[EDIT: Many pardons for the gargantuan mess of text. Trying to straighten it out and make it more pleasing to the eye...]
I keep seeing this mindset and I want to understand that more. Can you better describe the level desing differences between Dark Souls 2 compared to Dark Souls, or even Demon Souls perhaps? I understand why it happened, but what actually occurred? I've heard the levels feel more connected in the other games - less like levels more like a consistent world. I can see that complaint somewhat but not fully due to an incomplete knowledge of the series. I don't have a full frame of reference since I only vaguely remember playing Demon Souls and haven't played Dark Souls. I am aware of the difficulty changes. I will do my best to maintain momentum to knock this one out and proceed to the next. I must admit it has gotten harder to do that as I have gotten older.
Actually this bums me out.
You and me both. I remember my immediate adaptability to games when I was a kid, and now I look back on those days and wonder how I lost that. I know part of it is social conditioning, because so many more games are made following a consistent model, so you learn to expect the same things, therefore anything deviating is alien and "hard to understand". But part of that feels like it was something lost to time, or the simple process of me aging. Eh, maybe it's something I can get back into capacity of with enough practice, just like enough exercise will help me get back into shape and bring my stamina back from the brink of extinction. XD
I deliberately left out a number of examples about map layouts because a lot of the joy of playing the games is finding these things out for ones self, but I can understand the desire to have a greater perspective so to understand a mindset better. Still, I'd rather avoid unnecessary detail. So I'll try to explain as much as possible without giving too much away.
In
Demon's Souls, the game is hub-based and level based, so there's very little inter-connectivity (if any at all) between 2 segments of a world, each segment separated by a boss arena. But the segments within themselves, however, tend to be mazes that loop back in on themselves. As a result, you end up unlocking shortcuts wherever you go, in DeS, because a path that took you 10 minutes of careful progression and delicate fighting can suddenly be bypassed by some shortcut you unlocked. Almost every level is designed so that you have a short jaunt to the boss from the beginning of the level... once the shortcuts have been unlocked. They also vary in form. One shortcut is a plank you kick across a chasm from the side opposite where you came from. One shortcut is a giant pit you can carefully platform down to the bottom of the level from the very beginning of the level. One shortcut is a series of careful "secret" jumps that allows you to bypass most of the level. One shortcut is a series of elevators that have been activated in the course of your journeys but began inactive. In the end, there's a common thread of "I can get to the boss almost immediately from the starting Archstone" in practically every level, but that's the only commonality every level shares. How the levels loop back in on themselves, how they're structured, how long or large each of them is, each varies from one to the other.
Map layout even varies within the same worlds, from level to level. The First level of the Valley of Defilement is set in the midst of a murky valley, where you precariously stand atop mossy and moist planks of rotted wood stuck into the sides of these two cliffs. You have to platform down to the bottom of the valley, careful not to fall off as any misstep will result in a drop to your death. Once you beat the first boss and proceed, now that you've reached the bottom, the second level of the Valley of Defilement is a vast poison swamp. No deadly falls to worry about here, you just need to cross this long stretch of bog that eats away at your stamina, making its traversal arduous and slow, and constant exposure to it will keep you perpetually poisoned, so finding bits of dry land to stand on offers precious respite from the nastiness of the unending defiled swamp. There are still planks and high spots you can reach where you CAN fall fatally, but compared to the first level and its overall vertical design, the second level is a wide open and overall flat space. How do they circle back on themselves? Well there are "special jumps" that allow you to cut corners in the first level, and the second level is very circular in design, so once you arrive near the end you will be geographically close to where you began, and the aforementioned plank to kick down can be found here connecting the two halves of the level.
A finer example of how the levels weave back and forth would be Boletaria.
The first level of the game is a gigantic gateway you must navigate as you ascend and descend guard towers, gradually unlocking doors that take you to various sections of the castle walls until you unlock the main gate, situated (as a gate would be) near the entrance. When you proceed past this, a large bridge is all you have to traverse, though it is peppered with one of the game's dragons and soldiers armed with crossbows standing atop several strategically placed towers. You can venture below the surface of the bridge to a series of tunnels, but the dynamic of the level changes to a cramped space, and there you'll be introduced to one of the game's nastier enemies... dogs. Ferocious, and more importantly, FAST enemies, that make a narrow quarters to fight in very dangerous. Past that, there is another section where going across ramparts and wall fortifications and hallways and courtyards will eventually take you to an even larger, more imposing gate. But along the way you may slay an enemy who drops a set of keys... These keys don't open any door that helps you move forward in this level, but if you backtrack all the way to the end of the bridge level, you will find a locked door in one of the towers leading to a dungeon with another enemy guarding an imprisoned NPC, and quite possibly
Demon's Souls' most badass character: Biorr of the Twin Fangs.
