One thing I didn't see covered, and maybe it was in a previous video, but there's a part of the memory of Orro I was always curious about. By the exit point of that memory, the giant that's blocking a door, there's a smaller building you can climb onto. From that roof, you can see into a bigger building through a hole in the wall and there's a giant in an idle animation inside. Is that more cut content or just an enemy to keep you busy in the memory?
You can get inside! I'm gonna add a bunch of empty space here before revealing the answer incase you have a save file you wanted to fire up to try and figure it out own your own. . . . . . . . . . Go up to the highest roof in the memory of Orro. Walk towards that back corner that has a few of the treadmill cranes. Attack and break the support for the crane, which will lower a platform. You can drop down onto this platform. The running jump from that platform to get in is pretty tricky, due to the lack of ample running space. It's still totally do-able without better jumping gear, but probably easier to do with the butterfly gear equipped. If you have a hard time picturing how this works in your head, bear in mind that the hole you've been looking through to see that giant isn't the intended entrance, that's the exit to that hallway. The entrance is further down the courtyard. edit: Apparently you don't even need to jump and I was always making it harder for myself than I needed to. Just stand back as far as you can to have room to build up running speed, and then just run towards the hallway. I'm gonna pin this for a bit. You're the second person to ask about it and I realize more people might be wondering too. :)
@@Wineblood as illusory wall said, you can and are supposed to get in there. There is items and a chest and stuff lol I had to look up how to get in so I could understand you thinking that it was out of bounds
Now my headcanon is the Giants crossing the sea by walking along the ocean floor like in Pirates of the Caribbean. Would be a terrifying visual to see them all popping up through the surface as they march into shallower water towards the castle
In my headcanon, the big giants he showed in the end were transferring the smaller one on their shoulders. Yesterday, BonfireVN even made a video about a small giant falling from the sky, and I imagine he was just thrown by a huge giant as a paratruper without a parachute. And the big one were also pyromancers that are throwing the fireballs on giant lord arena. Lets call them Fire Giants😀. (Elden Ring is truly just DS2 2)
I’ve always liked the theory that the giants in Ds2 look so different compared to the other two games because they’re actually stone creations of the real giants who transferred their souls into the golems to allow them to cross the sea. Maybe the reason Vendrick was able to invade and pillage their lands so easily is that the giants’ flesh and blood bodies are less capable of fighting back against humans (which is true for ds1 and 3, where their massive size and slow movement makes them easy for smaller foes to bait and maneuver around). This would also make the remaining giants found in the Black Gulch much more tragic, since they’ve been stuck in a literal husk for hundreds of years unable to return to their original bodies :(
Indeed, one might suppose all the ships in the harbor are sinking, because the giants attacked them from below. Both venting their revenge, and ensuring their foes had no chance to either sally forth to attack them nor to escape by sea.
You truly have a gift for knowing when to say "they probably didn't think about this too much and didn't want us thinking about this too much either", and when to start thinking about something too much, and I mean that as the highest compliment
Reminds me of the D&D module "Tomb of Horrors". Where a single door is casually worth a comical amount of gold, so countless players who ran the adventure would rip it from its hinges and abscond with it.
People will always reuse good resources. Here in Norway we repurposed iron and lead from the sunken german warships from ww2 into manhole lids and sewer gratings. Probably other places as well but those are the most well known instances. And they were used not just locally but transported all over the country to be used.
I'd bet good money that basic navmesh on the "Right Wing" was put there specifically so they could get the shots for the trailer. I've done something similar to get promo shots before.
That's exactly what I was thinking! "Hey, we want some vantage point to show the [left wing] from, and the [right wing] would work well. There is nothing actually there, but we can just slap in a collision box, teleport the player to it, and take some shots."
the 8 bit majula intro music continues to be absolutely amazing i can't put my finger on why i love it so much. i think it's the kind of weird lazy off beat timing.. even tho it is 6/8 it sounds so spicy... idk why but i love it.
I didn't finish this video but 17 minutes in I just wanna thank you so much for being of one of the few people that doesn't write off DS2's world design as "lazy". The developers had a rough time and some things are stitched together in a hurry but even with that kind of crunch they actually cared about some things as you spotted many times in this video and didn't cheap out (with the exception of not putting a volcano behind earthen peak). The forest area being by far the most thorough. I've seen only 2 or 3 people who managed to notice the memories actually take place in some part of the level and you're of one them, the rest of the community just doesn't bother to do their own research. Thanks for making justice for this amazing game, illusorywall.
@ChristopherWaddelow definitely. Reading about how much they had to cut and downgrade to fit into the ps3 (it was originally meant to be for the ps4 only) and how they changed directors it's nothing sort of a miracle in how the game was even released in an acceptable state, or released at all. A similar game I'd like to compare to is Crash Twinsanity. While I love that game it's very clear how its incomplete and buggy. DS2 could have been released in a similar fate. But FROMSOFT is an exceptional studio and the devs did actually really good considering the tools and deadline they had.
I know nobody's gonna start taking this seriously now, but even the Earthen Peak thing makes a lot of sense to me in the story. The lava the Iron Keep sank in isn't just lava, it's the soul of Gwyn transformed into an incorporeal unfathomable old one. It doesn't surprise me at all that it doesn't follow rules of logical space. But what's actually going on with the Old Ones is another thing people write off or simplify
@LadyDeSelby there are definitely some people who agree. I know some guy put out a lore video recently that went down that route. I find it to be big head cannon. I struggle to find the game to be that intentionally made. It was rushed.
@@ChristopherWaddelow The lava being Gwyn is literally stated in the text of the game. To be clear, I'm not saying they planned out the world layout specifically to prop up that idea - the development of almost every game is a series of compromises and concessions, and we know DS2 had many. But the result does make at least some sense.
The concept of being able to explore the whole “forest of fallen giants” in the past and see more details and new areas and bosses not accessible in the present is very cool. Whether or not it was the intention of the developers. Thanks for the video.
I wonder if maybe it wasn't intended to be the whole level but some item that let you switch between the two, so for instance in the past there's a place you can't go past so you need to shift to the present, then you can get through until some place you're blocked, and back to the past. Wouldn't need each area to be linked in a single timeline then. Maybe what the time crystal item would have been for.
"The alpha was horribly unfinished" I wish more people realized this. I swear some people think there's a fully complete alpha version of ds2 out there with pretty lighting and time travel and everything.
Haha true. Most of the time the stuff you see in trailers is the best stuff being done at the moment, maybe even the most. I only came to that realisation after some time.
