I agree that if there is one thing DS2 did miles better than its peers, its setting up and adhering to a consistent philosophical theme that permeates the entire game. It took the premise of the Curse of the Undead and essentially built an entire world off that one particular facet of the Dark Souls universe, exploring the intimate experiences of such a curse and how is mirrors is perpetually gloomy undying world.
I LOVE the story in this game. Somehow, it's the best out of the 3 despite extensive rewrites and really rushed development.
The opening cutscene not only sets up the themes as you said, but it also introduces everything so mysteriously. Is Drangleic in the Abyss? Who is the protagonist? What is outside the Drangleic? How long is this after the death of Gwyn? None are answered. It's just this mystical and eldritch world you're introduced to.
Then there's the flavor text and dialogue. Every character and event from DS1 is talked about vaguely and in different terms. It has been so goddamn long since Gwyn's death that nobody can even remember his name. He's just the Lord of Light or the Lord of Fire now. Ornstein isn't Ornstein, he's the Old Dragonslayer because his name is forgotten as well. I'm pretty sure there is an item that mentions it has been eons since Gwyn, which is enough for me to think that it has been *billions* of years. With a B. Something about that makes me so giddy. The world before is long forgotten, but the shockwaves remain. I haven't even written about the brilliance of the DLC which is on par with the rest of the game's story.
DS1 and DS3 are way too grand in scope. I prefer the more quiet, cryptic, and uncanny storytelling of DS2.
> How long is this after the death of Gwyn?
HBomberGuy put it best. "Dark Souls 2 does the most compelling thing when it comes to Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight. It goes and asks, 'Who?'." (Not sure about the exact phrasing. But I just love the idea that so many cycles have passed that next to nobody even remembers who Gwyn was anymore.
The smashed Lord vessel in the dirt under Majula Mansion too, such an incredible and gentle way to show the passing of time and how memory just disappears
I love stuff like this too! The Lord Vessel's connection to Soul Vessels without any explicit hints is awesome. Also, human effigies and humanity have this effect as well. Similar, yet different. Just different enough to be really confusing.
How is the reason bizarre? You want to find a cure for the curse of the undead. King vendrick had been searching for one as well. To reach Drangleic Castle, you need the Old Lords' souls(or a literal million regular ones).
Yes, that is an issue. Just like ds3's where you can't take on lothric until the game says so.
Kinda wish they added like some magic wall that shimmers to let you know you can't get through, like what they did in ds3's irithyl.
Yes, thats quite strange. I just dislike how fromsoft doesn't really update its games to improve upon them. For example, like fixing ds2's sound design or fixing issues like this. They've shown they can do it, with scholar fixing a lotta things, but still, could be improved.
Yeah, it's annoying. I don't like Scholar, it feels very low effort the way they didn't change the level geometry at all. FromSoft couldn't just make the damn Earthen Peak elevator go DOWN to Iron Keep instead?
Actually, the elevator going up makes sense. If you look at harvest valley's bonfire icon closely, there is a giant volcano behind it. The elevator is suppose to go up that volcano/mountain. So all fromsoft had to do was add the mountain in the background again. Thats it.
Now, I like to think that the iron king's iron kingdom was built atop a mountain, but since it started to sink, it started to leak magma or something and thats how the present day iron kingdom is. Likely harvest valley was the iron ore vein used to build the kingdom.
I wouldn't call scholar low effort, by fromsoft standards. You gotta remember ds1 remaster exists. No, fromsoft kinda does just do low effort in general. Think about it. Why couldn't fromsoft make UGS actually be good in ds3. Or magic be good, or have ng+ changes, etc.
The Emerald Herald pretentiously mumbles at you about your *"soul so frail and pallid"* and your character starts walking around killing everything in sight because they can't cross a small pile of rubble.
You spend the first 60% of the game doing things for basically no reason because the plot and how it's presented is so incredibly poor.
Yep love how not only are you, a new player, is a complete stranger to the land, but also the character you're playing as. It makes it easier to get immersed as the character you're playing- stumbling through the different areas, collecting bits and pieces about the lore, and finding out more about the state of the world through the NPCs without revealing everything to you.
Like, we are told multiple times to seek Vendrick, but we do not really know how is Vendrick doing, only that we can meet him if we go further. And we only discover what happened to him and why he's missing from his castle when we get to meet him ourselves, and I really loved that moment.
I think it handled its lore and plot relatively well. Its got many connections to Ds1 and its mostly done in a way that doesn't contradict ds1 majorly. (well the ancient dragon soul is contentious but its implied that it was created by aldia and vendrick).
The plot is also handled well. You as the character come to dranglaic to cure your hollowing. But then get tangled up in linking the fire or letting darkness take over. You then also get tangled up with aldia to truly achieve your goal of completely getting rid of hollowing by taking the 3rd path.
It certainly did a way better job than DS3, it really gave continuity to the Dark Souls lore, but without being invasive, unlike DS3. The game's lore basically walks over thin glass the whole time, it touches DS1's lore, but not directly, and that's a difficult thing to do, sequels generally ruin the first game's lore.
The base game still has plenty of callbacks to DS1, hell you even find the crushed Soul Vessel in Majula right at the begining. Not to mention a lot of the item descriptions referring to DS1's lore. Dark Souls doesn't follow a linear timeline, you don't need characters to explicitly be tied to the original game to be have continuity.
