PixlBit

Post any and all information you have about the game, items, Lore, etc., right here!

Do it meow!

Ungh, this is a megathread I can get into...

I'm hoping a lot of people get into this thread. It would be awesome to have a basic community dissertation in regards to the game

Chris, you turd, I've gone my whole life without actually participating in any online forums and you're laying a clever trap to pull me in because you believe this is relevant to my interests. Well I've got news for you, it is relevant to my interests and I'll probably show up here a little, thanks a lot, geesh!

So I'm planning to get the black armor edition for my 360, finances forced me to cancel my preorder of the collector's edition with that hot map and art book I wanted so bad. Maybe I can find those idividually at some point somewhere. I'm pretty much only playing Spelunky every day now and not much else, but as it gets closer to DSII I'm trying to play through some more of DS to get ready. I'm in a NG+ playthrough and I have to go through Blighttown but I don't want to. Even though I know all the nooks and crannies of Blighttown and I have the rusted iron ring and poisonbite ring to make it easier I still don't want to go down there. Blighttown's just a whole fuckin thing, it's just a whole thing. I don't want to go down there.

I'd like to add the fact that Dark Souls 2 is going to kick my ass. 

Let's get this ball rolling! Here's some things I've come to learn from the beta:

Non-Estus Flask healing items are back in the form of Soul Gems. They strike a really nice balance between the total grass-based healing of DeS and the pure Estus healing of DS1. Another nice middle ground between the two past games is the health reduction on death. Going hollow won't drop you to 50% health immediately, but it won't have zero effect either.

Covenants are back and one of them requires you to invade someone to join. Apparently invading can also drop your health below the 50% mark, so things could get really brutal in that department.

Let's see, what else... black phantoms are back, another DeS throwback. Also, in general it seems to play even smoother than DS1. There's more stuff I'm sure, but I've got a pounding migraine and can't focus too well.

Oy.... There's so much to cover in this game, I'm unsure where to start. So I guess it would make sense for me to start with the latest of things I've learned.

1. Health drops down 10% every time you die unless you use a Human Effigy, and maxing out at a 50% health loss.
We knew this, BUT, we did not know that it can drop down to 10% of your maximum if you're a frequent invader. Damn!!

2. There are now four ring slots. I somehow missed this part in the Beta...

3. Speaking of rings -- there is now a ring which will enable voice chat. I believe it's quoted in the item description to allow the user to "talk to the dead". I was unsure of the whole Chat Ring at first until I read that description, then I grew to love the concept since it sort of works its way into the Lore as a whole.

lol

The thing I'm interested in today is what kinds of rings DSII will have. In Dark Souls they seemed to have two general types of rings. Rings that A) Buffed a defensive stat or amplified an offensive one, or B) A covenant ring that had some special, often non-combat related, effect(s). You said there will be a ring that enables voice chat, so I wonder if they will be adding lots of new rings that have weird functions, making the fact that you have two extra ring slots more of a necessity but not necessarily a boon of new space. In DS there was a lot of great rings I always wanted to use but since there were only two slots I had to settle for whatever I needed most, I'm wondering if that feeling will remain in DSII even though you have 2 new slots.

I said the word slots a whole lot just now. We cleary need to get to the bottom of this slot situation, it's killing me inside.

The most interesting thing about the 'slots' is that I'm not really seeing the necessity for having so many at once. During the Beta, I remember coming across a ring or two that offered resistanceS, not a resistance boost. By this, I mean that rings would offer resistance to Fire, Lightning, AND Magic, or there was another ring that offered resistance to Poison, Bleed, Weapon Break, AND Curse. From what I remember, the resistance based rings offered no singular boost, they were all multi-functional for the most part.

Also; I've seen a couple Covenant rings, but I can't imagine being able to be in multiple Covenants at once...

tl:dr
I have NO clue for of why we have so many ring slots now.

Side Note:
Any one else notice that this game is keeping the same 'theme' as the others in terms of having a Fallen King?

Just thought I'd point that out

 Have some info :)

Thanks for posting this thread, Chris! One of the things that I'm most excited for in terms of Dark Souls 2 is the series' vibrant community dissecting the (hopefully) cryptic lore. Judging by what we have seen (and a little research) I'm going to take a swing as to what we might be able to gather thus far. 