I mean, I think thats a bit uncharitable. People who think like that are passionate about it from having a strong imagination, imagining what the hypothetical "full" level would look like based on those snippets. I think for most people who think like this their passion is short lived, either with the understanding that the cut/unused content either couldn't work beyond its concept, or simply they realize they shouldn't waste too much time and energy fantasizing about this hypothetical parallel "DS2, but the cut content wasn't cut". Because, after all, the DS2 we have here now was the DS2 that came from its' artists early concept ideas, molded into a finished piece.
Same situation with the nebulous DS3 "alpha build" that a supposed leaker played before the games release. Most of the information provided by the leaker was already known from the previously leaked screenshots, which were proven to be real, coupled with heaps of information that has either been outright disproved or is highly disputed among the souls community because of a lack of evidence. The legitimacy of the alpha build will always be contested and for good reason. Cut content is so alluring that people will believe anyone if they spin a good story. The perfect example of this would be Pontiff being the final boss in an earlier version of the game because it is only half true. Pontiff's model was intended to be used as the final boss but with an entirely different character to match it. Pontiff Sulyvahn as we know him did not exist as a character at that point in the games development, Aldrich's name in the game files is Sulyvahn.
The fact that the lighting system was very ambitious and they show how so little areas in any previews of the game makes me think that the game ran absolutely horribly on consoles aside from a select few areas they could show. There was no way they could keep this up to the final product.
The Forest of Fallen Giants was always one of my favorite areas of the game as far as visuals go. I love the fortress being torn apart by roots in the present day, as if the giants are still trying to destroy the kingdom they hate so much even after death.
I love the Dark Souls II that we have today. But gosh, how badly I wish that we could get the fully fledged version that the devs originally aspired to give us.
Average FromSoftware game experience ever since the 90s but somehow they still make the final product peak gaming. Their ambitions have always been too big for their budgets but they still make do in the end.
@@familyguyfreemoviedownload8314 And that's what is so agonizing with Souls games. You already know it's good, but when you hear the original visions, you know it could have even been better. I honestly feel like a Dark Souls 1 remake would actually be completely justifiable with how much of that game was gutted.
There's some unintentional thematic resonance there. We are all Chosen Bearers of the Curse who are Unkindled. We long for what could have been, with more knowledge only serving to increase our desire and suffering.
In development, it's typical to spend extra time on the first area of the game, often revisiting it as the last part of development. It looks like to me that the "past" version of the area probably wasn't revisited and thus lives in an older, less detailed iteration.
The way people tend to fixate on behind-the-scenes details, cut content and unused concepts, reminded me of an old blog post I once read. It was essentially stating your exact same sentiments - that there's no guarantee that the DS2 hinted at in development would have actually turned out good in the end. But I always remember the term the writer came up for this phenomenon: "meta-spoilers". The same way story spoilers can undercut the intended impact of story beats, meta-spoilers can undercut the intended impact of the finished version of a game.
I love seeing DS2 datamined! The big arial overview shot, and the purple DSAnim map for reference, are really appreciated. I'm legitimately SO STOKED to have a solid potential answer to that inaccessible cave behind Soldier's Rest, and the broken bridge up there that seemed to lead nowhere. Really juicy stuff!
I'm probably in the minority here but while id say I'm a fan, I'm not even a hardcore souls fan. It's more that I'm a fan of these vids. Like I love souls don't get me wrong, but it's the presentation and explanation of niche game knowledge and easy to understand breakdowns of otherwise complicated game development concepts that keeps me coming back. I'd watch this content even if it was based on a series I've never played. It's just so interesting.
Maybe a cop-out, but I like the idea that the reason the geometry and architecture don't always line up between past and present is becuase we're experiencing the faded memories of the giants. The giants weren't intimately familiar with the castle and might be misremembering aspects of it all these years later. Of course, the giants are still here in the form of trees and died when they left these memories behind so it doesn't make that much sense for them to be different. I'm not holding my breath for this to true; you'd expect more things to be off if we were supposed to assume this was a misremembered location.
this reminds me of the theory that the reason levels feel so disjointed in DS2 is because your character is slowly hollowing and forgetting the experiences in between levels where nothing really happens, basically blacking out
@ I like that idea too! I know it’s just making excuses for a troubled development, but I think it’s cool to head-canon.
13 дней назад+60
The saddest lost content from intended iterations is the darkness mechanic. Which was completely cutt. Just like DkS3 had a "create your own bonfire" mechanic also cut.
That's my personal desire, too. I like doing the torch stuff in the retail game already, but how frickin' cool would it have been for the torch to be more important, more necessary?!
@@kenjen9861would've been annoying, try exanima to see why. On the other hand DS2 is much much less punishing than exanima and you can one hand use two handed weapons, so it'd make it less annoying. But at the datw it was released, would've been a pretty cool gimmick.
Darkness mechanic was probably intended to be a nod to King's Field like many DS2 things are. In case anyone wants a taste of how it would've worked. King's Field 3 in particular is pretty brutal with the Dark mechanic compared to the other ones. It was really annoying in KF3 so I understand why they'd cut it in the end for DS2 lol granted in KF you mainly use magic to light up the rooms rather than torches held in your hand so it's more forgiven and MP resource based.
For the Memory of Jeigh cut content I wonder if the original intention was the rolling statue head blocking your path (without the crack down the middle of it yet, to let you walk through it), which would make you turn around, go into the statue pathway, down to the middle floor, then all the way round to right wing, climbing the stairs and possible encountering the Giant Lord on that wing, or other enemies with those navmeshes allowing for enemies to path down the rubble to you.
26:00 There actually is a good explanation (or theory) for the Iron Door originating from Iron Keep. Vendrick and Drangleic did some recycling. The Old Ironclads Soldiers enemies we see all over the Forest of Giants are from the Iron Keep and were golems made by the Old Iron King. Vendrick assimilated them into his own army after the OIK's death. We also know that the Iron Keep itself was plundered for iron and materials. "Over the ages, the iron was stripped from the castle by opportunistic passers-by."
I like to think that the reason the Heavy Iron Key is in that room is because they took it thinking it was the key to that door and whoever they got to install the door unwittingly locked themselves inside with the salamanders.
@OneNationUnderPug I'd assume they would put the salamanders in AFTER installing the door that contains them. But idk maybe that's in-character for aldia or vendrick or whoever.
