Shrine Handmaiden’s reaction to excrement-covered ashes: mmm such splendid ash Shrine Handmaiden’s reaction to Dreamchaser’s ashes: wow this is so shitty where’d you even find this garbage haha
@@SoFarSoGoodSoWhat14pretty sure the whole point of Miyazaki’s story telling is to fill in the blanks with your imagination, so what’s the problem with imagination running wild?
If the undead never runs out of purpose, they’ll never truly hollow, and so the pendant was born, always searching for its purpose and so, never hollowing fully
You know something I think would be really fun would be a history of the figuring out of Dark Souls Lore. I imagine in the first weeks after its release very little of the story was actually understood and I think it would be cool to trace an evolution of that story being unraveled. This would take a lot of research but maybe somebody's done it already?
@@BestiaryYT Then I recommend checking ENB, aka EpicNameBro, the OG of Dark Souls lore stuff. Man was so invested he even got to write the official guide for two of the games (Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne, IIRC). A lot of his YT stuff is privated or deleted but you could definitely try to check in with Marcus himself if you ever dig into it. The other lore people who have been around for a while definitely also know his stuff.
this interests me a lot - and more than this, how certain secrets were discovered. There are some things in these games that feel like they couldn't have been figured out without a bit of community effort which we no longer think about since it's just there on the wiki. For example, how Midir was found. How many players found Midir entirely themselves? I imagine very very few
I don't think the Pendant was necessarily a prank, I think it was more just an option for players to insert their own meaning during character creation for roleplaying purposes. It has no effect beyond the meaning that the player gives to it, as the description pretty clearly states.
@@error4159 Not really. He said he preferred to either choose nothing or the pendant as his starting gift, which was a strong hint that the pendant also did nothing.
I always saw the Pendant as having sentimental value; it's worthless as far as powers or abilities go, but Manus made it very clear that the power it held was in the memories it represented. When the sorcerers of Oolacile broke his pendant, Manus lost the last real connection he had to a life before his torment, so little wonder his Humanity ran wild and birthed the first Abyss. Almost everyone has some item that is objectively worthless and meaningless, but we still hold onto it because it has sentimental value. I myself still keep around a piece of artwork I made in highschool over 20 years ago because the teacher said it was one of the best pieces he'd ever seen; I still keep around a paper frog that was used as a seat marker for my spot in my first grade class because the teacher was one of my favorite teachers and that was over 30 years ago; I still keep the tassels from every school I've graduated from, because they're trophies of accomplishment, and even though my life would be objectively the same without them, I keep them around because they help me remember. The reason FromSoft lore is always vague and unclear is because famously Miyazaki used to read old fantasy and myth stories, but because he wasn't fluent in the language they were written in, he had to fill in the gaps with ideas he came up with himself; as such, part of those stories became entirely unique to him and thus made them part of his own personal memories, just as you and I fill in the gaps of DS/BB/ER item descriptions to create in essence our own stories about what's going on.
Gosh I forgot about those. I was convinced myself way back when that they had to have some sort of meaning. They all had runes on the bottom sides if I remember correctly and that drove me crazy. Alas, after over a decade now, I’m convinced those bugs in jars belong in the Dragonborn Gallery. As always, mods come to the rescue.
Vaguley reminds me of a door that would never open behind a certain giant beast and also in a room filled with pots and a single (pretty bad) upgrade gem... Or even better, if a certain trap door that disabled online matchmaking when stood on in a conspicuous college which was never opened, not even in the DLC...
No matter how much time goes by, I still love watching videos like this where even years later, ppl after *_still_* learning new secrets or new takes on lore. DS1 videos hit so many nostalgia boxes for me lol
This has to be one of the best DS1 videos i have seen. And it's on a new channel. This is a true masterpiece. Keep up the uploading king i have watched all of your videos now. You will blow up
i started to tear up the second u narrated the diary entries, all because i knew where it was going. All i began to hear in my head was "dont go hollow" and how much it means with such little words. In my second year of uni, I met someone who absolutely loved the first dark souls and wouldn't let me leave without admitting how beautiful the ambiance was in the first game, let alone the whole series. For such a little trinket, there are so many memories that all come crashing back and the same goes for everything else to do with this game - be it the music, the items and weapons or little pieces of dialogue that act as memories the longer time passes since playing it for the first time. Sometimes I imagine him playing the game, and any time I go back to play it myself, I imagine him being already through the same areas and bosses before me. How he could be in the same place as me in another time, so close and yet we don't know each other anymore. I don't think there is any game that does that like the souls series
Can't wait for Bluepoint to eventually remake DS1 and actually add some insanely convoluted purpose for the pendant. They've already proven they're not above such silliness with the coin mystery in Demon's Souls.
