Wanna take special mention of this because, and I’m almost certain this was said earlier in video but I just forgot, but the actual process of “getting mad at video game” is effectively identical to going Hollow, as it’s described. You start as this fully functioning being, and with every death you get more and more salty until your rage overtakes you and you just slam your head against a wall for five hours.
It’s my favorite type of gameplay and story integration, I think. The idea that you, the player, are actively being hallowed by the game.
A really nice touch is that almost every source of transient curses gives two at a time. Which makes sense - you’re cutting off the hands of curse victims. If they have two hands, might as well take 'em both, right?
Unrelated, I had thought that Oswald of Carim had purging stones, if not in the first version, then at least in an earlier patch than the female undead merchant. Patch notes I can find mention when they were added to the merchant, can’t find if Oswald had them added or not, but given they’re from Carim it makes some sense for him to carry them.
Lastly, something on sorcery tools in this game: tin is the magical metal, and the formal term is catalyst. The informal term, used in far fewer descriptions (and never descriptions connected to hyper-formal vinheim) is wand, and staff is never used. Weird idiosyncrasies, really, but I personally found they drew me into the world, just by being an unspoken rule you could notice.
I love technical details on things like that ghost ceiling trap. It remind me of that one Iwata Asks about how they designed the first screen of Level 1-1 in the original Mario Bros. The kind of extremely detailed thought that goes into guiding and teaching the player is always so fascinating.
Also, I looked up the ghosts because I was curious about the differences between them, and I found one of the 50,000 Souls wikis basically has the best-worded description of their lightning attack.
A detail I like is that the ghosts don’t follow you up to Ingward’s spot on the rooftop, its good gameplay-wise since it makes it so you won’t hit him while trying to fight ghosts and it also drives home his being the expert on curses and a guardian of sorts for the city.
Like Ingward’s knife and the Ghost Blade, I am like 99% certain that one of the two versions of the Greatsword of Artorias can harm ghosts as well. I used it in a run, I think.
I like how Leanne the crystal-smasher has gone from a land of towers, crystals, and knowledge to this submerged haunted ruin and capital-D Darkness.
(Dorky myth/theme talking alert.) It occurred to me while watching this episode… I think it’s significant that this is in a way the “darkness level” and yet it’s called New Londo, and not like, The ShadowZone, or Inky Landing, or whatever. If you did a big bong hit and had to define darkness, you would probably do so in terms of the absence of light. That’s how New Londo is defined: it’s the place light tried to colonize, and what’s left behind when the light failed.
An important facet of the world is exactly that, that despite all the attempts to demonize it, darkness is just another natural consequence of flame, the other side of light’s coin. And as we’re about to see, both sides of that coin have done some pretty terrible things
Possibly worth saying in connection to the seal - a lot of games do the “ancient evil sealed away” thing. Usually it’s portrayed as as a magical phenomenon, and I think players are meant to have that sort of image in their heads when exploring upper New Londo and learning about ghosts. Even the word sacrifice has mystical connotations.
That the seal was a feat of engineering, and the victims weren’t fuel for a spell, just people in the wrong place who weren’t evacuated (likely for fear darkwraiths would escape amongst them) makes the horror comprehensible and gives it weight - the sacrifice wasn’t integral to the seal, it was collateral damage in the name of being absolutely sure the spread of the dark was stopped. It was a wholly mundane crime, to the extent mundane exists in dark souls, but so horrific as to spawn the cursed ghosts.
Very true, and even better that you’re given this big, important looking key and it literally just goes to a small iron door. It’s a great fake out. The games are very much set up to present the fantastical but give it a roughshod feel to it. Magic in fantasy has this tendency to work perfectly. Even unintended consequences are often presented as a direct result of a spell, in the monkey’s paw sense. In Dark Souls magic is always finicky, and even the supposed masters of it, the Lords, aren’t truly in control. Their actions as the flames start to fade are almost always desperate and always make things worse, because they don’t really think through the consequences of it, and through New Londo we see that mentality even seeps down to the human lords beneath them. Keep in mind that the biggest pile of bodies is just in front of the floodgates, implying that this was all done very suddenly and very violently, with the entire city trying to escape over the one now-closed exit
The juxtaposition between the horror of New Londo and the big ol’ outdoors is something I’ve really never liked. Like look at the drakes just chillin on the bridge, one of em is close enough the door would’ve smacked it while opening and not one of them like turns around in acknowledgment of oh hey the wall just opened - like it’s honestly for lack of a better description one of the gamiest things in Dark Souls and it’s the sort of jarring, awkward transition that wouldn’t feel out of place in Dark Souls 2. I dunno how I’d change it while keeping the connectivity beyond “move the drakes around” but I feel like it could’ve been handled better.
