After 200 hours of work, Dark Souls detective Lance McDonald recently uncovered all 46 of the third game's lore epitaphs. At the end of that video, McDonald promised some "absolutely WEIRD" stuff in the coming weeks. This now takes the form of the ARPG's axed Ceremony database—"a set of parameters DS3 uses to dynamically change the world state or time of day."
As outlined above, things start off fairly tame. Manually changing the time of day switches to a different 'Ceremony', which in practice sees the Cemetery of Ash flip to the Untended Graves—areas identical in likeness, with different enemy layouts and lighting. Likewise, Archdragon Peak is seen pre and post-storm; and the High Wall of Lothric is seen with the Dark Sign Eclipse triggered and untriggered.
As things progress, things get progressively weird. The 'Evening/Dusk' Ceremony offers a gorgeous, purple/pink sky texture that looks like this:
'Moonlit Night', as the name might suggest, plunges the world into darkness:
Whereas 'The Past' drains Lothric of colour further still. This monochrome setting might be my favourite.
'The Sun' cranks the light back up to 11.
While 'Eclipsed Night' portrays light and dark in concert.
And then things get super weird. Here's an excerpt from McDonald's narration: "Now, I did say we're saving the best till last and to do that we're heading to The Undead Settlement, which is the only map in the game where The Eclipse Ceremony is accompanied by a sky filled with creatures."
Skip to the 8-minute mark in the video above to see that in full. Otherwise, here's some screens.
McDonald continues: "And perhaps even more striking is that this same thing happens during the Sun Ceremony."
After pointing out that these flying beasts cast dynamic shadows, McDonald says: "It's hard to imagine how exactly the game was once planned to progress through these different world states—would the time of day just organically changed as you played through the game?
"And the more abstract ones, such as The Past, The Sun and The Eclipse Ceremonies certainly appear to be fairly climactic, which gives us a lot to think about with regards to how the game may have once been planned to end."
Lance McDonald is an indie dev turned hobbyist game engineer, who's spent the last few months uncovering cool Dark Souls cut content. His latest investigation unearths the third game's removed lore epitaphs—of which there are 46 in total.
In a video released earlier this month, McDonald suggested that, besides Dark Souls 3's first four story-supporting epitaphs, the remainder were comprised of placeholder text. Prominent Souls figure Sanadsk then uncovered a database of completed epitaph text from the game's Japanese retail version, and McDonald then spent over 200 hours fully restoring the alpha blurbs in-game.
That's showcased here:
I love stuff like this, and I especially enjoy McDonald's analysis against his previous findings. This is especially interesting here, given how far this particular discovery has come in the past few weeks.
More interesting still, McDonald has some "absolutely WEIRD" Dark Souls 3 cut content stuff coming up which he's keeping close to his chest for now. I'm intrigued. Needless to say, watch this space.
Following its Dark Souls Age of Fire mod, the Datahacks team has released Forces of Annihilation—a similar hobbyist project for Dark Souls 3. Out now, FoA lets you storm Lothric as the game's enemies and bosses alike.
Naturally, that's best portrayed in the massive shoes of Yhorm the Giant.
With that, I'm particularly fond of seeing a hulking Yhorm wandering around the Profaned Capital, battering Headless Gargoyles. Skip to the 5.40 mark above to see that in practice.
With installation and use in mind, Datahacks provides a three-video tutorial series that covers attaching the mod to the game, and possessing a bosses and enemies; camera toggle, and attacks and phases changes; and regular and enhanced enemy controls.
Modder group Datehacks have created a Dark Souls 3 mod that allows you to play as the bosses.
Sharing the details on Reddit (via Kotaku), the creators stated that the "Forces of Annihilation" mod permits players to experience the game as "any enemy/boss anywhere [across the] WHOLE map", complete with their HP and weapons.
Datehacks was also behind a similar mod for Dark Souls, but because "no one plays [Dark Souls 1 Prepare to Die Edition] at all" apparently, they hope the Dark Souls 3 mod - which has been in development for three years - will gain more traction.
