Tl;dr dark bad or not?

Improper use of meme, flag on the post.

At least DaS2 had a true human champion doing things right.
Vendrick had a dream.

I like to imagine DS2 is its own universe. It's themeatically similar but it's much more interesting then dark souls 3 so it's hard to imagine they are connected.

Apparently they were supposed to be preachers meant to sell people on the dark but they were too locusty so they just ended up being hungry lads

being immortal is nice

cumbrains

Dark is ugly truth. Human nature at its raw and unrefined. Emotional, reactionary, beautiful and simplistic but also prone to violence and thoughtless destruction.

Fire is civilization. Beautiful for the sake of being beautiful and full of glory. constructed with great effort, care and legacy. full of structure and "points". However is ultimately arbitrary/illusionary and is eroded by or even succumbs to the dark (human nature) and must be fought very hard to preserve

That was the general thematic gist I got when I played the games anyway.

Attached: 1560679025212.jpg (1200x1200, 418K)

Dark is akin to entropy, it is in humanity's best interest to keep it at bay, but it is at the same time impossible to do so because it is a part of nature, its coming is inevitable, and it only grows more severe with time.

none of the games make sense, its purposefully designed to not make any sense. its the vague shit that keeps contradicting itself and will ultimately make you come up with your own headcanon. just like miyazaki read western fantasy epics without properly understanding the language and trying to piece it together himself.

>let the darkness come
>oh it turns out another flame just pops up anyway naturally
dark is literally just night time

Attached: 1436059881037.jpg (571x460, 27K)

No shit
I don't know how you missed the "it's an endless cycle" they hammer you with every five seconds. The whole point of Scholar of the First Sin was to transcend the cycle, to go "beyond the scope of light, beyond the reach of dark."

DaS1 was cryptic
DaS2 made sense
DaS3 is schizophrenic

in the purest sense dark is the best for humans, but humans as they appear in game are not in their natural state. when people in the game call dark "corrupting" they are mis-interpreting what the true form of humanity is- dark returns humans to their natural state which is uncomfortable for those who have spent their entire lives corrupted by the age of fire

so what is a human in its natural state? a hollow zombie who just flails at everyone?

Taken as a whole, Dark Souls is a metaphor for man's attempt to understand reality. The flames represent different attempts, or non-attempts, to do that.
Gwyn's is the glory of religion, notably based on Christianity. Nito's represents a worship of death. The Witch of Izalith's is the destructive force of nature, natural religion in the form of Wicca is notably female-centric. And the Furtive Pygmy's is focusing on the reality of the situation, being related to base humans, and they're the only one whose system of government we're actually told about in 3.
The Light is subdued by Gwyn (and those who follow in his footsteps), along with Nito and the Witch, in an echo of Christianity dominating and consuming lesser religions and death worship. It shuns the Dark, the power of the Pygmy, by regulating base desires which inevitably explode in the Hollows. Throughout history we've seen a cycle of glorious empires brought low by base desires, which is translated into the games as the cycle of Light and Dark
Aldia comes into this by talking about a third path, beyond the Light and the Dark. Almost every ancient philosophy (Greeks, Hindus, Desert Fathers, etc) came to the conclusion that one should reject the body and try to perfect the mind. It's no coincidence that the path beyond was walked by a scholar, light in our own history; he even specifically says he lost his body and is now only a head. The Light and Dark are obsessed with the body, Aldia wants to transcend that.

Dark is just entropy
You can keep the fire going on a long ass time if you really try hard (and they do because that's what humans do) but inevitably you are just gonna get heat dead.

>must be fought very hard to preserve
And considering how truelly awful the firelinking cycle is and how it mostly serves to persevere the God's power at the expense of humanity, I rather give the Age of Dark a chance over that ponzi scheme.

Ironically, not only did DaS III prove that Kaathe was right about almost everything, but even his original scheme of creating a Dark Lord worked out pretty well too and Gwyn inadvertently helped with it.

Attached: download.jpg (267x189, 6K)

Are you kidding? Literally all of the games had poison swamps. It's kinda a staple.
>DaS2 made sense
Sure did, that level design wasn't wonky at all

Made me chuckle.

>I don't know how you missed the "it's an endless cycle" they hammer you with every five seconds.
Considering how much the games focus on the firelinking business, it is kind of easy to overlook that cycle was already upheaved/broken and to mistake the firelinking thing for the cycle itself.

Dark = Peaceful and chill
Deep = Stagnant rotting shithole where you never die and everything is a mess

Attached: 2metnko.jpg (720x389, 94K)

>so what is a human in its natural state? a hollow zombie who just flails at everyone?
Given the general appearance of the pygmies and a few other hints here and there, being a hollow is the natural state of human beings.
But Gwyn gaslighted humanity into believing that being hollow was bad via the way of white and then cursed them with mortality.

don't download thumbnails you frik

Attached: file.png (1024x724, 840K)

And the Abyss = Wild humanity/Dark driven by turbulent emotions(?)

Gael was so close to being 10/10 kino. They really needed a DLC between Painted World and Ringed City to flesh him out more

Attached: 1523765384218.jpg (600x600, 65K)

It's a shame because Ds3 original had 3 DLCs planned, I wonder what would have changed had they gone through with it.

Attached: 374320_screenshots_20170923125318_2.jpg (1920x1080, 411K)

Dark bad.
Fire bad.

Attached: aldia.jpg (1540x898, 1.83M)

>They really needed a DLC between Painted World and Ringed City to flesh him out more
Or just have him be a reoccurring character in the base game that you come across periodically and learn a bit more of his background as a slave knight.
Btw, did the slave knight fight against the dragons, demons or what? The descriptions seem to indicate that they were the first undead or something like that.

Yes, the swamps actually represent the mites of the dev cycle

>Scholar of the radical centrism

Ringed City and Dreg Heap were probably seperate areas. Likely they would have been larger than the sizes they ended up, but the poor response to the small size of Ashes had them redesign their plans.

I love how the author was like fuck it make him Guts but just old with a beard

Attached: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH copy.jpg (1600x1200, 122K)

Dlc connects them all. Same universe, different era

>but the poor response to the small size of Ashes had them redesign their plans.
They made the decision to make 2 dlcs before the base game even released.

There were either part of the war against the dragons but treated even more shit than the ringed city knights, or the slave knights of some old kingdom like Astora.

I only JUST now realized that Aldia's form is supposed to be a head/shoulders

>There were either part of the war against the dragons but treated even more shit than the ringed city knights
Don't some of the pygmies in TRC wear faded red capes if I remember correctly?
Might explain how Gael knew about the pygmy lords and TRC, he's been there before.

I never noticed that either.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh fuck

Attached: 1483427548743.png (1016x633, 346K)

Has anyone seen this lore video before?
Much better than Vatti's dumb shit. Apparently The Deep is connected to Japanese Shintoism or something.
youtube.com/watch?v=7FZiAi9LDIs&feature=youtu.be

Gael uses the Sunset Shield when he's a summon, which includes the description:
>This design symbolizes those who both harbor and oppose the power of flame.
Otherwise, there's no real clues about his deal other than he was an undead knight dropped into battle as an unstoppable killing machine. It's unlikely the Slave Knights fought dragons, as he uses an Executioner's Sword which is obviously intended for killing humans (or human sized enemies like the Knights of Gwyn)

Attached: Screen Shot 2019-08-01 at 2.20.48 PM.png (322x127, 55K)

DaS3 has more swamps than any other game in the series

Who the fuck knows? DAS3 annihilated every aspect of lore and Ringed City salted the earth.

How can it be a ponzi scheme when the CEO is set on fire for eternity

Yea def throught it was just some random blob. They didn't do a good job at making this clear at all

>Executioner's Sword which is obviously intended for killing humans (or human sized enemies like the Knights of Gwyn)
Maybe he's a veteran of the occult rebellion that has a few mentions in the first game?
It would explain his ties to the painted world.

Fear not, the dark, my friend.

Attached: I shall partake.png (500x500, 118K)

Those humanity ghosts you find in oolacile before fighting Manus.

>How can it be a ponzi scheme when the CEO is set on fire for eternity
It was more of a ponzi scheme for the God's in general than Gwyn specifically. I don't think Gwyn was ever directly connected with setting up the "chosen undead" scheme.
But yeah, everyone that linked the fire after Gwyn was human or at least of human descent.

>DaS2 made sense
This is lordran-maybe, maybe not, I don't know here's ornstein i guess (he's dark now don't think about it just turn your brain off)
Bearer of the curse, kill four of the most powerful beings in existence so you can bypass a knee high pile of bricks!
Seek the king of empty box castle.
Oh no he's hollow.
Bearer of the curse the time has come, seek the dragon for some reason
Oh my his insightful toilet flush noise really expanded on this deep narrative, and he gave me some mist too!
The game never explains what it's for but it sure looks cool!
Google: use the mist on the trees for some reason
Oh, time travel for literally no reason, very cool!
You did it bearer of the curse, you killed the first boss again!
And look he gave you purple mist for some reason, take it do the throne.
OH HO, bearer of the curse, my plan worked perfectly, to have you get the purple mist from back in time to activate the golems for some reason!
Now it's time to die!
OHHHHHH! How could I Nashandra die so easily with little to no resistance! MY PLAN WAS FLAWLESS EXCEPT FOR THE FATAL FLAW OF ME BEING A POORLY DESIGNED BOSS BATTLE!!!!!!!!!!!!! Noooooooooo
Now go bearer of the curse, the golems will move for your purple mist, filling the 5 foot gap so you can sit in the literal kiln
the cycle continues...

