Unremarkable and Odd Places in Dark Souls 

As soon as the scripted part was done I felt the video came together better. I think as I explore this format more I’m gonna try incorporating less movement in the footage, more ambient shots, keeping the camera still, etc etc. just an idea for you, but I definitely think there’s room to expand the format and the best way to do that is for more people to participate in it. Solid addition to the canon. Edit- I’m also going back and forth on the title. I appreciate that it might be part of why it performed reasonably well, but it could just confuse people for both of us in the long term! Food for thought. Good video.

I liked finding places in Dark Souls 1 where I'd say "Yeah I could sit here for a hundred years being an undead merchant."

@ 9:30 So those chest are actually really cool and clever. The DLC has 4 Dark Sorceries. One, Pursuers, is traded for the soul of Manus. The other 3 where unearthed or crafted by the people of Oolacile and used to be stored in that room. However, two of them were stolen/removed from that room. You get there and there's 2 dark sorcerers at once in that room, something that is a first and three chests. One of them contains Dark Orb, a dark sorcery. The other two have been looted already, hinting at two more spells you can find later on, the thieves having been hunted down by the dark sorcerers, one with Dark Fog in the big hall, who's been hanged from a chain, presumably as punishment, and the other with Dark Bead way down in the Chasm Of the Abyss, again with their assailants/pursuers still around their body

This was a really fun watch! I love thinking about the weird little corners and nooks that don't have much purpose. I relate 1000% to the "strange feeling" these spaces can evoke when you stop to think about them. Occasionally, rarer mechanics will make use of these spaces, which is really cool. It shows the developers thinking about putting *something* there when they can. For example, the empty dead end behind the Balder Knight shown at 2:20 is actually the potential spawn location of an Evil Vagrant. At 6:20, a group of Gravelord Black Phantoms can spawn there as well, and in my video on Gravelording, I commented on how it was interesting to me that they put some extra enemies there specifically because of how it felt like they just wanted to make use of that space. Those enemies are far enough off to the side of the entrance to Artorias that it's unlikely they'll even see or aggro on you. Most extra enemies are there to make the game harder, but those are particularly easily avoidable, so to me it really felt like just "rounding out the map", if that makes any sense. And getting a Red Good Vagrant was awesome! At around 9:38 you can hear its insect-like sound effect and I immediately said "no way!" (I've spent too much time messing with them to not be extremely on-guard for that sort of thing). It's cool you caught a glimpse of it; The most cryptid-ass thing in a video game to exist, lol. I think it probably heard you and approached your location, they can be curious and want to investigate the source of the sound like other enemies. However, once it properly "sees" and "aggros" is when it'll actually run off and disappear. I believe the investigating the sound source can explain why sometimes they wander a little bit from their spawn locations, I've found one not at its spawn location in New Londo Ruins and the Undead Burg before as well. Sorry for the incoming dump of comments but I've also spent so much time wondering about these locations and have thoughts on some of them! At 16:56, I've always suspected this extra Darkwraith was here to overlook Beatrice's summon sign. Her sign is by the ledge and not back in that corner, but you do have to pass by this enemy's line of sight to reach it and forces you to engage it. Or maybe it's not intentional, but it's still a good interaction between two kind of oddly-placed things. 22:50, this platform is an unused alternate entrance to The Depths! There's a video called "Secrets of the Sunlight Altar" by Diamond that goes into a lot of detail there. In the final game, there's still a set of breakable boards (a completely unique asset/object) in the ceiling above that platform in the Depths, leftover/ scrapped content on how you would've fallen in through the roof. 23:50, I believe this is the remnants of an unused path, something I haven't covered/ shown yet in any of my videos. It's impossible to make sense of by just going out of bounds though, there's no collision back there, and from down here, the thing that helps indicate that it might be a cut path isn't rendered. I believe this path might've originally lead to a tall ladder that went up. There's no evidence of the ladder itself, but following the out of bounds curved path lines up to an unused path a lot higher above it. 35:00, Lautrec's summon sign is placed here! It's so out of the way and easy to miss and I think a lot of players don't even realize that you can also summon him for the Gargoyles. On top of being in an obscure location, you'd have to free him and then meet him and talk to him in Firelink Shrine first anyways. 43:20 On top of this beam is an invasion spawn location. I've wondered if those paths to be able to get back down there were somewhat intended in that if an invader could wind up there, that you should be able to get to that same location on foot as the host maybe? 1:00:50 This weird side area is one of the spots where I'll drop items that can spawn Good Vagrants. I'm always on the lookout for weird nooks to drop Drift Items as to hide them from the players who receive them, and I feel like this is the place to do it in the Painted World! 1:05:50

I will never get tired of Dark Souls 1. It really is the forever game. Thanks for putting out so much great stuff recently.

