and while I have no solid canon proof for it, I will always and forever be a defender of Lothric being incredibly cunning politically and adept with incantations (the only character who can cast them without a focus). Plus even with Oceiros turning into a crazy dragon man, there's no way he could have managed to navigate the rejection of his duty to the flame without some political capital to expend (and I don't think Lorian was the one making those maneuvers when he was out fighting).

💜: Which character is way hotter than everyone else seems to think? Is it cheating to say Malenia? Because it's Malenia to me, if only because a huge portion of the fandom thinks she's hot in the wrong way (not as much on tumblr but I mean we've all seen it). I treasure the art of her that doesn't shy away from and actually emphasizes her rot & prosthetics because there simply isn't enough of it. Erasing her rot/disabilities is cowardly and pathetic when she's so hot even with them.

💛: What is a popular ship you just can't get behind, and why? I already did my hottest take in the other answer but surprisingly I have no shortage of answers for this one with ER. Messmer/Rellana has entered my muted tags list simply because I cannot bring myself to care about Rellana whose entire existence as a character feels like a filler character they made the intern workshop for a solid 5 minutes before adding her to the game. Her story isn't compelling, her reasoning for going to the shadow realm is so ????, and I can't see Messmer ever returning her affections. If anything it would be a one sided thing but also she breaks the only timeline that ever made sense in my head so badly that I refuse to acknowledge her existence.

#cinder answers #ask games #sorry if youre a rellana fan anon #but i mean cmon...#surprise twin where just the L and Ns in rennala's name are swapped? no head model? similar moveset to malenia?#half-assed lore?#almost as bad as retcon radahn imo #She lives in my head only for her aesthetics and even that is not much

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holdharmonysacred · 3 years ago

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I was gonna make this the tags of that last post but actually I have a Lot to say so I’m making it a real post. I love soulsborne stuff as someone who consumes it entirely through other people playing it because I am 1. a weenie coward and 2. too poor to buy a PS4 and beyond, but like. I do have some genuine beef with the fromsoftware signature special that is its environmental storytelling in that a lot of the time it throws these games into the territory of “these are some real fun games to write wikis about”. Because the way they implement it turns a lot of the games into telling us that cool stuff is happening, rather than showing us these things, and it means that a massive chunk of the cast in these games is extremely flat. The NPCs you do actual real sidequests and covenants with tend to have genuinely good, heartbreaking writing because we get to actually see their character arcs and tragic downfalls, but a lot of the enemies, bosses, and major Lore characters suffer bad from this telling-not-showing problem since their only real relevance to the player’s story is “guy you hear about and/or have to beat up to proceed”. Like, it’s kinda hard to buy that Lothric and Lorian are some of the most tragic characters in DS3, for example, when you can count their lines on one hand and their boss fight is basically their only real scene, and everything else is stuff you’re just told.

And the thing is I don’t really know how they could fix this writing issue???? Because a lot of it is just an inherent pitfall that comes with environmental storytelling like what soulsborne games employ. The point of these games is that you’re someone who’s come along after the apocalypse has already kicked in, where all you can do a lot of the time is gaze upon the ruined aftermath of past tragedies, but that doesn’t make that problem of “everything cool has already happened and you don’t get to see it” any less frustrating. The best I can think of is for fromsoft to release some more supplementary materials and spinoffs to show off all the cool stuff we normally don’t get to see, like novel or comics showing us Lordran or Yharnam or what have you’s falls. Environmental storytelling is a legitimate form of storytelling that has its pros and cons, and this is unfortunately just one of its cons.

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fume-knight-of-shovelry · 8 years ago

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Thoughts on Dark Souls 3

(Note: I made this right after I finished the base game back in April. I just wanted to clean this up and get it published while going through my drafts. This only applies to the base game.)

All right, first off, I’m going to clarify that I love Dark Souls 3 and have not played Dark Souls 1 (was too young when it came out to play an M-rated game).

That being said, Dark Souls 3 has some serious issues. I know Fromsoft will never see this, and in all honesty most companies should ignore everything on tumblr (otherwise BioWare’s future games would be awful, awful, awful and Overwatch would be doomed). I still wanted to verbalize this, though.

1: The Bosses

I cannot be the only person who thinks that, ironically, Dark Souls 3 has more “Armored Knight” bosses than Dark Souls 2.

I mean, if we compare the bosses, there are 32 in Dark Souls 2.