*This post will contain spoilers for Dark Souls, so if you haven't played it, you might want to skip over this!*

One of the things that a lot of people have commented on is how much "brighter and warmer" Dragleic looks as opposed to Lordran. If Dark Souls 2 shares the same universe as its predecessor, and the sunlight is in fact not an illusion (Gwyndolin, you sneaky little shit!), then perhaps the true ending to Dark Souls was Solaire's ignition of his own soul to bring back the sunlight. If this is in fact a direct sequel, then the Age of Darkness ending doesn't make much sense, and in the Linking of The Fire ending it's assuming that all the player is doing is continuing an illusion of the sunlight (since Gwyn is basically a hollow version of his former self), as opposed to actually bringing true light back to the realm.

I've found that, typically, the hardest ending to get in games is quite often the "true" ending. This concept would certainly translate well into the "try until you get it right" philosophy of the Souls franchise.

Of course, this is all assuming that the lore & events of the first Dark Souls don't just pertain to the realm of Lordran.  Dragleic in all likelihood has its own separate history & deities, but it's fun to speculate nonetheless  

I'm kind of new to this, so if I botched any of the lore, forgive me! What do you guys think?

Here's an OLD theory I used to throw around with Michael117.
Not sure how well it's going to stand (especially the ending that leads into Dark Souls II), but I thought it was a fun little theory and I wanted to share it! Enjoy!

So we know that there were originally four Souls;

The Life Soul was given to the Witch of Izalith

The Death Soul was given to Nito

The Light Soul was kept my Gwyn

And the Dark Soul was found by the Pygmy.

But it’s the Light Soul and Dark Soul in which I want to theorize on.

I think these are more literal than mystic. For instance, the Life Soul was used by the Witch of Izalith incorrectly, and it brought Life to all the Demons of Lordran. So; what if the Dark Soul brings the Dark and the Light Soul brings the Light?

Hear me out here. We all know that the Fire is dying and Lord Gwyn is essentially burning out. We can tell the Light is dying the moment we kill Gwynevere and all of Anor Londo goes Dark (Who’s to say that Firelink and everyone else isn’t dark all the time, and the light is merely an illusion?).

So if the Light Soul is actual Light, then the Dark Soul must be Darkness, and this is where it gets interesting. We know from the prologue that the Pygmy found the Dark Soul and disappeared, but.. What if he didn’t disappear? The Darkest Dark in the game is the Abyss since it’s totally empty and black. So here’s my theory:

Manus, the Father of the Abyss is the Pygmy.

If you have played the DLC and fought Manus, you’ll notice that there’s an empty grave in the area where you fight Manus. This may not mean too much, but to me, it’s a rather ‘human’ thing to do (Graves that is). Also Elizabeth (The Giant Mushroom) states that a ‘Primordial Human’ has taken Dusk of Oolicile. To me, a Primordial Human sounds like the Pygmy. The Humans are also spawned from the Pygmy since Kaathe explains that the Pygmy is an ancestor of the player.

If you’ve played the DLC, you’ll notice that most of the citizens of Oolacile have been turned into weird creatures. If you get the rare drop ‘Bloated Head’ from one and read the description, it states:

‘The head of an Oolacile resident whose humanity went wild after being devoured by the Dark of Manus, Father of the Abyss’.

Here we are referenced to Dark and Abyss in the same sentence for the most part, which further leads me to believe that Manus is the Pygmy who found the Dark Soul. The Citizens and Sorcerers of Oolicile are twisted and distorted, presumably from exposure to the Dark/Abyss much like Artorias’ was, so who’s to say that Manus’ transformation from Pygmy to Manus wasn’t due to over-exposure to the Dark Soul and the Abyss that came with it?

Here’s another cool spin on the Darkness being the Abyss that I thought of:

If Light is Light, and Darkness is Abyss, then that may clarify the ending a bit.

Everyone knows that the endings are sort of vague. The way I see it, either you Rekindle the Flame and allow the Rule of the Gods for a bit longer, therefore prolonging the inevitable Darkness. Or you simply let the Flame die and usher in the Darkness sooner. I think that no matter what, the Darkness will come. However, this could be where Dark Souls II comes in.

Since either ending in my eyes is essentially the same (Darkness will come no matter what, for there are no happy endings in Lordran), perhaps if the Abyss is the Darkness, then maybe this is how Dark Souls II comes to fruition? It’s just a theory, but it makes sense in my garbled head at least.