If you visit actual old castles, they have these same types of odd, impractical or useless spaces. DS1 nails that beautifully.

The idea of good level design, especially towns and buildings is not just to build whats required for the player to do his journey but spaces with perception of past time. Rooms and walkways which once hat a purpose but lost it. Buildings who got extended, doorways shut, abandoned. Collapsed bridges which lost its purpose and kept broken. Statues stuffed away in a building for no one needs them anymore. This is why DS1 feels so much more "real" than DS2 with barren square rooms to home a bonfire and nothing else.

Fromsoft: look at these huge architectures and impressive level designs. This guy: this little nook in the wall gave me many emotions!

“It’s Nostalgia for something you never knew” -Terence McKenna

This is a certified Knight Laurec of Carim banger

In Dark Souls 3, between the Crystal Sage bonfire and the Cleansing Chapel bonfire, you can find the Cathedral of the Deep bonfire (with the Paladin's Ashes nearby). Look up towards the stairs and turn a bit to the left, towards the tree line. There is a small clearing up on a hill in that direction that is incredibly liminal. I've played DS3 on and off for some 6 years and only recently did I discover this place. But it wasn't forgotten by the devs, that place actually has a Titanite Shard!

I'm so happy to hear someone else also gets that weird feeling in certain places in DS1! I think it's because the game does such a great job at making you feel like it's a real place, your subliminal mind feels like there MUST be stories and history attached to places that seem otherwise empty. For the places like the street beside Capra's arena, the world feels so fleshed out that it tricks you into being certain there's more to it, and that in turn causes that feeling of longing to go and explore more of the world. Even though we know there's nothing there really.

Every Dark Souls playthrough for me always inevitably turns up the fantasy of "where is a mostly safe location my character could reasonably set-up camp in?" so this video concept is 200% up my alley.

17:10 that's where the witch's summon sign is if you're human and you used her in the butterfly fight.

the Duke's Archives forest section gave me the feeling i was looking at a like, mid-tier japanese game on the ps2, mixed with Quest 64. The repeating floor textures, the artifically natural tree placement, the fog off in the distance, the desolation and ability to just kind of walk through, and the haphazard enemy placement mostly along the edges combine to produce a very off location. there's no animals, no music, no noise... its my favorite spot in the video for evoking the 'liminal' feeling so strongly.

I think one of the emotions being felt here is described as "stepping outside of the magic circle". Or "breaking kayfabe". Basically you're immersed in a world the developers have given you, you've adopted the rules of the world (there's stuff in corners, the chests have cool stuff), but instead you're noticing a break in the pattern. That or simply making yourself aware of the magic circle you've forgotten was there. And that brings you out of the experience. Depending on how you feel about that, and the game, that can be a cool thing. Like "oh wow, the devs really did just forget this, cool." Or a negative experience, like "why the hell is this here? there's NO REASON for this." Basically you're breaking the 4th wall.

I personally encounter bottomless pits pretty often in real life

People also seem to forget that the area in Lost Izalith with the Chaos Eaters is one of the final locations of Siegmeyer's quest, where he jumps down to fight them and you have to help him before they kill him. I will agree that it is an offputting area that fits well in this video though.

The Dark Souls of Any Austin videos

A lot of the places that you say "have no purpose" are places that you can jump down to from above, essentially they are platforms that help you traverse the area.

Chaos Eaters (the yellow enemies that spawn in Lost Izalith) give me this feeling even more intensely than anything else in the game. Everything up to that point has been something somewhat recognizable, dragons, humanoids, demons, etc. but then out of nowhere you have these cup-shaped monstrosities with a sickly yellow body and bulging black eyes that dart around in random directions. You wouldn't expect an enemy like this to be in Lost Izalith, considering everything else there is a demon or some other enemy you've seen before, so you go up to it already on edge. Then it grabs you, throws you up into the air, and catches you in its mouth(?) full of a thousand teeth and fucking *blends you like a goddamn smoothie* out of nowhere. What the hell is this enemy? Why are there so few of them in the game, and why does nothing else look like them? And why do they kill you in a way that's so much more gruesome than anything else in the game? They're just so interesting and it baffles me how such a cool and horrific enemy design was so underutilized and never appeared in any sequels, but I guess it's just another consequence of the game being rushed