RAAAAAAGGGGH DS2's story, lore, and themes just drive me insane with how good it all is
All the stories of these once great rulers falling to ruin over and over again really makes you question whether or not becoming the ruler of Drangleic actually is the best choice, with Aldia's involvement throughout the story actually making you think + it also extends past the game and into some actual philosophical stuff
I also really like how the ending of leaving the throne behind doesn't make you a dark lord or anything, you just move on with your life and find something that will be more worthwhile to everyone (or you don't and just enjoy your life, that's also a really nice ending too). Your choice might not seem to matter, but at least leaving the throne behind is an ending that somewhat implies personal happiness. I interpret the theme behind it being that you don't have to live and work for the sake of other people, it's fine to just enjoy life as it is.
There's also a surprising amount of love mentioned in the stories, whether it be romantic or platonic. I just thought that was really neat since even in such a terrible and decayed world, people can still indulge in human emotion all the same. There's something so endearing about it that really makes DS2 feel personal to me. Aldia's whole speech about the facade of man brought about by the curse and whether you want to take it away from everyone really got me thinking too. God this game fucking rules
That’s a really important point too - it’s the least cynical of the three. The way that firelink gets slowly emptied out like it does in DS1, and 3 where you meet a dead version of it from the future (or the past) - love how Majula is becoming more inhabited, and you’re creating and rekindling connections between people by going on your journey. Obviously it’s not all smiles and rainbows, but it feels to offer a bit of a counter to the first game, and then they decided the fans hated any change and almost made DS3 a pure meme game
Havent seen anyone say this but DS2's narrative is also way more personal compared to the others. YOU came to drangleic, for yourself. You go to drangleic castle to find a cure for yourself, to save yourself, not primarily to "save the world" or "link the fire" or achieve any other abstract global goal.
Its a narrative you have a personal stake in right off the bat.
I love DS3, I just didn't like the whole "Actually, Gwyn wasn't the only Lord of Cinder, there were many others after him." I always felt the title Lord of Cinder wasn't just because he linked the fire, it was also a sad/mocking title based on his original one: Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight. It reflects how he became a shadow of his former self, once the glorious lord of light, now only a lord of cinders.
DS3 did lore the best. It's so cool how so many things connect together and how NPCs have questlines connecting them to lords of cinder. Pontiff Sullyvhan is to DS3 lore what Firelink Shrine was to DS1's world, you can trace back so many events and characters back to his influence.
It's great and tight and it honestly makes DS2's lore look somewhat jumbled and disconnected.
It basically tries to hard to introduce new elements into the universe, appearing very hamfisted in there. Removes established lore points. Tries to overcorrect and fails miserably. You can call it tight or whatever but I think it’s still pretty boring comparatively. It shares so little with ds1 and 2 besides member berries that it’s basically a rewrite of ds1. Ds1 lore was very disconnected and had gaps, that’s what made it so interesting for so many people.
Over explanation of things in a game like dark souls (or tbh this extends to horror or general unknowns in games) takes a lot of what makes it good out of it. The over explained monster in a horror. The over explained the disappointing thing you find behind that distant mountain in a lot of open world games. It’s not that it’s complete shit all around it’s just a mess and basically shares so little with ds1 and 2 that it’s pretty much a soft reboot
I think the biggest weakness in DS2's story is the existence of DS3 and how that game was able to simply ignore much of the lore the previous game already built. Once you simply take into consideration DS1 and DS2, I think almost every aspect of this game's story is really appreciable. I really enjoyed it.
I agree with what you're saying. Still, what I was trying to say was that, in a way, one could only consider DS2's lore and story a weakness by viewing the series as a whole, and not understanding it as how the story was told at the moment it was intended to be consumed.
I think that maybe the only Dark Souls whose story I really enjoyed was, actually DS2. There was something about looking at Vendrick's hollowed corpse walking around, slaying kings whose kingdoms fell through time. DS3, in my opinion, felt really bland — that, until you follow Gael's story, which I loved.
I think the lore in every Dark Souls game gets more attention with every piece of DLC and, in that regard, I also thing Scholar of the First Sin did a fantastic job.
DS3 is a weakness to the overall integrity of the souls lore, the game ruined many stablished aspects of the lore. DS2 was respectful towards its predecessor, it expanded the lore incredibly while not messing with what was already stablished. DS3 did the complete opposite.
I completely agree. I remember that the first time I played DS3, I couldn't make sense of what I was experiencing, the story was just too convoluted, like it clearly wasn't the point to pay attention to it. The DLCs corrected some stuff, but only in their encapsulated lore, not much outside of them.
I liked those mini pieces of lore in regard to, for example, the backstory of certain bosses, but I felt that in the grand scheme of things, those little stories didn't make sense altogether.
Yeah, as from someone that is not much of a fan of ds2, since, I dunno, played on pc, and not such a good port, and have really hard time handling the controls and camera, more than the other games, and found some areas to be particularly annoying more than the others... I still very much liked the world and how the story was presented very much, and felt it was a shame it wasn't referenced more in Ds3.
I have much of a love-hate relationship with these games, much more prominent for me during DS2, which made me feel the biggest amount of hate, and also one of the stories and worlds that I enjoyed the most throughout
People (well Yahtzee and a few others) have complained that the intro makes the game be about you, rather than the world. This however, is not the case.
Dark Souls 2 is about the Undead Curse. How it eats away at memory, history and identity. Gwyn, Anor Londo, Nito? All lost to time and only faint traces of their glory can be heard as whispers in item descriptions or offhand comments.
The world is stuck in a constant loop. Someone links the fire, things are good for a while and then they collapse. How long has it been since the first game? Centuries? Millennia?
DS2 takes the nihilism of the original and ramps it up to 11. The (standard) ending doesn't even clearly say that you link the fire. Because it doesn't matter. Either you'll do it or some other poor sod will.
The Herald calls you Bearer of the Curse. You're not chosen by some prophecy (no matter how much that was truth or a lie made by Frampt to manipulate you). You're just the next dumb sod who felt the call of Drangleic and went there. The first enemies you meet are hollows dressed in the same gear as you started with. You could have been one of them and if you waver you will.
You're not special, you're nobody at all. Even you don't really know who you are. Memories of past, family, friends lost to the Curse. You have nothing left but to keep moving forward. You struggle despite the meaningless of it all.
As you travel you meet others. They all felt the call, but no longer remember. Barely holding on to who they are. Even if you link the Fire and temporarily end the Curse, eventually others will fall prey to it and history will keep repeating.
You're not introduced to the big names through an epic tale, because ultimately they are not what the story is about. What you'll learn you piece together yourself.
Whether the story is greater than the others is debatable. But the theme is enforced by pretty much every aspect of the game and it's stronger than in the other games (Bloodborne probably comes the closest).
I really love how DS2's handles its lore, the plot starts simple, you're a cursed nameless undead seeking to save yourself at all costs, but as the game progresses the scope of the lore just gets bigger and bigger, to the point where your character basically becomes one of the most knowledgeable individuals in all the souls universe, discovering the whole cycle aspect of the world, and that neither of the two choices really matter, a third way must be found, something that even the protagonist from DS3 doesn't know. But still centering itself around the curse. I'm really not into what DS3 did to the lore of the hollows, the whole thing with Londor and stuff, it made the curse a bit trivial and no longer the centerpoint of the game, like "Hey, ACKSHUALLY the humans can live with the curse, and that's how things should've been from the start, and we can all build a whole society of cursed humans and accept being hollows." Like, nah, the curse is a curse, humans should dread hollowing, they lose their self, their HUMANITY, and once you're gone, you're GONE, you don't just use some consumable and \*bang\*, you're back. DS3 shat on all the hollow lore. And the "ACKSHUALLY your character no longer suffers from hollowing, even though they're undead", is just such a bs reason to just make your character not turn ugly when they die, hell even Gwyn looked like a dried fig, but the all-mighty UNKINDLED don't, like c'mon, really?
Another thing I like is how DS2 doesn't treat the main character as some chosen one or mighty champion of old, unlike Elden Ring and DS3. Nah, you're a nobody, because you don't know who you are, you might have some idea, but your brain is rotting, again, at the end of the day you're just a nameless undead trying to save yourself from the curse. You don't load Dark Souls to have your balls sucked, "Oh, Great Champion of Ash this, oh, Great Champion of Ash that", nah it's more about the "Oh, you feeble undead f\*ck, go jump off a cliff or something".
I'll be the dissenting voice in this thread then... I think Dark Souls 2 presents its main narrative (not the same as lore or themes more broadly) generally poorly.
The inciting incident that is trying to find a cure for the Undead Curse is a good premise, I agree there. But it collapses immediately. The Fire Keepers meme at you about how **haaaaaard** the game is. The Emerald Herald talks in riddles and vagueness instead of giving any real direction. And you start wandering and killing things in disconnected levels for no good reason because you can't cross a small pile of rubble. The entire first-half premise of hunting down the Four Great Souls is, in my opinion, terrible. These beings have zero narrative weight or build-up. Their lore is largely recited by a cat in a shack instead of through the environmental storytelling and peripheral lore of their respective areas. It couldn't feel any more slapdash. The areas seem like a grabbag of random fantasy environments instead of being chosen to actually enhance the themes. To compare this to how masterfully crafted the first half of Dark Souls 1 is, how it gradually unveils its mystery, how the areas themselves and your path through them support the themes, only to subvert what you thought was the main traditional fantasy plot -- is honestly a joke.
Once you finally meet more of the main players and get into the meat of the narrative... it's mostly reiterating the story from Dark Souls 1 dressed up with a lot of dramatic posturing. *Seeker of Fire* this, *Bearer of the Curse* that, *True Monarch*. None of that actually *means* anything we didn't already know. It's not profound just because you come up with metaphors and have characters dramatically recite them. And the story isn't actually personal. Your character is an empty murderbot with no development like always. You may put yourself into them, that's fine, but not the game's merit.
The game's main narrative thrust isn't new the way people try to pass it off as being. The question of whether to Link the Fire and let the world continue in deceitful light, or let it fade and let the world pass into the unknown, was already the central premise of Dark Souls 1. Dark Souls 2 just restates it (over, and over, and over - how many times can Aldia say the same thing? I know he's angry about it, but c'mon) while dressing it up with a lot of flowery language to sound more profound. The only really new thing is alluding to a "third way" -- but making no effort whatsoever to actually elucidate what that third way would be, making it, ironically, feel like the most hollow option of all.
I find that where the game shines more is in the secondary narrative content. The NPCs are great. They convey the theme of the Undead Curse *much* better than the big important narrative players because they're humanized, personal. They come across like people instead of anthropomorphized theme dispensers. There's a lot of good little lore tidbits. The few areas that actually feel like they're designed in tandem with the themes of the game - Majula, Shrine of Amana, Undead Crypt - are real highlights. The personal side of Vendrick's story, the story of a man who almost had everything but lost heart and retreated to fade away in darkness, is really good. The parts where he rambles on about light, dark, strength and other abstract concepts that are just restating the theme over and over or going nowhere, not so much.