I guess so, yeah. Abyss seems bad for everyone no matter what.

DS2 is on a different continent. Vendrick went to Lordran and stole the Lord Vessel which caused the Giants who were the race in charge at the time to go and fight them for it

>Oh, time travel for literally no reason, very cool!
As oppose to "time is convoluted" in 1?

Not too bad at first, but then humanity lost their ability to control it and then it became bad

What we needed was a final DLC to kill the serpents.

>I guess so, yeah. Abyss seems bad for everyone no matter what.
Not even Kaathe wants anything to do with it.
He may have told the residents of oolacile where they could dig manus up, but torturing the poor guy into insanity was their own dumbass idea.

Slave knights were a really shitty version of Alucard.

>Slave knights were a really shitty version of Alucard.
who?

I think he meant the ending where you completely snuff out the first flame beyond the possibly of rekindling. The cycle thus far has been due to people reinvigorating the first flame over and over.

But turns out if you kill the first flame entirely and give in to the age of dark, a whole new flame is born from nothing.

Meaning this shit Gwyn has started is literally pointless. Diverted the course of Gods and humanity for countless eras, fucking everything up in the process, just to find out a new flame comes anyways and that the first flame aint unique.

idk my bff jill but I'm glad I gave painting loli thick black goo to paint with.

Attached: 1553826589837.gif (495x336, 1.98M)

Basically Kaathe just had a huge hateboner for the Gods.

>What we needed was a final DLC to kill the serpents.
I used to think this, but when you really get down to it, the only snake that lied to you was Frampt.
Nothing that Kaathe said has ever been contradicted throughout the series and while he had a hand in oolacile and new londo's abyss outbreaks, it wasn't entirely his fault.

The flame isnt necessary the same one.

This nigger knows what's up. The dirt snakes need to pay for their meddling, period.

>But turns out if you kill the first flame entirely and give in to the age of dark, a whole new flame is born from nothing.

Are you referencing what the firekeeper said in the dark ending? Shit isn’t guaranteed.

>Basically Kaathe just had a huge hateboner for the Gods.
The snakes are related to the everlasting dragons somehow, so I'm guessing that they are kind of pissed about Gwyn's massive genocide to stroke his own ego.

They both worked to topple empires in their own way. Frampt through deception, and Kaathe through telling people to act like degenerate faggots.

Fitting for the final boss of the franchise known for ripping off Berserk

Attached: 374320_screenshots_20170923124758_1.jpg (1920x1080, 373K)

Why wasn’t it GRIFFIS instead?

>They both worked to topple empires in their own way.
But if you go this route, you have to ask why they are doing this and what they have to gain from all of this especially considering that they are dead by the time of 3.
If you take Kaathe at his word, his motivations make total sense. Gwyn fucked over the dragons and their snake cousins and then he fucked over humanity. Kaathe hates Gwyn and helps humanity to get back at him.

>snake cousins
is this mentioned at all? Iirc the only time we even got a hint of snake backstory were the snakehead statues in 3

>helps humanity to get back at him.

The only thing he seems to be helping with is making everyone into an insane abyssal abomination. We don’t really know their intentions. All we know is whatever they touch becomes corroded in some fashion.

im picturing him with a giant fedora now, thanks

They already did Femto for their previous games DLC
Skullknight for Elden Ring DLC

Attached: file.png (1280x828, 1.71M)

enjoy the feast

>is this mentioned at all? Iirc the only time we even got a hint of snake backstory were the snakehead statues in 3
Given the nature of dark souls lore, it hasn't been exactly confirmed, but the covetous serpent rings heavily imply a connection.
>The serpent is an imperfect dragon and symbol of the Undead.
>A gold ring depicting a snake that could have been, but never was, a dragon.
Hell, even dark souls 2, for all its terrible attempts connect to 1 and 3, mentions "serpentine dragons" that watch over the cycle or something like that.

All these words to say, "I am stupid."
Keep it simple, simp.

This is an accurate retelling of the games plot, any stupidity you sense comes directly from the Dark Souls II™ development team.
This

>simple

Another questions for everyone here, what do we actually know about Velka that isn't shitty fanon pushed by vattividya?
I know Velka basically a meme at this point, but there has to be something people went off of given all the weirdass theories people inject her into.

That was more of a throw-away line to justify multiplayer aspects in a singleplayer game rather than being the actual """""plot""""""

Debatable, and I interpret it as relevant to the plot.

She was a respected black-haired God and a fan of crows. She wasn't part of Gwyn's clique and her job was focusing on ridding the world of sin, through either absolution or punishment. That's about it.

It was more to justify the enemies resetting and the player restarting at the bonfire
phantoms are always explicitly described as being from other worlds, but further explanation is never given

I don't care what you think faggot I told you the difference in the important placed between the two

The giants in DS like Hawkeye Gough and that blacksmith in Anor Londo are in no way similar to the giants in DS2. Besides, the giants from 2 were supposed to be somewhat brutish, and whatever they had what gave them power was the power to make structures like King Vendrick's castle (and his supposed kingdom)

>That was more of a throw-away line to justify multiplayer aspects in a singleplayer game rather than being the actual """""plot""""""
While your not wrong, their is some lore stuff in the first game that light/fire is associated with the linear flow of time while darkness is the absence of such.
Linear time breaks down when the first flame fades allowing for time travel such as summoning or Manus grabbing you out of his dark portal thingie.

"The flow of time itself is convoluted; with heroes centuries old phasing in and out."
He says this when he tells you about summoning and gives you a white soapstone. It could also explain the bonfire resetting enemies but it's never implied or stated

I dunno. I feel like everything in Dark Souls is pretty bad.

But I guess light is slightly less bad?

what

The light is just as bad but at least everything isn't smeared in shit

Also those crow people in 1 and 3 in the painted world are her followers and Velka may be the "merciful goddess" and "mother of the forlorn" that Gael worships when you first encounter him.

>This is fine

What am I forgetting other than Manus grabbing holders of his pendant through time? I think that was to emphasize how much he longed for it that he could just fucking punch through the fabric of reality to grab at it rather than Dark = Rewind Time

I mean really it was just a cool way to let the player experience something new for a DLC but whatever

That's generally assumed and agreed upon but isn't stated in game which is what was asked

I think that the giants in 2 were meant at some point to be the same as the giants in 1 and 3, but fucked up development of 2 gave us faceless giants instead.
Don't know if it adds to this at all, but Yhorm somewhat evokes the appearance of 2's giants, but has a face.

>What am I forgetting other than Manus grabbing holders of his pendant through time?
Flameless shrine in 3 I think?

>That's generally assumed and agreed upon but isn't stated in game which is what was asked
I don't know anything about who Gael is worshiping, but Velka isn't associated with the Way of White which the Deep Church used to be.

doesnt matter. itll happen eventually

its only bad when its enslaved by the gods, which is why undead and hollows are a thing. Gwyn made humans live a tortured existence bound to the gods power and forces them to continually sacrifice themselves. Prior to that, it was just humanity being an underdog that would eventually replace the gods for a time, maybe all time. In general, dark=better for humans but its chaotic and is just freedom. Fire=better for gods. We dont get to see what its really like to live in a dark age, so you just have to go off what characters say like Yuria. Londor seems like its a place where its basically already a dark age, and while its weird theres nothing to say its anything but humans in power as opposed to the gods.

You're a human, so if you had to choose a side you should choose Londor and the dark. Ds3 had two dark endings if I remember, the Londor one which was supposed to be a permanent dark age that alters the flame rather than link it or snuff it out (both temporary).

Sorry I don't give a fuck about 3's effect on 1
Yeah I meant the crow demons being followers of Velka making sense but it's all conjecture

Wait, Gael is the Dark Lord that Kaathe was trying to make?
I thought that the Lord of Hollows was basically suppose to be the Dark Lord.

>We dont get to see what its really like to live in a dark age
We literally see it in the opening cutscene of 1. Humanity are mindless hollows before finding the flame

Kaathe wanted a dark lord to fuck Gwyn off and piss on the bonfire to allow the Gods and the undead to finally die and let someone else take the reigns.
Gael wanted to reform the Dark Soul by gathering every fragment of humanity it had split itself into as a gift for his waifu

dark good
light and fire bad

To be fair that technically means it was a world in which the First Flame was burning. You could say I'm arguing like one of those REAAAL COMMUNISM HASN'T BEEN TRIED YET retards but it's technically true. I think the age of dark just refers to getting the fuck rid of the Gods once and for all.