I didn't think I had anything unique to say when the post came out, but nost of these spaces resonated with me in that way, just I had half-forgotten them, having noted that there was no reason to visit them, and that made them feel weird, then never visiting them. the place I feel a feeling like this for most, though it's not the same feeling, is the sunlight altar area. it's my favourite bonfire, I like how private it feels sometimes, like, a lot of people won't find a way to get over there their first time, and even after opening the gate, there's little reason for anyone to come back through that gate. it's shady inside, but lovely outside. it's grassy, and that little nook with the bench is my favourite spot in the game. I don't really pay attention to the flat grass, maybe because I play in glorious 720p, but it's a really pleasant, sunny, and enclosed little nook with a bench, and I so wish I could sit there. it reminds me of a place at my old school behind the red brick music house, with a wooden bench, and viney seperating wall, making it really nice feeling to sit in that corner, like how you feel about the corner in the demon ruins I guess. there was also a corner in the outside courts, where there was just an apparently useless wall making a pretty large, but also pretty narrow relative to length, space with three wall. I never sat there, and it probably would have been cold to sit since there was no bench, just concrete, but it was usually sunny there and it did look nice. and the cricket cages which were similar, and probably would have been amazing for reading in if you got there at the right time of a sunny day, but for the fact that they were always closed. probably coulda gotten in alyway though . . . also the unused office which was open to access, and had a bunch of seats in it, and, for a glorious, sunny year, was largely uninhabited but for me and the biggest book in the school library . . . those places are why I love the nook with the bench at the sunlight altar

i get the same feeling with cod zombies barricades, i always wanted to go behind them so bad even though i knew nothing was there and it's out of bounds, hard to explain 😂

10:37 those open chests indicate the 2 dark spells that were taken from them. Dark Bead and Dark Fog.

It's not exactly a place, but something that always creeps me out is the sound of bells tolling in the distance that you can hear from the Firelink Shrine and from the surrounding places. I think it's a combination of the tone of the world itself, along with the meaning of the ringing bell? For me, it's a constant reminder that you must begin your hero's journey in this world, as if it were a calling

35:00 i totally get how you get that feeling here. But that spot does in fact have a purpose: after freeing lautrec and talking with him at firelink, you can summon him here to fight gargoyles.

I think the reason the spot at 20:30 is so compelling is because it uses every bit of the language of videogames and particularly games like dark souls that tells you that is a "place" you can be. It is mostly surrounded by walls textured like the rest of the place, is directly connected to the actual walkable level and has a fully flat surface that looks in a weird way "solid". Most of the game isn't spent on such flat surfaces, but instead you start to get a sense of when a surface is too slanted or too busy to be a part of the level instead of just scenery. A fully flat surface like that just seems so... sure, like you'd be certain you can be there. It's like a hidden calculation your brain has grown accustomed to doing and in this case reaches the wrong conclusion. Edit: I guess this could be applied to most of the video too

Wow, that's actually a cool topic to discuss. I never consciously thought about this feeling, but it feels familiar. Also, your voice is so sweet and soothing. It's just nice listening to you.

There's a lot of spots in Dark Souls that you have to go out of your way to get to and contain random items, usually souls. I find new stuff all the time, even after many playthroughs. They all remind me of this

The platform around 7:00 is so common in Bloodborne. Yharnam has so many bits where it looks like you should be able to drop down, but once you step off the ledge the camera changes and you die haha. Lothric's High Wall and Castle have this, too It's kind of the same problem as 2d platformers that don't distinguish background and foreground objects from actual platforms, but in an immersive 3d environment

This video has helped me conceptualize what exactly about dark souls 1 is so enchanting. The other 2 games have things I can specifically point to for why I like them so much, but for a while dark souls 1 has just kinda been the one I still hold in high regard without being sure why. Taking a look at the less traveled parts of this game reminds me what made it great in the first place.

Pleasant uncannyness is the best term I can think of to describe the common yet distinct feelings the many different things you talk about in this vid

You *can* reach the lower Oolacile platform by jumping onto the railing (you may notice player messages appear on it regularly) and rolling off. It has no collision though, you fall through and then subsequently die.