The actual idea of the contrast is cool though, it really helps emphasize how this huge underground city of darkness is simply built within an atrium and the only thing disconnecting it from the outside are its walls. Where as Anor Londo is this sanctuary atop actual mountains New Londo is built into the earth - it sells the notion that Anor Londo is a city of the gods, while New Londo was built by and for Undead. The carefully maintained appearance of Anor Londo also plays pretty well against how haphazardly and desperately New Londo was “sealed”.
The greatsword sure smacks down the Darkwraiths, damn. They usually seem more challenging in other LPs.
For all the ridiculously big & tall knights that you end up fighting in Dark Souls, the normal sized ones seem scarier in a way. Like Darkwraiths and the Crestfallen Knight, when they’re trotting out and kind of circling around you and being aggressive… it’s like, OH SHIT HERE WE GO.
It seems different than like Artorias or other big, fast, powerful enemies. There it’s just about surviving the onslaught. PVP isn’t quite the same because that’s clearly a game and often the other player has like a silly outfit on and is named Lord Buttmunch or whatever.
The hitstun on the zweihänder is legit unbalanced, it’s almost surprising it made it into the game like this. The swing is slow, but it’s so huge that it’s actually one of the more forgiving weapons in the game, especially because hitting almost any enemy in the game will knock them back
I think people have a lot of trouble with darkwraiths because they’re aggressive like black knights, which we haven’t had to fight up to this point. Their combos are long and have a lot of reach, so if you can’t kill them in two hits it can be tough to get a word in
E: also I feel the artorias fight is the best in the game, bar none, but we’ll get there when we get there
New Londo was certainly one of the parts in the game I was sure I had to have missed a bonfire in. I spent so much time cautiously inching through the drained section knowing I was out of estus and would not be able to remember how to get back to where I was, it was tense.
I really feel like New Londo was a great idea in messing with your expectations mechanically, but I don’t think it was all that well executed. I still think it’s probably the most haunting design in the entire game though, the stacks and stacks of bodies just laying all around is pretty horrifying, I feel like it nails the intended mood better than any other area in the game except maybe the Kiln of the First Flame.
There may be a bit more delay in episodes, since my recording plans for the weekend were sidelined by a migraine. Hopefully I can get it going again soon.
I’ve been looking forward to meeting Quelana all game, really. She’s one of my favorites, in her overall demeanor and in the way she ties together the story of Izalith, gives the player more context for it. One thing I forgot to mention is how I love the way she treats you not buying anything as just not being able to “get it”; while so many other merchants treat it like a transaction, she frames it as a learning session that takes your souls as tokens of effort. It’s a really neat way of framing a merchant transaction
Regarding Laurentius and Quelana, there is an interesting contrast with the spells they sell - Quelana has very literal fire manipulation, pushed to heights Laurentius can’t imitate, and her pupil Salaman, whose signature accomplisment is an uncommonly large fireball, describes pyromancy as rooted in the love of fire. She teaches almost nothing utilitarian or practical for anything but violence, and insists the fire should be feared.
Laurentius, for all he loves fire, does treat pyromancy as a tool for survival. He mentions Salaman in dialogue, and clearly believes in the love of fire, but his exclusive spells - which no other pyromancer in Lordran knows - come from Salaman’s apprentice, Carmina, and are purely defensive, practical tools that use fire symbolically rather than directly. Iron flesh is a pyromancy spell because flame is used to forge metal!
And Laurentius, like others of his tradition, has pyromancy actively woven into his clothing, for protection from the horrors of the great swamp. He will say very little about fearing flame, and a lot in praise of it. Where Quelana sees fire as a destructive thing to keep careful control over, a thing that takes things away, Laurentius relied on it his whole life for survival and loves it unequivocally.
Of course, neither is wrong. Both have a lifetime of experience to support their perspective.
Is it weird that I’ve always kinda equated Laurentius with Vicas? Like, I thought this back from when he was first talking about him, and my initial response in my head was that Vicas’s excitement to show off his favorite characters and how they interact with the world and how it all fits together, reminded me a lot of Laurentius himself.
While it’s painful, I could never, ever, ever ever ever, send my good friend Laurentius down to the swamp. Even if, in some weird way, becoming hollow trying to become more entrenched in the knowledge of fire is a happy ending for him, I cannot send my good friend to die. It’s sad, almost the saddest story in this game. Almost.