(1)
>This is lordran-maybe, maybe not, I don't know
How does this "not make sense"? It's mentioned time and time again that hundreds if not thousands of kingdoms have existed where Drangleic does now, and probably thousands more will in the future. Straid of Olaphis is a walking example of this.
>here's ornstein i guess (he's dark now don't think about it just turn your brain off)
You saw how Anor Londo as we first see it is an illusion set up by Gwyndolin. The Gwynevere we meet is an illusion, a ruse; why couldn't O&S be the same?
>Bearer of the curse, kill four of the most powerful beings in existence so you can bypass a knee high pile of bricks!
Bad level design doesn't mean the plot doesn't make sense you autismo
>Seek the king of empty box castle.
>Oh no he's hollow.
You're telling me Shanalotte should've known that Vendrick was hollow? Why, exactly, does it not "make sense"?
>Bearer of the curse the time has come, seek the dragon for some reason
Shanalotte was created by the dragons, that's why she want you to meet them
>Oh my his insightful toilet flush noise really expanded on this deep narrative, and he gave me some mist too!
"...the curse of life, is the curse of want.
And so, you peer…
Into the fog, in hope of answers."
>The game never explains what it's for but it sure looks cool!
"The magic of the ancient dragon allows one to delve into the memories of the withered." And besides this, Nashandra instructs you to go to the forest as part of her plan

Attached: Shanalotte.png (1920x1080, 427K)

(2)
>Oh, time travel for literally no reason, very cool!
The mist allows you to visit memories. A stone slab allows you to visit several parts in a kingdom. A vessel full of souls allows you to teleport between bonfires. A lamp with a couple bells on top allows you to visit a dream.
>You did it bearer of the curse, you killed the first boss again!
The very reason the giant if where you meet him in the forest is because he was dragged there after you defeated him during the war. It's the exact contrary of "not making sense", and you're reaching at this point instead of bringing up actual points
>And look he gave you purple mist for some reason, take it do the throne.
The item is called the Giant's Kinship, and its destruction talks about the Throne
>OH HO, bearer of the curse, my plan worked perfectly, to have you get the purple mist from back in time to activate the golems for some reason!
She wanted the Throne, it's not hard to guess
>OHHHHHH! How could I Nashandra die so easily with little to no resistance! MY PLAN WAS FLAWLESS EXCEPT FOR THE FATAL FLAW OF ME BEING A POORLY DESIGNED BOSS BATTLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Poorly designed boss battle doesn't equal plot not making sense
>Now go bearer of the curse, the golems will move for your purple mist, filling the 5 foot gap so you can sit in the literal kiln
You seem to forget the fact that the door to the Throne was closed shut
>the cycle continues...
Or not, if you trust in Aldia's "solution" regarding the crowns

Instead of bringing up valid points, you go and and decide to reductio ad absurdum, coming across as an autist

Attached: DSII Time Pendulum.png (372x1080, 234K)

Some of the NPC questline involve using them as summons, so it's very much relevant to the game's plot beyond the multiplayer

it's the mirrah shield in ds2, and used by hodrick who's described as a crazy hollow who goes apeshit in battle, so maybe they're mirrahian
but "harbor and oppose the power of flame" sounds like something from the ringed knights, which is weird

Attached: 1553032446283.jpg (1500x1082, 700K)

>make nice looking city for the final DLC
>biggest area to explore is a fucking swamp
Ringed city had so much potential

This is a cut design for II's Giants. II's fucked development made them change the plot and have to rework already existing character/enemies models and areas, not completely redesign stuff from scratch. As far as I know, II's Giants were always supposed to be their own thing, and what Vendrick stole from them was actually known in the original plot

Attached: DSII Original Giants.png (1920x1080, 1012K)

And Griffith in Demon's Souls

Attached: King_Allant_The_False_King.jpg (1280x720, 71K)

Why did people focus so much on her again? I only found out about it recently after watching JSF for the first time. Out of all the stuff that isn't explained in scrutinous detail, why her?

Attached: 1563902520893.png (800x766, 1.07M)

>Or not, if you trust in Aldia's "solution" regarding the crowns
Aldia's the worst part of 2.
If you buy into the idea that fire and dark are the moral equivalent of eachother, your basically just falling for Gwyn's gaslighting of humans.
The dark is only bad because Gwyn said and made it so with the dark sign.

>Why did people focus so much on her again?
Velka apparently has quite a bit of cut content focused on her including an entire covenant.
But yeah, aside from being a "rogue deity" that is oppose to Gwyn and the other Gods of Anor Londo and her connections to the painted world, Velka isn't really that important.

You have to remember that for the longest time, loreretards thought that Solaire was Gwyn's firstborn despite his item descriptions from the first game saying he wasn't divine.

>You saw how Anor Londo as we first see it is an illusion set up by Gwyndolin. The Gwynevere we meet is an illusion, a ruse; why couldn't O&S be the same?
Because you fight them and get their soul after you kill them.

Remember that tower that was so prominent in the trailers/screenshots of the dlc?
I thought for sure it was going to be explored at some point.

The dark is an inevitable force of nature. "Humanity" has an innate aversion to the dark as far as the Souls universe goes due to fear of the unknown. It is only human to fear the dark.

>I mean, it's canon that Ornstein left Anor Londo
in search of the Nameless King so whether you consider the Old Dragonslayer Ornstein or not, what's canon is that the one you fight in 1 is an illusion

Yeah that really bugged me, why show it off so much if its just going to be in the background. Development for it mustve been rushed or something.

>Or not, if you trust in Aldia's "solution" regarding the crowns
Refresh my memory here because all i remember is you walking into a age of dark and Aldia basically going 'trust me bro, this time we can find something else'

>Aldia basically going 'trust me bro, this time we can find something else'
I need my memory refreshed as well because didn't Aldia try to beat the undead curse by trying to recreate the everlasting Archdragons?
And he did so by using the souls of the giants that were captured right? And those same souls originated from the first flame?
How exactly was Aldia going to be the cycle by using things that are utterly connect and bound to said cycle?

*beat the cycle*

>in the purest sense dark is the best for humans,

except every times humans fuck with it it turns to shit. Like Oolacile. Like new Londo. since DaS never expands on what the age of dark actually entails it makes the fire/dark choice a lot less multidimensional.

Attached: 1544029396152.png (540x540, 309K)

>Like Oolacile
This only happened because they decided that it would be a great idea to torture poor Manus into insanity.

>DaS never expands on what the age of dark actually entails
The closest we have is DaS3's parallel shrine and that just make it look like the dark age is just a fire age on perma night. For the record i havent done Yuria's quest so i dont if there is more info there

>Yuria's quest so i dont if there is more info there
Nope not really

>For the record i havent done Yuria's quest so i dont if there is more info there
You basically become an undead Karl Marx (dark lored) and seize the means of production (the first flame) for the workers (hollows/humans).

Darkness is decay, darkness is death, darkness is stagnation.
Are these "good" things, user?

Before they changed the plot, that's how the firelink shrine you visit throughout the entire game would've looked like after telling the flame to fuck off near the end of the game

>darkness is death
That is Nito's thing user.
And Nito has a soul based on fire, not dark.

>dark returns humans to their natural state which is uncomfortable for those who have spent their entire lives corrupted by the age of fire
People who parrot this shit are the dumbest fuckers ever.

Here is Aldia's dialogue on the matter:

Once, the Lord of Light banished Dark, and all that stemmed from humanity.
And men assumed a fleeting form.
These are the roots of our world.
Men are props on the stage of life, and no matter how tender, how exquisite…
A lie will remain a lie.

Peace grants men the illusion of life.
Shackled by falsehoods, they yearn for love, unaware of its grand illusion.
Until, the curse touches their flesh.
We are bound by this yoke.
As true as the Dark that churns within men.

All men trust fully the illusion of life.
But is this so wrong?
A construction, a facade, and yet…
A world full of warmth and resplendence.
Young Hollow, are you intent on shattering the yoke, spoiling this wonderful falsehood?

WHAT ARE THE LIES HERE?
LIFE, PEACE, WARMTH, COMFORT
THESE ARE THE "UNNATURAL" FACETS OF MAN, THAT WHICH ARE STRIPPED AWAY WHEN THE DARK COMES

Pic related is your """"true""""" form of mankind, idiot. Enjoy.

Attached: vendrick.jpg (1920x1080, 154K)

fucked up my file, bottom line is that the "natural" form of mankind that darkfriends tote about is just being hollowed.

Attached: king vendrick.jpg (1570x898, 1.48M)

does anyone make good ds2 lore videos? save me from vaati please

>fucked up my file, bottom line is that the "natural" form of mankind that darkfriends tote about is just being hollowed.
A hollow need not be mad user.

no I think it is being those humanity people. Vendrick is just hollowed.

>decay and death
Literally the Death Soul's domain, not the Dark
>stagnation
Literally the Light Soul's domain, the opposite of Dark. The Dark is volatile and lashes out chaotically while the Light seeks order and control. The Dark is also implied to be what truly makes man "man", making it a "tragic good" power, and the Light is a fading evil, but a necessary one. An evil that will always return. In the natural cycle, the Light comes into power only to lose to the Dark, and rise anew after an age of Dark when it will be reborn. While the Light is oppressive it's only an issue when prolonged beyond it's natural course, and the series is a tale of a time when that's the case.

IGNORANT SLAVES

The main gist of Aldia's dialogue is that life itself -more specifically, the kind of life provided by the souls which emerged from the First Sin- is the problem. Light and Dark are but two sides of the same coin, and the hollowing curse is just as much a part of 'life' as the happy pleasantries that counteract the hollowing. To deny this order of the world is to propose that life can exist beyond the Soul, the Fire, and the cycle. He wants us to choose if we want to go on being a part of the cycle and be satisfied by this 'false truth' (or something like that, don't remember his dialogue) or go beyond the cycle and break through the order of the world as it is now. By abandoning the Throne of Want, you don't usher in the Age of Darkness. you simply go on your immortal way (thanks to the crowns) while letting someone else Link the Flame and continue the cycle themselves. What happens with the Bearer of the Curse or Aldia himself after that? Who knows

>Londor cope
All hollows will one day go mad.

