Dark Souls 2 Sheild contest winners

From Soft have chosen six shields to add to the game(above pictures) Sunlight Warrior Dark, Shield of Ash, Rose Shield, Disunion, Guardian Shield, and Great Shield of the Raven Goddess.

the community winner where Marcus Shield, Tally Shield, Blue Eye Shield, Mask of the Enemy, Calamity Shield, and Ire Shield.

the winners chose by From Soft will have their Shield added to the game and name added to the game credits

Sheild...

Most of those shields are pretty ugly imo.

Love most of the winners but does this mean Solaire already exists within the game/world or is the shield non lore related?

Also wish the Tally shield had got into the game for some monster NPC or something but I guess you can't have everything x)

i actually like all of froms choices. the guardian one is interesting, not sure how the name fits the design but its cool. not sure what to make of the sunbro design shield. solaire was great character and all, but not sure i want to see him again in 2. patches is the only reaccuring character i want in souls. hes freaking cross platform reacurring even.

any word on special attributes though? i am not wanting special bonuses myself but anxious for any info.

It's great that the Facebook page finally came back with an update on this, but right now I'm more excited about the game than the contest. I'm also glad that none of those got disqualified.

Congrats to the winners!

i really don't like the rose shield
just not my cup o' tea

personally i think the ire shield should have made it in, it looks so detailed and amazing imo

I'm a little disappointed that Ire and Iron Oak Tall didn't make it in - I was really hoping they would! I even thought a "Golden Lion" themed, almost Ornstein-esque, character, would be really fun.

That said, I'm obviously happy mine had both the most votes in its category and got selected by FROM. The Solaire shield getting put in could have some very interesting lore implications, no? If Dark Souls 2 is BEFORE Dark Souls 1, maybe it means Solaire is like Link and his armour is the same throughout history? Or if it's AFTER Dark Souls 1, maybe he became all legendary and stuff.

Or maybe it's just fan-service! Haha. 

Overall, I'm quite happy with the winners, and I think overall the quality of content was very high in this contest. I would have picked Ire over Rose, but oh well!

Also, I made a quick video on the topic:

Bit sad the Solaire one made it in, honestly it looks tacky and cheap, and there were many, many other round shields that, imo, looked far better and suited the game world more.

The Raven Shield is a direct reference to Velka, and imo this is fine, as Velka is a Godess, and it wouldn't be a stretch to assume she has a presence in other countries, not just Lordran. However the Solaire shield just references a loon, and imo is nothing but fan serivice. I'll be interested in seeing how they explain that one, lore wise. I'm guessing it will belong to a person that met Solaire and became a little obsessed with him.

The rest of them all look pretty good. I like the Shield of Ash, and I wish Ire had made it in through, as I think it had the most potential for cool lore about it. Will see how the Rose one goes though. Disunion is a sweet design, but again it's referencing something from DaS1, which we don't know will be in DaS2, so again, that seems like a bit of fan service, we'll see what lore they tie to it but I don't really like it as a choice for something being in the game, would've much prefered Ire.

Not really keen on many of the community ones either. Ire looks amazing, Tally is pretty cool too, and I think would have looked pretty awesome in the game, found on a corpse of a warrior, showing us not to get too c0cky as even the best of us can die.
However Calamity, whist well designed, doesn't really fit the DaS2 universe as it's just directly referencing a boss from DaS, which may not have even existed DaS2 depending on the timeline. The Mask one looks like that chick/thing out of Doctor Who, the ENB one is just hideous, and while I recognise all that he has done for the community, that really wasn't the way to tribute him (imo), and the Blue one is pretty flat.


The two winning Greatshields were designed by the same guy, here is what he had to say about them.

GabrielVerdon wrote:

Hey, I'm the person who made the Guardian Shield and the Raven Shield! I want to say thanks again to all the people here who voted for me and helped get my designs selected.

I think the reason mine got selected was because I took into account the feasibility of putting them in the game, and also the lore and atmosphere of Dark Souls, which I love. I based the Raven Shield on Velka imagery (it's actually a silhouette of raven and also a face), and the Guardian Shield I tried to base around the look of the painting guardians (not actually a Skyrim reference believe it or not! I was told afterwards that it was the Dark Brotherhood symbol. I was just trying to get something occult looking). I tried to make it so that any of the 3D elements could be made only with a normal map (and not require any additional 3D modelling). There were some that I absolutely adored, like the ire shield, the guillotine shield, and a couple others, but I think the elaborate forms they had meant it would be a lot of work to put them in, and that's unrealistic when you consider all of the other work that From has to do to finish DkS 2. As to why they didn't select the Tally Shield, I have no idea! I really liked that one.

I like most of the shields selected by Fromsoft especially the two greatshields. Though the Solaire shield is a bit out of place amongst the rest and there were others that were better I don't think it's the worst choice they could of made. Also the Rose Shield is still a mystery on how it got in since it wasn't in the top 30 of the facebook shields.
As for the community shield choices, most of those are pretty disappointing to me. I like ENB but the guy who made the Marcus shield merely was riding ENB's coattails to win. Plus it was proven that the pig face was just ripped off of google. The only thing that the guy did to the shield was give it color and the cross design.
The only two shields I like of the community choices were the Tally Shield and Ire Shield. The rest were all right but I felt there were others that were better then those. But I guess that's what happens when you do a contest on facebook.

StiffNipples wrote:Bit sad the Solaire one made it in, honestly it looks tacky and cheap, and there were many, many other round shields that, imo, looked far better and suited the game world more.

please be respectful and dont insult the artist

Don't like the Solaire shield, would have probably swapped it for the Enemy one.

The raven godess shield is my favorite, hopefully this means we'll get more back story on Velka. I wonder what attributes the shields will have as well. All in all the submissions were pretty good.

I actually like the Shield of Ash the most, the rest look very graphic artsy.

the raven shield look unequivocally badass, so finding that on my first playthrough

nsane32 wrote:

StiffNipples wrote:Bit sad the Solaire one made it in, honestly it looks tacky and cheap, and there were many, many other round shields that, imo, looked far better and suited the game world more.

please be respectful and dont insult the artist

I didn't insult the artist, I concede I wasn't being entirely respectful, but I didn't insult the artist. Insulting the artist would be saying something about him personally, because of his design, I just don't think his design suits the feel of the Souls games.

I was commenting on FROM's choice to include such a shield in the game.
It's stark contrasting colours and design style (imo) clash with the game world and it's going to stand out like a guy in a hockey jersey rocking up to a gala ball (hence why I said it's going to look tacky).

I have nothing against the design itself, it would look good as a button pin to put on a bag or hat or as something in the real world to reference to DaS1 (shirt, hat, etc), but imo it doesn't belong in DaS2.

But I'm not FROM, and I don't know how they'll tie it in, I trust that they'll make it work, but personally I wouldn't have selected it as something that would fit into DaS2.

I like what the designer of the two winning greatshields said, when he stated that he created the shields with a style of design that he envisioned would mesh well with the world of DaS2. The Solaire shield is just fan service to a previous game, which is so obvious that for me it breaks the immersion of the game universe.

Carrying over things like Patches and the Moonlight Sword is great, shamelessly pandering to peoples fanboyism of Solaire - not so much.

Like I said though, I'll be interested to see how they tie it in to the game.