Biorr will help you in the following boss battle, if you haven't killed it first, and he will offer much back story when you speak to him in the game's hub in between ventures. After fights, he just shrugs off all danger and just takes a nap in the middle of the battlefield. What a badass. He's a jovial, but loyal character, and near the end of the game, he will single-handedly take on a fucking dragon JUST to distract it so you can move on ahead. Badass! Uh, but I digress... In the dungeon where you find and free Biorr, his jailor will drop another set of keys... keys that DO NOT match the cells he is guarding. Strange. Back in the third level of Boletaria- containing the boss Biorr will assist you with -there is a hidden alley that comes to an end at a locked gate, and here is where these latest set of keys come into play. Once past it, you find yourself at a solitary tower, wherein lies one of the game's most adored (also captured and in-need-of-freeing) NPCs, Yuria the Witch. But unlocking the gate to the tower and climbing the stairs isn't enough. She's held on a platform you cannot reach in any way, so how do you get to her? Well, AGAIN, elsewhere in the level, you will find an enemy who drops a unique hat. You can keep it for style, or, use it "as a disguise" at the tower Yuria is held in. While wearing it, her jailor will mistake you for one of his own, lower a set of stairs to you, and you can dispatch him and free Yuria. BUT you'll need to remove the hat, first. Yuria will also confuse you for another one of her captors, and trying to speak to her will only result in insults and spite. XD
Yet STILL BEYOND all of this, once you beat the last of the Demon's guarding the False King, once you fight off the phantoms of THREE of Boletaria's greatest heroes (who all attack you simultaneously), once you fell an even STRONGER dragon barring your path to the throne room, you will reach the steps to the throne room with a very disappointed NPC waiting for you. He will share with you the tragic revelation he's come upon, and beseech that you vanquish the False King (you were going to anyway), but before dying he bequeaths unto you a key to the Mausoleum, where the kingdom's sacred swords Soulbrandt and Demonbrandt are held. Now THIS takes you ALL THE WAY back to the beginning of Boletaria, at the large gate that barred your path from the start! On one of the wings of the upper walkways, an imposing enemy (which will make short work of you if you ever attempt to fight him at the beginning of the game... which is possible) guards the doors to the Mausoleum, for which you now have the key! Inside stands Old King Doran, a legendary and apparently immortal demi-godly character who will test you in a fight to see if you are worthy of the sword Demonbrandt- the sword that banishes evil. After dealing enough damage to Doran, he will acknowledge you and step aside, allowing you to claim Demonbrandt as your prize (Soulbrandt- the sword that banishes humanity -is curiously missing). Now in possession of a powerful weapon that increases its damage the more white (good) your Soul Tendency, you can face the False King.
OR don't bother with any of that, because it was ALL optional!
Just progress from one boss at the end of a level to the next, ignore rescuing Biorr, don't bother freeing Yuria, don't worry about Doran and Demonbrandt. None of them are essential to your forward progression, just reach the end of Boletaria and face and defeat the False King. But they are all very helpful in their own ways. Characters who wish to explore magic will want Yuria's mentoring to learn powerful spells. Characters who undertake an assassination sidequest (which is hidden and quite easy to overlook) will need to track down Biorr as he is one of your targets. Characters who wish to forge North Regalia, the "most powerful weapon in the game" (it's all relative, though; it's just "good", it's far from OP), will need to collect BOTH Demonbrandt AND Soulbrandt and combine them using a specific Demon's Soul at a specific Blacksmith who deals with major weapon upgrades, AND whom you must unlock the path to reach to even visit said Blacksmith.
There is TONS of backtracking in
Demon's Souls, in spite of its relatively linear level design due to its hub-based, level-based structure. Many NPCs will only appear if you successfully raise the World Tendency of the world they're in to Pure White, so you might need to endeavor to do that. The NPC who sets you on an assassination mission will only appear if you have Pure Black Character Tendency and have dispatched their disciple (who also much be found). Said disciple, if left to their own devices, will systematically kill every NPC in the Nexus, if you don't stop them- INCLUDING Stockpile Thomas, the only person in charge of looking after your stored goods. So once he dies, you cannot access them again (until NG+)!
