Welp, today it's Dark Souls 2's "irrational" placement of areas
like, the infamous elevator going from Earthen Peak, a valley downhill, "up" to the bottom of the lava-submerged Iron Keep or running below sea level from Heide's Tower "down to" No Man's Wharf being above sea level.
It's good actually. Cause it's ludonarrative harmony/consonance
First off, why? Like why care about this? Those who like DS2 might already accept it as is and those who don't would write it off as bad design. Regardless, I hope that this interpretation is interesting. It might not be canon or accurate or full of holes, but if it gives you some thoughts about how your next DS2 playthrough can be different then this interpretation does its purpose.
Taking DS2 out of the franchise and just as a standalone game, it does one thing well in the way Half-Life or GTA does its story world well: the "sandbox". Whatever the player does to the world, there is a consequence that feeds back into that action, acknowledging and recording that the player does it. Not just consequence, but recording in the way that it creates an emergent narrative about what the character, controlled by the player, becomes. The famous example in Half-Life is if you pay attention to the story, you get to engage with the lore. Your character can save people and be rewarded, or be homicidal and also be rewarded, and the surrounding people run away from your character screaming. The world took note of your character's action and reacted to the character accordingly. By building a "reputation" for your character, the game world assigned them "an identity". (Half Life Example: Raycevick's The Orange Box...10 Years Later)
DS2 does this. There are Youtubers doing lore content, reading every piece of item description to try and extract information about the world. There are challenge runners who "bear, seek, seek, lest" and watching their runs, one never understand what the game is about. If one goes on to r/darksouls2 looking for tips, then one comes into the game probably knowing more about the stats and weapons and killing than why some enemies ragdoll and most other vanished (including your own character). Simply put, no matter what you the player choose, the game world has a way to reward and engage with your play style, or rather your way of engaging with the game and its world, by reward and engage with your character's action.
This is ludonarrative harmony (or consonance, as opposed to dissonance). The quick and dirty is when gameplay and story aim to do the same thing, as opposed to when gameplay does one thing and story does another, often in direct contradiction to each other. For contrast, examples of ludonarrative disonnance is well this ProZD's video, or when the game has you be overpowered gods then got tickled to death in a cutscene, or preaching to be a pacifist during cutscene and dialogue only to make sure the number of living thing around you is 0. So compared this to DS2, however you want to play the game, your character's story and and action is aligned or in harmony. That's intentional and is good design.
So what does this have to do with areas placement? Why Aldia's Keep opens to a cliff on top of mountains?
One of the many themes or possible interpretations of DS2 is the focus on the player character being undead, destined to lose memory and become hollow. Simply put, the world designs reinforce this aspect, creating the sense that the character through whose eyes you see the world hollowing. Specifically, it is done through things that are in-the-face, such as having a long connection between the previous area's boss to the next area's first bonfire, the seemingly impossible physics of "up and down", and the frozen time (always sunny in Majula, always twilight-moonrise in Huntsman's Copse, etc.), but also other mechanics that are more subtle and can be easily accepted as "game mechanic". The repeated dying and respawning of enemies, the New Game plus, both through ascetic or restarting at Majula, etc. few things are permanently changed, even the result of the supposed ending (linking the fire or walking away) can be undone by NG+. They all added to the sense of what it's like being hollow. We hear this from other NPC who arrived and pursued their own journeys but slowly and gradually forgetting why they were here, only that they're here (which, isn't that's why we the players are here?).
I'd argue at the surface level, this is simply good design to communicate the overarching feeling of being in this world, a sense of melancholy exploring an already dead world, almost dystopian because the character and everyone in it is trapped in a loop, but at the same time finding some personal objective to help push one forward. But take it to the next level, this design makes sure that no matter how you want to play the game, your character stays consistent narratively. Your character is a conduit to tell the story of the world of Dark Soul 2. The story is there, even if you choose not to engage with it.
Accepting this argument, then the intentional design of the world and the lore of DS2 provides the added benefit of arguably having all of the lore explanation for every game mechanics. I wouldn't say that all game mechanics will have an accurate lore explanation, but I would say this design allow all game mechanics to have a lore "consistent" explanation. Everything should point to "this is what being hollow is like, this is what the world is like to the hollow".
I haven't played through any other entry in the series (Elden Ring is temping a hunger I have fought for years lol) but at least for DS2, I appreciate the design that turns Mario-esque "grassland, desert, forest, jungle, ice world, fire world, boss" into a gateway into a fantastical land.
And yeah, I understand that this design, in real life, is due to industry trademarked deadline/need to ship product/budget, timeline, very real thing issues, etc. But this will be my headcannon that in the real life error and creative constraints , Miyazaki and his team found us a great example of game meets design meets story.
p/s: originally posted this take on reddit, reposted here with some edits