Area layouts

Ok so basically I want to discuss what areas in Dark Souls people particularly liked (and demons souls if you played it). And then how this could affect Dark Souls 2

So for me the best/most enjoyable areas in Dark Souls were: blight town, the catacombs, the painted world and the tomb of the giants. 

The first 2 were favorites for several reasons. The multiple levels meant you could find some shortcuts or secret hidden areas with really useful loot (Eagle Shield, Gwyndolin Ring, Secret Blacksmith, and even a pretty hard npc summon considering Leeroy). I think the areas also had some of the hardest enemies- bonewheel skeletons, blowdart guys ect. I loved those two areas on my first playthrough as difficult as they were and I felt they had the best replay value as there was always more to find. 

Again the Painted World was hard to get to/discover from the start but once you got there it was just magical. So much different parts to jump/explore with a massive aray of enemies and items to find. The path through the level became a bit hard to understand in the second half and just made the player more confused but also forced them to explore every inch of the area which was awesome. 

I liked Tomb of the Giants because it really was hell. Requiring a lightsource is instantly off putting and the enemies could crush you quite easily. Again it had some really hard to stuff to find/retrieve (serpent ring, divine ember) and then the skeleton babies at the end were the perfect touch. 

Don't get me wrong every area in Dks had it's own secrets and places to explore but these were my personal favorites on and Ashe Lake for the atmosphere. 

In Dark Souls 2 I want there to be multiple routes to the boss fight (which they might be doing because I heard you can fight bosses earlier if you want to?). Multiple levels with short cuts and hidden areas that even if you find will probably just kill you anyway. Sens Fortress and Anor Londo had some secrets but as levels they were pretty linear and there was always one clear path as was Lost Izalith although I heard that was unfinished?. I felt aside from Ash Lake, Dark Souls was lacking in atmosphere compared to Demons Souls but maybe that was just me?

So what do people want the areas to be like in Dark Souls 2?

Well Dark Souls 2 is going to have many place as dark as the tomb of the giants where you will have the choice to run trough the dark or replace your shield with a torch to fight your way trough and Im pretty happy about it  , It would be nice to have this but in a big dark forest with Deadly creatures lurking in every corner , hiding in or behind trees and bushes. Going trough in the forest with a torch   or run for your life ?  thats an inportant decision to take

I heard something about areas being more "vertical", which I like the sound of. I love scaling towers and such in video games and just looking down as you gradually progress to see the daunting fall you could potentially take.

For variety's sake, I wouldn't want this to be the case universally, but I would like to see some of that.

tigab95 wrote:Well Dark Souls 2 is going to have many place as dark as the tomb of the giants where you will have the choice to run trough the dark or replace your shield with a torch to fight your way trough and Im pretty happy about it  , It would be nice to have this but in a big dark forest with Deadly creatures lurking in every corner , hiding in or behind trees and bushes. Going trough in the forest with a torch   or run for your life ?  thats an inportant decision to take

 Yeh I forgot the tourch was going to be a bigger part of the game my bad x). And yeh a real and large forest would be great although I'm already getting images of giant spiders lurking around much like the Hobbit. And those snakes in Dark Root that are clinging to the tree only actually threatening. 

Also in response to the comment below, yeh delving further down feels a lot more dark souls to me as you know you can't go back and it's only going to get harder and harder but you carry on (Blightown, Catacombs and even the Hollow. I can't wait to see what else FROM come up with.

CakeThiefPro wrote:

tigab95 wrote:Well Dark Souls 2 is going to have many place as dark as the tomb of the giants where you will have the choice to run trough the dark or replace your shield with a torch to fight your way trough and Im pretty happy about it  , It would be nice to have this but in a big dark forest with Deadly creatures lurking in every corner , hiding in or behind trees and bushes. Going trough in the forest with a torch   or run for your life ?  thats an inportant decision to take

 Yeh I forgot the tourch was going to be a bigger part of the game my bad x). And yeh a real and large forest would be great although I'm already getting images of giant spiders lurking around much like the Hobbit. And those snakes in Dark Root that are clinging to the tree only actually threatening. 

Also in response to the comment below, yeh delving further down feels a lot more dark souls to me as you know you can't go back and it's only going to get harder and harder but you carry on (Blightown, Catacombs and even the Hollow. I can't wait to see what else FROM come up with.