Fromsoft owns the Dark Souls license. Blue Point will never be able to touch this game for a remake because they're a Sony studio. Sony only own the Demons Souls and Bloodborne licenses.
I hope that never happens they sucked the soul right out of demons souls. The game looks like it was made with AI I’ll take the og ps3 release any day.
@iAMmiso000 Art direction, general-atmosphere overall tone; these were ruined in making it "more technically impressive", it lost its original vision; something that Bluepoint obviously neither understood nor cared about. So many technically impressive remakes, so fewer the ones that keep the original vision...or truly improve on it. Instead of Enhancing the original, they try to improve over it.
I love your takes on Dark Souls lore, i've been craving some more recently. Your videos definetly scratch that itch. Thank you for making these videos, they're great!
My personal theory is still that he's a pigmy who really likes hats, but he's big enough to look like a human so that's why the pygmies call him "Big" Hat Logan, while the other humans who aren't aware he is a pygmy at all mistook it as "Big Hat" Logan
Awesome video. There are probably enough of these mysterious items that lead nowhere in game perhaps you could turn it into a series. A sort of "friends we made along the way" series. Keep it up regardless!
I think the pendant for me symbolizes why i love dark souls 1 so much. The quality of souls games nowadays are usually judged by superficial things like how fair the bosses are, or how big the map is, but that’s never really what it’s been about for me. The feeling of mystery throughout dark souls 1 is the real beauty of the game. The best memories I’ve had were wondering what’s behind that wall or past that mountain. Meaningful or not, the pendant is just another piece of dark souls one that helps create that mysterious feeling and yearning to go deeper.
I mean I'm pretty sure it was meant to be a "praise" of it (or at least an optimistic view) given Manus' broken pendant is like, his sole redeeming quality, that which still reminds us, maybe himself, that he was, and perhaps even still is, human, it is the only thing that keeps him going at all. I can even say that the pendant is redemptive in Manus' case but a snide to those who thought "wow, this thing saying 'I have nothing to offer than a bit of comfort for the weary' must mean I can get the Firstborn Lord's Sunlight Silver Spear Ultra Mega Colossal Sword if I just find were to use it or get a lot of them".
Proofreading OP's Post for Maximum Readability, in Honor of the Humble Comma: I mean, I'm pretty sure it was meant to be a praise of it (or at least an optimistic view), given Manus'[s] broken pendant is, like, his sole redeeming quality --- that which still reminds us, maybe himself, that he was, and perhaps even still is, human. It is the only thing that keeps him going at all. I can even say that, [while] the pendant is redemptive in Manus'[s] case, [it's] a snide to those who thought, "[W]ow, this thing saying, 'I have nothing to offer than a bit of comfort for the weary' must mean I can get the Firstborn Lord's Sunlight Silver Spear Ultra Mega Colossal Sword, if I just find w[h]ere to use it, or get a lot of them." ****************** Editor's Note: I can't help but mention how much I'm loving "snide" here. Pure loving that shit. It's an adjective, functioning as a noun (I looked it up); but it's the way that it stands opposed to "praise" --- which itself feels jury-rigged lol --- that gives me them good-good tingles. To that end, I changed it to, "it's a snide" in order to precede snide with a being verb, just like what's done with praise. My hope is to better inure, "snide" against any detractors. As being verbs are so often followed by predicate nouns --- sometimes called, "predicate nominatives" for some ungodly reason --- I feel that this choice I've made will head off some, if not all, unbelievers. Of course, I didn't devise any of this. I'm writing this all after letting my instincts lead me. In the moment, I chased ideas, harmony, and rhythm, not chasing any dumb-ass rules. I checked your page, and the far-outedness of it made me feel that u wouldn't dishonor my extra attention. Also, that I owed u an explanation: I DO think that, considering the paragraph break I employed, it simply reads better. But, I acknowledge fully I may have encroached with my edit. If that's true, then I can only hope that my passion 4 ur writing protects me.