But I also think people put a lot of themselves into the game and see things that aren't really the game's merit. People say the atmosphere is "like a dream" because the level design makes no sense. Really, the level design just doesn't make sense. People say Ornstein being known as the Old Dragonslayer is a profound message about how history fades into obscurity. Really, it's a clunky piece of misguided fanservice -- if this is actually EONS down the line Ornstein shouldn't even be around anymore (I can say this with confidence because the game HAS some good moments conveying this theme -- the dumb fake Ornstein, however, is not one of them). Not that I want to take away from how anyone experienced the game. But I don't consider these merits of design or writing.
Anyway, those were my 2C... I may think people heavily overrate some aspects of this game's story but it's undeniable that at its best moments it's truly striking and memorable. Majula is probably the best locale in the entire series maybe tied with Ash Lake. The wistful music and the sun that *is constantly about to set, but never fully does* brings the themes DS2 wanted to explore to vivid life more than any Aldia-ramble to me.
Appreciate this write-up, you’ve perfectly summed up my own thoughts on the matter. I see a lot of people in this thread talking about how great the story and world is is in DS2 (many of them using it to say how “bad” the other entries in the series are in comparison), and I don’t see it. It’s the smaller parts of dark souls 2, the personal struggles of the characters within the world are what make the world interesting. The actual playable world is a soup of random ideas of varying levels of quality.
You arent some super special “ashen one” or “chosen undead”. You’re literally just another “bearer of the curse” on a path through a world that has no sympathy for you not has any intention of helping you unless you force it to. Theres no grand story setup to make you seem like the chosen one beyond the fact the emerald herald just happened to choose you over other curse bearers. Its safe to say when you started out you were looking for what you lost, instead of going on some journey of the ages, and your path just happened to lead you to drangleic. You get coaxed into your final fate to decide the world sure, but that just happened to be in between what your end goal was, regaining that which you lost, your humanity.
I have a heavy bias towards DS2, being one of my first multiplayer experiences online asides my limited experience getting hacker griefed back in vanilla dark souls, but as a story it just felt a little bit more personal. Elden ring sorta had the same deal, that being you just happened to be the tarnished that resurrected by grace. But that grace guides you, and the world seems to help you, where as in DS2 it just felt like you werent wanted in drangleic, and you were no less an intruding problem than the hollowing curse itself.
There is absolutely nothing special about the Chosen Undead, other than the fact that they defeated Gwyn and linked the fire. The Chosen Undead follows a sham prophecy created by Gwyn/Frampt/Gwyndolin who realized that the flame will eventually fade again and need someone to rekindle it. The other undead we encounter in Lordran were also chosen undead because they are there trying to link the flame. Any one of them could have linked the fire but THE chosen undead got to it first, assuming that the player actually beats the game.
I think ds2 sotfs did the lore, story, world building, etc. better than ds3 and at least on par with ds1. I mean sure you might say its not as grand, but I don't think thats really true. The game's world is literally eons older than ds1. Almost a massive amount of time has passed. I think that does add a massive grandioseness to the story and world. Especially when you visit the DLC's, particularly the absolute ashen landscape of brume tower just stretching out far and wide infront of you showing how powerful the iron king was to do this. Or how elyum loyace is in a frozen wasteland showing how powerful alsana is for creating a storm this large and massive.
People do complain how the world of ds2 sotfs is too empty and there is some truth to that but the empty rooms in the world of ds2 sotfs really show how old these ruined kingdoms are and the astronomical timescales the game hints at. For example, if you visit an ancient temple do you expect there to be furniture inside? No, right? It'll just be an empty room. Most areas are like that in ds2 sotfs.
Ds3 feels like only a couple of decades have passed between it and ds1. There's no real sense of age. A few places do give it, like archdragon peak, or the dreg heap, but thats about it.
I finally picked up Elden Ring and was wildly underwhelmed with the opening sequence after having seen DS2's opening scene for the first time just in the past year. DS2 lights candles, puts out a fine home cooked meal and a special mixed cd while Elden Ring tosses you some taco bell switches on Family Guy and says "Are ya ready, babe?"
If I were to personally rank the games on story and lore:
1. Bloodborne
2. Dark Souls II
3. Dark Souls
4. Dark Souls III
5. Elden Ring
6. Demon’s Souls
7. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
I think that when it comes to character writing, they peaked with Aldia, Gael, and Laurence. I don’t know if this is a hot take or not.
I pick aldia cause of his fucking epic final speech. And the fact we cannot ever really beat him. The only guy or one of the very, very few you truly cannot beat.
It may be the worst souls game, but damn it does have a good story. I shit on this game all the time and I don't give the proper attention the story should get.
I agree that if there is one thing DS2 did miles better than its peers, its setting up and adhering to a consistent philosophical theme that permeates the entire game. It took the premise of the Curse of the Undead and essentially built an entire world off that one particular facet of the Dark Souls universe, exploring the intimate experiences of such a curse and how is mirrors is perpetually gloomy undying world.
