Dark Souls 1: Distant Views Explained (Part 2)
Larger source images can be seen in this album.
9) Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith from the Tomb of the Giants
My favorite surprising vista is the Demon Ruins skybox seen from the Tomb of the Giants:
If you’re having trouble recognizing familiar terrain from the Demon Ruins, bear in mind that everything in the upper half of the image doesn’t belong to anywhere you can reach in game. I refer to this as the “Upper Shelf” of the Demon Ruins, which you can see when looking up while you’re down there:
(you can see more pictures of these structures here)
What’s recognizable is what’s down below:
How accurate is this view compared to the game’s actual map space? It’s pretty close.
One thing that always renders regardless of distance is the player’s bloodstain. Even if you drop it in a different level that isn’t loaded at all, it’ll still display at its exact coordinates (assuming you have a clear view to it). We can drop our bloodstain right at the fork of the side path tunnel:
And see if it shows up from the Tomb of the Giants:
It certainly doesn’t line up perfectly, with the bloodstain appearing quite a bit further back in the skybox. However, the “general idea” is correct in that you really would see this area from the Tomb of the Giants.
10) A quick tangent on the Lost Izalith dome
The large dome structure we see when first entering the Demon Ruins (and also from up in TotG) houses Lost Izalith. I’ve seen people ask about the dome before, so I wanted to point out how we know that Lost Izalith is inside it. Apart from the map data clarifying that it’s located behind it, we are also shown this in-game.
When you walk through the wall into the area with all the Dragon Butts, you can see that you’re passing through a crack at the base of the dome:
Once you’re inside, you can look up and see the curvature of the dome:
11) A couple missed opportunities with the TotG/ Demon Ruins skybox
Despite being my favorite skybox, I feel like they missed two things which would’ve made it cooler. When you drain the lava after defeating Ceasless Discharge, this change isn’t seen from Tomb of the Giants. The lava remains.
Secondly, you can’t see Tomb of the Giants from the Demon Ruins. I’d understand if you couldn’t see into it due to it being too dark, but there should at least be that massive “window” that allows us to see the Demon Ruins from up there.
To get an idea for where it should be, the Map Explorer shows us. This is looking back from where we left the bloodstain in Ceaseless’ arena:
In-game, it’s just a solid wall:
I wonder if this has anything to do with Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith being rushed in development. While the skybox probably wasn’t high on their priority list for things to get right, is it something they would’ve fixed if they had a lot more time to work on this area? Who knows.
12) The “Ash Lake Expanse” from Tomb of the Giants
Not much further into the Tomb of the Giants, we’re provided another interesting view with a very different aesthetic from the Demon Ruins:
I refer to this area as the “Ash Lake Expanse” because it depicts the primordial underworld seen surrounding Ash Lake. This is not actually a view of the Ash Lake level, it’s nowhere near here nor is it meant to be. To get to Ash Lake from here, you’d have to fly forward, take an acute turn right around the rock structure, and then fly a pretty far distance. So it’s not even close to being in view.
This view of the underworld is also technically impossible given the map/ world design. Not even with a bit of stretching could it really fit, this is a lot more like the world design of Dark Souls 2 where things don’t try to fit 1:1 with the map data.
The violation here is that we should be not far from a valley wall in the Valley of Drakes, near (and underneath) the bridge leading into New Londo Ruins. Standing in the doorway where the yellow fog gate is and looking up, you can see the Valley of Drakes Bridge nearby in the Map Explorer:
In-game it looks like this:
So we shouldn’t be able to see far forward at all, due to being behind a wall in the valley, but additionally the valley simply doesn’t seem to exist at all from down here, because we can see empty space far beyond where the opposite side of the valley should be.
Given the consistency of the world design otherwise, I’m sure this wasn’t a “mistake”. They likely ignored accuracy here and went for environmental storytelling instead.
There’s nothing really special to see in the skyboxes of The Undead Asylum, The Painted World, or the Kiln, because they don’t try to fit in with the rest of Lordran’s geography in any meaningful way. Players have noted losing a bloodstain somewhere (Anor Londo IIRC?), and being able to see it in the sky of the Kiln, but that has everything to do with the maps needing to be placed somewhere in the data and nothing to do with where the maps are actually supposed to be in canon/lore.
But one structural detail I find interesting is Gwyn’s lair, which is hard to see in-game. It’s basically like a giant version of the Lordvessel. You have a round structure which houses the flame on top, and a series of branches supporting it at the base:
14) Oolacile and Darkroot Comparisons
This also doesn’t have much to do with skyboxes, but it does pertain to the geography of Dark Souls. A while back I made an album of animated gifs that compare The Royal Woods to Darkroot Garden, showing how they’re mostly the same location, with some minor changes. Even things like trees are in identical locations in the past, only somewhat smaller due to being younger: