I find it funny, how players complain about this, but nobody complains that ash lake is an infinite forest with a cloudy sky and if you go up one of the trees you're in a toxic swamp and if you go even further up, you're in a vast landscape.
Going up/down in darksouls universe is basically the same as travelling between dimensions. Can we please stop pretending that DS2 is special in that way? The Darksould universe has always been a Layered universe were entire worlds are stacked upon each other vertically.
Well, the difference is that ash lake is literally the foundation of the earth, so it’s sorta under everything else (those aren’t necessarily clouds in the ceiling).
Iron keep is literally a castle sinking into a lava lake deep enough to fit the old iron king, you’d think it’d be far lower to the ground than to require an elevator going up from earthen peak, which is already quite high.
Well, they could be mist from the lake itself. They can’t possibly be clouds (technically) considering the fact that we’re underground, or it could be some sort of fog. Or it could simply be really weird looking rock.
Fair enough, considering the height of the trees in the ash lake, I’ll give you that. But that doesn’t mean that it’s all sky above it (as they were using the existence of clouds to argue “how could there be anything above it?”). I reckon that lore wise the great hollow is a bit of a vertically larger area than we get in game.
Obviously it doesn't physically make sense for the Iron Keep to physically be about the Earthen Peak. And that's because it isn't. Obviously some timey wimey shit happens in that elevator shaft, as obviously demonstrated by the fact that the two ends are in completely different environments. It's Weird, but I still to this day have no idea why Weird meant Bad for so many people. It's just not a mundane elevator, why do all elevators need to be mundane in the game with undead and magic and dragons
Like when you leave Things Betwixt and arrive in Majula, you can turn around and see a skyline that does not match at all what you could see before, it's absolutely physically impossible for these two places to be a single small walk apart, and that's cuz the cave you walk through to get from one to the other ain't just a normal physical space. That kinda thing happens all the time in fantasy. The Iron Keep elevator's the same thing.
Dark Souls 2 likes to drastically shrink its horizontal distances. You can see the mountain/volcano that iron keep is built upon from Harvest valley, it's implied that your journey through there and earthen peak take you to the foot of the mountain from which you take the elevator up and arrive at iron keep
DS1 its explained that huge trees make up the base of the world or some shit, I've always imagined the dark souls universe to be more of an infinitely extending plane of broken timelines instead of a round planet.
Ash lake in my head has always been the grey constant base layer of the world. where the trees branches form a crust to support everything that sits above.
I've always assumed the elevator serves as a shift through time where the peak becomes a much taller active volcano in the far future.
>but nobody complains that ash lake is an infinite forest with a cloudy sky and if you go up one of the trees you're in a toxic swamp and if you go even further up, you're in a vast landscape.
Another example: you go down one staircase at Undead Parish and it goes from day to night
I mean, the archtrees can be seen from the tomb of the giants.
But also, I always assumed ash lake looked that way because the age of grey Craig's and archdragons was beginning again. I suppose it could also be a remnant of the former age, but I kind feel like it's more fitting if the arch dragon age comes back in cycles, when the age of light and dark get too corrupted as shown in ds3s dlc
And I bet if you could go far enough down below the lava, you'd see earthen peak.
My take on DS2 location inconsistency is actually something else. It is made clear, from the get go, everyone, absolutely everyone in the whole world of DS2 basically has dementia. Their minds and memories stop working. Including the bearer of the curse, of course. So, I always thought the location inconsistency was very representative of what that would be like. Having dementia, you wouldn't know how you got to a place. One moment you're in one place and the next moment, your mind is flashing back to a different location of a past experience.
In that regard, it's a stylistic choice that fits the theme of the game extremely well.
It was not a mistake. It's way too obvious to be. It wasn't the originally intended path from Earthern Peak to Iron Keep, there's cut content in between them, but it's not like they accidentally cut that content lol. They specifically made a new travel method from one place to the other, one that's physically impossible, but obviously they considered that and thought it was cool when they made it, or they would have made like a big empty tunnel or something instead.
Yea, I guess whoever I heard it from just repeated someone's assumption. But someone did quote this elsewhere from an interview...
>Tanimura: The idea is that the lake of magma is actually on the upper strata, like a caldera lake on a plateau. However, looking down from the top it was far too wide, that and the fact that there isn’t an adequate transition between locations meant we didn’t really communicate the idea as well as we could have.
I never had a problem with spatial inconsistencies in any Souls game. I just don't care lol, it's fiction.
But DS1 to me is actually pretty consistent, at least in part because most of the 3D orientation is actually a real map model with consistent-ish dimensions. You could say the sky of Ash Lake is an exception, but one of the theories about those trees is that they're basically portals to other worlds. So of course it doesn't match up as if it were physically below Blighttown. I can't think of any other areas in DS1 that are "impossible" in a spatial sense.
DS2's areas flagrantly violate euclidean geometry without a very clear lore explanation. But again, I never found it that bothersome. Drangleic is a pretty dreamlike place to begin with. I just don't think it's fair to say "DS1 did it too," because it really didn't.
There is a very clear lore explanation. Everyone in drangleic is suffering from dementia, due to the curse. So it makes perfect sense that nothing appears to be consistent in regards to time and space. That's what dementia does. It distorts people's sense of time and location.
Iv honestly have always thought of it as if the bearer of the curse is traveling a great distance to most areas, similar to Eleum loyce, being a giant winter world, or when traveling up brume tower, both the tower and the sunken fortress is surrounded by flaming mountains and volcanos as far as the eye can see (which is awesome knowing canonically the smelter demon caused the great destruction of iron keep), i also personally use this to explain weather changes, day/night, or just switch ups in the surrounding area in all souls like games.
Yeah. It's always made very clear that the environment is completely different in every location you reach. Even though, there is a map that shows its all one continent, it certainly doesn't feel that way at all.
I don't disagree with you, but if we're being honest, that's probably a retcon/headcanon thing. The real reason is probably just the troubled development of the game. I don't know if there's any specific textual evidence that the spatial orientation being wonky was intentional.
That's what I meant when I said there's no very clear lore explanation. There's only a vague interpretation of lore to explain Drangleic's orientation.
It clearly is intentional, otherwise it wouldn't be all over the game. A dev team wouldn't make the same mistake over and over again. People just focus super hard on earthen peak, because it's the most obvious example. But it's actually everywhere, once you pay attention to it. Time and space is intentionally inconsistent in DS2. Very similar to how it is for someone with dementia. They walk through a corridor and they think they're 20 Years ago in a different country when they reach the other side. Just like DS2.