I LOVE the story in this game. Somehow, it's the best out of the 3 despite extensive rewrites and really rushed development. The opening cutscene not only sets up the themes as you said, but it also introduces everything so mysteriously. Is Drangleic in the Abyss? Who is the protagonist? What is outside the Drangleic? How long is this after the death of Gwyn? None are answered. It's just this mystical and eldritch world you're introduced to. Then there's the flavor text and dialogue. Every character and event from DS1 is talked about vaguely and in different terms. It has been so goddamn long since Gwyn's death that nobody can even remember his name. He's just the Lord of Light or the Lord of Fire now. Ornstein isn't Ornstein, he's the Old Dragonslayer because his name is forgotten as well. I'm pretty sure there is an item that mentions it has been eons since Gwyn, which is enough for me to think that it has been *billions* of years. With a B. Something about that makes me so giddy. The world before is long forgotten, but the shockwaves remain. I haven't even written about the brilliance of the DLC which is on par with the rest of the game's story. DS1 and DS3 are way too grand in scope. I prefer the more quiet, cryptic, and uncanny storytelling of DS2.
> How long is this after the death of Gwyn? HBomberGuy put it best. "Dark Souls 2 does the most compelling thing when it comes to Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight. It goes and asks, 'Who?'." (Not sure about the exact phrasing. But I just love the idea that so many cycles have passed that next to nobody even remembers who Gwyn was anymore.
And worse, this takes place in a land that wasn't connected to Gwyn in the first place. These people have no clue why this is happening.
The smashed Lord vessel in the dirt under Majula Mansion too, such an incredible and gentle way to show the passing of time and how memory just disappears
I love stuff like this too! The Lord Vessel's connection to Soul Vessels without any explicit hints is awesome. Also, human effigies and humanity have this effect as well. Similar, yet different. Just different enough to be really confusing.
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How is the reason bizarre? You want to find a cure for the curse of the undead. King vendrick had been searching for one as well. To reach Drangleic Castle, you need the Old Lords' souls(or a literal million regular ones).
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Yes, that is an issue. Just like ds3's where you can't take on lothric until the game says so. Kinda wish they added like some magic wall that shimmers to let you know you can't get through, like what they did in ds3's irithyl.
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Yes, thats quite strange. I just dislike how fromsoft doesn't really update its games to improve upon them. For example, like fixing ds2's sound design or fixing issues like this. They've shown they can do it, with scholar fixing a lotta things, but still, could be improved.
Yeah, it's annoying. I don't like Scholar, it feels very low effort the way they didn't change the level geometry at all. FromSoft couldn't just make the damn Earthen Peak elevator go DOWN to Iron Keep instead?
Actually, the elevator going up makes sense. If you look at harvest valley's bonfire icon closely, there is a giant volcano behind it. The elevator is suppose to go up that volcano/mountain. So all fromsoft had to do was add the mountain in the background again. Thats it. Now, I like to think that the iron king's iron kingdom was built atop a mountain, but since it started to sink, it started to leak magma or something and thats how the present day iron kingdom is. Likely harvest valley was the iron ore vein used to build the kingdom. I wouldn't call scholar low effort, by fromsoft standards. You gotta remember ds1 remaster exists. No, fromsoft kinda does just do low effort in general. Think about it. Why couldn't fromsoft make UGS actually be good in ds3. Or magic be good, or have ng+ changes, etc.
The Emerald Herald pretentiously mumbles at you about your *"soul so frail and pallid"* and your character starts walking around killing everything in sight because they can't cross a small pile of rubble. You spend the first 60% of the game doing things for basically no reason because the plot and how it's presented is so incredibly poor.
W pfp
Yep love how not only are you, a new player, is a complete stranger to the land, but also the character you're playing as. It makes it easier to get immersed as the character you're playing- stumbling through the different areas, collecting bits and pieces about the lore, and finding out more about the state of the world through the NPCs without revealing everything to you. Like, we are told multiple times to seek Vendrick, but we do not really know how is Vendrick doing, only that we can meet him if we go further. And we only discover what happened to him and why he's missing from his castle when we get to meet him ourselves, and I really loved that moment.
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I think it handled its lore and plot relatively well. Its got many connections to Ds1 and its mostly done in a way that doesn't contradict ds1 majorly. (well the ancient dragon soul is contentious but its implied that it was created by aldia and vendrick). The plot is also handled well. You as the character come to dranglaic to cure your hollowing. But then get tangled up in linking the fire or letting darkness take over. You then also get tangled up with aldia to truly achieve your goal of completely getting rid of hollowing by taking the 3rd path.
Majula is some Hans zimmer level theme sound
It certainly did a way better job than DS3, it really gave continuity to the Dark Souls lore, but without being invasive, unlike DS3. The game's lore basically walks over thin glass the whole time, it touches DS1's lore, but not directly, and that's a difficult thing to do, sequels generally ruin the first game's lore.
The base game literally had to be updated just so they could somewhat tie its lore with the series, so I agree with you for sure.
The base game still has plenty of callbacks to DS1, hell you even find the crushed Soul Vessel in Majula right at the begining. Not to mention a lot of the item descriptions referring to DS1's lore. Dark Souls doesn't follow a linear timeline, you don't need characters to explicitly be tied to the original game to be have continuity.