It would be really cool to see a video from you going into the God/Divine Graves area cut from DS3, sometimes it feels like half that game was just repurposed from that one area, as well as parts of elden ring edit: honestly something ive always wanted to see is someone make a video going into how many bosses from elden ring are reused from other games, even the ulcerated tree-spirit is the cut snake soul boss from ds3
the erdtree spirits are asylum demons and the omenkillers are capra demons. the orange wolves have a few moves from sif but could be the old farron wolf from 3 instead since we never got it. im sure theres more im blanking on... hell im pretty sure the beast claw weapon from the dlc recycles gasciones move set. the combo looks very familiar atleast. ide have to sit down and fight stuff again as a refresher to pick out more probably
@@brewedjuice494 Yeah I agree the orange wolf is probably derived from the cut farron boss. There is a theory that Malenia is Tomoe from an entirely scrapped Sekiro DLC but I haven't seen anyone show a smoking gun in terms of strings or file names
@@ASapphicKitsune ive definitely heard that, but never with any type of real proof. i wouldnt be surprised if atleast a move or two were originally intended for sekiro, like waterfowl. sekiro is usually pretty clear about "master and student" fighting styles though. Emma and Isshin, wolf and owl. genichiro doesnt really "fight" like malenia so i imagine most of her kit is bespoke for her in elden ring. the prostetics do draw an interesting comparison tho since she was also the guardian of an immortal heir like kuro.
The memories of the giants might be favorite part in any of the Souls games. It really made the area come alive in a way none of the other games have. Stuff like that is why DS2 is my favorite FromSoft game, it has so many unique ideas that make the journey feel more epic than just running from boss to boss until its over.
I'm glad DS2 is getting more love, but I wish people would do it without reductively degrading the other games. No Souls games can accurately be characterized as "running from boss to boss until it's over". They all have incredible storytelling, worldbuilding, art, exploration, characters etc. I understand the reflexive impulse because of how much shit has been unfairly thrown at DS2, but we should be a bit more measured.
@@twolessba1087 Cheap bait. Swapping garbage for something like "poorly-designed" would probably improve your odds for landing a fish though. Good luck with the trolling.
I have mixed feelings about your findings. On the one hand, I'm glad that my beloved game has a great story behind it, and I can see how much care they put into the level design. On the other hand, I'm depressed by the final state of the game. How many ideas did they have to butcher due to time constraints, low budget and management changes? How great could this game be if they could make what they originally planned? I guess we will never know. Thanks for this impressive work
I think that it's fine that some of these side areas got cut if it means that what we were left with was more detailed and meaningful. FoFG in the end turned out to be an incredibly well designed area.
@@nateh5736 Agreed. After all, we wouldn't be here talking about the game after more than a decade if their decisions had been bad. On the contrary, they managed to create a great and memorable enough level and game overall, despite all the hardships along the way.
What people always forget when discussing "cut" content, is that, no, it wasn't "cut". Almost always it was content that never even was being considered for development. It existed in concepts and draft documents at best. Maybe someone threw a few grey boxes together to look at what it'd be like. But: It was never seriously considered for development. It's not some kind of lost media or potential. Almost always cutting things for budget, design, and management reasons, happens long before any serious effort went into it. If it wasn't cut because it was actually bad content (and would have made the game worse), then it was cut early enough for everything else to adjust around it, and thus has no impact. Could the game have been a greater whole than what we got? Maybe. Would that have included all of this "cut" content? Probably not.
Another thing that supports your interpretation of the Old Iron door being imported, not a natural part of the fortress: IIRC, the original release of DS2 that was a regular Fortress of Fallen Giants door. Instead of locked by a key it “does not open from this side”, you open it by attacking it to “knock” and a soldier on the other end will open it for you. So the presence of the door in SotFS was a retcon done once they’ve written up lore for the DLCs.
Considering 55:25 and my thoughts about it, Dark Souls 2 talks a lot about memories, and specifically losing them. I mean, that's why you're here in Drangleic to begin with. Maybe the intent here is to convey how your "memories" of the world are wrong, even if only slightly. That the way you are seeing things isn't necessarily correct because you are losing your memories, perhaps trying to fight against the curse to remember what it is, and just remembering wrong because of it. Granted, this is a bit of a catch all idea (it can explain away basically anything that's is incongruent or doesn't make sense) but I'd like to think that that's the ultimate intent here. Plays into that idea and helps make things that don't make sense, make sense.
I was thinking the same. Is there some deep lore reason why these memories are not literal memories? I had always assumed the Giants simply remember the area differently than it really was.
This is exactly what I was thinking every time a reason for discrepancies was brought up, memories are notoriously unreliable, while some things may be spot on, details, especially distance details, could be way off. Thinking there were two towers in a spot is entirely plausible, remembering an archway being much lower because of the angle you saw it from makes perfect sense.
...No, dude, sorry but thats a wrong model in the wrong spot lol. I understand what you're implying but thats not it in this case. The "actually the 10 seconds long hallway from a foggy forest to a night time castle during a downpour represents the character losing his mind!" is good enough.
@DedAlexFive The time stamp is in regards to what illusory wall is talking about, specifically the start of the thought I'm directly talking about my thoughts on. The idea that clearly they were changing the models and how the level looked on purpose because we can see this spot they missed, so why were they changing it?
I was thinking this too. I like to believe that the entirety of the Drangleic that we see is akin to a memory of Shanalotte that she used to trap Nashandra in, or Nashandra's memory itself, so discrepancies between one person's memory and another's fits in with that idea.
The door itself being older than Drangleic, but not it's installation in Drangleic is why I love these games. So many "technically, I didn't lie" moments.
I think this is one of my favorite topics this series has ever covered. The situation with the Forest of Fallen giants is so specific and unique, and it was such a fantastically clever idea to mine it for behind the scenes insight. There are of course other times we see the same location in multiple time periods, but never quite so thoroughly-entwined as this.
the most solid conclusion we can reach from the differing details between the alpha and the release version of dark souls 2 is that the fiscal year is an evil on human creativity.
Fantastic episode, as always! I do think your comments on cut content in general are on point; content gets cut for a wide variety of reasons, not just time constraints-sometimes something just isn't fun, or the lore got changed, or there's technical limitations. Also, I wasn't going to mention it, but since you asked: The 'ciara' in 'Inciaradible' is supposed to be pronounced like the Dark Souls 1 character, Ciaran. 😅
With each passing year i realize more and more that Dark Souls 2 is my favorite of the bunch, and i get sadder and sadder that it wasn't allowed to shine, to become what it was supposed to be.