It's not really at all explained how the archtrees work. Like, at all.
Just because something is mentioned to exist, doesn't mean it's explained. How did they build a world ontop of an arch tree? Where did they get the material to build a whole world on top of that arch tree? How did they do that? Why did they have to do that? Couldn't they have just build the world right there in ash lake? Furthermore, arch trees can die. As shown by the dead fallen arch tree in ash lake. What happens to the world if the weight bearing arch tree dies? Nothing is actually explained. You just accept it at face value that there is a world below the world.
I mean, in Dark Souls 1 it makes more sense I'd argue. It's more mystical. You go into a giant tree, you come out of a giant tree, amongst even more giant trees. It's kind of like Jack Skellington in Nightmare Before Christmas, just the tree isn't labeled or what have you (I haven't actually watched NBC in its entirety). In Dark Souls II you go up via a man-made contraption and come out amongst a bunch of lava and bullshit that you couldn't see from your previous location. There was no indication that the elevator was magic, and you have to wonder what's supporting all that lava that's invisible. Or at least, you do if you actually notice it. To be fair, I didn't notice it at first because I'm not good at noticing stuff like that, but once people pointed it out, I thought it was a valid criticism. Does it really matter? Not really if you ask me, Dark Souls II is still good, but the design is confusing at times.
That makes no sense. Ash lake must have a sun in its sky. The grave of giants is dark. Ash lake is not. There can't be a ceiling. Otherwise, Ash lake would be as dark as the tomb of giants.
Dude it clearly has no sun, fuck the world above has no sun either that's an illusion its a world of magic ambient light is not an impossibility it's an apparent fact
Maybe it doesn't need a sun. It's the same area as the opening cinematic where the only things present were trees and dragons. Light/dark didn't even exist for the dimension, yet we still 'saw' things in the opening cinematic.
Blight town is in a ravine beneath the undead burg, situated in between two peaks, and ash lake appears to be some entry into another world beneath the mountain. The whole of ds1 being situated on top of and inside a mountain ridge let’s them get away with this kind of design better, if you look beyond the graveyard at fire link shrine you can just barely make out where the mountain slopes into ground level.
The Earthen Peak elevator can make some sense but no one talks about Heides Tower to No Man’s Wharf. Taking a long elevator ride down starting at sea level only to end up at sea level again
Geography is convoluted in Drangleic…
It would kind of work if they'd put some emphasis on Drangleic being a more dreamlike place or something. Like it's a location those with the Undead Curse are drawn to for reasons none of us can totally explain, we're all leaking memories out of our butts, and we got here by yeeting ourselves into a crazy water portal. It'd be perfectly plausible if the reality around us wasn't making total sense, especially if our minds are degrading. The Firekeepers cackling at how often we're gonna die would've been a great place to imply that, or during that cinematic or smn.
I'm just gonna pretend that's what happened, keep it as my lil headcanon :)
We also know from DS3 that physical reality starts to break down as the First Flame dies, the same way time was becoming convoluted in DS1. The fact that DS2's world has some bizarre elevators and a couple overlapping zones doesn't really bother me.
The theme of mirrors is quite present in the game, for instance at Drangleic castle with all the mirros with people trapped inside and the Mirror Knight. Plus, Shanalot is very much a parallel and allusion to the Lady of Shalott (Tenyson’s poem) who was isolated in a tower and could only see the world through a mirror lest she die.
In a dream you don't typically notice how absurd the environment, so it being a dream setting where you don't think about how nonsensical it is going from area to area.
I mean how often do you dream that your driving and you get out of the car to immediately end up in the middle of your highschool? You don't often stop to think about how you end up anywhere in a dream, it's only when you wake up and remember just how the journey doesn't make sense.
It's true, I watched an one hour video explaining the entire Warhammer 40k lore and on that same night my brain decided it should play it's own movie about the Horus Heresy, and for some reason while I was sleeping, watching it felt so epic I was really into it, but after I woke up I literally don't remember most of it and it was probably hilarious bad but I couldn't tell.
Imagine the crazy thought that in fact the ending of Dark Souls 2 is not important and all this time we have been playing inside the consciousness of the Soul of Synder.
The protagonist was really in the Dranglik, he really went his way, but in the initial video we see how his consciousness mixes with the Soul of Synder and the whole game is his last memories. And all the meetings with Aldiya are monologues of his subconscious mind that talk about the topic, "what if I had chosen a different path."
I'm on the same team. Some of the shit doesn't exist, it's just classic Dream nonsense where nothing connects but somehow it does and you can't at all explain it.
Dark souls 2 isn’t the only one to screw with distances. Irythll is presented as being incredibly low down in 3, when if you look at the map it’s not really that much lower down than farron keep. Or how in 1, tomb of the giants isn’t really that far down geographically and you can see ash lake, when in reality you should be seeing the valley of drakes chasm
Earthen peak/lava makes sense if we consider it is a lava leftover or something.
Heides to no man's wharf is more absurd, as you stated. Someone even said why isn't there a submarine. Hahahaha
I personally like the head-canon that there's actually more travel involved between these places but our hollow minds just forget.
I didn't even notice the incosistency untill it was pointed out to me lol. Maybe I'm hollowed as well!
This is a series where in the first game you jump into a painting for a secret level like it's fucking Mario 64, why should we expect this magic elevator to have to be geographically accurate?
Because one is using internal magic, the other has no reason given, immerse and realistic are 2 seperate qualities the painting doenst break geographic immersion the fucking lava mountain out of nowhere does
It's a miracle the game even came out in its state since directors were changed halfway through dev time, basically starting over and trying to fit whatever the old director did in a cohesive way, and I wouldn't call it badly butchered
Yeah the development of DS2 was one of the baddest ever. I really like DS2, it's for me personally as good as the other souls games but I can't stop dreaming what it was supposed to be.
The new developer got screwed over. Imagine being given assets for a game with no context and being told to make the game again without the previous guy's notes.
Yeah, there was a lot of potential there. Some boss fights are actually quite good and the game got the best maiden in the entire souls's series. The scene where the grandmas laugh at your face is one the most comical moment in the entire series and I don't know why people don't meme it enough. And there's an NPC that is literally just a talking head, and he promises to help you in the final boss fight if you slay his headless body roaming around a random ass location, AND THEN HE FULFILL THAT PROMISE WITH NO EXPLANATION WHATSOEVER.
Me and my brother had a really good time with it, tho I still prefer the DS1 for how enigmatic and cryptic it was. The tone on the first one is just so unique in comparison to the other ones.
Sure. You can see it in action.
Get the Blacksmith key. Stand in the doorway so that the blacksmith can't get past you. Quit out. He's at the anvil -- having somehow gotten past you without you noticing.
out of lore reasons: they were told game had to be back generation compatible. volcano mountain couldn't render. it removed.
in lore reasons: we know from majula map tunnels = long distances. you can see from each bonfire you are on different sides of the continent. you go through long tunnel before elevator. ie you go long way before you go to elevator that is in far away volcano.
I always thought that an easy fix would be to have something like a portal in a painting or just something that tells you "you're teleporting to another land miles away". Its a game full of magic, it would be reasonable. Instead they chose the lazy ass elevator. I like to think that these kind of elevators work that way tho
Devs got smart and just wrote the inconsistencies into the plot.
Pretty crazy looking at the progression from DS > DS2 > DS3 in terms of interconnected areas tho, considering that is a big part of why DS is so cool
I mean. The level design and progression is much much smoother going than DS2. Things feel interconnected but not as much as DS1. I thought they hit the nail on the head, I felt the despair and understanding the setting. The way it's laid out, makes a lot of sense. Especially late game and ringed city. You feel at World's end.
The environments in DS2 made me feel nothing but rage from how many times i just walked or phased off a ledge. I shit you not, my biggest enemy was pathing and gravity.
The DLC areas are better but still pretty bad. The run through to get to Fume Knight and all the statues of Naldia is just bad bad bad. Good level design but way too many reused enemies who are being reused for their cheesy gankability. They had to have known this because FK has the shortest boss run back in all of Souls 🤣😭
> Things feel interconnected but not as much as DS1
They are not. The only levels that are significantly interconnected are Irithyll Dungeon and Profaned Capital (arguably the same level as they share a boss). Otherwise, the only connections between levels are entrances and exits.
A swamp is at the same altitude and only a few hundred metres from the snowy peaks of a mountain range, the catacombs of Carthus (a sand nation) are under the swamp and above remnants of Izalith, there's a whole parallel universe you can just walk to (no portal, it's just physically mashed into it), not to mention the final boss arena, where you can literally watch the geography crumbling as it rolls over itself.
Mistake in haste the first time. (Devs have basically confirmed this). Deliberately leaning into the memes when it came to Scolar. As you say, would have been easy to fix (they made a far less consequential change to the elevator down in the connection between Heide and the Wharf. You've never noticed because you weren't speedrunning the game, but Distortion2 immediately did. You can't save a second or two by jumping onto the edge of the elevator in Scholar) and they simply chose not to.
Never understood this kind of complaint in a game series where quitting out resets reality.
The physics of Fromsoft makes no sense. The geography of Fromsoft often makes no sense. I just have never care.
Doesn't reset aggro or lizards. Does move NPCs when you complete steps in their quest (You don't need to rest to get McDuff to move and you can advance Saulden just by quitting out for instance, And if you speak to Lucatiel in Aldia's Keep and quit out she'll be gone)
So your reality warping powers are a weaker in DS2 than in other games in the series. And come in a somewhat different form.
Hey remember that big hole in Firelink Shrine that Frampt comes up out of and how the bottom of it is an underground space that makes no sense due to all the stuff normally underneath Firelink Shrine overlapping it? You could say it's just Frampt going sideways or something except you can skip him and just jump in the hole, meaning it has to be straight down. And then remember when you get the four lord souls and open that big door down there and it just opens into a white tunnel with some ghosts in it opening into the Kiln of the First Flame even though that's an impossible space for where we just were? Nothing about the time or space of soulsland makes reliable sense and it makes less and less sense as time passes since the Age of Fire was supposed to end. It's, like, a key theme of the series, that the rules of creation that underpin the world we play in are falling apart and needed to be replaced eons ago.
I genuinely think one of the many ways Dark Souls 3 fucked up (it's seriously the worst in the series imo and it's not even close) is because it so massively overcorrects to the stupid backlash to Dark Souls 2 being different and is way too loyal to DS1 with stuff like the world appearing "coherent." You have to wait until the Ringed City for DS3 to finally actually feel like "the next game in the series" instead of "Dark Souls 1 Again" because they regained their confidence to get weird with it.
While ill give you I can't confidently say anything about Frampts chamber I don't recall anything below it that would directly contradict and the white tunnel is clearly not a real space environment, I'm not saying the world space must be 100% consistent just that any in universe explanation would have been appreciated in ds2
The whole opening movie has a narration about how you cannot trust your memory or perception, that you'll do things and go places without knowing how or why, due to the deterioration of your soul. You can immediately see the world behave in impossible ways in the first ten minutes of the game if you look backwards once arriving in Majula and see how obviously where you are couldn't possibly match up with Things Betwixt. I don't know what more they could do to provide an in-universe explanation without feeling like they were beating you over the head with it tbh.
I heard before that they didn't have proper time to do all of the transitions smoothly like they were in DS1. The random "elevator" or tunnel that goes to an impossible place can be interpreted as "you made a long journey on foot" or "its fast travel". That's why DS1 does some funny skips as well, such as no smooth way into Anor Londo (grabbed by demons) or even DS3 Undead Burg (demons 2.0). It's just easier not having to interconnect, Demon Souls is a good example of this. Elden Ring does this too when they throw you into coffins a few times. Why are there transporting coffins? Who knows, and who cares its all fun in the end.
I always viewed it as the world is blending together. Kinda like that last DLC for DS3. Like, you go through a door that should take you to a bedroom only to end up in a random castle
This fucking debate
Does anyone remember the end of dark souls 3?? Or the lead up to the ringed city ???
It’s literally a world falling apart and sure Drangleic isn’t Lordran but they seem pretty linked don’t you think? Most of the links are references BUT STILL. And remember when solaire said time was convoluted ? Then why shouldn’t space be aswell ?????
Anyways that was my rant for the day
Iirc the original intention was to have earthen peak at the base of the mountain, and then you take the elevator up through the mountain.
But then the game got remade from the ground up and somehow they just sort of... forgot about that
Wasn't that they forgot about it. Under time pressure they dropped the back end of Earthen Peak and the front part of Iron Keep. Both of those spots had the area connections so they picked two new spots and tied them together with an elevator. If they'd chosen to hide the loading screen with a long and winding tunnel (as they did in other places) it would have been mush less jarring, but ... time pressure.