>no I think it is being those humanity people
Literally only happens when you get devoured by the Abyss. Is turning into a chaos monster because you get fucked up by Izalith considered a "natural" transformation? No.

Furthermore, when you LITERALLY journey to the Age of Dark by visiting the Untended Graves, do you see any humanity monsters? No you do not. It's just an endless sea of darkness (hence the name), and some stray hollows. That's you age of dark. woo.

bitch, be GONE

Not that I know of, unfortunately. JSF might be the best Souls lore fag out there but like 85% of "his" videos are on Bloodborne, with another 10% on DSIII

Attached: doan-xuan-minh-bearer-of-the-curse.jpg (1920x2457, 527K)

>All hollows will one day go mad.
It literally been canon since the first game that being hollow isn't the end of the world.
If you become nihilistic like the chestfallen, yeah you go insane, but otherwise hollowing isn't all that bad.

>The Dark is volatile and lashes out chaotically while the Light seeks order and control.
No. This only happens when you fuck with it and deliberately drive it out of control. Otherwise it just sits there, gentle and stagnant. Fire burns and devours. Darkness is the opposite of fire.

Someone posted "The Bastard's Curse" earlier in this thread.
Check it out, much better than vatti's shit.

>A true human champion doing things right
You mean Ivory King right? Because Vendrick himself admits he's kind of a fuckup.

>It literally been canon since the first game that being hollow isn't the end of the world.
Dark Souls 1
>Those branded with it are reborn after death, but will one day lose their mind and go hollow. -- Darksign
Dark Souls 3
>Carriers of the Darksign are reborn after death, and eventually lose their minds, turning Hollow. -- Darksign
You WILL eventually lose the will to continue on, and hollow out. It's not a question of "if." It's a question of "when." The odds of anything happening approach 1 as the timeline extends out to infinity.

If the Untended Graves is suppose to be how horrible the Age of Dark is, I don't see the big deal.
Its kind of comfy in its own way.

wow Ds2 lore sucks

Attached: 1472415188-2220806798.jpg (1920x1080, 746K)

If your going to quote 3, how about you talk about who made the dark sign in the first place?
Gwyn deliberately made being undead/hollow as shitty as possible in order to force humanity to support the Age of Fire.

It's peaceful, but it definitely is not some "glorious age of man." It's dark, there's fucking nothing there, and everyone is hollowed. That's it.

The biggest part of Dark Souls 2's lore that annoys me is the Brides of Dark, just why did Manus dying create three waifus and an angel mage

>It's peaceful, but it definitely is not some "glorious age of man." It's dark, there's fucking nothing there, and everyone is hollowed. That's it.
Still better than the perpetual suffering machine that is the Age of Fire.
Prince Lothric had the right idea. Find somewhere comfy to sit down and just wait for the fire to die out. Pity we had to kill him for that.

Gwyn did not create Undeadness and people who continue to assert this are dumb.
>Victory in this battle once led to ancient Anor Londo, but even in the absence of it's overseer, capitulation is a disgrace. -- Purple Coward's Crystal
Anor Londo during it's heyday (before all the gods fled) held Undead gladiator matches as a spectator sport. Even during the "original" age of fire, Undead were still a thing.

>The biggest part of Dark Souls 2's lore that annoys me is the Brides of Dark, just why did Manus dying create three waifus and an angel mage
3 tried to follow up with the angel thing and went nowhere with it really.
As for the four waifus, doesn't Nashandra look a lot like dusk?

He didn't, they sprouted off from his corpse. You know how darkness-infected stuff tends to display a rudimentary form of free will? Manus' corpse vomited out like the ultimate endgame of that concept, these being entirely sentient beings.

>Gwyn did not create Undeadness and people who continue to assert this are dumb.
Then what was the whole deal with the ring of fire that Gwyn casted on humanity revealed in TRC?

So does that mean they're embodiments of Manus' animal wants or did he want to be a pretty princess

Primordial concepts and forces of nature cannot have moral values assigned to them. The dark is neither bad nor good. It just is.

yes

I don't care, i just want to fuck the witches.

Attached: 0396a91fcb48d89f3b91e6ef822cea77.png (1024x1390, 342K)

>not some glorious age of man
It is though. The one thing we know about the fading of the Light is it literally signals the fading of the power of the gods. If the light is completely gone, their power is too. If they no longer rule, then who else but man is left?
>everyone is hollowed
Well it's too late to do anything about that either way. Hollowing only gave humans the illusion that the flame was their savior, but in the end they were just feeding it the dark soul, further continuing the madness that was the age of fire and torturing the dark. With the age of dark in place, maybe the dark soul will have the room to breathe to spread and reverse hollowing?

Dark souls II, yes its bad, its a bad boring game, praised by a few derps and mostly hated by everyone else.
>tl;dr dark bad or not?
picture explains itself

Attached: dsmGaKWMeHXe9QuJtq_ys30PNfTGnMsRuHuo_MUzGCg.jpg (960x540, 293K)

Attached: tumblr_o6iw6bIiK01tznexxo1_500.jpg (500x473, 11K)

The impact it has on the world is a negative one for those who will be affected by it. It is, for them, bad.

>So does that mean they're embodiments of Manus' animal wants or did he want to be a pretty princess
Maybe Dusk and Manus's Pendant reminded him of his dead wife or something and the four daughters of the abyss were the children Manus always wanted or something?

dark based and for chads
fire gay and for cucks

Damn, Abyss juice is some powerful shit

>Manus kidnapped Dusk to put on her crown and dress so Artorias-kun could notice him/be his knight
Kek

To elaborate on this, consider the Ringed Knight Armor:
>The armor of early men was forged in the Abyss, and betrays a smidgen of life.
>For this reason the gods cast a seal of fire upon such armor, and those who possessed them.
What is crucial to observe here is that the seal cast by the gods has FAILED. The armor still displays a will of its' own, a characteristic of Abyss corruption, it says it right in the description. Whatever seal was placed on the armor to hide away its' abyssal nature is NOT WORKING properly. And what do we see on the armor? A big honking darksign.

Darksign = failed seal of fire.

Consider now pic related. We have known since DaS1 that the sun is a construct of fire magic. It only exists so long as the Age of Fire is strong. And what do we see in DaS3, when the fire snuffs out? The Sun grows a Darksign.

Darksign = failed construct of fire.

Now turn to what the Darksign on an Undead's flesh signifies. It signifies that they are unable to die, or at least stay dead. And what is "death?" Look now to Nito's soul.
>Gravelord Nito administers the death of all manner of beings. The power of his soul is so great that it satiates the Lordvessel, despite the fact that much of its energy has already been offered to death.

Death = a construct of fire magic
Inability to die = failure of construct that is "Death"
Inability to die = Darksign

What is crucial to note here is that the Darksign appears on you WHILE YOU ARE STILL ALIVE (Logan attests to this). From that moment on, YOU ARE IMMORTAL (until someone kills you, at which point you respawn).

MEN ARE NOT MEANT TO DIE. They are meant to be immoral like the Lords. Gwyn feared this, and thus forcibly turned them mortal with a seal of fire ("Death."). This seal fails when the fire fades, thus ending your mortality. THIS is the Darksign.

Attached: dark souls 3 sun.jpg (1133x715, 59K)

It's just implied whatever Dusk has going on he wants it

>If they no longer rule, then who else but man is left?
Men in mankind's "most honest shape," aka hollowed out and shuffling around like zombies.

>MEN ARE NOT MEANT TO DIE.
This makes a lot of sense considering what you the player spend most of the game doing.
Killing Gods and Dragons because they can die while you can't.

From what I recall.
> Dark wasn't bad at first
> Gwyn's fuckery made it bad. Kind of festered and stagnated from being locked away.

Except that the dark is what undoes hollowing. In an age of dark "humanity" would be plentiful. Hollowing is what's left of man when the dark soul within them is tortured out through suffering and death, done intentionally by the gods out of fear for its power and out of need for it as fuel. Without a flame to feed on it, the dark soul could unhollow freely.

>Find somewhere comfy to sit down and just wait for the fire to die out
But isn't the good end literally doing this exact thing?

You forgot.
>Man/hollows/pygmies had a pretty good control over the dark until Gwyn fucked them over and they kinda of forgot how to reign the darkness in.

>Man/hollows/pygmies had a pretty good control over the dark
Fuck no they didn't, mind explaining the giant fucking Abyss underneath TRC if they had that shit handled?

Attached: file.png (272x185, 65K)

Demon Souls' lore made more sense

Letting the fire die as it is is not a good idea, as we see in the end game the first flame is doing everything to force its rekindling, meaning the world itself is literally imploding on it to this end. In the good end you let the fire keeper hold it to let it die peacefully so the age of dark can happen without an apocalyptic implosion and a new age of fire can be awaited.

As the future Pope, let me tell you this.
Fire BAD
Dark BAD
Deep good
Water good

Attached: 1559479858182m.jpg (1024x669, 109K)

>Fuck no they didn't, mind explaining the giant fucking Abyss underneath TRC if they had that shit handled?
Gwyn casted the dark sign/seal of fire on humanity/pygmies.
Pygmies lost control over the abyss.
Just as planned by Gwyn.