Love this series. I don't really care for DS2 but I've always respected the big swings it takes and some of the more out there parts of its design. These videos really help elucidate why the game is how it is, both good and bad.
the best souls youtuber strikes again! 16:50 maybe they used the bricks for repairs the four arm giant boss arena memory and theories is awesome! 51:40 i got it! 1:02:43 rumbling
Memory is always different from reality, so it makes sense to me that the memory looks different to the present. There's also the fact that they are memories of Giants and who knows how they see brickwork with their gaping hole.
I dream of a Dark Souls 2 mod that would reintroduce most of the cut content and original level layouts, with the current tools we have, I feel like we're getting closer and closer to that becoming a reality.
My god 2:50 in and my minds already fried from the revelation that I’ve been standing in the same area in two different time periods. Hold on folks this is going to be a good one
Along with the old iron door, Drangleic seems to salvage technologies from older kingdoms in general. Drangleic castle being the place where most of it is horded.
I've been playing souls games since 2012 and have countless hours in all of them (also AC6) and after finishing the ER DLC, souls fatigue hit me hard but your content is the only Dark Souls content I'm still really looking forward to.
It's hard to not feel bittersweet about what was presented in the trailers and what we recieved, even after all this time, but I understand that the final product needed to take a different direction, all things considered. Thanks for this detailed look!
Yay! This is the stuff I've been most excited to see! DS2 cut content is so interesting, but especially the forest and giants in particular to me have always felt like they had so much left to look into. They feel, to me, like some of the most "DS2" stuff, like the departure from other works that could have been given more love if allowed to be more of its own thing. I don't know how true that is, but they're special regardless, and I love to learn more about them!
44:10 the implications of this alpha route are hilarious, “ok so you go down stairs, then make a left, then make another left, then make a left again, then you go left and up stairs again.” I want to know what the architect of this castle was smoking
You know it's kinda wild this game has 3 different forest areas that are distinct from one another. I wasn't sure at first if the forgotten forest was the Forest of Fallen Giants, Huntsman's Copse or Shaded Woods until I clicked on it
You raised such a good point a lot of these cut content videos miss, being the final versions context. I also don’t have a clear memory of Dark Souls 2, having never played it. So having a frame of reference makes it necessary to appreciate the reasons for changes.
Your Gutter video is probably one of my favourites on the channel, and my favourites about DS2 cut content - it's extremely thorough and interesting. I'm excited to see more, similar stuff from you here and to come in the future!
Thank you so much man really appreciate your hard work you are my favorite souls content creator a huge fan of ds2 ❤ I'm sure someday we will see a remake that will bring this game full vision to life
I wish we got to explore more of the fort in the present. The memories just give off a more classic medieval vibe, like something akin to undead burg. I’d love to explore a more chill version with less enemies and no time limit.
I think a lot of people missing a point here. Memories are not time traveling, they are just that - memories. Similar to the painted worlds, they are more akin to the parallel worlds. Whatever details giant picked up before his death will be in the memory, hence the discrepancy in minor details like crenelations and stonework.
I discovered your channel because of the “You Died” Book and realised Ive already seen half of your videos!! I love your content and it was so cool to learn a bit of your backstory, it makes the effort you put into the videos far more apreciated
One thing I didn't see covered, and maybe it was in a previous video, but there's a part of the memory of Orro I was always curious about. By the exit point of that memory, the giant that's blocking a door, there's a smaller building you can climb onto. From that roof, you can see into a bigger building through a hole in the wall and there's a giant in an idle animation inside. Is that more cut content or just an enemy to keep you busy in the memory?
You can get inside! I'm gonna add a bunch of empty space here before revealing the answer incase you have a save file you wanted to fire up to try and figure it out own your own.
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Go up to the highest roof in the memory of Orro. Walk towards that back corner that has a few of the treadmill cranes. Attack and break the support for the crane, which will lower a platform. You can drop down onto this platform. The running jump from that platform to get in is pretty tricky, due to the lack of ample running space. It's still totally do-able without better jumping gear, but probably easier to do with the butterfly gear equipped.
If you have a hard time picturing how this works in your head, bear in mind that the hole you've been looking through to see that giant isn't the intended entrance, that's the exit to that hallway. The entrance is further down the courtyard.
edit: Apparently you don't even need to jump and I was always making it harder for myself than I needed to. Just stand back as far as you can to have room to build up running speed, and then just run towards the hallway.
I'm gonna pin this for a bit. You're the second person to ask about it and I realize more people might be wondering too. :)
@@Wineblood as illusory wall said, you can and are supposed to get in there. There is items and a chest and stuff lol I had to look up how to get in so I could understand you thinking that it was out of bounds
Now my headcanon is the Giants crossing the sea by walking along the ocean floor like in Pirates of the Caribbean. Would be a terrifying visual to see them all popping up through the surface as they march into shallower water towards the castle
That is literally the coolest idea ever
Attack on Giant
In my headcanon, the big giants he showed in the end were transferring the smaller one on their shoulders. Yesterday, BonfireVN even made a video about a small giant falling from the sky, and I imagine he was just thrown by a huge giant as a paratruper without a parachute.
And the big one were also pyromancers that are throwing the fireballs on giant lord arena. Lets call them Fire Giants😀. (Elden Ring is truly just DS2 2)
I’ve always liked the theory that the giants in Ds2 look so different compared to the other two games because they’re actually stone creations of the real giants who transferred their souls into the golems to allow them to cross the sea. Maybe the reason Vendrick was able to invade and pillage their lands so easily is that the giants’ flesh and blood bodies are less capable of fighting back against humans (which is true for ds1 and 3, where their massive size and slow movement makes them easy for smaller foes to bait and maneuver around). This would also make the remaining giants found in the Black Gulch much more tragic, since they’ve been stuck in a literal husk for hundreds of years unable to return to their original bodies :(
Indeed, one might suppose all the ships in the harbor are sinking, because the giants attacked them from below. Both venting their revenge, and ensuring their foes had no chance to either sally forth to attack them nor to escape by sea.
You truly have a gift for knowing when to say "they probably didn't think about this too much and didn't want us thinking about this too much either", and when to start thinking about something too much, and I mean that as the highest compliment
28:42 Didn't expect iron door backstory...
in short, be wary of thief.
Reminds me of the D&D module "Tomb of Horrors". Where a single door is casually worth a comical amount of gold, so countless players who ran the adventure would rip it from its hinges and abscond with it.
People will always reuse good resources. Here in Norway we repurposed iron and lead from the sunken german warships from ww2 into manhole lids and sewer gratings. Probably other places as well but those are the most well known instances. And they were used not just locally but transported all over the country to be used.
Missed opportunity for a unique greatshield, guess the big dudes in Undead Crypt make up for it somewhat though.
Not even ten mins in and I feel safe in saying the already fantastic production quality of this series has somehow improved yet again!
thank you so much!
Can't wait to watch this, then watch it again in 6 months, then watch it again after that in another 6 months - peak Souls content once again dude!!
Also I've always felt forest was particularly 'cobbled together' so this was so interesting!
This post gets me.
Gilligan going from a child trafficker to a ladder smith is perhaps the biggest glowup. Props to him for turning his life around
I guess Ladder smithing was really profitable lol. Or maybe he just couldn't find anyone else to traffic
Laddiesmith Gilligan.
If he had stayed the same we would have felt less remorse when doing Navlaan's assassination quest and less sorrow seeing his corpse in DS3
@ I just did Navlaan's quests without killing the NPC's. I'm really not a fan of killing stuff in FromSoft games that you don't absolutely have to.
You can't prove he wasn't still a child trafficker and changed career paths after the undead curse made his business unprofitable.
Man a video from Illusory Walls and a video from Zullie about dark souls 2 on the same day is peak just like this game
thank you for illuminating that there was a new zullie video :), yt didnt show me that one in my feed lol
Literally said that a couple minutes ago, fr its so nice
Conspiracy theory: the two actually coordinated this!
And BonfireVN did one about the giant memories yesterday!
Maybe Illusory wall IS Zullie
I'd bet good money that basic navmesh on the "Right Wing" was put there specifically so they could get the shots for the trailer. I've done something similar to get promo shots before.
That would make a ton of sense.
This was my thinking as well.
That's exactly what I was thinking! "Hey, we want some vantage point to show the [left wing] from, and the [right wing] would work well. There is nothing actually there, but we can just slap in a collision box, teleport the player to it, and take some shots."
Another crackpot right wing conspiracy theory, when will the madness end
the 8 bit majula intro music continues to be absolutely amazing i can't put my finger on why i love it so much. i think it's the kind of weird lazy off beat timing.. even tho it is 6/8 it sounds so spicy... idk why but i love it.
thank you so much! I really appreciate that!
I didn't finish this video but 17 minutes in I just wanna thank you so much for being of one of the few people that doesn't write off DS2's world design as "lazy". The developers had a rough time and some things are stitched together in a hurry but even with that kind of crunch they actually cared about some things as you spotted many times in this video and didn't cheap out (with the exception of not putting a volcano behind earthen peak). The forest area being by far the most thorough. I've seen only 2 or 3 people who managed to notice the memories actually take place in some part of the level and you're of one them, the rest of the community just doesn't bother to do their own research. Thanks for making justice for this amazing game, illusorywall.
I would consider DS2 a miracle being as well made as it is considering the rocky development.
@ChristopherWaddelow definitely. Reading about how much they had to cut and downgrade to fit into the ps3 (it was originally meant to be for the ps4 only) and how they changed directors it's nothing sort of a miracle in how the game was even released in an acceptable state, or released at all.
A similar game I'd like to compare to is Crash Twinsanity. While I love that game it's very clear how its incomplete and buggy. DS2 could have been released in a similar fate. But FROMSOFT is an exceptional studio and the devs did actually really good considering the tools and deadline they had.
I know nobody's gonna start taking this seriously now, but even the Earthen Peak thing makes a lot of sense to me in the story. The lava the Iron Keep sank in isn't just lava, it's the soul of Gwyn transformed into an incorporeal unfathomable old one. It doesn't surprise me at all that it doesn't follow rules of logical space. But what's actually going on with the Old Ones is another thing people write off or simplify
@LadyDeSelby there are definitely some people who agree. I know some guy put out a lore video recently that went down that route. I find it to be big head cannon. I struggle to find the game to be that intentionally made. It was rushed.
@@ChristopherWaddelow The lava being Gwyn is literally stated in the text of the game. To be clear, I'm not saying they planned out the world layout specifically to prop up that idea - the development of almost every game is a series of compromises and concessions, and we know DS2 had many. But the result does make at least some sense.
The concept of being able to explore the whole “forest of fallen giants” in the past and see more details and new areas and bosses not accessible in the present is very cool. Whether or not it was the intention of the developers.
Thanks for the video.
It's like basically Dark Root/Oolacile, but in the base game instead of as DLC.
I wonder if maybe it wasn't intended to be the whole level but some item that let you switch between the two, so for instance in the past there's a place you can't go past so you need to shift to the present, then you can get through until some place you're blocked, and back to the past. Wouldn't need each area to be linked in a single timeline then. Maybe what the time crystal item would have been for.
"The alpha was horribly unfinished" I wish more people realized this. I swear some people think there's a fully complete alpha version of ds2 out there with pretty lighting and time travel and everything.
Haha true. Most of the time the stuff you see in trailers is the best stuff being done at the moment, maybe even the most. I only came to that realisation after some time.
It's a vertical slice after all
I mean, I think thats a bit uncharitable. People who think like that are passionate about it from having a strong imagination, imagining what the hypothetical "full" level would look like based on those snippets. I think for most people who think like this their passion is short lived, either with the understanding that the cut/unused content either couldn't work beyond its concept, or simply they realize they shouldn't waste too much time and energy fantasizing about this hypothetical parallel "DS2, but the cut content wasn't cut".
Because, after all, the DS2 we have here now was the DS2 that came from its' artists early concept ideas, molded into a finished piece.
Same situation with the nebulous DS3 "alpha build" that a supposed leaker played before the games release. Most of the information provided by the leaker was already known from the previously leaked screenshots, which were proven to be real, coupled with heaps of information that has either been outright disproved or is highly disputed among the souls community because of a lack of evidence. The legitimacy of the alpha build will always be contested and for good reason. Cut content is so alluring that people will believe anyone if they spin a good story. The perfect example of this would be Pontiff being the final boss in an earlier version of the game because it is only half true. Pontiff's model was intended to be used as the final boss but with an entirely different character to match it. Pontiff Sulyvahn as we know him did not exist as a character at that point in the games development, Aldrich's name in the game files is Sulyvahn.
The fact that the lighting system was very ambitious and they show how so little areas in any previews of the game makes me think that the game ran absolutely horribly on consoles aside from a select few areas they could show. There was no way they could keep this up to the final product.
The Forest of Fallen Giants was always one of my favorite areas of the game as far as visuals go. I love the fortress being torn apart by roots in the present day, as if the giants are still trying to destroy the kingdom they hate so much even after death.
Hearing about Any Austin in an Illusory Wall video is incredibly funny to me since I've recommended this channel on one of his videos
Shout out Any Austin!