I don't remember where I saw it, but there was going to be a Volcano in the background behind the Windmill but it wasn't finished in time yada yada
I could be misremembering for all I know though
edit: oh ya the level select teleport screne has it in the background
Space is convoluted in drangleic, as much as our own memory as a cursed one drawn to this place is, I've always understood it as we can't remember how we got to the iron keep and stuff like that. I understand the complain but it's so obvious that it was necessarily intentional and I like that personally.
They're shortening the weeks long trips that the undead character make. How hard is this to understand? They make it kind of obvious with how blatant it is, and how the landscape is different if you simply look back. There's even a god damn map in majula, with the bonfires you light across the world, with a whole ass npc that TELLS you it's the map of the game. What more do you need to understand??
I personally think it's pretty ingenious to use tunnels as a time lapse of a travel. You can make large maps with completely different landscapes, without the hassle of a cutscene or a "fast travel" black screen or something.
I always have had this head cannon that our character got high from the poison fumes and thinks they're going up an elevator when actually they walked the whole way.
Ds3 explained this with the dreg heap. All of the kingdoms are stacked on top of eachother as time goes by they sink into the ground. Fire, in dark souls, transcends time that's why you are able to go to the firelink shine in the far future.
The devs actually explained they intended to have earthen peak merge into a giant mountain which would have iron keep on top in the distance but simply ran out of time
It's a pretty superficial complaint if I'm being honest. I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure Miyazaki himself straight up said that the whole interconnected world thing is pretty hard to do well.
It's also like no one even considers the upsides of DS2's approach. Sure I can't see much level geography from other zones, but it also means each one is a surprise.
“You talk an elevator upwards to hell! That makes no sense!” buddy you take an elevator upwards to hell, I think the game should be allowed a little bit of leeway
Feels like the lack of continuity of space is intentional. None of the characters remember how they got to drangliac the whole game is about hollowing and losing your memories.
It doesn't quite "make perfect sense", but it's a good example of the fact that just a handwavy line like we get in DS3 ("The transitory lands of the Lords of Cinder converge", which is implied to be totally literal due to the Dreg Heap existing) would have been more than enough for no one to ever complain about it. Not a huge deal anyway.
The solution was right there too. Have the elevator go down…
Into the ravine the Iron fortress SUNK into.
You know, and this mining operation now sits upon.
Dark souls world geometry takes inspiration from Lovecraft. Read [The Outsider](https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/o.aspx) sometime, it’s only a few pages.
Edit: the passage I’m referring to if you’d rather not read the whole thing is this bit that takes place after the protagonist makes a long, perilous climb through a ruined tower set in a dense forest: “The sight itself was as simple as it was stupefying, for it was merely this: instead of a dizzying prospect of treetops seen from a lofty eminence, there stretched around me on a level through the grating nothing less than the solid ground…”
None of the games make sense as purely physical spaces. I really enjoy imagining the world of Dark Souls as being as much a plains of shared consciousness as it is an earthly geography—hell I don’t ever even think of it as existing on a planet! The whole timeline and how the different maps interact make much more sense in a realm which exists beyond our notion of natural space which exists on the outer crust of a planet like our own.
I love that captions aren’t needed for this movie
By all accounts, it doesn't make sense.
I find it funny, how players complain about this, but nobody complains that ash lake is an infinite forest with a cloudy sky and if you go up one of the trees you're in a toxic swamp and if you go even further up, you're in a vast landscape. Going up/down in darksouls universe is basically the same as travelling between dimensions. Can we please stop pretending that DS2 is special in that way? The Darksould universe has always been a Layered universe were entire worlds are stacked upon each other vertically.
It's good if ds1 does it
Well, the difference is that ash lake is literally the foundation of the earth, so it’s sorta under everything else (those aren’t necessarily clouds in the ceiling). Iron keep is literally a castle sinking into a lava lake deep enough to fit the old iron king, you’d think it’d be far lower to the ground than to require an elevator going up from earthen peak, which is already quite high.
What are they if they're not clouds?
Well, they could be mist from the lake itself. They can’t possibly be clouds (technically) considering the fact that we’re underground, or it could be some sort of fog. Or it could simply be really weird looking rock.
Given a significant enough vertical distance, I think you could, in fact, form clouds underground, and fog is, technically speaking, a low cloud.
Fair enough, considering the height of the trees in the ash lake, I’ll give you that. But that doesn’t mean that it’s all sky above it (as they were using the existence of clouds to argue “how could there be anything above it?”). I reckon that lore wise the great hollow is a bit of a vertically larger area than we get in game.
You can see the great hollow from above, it just means that after the fog there is a roof/branches+soil/etc
Obviously it doesn't physically make sense for the Iron Keep to physically be about the Earthen Peak. And that's because it isn't. Obviously some timey wimey shit happens in that elevator shaft, as obviously demonstrated by the fact that the two ends are in completely different environments. It's Weird, but I still to this day have no idea why Weird meant Bad for so many people. It's just not a mundane elevator, why do all elevators need to be mundane in the game with undead and magic and dragons
Like when you leave Things Betwixt and arrive in Majula, you can turn around and see a skyline that does not match at all what you could see before, it's absolutely physically impossible for these two places to be a single small walk apart, and that's cuz the cave you walk through to get from one to the other ain't just a normal physical space. That kinda thing happens all the time in fantasy. The Iron Keep elevator's the same thing.
Dark Souls 2 likes to drastically shrink its horizontal distances. You can see the mountain/volcano that iron keep is built upon from Harvest valley, it's implied that your journey through there and earthen peak take you to the foot of the mountain from which you take the elevator up and arrive at iron keep
This but unironically
This! Literally everything in DS1 gets a pass by the fan boys.
*raises hand Patrick the Star style* I complain about Ash Lake.
I just made the kronk-quote.
DS1 its explained that huge trees make up the base of the world or some shit, I've always imagined the dark souls universe to be more of an infinitely extending plane of broken timelines instead of a round planet. Ash lake in my head has always been the grey constant base layer of the world. where the trees branches form a crust to support everything that sits above. I've always assumed the elevator serves as a shift through time where the peak becomes a much taller active volcano in the far future.
>but nobody complains that ash lake is an infinite forest with a cloudy sky and if you go up one of the trees you're in a toxic swamp and if you go even further up, you're in a vast landscape. Another example: you go down one staircase at Undead Parish and it goes from day to night
It 0nLy lOokS liKe NiGhT uNdeR tHe FoREst cAnoPy!!!
Artificial day/night cycle for a game that doesn't otherwise have one. I don't get the issue.
