Dark Souls 3 ► Story of the Ringed City [Part 2] - VaatiVidya
So Fil flung us into the future; how? why? and IF it is the future why does it look like the intro cin? Why were the pilgrims going to Lothric? Why did they go THERE to die? HOW did they die? And how didn't Yoel die? I just assumed Fil was keeping the illusion of the entire world safe = Lothric is an illusion and we are actually walking around in a sand filled ruin?? or more like everything outside of the city is sand but looks like lakes and forests. WHAT is going on with the world?!?!?! Why is it sandy in the intro and then just a bit overgrown in the gameplay and then we are flung into the future and it is still just a bit cracked and overgrown and then we are according to Vaati flung even further into the future but now it looks like the beginning cin?!?!? What the f*ck!? I get that for gameplay's sake the game has to be special, but how come Lothric is such a overgrown mess when we "wake up"? Lothric (prince) is still alive isn't he and always has been, because he doesn't want to link the fire we are awoken in the first place, what a shitty ruler he is OR is it because of the undead curse that shit went to f*ck in the first place? Servants went hollow and stopped cleaning up the place? Forgot their duties and started to want to become pilgrim butterflies? Only the knights with their dutifulness regained their deep thing that kept them patrolling and shiz? What are the pilgrim butterflies? how do men become them? where did they come from in the first place? Why did they come to Lothric? Why are they circling the castle? WHAT IS GOING ON?!
I'm no writer so I'll just bullet point some misc thoughts pretty much:
- I would've preferred if the long drop-downs was handled in another way. I always play offline since I like finding secrets myself and seeing 3 orange messages in front of a seemingly normal wall kinda gives away that it's an illusion. Since dev messages however show up no matter your online status they where quite the blaring neon signs!
- Obviously my ears perked up when Lorian got name dropped right away but then there's not a single ref to him or the Lothric royal family in rest of DLC?
Why would you mention it in the first place then...I guess to refresh people's memories that he fought the Demon Prince way back when but even so it doesn't really bring anything new to the table.
I was mainly hoping for some info on the Queen of Lothric to finally get rid of the theory that she's Gwynevere but I suppose this will never go away...At least the Projected Heal miracle further hints that they’re separate people but you can easily read it both ways.
- Cute that the stone-humped hag ashes implies she was Lorian's (and/or lothric's) wetnurse tho, figures a good lad was handled by a (seemingly) good woman :3
- Not-Patches. I love Patches and his final sendoff was very cute with him gently just pushing you in the direction you needed to go anyway, but I can't help but feel like a salty smash player whining about wasted slots since he got in instead of a wholly new NPC. Also since I'm a swede I regged right away that his name was literally "patch" which kinda gave it a too cheeky On-The-Nose vibe.
- I suffered more than I should've at the hands of the swamp angel, the "parasite" form of the angels you need to kill to get rid of the flying ones looked so pitiful I wasn't sure if killing them would be a sin so I left it alone for a bit.
- Really nice that we got a lot of hot babe armor, Desert Sorceress for maximum sexy, Zullie's for Sexy But Modest, and Shira's outfit just looking lovely overall. Halflight's is also boob country if you wear it as female but it looks like cheap pirate cosplay to me. All outfits appreciated, but it would've been nice to have these options available much earlier. I mean to rush it you have to beat Friede at low level? I shudder at the thought. (Lothric's hoods mends quite nicely with Zullie's dress btw)
- While on the topic on armor I can't believe that even in the end we never got a defiled moonlight set.
- Demon Prince boss, the first half is quite manageable and the second quite hard, I'm not a fan of bosses where you have a long boring part wasting time to get to the real deal. The setup here with two seemingly sickly demons makes me wonder if they're trying to mirror twin princes but if that was the case they didn't seem to commit 100%
- I'm not sure how I feel about the Locust's talking about misc NPCs in the games, it's neat but why would they even bother mentioning someone as unimportant to the world as Irina for example? Ages has gone past.