Attached: maxresdefault.jpg (1280x720, 153K)

>Except that the dark is what undoes hollowing. In an age of dark "humanity" would be plentiful
Yeah if you're going to kill someone and steal it from them. That's just a pyramid scheme like New Londo.

t. Darkstalker Kaathe

True darkness is peaceful, just like the dragons were, just like fire was at the start, then gwyn fucked the dragons when he got the souls to do so, but the only part he was meant to fuck with was the killing of the ancient age, he went even further beyond and fucked with the dark before it was their turn, bc he knew one day they'd do the same he did to the dragons, so he casted the darksign, linked humans to the fire so that when fire fades, so did the line between being alive and dead, and between time and universes (summon signs and shit) and between undead and hollow, that was the first sin, fucking with ages and humans, he knew dark was gonna be really powerful so he gave the pygmies the ringed city to have the dark souls in check and jailed. But anything you tamper with gets corrupted, like the witches of izalith did to their flame, fire spawned toxic shit and most importantly lava, similarly when dark was tampered with it created the abyss, which you can see clearly it's very fucking powerful, and also spawned the deep. It's like when saiyans use their good and kind emotions to turn super saiyan vs vegeta using fucking rage and revenge to turn super saiyan, maybe if dark and humans had never been fucked by gwyn in the first place then the dark age would have started and be chill and peaceful and quiet and beautiful, until one day, something or someone rises up and makes the change to a new era (age of the deep?), or maybe even back to the dragons, resetting the cycle

The Pontiff should have been the final boss

But Pontiff, the Deep is just non-wild darkness.

Psssst . . .
Fear not, the dark, my friend. And let the feast begin.

Attached: Pssst.jpg (1024x576, 43K)

>t. Darkstalker Kaathe
The entire point of TRC is that Gwyn is dick.
How did you not notice this?

Google 'myrish swamp'. Miyazaki was hinting at a partnership with grrm.

>But Pontiff, the Deep is just non-wild darkness.
I thought the Deep was rotting, stagnant darkness?
Kind of like a water bloated corpse of humanity/dark soul.

If Gwyn wanted to destroy TRC with Abyss why did he leave them with a pet archdragon who's sole purpose in life was to keep the Abyss in check?

DeS' lore might not be as complex (King calls upon eldritch monster, goes full Femto and summons demons which destroy his kingdom) but it was way fucking cooler than "muh light muh fire for three games"

It's "supposed" to be gentle, non-wild darkness but because it was kept bottled up for too long it rotted.

I SHALL
PARTAKE

That's because they stole it from Berserk

He originally was, or at least the character/model that ended up becoming the Pontiff was

>If Gwyn wanted to destroy TRC with Abyss why did he leave them with a pet archdragon who's sole purpose in life was to keep the Abyss in check?
Because he didn't want to destroy TRC with the abyss?
He wanted to keep the pgymies all nice and locked up. The abyss running wild in TRC was detrimental to that.

>wasting time interpreting souls lore
Miyazaki himself doesn't know what the fuck is going on. Read any of his interviews.

Attached: images.jpg (300x168, 3K)

That, and the way of white/gods using the Deep as a dumping ground for all the shit they didn't like certainly didn't help matters.

I liked it user, though being better than Vaati isn't saying much. You have a nice voice.

I know and it pisses me off, he should have been endgame material yet they make him a midgame boss!

Take the real Darkpill, anons:

Fire and Dark are opposites.
Therefore, logically speaking, there should be a Darkness equivalent to the First Flame during the Age of Dark.
However, because Fire and Dark are opposites, this Darkness "first flame" would be the opposite of a roaring fire.
And what is the conceptual opposite of a bonfire? A deep, cold body of water. Only made of souls like the First Flame was, instead of literal water.
The Deep, which is an unfathomably large mass of stagnant, still Humanity, is the "first flame" of the Age of Dark.

Can I get a quick rundown?

It is by that point in time. The prolongation of the Flame ends up corrupting the world. Only the Deep will remain. The original Dark was a thing of comfort and the nature of man, but it soon became the Abyss and corrupted its inhabitants. Kaathe speaks in half-truths, because when you meet him in the first game, the Abyss is already far gone.

I SHALL PARTAKE.

Attached: FaceApp_1564705734780-01.jpg (338x405, 28K)

reddit.com/r/darksouls3/comments/ahwshw/dark_souls_3_original_plot/

Attached: 1560799266712.png (240x240, 24K)

i havent thought about this commercial in years

Obviously the painted world of ashen blood aka fucking BLOODBORNE is next, the world of fire is fucked yet it lives on as echoes inside the blood of the dark soul which was used to paint the world of pygmies, humans who escaped the cycle of ages and started the cycle of dreams

>The bell was to be tolled to break the seal of the dark lord, who is Pontiff Sullyvahn. It didn't wake the Ashen Ones / Lords of Cinder.
I will take whatever is on that thread with a grain of salt to be honest.

>Killing Gods and Dragons because they can die while you can't.
But gods too, can go undead and hollow. See pic.

It is important to note that the darksign triggering makes it impossible for you to die of old age. You are now as the Gods are, immortal unless struck down by disease of violence.

This is actually different from the phenomena of respawning after being killed (being undead). Humans aren't even unique in this manner. The rats and dogs that you find as enemies are also undead. This is purely a consequence of the first flame fading away.

From the get-go, it is stated that disparity is a consequence of fire, not the other way around. Disparate opposites such as life vs death, past vs present vs future, location A vs location B, parallel world A vs parallel world B, etc. can only exist so long as fire exists. So when the flame starts fading, the difference between "life" and "death" stops working properly across the board, and the whole world becomes undead and hollow. This is, of course, a return to the natural state of existence for all life. Note that Hollows came from the dark, and only became something more by coming into contact with fire.

Attached: nameless king is hollowed.jpg (2560x1440, 613K)

twitter.com/manfightdragon/status/986499424288366592

Why? There's proof for like 90% of it, and Sullyvahn being the final boss has been known for a long while now

Attached: Pontiff_Sulyvahn_Concept_Art.jpg (2714x1920, 769K)

Final dlc worth getting if you have to buy the whole game again? Used to play this on ps4 a lot and only bought the first one, thought it was kinda gay. now I don't have a ps4 anymore and don't have an urge to play since I've done everything to death but the ringed city.

>Sullyvahn being the final boss has been known for a long while now
I'm not disputing that, I'm disputing dumb shit like "Aldrich and the abyss watchers can't physically link the first flame".
Sully being the final boss makes perfect since given that even in final version of the game we got he basically masterminded 90% of the plot.

>ah yes this horrific gooey tree monster is absolutely trustworthy, we should hand him totalitarian control of our civilization -- everyone in Irithyll
What did they mean by this?

>But gods too, can go undead and hollow. See pic.
To add to this, not only he looks like a hollow, but the Hollowslayer works on him as well.

Dark is good, Abyss is bad, just like Fire is good, but Chaos is bad

It's worth getting for the final fight of it.

Attached: hand it over, that thing.png (1136x640, 963K)

>fight Gael
>sky turns dark
>world starts shitting itself, lightning everywhere
>Gael dies
>the sun doesn't turn back on once the fight ends
bros is this it? t-minus 0 seconds to the death of the first flame?

Isn't that what aldia is describing as men having assumed a "fleeting form"?

Read Aldia's quote in context

>A big honking darksign.
Come to think of it, does Gael even still have a dark sign? Looks like he has two holes in him.

>Those humanity ghosts you find in oolacile before fighting Manus.
Still don't know what those things are even.
Or those pus of men things in 3.

That's Aldrich after he ate Gwyndolin, the Pontiff snuck into the ranks of the Darkmoons by pretending with sorcery he had faith. He then got Aldrich to vore everyone's favorite trap god and called himself Pontiff

Absolutely based,and quite RedPilled as well.

My impression is the same as they are right now, it's the hollow inhabited by the humanity.
Pus of Men is corruption from the Abyss, the Wolf GS, Farron GS, and Old Wolf GS get the anti-abyss bonus while hitting them.

i don't want it to end

>Come to think of it, does Gael even still have a dark sign?

Attached: gael darksign.png (647x567, 875K)

>it's the hollow inhabited by the humanity.
So human beings in the souls verse are basically P-zombies piloted by a fragment of the dark soul?

Why does he have two holes?

>So human beings in the souls verse are basically P-zombies piloted by a fragment of the dark soul?
That's literally everything in the universe, user? Remember the opening cutscene of Dark Souls 1?
>And then, from the dark, THEY came
>[image of hollows standing up from the dark and grabbing souls]

That's why they call them hollow. There's nothing inside, no souls, no humanity, no fire. The hollows found the souls in the First Flame, and that's how they all came to be something higher.
That's why the Church of Londor is a scam, a hollow is not the true shape of man.

The big hole is just his body having decayed due to age and abuse and shit. Like, he's so old he's nothing but a skeleton. Also the dark soul is eating him from the inside out.

>Champion gundyr as the actual final boss
fuck now I want this

Attached: marcille again.jpg (91x125, 3K)

>That's why the Church of Londor is a scam, a hollow is not the true shape of man.
They have to believe the lie. Otherwise they will lose their sanity.
Kaathe want to dig up enough humanity to go around, but Gwyn and pals prevented that from happening, so hes working with what hes got.