@@erwidobi7812 Ah, thank you! And no, I'm not bothered by the extra attention, haha, I appreciate it! I agree even a paragraph break alone would have made it more readable, although had I proofread, I would have probably made a bunch of changes; sometimes I avoid doing so at all precisely because I spend too much time editing around a random comment online.
Thanks for this video. I just finished DS1 and didnt know the story behind that. I chose the pendant on my first character for roleplay purposes, I wanted the pendant to make my character remember something from his past and not give up.
if u can search for meaning in something that promises your efforts may be in vain, then you can get through a lot in life and miyazaki wanted to show a lot of us that. he shares wisdom through these games.
hey there, im new to the channel but this was a nice video! I really appreciate you putting subtitles on this video, youre an absolute godsend. excited to see what you make next❤
This is literally a throwback to the concept of RPGs. The Pendant has no significance to the game's story, only the story of your player character that you create.
Now I’m gonna start my journey to discover the ultimate mystery, the greatest obscurity that evades us even still, all these years of knowledge and new tools later, none could give us the answer to the greatest question yet: Did you leave the cursor on the screen on purpose?
If you also think about the starting gifts in terms of what fromsoft game the player enjoyed the pendant can also be seen as the very idea of Kingsfield: a game that while capable of killing you off in any way possible to laugh at you, it also teaches you the value of enjoying the journey through any memory good or bad as you grow as a person over time
This happens so often with DS lore videos. You're seeing things that aren't there. What was that saying... "One who seeks evil will find evil, whether it was there or not." To me, the pendant was always the vehicle for [insert your character's backstory here] and nothing else... Just because there's a lot of hidden depth to the DS universe doesn't mean some things shouldn't be taken at face value. Nice video, by the way, I enjoyed it even if the premise disagreed with me.
Playing souls games on and off for years (just two done) it's always mind blowing how deep these games are and how passionate the community is ,very nice production man👍
I like your final take on it, I love this series and what’s funny is I actually purchased Dark Souls 1(way after release it was on sale) on accident, I forgot what other game I was trying to buy but that one mistake changes my gaming life forever 🙌🏽🎉
Funny how a "nothing" item unironically inspired so much lore though. It's only use is to be traded with the crow for a Souvernir of Reprisal. Funny thing about Snuggly is that the items it trade are half completely random or completely meaningful to thing you've just traded. A fond memory related to a souvenir of reprisal probably means the character related to the pendant knew someone who was hunted/slain by a Blade of the Darkmoon (in other words, they were oathbreakers). These are also dropped by people that try to invade Alvina's part of the forest. She more or less protects the grave of Artorias and Sif. The key to the DLC is a broken pendant, that was probably belonging to either Dusk or Artorias himself. Fastforward to Dark Souls 3. Dreamchaser Ashes. Ashes of someone hopeless that died grasping a dream. Found near a covenant made in the image of Artorias. Some might have broken oaths to chase this dream. Although made as something to troll players, this legit paints a picture of a kind of people somewhat similar to Artorias.
The cynic in me feels the same. Perhaps what the pendant really symbolizes is the fanbase's insane delusions about the wisdom and genius of Miyazaki. The game outright says the pendant is useless; Miyazaki straight up proclaims it as a prank; and yet the video and comments continue to praise its concept. Yes, there is beauty in a community that comes together in search of hidden meanings. But there is also plenty of absurdity in such blind beliefs. Really makes one wonder how much of this lesson applies to the lore and the game itself.
@@fourtruths3324 People reading too much into things is directly responsible for how lame and politically correct the world has become over the last 10 years.
Velka, Fina, Queen Lothric, the nature of the war against the gods, the specifics of Yorksha's conception, the development timeline of pre- to post-Demonic Izalith culture, the timeline of the Nameless King's banishment relative to Lloyd becoming King of the gods, how is Lloyd Gwyn's "uncle," what was Sulyvahn's actual goal, and what happened with the Death Soul? These are but a selection of the unexplained.