- I LOVE the cleric turtle enemies!!! Such fun design, made me think about the dogs/spiders in Siren even though they're not quite as warped.
- The long stairway next to Shira with HOW-many-armor-fatties is plain BS. I assume the game expects you to kill them by plunging attacks since there is many ledge opportunities to do so in the area, but in the end it feels like the intention here is designed around blitzing it which is NG.
- "Show Your Humanity". I'm really salty since I actually DID realize what the game wanted here since I had tried a brance earlier trying to sneak past the bramble fatties but I didn't connect that it was standing in the actual swamp that triggered the humanity form. Used a few brances in front of the wall and didn't bother trying harder when it wouldn't cycle to the right one. It's such an unorthodox trigger for something as "important" as continuing a NPC quest, I just figured it would net me some treasure I wouldn't have use of anyway.
(Keeping Solaire alive in DS1 is also unorthodox but the way Patches waves you off makes it seem like the devs expected and wanted you to get his quest correct right away?)
But also randomly getting a ladder to drop down as a humanity sprite is just silly and too video game-y.
- Pretty odd to put a chloranthy ring as the loot on Gwyn's fancy Provide Thee Succ statue instead of something related to the story.
- Midir. I thought I had to kill this thing to progress since I was a huge tool not realizing I could just give the finger to Judicator Argo and open the door even though he told me to fuck off (please no bully I somehow didn't see any Open prompts, I guess I tried opening while he was still talking and that blocked me the first time I attempted it...???) So I butted my head against this flailing HP sponge longer than I should, the camera is a problem even when not locking on and you have to do so much running back and forth in the arena...But since he's 100% optional I don’t mind since it's nice they added something for non-scrubs unlike me to have fun with.
- Halflight, joke boss but then I most likely didn’t have an actual player spawn in. I'm not into PvP so this feature doesn't do anything for me, but fun gimmick to have an Old Monk style battle. Unfortunate that it's far into a DLC? I wonder how long it'll be active.
- Filianore is listed as Gwyn's youngest daughter (and also his favorite? Sorry 'vere.) so I guess this confirms that Yorshka isn't Gwyn's by blood (not that there was any doubt) since there's no way that waif tot can be older than Filly.
Wish we got some more info on the mother/s here, it feels to me Filianore might've never even been in Anor Londo and was birthed by another mother than whoever produced the Gwyn-line series of kids.
Her room is so tiny it takes away the full awe of her sight, I wonder if this was a wise choice. In the artbook it looked much more airy and impressive.
- Gael, phase 2 is much more fun and almost easier than first (""easier"" that is, I still died over and over until I gave up and brought a friend ofc), he's just so aggressive in the start! His fancy bloodborne cape did however create the bloodborne problem of having too much parts moving around the boss making it hard to see where he was currently facing or doing.
- The fact that both he and painter constantly talked about The Dark Soul™ ruined any impact the story could've had, it's just plain silly hearing a game title repeated over and over.
In my heart I knew that none of the loose ???-lore tidbits in the main game would be brought up in the DLC but it still hurts that indeed none of them got touched upon. Yorshka's origins forever R.I.P.
Overall though it was much more fun and interesting to play than AoA, so that was a treat!
Now how long will we have to wait for proper teasers about Fromsofts new projects I wonder. I'm excited to be able to play something completely fresh without constant callbacks, fanservice and conflicting lore due to there being multiple games in same series.
Is just hope they don’t go too sci-fi.
Whos ready for some ringed city ^^
Anyways fan art for the set of armor from ringed city dlc for dark souls 3
Also fan art of a desert sorceress i suppose o.o and maybe fan art for ds2 anyways desert sorceress are in both games now
So after (presumably) killing Gael if you go back to the beginning of the DLC the old pilgrim that sells stuff is dead and has some ashes for the handmaiden. I gave them to the handmaiden but can’t find anything new of worth that the handmaiden sells. Maybe it’s in case you don’t buy the halberd she sells?