If the games we play are anything to go by, the depths of hell are one of humankind's favourite destinations when it comes to travels of the mind. Few fantasy RPGs or horror games could be considered complete without at least a quick excursion into the domain of demons and sinners. And what better place to conclude your game than hell itself? What better villains to fight than the citizens of Pandemonium? Hell has found a steady home in many kinds of games, and its popularity shows no sign of abating.
"A dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames
The city of Lordran is not a very nice place. The decayed, moss-stained ramparts are populated exclusively by mindless undead, ornery dragons, forsaken soldiers, and obsidian-skinned demons. The capital of Anor Londo is home to a worthless, greedy class of gods who intend to hold onto their waning power until the flame goes out. Dark Souls is about subsisting under that threat forever; to thrive while being crushed by the impossible magnitude of mystery and razor-tight attack animations. So, naturally, I was surprised to find a three hour video of a man whispering strategies for each of the boss encounters in Dark Souls 3.
Sure enough, I had found the nexus of the Dark Souls ASMR scene. If you're somehow unfamiliar with the term, ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, which is a diagnosis of the tingling sense of satisfaction you might get when someone crinkles a plastic bag, or raps their fingernails against a piece of aluminum. YouTubers around the world have developed robust careers out of stoking those uncanny tinglesin the minds of their viewers, and the videos can be pretty creative. (Here for instance, is an ASMR cyberpunk roleplay.) So I suppose it's not shocking that the culture found a home in Dark Souls, but it certainly makes you consider the degree of difficulty. I mean, black metal ASMR doesn't exist for a reason, right? (OK, PC Gamer associate editor James Davenport tells me it actually does exist. But my point still stands!)
However, by far the most famous, and most successful Dark Souls ASMR artist is AlternateAurora. Unlike the other people in her business, Aurora goes the extra mile by roleplaying characters from the series, thus recontextualizing them into doting, peaceful caretakers who have absolutely no interest in forcing you to do a lengthy corpse run. In one of her dispatches, she speaks on behalf of Crossbreed Priscilla, who you may remember as that outrageously annoying boss in the Painted World who has a bad habit of turning invisible in high-pressure moments. Of course, Aurora interprets Priscilla as a warm matriarch urging you back to sleep—someone with absolutely no interest in tearing you in two with her scythe.
You indulge a glint of happiness and hopefulness that's gone extinct in this dying realm.
Aurora writes all of her scripts herself by scrutinizing every scrap of dialogue and fan theory she can find of the character she's roleplaying. (She'll also occasionally pantomime her own homebrewed denizens within the Souls universe, which she says are the hardest to get right because, "When you don't have a template, it can be easy to stray too far.") In the past, Aurora taken the guise of the doll liaison in Bloodborne's Hunter's Dream, and the croaking undead merchant lying dormant and behind bars in the annals of the Undead Burg (the latter being one of the more radical risks she's taken as an ASMR creator).
I ask her where she's found so much inspiration for pacifying ambiance in this series—the calm moments that helped her shape the sedate, new-age meditation material amidst the 10-foot skeletons and wriggling mountains of flesh. Her answer made more sense to me than I expected. There's a euphoric reprise, she says, after you've fallen one of those titanic boss encounters, and your character finally discovers refuge at a hidden bonfire. You indulge a glint of happiness and hopefulness that's gone extinct in this dying realm, and you live to fight another day.
"The contrast between how difficult and oppressive some areas are compared to the more serene and quiet places you can find yourself in is amazing," says Aurora. "I'll never forget stumbling into Ash Lake for the first time, or how safe I felt at Firelink when I first found myself stumbling through the Burg. For me, the game really nailed its atmosphere and that's part of what makes it such a strong experience. You have all this suffering set up against the backdrop of a beautiful world and it just makes it that much more poignant."