For me, Demon's Souls through Dark Souls II in particular hit me really hard in this regard a lot. The graphics, especially lighting, are such that a lot of stuff feels like it takes place in some far away dream place, where the weather is overcast and it just finished raining not too long ago (which I associate a lot with my childhood home town). Not to say the later games don't have this at all, but something about the first three games hits harder in this regard. The sheer amount of weird little crevasses everywhere make it seem like you could keep exploring and always find one more illusory wall that takes you somewhere noone has ever been to before. There's a certain tranquil stillness that seems very intentional and it really adds to the feeling that you could drop off a ledge in Undead Burg, get lost in an old forgotten part of the world for eternity, and when you finally make your way back after forever has passed, it'll all still be as you left it. Also, if you do one of these for Dark Souls II, I recommend checking out the upper cliff area in No Man's Warf where you can see the obvious two dimensional buildings behind all the rocks, just out of reach for your character to get over and see the area below.

I think the point of the bridge in Sen's is to show you the part of the game that is upcoming, the giant loading the ball (so you understand you can kill it to stop the ball). Not every room has to serve a material purpose.

The random ass vagrant was just the cherry on top lmao, great video.

30:26 this honestly looks like a GODTIER reading spot.

The entirety of Shadow Of The Colossus feels like this. Outside of the very loss Colossi fight, the entirety of the map is available to you to visit and explore at any point. There are even entire alcoves, forested walkways, environments, and buildings that serve no purpose whatsoever. You’re not exactly SUPPOSED to go to these areas, but there is nothing stopping you from just showing up there. The biggest example of this in SOTC is the very huge beach on the lower section of the map. There are no NPCs, no merchants, and nearly no interactables throughout the entire game. There is this “dreamlike” quality to it. This is even doubled up upon when, after you defeat a Colossi, returning to the fight arena is extremely strange. It feels like something should be happening, but it doesn’t. It is now empty, with its purpose fulfilled, and is now effectively useless. Funnily enough, the only other game besides SOTC to get those sorts of feelings out of me is DS1. It has the same vibe for me.

I understand this feeling. I remember as a child playing Pokemon Red, I was still able to fully, completely immerse my self in the worlds of games. I did not consider that games were "just" programming. I thought there were actual places, towns, points of interest, etc. beyond the boundaries of the game (those bollards/stones alongside paths or like the trees). I wanted to go beyond those boundaries so bad.

2:26 one thing to consider for the souls games is that the world has a PVE and PVP function. Regarding PVP: There are many areas that are built for people to evade, hide, or trap other players. Regarding PVE: That bridge may be empty in now, but there are things that change areas in the game. Either an NPC quest, for people to go back here and check back, or in a later NG+ there might be an item there. However, I do agree that they could decorate the end of that bridge to communicate more clearly "hey you've fully explored this for now"

Wow im os glad this was recommended to me! Just an hour and a half of talking about niche dark souls things with your soothing voice narrating it all.

The forest you showcased at 1:21:50 is the exact place I thought about when I saw this video. As you mentioned, you're usually just supposed to run down the ladder and head straight for the crystal caves, so it is often overlooked. It's a cozy little place between the behemoth that is the archives and the alluring crystal caves, and it gives me that weird nostalgic feeling you pointed out earlier in the video.

This entire video is just a throwback to the days when we didn't know what the pendant was for

A small number of games give me a weird feeling, something of a forgotten dream. Have I been in this place before?

6:00 there are 3 black phantoms there in ng+ if youve been gravelorded

That spot at 5:20 serves to snipe Kalameet with a greatbow without getting hit by his flames. You can actually kill him this way and get special dialogue from Gough for doing so, it must have been intended.

this and the "top 10 smoke up spots" video are modern day picassos

Whenever I find these spots I always feel so cozy standing there for some reason

This trend of random places continues in Elden ring, the fort In The weeping peninsula has an empty room before the lift with no purpose or world building, it’s just, there

It is fun to leave messages in odd and obtuse spots :> To make people try to reach them. Thank you for the video!

10:26 YES, the feeling I get from looking at those already opened chests is the same one I get looking at a picture of the backrooms or some of the other early liminal photos, just like some of those pictures made no sense architecturally, this room makes no sense from a design stand point, like, who constructed it that way, and why?