Just two incredible videogame nerds
I love the Dark Souls II that we have today. But gosh, how badly I wish that we could get the fully fledged version that the devs originally aspired to give us.
it’s kind of interesting how every dark souls game has a major case of “what could have been” and yet they’re all so good
Average FromSoftware game experience ever since the 90s but somehow they still make the final product peak gaming. Their ambitions have always been too big for their budgets but they still make do in the end.
@@familyguyfreemoviedownload8314 That's almost every video game honestly
@@familyguyfreemoviedownload8314 And that's what is so agonizing with Souls games. You already know it's good, but when you hear the original visions, you know it could have even been better. I honestly feel like a Dark Souls 1 remake would actually be completely justifiable with how much of that game was gutted.
There's some unintentional thematic resonance there. We are all Chosen Bearers of the Curse who are Unkindled. We long for what could have been, with more knowledge only serving to increase our desire and suffering.
It's a good day when there's a new illusory wall video
especially when its a DS2 video
And a zullie the witch video
So true
and it rains
Why do people say this. Am I old now
“It’s a good day when there’s a new ___ video “ please answer this gramps
In development, it's typical to spend extra time on the first area of the game, often revisiting it as the last part of development. It looks like to me that the "past" version of the area probably wasn't revisited and thus lives in an older, less detailed iteration.
Funnily very fitting
28:16 Old Iron Cake!
The way people tend to fixate on behind-the-scenes details, cut content and unused concepts, reminded me of an old blog post I once read. It was essentially stating your exact same sentiments - that there's no guarantee that the DS2 hinted at in development would have actually turned out good in the end. But I always remember the term the writer came up for this phenomenon: "meta-spoilers". The same way story spoilers can undercut the intended impact of story beats, meta-spoilers can undercut the intended impact of the finished version of a game.
I love seeing DS2 datamined! The big arial overview shot, and the purple DSAnim map for reference, are really appreciated. I'm legitimately SO STOKED to have a solid potential answer to that inaccessible cave behind Soldier's Rest, and the broken bridge up there that seemed to lead nowhere. Really juicy stuff!
I’m just disappointed that the tunnel at the start of Memory of Vammar (where you meet Drummond) appears to connect to nothing based on his map.
I'm probably in the minority here but while id say I'm a fan, I'm not even a hardcore souls fan. It's more that I'm a fan of these vids.
Like I love souls don't get me wrong, but it's the presentation and explanation of niche game knowledge and easy to understand breakdowns of otherwise complicated game development concepts that keeps me coming back. I'd watch this content even if it was based on a series I've never played. It's just so interesting.
thank you so much! I really appreciate that
his video on Mr Gimmick is pretty much that!
Maybe a cop-out, but I like the idea that the reason the geometry and architecture don't always line up between past and present is becuase we're experiencing the faded memories of the giants. The giants weren't intimately familiar with the castle and might be misremembering aspects of it all these years later. Of course, the giants are still here in the form of trees and died when they left these memories behind so it doesn't make that much sense for them to be different. I'm not holding my breath for this to true; you'd expect more things to be off if we were supposed to assume this was a misremembered location.
this reminds me of the theory that the reason levels feel so disjointed in DS2 is because your character is slowly hollowing and forgetting the experiences in between levels where nothing really happens, basically blacking out
@ I like that idea too! I know it’s just making excuses for a troubled development, but I think it’s cool to head-canon.
The saddest lost content from intended iterations is the darkness mechanic. Which was completely cutt. Just like DkS3 had a "create your own bonfire" mechanic also cut.
That's my personal desire, too. I like doing the torch stuff in the retail game already, but how frickin' cool would it have been for the torch to be more important, more necessary?!
@@kenjen9861would've been annoying, try exanima to see why. On the other hand DS2 is much much less punishing than exanima and you can one hand use two handed weapons, so it'd make it less annoying. But at the datw it was released, would've been a pretty cool gimmick.
This seems like a concept a mod should try to revive.
Darkness mechanic was probably intended to be a nod to King's Field like many DS2 things are. In case anyone wants a taste of how it would've worked. King's Field 3 in particular is pretty brutal with the Dark mechanic compared to the other ones. It was really annoying in KF3 so I understand why they'd cut it in the end for DS2 lol granted in KF you mainly use magic to light up the rooms rather than torches held in your hand so it's more forgiven and MP resource based.
For the Memory of Jeigh cut content I wonder if the original intention was the rolling statue head blocking your path (without the crack down the middle of it yet, to let you walk through it), which would make you turn around, go into the statue pathway, down to the middle floor, then all the way round to right wing, climbing the stairs and possible encountering the Giant Lord on that wing, or other enemies with those navmeshes allowing for enemies to path down the rubble to you.
That's a really neat idea! One statue making you turn around to use the other statue would be a solid concept.
My lord the fact that you are at least aware of any Austin makes so much sense.
It also puts into perspective my RUclips taste
26:00 There actually is a good explanation (or theory) for the Iron Door originating from Iron Keep. Vendrick and Drangleic did some recycling. The Old Ironclads Soldiers enemies we see all over the Forest of Giants are from the Iron Keep and were golems made by the Old Iron King. Vendrick assimilated them into his own army after the OIK's death. We also know that the Iron Keep itself was plundered for iron and materials. "Over the ages, the iron was stripped from the castle by opportunistic passers-by."
Yup! Although I didn't mention the soldiers (I should have), that's the main idea I wind up settling on.
I like to think that the reason the Heavy Iron Key is in that room is because they took it thinking it was the key to that door and whoever they got to install the door unwittingly locked themselves inside with the salamanders.
@OneNationUnderPug I'd assume they would put the salamanders in AFTER installing the door that contains them. But idk maybe that's in-character for aldia or vendrick or whoever.
As I recall, the Alonne Captains have the crest of Drangleic on them so they have changed allegiances as well.
@@Paddy656 perhaps they did but had to replace the door with a sturdier one.
40:12 I know this is from another video, but DAMN CJ in DS2 is so funny
you and any austin are two of my favorite youtubers so you namedropping him just made me really happy for no reason
6:47 passing the giant in the tunnel like “hey how’s it going…..WAIT A MINUTE WHAT THE HELL”
DS II is my fav souls game of the series. I love too see it recieving this deep dives. !
Both you and zullie released DS2 videos within 3 minutes of each other. This is a pretty good day
Always a treat when you upload. Thank you for the effort you put into these!