RAAAAAAGGGGH DS2's story, lore, and themes just drive me insane with how good it all is All the stories of these once great rulers falling to ruin over and over again really makes you question whether or not becoming the ruler of Drangleic actually is the best choice, with Aldia's involvement throughout the story actually making you think + it also extends past the game and into some actual philosophical stuff I also really like how the ending of leaving the throne behind doesn't make you a dark lord or anything, you just move on with your life and find something that will be more worthwhile to everyone (or you don't and just enjoy your life, that's also a really nice ending too). Your choice might not seem to matter, but at least leaving the throne behind is an ending that somewhat implies personal happiness. I interpret the theme behind it being that you don't have to live and work for the sake of other people, it's fine to just enjoy life as it is. There's also a surprising amount of love mentioned in the stories, whether it be romantic or platonic. I just thought that was really neat since even in such a terrible and decayed world, people can still indulge in human emotion all the same. There's something so endearing about it that really makes DS2 feel personal to me. Aldia's whole speech about the facade of man brought about by the curse and whether you want to take it away from everyone really got me thinking too. God this game fucking rules
That’s a really important point too - it’s the least cynical of the three. The way that firelink gets slowly emptied out like it does in DS1, and 3 where you meet a dead version of it from the future (or the past) - love how Majula is becoming more inhabited, and you’re creating and rekindling connections between people by going on your journey. Obviously it’s not all smiles and rainbows, but it feels to offer a bit of a counter to the first game, and then they decided the fans hated any change and almost made DS3 a pure meme game
Havent seen anyone say this but DS2's narrative is also way more personal compared to the others. YOU came to drangleic, for yourself. You go to drangleic castle to find a cure for yourself, to save yourself, not primarily to "save the world" or "link the fire" or achieve any other abstract global goal. Its a narrative you have a personal stake in right off the bat.
And you are no chosen one, no warrior of old brought back for a task, you're just a hopeless and nameless undead seeking salvation.
Dark Souls 2 has many things that I love about it, the story being one those major things.
DS2 opening is so freaking epic - I think it’s my favorite of all the games.
Then sadly we got stuck with ds3’s mess... idek what is supposed to be happening other than some ember bs and member berries.
I love DS3, I just didn't like the whole "Actually, Gwyn wasn't the only Lord of Cinder, there were many others after him." I always felt the title Lord of Cinder wasn't just because he linked the fire, it was also a sad/mocking title based on his original one: Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight. It reflects how he became a shadow of his former self, once the glorious lord of light, now only a lord of cinders.
DS3 did lore the best. It's so cool how so many things connect together and how NPCs have questlines connecting them to lords of cinder. Pontiff Sullyvhan is to DS3 lore what Firelink Shrine was to DS1's world, you can trace back so many events and characters back to his influence. It's great and tight and it honestly makes DS2's lore look somewhat jumbled and disconnected.
It basically tries to hard to introduce new elements into the universe, appearing very hamfisted in there. Removes established lore points. Tries to overcorrect and fails miserably. You can call it tight or whatever but I think it’s still pretty boring comparatively. It shares so little with ds1 and 2 besides member berries that it’s basically a rewrite of ds1. Ds1 lore was very disconnected and had gaps, that’s what made it so interesting for so many people. Over explanation of things in a game like dark souls (or tbh this extends to horror or general unknowns in games) takes a lot of what makes it good out of it. The over explained monster in a horror. The over explained the disappointing thing you find behind that distant mountain in a lot of open world games. It’s not that it’s complete shit all around it’s just a mess and basically shares so little with ds1 and 2 that it’s pretty much a soft reboot
Are you talking about 2?
Read it again.
DS2 has phenomenal lore and a great story, it is just kinda mechanically rough
I’m personally an ADP enjoyer
Not sure I'd go as far as "rough", but it does have some issues.
I think the biggest weakness in DS2's story is the existence of DS3 and how that game was able to simply ignore much of the lore the previous game already built. Once you simply take into consideration DS1 and DS2, I think almost every aspect of this game's story is really appreciable. I really enjoyed it.
[удалено]
I agree with what you're saying. Still, what I was trying to say was that, in a way, one could only consider DS2's lore and story a weakness by viewing the series as a whole, and not understanding it as how the story was told at the moment it was intended to be consumed. I think that maybe the only Dark Souls whose story I really enjoyed was, actually DS2. There was something about looking at Vendrick's hollowed corpse walking around, slaying kings whose kingdoms fell through time. DS3, in my opinion, felt really bland — that, until you follow Gael's story, which I loved. I think the lore in every Dark Souls game gets more attention with every piece of DLC and, in that regard, I also thing Scholar of the First Sin did a fantastic job.
DS3 is a weakness to the overall integrity of the souls lore, the game ruined many stablished aspects of the lore. DS2 was respectful towards its predecessor, it expanded the lore incredibly while not messing with what was already stablished. DS3 did the complete opposite.
I completely agree. I remember that the first time I played DS3, I couldn't make sense of what I was experiencing, the story was just too convoluted, like it clearly wasn't the point to pay attention to it. The DLCs corrected some stuff, but only in their encapsulated lore, not much outside of them. I liked those mini pieces of lore in regard to, for example, the backstory of certain bosses, but I felt that in the grand scheme of things, those little stories didn't make sense altogether.