I personally think that Lord Gwyn was absolutely terrified of the Darkness/Abyss which is why he sent Artorias and Gwyn went to the Kiln to try to keep the Fires burning, but that’s just personal speculation on my part.

Yep, that all checks out. Lol

This was always one of your speculations that intrigued me most. The setting and tone in DS is so metal. It has a beautiful but crushingly depressing Gothic aesthetic, melancholy music, and tone that makes you feel a sense that things have gone horribly wrong in this once gorgeous world, and now you're all alone exploring what amounts to an ancient crime scene, finding bits of cryptic evidence everywhere that mean next to nothing on their own, but once you compare them to other pieces of evidence it builds a picture of a mythology and series of conflicts that are both epic in scope but personal in their representations of human emotions & motives that it compares to something you'd see in classical Greek mythology.

How strongly do you feel about your old Nordic Yggdrasil tree concept of how the world is built, would you want to share that little bit with people? To your knowledge has anyone ever asked Miyazaki about Norse mythology and its possible influence on the lore and art design?

Has anyone played the Kings Field games for PSOne PS2? I was curious to play through them to see the origins of the Souls Series.

I'm also curious about them. I've seen some gameplay on YouTube and it makes me want to grab one of them to give them a shot.

I've never played them, but I want to..

How strongly do you feel about your old Nordic Yggdrasil tree concept of how the world is built, would you want to share that little bit with people? To your knowledge has anyone ever asked Miyazaki about Norse mythology and its possible influence on the lore and art design?

I still dig that old theory of mine, and I believe it's fairly true. There's a lot of evidence to show that the world of Lordran is held up by a tree. And I'm not sure if anyone ever directly asked Miyazaki about Norse-influence, but I'm certain it's there.

Playing through the games made me wonder about what the world was like just before it went into darkness. More specific the kingdom of Boleteria in Demon Souls. A few site boards and blogs have mentioned the Anime/Manga called 'Berserk' which is a medievel themed comic that is very similar to the world of Boleteria before darkness. It's kind of like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings, but then Demons start appearing and a crazy mythology is setup in the world. The manga has been around for 30 years and a lot of the art work and character design allegedly influenced the look and tone of the Souls games. As far as the actual mythology, in the Berzerk manga, the demons/ gods existed before humanity and exist in another dimension, but humans are responsible for creating demons that cross over some how. Interesting stuff. 

It's been around since 1990, so about 24 years... the author just takes his sweet ass time releasing chapters. He does it on his own unlike other serialized manga, and his art in each chapter is fantastic, and he's realized quite an awesome world. I think that the world of Berserk is a fair bit darker, but I can see the comparison.

Out of curiosity, how are you all doing in Dark Souls II thus far? Having fun yet?

Also; what Starting Gift did you all choose? I took the Petrified Something, not sure what it does yet though...
Been pondering whether or not I should restart and perhaps take the Seed

Also took the Petrified thing. Guess we'll see what that does eventually.

I've been playing since Friday and I'm currently at the third boss. Game has been brutal thus far. Good, but much more frustrating than the first two games ever were for me. I'm getting through though and will persist onward. I might throw down my soul sign and do some co-op soon, since it's not something I did much of in the past.

So I stopped my playthrough with my Hunter and created a Mage and Knight just to see what they were like. I ended up keeping the knight and deleted the other two. So far, I'm in the Giant's Forest and I think I'm nearing my first boss (Finally).

So, I threw down my soul sign a bunch last night after getting the White Soapstone in place of the Small White Soapstone. Had a blast running all the bosses again and helping people over the hump. Got three tokens for my efforts and about 30k souls, so I'd call it a success.

Also, I made my way to the fourth boss (and got decimated, need more poise). Also explored an area I had already passed through and discovered the use for the Pharros Lockstones (look for the face things on the wall - they go in its mouth). Going to head back in tonight and see where else I can go. I found this pirate ship out on the water, but I have no idea how to board it. Gorgeous area though, with the moonlight peeking through the clouds - a true sense of serenity, despite the foreboding nature of the ship.

Holy shit this game opens up like crazy. I went from having (what seemed like) 1 path, to somewhere around 5. Also, after beating the Sinner boss, I got an idea of the objective of the game. Was kind of missing having direction (not that I have much now), but at least I know there's a goal now.

Looking forward to jumping back in and running some new areas tonight. Will likely continue doing co-op because it's a blast, but it sure is resulting in me being overleveled (not that I mind much ).