The following could count as “Dudes in Armor”:

The Pursuer

The Looking Glass Knight

The Ruin Sentinels

The Old Dragonslayer

Velstadt, the Royal Aegis (who is awesome)

Vendrick (who’s naked, so maybe it doesn’t count?)

The Dragonriders/The Twin Dragonriders (counting these as two bosses)

Throne Watcher and Throne Defender

The Gank Squad (okay, only two of them are in armor, but we’ll just count these guys/girls/whatever)

Sir Alonne (who is awesome)

Fume Knight (who is super awesome)

Burnt Ivory King

So that’s...thirteen bosses out of 32, twelve if we exclude Vendrick. Of the 23 bosses in the vanilla game, 10 of them are dudes in armor (9 if you exclude Vendrick).

Let’s compare that to Dark Souls 3. Of the 19 bosses, the following could be counted as “Dudes in Armor”:

Iudex Gundyr (or, at least, his first phase)

Vordt of the Boreal Valley (he’s got the behavior of an animal, but still counts)

The Abyss Watchers

Pontiff Sulyvahn (who is a great boss)

Dancer of the Boreal Valley

Champion Gundyr

Lorian, Elder Prince, and Lothric, Younger Prince (okay, only one of them is in armor and the boss is badass, but c’mon, they count)

Nameless King (phase 2)

Soul of Cinder

So, that’s 9 out of 19.

So 47% of the Dark Souls 3 bosses are armored knights, while 37% of the Dark Souls 2 bosses are (counting the DLC and excluding Vendrick: it’s 40% if we count the base game without Vendrick). So, percentage wise, I’m mostly splitting hairs since the difference doesn’t seem substantial (although 10% is nothing to ignore, so we’ll have to wait and see how the DS3 DLC shapes up).

While the overall quality of the non-knight bosses in Dark Souls 3 is better compared to those in Dark Souls 2 (Prowling Magus, Blue Smelter, and Royal Rat Vanguard, I’m looking at you), I still feel a bit disappointed in the buildup to the bosses in DS3. Plus, there aren’t all that many optional bosses, and, except the entirety of the Archdragon Peak area, most of these optional bosses aren’t well-hidden.

Remember exploring the now-unlocked areas in the Lost Bastille and coming across the Gargoyles and the Bellkeeper covenant, or finding the Darklurker at the end of the Pilgrim questline? There aren’t too any bosses like that in DS3. The DLC might fix this, though.

The Lords of Cinder are quite good, but two exceptions stand out; Yhorm and Aldrich. While Yhorm’s fight is a love letter to a Demon’s Souls boss, it still feels like it embodies a critical flaw in the game; sacrificing interesting or innovative ideas on the altar of nostalgia. Aldrich is appropriately horrifying and a gut-punch to DS1 players, but after the initial shock, goes down without too much trouble. On the other hand, the Soul of Cinder is an epic love letter to Dark Souls 1 and 2, and many of the other bosses are excellent additions to the Souls boss repertoire, there are still plenty of disappointments (Deacons of the Deep, Crystal Sage, Ancient Wyvern, and the Greatwood [arguably]).

So, in conclusion, while the bosses are excellent, I hope the DLCs do a bit more to hide the optional ones, increase the number of optional ones, and diversify the boss lineup.

2: The PVP

I’ll be careful about blanket statements, but the PVP seems to have overall been received much more poorly in Dark Souls 3 compared to Dark Souls 2. Part of this is flaws in the covenant design, but a lot of it is the core design choices of this game and how they differ from before.

Let’s start with the positives. The absence of Soul Memory is an obvious plus, making it much easier to find appropriately-leveled and geared friends and enemies. The online connectivity is the best it’s ever been, with fewer instances of game-based lag, and generally smooth hitboxes even for notoriously problematic weapon classes. Covenants once again offer a place for players to carve themselves out in the world, and the differences between some of them lead to far more creative gameplay then we’ve ever seen before. Increasing the number of possible players in a world leads to even more chaotic brawls.

Unfortunately, there are a slew of negatives to go along with this.

For one, you can no longer be invaded in areas where you have cleared a boss; while I can understand the desire to make an area permanently “safer”, this means that end-game players are left in the lurch for areas to PVP in.

[NOTE: As of the original time of writing this, the arenas were not yet announced. With the presence of arenas, this issue has been largely addressed.]

All weapons in a weapon class have identical movesets. This makes it more fair when it comes to predicting possible attacks and helps unify weapon balance, but robs the ability of some weapons to stand out based on their specific moveset (Santier’s Spear, anyone?), meaning that good weapons are determined by stats alone and there are far fewer viable options.