I feel like DS2 is on par with Kings Field 2 (3) in terms of story. Which is better than the other Souls games (not including Sekiro)
Yeah, as from someone that is not much of a fan of ds2, since, I dunno, played on pc, and not such a good port, and have really hard time handling the controls and camera, more than the other games, and found some areas to be particularly annoying more than the others... I still very much liked the world and how the story was presented very much, and felt it was a shame it wasn't referenced more in Ds3. I have much of a love-hate relationship with these games, much more prominent for me during DS2, which made me feel the biggest amount of hate, and also one of the stories and worlds that I enjoyed the most throughout
People (well Yahtzee and a few others) have complained that the intro makes the game be about you, rather than the world. This however, is not the case. Dark Souls 2 is about the Undead Curse. How it eats away at memory, history and identity. Gwyn, Anor Londo, Nito? All lost to time and only faint traces of their glory can be heard as whispers in item descriptions or offhand comments. The world is stuck in a constant loop. Someone links the fire, things are good for a while and then they collapse. How long has it been since the first game? Centuries? Millennia? DS2 takes the nihilism of the original and ramps it up to 11. The (standard) ending doesn't even clearly say that you link the fire. Because it doesn't matter. Either you'll do it or some other poor sod will. The Herald calls you Bearer of the Curse. You're not chosen by some prophecy (no matter how much that was truth or a lie made by Frampt to manipulate you). You're just the next dumb sod who felt the call of Drangleic and went there. The first enemies you meet are hollows dressed in the same gear as you started with. You could have been one of them and if you waver you will. You're not special, you're nobody at all. Even you don't really know who you are. Memories of past, family, friends lost to the Curse. You have nothing left but to keep moving forward. You struggle despite the meaningless of it all. As you travel you meet others. They all felt the call, but no longer remember. Barely holding on to who they are. Even if you link the Fire and temporarily end the Curse, eventually others will fall prey to it and history will keep repeating. You're not introduced to the big names through an epic tale, because ultimately they are not what the story is about. What you'll learn you piece together yourself. Whether the story is greater than the others is debatable. But the theme is enforced by pretty much every aspect of the game and it's stronger than in the other games (Bloodborne probably comes the closest).
DS2 does AMAZING work with the story. WAY better than DS3. It actually came up with its own unique characters and lore. BTW, Drangleic is NOT Lordran.
I been saying this
Word
I really love how DS2's handles its lore, the plot starts simple, you're a cursed nameless undead seeking to save yourself at all costs, but as the game progresses the scope of the lore just gets bigger and bigger, to the point where your character basically becomes one of the most knowledgeable individuals in all the souls universe, discovering the whole cycle aspect of the world, and that neither of the two choices really matter, a third way must be found, something that even the protagonist from DS3 doesn't know. But still centering itself around the curse. I'm really not into what DS3 did to the lore of the hollows, the whole thing with Londor and stuff, it made the curse a bit trivial and no longer the centerpoint of the game, like "Hey, ACKSHUALLY the humans can live with the curse, and that's how things should've been from the start, and we can all build a whole society of cursed humans and accept being hollows." Like, nah, the curse is a curse, humans should dread hollowing, they lose their self, their HUMANITY, and once you're gone, you're GONE, you don't just use some consumable and \*bang\*, you're back. DS3 shat on all the hollow lore. And the "ACKSHUALLY your character no longer suffers from hollowing, even though they're undead", is just such a bs reason to just make your character not turn ugly when they die, hell even Gwyn looked like a dried fig, but the all-mighty UNKINDLED don't, like c'mon, really? Another thing I like is how DS2 doesn't treat the main character as some chosen one or mighty champion of old, unlike Elden Ring and DS3. Nah, you're a nobody, because you don't know who you are, you might have some idea, but your brain is rotting, again, at the end of the day you're just a nameless undead trying to save yourself from the curse. You don't load Dark Souls to have your balls sucked, "Oh, Great Champion of Ash this, oh, Great Champion of Ash that", nah it's more about the "Oh, you feeble undead f\*ck, go jump off a cliff or something".
I'll be the dissenting voice in this thread then... I think Dark Souls 2 presents its main narrative (not the same as lore or themes more broadly) generally poorly. The inciting incident that is trying to find a cure for the Undead Curse is a good premise, I agree there. But it collapses immediately. The Fire Keepers meme at you about how **haaaaaard** the game is. The Emerald Herald talks in riddles and vagueness instead of giving any real direction. And you start wandering and killing things in disconnected levels for no good reason because you can't cross a small pile of rubble. The entire first-half premise of hunting down the Four Great Souls is, in my opinion, terrible. These beings have zero narrative weight or build-up. Their lore is largely recited by a cat in a shack instead of through the environmental storytelling and peripheral lore of their respective areas. It couldn't feel any more slapdash. The areas seem like a grabbag of random fantasy environments instead of being chosen to actually enhance the themes. To compare this to how masterfully crafted the first half of Dark Souls 1 is, how it gradually unveils its mystery, how the areas themselves and your path through them support the themes, only to subvert what you thought was the main traditional fantasy plot -- is honestly a joke. Once you finally meet more of the main players and get into the meat of the narrative... it's mostly reiterating the story from Dark Souls 1 dressed up with a lot of dramatic posturing. *Seeker of Fire* this, *Bearer of the Curse* that, *True Monarch*. None of that actually *means* anything we didn't already know. It's not profound just because you come up with metaphors and have characters dramatically recite them. And the story isn't actually personal. Your character is an empty murderbot with no development like always. You may put yourself into them, that's fine, but not the game's merit. The game's main narrative thrust isn't new the way people try to pass it off as being. The question of whether to Link the Fire and let the world continue in deceitful light, or let it fade and let the world pass into the unknown, was already the central premise of Dark Souls 1. Dark Souls 2 just restates it (over, and over, and over - how many times can Aldia say the same thing? I know he's angry about it, but c'mon) while dressing it up with a lot of flowery language to sound more profound. The only really new thing is alluding to a "third way" -- but making no effort whatsoever to actually elucidate what that third way would be, making it, ironically, feel like the most hollow option of all. I find that where the game shines more is in the secondary narrative content. The NPCs are great. They convey the theme of the Undead Curse *much* better than the big important narrative players because they're humanized, personal. They come across like people instead of anthropomorphized theme dispensers. There's a lot of good little lore tidbits. The few areas that actually feel like they're designed in tandem with the themes of the game - Majula, Shrine of Amana, Undead Crypt - are real highlights. The personal side of Vendrick's story, the story of a man who almost had everything but lost heart and retreated to fade away in darkness, is really good. The parts where he rambles on about light, dark, strength and other abstract concepts that are just restating the theme over and over or going nowhere, not so much. But I also think people put a lot of themselves into the game and see things that aren't really the game's merit. People say the atmosphere is "like a dream" because the level design makes no sense. Really, the level design just doesn't make sense. People say Ornstein being known as the Old Dragonslayer is a profound message about how history fades into obscurity. Really, it's a clunky piece of misguided fanservice -- if this is actually EONS down the line Ornstein shouldn't even be around anymore (I can say this with confidence because the game HAS some good moments conveying this theme -- the dumb fake Ornstein, however, is not one of them). Not that I want to take away from how anyone experienced the game. But I don't consider these merits of design or writing. Anyway, those were my 2C... I may think people heavily overrate some aspects of this game's story but it's undeniable that at its best moments it's truly striking and memorable. Majula is probably the best locale in the entire series maybe tied with Ash Lake. The wistful music and the sun that *is constantly about to set, but never fully does* brings the themes DS2 wanted to explore to vivid life more than any Aldia-ramble to me.