Demon's Souls throws a bunch of curve balls at you, be it the difference in level theme, the difference in enemy type and the strategies necessary to face them, the difference in map layout, where to find which NPCs and what prerequisites must be fulfilled before you can even MEET them, the back-and-forth journeys necessary to access certain areas, and more. All while contained in a progression, hub-based game.
Dark Souls took this formula and kicked it up a notch by presenting what many called an "open world", which I find to be a misnomer. There are no longer "levels" and there is no hub to travel between worlds; it's all one gigantic map, but that doesn't make it an "open world" necessarily. You can reach one end of the whole map from the other all in one go (theoretically, once every roadblock has been opened up), assuming you can beat or bypass every enemy in your path. So it's "interconnected" and "seamless", definitely. I just wouldn't call it "open world", because there still is structure and progression to it. The roadblocks aren't suggested, they're definitive. You begin in the Undead Asylum, and once you escape this place you are taken to Lordran, near a place called the Undead Burg. You cannot immediately reach the ruins of Lost Izalith from here, any more than you cannot reach the Undead Parish past the Undead Burg till you PASS the latter; although places like Lost Izalith (endgame locations) will take MUCH more time to reach. But the point being, they are all connected, and there is no hub binding them all. You can journey the entire game on one continuous map, and this opened up MANY more possibilities for the inter-connectivity and non-linear gameplay that DeS explored, because now the game isn't confined to that rigid level-based structure.
When traversing the Undead Burg, it begins as a fairly straight-forward journey forward, dispatching enemies, only one way to go, a couple minor detours to explore, but largely a path leading you to the first proper boss fight. The boss doesn't even NEED to be fought (as a friend fortuitously displayed, when despite his ineptitudes at DkS HIS boss decided it couldn't go on and leapt to its death, awarding him the victory) and while you can engage it in a one-on-one brawl, you can equally utilize the environment to your advantage, and avoid fighting it directly while gradually killing it. Now with your path no longer blocked, you proceed to a great bridge, and a message appears to tell you that you have entered the Undead Parish. Here you can meet the game's most famous NPC, Solaire of Astora (a.k.a. Sunbro), who gives you an item that allows you to coop with other players, as well as begins his long and tangled questline for the player to discover. If you thought freeing Biorr or Yuria was confusing, Solaire's quest is A MAZE! As a nifty perk, Solaire leaves a sign before certain boss fights that will allow you to summon him (if you're in Human form) to assist in the battle, effectively making him a Biorr 2.0! This isn't unique to Solaire, however, as several NPCs may be summoned before specific boss battles.
Moving on! Like the King's Road in Boletaria, the entrance to the Undead Parish, a bridge, is guarded by a fire breathing scaly beast, however unlike the dragon in
Demon's Souls, THIS guy is not easy to bypass! If you attempt to run past him (assuming his flames don't absolutely roast you instantly) he will fly off of his perch and descend to the bridge to crush you. But if you are daring, there is a set of stairs halfway down the bridge that you can reach that will take you beneath the upper road, and a path leading 2 ways. One way is a less-dangerous path along the supports of the bridge BENEATH the beast blocking the main gate (though less dangerous, it's still a precarious path with deadly falls if you're careless), the other path brings you to a ladder you can kick down that will allow you access to... tada! A shortcut to the Undead Burg! =D Sound familiar? Just as with DeS, the game's layout will take you here and there, back and forth, and sometimes surprise you by returning you to a place you've been before! Only unlike in DeS, the world in
Dark Souls is NOT segmented by boss arenas, so you may very well find a path suddenly taking you to a bonfire (the game's "checkpoints") you arrived at previously long before facing any bosses for several hours, and it will feel like a breath of fresh air, because you'll be able to rest and replenish your reserves.