New Londo was literally a pyramid scheme

>New Londo was literally a pyramid scheme
Kind of like the Age of Fire right?

Litterally what is even the usurpation of fire?
Is it a good ending? Ok ending? Awful?

the original final boss was Pontiff, Gundyr was gonna be Oceiros, Yhorm was gonna replace Gundyr, and Wolnir was gonna be where Yhorm is

Envision drilling a tap into a tree to let out all the sap.
This is what the Dark Sigil is. It oozes humanity, and also conveniently allows your humanity to actually vacate your body upon death, which is why you hollow. Humanity that would normally be imprisoned somehow within your body as an Unkindled for reasons unexplained, which normally prevents hollowing.
The more taps (Sigils) you have installed, the more dark soul can escape and the more hollow you get.
By the time you have 5 of the damn things, you're hollow as fuck. An empty vessel waiting to be filled.
Filled with the first flame, to be exact.
So you basically pick up the first flame and stuff it inside yourself, and walk away. Which is why the sky turns black when you do it, because the first flame has been corrupted by darkness due to it's new home.

>GRANT US EYES, GRANT US EYES! PLANT EYES ON OUR BRAINS, TO CLEANSE OUR BEASTLY IDIOCY!
What did the Fire Keeper mean by this?

if you care about the story in any souls game beyond "I find this NPC charming and I'm sad that they died" you're a retard

I thought she didn't want eyes

>Humanity that would normally be imprisoned somehow within your body as an Unkindled for reasons unexplained, which normally prevents hollowing.
Well, the first flame brought you back to set yourself on fire again. So you need a bit of humanity in you to serve as a bundle of twigs for the campfire.
>So you basically pick up the first flame and stuff it inside yourself, and walk away. Which is why the sky turns black when you do it, because the first flame has been corrupted by darkness due to it's new home.
So you seize the means of soul production so to speak?
Is that what is meant by making "Londor whole"? Using the first flame to produce limitless humanity for the soulless hollows of londor?

Doesn't 3's DLC pretty much confirm that the gods are total assholes? After what happened to the ringed knights, it's tough to believe that dark isn't good for humans

>Fluted Set
>Elite Knight Set
>Faraam Set
>Knight Set
rank in order of increasing style

>Using the first flame to produce limitless humanity for the soulless hollows of londor?
Londor doesn't want humanity. They're proud of being hollows. They just want to brag about owning the flame.

knight set isn't the posterboy in DS3, it's firelink set or peepee knight

Fire is a transient illusion but it also contains all of the things that make life worth living in it. The dark represents entropy.

Being an asshole isn't the same necessarily as being wrong.
Yes, Gwyn could have handle the pygmies a lot better, but the abyss/dark was always going to be a fucking problem.

Queue this is your brain on trying to understand the clusterfuck that is souls lore

fire = peace, happiness, warmth, vitality, light, life
unfortunately for mankind, fire is not only destined to go out and take all of these good things with it, mankind also heralds this apocalypse by merely existing due to being creatures of darkness, and therefore to continue enjoying all these good things they must submit themselves to enslavement and deny themselves their own true nature.

>ds2 hollowing: this sucks, I'll lose all my memories and sense of self, d-don't forget me user-kun, okay?
>ds3 hollowing: WOOOOOOOOOOOOHO LONDOR RULES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why are Londor cucks so retarded?

Gwyn is a big ol' Zeus/Jupiter allegory so he's the only real cunt out of the four original Lords. He's also a stand-out, Gwyn fucking despises the Dark and the Dark Lord/Furtive Pygmy along with his entire domain while there's no real notable connection or negativity between Nito and the Witch of Izalith, even though those two are opposite ends of the elemental scale too. Even having an opposite element is a direct challenge to Gwyn's rule and domain, let alone the Dark daring to create its own life like TRUE and HONEST Gwyn did with the gods and goddesses/WoI did with her daughters and son (and demons by proxy)/Nito did with the Milfanitos and Fenitos.

"Wild" Life produces the Chaos Flame, "wild" Dark produces the Abyss, the uncontested age of the gods could probably be construed as "wild" Light, and Death never really went wild.

Difference between undead and hollow

>Wol
who?

Witch of Izalith.

Londor is apparently functional so they're probably not too concerned with actually being hollow. Also they've got rings so they don't look like beef jerky to outsiders.

The "philosophy" is easy to understand because it's entirely based on headcanon and the "volume" of it (lines spoken/described) is pretty small. What fucks me up is trying to line up all these story lines in a way that makes sense when not on hard drugs.

>Sekiro interview with Hackazaki
>"will it have blighttown"
>"uhhhhh, well, yes, but also, no"

I thought that having a strong will/motivation starves off hollowing?
Londor believing in pure bullshit is what is keeping them sane.

That isn't headcanon, numbnuts
>Gwyn banishes the Dark and Humanity
Establishing the age of fire
>Man assumes a fleeting form
During the age of fire, men are normalfags who are born, live, and die without being undead or other bullshit
>Peace grants men the illusion of life
"Normal" life is a facade that exists only because Gwyn sealed away the dark
>until the curse touches their flesh
See above, when the dark is exposed the whole charade comes crashing down
>All men trust fully the illusion of life. But is this so wrong? A construction, a facade, and yet... A world filled with warmth and resplendence. Young Hollow, are you intent on shattering the yoke, spoiling this wonderful falsehood?
Life underneath Gwyn's facade is objectively pretty peachy once you get over the "denied your birthright" thing

Christ, he's literally spelling the central conflict of the franchise out word-by-word and people still don't get it.

>Literally all of the games had poison swamps.

Let's tally, shall we?
>DS1
>Bottom part of Blighttown
>VERY bottom of Seth's (optional)
But there's a ring that nullifies the movement penalty, so it's not a big deal.

>DS3
>Road of Sacrifices
>Farron's Keep
>Bottom of Cathedral of the Deep
>Spider-infested part of Profaned Capitol
>Bottom of Ringed City
Oh and no ring to ease movement, even though you have 4 fucking ring slots.

What interesting gameplay is created by having so many areas with decreased movement? If you're fighting enemies, it's just annoying. If you're not fighting enemies, it's just boring.

The bottom of Seth's Fortress was a CHALLENGE. It challenged your ability to fight multiple minibosses with decreased movement. You don't get that same gratification anywhere else.

AY KNIGGA IF YOUR FAVORITE WEAPON IS NOT ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:
>BALDER SIDE SWORD
>LONGSWORD
>ASTORA STRAIGHT SWORD
>LOTHRIC KNIGHT SWORD
>BLACK KNIGHT SWORD
>ZWEIHANDER
>GREATSWORD
>HOLLOWSLAYER GREATSWORD/MIRRAH GREATSWORD
>MOONLIGHT GREATSWORD
>ONYX BLADE
>FLAMBERGE
THEN YOU ARE REQUIRED BY THE LAW OF OUR GREAT FATHER GWYN TO KILL YOURSELF IMMEDIATELY

Attached: 1541170510431.png (189x284, 16K)

>1handed swords
cringe

DRAKEBLOOD GREATSWORD ALSO ACCEPTABLE THAT SHIT IS BEASTLY WHEN CHAOS OR DARK INFUSED AS A PYROMANCER

dual greatsword flippy dippies

>no Artorias Greatsword
Gay

Ur casual if you can't SL1

K bye

Literally what is the point of Artorias' greatsword now that Gael's greatsword is in the game?

ALSO ACCEPTABLE, REALLY ANY GREATSWORD AND MOST UGS WEAPONS ARE TOWERING PILLARS OF MASCULINITY ANY TRUE KNIGHT WOULD BE PROUD TO USE, EXCEPT CURVED GREATSWORDS, THOSE THINGS ARE CURVED LIKE THE DICKS OF THEIR WIELDERS AND GWYNEVERE WOULD NOT BE CAUGHT DEAD IN THE SAME ROOM AS THEM

Because my nigga Artie was the OG, Gael was just following in his footstep

>SL1
bitch please. come back after you've tried THIS:

SL1
NG+7
bare fists only
naked
no magic
no healing
no bonfire
no homeward bone
no deaths
no glitches
no skips
all bosses
all DLC
perma-gravelorded
aggression modded
perma dried fingered
always online

I've never been so offended by a sequel. "Oh it's an endless cycle" fuck off that's lazy bullshit and you know it they just didn't want to kill their cashcow. Dark Souls should have been standalone or at the very least the sequels should have been spiritual, like DeS to Das. 2 was shit, but the lore is interesting at least. 3 is just shitting on the lore of 1.

>punch everything for 10 years
But why though

>being a casual

You just made living in the world of dark souls seem pleasant. ARE YOU PROUD, WHEN YOU LOOK UPON THIS BEAST YOU FEEL PRIDE?

Attached: Varg_4.jpg (480x517, 23K)

>whining about "oh a new fire will show up one day lmao" while at the same time praising 2
>when 2 was the one that introduced this concept to start with
what did he mean by this

3's still an ending unless the cycle renews and new Lords try to shut Dark up in the exact same way.

But I don't want to play Dark Souls for the rest of my life gently tapping everything to death

DS3 is better without the DLC

sorry, I should be clearer about that. 2 is not good. My point was that it went to new places that weren't directly lore-tied to the first game, which I respect. I still hate the cycle aspect of it, but there's more to the lore than that, whereas 3 repeats shit about cycles every other second.