 Haha , I was thinking of spiders too  and I too cant wait to see what kind of atmosphere there will be

CakeThiefPro wrote:So for me the best/most enjoyable areas in Dark Souls were: blight town, the catacombs, the painted world and the tomb of the giants. 

 Just to add in why I like PaintedWorld best:
It is one of the only levels were you were taking on an entire level in co-op most of the time, not just a quick run to the boss.

In painted world, you got:
-Almost 3 mini-boss fights (Sentenal, Zombie Dragon, Mini Monk)
-SUPER tough normal enemies, shooting, close combat, rolling, flying, and everything hits hard.
-Team Dynamics promoted. Closecombat, tanks, mages, even archers are great members of a Painted World co-op team.
-Single Bonfire so easy hub location for summons.
-Unlockable shortcuts for entire level.


Township in the DLC was close, burg in nice at low level and Anor is a close second but so much empty space in that zone  =/

CakeThiefPro wrote:Ok so basically I want to discuss what areas in Dark Souls people particularly liked (and demons souls if you played it). And then how this could affect Dark Souls 2

So for me the best/most enjoyable areas in Dark Souls were: blight town, the catacombs, the painted world and the tomb of the giants. 

Funny, everyone I know says that these were the most pain for them.

MosquitoPower wrote:

CakeThiefPro wrote:So for me the best/most enjoyable areas in Dark Souls were: blight town, the catacombs, the painted world and the tomb of the giants. 

 Just to add in why I like PaintedWorld best:
It is one of the only levels were you were taking on an entire level in co-op most of the time, not just a quick run to the boss.

In painted world, you got:
-Almost 3 mini-boss fights (Sentenal, Zombie Dragon, Mini Monk)
-SUPER tough normal enemies, shooting, close combat, rolling, flying, and everything hits hard.
-Team Dynamics promoted. Closecombat, tanks, mages, even archers are great members of a Painted World co-op team.
-Single Bonfire so easy hub location for summons.
-Unlockable shortcuts for entire level.


Township in the DLC was close, burg in nice at low level and Anor is a close second but so much empty space in that zone  =/

I hadn't thought of it from a coop perspective before but you're right the painted world forced the people you summon to help you throughout most of the level. Finding people to summon for blightown was basically purely so they could help with the boss. I guess coop was always easy mode in most other levels and it would be nice for some areas to be significantly harder than the rest. Maybe they could be covenant specific missions/areas that let you summon other players from your covenant or at least an Npc from it since the AI is meant to be improving. Hell it could be 2 AI that work well together for the mission. Or a forced AI you have to keep alive like Rhea.

Oh man painted world was so good it definitely had the best atmosphere for me. Accidentally touching that massive painting was the best, i hope in DkS2 we get another secret area that's optional and hopefully its even bigger.

What I want is variation.

I'd like levels with several paths down to the boss. (not just shortcuts too, some with traps, some big sub bosses etc).

I'd like mixing up of types of enemy, the atmosphere of each level. Using dark, traps and sneaky enemy placement effectively.

I'd like areas to have lots of exploration in them like the best areas such as blighttown, tower of latria, shrine of storms have. Back routes, lots of loot, hidden doors, areas that are there just to give you something else to look in. The parts of a level that really flush it out are the extra little nooks and crannies that don't need to be there- but make the areas seem like an actual place, an actual environment that makes you forget the linear path to the boss.

Serious_Much wrote:I'd like mixing up of types of enemy, the atmosphere of each level. Using dark, traps and sneaky enemy placement effectively.

 I agree with your entire post but this is what made the painted world so good I think. There were a lot of different enemies: crows, bonewheels, undead, and Sub Bosses but most other areas focused around a theme of enemies that were repeated (dukes archives for example) and I don't know if FROM will differ from this in every area or not :/

Some areas were really good for mixing up enemies such as anor londo (Painting guardians, giants, SK, winged demons), parish (hollow warriors, hollows, armoured boar, chaneller, balder knights)...

However, some were really quite boring like burg, lower burg, Izalith. I get in some levels why there weren't a range of enemies like in tower of latria or 2-1 in demons, but they were due to atmospheric reasons. In sen's fortress we got snakes and then reused the balder knights.. It was kinda boring (and I still don't get why there were snakes there.. it was just random)

Serious_Much wrote:Some areas were really good for mixing up enemies such as anor londo (Painting guardians, giants, SK, winged demons), parish (hollow warriors, hollows, armoured boar, chaneller, balder knights)...