On that note, Whips, Scythes, and Lances are essentially nonexistent or so poor as to be unviable choices (with the lone exception of Friede’s Great Scythe). Gone are the days when dual bleed whips were a viable strategies and the Grand Lance’s running attack was the terror of tight corridors.

And now, we come to poise. Whoo boy, poise. “Working as intended” memes aside, poise is a difficult issue to pin down. Making it too strong leads to the death of fast weapon builds and the overabundance of tanks. Unfortunately, the opposite occurred, and for a long time after launch, fast straight swords (Estoc and Dark Sword spam) ruled the meta, and running heavy armor was essentially worthless. The situation hasn’t been fixed, but people have adapted a bit.

Lastly, we need to address the covenants, which are the worst they’ve ever been. Never mind that some of the rewards are worthless or poorly placed (Mound-Makers get Warmth? Really?). For weeks after launch, auto-summon covenants (Blue Sentinels/Blades of the Darkmoon and the Watchdogs of Farron) weren’t working at all, making levelling up in these covenants a near impossibility. The Blue Sentinels/Blades of the Darkmoon were hit particularly hard by this, given that there are no rewards for joining the Way of the Blue and thus people didn’t have much incentive to equip it, further killing the chances for “Bluebros” to get summoned.

Perhaps in anticipation of this, much like how covenant spells were available in NG++ from Chancellor Wellager in Dark Souls 2, some enemies drop covenant items. While they shouldn’t drop regularly enough to disincentivize online play, the drop rate for some items is inexcusable. I never want to see another Silver Knight again; far too many hours were wasted hunting for Proofs of a Concord Kept, and it’s only marginally better for Wolf’s Blood Swordgrass and Pale Tongues.

That being said, the positive from above are worth noting, and being able to swap covenants instantly and keep progress is a welcome and overdue boon.

3: The Levels

I’ll preface this by pointing out that the levels in Dark Souls 3, mostly, are vast, interconnected webs with shortcuts, interesting navigational tricks, and clear connections to other areas. From the tower in Farron Keep, for example, you can see the Undead Settlement, the High Wall of Lothric and Lothric Castle, the Cathedral of the Deep, and (maybe) Irithyll of the Boreal Valley. The areas make good use of verticality and looping-back to feed into a growing sense of comfort with the ins and outs of a place of exploration.This is all fantastic.

However, in terms of the sheer variety, Dark Souls 3 feels like it drops the ball. A few too many areas have the ambiance of a cathedral (sections that stand out in particular include parts of the High Wall of Lothric and the entirety of the Cathedral of the Deep, excluding the graveyard portion), to the extent that once you get to areas like Lothric Castle, I was a little sick of grand arches and choir chambers. Plus, almost every area you visit has already been colonized, inhabited, or otherwise has some continuous sentient presence. The primary reason areas like the Untended Graves stood out, aside from the genuine creepiness of the whole place, was the sensation of isolation that wasn’t really present when tearing through the Undead Settlement or Irithyll of the Boreal Valley.

In addition, some areas are of baffling length given their placement. The Road of Sacrifices feels poorly paced; besides the section with Corvians at the beginning, one can essentially bolt in a straight line from Anri and Horace to either of the two connecting areas. Though the Consumed King’s Garden and Smouldering Lake are optional, these areas have the distinct sensation of halting at awkward times. The Garden has a few wandering abyss-snake dudes and some confusingly-placed Cathedral Knights, but ends after a single shortcut. The Smouldering Lake is a confusing mess of tunnels that can be skipped by…running in a straight line from the entrance, if one is ballsy enough. Sure, deactivating the ballista is an interesting operation, as is finding all the goodies, but the Lake does feel like a strange tribute to DS1’s most hated area. Anor Londo made a little bit of sense as a beloved an important area from DS1, but Lost Izalith?

Unfortnately, the Profaned Capital does not have “it’s optional” as an excuse. After the confusing but rewarding hell of the Irithyll Dungeon, an area with the tagline “Profaned Capital” brings to mind something more like Lothric Castle, but instead is a very fast L-shaped pathway towards a boss that sacrifices interesting mechanics for nostalgia, with an optional hellswamp.

On that note, the amount of poison in Dark Souls 3 feels a little overbearing. Farron Keep on its own is worse than any previous poison zone, and even if they’re short, the Consumed King’s Garden and the swamp section of the Profaned Capital feel like an extra kick in the nuts.