It's been seven years, how does Yea Forums feel about this video?
youtube.com/watch?v=oyA8odjCzZ4

HAMMER OF MORNE BAYBEEE

Or you could be Patches and kick people off cliffs forever and ever

TIME IS CONVOLUTED :)

>HOLLOWSLAYER GREATSWORD
Just did a playthrough with that recently, probably my fave weapon now.

>game tells you this up-front
>smoothbrains think they have a point when they bring up nonsensical level-geometry in later titles (see harvest valley in ds2)
>to say nothing of how fucking stupid it is that anor londo is so close to the tomb of the giants or blighttown so close to the undead burg and the valley of the drakes

I loved Drakeblood when I noticed it has the Hollowslayer flippy moveset and then it became my swordfu when I saw how well it takes to a pyromancer build and Chaos/Dark infusion.

Seethe harded knight cuck

Attached: Furysword.jpg (949x468, 170K)

AHHHHHH
IGNORANT SLAVES

Attached: 1534434398772.gif (280x296, 1.61M)

FINALLY TAKEN NOTICE, HAVE YOU?

Excess is what's truly bad for anyone. The Age of Dark needed to come to pass naturally, and from it, a new flame would eventually ignite again. Gwyn chickened out and prolonged the Age of Fire.
In the end where you snuffed out the flame with the firekeeper, she predicts that fire will inevitably come back

AHHH
DEAR LITTLE OCELOTTE

The "swamps" in the Cathedral and the Profaned Capital could hardly be counted as a whole level.
>Road of Sacrifices
Pretty sure there's no poison in that area, and the deep parts are optional.

the main reason is she shows up in some numerous peculiar places

Aw, can't handle the style?

Attached: G8b3FQF.jpg (600x800, 191K)

>a character side one thing one time in order to justify the multiplayer mechanics, that means it's okay that nothing makes any sense at all =)

for lorefags, hawkshaw
that's probably the best lore you can get. definitely same tier as jsf

>in order to justify the multiplayer mechanics,
and the topography, and why knights and witches whose ancient corpses you can find are attacking you as phantoms, and...

>Some of the NPC questline involve using them as summons
there are 0 NPC quests that require you to summon someone in DS1, not even solarie. You also don't need to summon anyone in order to have their body magically apear somewhere in the world to get their stuff - this was a shitty idea DS2 came up with that fucked everything up because it doesn't make any sense

Behold, the true patrician weapon.

Attached: Millwood_Battle_Axe.png (512x512, 59K)

How many years pass between each game?

>You also don't need to summon anyone in order to have their body magically apear somewhere in the world to get their stuff
You do need to kill some NPC phantoms to get their stuff, though, such as Paladin Leeroy. DS2 didn't invent the idea, it started applying it to NPC co-op phantoms.

you forgot at least 2 swamps in das3

"Eons", and this is assuming DS2 is a period of history and not a reflection of the world on a lake's surface or whatever the theory was

Some people say a millennium between each cycle, but it seems to me like it's more like a century, and steadily growing shorter with each linking. Lothric, Aldtrich, and Sullyvahn had to have existed within the same time-frame.

Fuck dark souls 3. shit game without soul

Who the fuck was Ocelotte suposed to be anyway? half dragon mutant son of the King and Queen of Lothric?

yes

My fucking nigga
I love this thing
Similar to the DS2 Battleaxe

There's a lot of statues of a maiden cradling nothing all through the game, so I am assuming the child is literally invisible.

>Who the fuck knows? DAS3 annihilated every aspect of lore

What lore did DS3 annihilate?

Attached: 1564648209057.jpg (4160x3120, 986K)

Soul of Cinder is Griffith, right?

Untended Graves was the original final boss area, right?

They're humanities brother race. The way I see it, humans as a whole were cucked by Gwyn. The dark sign is basically explained by the Ringed Knights armor, "Fire sealing dark".
Humans drank the dark cool aid, so brother locust wants to return to the dark.

The problem? The dark is pretty bad according to all the flavor lore and shit, and those locust men are no exception as they have no issues "partaking" in who they preach to.

Attached: Dark Son.jpg (1024x778, 106K)

keep it up

Attached: 11How_To_Repair_Rings_Dark_Souls_2_Blacksmith_Majula.jpg (970x545, 115K)

DS3 salvaged the lore from that horrid fanfiction that was DS2.

>Implying his "Waifu" isn't Kaathe's daughter
Calling it now, Kaathe fucked one of the Sable Church sisters.

The way I see it, the sign is burning into him.

>DS3 salvaged the lore from that horrid fanfiction that was DS2.

Explain this?

Entire kingdoms, with monarchies, royalty, built castles and fortresses, wars... aren't built from scratch and maintained in as few as 100 years, and there's been a quite a few kingdoms between Lordran and Drangleic, and Drangleic and Lothric
To sum it up, it's easily been 1500 at the very very least

Not him, but DaS II's story really lacks baring on the souls franchise beyond Manus spawning some daughters and Aldia trying to break reality.

>Drank the dark coolaid
I mean Fire Coolaid.

>copypaste of Gwyn
>just bullshit

Attached: maxresdefault.jpg (1280x720, 116K)

>sequel does its own thing instead of following on from the first game's plot
How is that bad? Out of all of DSII's fatal flaws, plot sure as hell is not one of them

All the plot threads in DS3 are directly linked to DS1, not some fucking far-away land that has nothing to do with the world besides some esoteric references, and completely stomped on what Artorias of the Abyss established about the Abyss and humanity.

What about the Drakeblood Knights and The Giants?

>dark souls 2 was less creative people trying to capture the magic of dark souls 1

Attached: 20090802.jpg (600x7771, 1.29M)

Well, it doesn't really have a plot at least for most of the game. The plot is basically Nashandra wants to be dark lord after royally fucking over her husband, but then an undead comes along and seeks the throne of want which will inadvertently restart the age of fire.

Most of everything you do in the game is just kill shit that has some vague connection to the original lords, with the only one having a link to the main plot being the Iron King. There isn't even an explanation for as to why you need the lord souls to enter the shrine of winter.

pcgamer.com/dark-souls-director-hidetaka-miyazaki-the-world-is-generally-a-wasteland/

that the Earth is a cesspool of human garbage.

Attached: GrSqph6dv89R59ReM4t4A5-650-80.jpg (650x385, 37K)

dark is good it's the age of humanity, gwyn designed the whole linking the fire meme to ensure humans are kept down permanently, he feared the dark. if you're human/undead and you don't wish for the dark you're a cuck to the 'gods'

Giants from II aren't much of a thing in III. In III there is but a tree that references them. The game takes an extra mile to show you that Gwyn's Giants weren't tree ogres and had faces, with Wolnir and Yhorme having normal faced skulls (and yhormes model getting glowing eyes).

Whatever they were intended to be in II, Miyazaki clearly didn't consider them related.

How much information do we have on Elden Ring right now?

did anyone figure out what's with the people turned into plants/trees in lothric? they all reach out to the sky

>dark is good it's the age of humanity

Attached: 0_tW5ApK4cUTdIB3bu.png (1838x1033, 97K)

> "Light looks more beautiful in darkness," he said. "When there is something beautiful in the middle of a wasteland, we are able to appreciate it more. One jewel doesn’t look like much when you have a pile of them, but if you find one jewel in the midst of mud, it is worth so much more."

Attached: i'm waiting for the good times.jpg (500x666, 57K)

we players reside in the cesspool where we belong

Essentially none, all we know about it and its world is that the fabric of reality has been shattered and people are genuinely falling apart and patching themselves up with other body parts

Related to the angels in some way (the angels share that kind of tree-branch/shrubby look) but the game doesn't actually explain what the hell angels are

>One jewel doesn’t look like much when you have a pile of them

Attached: 1563516143563.jpg (959x479, 70K)

>Why miyazaki filled dark souls 3 with swamps?
>Was he trying to convey a message here?
Darksouls 2 fan service

I DOUBT

In the original design of Lothric, there was a civil war of pro-abyss vs pro-fire citizens, which explains the blue and red knights killing each other.
That never made it, so at some point they added angels as a concept to explain it, because the Angel Knights were clearly in the fight.

I think Angels are kind of the opposite of whole Deep shit. Everything in 3 is sinking as the world ends, so it's like something from "above" is trying to rapture people towards it instead. It's releated to the "mutant" hollows known as Pigrims, as Stone Humped Hag summons her angel at the end her quest chain. Also Pilgrim Butterflies.

>They didn't became an everlasting dragon that would endure the passing of ages
Take the dragonpill, faggots.

Based Namless King.

muh honorable duels to become a no-helmet furry

only if you're a parry god, and even then a chaos dagger does more. too much split damage plus greatsword sing speed with longsword range to be usable.

He's returning to the natural human state of an archtree

Anyone else kind of freaked out about the whole Abyss/Deep shit literally sinking everything into the ground? I live in an area prone to sinkholes so that only makes me more paranoid.
Didn't noticed until I replayed recently that the altar in the Cathedral's altar is sinking directly into the ground, the whole exterior is oozing with gunk and that the Deacons are leaking tendrils from their eyes, freaky shit.

in ds3 there's hollows turning into trees and undead turning into dragons later on at the mausoleum. it's the world anticipating the fire fading and a return to natural order. now angels I'm not sure about but it has something to do with lothric since that's where all the pilgrims are trying to get and they use the same light miracles that winged knights use.