It would be really cool to see a video from you going into the God/Divine Graves area cut from DS3, sometimes it feels like half that game was just repurposed from that one area, as well as parts of elden ring
edit: honestly something ive always wanted to see is someone make a video going into how many bosses from elden ring are reused from other games, even the ulcerated tree-spirit is the cut snake soul boss from ds3
the erdtree spirits are asylum demons and the omenkillers are capra demons. the orange wolves have a few moves from sif but could be the old farron wolf from 3 instead since we never got it. im sure theres more im blanking on... hell im pretty sure the beast claw weapon from the dlc recycles gasciones move set. the combo looks very familiar atleast. ide have to sit down and fight stuff again as a refresher to pick out more probably
@@brewedjuice494 Yeah I agree the orange wolf is probably derived from the cut farron boss. There is a theory that Malenia is Tomoe from an entirely scrapped Sekiro DLC but I haven't seen anyone show a smoking gun in terms of strings or file names
@@ASapphicKitsune ive definitely heard that, but never with any type of real proof. i wouldnt be surprised if atleast a move or two were originally intended for sekiro, like waterfowl. sekiro is usually pretty clear about "master and student" fighting styles though. Emma and Isshin, wolf and owl. genichiro doesnt really "fight" like malenia so i imagine most of her kit is bespoke for her in elden ring. the prostetics do draw an interesting comparison tho since she was also the guardian of an immortal heir like kuro.
The memories of the giants might be favorite part in any of the Souls games. It really made the area come alive in a way none of the other games have. Stuff like that is why DS2 is my favorite FromSoft game, it has so many unique ideas that make the journey feel more epic than just running from boss to boss until its over.
The concept of experiencing a war as it happens is rarely explored in these games, and so the memories was a nice touch.
I'm glad DS2 is getting more love, but I wish people would do it without reductively degrading the other games. No Souls games can accurately be characterized as "running from boss to boss until it's over". They all have incredible storytelling, worldbuilding, art, exploration, characters etc. I understand the reflexive impulse because of how much shit has been unfairly thrown at DS2, but we should be a bit more measured.
@@Robbay363 can't agree more 👏
@@Robbay363 youre both wrong. ds2 is garbage and the other games dont have "incredible storytelling"
@@twolessba1087 Cheap bait. Swapping garbage for something like "poorly-designed" would probably improve your odds for landing a fish though. Good luck with the trolling.
THANK YOU, I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS KIND OF EPISODE ABOUT THE FOREST. THANK YOU SO MUCH MAN
I have mixed feelings about your findings. On the one hand, I'm glad that my beloved game has a great story behind it, and I can see how much care they put into the level design. On the other hand, I'm depressed by the final state of the game. How many ideas did they have to butcher due to time constraints, low budget and management changes? How great could this game be if they could make what they originally planned? I guess we will never know.
Thanks for this impressive work
I think that it's fine that some of these side areas got cut if it means that what we were left with was more detailed and meaningful. FoFG in the end turned out to be an incredibly well designed area.
@@nateh5736 Agreed. After all, we wouldn't be here talking about the game after more than a decade if their decisions had been bad. On the contrary, they managed to create a great and memorable enough level and game overall, despite all the hardships along the way.
Nobody tell this guy about Duke Nukem Forever....
What people always forget when discussing "cut" content, is that, no, it wasn't "cut". Almost always it was content that never even was being considered for development. It existed in concepts and draft documents at best. Maybe someone threw a few grey boxes together to look at what it'd be like. But: It was never seriously considered for development. It's not some kind of lost media or potential. Almost always cutting things for budget, design, and management reasons, happens long before any serious effort went into it. If it wasn't cut because it was actually bad content (and would have made the game worse), then it was cut early enough for everything else to adjust around it, and thus has no impact.
Could the game have been a greater whole than what we got? Maybe. Would that have included all of this "cut" content? Probably not.
@@Duriel181 What could've been is always preceived as better. Rose tinted glasses and all.
My favorite series!
Love these deep dives into specific levels
Another thing that supports your interpretation of the Old Iron door being imported, not a natural part of the fortress: IIRC, the original release of DS2 that was a regular Fortress of Fallen Giants door. Instead of locked by a key it “does not open from this side”, you open it by attacking it to “knock” and a soldier on the other end will open it for you. So the presence of the door in SotFS was a retcon done once they’ve written up lore for the DLCs.
Illusory Wall made 4 Dark Souls II videos back to back? We eatin good this year
Your vids on DS2 has made me really appreciate it a whole lot more than I already did. Thanks for the deep dives on it!
Considering 55:25 and my thoughts about it, Dark Souls 2 talks a lot about memories, and specifically losing them. I mean, that's why you're here in Drangleic to begin with. Maybe the intent here is to convey how your "memories" of the world are wrong, even if only slightly. That the way you are seeing things isn't necessarily correct because you are losing your memories, perhaps trying to fight against the curse to remember what it is, and just remembering wrong because of it. Granted, this is a bit of a catch all idea (it can explain away basically anything that's is incongruent or doesn't make sense) but I'd like to think that that's the ultimate intent here. Plays into that idea and helps make things that don't make sense, make sense.
I was thinking the same. Is there some deep lore reason why these memories are not literal memories? I had always assumed the Giants simply remember the area differently than it really was.
This is exactly what I was thinking every time a reason for discrepancies was brought up, memories are notoriously unreliable, while some things may be spot on, details, especially distance details, could be way off. Thinking there were two towers in a spot is entirely plausible, remembering an archway being much lower because of the angle you saw it from makes perfect sense.
...No, dude, sorry but thats a wrong model in the wrong spot lol. I understand what you're implying but thats not it in this case. The "actually the 10 seconds long hallway from a foggy forest to a night time castle during a downpour represents the character losing his mind!" is good enough.
@DedAlexFive The time stamp is in regards to what illusory wall is talking about, specifically the start of the thought I'm directly talking about my thoughts on. The idea that clearly they were changing the models and how the level looked on purpose because we can see this spot they missed, so why were they changing it?
I was thinking this too. I like to believe that the entirety of the Drangleic that we see is akin to a memory of Shanalotte that she used to trap Nashandra in, or Nashandra's memory itself, so discrepancies between one person's memory and another's fits in with that idea.
The door itself being older than Drangleic, but not it's installation in Drangleic is why I love these games. So many "technically, I didn't lie" moments.
Bloodborne music playing background gives me 99 insight while watching this, thank you
This is my favorite series on RUclips. Thank you so much for making these with so much detail and effort.
I think this is one of my favorite topics this series has ever covered. The situation with the Forest of Fallen giants is so specific and unique, and it was such a fantastically clever idea to mine it for behind the scenes insight. There are of course other times we see the same location in multiple time periods, but never quite so thoroughly-entwined as this.