The larger problem I have with the level design is actually less the level design, and more the world design with respect to player choice. Dark Souls 3 is pretty much a linear shot the whole way through, with only two notable diverging points; whether you kill the Deacons of the Deep before clearing the Catacombs of Carthus, and whether you kill Aldrich or Yhorm first. Technically, one can also get to Lothric Castle early by fighting the Dancer of the Boreal Valley before Vordt, but you can’t a actually get to the Lorian and Lothric, or even the Grand Archives, early. In comparison to Dark Souls 2, where you could not only choose which area to go to first (within a limited framework), but also which boss you could fight first, the restriction feels more than a little unwelcome.

That being said, most of the game’s areas are very well-designed. As mentioned, Irithyll Dungeon is a confusing, claustrophobic, terrifying and unforgiving environment, and the Cathedral of the Deep offers plenty of shortcuts (developer-made or otherwise) to make navigating the well-designed building easier. Archdragon Peak is of just the right size for an area so off the beaten path, and the Grand Archives are a fantastic final wall to throw up in front of players before the end of the game, involving heavy vertical as opposed to horizontal travel. And especially in comparison to Dark Souls 2, as mentioned above, even if the player has less choice in where to travel, the ways those areas link up is much more fluid and interesting.

On an unrelated note that I couldn’t think of any other place to put, the lack of differences between NG and NG+ and beyond are noticeable. In Dark Souls 2, new enemies and items were very common and the difficulty jump was noticeable. In Dark Souls 3, there are new rings, and that’s pretty much it. It’s a small issue, but combined with the lack of build variety, really hurts the game’s replayability.

4: The Story

The story is the part that hurts the most for me personally. While the characters and plotlines introduced in this game can be genuinely interesting, there’s no way to beat around the bush. Far too much of the story feels like it’s directly repeating Dark Souls 1.

While some of my complaints are to do with the dropping of interesting threads and characters from Dark Souls 2 (in the base game, there are a handful of items and areas referencing it, and the only enemies that carry over are the fucking poison bugs; even Yhorm turns out to not be a Dark Souls 2 Giant, although he’s implicitly related to the Giant Lord), I’m actually mostly frustrated because it means that the genuinely interesting threads from Dark Souls 3 get dropped. The entirety of material relating to “The Deep” ends up a dead end, Lothric itself feels like it’s repeating Lordran and Drangleic in uninteresting ways (even if that’s a theme of the series), and some of the most interesting original areas (Irithyll of the Boreal Valley, the Grand Archives) turn out to be connected at the hip to key elements of Dark Souls 1 that take over the new plotlines. Several new characters are essentially repeating roles from previous games, either in new coating (Lautrec for Leonhard), or even with the same appearance (Siegmeyer and Siegward [while I love both of them, the latter feels a little too much like silly fanservice at first]), and some of the new characters don’t…really go anywhere. Greirat finds an old woman’s bone and…dies after a while? Cornyx and Karla don’t go anywhere, although Karla has enough interesting questions to excuse her case.

And even for a Souls game, some of the material feels like such a tiny amount of substance is given to it that attempting to make connections is more frustrating than interesting. How on earth did VaatiVidya get enough material to make videos on the Angels of Lothric and Londor when very few items make any substantial connections? Again, what on earth is going on with Sulyvahn, the Church of the Deep, Carthus and more?

That being said, there are some excellent storylines and questions that pop up, and many of the previous callbacks enhance the story of the original Dark Souls. Again, the Untended Graves pops out as a positive, adding a great deal not only to the game’s story, but extending the importance of a seemingly silly character (Ludleth), and several storylines pan out in interesting ways. In general, the purely original elements of the story and characters stand out as great; some of the previous tie-backs fall comparatively flat.

Conclusions

Vocal people were spending the last 2 years whining about Dark Souls 2 and the developers tried so hard to recapture Dark Souls 1 that it kind of feels like DS3 fell flat in both respects. Genuinely good aspects from the second game were discarded for reasons that really aren’t clear, although they deserve props for learning from DS1′s mistakes and what DS2 didn’t do well.

I feel like Dark Souls 3...doesn’t really have its own identity. It blends elements from the previous entries very, very well but I genuinely think the story is too hung up on DS1, even with the excellent references to DS2 (Shield of Want and theories regarding Eleum Loyce being the Profaned Capital/Irithyll, anyone?).

Dark Souls 3 is an excellent game. At the same time, it feels like it’s trapped in an identity crisis between the first Dark Souls, and, occasionally BloodBorne.

#dark souls 3 spoilers #dark souls 2 spoilers #dark souls #post #i still love dark souls 3 #but it has problems

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