I consider Wolnir not being next to the Profaned Flame to be the biggest injustice to the original lore.

Ocelot was a victim of censorship. His animations are still present within the game’s files. He was originally stuck to Oceiros’ arm and would be smashed repeatedly against the ground in the second phase. Like with Mergo in Bloodborne, they couldn’t portray graphic violence against babies.

GREATSWORD WAS MY WIFE IN 1 AND 2 BUT WHEN I GOT TO 3 I GAVE THE DARK KNIGHT GREATSWORD A TRY AND I'M REALLY CONFLICTED OVER WHETHER I SHOULD USE IT OR THE GREATSWORD BECAUSE IT'S PRETTY GOOD

So who exactly was Manus? We now know he wasn’t the Pygmy Lord.

The original sound file implies Ocelot actually "survives" being crushed repeatedly, implying he truly does have nothing to fear.

Yup, that's me. You're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation

Attached: file.png (1280x720, 1.34M)

The original Fertive pygmy. I don't see how the Pygmy lords discredit this notion.
Does cucking to Gwyn sound like something the original father of all human kind would do?

Yeah but nips have a real issue with violence against babies. If only the west did too.

Can someone give me the run down on the Queen of Lothric and Gertrude?

ALL THE BLACK KNIGHT WEAPONS ARE PRETTY FIRE (GEDDIT), THEY'RE ON THE HEAVY END OF THEIR WEIGHT TYPES BUT MAKE UP FOR IT WITH THE DAMAGE-MODIFIER AGAINST DEMONS, GOOD SCALING, GOOD RANGE (ESPECIALLY WITH THE POLE-WEAPONS AND THE UGS), AND VERY GOOD STAMINA-PER-SWING CONSUMPTION FOR THEIR ACTUAL WEIGHT

IF IN DOUBT TRY THEM BOTH FOR A WHILE AND SEE WHICH ONE YOU PREFER IN NORMAL ADVENTURING OR JUST PICK WHICHEVER YOU LIKE THE LOOKS OF BETTER

A primeval man that got exhumed and tortured by the degenerates in Oolacile, and literally went berserk when they took his keepsake away from him.
So much humanity going apeshit that it exploded into the horns in his back, and sunk the whole town into the ground.
He's the source of the Abyss, and it's safe to say that he was important because his burial site is adorned like a paleolithic burial site.

Item descriptions say Manus was once a man. And the Pygmy Lords having the dark soul makes it clear that they inherited it from the Furtive Pygmy. Gwyn probably bought him off with Fillianore, who was likely gang raped by pygmies. So Manus is probably someone else

The Furtive Pygmy's thing was always playing the long game and he was well aware Dark would win just by virtue of entropy

WILL DO THANK YOU FOR THE ADVICE
I CANNOT CONDONE INFIDELITY BUT THE VERSATILITY OF THE BKGS'S MOVESET GOT ME GOOD
GOT ME REAL GOOD

YOUR WIFE WILL UNDERSTAND THAT YOU'VE GOT A TOUCH OF THE SCORCH FEVER AND YOU NEED A NIGHT OUT ON THE BLACK SIDE ONCE IN A WHILE, SHE WOULD NOT BE YOUR WIFE IF SHE DID NOT UNDERSTAND

Attached: file.png (1920x1080, 2.79M)

How are the pygmy lords not men? They''re short and gaunt, but that's perhaps what early humans resembled.

I shall...partake...in the feast

Yeah

They’re the ancestors of men, not men themselves. The Ringed Knights, actuall early men, are much bigger than the pygmies. So maybe when the pygmies raped Fillianore, who’s huge, the offspring were human-size?

The bulk of the last dlc was at land's end. The final fight launched you to time's end. Note the lightning during the final phase is white, not yellow. unique to the series. All the gods are dead.

After the fight the sky is dark. All the stars expired.

HUNGRY NIGGAS

>So maybe when the pygmies raped Fillianore

Attached: 1563645433069.jpg (200x146, 6K)

Think of it like the LCL from NGE.
The dark is absolute peace, without any suffering. But while the light brings suffering, it also brings goodness to contrast it.
“Fire brings disparity”, remember?
Gwynn=Shinji

Why else did Gwyn give his daughter? If not sex, what else would the pygmies even do with Fillianore? Stare at her pretty face? Give me a break. There was dark soul-bukkake shit going down in the Ringed City. That’s why Gwyn had promised to rescue her.

ELDEN RING

Attached: 6F12A21D-3E9D-443F-8FE2-B2FFB74943CE.jpg (1622x2046, 456K)

It's too bad we can't time travel in dark souls 3.

Attached: Look_Skyward.png (95x115, 8K)

Gimme a fun build to play through 3 with

Jack of all trades pyromancer with 50 INT/FAI, keep that one candlestick or whatever it was that lets you cast both miracles and sorceries with it alongside your pyromancy flame and dump enough STR/DEX/defense that you can equip whatever sword, shield and/or greatsword you want for dark or chaos infusion

Heysel Pick for a fun challenge
Vordts fuckoff hammer for the easiest experience possible

Attached: CS2dA13.jpg (960x540, 194K)

>this thread

Attached: 77.jpg (1085x417, 71K)

How many swamps is elden ring going to have?

Dark is stability, stagnation, obsession, deep, love, and hate. Light is sterile and shallow altruism.

I DOUBT YOU COULD EVEN IMAGINE

You might be on to something user, why else would she have a giant egg?

that's midirs lil egg

I'd kill just to bust a fat one inside that cloaca

Dark is only as good or bad as humanity is. It’s an essential part of creation that all humans were given a right to
The fault lies in Gwyn, who made the Dark go haywire through the Darksign

What's the lore on people turning into wood in ds3?
Those butterfly things and the pilgrims becoming angels for that matter

Give me more same thing or I cry

>DS2 had loads of same thing sprinkled with some bits of unique thing
>DS3 is the same
>DS3 is the bad one

>Its pretty tite

Attached: dancerofborealvalley.jpg (542x559, 31K)

Yeah those whopping two areas (if you can really count Pharros)

Was it ever explained how one becomes undead in the first place?

Basically we're rentering the Age of Ancients and those will become Archtrees

really stretching there aren't you?

I’ll give her my goo

Without the light, humanity is literally nothing but brainless zombies. Uncontrolled Dark has been demonstrated to be a really shit thing again and again in every single game. How can you think that humanity is better off with nothing but Dark?

vocaroo.com/i/s15Z0saP09bP

laughter not long enough

.
5

Are there any good Fillianore doujins?

you stole my 5. at least i have this 9

nice try, NIGGER

check exhentai

damn that's really spot on. nice work user

Attached: 1563243976087.jpg (584x606, 86K)

>exhentai
You mean nhentai

Name a character more based than Sulyvahn

Dark Souls 2 ending explained it best.

Fire and Dark are both shit. Find another way.

...

CAN'T YOU SEE?! FRAMPT AND KAATHE ARE TWO HEADS OF THE SAME HYDRA! YOU'RE BEING PLAYED FROM BOTH ENDS!

Very astute, user.
I relate it strongly to the themes of LOTR too; it's made explicitly clear evil is going to triumph in Middle Earth by the end. The elves are leaving the world (as did the gods in DS) and the glory of the world is fading. But there's still beauty and worth, possibly the greatest of all in persisting to preserve what good exists, rather than submitting to the inevitable and trading the fleeting good for a hollow immortality as Gollum or the wraiths chose.
I'm basically saying I'd put money on Tolkien choosing to link the fire.
Cool art btw. Hadn't seen that yet.

Attached: tuor discovers Gondolin.jpg (1395x983, 486K)

Thats one of my favorite pics of Gondolin

Attached: 1484201423523.png (532x582, 514K)

I've come to make an announcement:

Lord Gwyn is a bitch ass motherfucker. He pissed on my fucking race. That's right, he took his sunlight fucking holy dick out and he pissed on my fucking race and he said his dick was "this big" and I said "that's disgusting".

So I'm making an indictment post in my Book of the Guilty: Lord Gwyn, you got a small dick, its the size of this titanite except way smaller. And guess what? Here's what my dong looks like. That's right baby, all dark, no fire, no light, look at that it looks like two vagrants and a serpent.

He fucked my race so guess what? I'm gonna fuck the Lords. That's right this is what you get, MY SUPER DARK PISS. Except I'm not pissing on the Lords, I'm gonna go higher, I'M PISSING ON THE FLAME. HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT GWYN, I PISSED ON THE FLAME YOU IDIOT!

You have a thousand years before the dark drrrroplets hit the fucking gods, now get out of my fucking sight, before I piss on you too.

Attached: pygmy.png (905x870, 1.2M)

Attached: 1564673104450.jpg (640x1216, 31K)

FUCK Gwyn and FUCK the gods and FUCK the Dancer very hard

Attached: Ahem.png (738x772, 790K)

The undead curse is a semi-random phenomena, you just kind of turn one day while still alive and you're treated as a leper or hunted down afterwards since you risk going hollow. It doesn't crop up until the First Flame is beginning to run dangerously low.

>Why give her Fillanaire
So they can be eternal?
She was creating a time bubble for the ringed city so it wouldn't be affected by falling into the pit.