Across the entirety of your journey through Lordran in
Dark Souls, beginning at Firelink Shrine which immediately connect to the Undead Burg, where you will reach the Undead Parish, which connects to Sen's Fortress (which you cannot yet enter) or the Darkroot forest. At the top of the Parish you will find one of two bells you need to ring, but the other, you are told, is only "far below". From here, you can journey into the Darkroot Garden and into the Darkroot Basin, which connects to the treacherous Valley of Drakes. Unlocking more passages, you'll manage to travel deeper into the Undead Burg and defeat an enemy that holds a key to The Depths, the sewers of Lordran. The Depths connects to Blighttown, a community of filth and refuse sequestered in the aqueducts beneath the gargantuan ramparts of the curious structures of Lordran, which will also connect back to the Valley of Drakes! More importantly, Blighttown will lead you to Quelaag's Domain, past which lies the second of the two bells you needed to ring. Ringing both bells awakens the giants operating Sen's Fortress, so now the gates to the colossal labyrinth are open, and the massive trap-laden maze is yours to explore. Upon conquering Sen's Fortress, you are carried off by a bunch of gargoyles to Anor Londo, the City of the Gods. Eerily empty of any Gods at all, but still guarded by their giant sentinels, you can travel to the vast Duke's Archives, or you can continue to the end of Anor Londo where you will be tasked with filling the Lordvessel with 4 Lords Souls.
So where are these Lords Souls? Well you'll have to recover them from their bearers. One can be found almost immediately near the beginning of the game just below Firelink Shrine, in a foreboding and intimidating abandoned city, New Londo. However it's impossible to travel this place at the start of the game, for one because the enemies are very dangerous, for another you cannot physically HARM them, for another half the city is completely flooded, so you must drain New Londo by opening specific gates to let the water out, AND ALSO your final destination at the end of it all is an Abyss that will kill you instantly so you cannot even travel it. So how do you even get to your destination? Well the gates to unlock that will drain New Londo can be found in the Valley of Drakes, and if you pillage the grave of one of Gwyn's 4 Great Knights, Artorias the Abysswalker, you might be able to find a way to traverse the Abyss just as Artorias was reputed to have done. His grave can be found at the far corners of the Darkroot Basin, past the guardians who protect the graves from would-be robbers. The twisting and tangled groves of the Darkroot woods also lead back to the Valley of Drakes, as well as the base of a tower that leads straight back to the Undead Burg. The areas keep twisting and turning and loop back into one another. The further you venture, the more passages you unlock.
But what of the other Lords Souls? Well, there's so much more world, and much of it involves returning to places you've previously visited, while others involve moving forward in new areas you've just reached. Some of the stretches are relatively simple walks forward (albeit, not without an abundance of challenge to slow your march onward), one which is a giant lake of lava you must traverse with care... all while the bodiless FEET of Undead Dragons are constantly trying to knock you into the lava to your doom. Like the Abyss, you'll find a way to walk on lava without instantly dying (though it will still hurt), but it's a small solace in the face of everything else you must face. Other areas are large structures that must be gradually unlocked as you progress, such as a magnificent and massive library, so vast that you must use a series of lever-activated stairways to reach the different floors of the archives to eventually reach your destination.
All of these lengthy travels across this single giant map gradually brings you closer to your goal of collecting every Lords Soul, so that you can "fullfill your destiny" which involves "rekindling the flames". Whatever that even means... (I won't spoil that for you! ^_<)
Secreted away near the gargantuan (See any running theme with things being disproportionately massive?) roots of a world tree (pretty important to the lore of the game) you can reach a hidden series of subterranean roots that will take you to a primordial locale hidden below the world itself, almost as though it were the foundation of the world. Clever observation of your surroundings will get you to the nest of a giant raven which delivered you to Lordran from the tutorial, and you can get it to RETURN you to the tutorial... only this time the beginner enemies have been replaced with deadly challengers, and the building itself has begun to crumble beneath your feet. A special item you may recover from this place may grant you access to a hidden world held within a painting, and at the end of which the tragic and exiled half-dragon (dragons have been all-but vanquished in
Dark Souls) living in this place will plead with you to leave her alone... and you can exit without fighting her at all! Several of the areas that will lead you to Lost Izalith can be completely bypassed if you find a hidden NPC and join their covenant and level your rank in the covenant up to a certain point and find a doorway that will only open if you meet these criteria, which will allow you to skip 2 bosses, avoid any treacherous lava sections, and provides the one and only means to save an NPC who will otherwise become infected by a parasite, driven mad, and killed. All completely optional.