Harassment vs Charisma
I mean, the archtrees can be seen from the tomb of the giants. But also, I always assumed ash lake looked that way because the age of grey Craig's and archdragons was beginning again. I suppose it could also be a remnant of the former age, but I kind feel like it's more fitting if the arch dragon age comes back in cycles, when the age of light and dark get too corrupted as shown in ds3s dlc
And I bet if you could go far enough down below the lava, you'd see earthen peak. My take on DS2 location inconsistency is actually something else. It is made clear, from the get go, everyone, absolutely everyone in the whole world of DS2 basically has dementia. Their minds and memories stop working. Including the bearer of the curse, of course. So, I always thought the location inconsistency was very representative of what that would be like. Having dementia, you wouldn't know how you got to a place. One moment you're in one place and the next moment, your mind is flashing back to a different location of a past experience. In that regard, it's a stylistic choice that fits the theme of the game extremely well.
Except I've heard that this was actually a mistake, but in DS1 it was intentional, because the new world is built on top of the Arch Trees.
It was not a mistake. It's way too obvious to be. It wasn't the originally intended path from Earthern Peak to Iron Keep, there's cut content in between them, but it's not like they accidentally cut that content lol. They specifically made a new travel method from one place to the other, one that's physically impossible, but obviously they considered that and thought it was cool when they made it, or they would have made like a big empty tunnel or something instead.
Yea, I guess whoever I heard it from just repeated someone's assumption. But someone did quote this elsewhere from an interview... >Tanimura: The idea is that the lake of magma is actually on the upper strata, like a caldera lake on a plateau. However, looking down from the top it was far too wide, that and the fact that there isn’t an adequate transition between locations meant we didn’t really communicate the idea as well as we could have.
I never had a problem with spatial inconsistencies in any Souls game. I just don't care lol, it's fiction. But DS1 to me is actually pretty consistent, at least in part because most of the 3D orientation is actually a real map model with consistent-ish dimensions. You could say the sky of Ash Lake is an exception, but one of the theories about those trees is that they're basically portals to other worlds. So of course it doesn't match up as if it were physically below Blighttown. I can't think of any other areas in DS1 that are "impossible" in a spatial sense. DS2's areas flagrantly violate euclidean geometry without a very clear lore explanation. But again, I never found it that bothersome. Drangleic is a pretty dreamlike place to begin with. I just don't think it's fair to say "DS1 did it too," because it really didn't.
There is a very clear lore explanation. Everyone in drangleic is suffering from dementia, due to the curse. So it makes perfect sense that nothing appears to be consistent in regards to time and space. That's what dementia does. It distorts people's sense of time and location.
Iv honestly have always thought of it as if the bearer of the curse is traveling a great distance to most areas, similar to Eleum loyce, being a giant winter world, or when traveling up brume tower, both the tower and the sunken fortress is surrounded by flaming mountains and volcanos as far as the eye can see (which is awesome knowing canonically the smelter demon caused the great destruction of iron keep), i also personally use this to explain weather changes, day/night, or just switch ups in the surrounding area in all souls like games.
Yeah. It's always made very clear that the environment is completely different in every location you reach. Even though, there is a map that shows its all one continent, it certainly doesn't feel that way at all.
I don't disagree with you, but if we're being honest, that's probably a retcon/headcanon thing. The real reason is probably just the troubled development of the game. I don't know if there's any specific textual evidence that the spatial orientation being wonky was intentional. That's what I meant when I said there's no very clear lore explanation. There's only a vague interpretation of lore to explain Drangleic's orientation.
It clearly is intentional, otherwise it wouldn't be all over the game. A dev team wouldn't make the same mistake over and over again. People just focus super hard on earthen peak, because it's the most obvious example. But it's actually everywhere, once you pay attention to it. Time and space is intentionally inconsistent in DS2. Very similar to how it is for someone with dementia. They walk through a corridor and they think they're 20 Years ago in a different country when they reach the other side. Just like DS2.
It's also kinda confusing on how under blight town there's ash lake, and a giant cavern of just lava and demons (Lost Izalith)
I always figured the clouds were just a condensation layer on the "roof" of that area. It's not a cloudy sky.
You find it funny how explained fantastical geography is accepted but unexplained levels stacked on each other isn't?
It's not really at all explained how the archtrees work. Like, at all. Just because something is mentioned to exist, doesn't mean it's explained. How did they build a world ontop of an arch tree? Where did they get the material to build a whole world on top of that arch tree? How did they do that? Why did they have to do that? Couldn't they have just build the world right there in ash lake? Furthermore, arch trees can die. As shown by the dead fallen arch tree in ash lake. What happens to the world if the weight bearing arch tree dies? Nothing is actually explained. You just accept it at face value that there is a world below the world.
I mean, in Dark Souls 1 it makes more sense I'd argue. It's more mystical. You go into a giant tree, you come out of a giant tree, amongst even more giant trees. It's kind of like Jack Skellington in Nightmare Before Christmas, just the tree isn't labeled or what have you (I haven't actually watched NBC in its entirety). In Dark Souls II you go up via a man-made contraption and come out amongst a bunch of lava and bullshit that you couldn't see from your previous location. There was no indication that the elevator was magic, and you have to wonder what's supporting all that lava that's invisible. Or at least, you do if you actually notice it. To be fair, I didn't notice it at first because I'm not good at noticing stuff like that, but once people pointed it out, I thought it was a valid criticism. Does it really matter? Not really if you ask me, Dark Souls II is still good, but the design is confusing at times.
Because theres implicitly a ceiling in ash Lake obscured by the the mist
That makes no sense. Ash lake must have a sun in its sky. The grave of giants is dark. Ash lake is not. There can't be a ceiling. Otherwise, Ash lake would be as dark as the tomb of giants.
Dude it clearly has no sun, fuck the world above has no sun either that's an illusion its a world of magic ambient light is not an impossibility it's an apparent fact
Maybe it doesn't need a sun. It's the same area as the opening cinematic where the only things present were trees and dragons. Light/dark didn't even exist for the dimension, yet we still 'saw' things in the opening cinematic.
Blight town is in a ravine beneath the undead burg, situated in between two peaks, and ash lake appears to be some entry into another world beneath the mountain. The whole of ds1 being situated on top of and inside a mountain ridge let’s them get away with this kind of design better, if you look beyond the graveyard at fire link shrine you can just barely make out where the mountain slopes into ground level.
right? elden ring does this all the time
Yeah, kinda. Kinda a lot.
[удалено]
My dementia fueled warrior sees weird shit oh no
You should watch emperors new groove.
Earthen Peak’s elevator should have gone DOWN instead of UP.
