u/ApprehensiveDare9765

Very very weird. I can’t comfortably imagine it spatially or size wise. It almost feels like if it was a planet, it wouldn’t be shaped like a sphere. With how much things collapse into one another and overlap - I wonder how much of it is “real”.

Like, is the Dreg Heap real or is it maybe purely magical? And if that’s the case where does the line of real and magical begin and end? Is Ash Lake “real”? If they are real, imagine how bizarre of a shape the world of Dark Souls would be. Or maybe for them, things can be real, but not be visible to the naked eye.

Gonna rant about some stuff I suppose would be obvious because I love Dark Souls and I want to hear your thoughts.

I always found it really interesting how we see so many knights in the Dark Souls games and are forced to encounter how varied they are in terms of morals, wants and desires. A lot of it seems to be regionally biased to a certain extent, both Solaire and Oscar seem like noble knights, Catarina produces more jovial knights, Carim produces a darker variety, etc. I find that their place in the caste of the world is even more interesting.

Knights served lords historically, depending on their location, they followed traditions of chivalry. Gwyn’s Knights served him of course, his place being a lord, but his status of a God also made him a stand in for the lower knights own dedication to service, for religion was also integral to historical knighthood. The lowly knights we meet mostly seem to be brought up under the tutelage of Gwyn’s order. He is the lord of the world, to link the fire is honorable. It must be honorable because without it the world will go to the dark, and Lord Gwyn himself committed his very existence to preserving the age of fire - sacrificing himself for all of mankind.

But with Gwyn being gone for hundreds of years after linking the Fire, the mystification of his legend can only carry something that was once real for so long. In the knights lifetimes that we personally meet, how many centuries has it been since Gwyn linked the flame? Many indeed. All they have is hope, a theme of the Souls games, but hope cannot carry everything. Human beings are still individuals, and by the time we meet them, I have doubts that these knights would be able to do what they do and say what they say in the heyday of old. They are weird, odd, not what you would typically think of when you think of a knight. Even Oscar seems to be acting of his own accord, though he is the most traditionally noble knight in the game.

Part of me doubts any of them would become knights in the first place in the olden age, even though Gwyn has a Giant in his coterie of Elite Knights, Gough is arguably the most noble NPC we meet in the game. He makes the other knights we meet seem so small, both literally and figuratively, in comparison.

What I’m saying is, so much time has passed that even knighthood has become weakened, lacking in meaning more and more as the world comes to an end. What it means to be a knight, its values and honors are meaningless when the world they serve is falling apart. This could extend to the greater religious values in the series as well, and Lautrec is a whole can of worms with him not even dedicating himself to Gwyn - but a whole other God entirely.

As such, knights in the world of Dark Souls seem to be upholders of the status quo, and it is only during the end of the world that their ties become more tumultuous, and their values are tested. With no “lord” of the world and the societal rules they uphold degrading, they too degrade alongside it.

If you like DS2, I respect your opinion. I’ve been playing Souls games since Dark Souls 1 release, and I’ve played and loved all of the games over and over. I wanted to replay DS2 since it’s been years and I remember it fondly.

But man, Dark Souls 2 does not hold up as well as I remember.

The game feels so stiff. The movement just feels so off, the roll animation is weird, attacks feel like you are scratching enemies - there’s so little hit stun sometimes or just hit reaction in general for most normal weapons. I’m not saying I should be chainstunning enemies, but some enemies just feel like balls to hit, like your sword is just phasing through them with the only sign of damage being a lower health bar and a flat metallic clank noise. Demon’s Souls on the PS3 runs circles around the combat flow and movement in this game. So many areas have way, way too many copy pasted enemies that have such particular aggro sight lines leading to constant ganks.

I don’t mind the areas and how disconnected they are, but I do mind the amount of empty stone cubes that act as rooms absolutely everywhere. Dark Souls 1 had this issue too sometimes, but even there there was usually more detail and it wasn’t everywhere. Walking across Drangleic to find multiple empty cube rooms in different areas is just odd.

I did not come out of this feeling great, and it kind of ruined my perception of DS2 unfortunately.

It seems that the sun has many properties our own sun does not have. The sun grows a dark sign, it seems to be out in Anor Londo and Gwyndolin uses illusion to keep Anor Londo attractive to would-be Chosen Undead. It seems at least tangentially tied to the status of the First Flame, I wonder if it even operates similar to our own? Does it have planetary bodies orbiting it? Is it just pure magic?

I saw some screenshots of the Remake where they look like chains. But in the original they seem way too vast and high up to be chains? So what the heck are they?

I'm guessing a lot would say their favorite lore theorist for OG Dark Souls is Hawkshaw, and he is great but he also feels a bit more like a story teller or fanfic writer at times. I know Dark Souls is basically all interpretation at a certain point, but are there any youtubers that go into the Japanese text or are a bit more methodical? Maybe some who analyze some of its real world inspirations?

That is to say, I do really think Petscop was mostly thought out and very much well constructed - and I do appreciate his own lauding of the series primarily as art rather than a puzzle to be solved, but I think he reaches in quite a few areas of the series, and I don't really see his total reasoning for doing so.

Of course all of Petscop is interpretative, so my opinion doesn't overtake his - but bringing aspects of socio-economics, politics, and greater societal issues into a very personalized story is just a bit of overreaching in my opinion. I highly, highly doubt any of these factors were major aspects of Petscop during its creation, if they were they would at the very least have some sort of larger implication - as the series is I really don't see why Nightmare Masterclass had to bring those factors in. Petscop was meticulously thought out, but not that out in my opinion, it's too tightly made to tackle the massive societal factors he brings in. Even if he's bringing them up as only vestigial aspects, I really don't see how you could do that with almost anything and always end up at the same point: overbearing your listener, and going off the range of your topic.