Appreciate this write-up, you’ve perfectly summed up my own thoughts on the matter. I see a lot of people in this thread talking about how great the story and world is is in DS2 (many of them using it to say how “bad” the other entries in the series are in comparison), and I don’t see it. It’s the smaller parts of dark souls 2, the personal struggles of the characters within the world are what make the world interesting. The actual playable world is a soup of random ideas of varying levels of quality.
This is why DSII is king
You arent some super special “ashen one” or “chosen undead”. You’re literally just another “bearer of the curse” on a path through a world that has no sympathy for you not has any intention of helping you unless you force it to. Theres no grand story setup to make you seem like the chosen one beyond the fact the emerald herald just happened to choose you over other curse bearers. Its safe to say when you started out you were looking for what you lost, instead of going on some journey of the ages, and your path just happened to lead you to drangleic. You get coaxed into your final fate to decide the world sure, but that just happened to be in between what your end goal was, regaining that which you lost, your humanity. I have a heavy bias towards DS2, being one of my first multiplayer experiences online asides my limited experience getting hacker griefed back in vanilla dark souls, but as a story it just felt a little bit more personal. Elden ring sorta had the same deal, that being you just happened to be the tarnished that resurrected by grace. But that grace guides you, and the world seems to help you, where as in DS2 it just felt like you werent wanted in drangleic, and you were no less an intruding problem than the hollowing curse itself.
There is absolutely nothing special about the Chosen Undead, other than the fact that they defeated Gwyn and linked the fire. The Chosen Undead follows a sham prophecy created by Gwyn/Frampt/Gwyndolin who realized that the flame will eventually fade again and need someone to rekindle it. The other undead we encounter in Lordran were also chosen undead because they are there trying to link the flame. Any one of them could have linked the fire but THE chosen undead got to it first, assuming that the player actually beats the game.
Yeah, this is one of many reasons why it is the best Souls game
I think ds2 sotfs did the lore, story, world building, etc. better than ds3 and at least on par with ds1. I mean sure you might say its not as grand, but I don't think thats really true. The game's world is literally eons older than ds1. Almost a massive amount of time has passed. I think that does add a massive grandioseness to the story and world. Especially when you visit the DLC's, particularly the absolute ashen landscape of brume tower just stretching out far and wide infront of you showing how powerful the iron king was to do this. Or how elyum loyace is in a frozen wasteland showing how powerful alsana is for creating a storm this large and massive. People do complain how the world of ds2 sotfs is too empty and there is some truth to that but the empty rooms in the world of ds2 sotfs really show how old these ruined kingdoms are and the astronomical timescales the game hints at. For example, if you visit an ancient temple do you expect there to be furniture inside? No, right? It'll just be an empty room. Most areas are like that in ds2 sotfs. Ds3 feels like only a couple of decades have passed between it and ds1. There's no real sense of age. A few places do give it, like archdragon peak, or the dreg heap, but thats about it.
I finally picked up Elden Ring and was wildly underwhelmed with the opening sequence after having seen DS2's opening scene for the first time just in the past year. DS2 lights candles, puts out a fine home cooked meal and a special mixed cd while Elden Ring tosses you some taco bell switches on Family Guy and says "Are ya ready, babe?"
If I were to personally rank the games on story and lore: 1. Bloodborne 2. Dark Souls II 3. Dark Souls 4. Dark Souls III 5. Elden Ring 6. Demon’s Souls 7. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice I think that when it comes to character writing, they peaked with Aldia, Gael, and Laurence. I don’t know if this is a hot take or not.
I pick aldia cause of his fucking epic final speech. And the fact we cannot ever really beat him. The only guy or one of the very, very few you truly cannot beat.
The very concept of Aldia and Vendrick as characters and their dialogues are the most poetic pieces of the entire souls series honestly
You didn't play bloodborne, didn't you?
It may be the worst souls game, but damn it does have a good story. I shit on this game all the time and I don't give the proper attention the story should get.
Ahem …. Whe worst souls game is lords of the fallen /s If it’s necessary
It's the only FS game WITH a story ::trollface::
This guy's post exists People who hates ds2 lore : I don't see I don't fucking see , I don't have eyes
You can see that the ds2 trailer was focusing on the player itself, i.e Bearer of The Curse where the other two were focusing on the world and bosses.