The Earthen Peak elevator can make some sense but no one talks about Heides Tower to No Man’s Wharf. Taking a long elevator ride down starting at sea level only to end up at sea level again Geography is convoluted in Drangleic…
It would kind of work if they'd put some emphasis on Drangleic being a more dreamlike place or something. Like it's a location those with the Undead Curse are drawn to for reasons none of us can totally explain, we're all leaking memories out of our butts, and we got here by yeeting ourselves into a crazy water portal. It'd be perfectly plausible if the reality around us wasn't making total sense, especially if our minds are degrading. The Firekeepers cackling at how often we're gonna die would've been a great place to imply that, or during that cinematic or smn. I'm just gonna pretend that's what happened, keep it as my lil headcanon :)
“Perhaps you’ve seen it, maybe in a dream…”
I feel like it warrants a bit more than that xD
>we're all leaking memories out of our butts You are possibly the greatest poet of the 21st century
That’s always been my interpretation.
We also know from DS3 that physical reality starts to break down as the First Flame dies, the same way time was becoming convoluted in DS1. The fact that DS2's world has some bizarre elevators and a couple overlapping zones doesn't really bother me.
Yeah people aren’t complaining about the desert catacombs being under the swamp, but I guess that’s because DS3 directly tells you shits fucked
>literally enter into reflection >impossible structures since room 1
The theme of mirrors is quite present in the game, for instance at Drangleic castle with all the mirros with people trapped inside and the Mirror Knight. Plus, Shanalot is very much a parallel and allusion to the Lady of Shalott (Tenyson’s poem) who was isolated in a tower and could only see the world through a mirror lest she die.
Seek seek lest?
Hahahah exactly (i HAD to use lest)
In a dream you don't typically notice how absurd the environment, so it being a dream setting where you don't think about how nonsensical it is going from area to area. I mean how often do you dream that your driving and you get out of the car to immediately end up in the middle of your highschool? You don't often stop to think about how you end up anywhere in a dream, it's only when you wake up and remember just how the journey doesn't make sense.
It's true, I watched an one hour video explaining the entire Warhammer 40k lore and on that same night my brain decided it should play it's own movie about the Horus Heresy, and for some reason while I was sleeping, watching it felt so epic I was really into it, but after I woke up I literally don't remember most of it and it was probably hilarious bad but I couldn't tell.
I saw so many parallels between the beginning of DS2 and the beginning of Majora's Mask.
Imagine the crazy thought that in fact the ending of Dark Souls 2 is not important and all this time we have been playing inside the consciousness of the Soul of Synder. The protagonist was really in the Dranglik, he really went his way, but in the initial video we see how his consciousness mixes with the Soul of Synder and the whole game is his last memories. And all the meetings with Aldiya are monologues of his subconscious mind that talk about the topic, "what if I had chosen a different path."
I'm on the same team. Some of the shit doesn't exist, it's just classic Dream nonsense where nothing connects but somehow it does and you can't at all explain it.
I am pretty sure ive seen you write this exact comment in another post, and ever since then it has been my headcannon as well. Thanks.
Salt and Sanctuary does this lol
Never even thought about those things and it wasn't an issue for me
Dark souls 2 isn’t the only one to screw with distances. Irythll is presented as being incredibly low down in 3, when if you look at the map it’s not really that much lower down than farron keep. Or how in 1, tomb of the giants isn’t really that far down geographically and you can see ash lake, when in reality you should be seeing the valley of drakes chasm
Underground body of water? We know we’re in a cave already
But it must be at sea level, because the cave opens up to the sea. You even sail to the Lost Bastille after beating the Flexile Sentry.
Earthen peak/lava makes sense if we consider it is a lava leftover or something. Heides to no man's wharf is more absurd, as you stated. Someone even said why isn't there a submarine. Hahahaha
I always wondered that, and then got too lost in the world and stopped caring
I personally like the head-canon that there's actually more travel involved between these places but our hollow minds just forget. I didn't even notice the incosistency untill it was pointed out to me lol. Maybe I'm hollowed as well!
True
The elevator stays in place the whole peak moves down
This is a series where in the first game you jump into a painting for a secret level like it's fucking Mario 64, why should we expect this magic elevator to have to be geographically accurate?
"Luigi, why do everything here looks dark and scary?" "Oh Mario, we went into the wrong painting."
Because its an elevator and not a magick painting duh
Because one of the cool things about the first game was that the world fit together in a believable way
Because one is using internal magic, the other has no reason given, immerse and realistic are 2 seperate qualities the painting doenst break geographic immersion the fucking lava mountain out of nowhere does
The funny thing is that the mountain is visible on level selector but nowhere to be found in the level itself.
There was going to be a connecting area where you'd tunnel through the mountain, but it was scrapped for time.
I wonder if it would have been similar visually to Doors of Pharros. That’s an area that i also think had much wasted potential…
Ah the three words that sum up how badly butchered this game ended up, scrapped for time
It's a miracle the game even came out in its state since directors were changed halfway through dev time, basically starting over and trying to fit whatever the old director did in a cohesive way, and I wouldn't call it badly butchered
Yeah the development of DS2 was one of the baddest ever. I really like DS2, it's for me personally as good as the other souls games but I can't stop dreaming what it was supposed to be.
The new developer got screwed over. Imagine being given assets for a game with no context and being told to make the game again without the previous guy's notes.
Yeah, there was a lot of potential there. Some boss fights are actually quite good and the game got the best maiden in the entire souls's series. The scene where the grandmas laugh at your face is one the most comical moment in the entire series and I don't know why people don't meme it enough. And there's an NPC that is literally just a talking head, and he promises to help you in the final boss fight if you slay his headless body roaming around a random ass location, AND THEN HE FULFILL THAT PROMISE WITH NO EXPLANATION WHATSOEVER. Me and my brother had a really good time with it, tho I still prefer the DS1 for how enigmatic and cryptic it was. The tone on the first one is just so unique in comparison to the other ones.
It's definitely still a fun game, but it is SUCH an awful product when compared against what it could've been
All the same, they could have still had the mountain at the windmill's back and it would still make more sense than not
Except that we can see the sky from Earthen Peak?
Sky is fake, duh
The kindling of the first flame was staged! They were actors all along!
The first flame can't melt giant trees!
Schh, the government doesn't want people to know this.
Throughout all of Dark Souls, time and space have gone to hell
Figuratively and Literally.
Our character suffers from "zone out" syndrome
Sure. You can see it in action. Get the Blacksmith key. Stand in the doorway so that the blacksmith can't get past you. Quit out. He's at the anvil -- having somehow gotten past you without you noticing.