I think the series is a bit simpler and more straightforward in its approach (not necessarily in it's content, mind you) than he makes it out to be. It's a play on creepypasta mixed with Lynchian experimentation and is focused on abstract themes ranging from child abuse to identity and PTSD - which we do agree on to a certain extent as he always emphasizes the core theme is child abuse. I just dislike that he brings in societal issues (which by the way I politically agree with for the most part) when I don't think that needed to be there in his interpretation nor do I think played much of a factor at all in Petscop's creation. Petscop isn't and was never about those things imho.

TL:DR - Great series of videos and easily one of the best on Petscop out there, but I do dislike personally how large in scope he sometimes makes Petscop out to be when it simply isn't in my eyes (not at all a bad thing, bigger isn't always better).

I need to emphasize this: I don't want to even know what I'm looking at.

I wanna see a 36 y/o motherfucker who works at Scheels reprogram a game on a fucking NES controller.

I want a screen to be grey for five minutes with some random jagged polygons spliced in every once and a while and then the credits start rolling.

I want to see some skinny guy on the bottom right corner with a completely blank, emotionless face as he makes some random ass game look like talking to a biblically accurate angel while on ketamine and DMT.

I want to be so concerned that I immediately go outside, take in a massive gulp of air, and touch grass.

I want to be terrified of what mankind is capable of and ask myself, "Why? How? Whomst? When?"

I want to be bamboozled, confounded, hoodwinked and bedazzled all at once, everywhere and in everyway.

I want schizophrenia. I want that high fructose, sugary, thicker than a bowl of oatmeal insanity that I'll never, EVER recover from.

I hear this a lot! Never played either, I’ve put hundreds of hours into base Diablo 2 and Resurrected (all the Diablo games except for 4, really). I’ve played an absolute shit ton of PoE 2, Grim Dawn and Titan Quest 1 & 2. I dunno if that makes me an ARPG vet or whatever but I am looking to get back into the genre after finishing the Grim Dawn expansion.

So. . . what even are these mods? They seem like they really change Diablo 2 a lot, almost into entirely new games. People hype both of them up quite a bit. What makes both of them so good exactly?

You know like SSX-likes or Tony Hawk’s-likes, maybe some games that are like Jet Set Radio. Maybe even like parkour games or baseball/basketball/soccer. I remember seeing some indie games that gave those vibes but for the life of me I can’t remember their names. Any suggestions?

I’m almost done with probation, I don’t really get too many opportunities to stack pits. They threw me into a 700 FWD pit today and I stacked around 40+ in Pit 3, filled Pit 1 to the brim and pit 2 up a ton. It was really hard to close the net with how intense the stacks were. I was taking my time trying to fit as many as I could but they complained about how little I fit up there. I feel like totally I fit maybe 60ish total bags across all the pits. A lot of the bags were huge as hell.

Am I doing something wrong? Do I suck? Advice?

EDIT: The back pit was weight restricted hence the large amount of bags in the front

EDIT 2: I mean a 737-700.

I remember my friend telling me about a character he played whose entire goal was to make love with an AI. Very very weird, intentionally designed him like Freddie from The Master. Ended up going cyberpsycho and getting wasted by his AI wife. What’s your experiences with weird characters and their fates?

I'm torn on what exactly his character should be, does he use tech? Does he not? His purpose will be a sort of vigilante in the campaign someone who is following a separate paper trail from the party but ends up at the same goal. Depending on how they spin things he can be either an ally or an enemy. I'm sure he left the temple and became secular, I'm just not sure how to spin it, and I want to be at least respectful of Tibetan customs, any advice?

Just finished SoTF right after The Forest and all I can say is: I’m dumbfounded by the plot and lore design in these games. I liked both well enough, but I’m sure I’m missing something so please feel free to rip into this post if I’m wrong about something - but like . . . I just need to rant for a second.

What’s up with the way Endnight designs their stories? Like, it feels like both games, The Forest and SoTF were games where they made models first and a story second every single damn time. That’s the implication I got every time I saw a new thing, because I learned after the first game that basically nothing links together all that much lore wise. None of the lore cohesively comes together, in either games. They almost never explain how anything lines up, the timelines for these games are total madness because: there is no timeline.

Nothing adds up, because they didn’t care about that - they cared about making things spooky or cool. Like, they never explain anything for all the skeletons everywhere in the first game, the religious connotations or anything. No explanation for anything related to the missionaries and how they fit in to the cannibals, what the cannibals have to do with fucking anything (in the first game). It’s all sort of ‘implied’ which I’m sorry can be done well, but with how little is given for implication I think it’s pretty damn obvious that no one in Endnight could give you a straight answer either.

It’s so messy and amateurish - almost everything else is so well done, it’s absolutely bizarre (besides indie game jank that is). Like the quality level on so many things is so high, but the story is completely nonsensical as soon as you give it two seconds of thought. It’s actually maddening, I don’t understand how they repeated the same mistakes with the sequel, if anything it feels more messy in SoTF. Why in the world did we need multiverse madness when you (you being Endnight) can’t even figure out why and how the cannibals fit in to anything story wise? The base and most common enemy in your game?

A series of personal theories or head canons cannot save a game’s story that does not try hard enough, I’m sorry. For an indie studio these games are achievements and they should be very proud and I guess I’m excited for the Forest 3, but I really feel just bewildered after finishing it all.