There's a remix of the nameless song called "I had a name". It is a video uploaded 9 years ago, and 8 years ago a guy called GregTom2 wrote this on the comment section: "The young traveller sighed. Where was he going again? Something... something about... a curse. Was that what he was running away from? Perhaps it was something he was running towards... The boy was far beyond saving. His movements were slow like an old man's, as if the very air had the thickness of a spider web. His skin had turned to a shade of brown that even the crows had forsaken. Most of all, his eyes were turning gray, not unlike those of a dead fish. He was hollowing from the inside. Now even the anxiety was fading; as he became oblivious to the notion that his mind was colapsing. For weeks he had screamed and moaned for his mother; now a stranger's name, sounding more and more like a scream of agony. No one had come but the dreaded men that had murdered him to harvest... something. Something about a curse. He was silent now. Laying down on his back under the rain. Waiting for a death that could not come. The young man put his hand in his pocket and felt it. He smiled one last time, and in a final spark of humanity, he whispered to himself: "I had a name". A simple pendant with no effect. Even so, pleasant memories are crucial to survival on arduous journeys." It was in the moment I read it that I understood the meaning of the pendant. You can listen to the music and read the original comment here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1jGAT-LjbV0.html&lc=UgiohqheKU363XgCoAEC Be safe, comrades.
The pendant keepsake has no meaning, if it had one once...the undead may never remember; their past is gone forgotten. However, that makes it quite useful; it makes the undead reflect, thinking of their past... trying to recall long-since passed memories, this meaningless purpose; one "with no obvious meaning" where no end can't be achieved, may have some purpose; staving off the endless degradation of the curse bearers' affliction... Nah Miyazaki's just trolling us.
Pendants, of this type typically held pictures inside; those of one's family, generally-speaking; hence it might be a picture of their's, only it's now meaningless, since their memories have long-since passed out of thought. However, "fond memories still comfort travelers".
I'm sitting here watching scorpion King listening to this on my phone with death metal playing on the radio while I write this. Welcome to the mind of a darksouls player.
People aren't thinking symbolically, like Miyazaki obviously does. The Pendant seems almost entirely tied to women, femininity, and fertility. My speculation is that the pendant itself is true humanity beyond whether you possess a "Dark Soul" (Humanity being literally Black Souls)(And is usually acquired through violence of some means), emphasizing the mundane, the tedium, the small things in life. Love, family, or friendship are most likely the good memories the item description references. The pendant implies a backstory to your character, that they were a concrete person with relationships, hopes and dreams. These elements are starkly juxtaposed with the rest of the game's world, it's spectacular, vast in scale, mythological, and divine themes are precisely that which is not of minuscule and petty lives of everyday people. Given what happens to Reah at the hands of a Way of White Cleric, I'd even go as far as to say these things are exactly that which destroys the lives of everyday people. Religion, Politics, Idolatry, Gods, Prejudice. These are the things that destroy people and insist on their own continuation despite the suffering they evidently cause.
This reminds me of the rabbit hole I fell in looking for a way to save Melina without having her vow revenge against you. I tried everything, even dove into the lore about Radagon and Rennalia, where he bathed in the sacred waters of the turtle popes church, after his battles with Rennalia and her school, in order to reconcile with her and marry her. This is actually an ingame mechanic that allows you to use celestial dew to reset the agro of NPCs. I figured I could bypass her sacrifice by following Vykes path and joining the Three Fingers, but just before I finished the game, I would use the Needle to rid myself of the covenant and bath in the church to absolve myself of her hatered. ...It didnt work though, in the end. I was greatly disappointed. I still havent found a way to save her while staying friendly. But damned if I didnt make a journey out of it!
It's funny because the last entry mentions the statue at firelink being a door, which it totally was a some point in development, even having animations depicting it getting moved and stuff
I think the real pendants meaning is the grind. How satisfying is it to master an area? To take down enemies that you used to fear like they were nothing? On top of that how satisfying is it to do with every disadvantage playing against you? The pendent represents the hardship one must endure to achieve greatness.
no the pendant has a purpose just not what everyone was thinking even Miazaki maybe. The pendant is there to remind players of the good times when they first played Dark Souls(pleasant memories) and community a nostalgic pendant if you will
It’s painfully obvious that a genuinely useless item was included into Dark Souls for similar reasons that the deprived is a character class - it’s inclusion was likely to appeal to challenge run players that didn’t want to choose any item that they might deem to be of any advantage. The internets tendency to overanalyze simple things took over from there.
In some circles of theology, there's a distinction made about Riddles Vs Mysteries. Riddles are meant to be solved, while mysteries are meant to be lived in. The pendant, slowly-surely, has proven itself the latter, and what a mystery to occupy.
Cool video! btw I would recommend just using RU-vid's built in subtitles rather than putting them in the video, it's generally better for accessibility to have subtitles that can be more easily customised and that exist as plain text :)