The best way i can describe these areas is "uncanney valley". They are almost real rooms, but not quite, and that makes them... Odd

I would love to see you do something like this for the zelda series

take a shot every time he says byproduct

When I was playing Dark Souls 3, this feeling I almost didn't feel it. There's a lot of rooms that or corridors that doesn't make sense. Onfe of these is the palace where the White Wyvern is in the Lothric Castle, there's no normal way to reach that place if you're not falling, there's no door that connect that room or corridors (even if they're decoration only). It's like the architechts that make that castle make it only possible to reach that room by falling (+15 mts)

I really prefer these less edited more grounded feeling videos. It just exudes personality. Thank you

i think i actually requested Dark Souls for an AnyAustin video, this is a godsend 🙏🏼

Honestly the entirety of dark souls 1 gives me the vibe you're describing with a lot of these places. The game just has a super weird, nostalgic, slightly creepy vibe. It's super hard to pinpoint.

"the hallway that has no reason to be there". Does anyone remember playing NES Metroid and finding the dead end of Kraid's Hideout? Or the dead end in the poison forest in Simon's Quest? The memory of how I felt then is very important to me today. I used to wish I could live in those places somehow. There was a little nook in the north mountains of BotW, looking south, that fit your descriptions of these places in DS. I would stand in that little nook and just sort of bliss out. I wonder if there is a word that fits this personal phenomenon.

Thanks dude. Loved your unique but relatable experience you had with DS

That small river near Sen's Fortress is probably intended to feed into the Catacombs, which is (in-world) located below Sen's Fortress. Even though the Catacombs does have a bit of sunlight shining through, it is actually fully underground, which is why you can't see it from Sen's.

I think the Anor Londo entry area feels especially "remote" because when you think about it, it's more like at the edge of the city. This is not a real "entrance", it's more like an area built just for housing the statues and a high-ground watch tower. Plus the pathway to the Duke's that feels like it probably wasn't regularly visited, where the recluse lord resides. It definitely feels like that kind of an unused space, and it looks the part too.

I feel like these spaces exist in spite of you. Like they were not meant for you to traverse or explore, they're just there because it was something one day. As if there was purpose in the past. And that's what makes fromsoftware level design so good, its a place with life, purpose and history. They could make a wall so you couldn't see anything(like many other games), but purposefully there's something to see, a beginning or an end.

I can hear in your voice how much this obscure topic captivates you! Its such a mundane thing that i havent put thought into before, but its so facinating. Just little blotches of "this design only exists because of the medium of videogames" spread everywhere

I am 19 minutes in. I feel like some of the areas you've mentioned of places you shouldn't be are, moreso, the deterioration of architecture. There's not only a game design perspective to be taken into account. You could argue that, just being in the game world, you're not somewhere you are intended to be; out of virtue that whoever built the castles and townships didn't intend their designs with the world gradually ending. A lot is now made unremarkable and odd with the decay of time. Like my shopping mall, for instance.

Every time i've played Dark Souls 1, There is no other place that has made me feel more strange than Lost Izalith. It's just so minimal in a weird way, And the area at 1:13:33 perfectly describes how i feel about it. Since when you kill the Chaos Eaters below they just despawn entirely, Making it feel really desolate. And the fact that Lost Izalith is the most unfinished and rushed area in the game kinda makes the weird feeling much more stronger. The same with how i feel about Darkroot. Dark Souls 1 in general was a really strange and special game in a way if you think about it.

This video explains some of the feelings I find when the chaotic and dangerous world is devoid of enemies. It is odd just strolling around, as if I could just walk into the frame. I really like this idea, I hope you do more observational videos like this.

That one door in the lost Bastille in ds2 that just leads to a bottomless pit, always cracks me up.

Start the video. He says you wouldn’t place an enemy in the corner of a room. Exit the video

this video has held my complete and undivided attention for the past hour and a half, absolutely loved it

Some of my favorites are from Bloodborne. There's this pit next to where Eileen hangs out in the Cathedral Ward, and if you actually look down into it you can see it's just a bunch of flat planes with a simple brickwork texture and no other decoration at all. It makes me think that they genuinely didn't expect anyone would bother to look down there. Otherwise they'd have put something there to make it look less like a video game. I also really like the curved staircase leading up to the locked gate in the same area, where the first Church Giant is. There are these lines of rope that run between the buildings on either side. If you look close at those ropes, you can see that they have crows perched on them, and that the crows are super low-poly with absolutely no animation. That asset doesn't appear anywhere else in the game, just on that one staircase

