Theory of when and where Dark Souls is set

What do you think of this? Dark souls II is set in the start of the age of fire after the age of ancients, when the gods are just coming into their power, and it is not in Lordran, but rather, is the story of a person journeying to Lordran to try to join the new order. Along the way, the character seems to run into a crow, a black-haired maiden, who some think is velka, a dragon, and what looks like the painted world. During his journey, he gets side-tracked and helps the gods by slaying the last few pockets of dragon resistance and, at the end of it, he finds the everlasting dragon and can choose either to continue the age of ancients by teaming with him, or can choose to end the age of ancients by slaying him. What do you think?

Naw.

An Astoran, who has become Undead, must travel to Lordran in pilgrimage. He is beaten and betrayed by his countrymen; he must travel through the deserted wilderness with only the birds to keep him company; he must try to sneak past the lairs of Dragons who have gone into hiding; he must traverse the sea and make port in ghost towns; and he must find hope in a world without it.

Eventually he makes it to Anor Londo, only to find it abandoned and without the warmth of the sun he was promised. He goes hollow and swears his vengeance on his former Astoran countrymen, traveling back and assaulting the nation until he is put down by the young knight Solaire.

You are the Dark Beast.

I've got tons on these.

I didn't understand, so i voted for everything

My biggest thoughts on this is that they defiantly won't be able to a direct sort of sequel. Since time is all messed up in Lordran we obviously cannot have this happening. I figure the game will either be about post-Gwyn or pre-Gwyn. The only reason I think this is because of the dragons. So most likely the dragons are coming back or you are fighting them when Gwyn started killing them.

Sounds kinda lame to me personally, so I disagreed. At this rate, it'd pretty much just be the story of someone like Lauternius or the fat cleric. Although, I wouldn't really mind playing as Lauternius. He's a cool guy. It'd be like a million times less epic than DkS though.

DE5PA1R wrote:Naw.

An Astoran, who has become Undead, must travel to Lordran in pilgrimage. He is beaten and betrayed by his countrymen; he must travel through the deserted wilderness with only the birds to keep him company; he must try to sneak past the lairs of Dragons who have gone into hiding; he must traverse the sea and make port in ghost towns; and he must find hope in a world without it.

Eventually he makes it to Anor Londo, only to find it abandoned and without the warmth of the sun he was promised. He goes hollow and swears his vengeance on his former Astoran countrymen, traveling back and assaulting the nation until he is put down by the young knight Solaire.

You are the Dark Beast.

I've got tons on these.

+1

I really hope this time FROM gets off their asses in the story department. Being the guy destined to go around and kill everything is fine, but the loosely based context and lack of any kind of development in this area will probably get boring at some point...

Next time, I want from to mix it up, throw in a spice of betrayal, perhaps a boss fight revolved around killing a fallen (maybe even possessed, POTENTIAL FOR MULTIPLAYER BOSS RIGHT THERE), comrade or significant NPC, some REAL character choices that affect more than just a tiny aspect of the game (eg if kaathe shows up or not... make whole factions of NPCs hating you, NPC invasions of enemy factions, loss of certain shortcuts and vendors).

How about some kind of actual good NPC sidequest/stories.. I mean randomly seeing people is nice enough but rather than feeling fleeting as intended, to me it always came off as lazy/half assed attempt to put in extra things to do (sorry, from)

Anyways, I want more focus on story this time, and please don't confuse what i mean with the lore. I'm all for the flushing out of a world, but that to me is irrelevant if what happens to your character and the changes in the world around you seem arbitrary in comparison.

Rant over, I'm gonna go lie down.

Well, knowing FROM I'm not expecting a huge improvement in the story development. Lore is one of the reasons why I still play DkS. This has been said a thousand times, but the whole "not knowing the story" thing just makes the game more worth while. You play through it a couple of times and you find new things that you missed last time etc.

I'm not saying we be spoon fed the story completely, I'm just asking there be more of it, and it be more interesting than the 10 year old "imma save the world" deal that both the souls games undertook.

Serious_Much wrote:I'm not saying we be spoon fed the story completely, I'm just asking there be more of it, and it be more interesting than the 10 year old "imma save the world" deal that both the souls games undertook.

lol

I understand that completely, but what you keep hearing is that they might make it more for the average gamer, and not us hardcore people. I also don't want to be spoon fed, but you never know.

I don't claim to be a hardcore gamer, I play games quite a bit yeah sure, but I only stumbled across dark souls because I just wanted something way different to what I usually play.

It'll come as no surprise to you that other titles I picked up on since are Heavy Rain and Okami, just for fun

I have played both of those, and I'm not hardcore like never leave my house, but it seems that the people I play with and the people I have introduced to DkS are people who just really like games. I'm not saying enjoying games is the definition of a hardcore gamer, it's just that most casual gamers wouldn't step into the Souls series.

I know what you mean, people who just wanna hop in for a quick game or relax now and then just don't work with dark souls.. Takes more an.. open mindset, and admittedly as we all know a bit of devotion

I mean as a total souls noob my first playthrough was about 80 hours of blood, sweat, and bosses slurping my tears

I'd rather not think of my first playthrough, It still hurts.

FattyOfDoom wrote:

DE5PA1R wrote:Naw.

An Astoran, who has become Undead, must travel to Lordran in pilgrimage. He is beaten and betrayed by his countrymen; he must travel through the deserted wilderness with only the birds to keep him company; he must try to sneak past the lairs of Dragons who have gone into hiding; he must traverse the sea and make port in ghost towns; and he must find hope in a world without it.

Eventually he makes it to Anor Londo, only to find it abandoned and without the warmth of the sun he was promised. He goes hollow and swears his vengeance on his former Astoran countrymen, traveling back and assaulting the nation until he is put down by the young knight Solaire.

You are the Dark Beast.

I've got tons on these.

+1

Sankyuu.

Serious_Much wrote:I really hope this time FROM gets off their asses in the story department. Being the guy destined to go around and kill everything is fine, but the loosely based context and lack of any kind of development in this area will probably get boring at some point...

Next time, I want from to mix it up, throw in a spice of betrayal, perhaps a boss fight revolved around killing a fallen (maybe even possessed, POTENTIAL FOR MULTIPLAYER BOSS RIGHT THERE), comrade or significant NPC, some REAL character choices that affect more than just a tiny aspect of the game (eg if kaathe shows up or not... make whole factions of NPCs hating you, NPC invasions of enemy factions, loss of certain shortcuts and vendors).

How about some kind of actual good NPC sidequest/stories.. I mean randomly seeing people is nice enough but rather than feeling fleeting as intended, to me it always came off as lazy/half assed attempt to put in extra things to do (sorry, from)

Anyways, I want more focus on story this time, and please don't confuse what i mean with the lore. I'm all for the flushing out of a world, but that to me is irrelevant if what happens to your character and the changes in the world around you seem arbitrary in comparison.

Rant over, I'm gonna go lie down.

Humbug. I submit that the plot of DkS is what you make of it. Which means it must necessarily be so open to interpretation that it cannot have an exceptional plot. This isn't laziness; it's purposeful, intelligent design.

The potential strength of a game's plot shares a direct relationship with its linearity and non-openness. On the one hand, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy VII and X are all examples of this rule. Oblivion, Fallout and Skyrim occupy the other end of the spectrum.

[quote="OrangePledge"]I'd rather not think of my first playthrough, It still hurts. [/quote
You think your first playthrough hurt? I left my vitality at 8 and used an enchanted dagger. I also didn't use the Bellowing dragoncrest ring or the dusk crown.

I don't have any *** clue HOW I beat the game like that.

DE5PA1R wrote:

Humbug. I submit that the plot of DkS is what you make of it. Which means it must necessarily be so open to interpretation that it cannot have an exceptional plot. This isn't laziness; it's purposeful, intelligent design.

The potential strength of a game's plot shares a direct relationship with its linearity and non-openness. On the one hand, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy VII and X are all examples of this rule. Oblivion, Fallout and Skyrim occupy the other end of the spectrum.

I kind of agree with the second point for the most part.. though there are some games with an open approach to things that have good story. I think GTA V actually has the strongest story of any GTA game to date and I think that in Borderlands 2, they really upgraded the story aspect, with a hateable and lovable villain, interesting plot twists etc.. Though a lot of the game was based around already established characters which made it easier for them.

Anyways, I have to disagree with your first point to be honest. The story isn't really up to interpretation, that's the wider lore really, the roots of the NPCs, history of lordran etc. The basic (and I stress BASIC) story is "Main character gets told about bells- rings bells, becomes chosen undead- Journeys to land of gods to get lordvessel- defeats lords to access kiln to achieve the destiny of the chosen undead- player either allows reign of the gods or become master of lordran himself".