To my understanding, there was no clear "why" as to why DkS2 follows such a different formula. It's possible that FromSoftware, without Miyazaki's direction, just took ideas from his previous games and slapped them all together, but without the greater vision of what brought them into a cohesive whole. While the ENTIRE world of
Dark Souls COULD be traveled on foot, once you recovered the Lordvessel, the game took pity on you and granted you the ability to teleport between bonfires. Not EVERY bonfire, but several key bonfires could be traveled to, back and forth. Just to save the player unnecessary trips. Apparently they decided that DkS2 should BEGIN with teleporting to levels unlocked, so the game never establishes a sense of a grander world to travel. What was implemented in one game as a measure to conserve excessive tedium was implemented in another game in a means that made it feel segmented and detached from the start. Unlike DeS and DkS, the creativity of enemies in DkS2 was, for reasons no one has really understood, been limited to largely... knights. Or various shapes of humanoid opponents. In
Demon's Souls, every NPC enemy is another human (or soul) who will fight using the same rules as you do, parries and ripostes included. But bosses don't follow this convention. Even humanoid bosses, like the False King, are still bosses and don't follow the same combat rules as the player. You could say these rules are beneath them.
Dark Souls of course changed this up a bit by introducing bosses who could be parried, bosses with parts of their body that could be severed, however the number of inhuman enemies to human enemies, just as with DeS, which very disproportionate.
The first boss of
Demon's Souls was an amorphous blob with no visible limbs or organs. Ironically, the final boss, too, would be a deformed blob.
Dark Souls is largely populated with giant monsters for bosses, with a few humanoids here and there. So why are so many
Dark Souls 2 bosses humanoids? Well apparently Miyazaki, when directing DeS, DkS, and BB, he would only approve character and enemy designs that followed a specific criteria that only he had in mind. When asked to design an Undead Dragon, one of the first concepts given to him was grotesque and covered with maggots, really emphasizing the death and rot of the creature, and Miyazaki turned it down, citing "there's no beauty in it". What would eventually be accepted was a decrepit and decayed corpse that would struggle to keep itself intact, an enemy that resonated a feeling of once-grandeur now lost to ages of decay. It didn't fixate on rot and maggots and nastiness, you could see the decay in its torn wings and boney structure, but you saw the presence of what was once a dragon before you, and that's what Miyazaki wanted... apparently, anyway. So without his direction, FromSoftware just took ideas from the previous games and retread them. Knights? More knights, then! Giant rats? More giant rats, then! Patches? Patches again, then!
It's probably disjointed because it was the work of mimicry. On the one hand, it took a solid formula, and for the most part it kept it. So in that sense the game WORKS. But on the other, arguably MUCH more important hand, they didn't have the overarching direction of a game being designed by someone's vision. They had a game to make, and they just made things for that game. It feels disjointed as a result because the forces behind it were so different. The same could be said of WHY
Ninja Giaden 3 is SO vastly different (and mind-numbingly inferior) to the previous games: because Itagaki wasn't involved. The things that mattered being lost eventually coalesced into games that looked and felt very much like their predecessors, but in fact operated VASTLY differently as a consequence of these losses. Much of the changes to the character creation and combat systems in DkS2 were the direct result of player feedback from DkS, and while they had the best of intentions, that didn't necessary end up with the best results. Poise utterly broke combat, and combined with a ring that would allow you to be jokingly athletic despite wearing SUPER heavy armor, players would be unassailable to their adversaries, yet deadly to them by taking advantage of some form of exploits in latency. From's solution? Restructure Equip weight from Endurance to go with Vitality. Make a new, invisible stat that governs your reflexes. Make your invulnerability frames not rely on your animations but rather completely dependent on your stats. On the surface is certainly seems like these solutions work to do away with those abuses seen in
Dark Souls. But they introduced more problems than they fixed. Sure, Havel Rolling (as it was called) was silly, but being UNABLE to roll much at all if you had very little Dexterity was an obnoxious inconvenience.
I haven't even touched on how
Bloodborne fits into any of those, but I think I've soaked up enough space with this explanation that will surely occupy plenty of brain cells to decipher, so I'll leave it at that. With any luck, this did a satisfactory job of explaining some of the intricacies about the differences in game design between the first 3 games, and why many say the things they say about DeS and DkS, and why they say what differs with DkS2.
(even though i beat it during the free weekend so didnt actually bother buying it) (steam+free weekend ftw)