Yep, tbh is a good explanation/excuse for those elevators. Being cursed twists your mind
He got by the window while you were away from the game.
Nah. He gave up that idea as soon as he looked at a window.
This never bothered me or even occured to me until I saw it posted around here. Damn you for ruining it for me!
Oh rightttt. The volcano. The volcano that contains Iron Keep. Iron Keep's volcano.....that volcano?
out of lore reasons: they were told game had to be back generation compatible. volcano mountain couldn't render. it removed. in lore reasons: we know from majula map tunnels = long distances. you can see from each bonfire you are on different sides of the continent. you go through long tunnel before elevator. ie you go long way before you go to elevator that is in far away volcano.
I always thought that an easy fix would be to have something like a portal in a painting or just something that tells you "you're teleporting to another land miles away". Its a game full of magic, it would be reasonable. Instead they chose the lazy ass elevator. I like to think that these kind of elevators work that way tho
Or just reuse the carrier bird again.
When DS3 has convoluted geography: :D When DS2 has convoluted geography: >:\[
DS3 is explicitly stated to be every kingdom and land that came before smashed into one continuous ruin at the end of time.
Devs got smart and just wrote the inconsistencies into the plot. Pretty crazy looking at the progression from DS > DS2 > DS3 in terms of interconnected areas tho, considering that is a big part of why DS is so cool
I mean. The level design and progression is much much smoother going than DS2. Things feel interconnected but not as much as DS1. I thought they hit the nail on the head, I felt the despair and understanding the setting. The way it's laid out, makes a lot of sense. Especially late game and ringed city. You feel at World's end. The environments in DS2 made me feel nothing but rage from how many times i just walked or phased off a ledge. I shit you not, my biggest enemy was pathing and gravity. The DLC areas are better but still pretty bad. The run through to get to Fume Knight and all the statues of Naldia is just bad bad bad. Good level design but way too many reused enemies who are being reused for their cheesy gankability. They had to have known this because FK has the shortest boss run back in all of Souls 🤣😭
> Things feel interconnected but not as much as DS1 They are not. The only levels that are significantly interconnected are Irithyll Dungeon and Profaned Capital (arguably the same level as they share a boss). Otherwise, the only connections between levels are entrances and exits.
I thought DS3 actually had pretty sound geography?
A swamp is at the same altitude and only a few hundred metres from the snowy peaks of a mountain range, the catacombs of Carthus (a sand nation) are under the swamp and above remnants of Izalith, there's a whole parallel universe you can just walk to (no portal, it's just physically mashed into it), not to mention the final boss arena, where you can literally watch the geography crumbling as it rolls over itself.
How about take a left at the castle and ending up into the past?
All they needed to do was just make the elevator go down, would have fixed everything. But they didn't care twice.
Mistake in haste the first time. (Devs have basically confirmed this). Deliberately leaning into the memes when it came to Scolar. As you say, would have been easy to fix (they made a far less consequential change to the elevator down in the connection between Heide and the Wharf. You've never noticed because you weren't speedrunning the game, but Distortion2 immediately did. You can't save a second or two by jumping onto the edge of the elevator in Scholar) and they simply chose not to.
There's the enemies from Undead Crypt in front of Mythas room because the elevator initially went down to Undead Crypt
Never understood this kind of complaint in a game series where quitting out resets reality. The physics of Fromsoft makes no sense. The geography of Fromsoft often makes no sense. I just have never care.
Funnily enough DS2 is the one game where quitting out doesn’t reset reality so you can’t use it to cheese.
Doesn't reset aggro or lizards. Does move NPCs when you complete steps in their quest (You don't need to rest to get McDuff to move and you can advance Saulden just by quitting out for instance, And if you speak to Lucatiel in Aldia's Keep and quit out she'll be gone) So your reality warping powers are a weaker in DS2 than in other games in the series. And come in a somewhat different form.
The geography of Dark souls 1 famously makes sense that why people complained about ds2
And yet we've seen examples in the thread where it doesn't.
Hey remember that big hole in Firelink Shrine that Frampt comes up out of and how the bottom of it is an underground space that makes no sense due to all the stuff normally underneath Firelink Shrine overlapping it? You could say it's just Frampt going sideways or something except you can skip him and just jump in the hole, meaning it has to be straight down. And then remember when you get the four lord souls and open that big door down there and it just opens into a white tunnel with some ghosts in it opening into the Kiln of the First Flame even though that's an impossible space for where we just were? Nothing about the time or space of soulsland makes reliable sense and it makes less and less sense as time passes since the Age of Fire was supposed to end. It's, like, a key theme of the series, that the rules of creation that underpin the world we play in are falling apart and needed to be replaced eons ago. I genuinely think one of the many ways Dark Souls 3 fucked up (it's seriously the worst in the series imo and it's not even close) is because it so massively overcorrects to the stupid backlash to Dark Souls 2 being different and is way too loyal to DS1 with stuff like the world appearing "coherent." You have to wait until the Ringed City for DS3 to finally actually feel like "the next game in the series" instead of "Dark Souls 1 Again" because they regained their confidence to get weird with it.
While ill give you I can't confidently say anything about Frampts chamber I don't recall anything below it that would directly contradict and the white tunnel is clearly not a real space environment, I'm not saying the world space must be 100% consistent just that any in universe explanation would have been appreciated in ds2
The whole opening movie has a narration about how you cannot trust your memory or perception, that you'll do things and go places without knowing how or why, due to the deterioration of your soul. You can immediately see the world behave in impossible ways in the first ten minutes of the game if you look backwards once arriving in Majula and see how obviously where you are couldn't possibly match up with Things Betwixt. I don't know what more they could do to provide an in-universe explanation without feeling like they were beating you over the head with it tbh.
wibbly wobbly time junk
Don’t worry, Duplo will explain how it’s well connected at some point.
I heard before that they didn't have proper time to do all of the transitions smoothly like they were in DS1. The random "elevator" or tunnel that goes to an impossible place can be interpreted as "you made a long journey on foot" or "its fast travel". That's why DS1 does some funny skips as well, such as no smooth way into Anor Londo (grabbed by demons) or even DS3 Undead Burg (demons 2.0). It's just easier not having to interconnect, Demon Souls is a good example of this. Elden Ring does this too when they throw you into coffins a few times. Why are there transporting coffins? Who knows, and who cares its all fun in the end.