However, some were really quite boring like burg, lower burg, Izalith. I get in some levels why there weren't a range of enemies like in tower of latria or 2-1 in demons, but they were due to atmospheric reasons. In sen's fortress we got snakes and then reused the balder knights.. It was kinda boring (and I still don't get why there were snakes there.. it was just random)

 Yeh Sens the first playthrough was fun due to the traps but after that it's the quickest area to clear and quite dull. I forgive the burg for being dull since it was basically like an extension of the tutorial to some extent. Izalith wasn't finished if I remember properly? But yeh I hope they find a way to include a variety of enemies in every area.

I want more random enemies like the black knights and prowling demons I thought they were cool, for challege purposes. I want there to be titan sized enemies and epic areas with stunning views and music to match.

I agree there should be these random enemies that are a sign you are almost certainly going to die here. I prefer the demon titanites to the black knights as they couldn't be backstabbed or parried making them a lot more threatening (although the titanite demons are a lot easier if you're ranged with magic or miracles so maybe they balance each other out?). 

As for titan sized enemies we had Tower Knight in Demons Souls and then Iron Golem in Dark Souls and hell mirror knight looks pretty big and they could go a bit bigger. Past that though it would probably end up like Ceaseless Discharge and potentially be a bit more gimmicky rather than a proper fight. If they could make a decent fight with that sized enemy however even if it was just like 4-3 in Demon's Souls which was certainly gimmicky but still a challenging fight so something like that would be good. 

As for music maybe it's me but it all sounds extremely similar. The only music I really remember is 5-3 from Demons Souls which I thought was pretty epic but my music taste isn't great if I'm honest x)

I want more optional areas like Ashlake with a stunning view and great music and a mining area with many neutral enemies in the dark like in Demon Souls.I think this would work quite well with the torch system.

Sleeprocket wrote:I want more optional areas like Ashlake with a stunning view and great music and a mining area with many neutral enemies in the dark like in Demon Souls.I think this would work quite well with the torch system.

Ash Lake was a real gem within the game. There's not too much incentive to go there but everytime I do I get goosebumps. The music is perfect and the area is stunning, even the Hydra is brilliant as you watch it fly across the small path of sand. It would be difficult to top but I hope there is something similar to it. 

As for the torch system there are so many possibilities. So far I like the idea of a dark forest but it might be hard to design properly. A mine would work really well but I need to think about it a bit more ^^

I've fallen in love with the idea of a 3-1 Demon's Souls type area with a part of the prison completely deprived of light to prevent the most dangerous prisoners/monsters escaping (I guess a cross between a maze/prison in the dark) in which there is an extremely powerful npc locked away. If you have faith in them and release them then it turns out they were wrongly imprisoned and they reward you with an item or something for freeing them. If you leave them to rot they escape anyway and turn out to be an evil assassin that killed someone important and pure and gives you the fight of your life at the most annoying time.

Yeh I know this will never happen but I can dream! xD

I like your ideas! There was already something like this implented in DeS but you didnt have a chance to not free

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Sleeprocket wrote:I like your ideas! There was already something like this implented in DeS but you didnt have a chance to not free

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Yeh the crucial difference from Yurt is the chance to not make him an evil self centered murderer and that this guy would directly try and kill you which Lautrec didn't and Yurt didn't until right at the end I think? I like the idea they appear randomly in a level as well and are forced upon you.

I'm gonna have to do another run through of Demons Souls to look for lore because I didn't pay nearly as much attention to it as I did Dark Souls although I remember the maiden in black being this ancient demon herself which was pretty awesome I thought ^^

For every boss you killed Yurt killed one NPC in the Nexus.But the first 2 are Patches and Urbans Apprentice so who cares

I remember my first play through of Demons Souls after Patches kicked me down the hole. I escaped found him and attacked him instantly without realizing you can talk to him. I mean really he tried to kill you why would anyone talk to him xD

Yeah you can kill him in Demon Souls without hesitating,he only sells overpriced crap and taunts you while doing so.Or you let Yurt do the job