Love the AnyAustin shoutout. Both of your channels are fantastic.
Just for your information, your videos help me during tough times. I appreciate your efforts, every upload makes me happier.
the most solid conclusion we can reach from the differing details between the alpha and the release version of dark souls 2 is that the fiscal year is an evil on human creativity.
Dude, I love your explanations of the lore through the level design. Thank you for making this series!
Fantastic episode, as always! I do think your comments on cut content in general are on point; content gets cut for a wide variety of reasons, not just time constraints-sometimes something just isn't fun, or the lore got changed, or there's technical limitations. Also, I wasn't going to mention it, but since you asked: The 'ciara' in 'Inciaradible' is supposed to be pronounced like the Dark Souls 1 character, Ciaran. 😅
Thanks so much, and ahhh crap thanks for letting me know!!
I am so so happy to see this video being published, I've been waiting for 4 years
Man.. FotFG is such a cool area! Now I have even more appreciation for it.
It is insane how quickly this channel became one of my all-time favorites on RUclips.
More Dark Souls 2 soon please.
With each passing year i realize more and more that Dark Souls 2 is my favorite of the bunch, and i get sadder and sadder that it wasn't allowed to shine, to become what it was supposed to be.
The Pig Shield is such a nice touch.
I love these videos, I love the Forest of Fallen Giants, one of my favorite areas in DS2 so Im more than ready for this video.
I see a step up in quality for this video with the edits, nice job man
I was just rewatching illusory wall videos, perfect timing
I absolutely adore these early levels design concepts explorations.
always a good day when illusory wall drops a monster vid like this
Fascinating video. I cannot start to imagine how much work when into it. Kudos!
35:38 that revelation is amazing
that's crazy that the community can piece this stuff together.
Forest of Fallen Giants is one of my favourite areas in all of souls, thank you so much for this!
56:47 true but the other wing is the same, affordable health care is cut content no matter the area
Its such a beautiful level. Thank you for doing a video on it.
4 DS2 dissected videos in a row. Absolute delight!
Love this series. I don't really care for DS2 but I've always respected the big swings it takes and some of the more out there parts of its design. These videos really help elucidate why the game is how it is, both good and bad.
the best souls youtuber strikes again!
16:50 maybe they used the bricks for repairs
the four arm giant boss arena memory and theories is awesome!
51:40 i got it!
1:02:43 rumbling
The Layout Recap was very well done and useful
Memory is always different from reality, so it makes sense to me that the memory looks different to the present. There's also the fact that they are memories of Giants and who knows how they see brickwork with their gaping hole.
Man this videos are sooooo cool. Been specting DS2 dissected for a while and man you just blown me away
I dream of a Dark Souls 2 mod that would reintroduce most of the cut content and original level layouts, with the current tools we have, I feel like we're getting closer and closer to that becoming a reality.
the non-released stuff... this is my favorite sort of dissected. love to see how things could have been so i can feed the what-ifs in my brain
My god 2:50 in and my minds already fried from the revelation that I’ve been standing in the same area in two different time periods. Hold on folks this is going to be a good one
These videos are the reason why Dark Souls 2 is still my favorite Souls game. I love the mystery of the game, created by all the cut content.
Along with the old iron door, Drangleic seems to salvage technologies from older kingdoms in general. Drangleic castle being the place where most of it is horded.
I've been playing souls games since 2012 and have countless hours in all of them (also AC6) and after finishing the ER DLC, souls fatigue hit me hard but your content is the only Dark Souls content I'm still really looking forward to.
Four DS2 dissected in a row!
We eatin good
More! More! More!
Love these map analysis videos, always excited when I get a notification for a new vid from you. Keep up the great work!!
Walking through the ocean instead of using ships is so badass XD
It's hard to not feel bittersweet about what was presented in the trailers and what we recieved, even after all this time, but I understand that the final product needed to take a different direction, all things considered. Thanks for this detailed look!
I would have loved to spend more time exploring the Giants' Memories, if only the game had let me. Thank you for this content ❤️
Yay! This is the stuff I've been most excited to see! DS2 cut content is so interesting, but especially the forest and giants in particular to me have always felt like they had so much left to look into. They feel, to me, like some of the most "DS2" stuff, like the departure from other works that could have been given more love if allowed to be more of its own thing. I don't know how true that is, but they're special regardless, and I love to learn more about them!
44:10 the implications of this alpha route are hilarious, “ok so you go down stairs, then make a left, then make another left, then make a left again, then you go left and up stairs again.” I want to know what the architect of this castle was smoking
To be fair, some castles are built intentionally confusing to delay the enemy incase they manage to enter
Always nice to enjoy the evening with a video from illusory wall!
You know it's kinda wild this game has 3 different forest areas that are distinct from one another. I wasn't sure at first if the forgotten forest was the Forest of Fallen Giants, Huntsman's Copse or Shaded Woods until I clicked on it
You have no idea how grateful I am for these ds2 videos🙏
You raised such a good point a lot of these cut content videos miss, being the final versions context.
I also don’t have a clear memory of Dark Souls 2, having never played it. So having a frame of reference makes it necessary to appreciate the reasons for changes.
Your Gutter video is probably one of my favourites on the channel, and my favourites about DS2 cut content - it's extremely thorough and interesting. I'm excited to see more, similar stuff from you here and to come in the future!
Thank you so much man really appreciate your hard work you are my favorite souls content creator a huge fan of ds2 ❤ I'm sure someday we will see a remake that will bring this game full vision to life
I watch these types of videos from you in a heartbeat! That being said, gimmick part 2 pls
Every time you mention a "potential Bluepoint remake" I shiver in fear
This content always hits the spot, especially dark souls 2 Thanks homie
I wish we got to explore more of the fort in the present. The memories just give off a more classic medieval vibe, like something akin to undead burg. I’d love to explore a more chill version with less enemies and no time limit.
keep up the ds2 content! im loving every second of it
I think a lot of people missing a point here. Memories are not time traveling, they are just that - memories. Similar to the painted worlds, they are more akin to the parallel worlds. Whatever details giant picked up before his death will be in the memory, hence the discrepancy in minor details like crenelations and stonework.
I discovered your channel because of the “You Died” Book and realised Ive already seen half of your videos!! I love your content and it was so cool to learn a bit of your backstory, it makes the effort you put into the videos far more apreciated
Illusory Wall: Scholar of the Forest Scene
completely unrelated. I love the use of ICO music.
Related, great video as always.