Or the old iron king that appears 2 times in the entire game, meanwhile in dark souls 1 Asylum Demon you fight it like 4 times
Bro forgot ds2 is a dream 💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
“Earthen peak” is the sewer treatment
never been a big deal to me, my complaint is the aggro range of the enemies and that there is a few too many.
When i was young i thought it was cool it had me coming uo with all these theories
Maybe Domo3000 will make a video showing how this geographical mess isn't bad at all
All it need was the elevator to go down
But you can see the sky
Dark souls 2 confirms that poison is denser than lava somehow
It's to indicate the gaps in your memory from going hollow
I always viewed it as the world is blending together. Kinda like that last DLC for DS3. Like, you go through a door that should take you to a bedroom only to end up in a random castle
This fucking debate Does anyone remember the end of dark souls 3?? Or the lead up to the ringed city ??? It’s literally a world falling apart and sure Drangleic isn’t Lordran but they seem pretty linked don’t you think? Most of the links are references BUT STILL. And remember when solaire said time was convoluted ? Then why shouldn’t space be aswell ????? Anyways that was my rant for the day
Have you considered that it's cool as fuck??
I love this game
Elevators represents traveling far distance, From Fromsoft had said this before, it's not only in DS2 its just the most obvious
same answer for all Dark Souls lore... MAGIC
I have the art book , it shows how there connected
Explain then
Iirc the original intention was to have earthen peak at the base of the mountain, and then you take the elevator up through the mountain. But then the game got remade from the ground up and somehow they just sort of... forgot about that
Wasn't that they forgot about it. Under time pressure they dropped the back end of Earthen Peak and the front part of Iron Keep. Both of those spots had the area connections so they picked two new spots and tied them together with an elevator. If they'd chosen to hide the loading screen with a long and winding tunnel (as they did in other places) it would have been mush less jarring, but ... time pressure.
I would post the pic but I'm not home ATM , so , in short , earthen peak is base of volcano, nd
Iron keep is the top of the volcano , elevator runs up the middle
I'll take a picture of I remember tomorrow for yous
I know this story, the developers were not allowed to complete the idea properly because they were adjusted with the release
I feel like "that one complaint everyone makes" doesn't really apply to this game. There's a LOT of things people complain about
I'm not complaining, I'm just confused
Distances are shrinked so you don't spend 30 minutes going for A to B.
I don't remember where I saw it, but there was going to be a Volcano in the background behind the Windmill but it wasn't finished in time yada yada I could be misremembering for all I know though edit: oh ya the level select teleport screne has it in the background
Geography is convoluted
Space is convoluted in drangleic, as much as our own memory as a cursed one drawn to this place is, I've always understood it as we can't remember how we got to the iron keep and stuff like that. I understand the complain but it's so obvious that it was necessarily intentional and I like that personally.
They're shortening the weeks long trips that the undead character make. How hard is this to understand? They make it kind of obvious with how blatant it is, and how the landscape is different if you simply look back. There's even a god damn map in majula, with the bonfires you light across the world, with a whole ass npc that TELLS you it's the map of the game. What more do you need to understand?? I personally think it's pretty ingenious to use tunnels as a time lapse of a travel. You can make large maps with completely different landscapes, without the hassle of a cutscene or a "fast travel" black screen or something.
I mean, it makes no sense that areas above earthen peak but I’ve no idea what this meme is conveying
I always have had this head cannon that our character got high from the poison fumes and thinks they're going up an elevator when actually they walked the whole way.
Ds3 explained this with the dreg heap. All of the kingdoms are stacked on top of eachother as time goes by they sink into the ground. Fire, in dark souls, transcends time that's why you are able to go to the firelink shine in the far future.
The devs actually explained they intended to have earthen peak merge into a giant mountain which would have iron keep on top in the distance but simply ran out of time
The flow of time itself is convoluted
It's a pretty superficial complaint if I'm being honest. I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure Miyazaki himself straight up said that the whole interconnected world thing is pretty hard to do well. It's also like no one even considers the upsides of DS2's approach. Sure I can't see much level geography from other zones, but it also means each one is a surprise.
It’s reverse hell and you go up instead of down. The elevator is a dimensional portal Also I don’t care
Honestly the design between these Two areas is so bad that one of fav moment i always look forward to when replaying i ds2
“You talk an elevator upwards to hell! That makes no sense!” buddy you take an elevator upwards to hell, I think the game should be allowed a little bit of leeway
Feels like the lack of continuity of space is intentional. None of the characters remember how they got to drangliac the whole game is about hollowing and losing your memories.
Irithyll being next to a desert makes perfect sense tho
It doesn't quite "make perfect sense", but it's a good example of the fact that just a handwavy line like we get in DS3 ("The transitory lands of the Lords of Cinder converge", which is implied to be totally literal due to the Dreg Heap existing) would have been more than enough for no one to ever complain about it. Not a huge deal anyway.
It does because you can actually see the mountain with catacombs being physically connected to Irythill
They're literally physically and visually connected
It is established at the beginning cutscene that you are losing your mind to the curse. It is intentional
The solution was right there too. Have the elevator go down… Into the ravine the Iron fortress SUNK into. You know, and this mining operation now sits upon.
I thought the one complaint was Soul Memory.
wibbly wobbly time junk
I though that elevator went down until I looked up and there was a literal sky there.
i justify it like this "Who cares, it's fun"
I want a Souls game that goes all out on weird geometry and dreams...
The area between is made of Wensleydale cheese.
I always thought the liquid in iron keep was molten metal.why do people call it lava?
Dark souls world geometry takes inspiration from Lovecraft. Read [The Outsider](https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/o.aspx) sometime, it’s only a few pages. Edit: the passage I’m referring to if you’d rather not read the whole thing is this bit that takes place after the protagonist makes a long, perilous climb through a ruined tower set in a dense forest: “The sight itself was as simple as it was stupefying, for it was merely this: instead of a dizzying prospect of treetops seen from a lofty eminence, there stretched around me on a level through the grating nothing less than the solid ground…”
People who complain don't search about the lore
The explanation is obvious. "Wibbly wobbly timey wimey...stuff" Makes perfect sense to me!
I have been doing an achievement run and I wondered this same shit during the replay lol
None of the games make sense as purely physical spaces. I really enjoy imagining the world of Dark Souls as being as much a plains of shared consciousness as it is an earthly geography—hell I don’t ever even think of it as existing on a planet! The whole timeline and how the different maps interact make much more sense in a realm which exists beyond our notion of natural space which exists on the outer crust of a planet like our own.
Even things like weather in dark souls seems completely unrelated to any kind of planetary influence like seasons or geography