You missed some of the best spots - that one balcony that you can reach from the new londo elevator is a personal favourite, also there are a lot of cool distant little corners with nothing in them in places like blighttown, demon ruins, lost izalith, darkroot etc. The big walkways in the kiln of the first flame also give me this feeling Also dark souls 2 is a goldmine for these places lol In dark souls 3, i especially this for smouldering lake, it just feels so out of the way and not that significant I’d also love to see you do one of these for bloodborne and elden ring

I'm very saddened by the fact that "The Kiln of The First Flame" was not included in this video. It's my favourite spot in ds1 and arguably the most underrated location. From its entry point to the bleak atmosphere all the way leading up to the final boss. When you know the lore it hits harder. Even the architecture leading up to the kiln was amazing and overlooked imo. Just the idea of being there in the sand in that atmosphere while trying to keep the dying flame alive...ahh what a sensation.

The area in Izalith where the floor breaks and chaos eaters dwell: You can encounter and help Siegmeyer there. I just looked it up, and he rewards you with the speckled stoneplate ring if you help him defeat those enemies. He then moves on to Ash Lake, which is an odd progression path imo, but anyway, it's basically an NPC quest encounter zone, aside from containing the red slab.

Just discover this video I find it fascinating, not sure if it’s been mention but there is this spot in the Depth I think just past the boxes where the rats are hidden where you can just fit through the curve wall and it’s a really narrow that you can just fit in and there is not much there. I think there is also more of that weirdness just before the Gaping Dragon. One another thing I notice with the Depths is if you use the bonfire with the master key and like you unlock the shortcut door, it always feel odd that you can just get straight to the Gaping Dragon without any enemies in your path. (I can’t think of any other main bosses in Dark Souls 1 that is the case - sure, you can avoid enemies leading up to the boss, but this one runback having no enemies in your way have always been weird to me) Anyway, love the video!

In Fromsoft games especially DSIII my friends and I always joke "This is where my NPC would be" and do a pose in a quiet spot.

Hey, so that weird rocky outcropping in the black dragon kalmeet boss arena is actially there because that whole area becomes darkroot basin, and in darkroot garden, you can reach that weird ledge thingy overviewing the basin

That opening about corners really reminds me of the 'A History Of Corners' sketch from Screenwipe. "Yeah, hooray for fucking corners!"

10:49 you can drop down from above to kill the sorceress easier. I couldn't manage to do it from the stairs. Glad I noticed it in my playthrough 😅

The world building has a natural feel, the structures have a culture even in there disrepair or ruin. While relatable there's a subversive tone, the themes feel deliberate.

Pssst, X marks the spot... Oolacilean Bloatheads cross their arms in an X (8:52) , Logan (X-Men) sits cross-legged, Darkmoon Knightess crosses her arms *and* legs, hinting at Velka's double-crossing and XX: Judgment (Tarot), consider also Quelaag's *Domain* (X = Eggs) and Kalameet's Eye (see: Kalimat (Arabic for Words, c.f. Logos)), or how the Female Undead Merchant says "Burn in [heck]! You cross-eyed hollow!", when hostile. Consider especially the painted world; "X"anthous King, "Cross"breed Priscilla, "Annex" Key, cross-shaped crank to spin the statue, Crow Demons cross their wings to telegraph their grab attack. And then in DS3, " Stray from the withered flame and curiousity could be your *cross* " and Crucifix of the Mad King. *FROM* in Latin is *EX*

What feels so wrong about the little patch next to the sunlight altar is how artificial it is. It’s obviously a little garden next to what was formerly a place of worship, with a little bench to sit in the shade near the statue of the sun’s firstborn. Now it’s neglected and storing some rotten boxes and barrels, but neither of those things make any impact whatsoever. It still remains a neatly manicured, surprisingly clean, peaceful place to sit and rest; and that feels off when the altar right next to it is destroyed and overgrown

1:32:18 The timing of the B-roll perfectly punctuates my point. Before someone made a video on AC6's architecture, I could not place a name to what I felt. It's quite literally an intentional feature of Anor Londo's architecture while the natural expanse of Ash Lake makes it incomprehensibly more terrifying. *Side tangent (don't worry, it's relevant)* I played a mod for Thief Gold recently. An early mission was to steal from what amounts to a crazy, aristocratic druid's manor. Typically manor heists are simple affairs, but this was different from the base game. The deeper down I ventured, the more the ambient soundscape and bizarre architecture unsettled and nauseated me. Now this isn't to say that the feeling was the same as Ash Lake, far from it in fact. It speaks volumes that natural locations are far more suited toward disorienting and terrifying players in ways that purposefully built spaces (like Anor Londo) can't.

not related to dark souls, but pretty much the entirety of shadow of the colossus’s open world is filled with this. almost the whole game gives me the feeling of these places.