I must ask- where is the room for interpretation in that?

I'd argue that it is indeed very possible to have a strong, main story (what happens to the main character and NPC interactions etc), whilst maintaining the ambiguity we love in the lore. (history of place and NPCs, characters we never meet, motives behind people etc)

I agree it's not laziness (well perhaps they're lazy with bonus stuff like ariamis and NPC interactions, there's not enough of it), I just think perhaps they purposefully have the reductionist story to emphasise that the focus of the game is on a pure gameplay experience, which we all can agree they do exceptionally well at. I think though that working on a better story will create a greater overall product, and give people added motive to keep playing the game.

No prequels please

By "join the new order" you mean the player wants to join the Gods? Problem is, you play as a human, so you can't really join the gods, you could be their slave though...
Besides, FromSoft has already said the story revolves around an undead (the player character) who is trying to find a cure for the curse of being undead.

Serious_Much wrote:
I must ask- where is the room for interpretation in that?

Backstory, motivation and what's going through the character's head are entirely up to the player, which is a HUGE portion of any plot.

Well, arguably there is a backstory and motivation, but like all parts of the dark souls story it's kept to a bare minimum, on purpose as you said so earlier.

Back story- you are an undead with occupation of (class) from (face you chose) and you had been branded with the darksign, died and imprisoned in the undead asylum where you are destined to rot.

Motivation- You overtake Oscar's quest on his dying breath, a promise made as he let you out of your cell to your freedom- effectively giving you life once again.

^That is all picked up in the first 10 mins. There is no 'interpretation' in that, just purely what happens and the information you are given. I know you wanna argue that it's intentional genius, but those parts they definitely didn't leave up to us for the most part, you adding extras is just bonus 'roleplay' you add in. That is the name of the genre, right?

I concede what is going through the player's head is not shown, but in many games you have a silent protagonist.. Suddenly just because it's dark souls it instantly becomes clever? I don't think anyone ever claimed Crash Bandicoot had any profound thoughts going through his head that we needed to make up, or many other characters. I think you're awarding souls credit for things which really it doesn't deserve credit for.

I know I'm very much playing devil's advocate here, but I'm simply trying to take off and trample the rose tinted glasses we all look at this game from and show you things from a different perspective from your own.

Serious_Much wrote:Back story- you are an undead with occupation of (class) from (face you chose) and you had been branded with the darksign, died and imprisoned in the undead asylum where you are destined to rot.

That's basically nothing. How did you get to the Asylum? Why did you leave your home country? When and how did you become branded with the Darksign? etc.

Motivation- You overtake Oscar's quest on his dying breath, a promise made as he let you out of your cell to your freedom- effectively giving you life once again.

Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. Maybe I killed that mofo. Or I chose not to listen to him at all. Regardless, that's not motivation. Am I escaping from the Asylum or am I conquering it? Am I on a mission to become a Blade of the Darkmoon or do I want to slay a god?

I concede what is going through the player's head is not shown, but in many games you have a silent protagonist.. Suddenly just because it's dark souls it instantly becomes clever?

Yes. Well, not BECAUSE it's Dark Souls. But it is clever.

Surely you understand that there's a difference between silent protagonists Crono and Crash Bandicoot.

Get to the asylum...? You get imprisoned there because you are undead. You do not come to the asylum by choice, more over it is at the point of become undead which you are taken to the asylum to rot.

Well lets consider this motivation then. There are two choices here- either you undertake oscar's dying wish, or you are simply escaping- and yes I say ESCAPE because you are trapped and imprisoned. Without oscar you wouldn't have got out the cell to begin with. Also, that stuff about blade of the DM is tosh, it is in itself a secret covenant (you need a ring to stumble accidentally upon it), so it's impossible logically you know about the DM. Also like i said you are a prisoner in the asylum, so you didn't go there for any purpose, you were merely unfortunate enough to be imprisoned there as an undead.

Well the obvious difference between crono and crash is that there is a heavily laid out and narrated story surrounding crono, whilst crash has minimal. Actually to put it another way, you just proved my point with that really- the chosen undead is much more suitable to be likened to Crash than crono due to the tiny amount of narrative surrounding them. There's much less depth.

I think you should try looking at it in another way, despair. I simply want to make you understand there is as much grounding in reason to say the souls story is rubbish as to say it is clever. As with any entertainment medium there's many ways to look at it and no one person will have an identical view to another of the game.