I'm currently about three quarters of the way through my first playthrough of Dark Souls. Most recently, my lonely knight fell to his death through a trapdoor full of carnivorous beasties in the hateful caverns of Lost Izalith. Everything I was taught about this game remains true; it's frustrating, the difficulty spikes are palpable and stringent, and you shouldn't expect to pick up on everything your first time through. That being said, I also kinda get where Aurora and other ASMR artists like her are coming from.
Breaking bread with Solaire, or taking a pregnant moment to admire the sun-bathed vista from Anor Londo—those are the moments that stand out in my head so far, and they're also the moments I yearn for the most. It is often said that Dark Souls was the game that forced this industry to reckon with what was lost as singleplayer campaigns became easier and obsequious. I suppose the same can be for ASMR, too. Sometimes you need a little pain to recognize the pleasure.
We’ve just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It’s a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you’ll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets. (more…)
I have reached a conclusion. Everything that’s bad is the fault of Steam sales. Two weeks ago these charts had reached a place of being a fertile ground of interesting new games and discounted classics. Today, they’re back to being mostly a miserably predictable list of games that even the undiscovered tribes of Papua New Guinea have on their Steam accounts. (more…)
Soulsborne sleuth Lance McDonald has returned to Lothric—this time with the suggestion Dark Souls 3 once planned a PvP battle royale multiplayer mode.
In his latest Dark Souls alpha cut content video, McDonald visits the third game's High Wall of Lothric area. He discovers three items absent from the final game—the Ceremony Sword of Darkness, the Ceremony Sword of Flame, and the Ceremony Sword Battle Royale Eclipse. In order to explain the latter, it makes sense to first look at the former.
Below, McDonald says the Sword of Darkness' description reads: "When used, perform a ceremony to envelope the world in darkness. For playable version, select this item to perform an eclipse ceremony". He explains the item can only be used in a specific context that he's unable to recreate in-game—but is able to work around it by changing a flag in the game's executable.
Doing so transports McDonald to a new, unseen version of the High Wall that's plunged into darkness. It's referred to in the game's data files as its 'Moonlight Ceremony' state.
McDonald says the Ceremony Sword of Flame's description reads: "When used, invade a world that has been enveloped in darkness. For playable version, select this item to perform an invasion ceremony." While he can't say for sure, McDonald suggests both swords would have allowed players to host and invade player-created moonlight ceremonies respectively.
McDonald then talks to a third item, the Ceremony Sword Battle Royale Eclipse. It comes with no description, but McDonald says it "may have been another way for players to engage in multiplayer events in moonlight ceremonies." He then explains that the term 'battle royale' has been used in the Souls series to describe multiplayer arena modes. He adds: "We might assume that Dark Souls 3's Moonlight Battle Royale Ceremony was an extension of the PvP arena concept."
All of which means Dark Souls 3's cut interpretation of battle royale probably wasn't the PUBG/Fortnite-flavoured, fight-to-the-death set up we're now so familiar with. We can dream though, right?
Dark Souls: Remastered is out now on PC, and we've got Chosen Undead fever. Dark Souls delerium? Lordran lurgy? Whatever, we've spent today praising the sun and now wish to shine a light on our favourite Dark Souls tales.
From fashion to flavour text, deceitful covenants and dumb crab infestations—the following list explores Dark Souls from its a myriad of perspectives, all testament to the series' widespread influence and appeal.
Without further ado, here are PC Gamer's greatest Dark Souls stories.
The art of flavour text Alex Wiltshire explores how developers use in-game descriptions to bring worlds to life. Dark Souls' use of flavour text, argues Alex, is an exemplar of the form.
Sometimes games are better without musicFTL composer Ben Prunty writes about games that sidestep music while conjuring atmosphere. Naturally, Dark Souls features heavily.
The 'Souls-like' label needs to dieAustin argues that while Dark Souls is one of the most influential games of the last decade, it shouldn't be treated as a template.