Seems like the point of that bridge you showed initially was to admire the giant fondling his boulders.

16:30 I wouldn't even bat an eye, hearing this from a character in game, with the laugh and everything

You would be a good artist. Loved how you put into words the feelings that the cliff in Kalameet's arena and the little corner in demon's ruins after the Taurus Demons evoked. Cheers!

Personally, what I find weird about the great hollow isn't even the hollow itself, it's all the mushroom platforms at the bottom. I think that it's supposed show that the tree is dead and being taken over by the fungus, but it just looks so weird to me. Maybe it's the unnaturally perfect spiral they make which contrasts the winding branches of the great hollow or the fact that they are found solely in that area in the tree (not even on the outside), but they feel so off to me. It feels as if they shouldn't be there, and by proxy, I feel out of place by interacting with them.

Bro is really glazing

39:22 That giant is the one we see in the cutscene after ringing both bells of awakening. The chain must be a clue, so there is some reason for that place. Nice video, mate.

I sometimes have felt these feelings when in a game, a sense of something being odd, or maybe had a story. Perhaps you saw something from a different angle or just left you with a weird sensation, glad you could show some of the DS1 ones like that, cool video.

This is such a specific topic but it's now probably one of my favorite videos I've ever put on

think about the great hollow this way, where on a tree are the branches and the roots? yeah their on the outside... but with the great hollow it has its branches on the... inside? it absolutely bizarre, the mushrooms you could explain with like it being old and rotting, but the branches on the inside? that just doesnt make sense in anyway

These places that "there is nothing here" are there to give you sense of scale, and continuity of places that you are, that it's a big world and you won't see it all and be everywhere. But that makes you subconsciously think that it's the same about the lore, that you only see part of it, that's part of why dark souls lore is mysterious and not in many details. That's a part of world building. And also many of those locations give you different perspective to look at locations and might give you hint that there was some hidden pathway and you missed some times etc. Also a lot of these "empty" places just look good. And looking good is one of the best reasons to put anything in a game.

thank you for making this video. Dark Souls is my favorite game right now and this video captures exactly what i love about it

The spot you said might be contested is the one of the few spots I do remember coming across as odd in my play throughs

I think the feeling with Oolacile and Darkroot Garden in the maingame depends strongly on how your visual and spacely imagination works. For some people I know f.e. this imagination is almost "invasive"; their brain forces them to scan and compare the area to its counterpart, but how removed it is (additionaly through it's nature as video game-maps that only reference themselves but not have a natural connection) from its counterpart creates some sense of disconnection, almost like an uncanny valley in a spacial and temporal way.

Really interesting learning experience, actually. Essentially all the empty corners and rooms are wasted resources being loaded in for no reason.

I think that "odd and unremarkable places" exist at the cross-road of two overlapping phenomena in game design. Architectural spaces, by virtue of being constructed, implicitly presuppose a historical context, even if it's mysterious or obscured. They were built _by_ _someone_ for _some_ _purpose_ : they have implicit context. Liminal areas stick out because their very nature as constructed spaces assert the existence of a purpose and history that we know to be absent. This tension calls us to investigate; to uncover something that makes sense of them. Being out of bounds only adds to the intrigue. When level design is working "as intended", a space's purpose is obvious. We effortlessly recognize and go along with the intention of the developer. Of course there are plenty of spaces in games that don't actually make real-world sense when you look closely at them (in fact _most_ video game spaces are like this). This isn't something that bothers us most of the time because while these spaces lack implicit context, we understand that they exist for the sake of the mechanics of the game. We sense the invisible will of the developer, guiding and shaping our experience through these spaces. They have authorial intent. I think what makes these liminal spaces so remarkably unremarkable is that they lack both implicit context and authorial intent. They feel overlooked, forgotten; as though we could hide there from the guiding eye of the developer. Their nature as man-made spaces implies a purpose we know isn't there, and their status as environments in a game implies a mechanical purpose that seems equally absent. Case in point: the little balcony in Undead Burg. It immediately seems less liminal once you realize that it was probably intended to give a hint to the player about accessing the other side of that locked door.

This is what happens when your stonemasons and workers go hollow before completing their contracts