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There is a thing Solaire can do that is explicitly not normal. He can cast Greater Sunlight Spear with nothing but his own hand and faith which as far as I know is a thing only Gwyn also does. I don't like Gwynevere being the mother of Priscilla because Priscilla has no actual powers similar to what Gwynevere does, whereas her special talent of Lifehunt is said to be a great sin against immortality. Also Solaire kindling the First Flame is a good ending for him because he realises that the Sun was always within him the entire time, and instead of dying broken by his quest he comes to a realisation that he didn't need to search for the sunlight anywhere but within which is kind of beautiful. It even makes an interesting mirror to the fact that your character in theory chooses the Dark path canonically, at least the Dark path is meant to be the choice that you go for because it is a more permanent solution. Basically people aren't wrong about the evidence that Solaire could be the first born, but that doesn't mean he is and if he is he certainly doesn't remember it nor does he have any of the powers from it any-more so he is still a mundane bad-rear end he's just got an interesting origin.
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Sep 14, 2015 13:47
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Faerie Fortune posted:The main Priscilla theory I hear is Seath/Gwynevere which also has some support and definitely explains why Seath likes to experiment on her maidens so much since she dumped him and left Anor Londo to marry the god of fire. So more on Velka being the mother. Seath being her father or at least a large part of the genetics involved is definite because no other dragon lived around the gods long enough to produce a child. Gwynevere being the mother I disagree with because she goes off to marry a different god for one thing and for another whilst Seath was a bro to Gwyn he certainly wouldn't have been allowed to touch his daughter. Also Velka being the Goddess of Sin is never actually explained, and what greater Sin than to have a child with a dragon? The last of the ever-lasting dragons at that. Also the fact that Velka's servants are inside the painted world and Priscilla herself is associated as being abhorrent to the gods, she's in the painting specifically because she can permanently kill godly beings from what I remember.
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Sep 14, 2015 13:53
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oh god the "solaire is the firstborn" crowd have started their attack. abandond thread.
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Sep 14, 2015 14:00
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Lord_Magmar posted:There is a thing Solaire can do that is explicitly not normal. He can cast Greater Sunlight Spear with nothing but his own hand and faith which as far as I know is a thing only Gwyn also does. He uses a talisman to cast like everyone else, you can get it off his corpse.
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Sep 14, 2015 18:46
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Astro Ambulance posted:He uses a talisman to cast like everyone else, you can get it off his corpse. Didn't actually know that, I just read that on one of the wikis and didn't look any further into it, or it was someone else speculating on a forum. In all honesty I don't particularly think he is the firstborn but I can see the evidence when presented with it and I understand where the conclusion comes from. Just looked it up and the thing I'm thinking of is that he has a miracle explicitly called the weapon of the God of War, he even teaches it to you and no-one else has it. Lord_Magmar fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Sep 14, 2015 |
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Sep 14, 2015 19:01
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His talisman is super adorable actually because it looks like a very crude, very tiny little effigy of Solaire himself! aand the item description for those curious quote:Medium for casting miracles of the Gods.
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Sep 14, 2015 19:06
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Iretep posted:The priscilla theory makes some sense at least since theres really no better explanation beyond she's a Seath experiment or some other dragon did it. It just now occurred to me that there's a huge similarity there between Priscilla and the Emerald Herald in DS2.
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Sep 14, 2015 20:28
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Hey, Dark Souls. Man, Dark Souls is great... except for the parts that are terrible. I have mixed feelings about Dark Souls. I only played it for the first time earlier this year, so it's all still relatively new to me. I finally decided to give it a go after seeing some of Bloodborne via Slowbeef's ongoing LP of it - and I liked it (Dark Souls) enough to go for a second playthrough pretty soon afterwards. I'm also playing through Dark Souls 2 for the first time at the moment. The combat in Dark Souls is fantastic. The tension and interplay between all the elements of attacking, blocking, positioning, stamina management, health management, etc is almost impeccably designed. (Oh, parrying is probably in there too, but since you need tons of practice - with each individual enemy and each individual weapon/shield you want to parry with, in order to get the timing right - and in the process you die and die and die and die... I never parry.) Love the combat. I finally see what people were talking about when they played Skyrim and said that its combat should be more like Dark Souls'. I think I'd agree with that, as long it's still in first-person. Re: Dark Souls being poor at communicating information to the player; this is probably my main criticism of the game. To take your example of the Crestfallen guy telling the player that they should take the path by the waterway (or through it, or whatever it was), that's cool, but... Where's the waterway? The player probably has no idea at that point, if talking to him is the first thing they do. On my first playthrough, I thought he was maybe talking about the area sort of behind him - where our big serpent friend shows up later on - as it has water in it at that stage. So for my part, I did end up trying to fight skeletons in the graveyard right off the bat, and getting flattened repeatedly. I do agree with you guys on the level design being amazing in terms of all fitting together and being interconnected. I can't actually think of another game that achieves that in the way that Dark Souls does. Unfortunately not all aspects of the level design are as good, though; especially on a smaller scale, in your more immediate environment. Lots of bare, spartan areas (to be able to manage those expansive vistas on creaky old consoles, presumably), getting caught on geometry, and especially lots of not being able to work out where to go. Some studios (like Valve... when they still made games anyway  ) made an art out of effortlessly and unobtrusively drawing the player's attention to where they need to go to progress, whereas Dark Souls goes the other way and often intentionally hides or obfuscates where you need to go, instead. It seems like part of a greater "thing" in the Souls games; making poor design decisions on purpose. A lot of people seem to like that about them, which I don't understand, personally. Being bad at something on purpose does not make it okay.There's also the semi-forced PvP aspect, which... this is partially a personal thing, but I know I'm not alone in this. I avoid all multiplayer games except on very rare occasions with my friends - and I don't play competitive multiplayer at all, ever. But then you've got the occasional ostensibly singleplayer game where there's the PvP-troll of Damocles hanging over your head; the threat you may be invaded and ganked. Who thinks up this poo poo? It's like sticking in a movie at home and trying to sit back, relax and watch it, knowing that at any moment it might prompt someone to walk up and hurl abuse at you through an open window (... or something). On the other hand, the online integration interacts with different parts of the game (the covenant stuff) in interesting ways - for people whose brains work differently to mine and can enjoy that stuff. The ability to leave pre-defined messages in the world for other players is pretty cool too (though it does of course open another avenue for trolls to be trolls), and is basically the sole reason I didn't just block Dark Souls in my firewall. The messages often took the edge off some of the particularly mean/dumb level design decisions in the game. It's frustrating! So much good stuff, but so much bad stuff too! I don't know what to think.
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Sep 15, 2015 01:27
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To me, Dark Souls is amazing because it very intentionally commits objective crimes against game design - dickish traps, one-hit kills, no sense of direction, forced multiplayer, if you get poisoned by the rats under the bridge you can't possibly have a Moss to heal already and many more - and still is a very good game. It has complete faith in its impeccable combat system, art and level design, and most importantly, its ability to teach the player to think how it wants the player to think. Sometimes, that doesn't work out - no amount of subtle tutorializing will make you accept that sometimes, a guy with a fuckoff katana will invade you and own your poo poo. Most of the time, it does beautifully, though - which I find most impressive of the game. You know, I've been playing Lords of the Fallen, a self-styled Dark Souls clone, and it's incredible how that game misses the mark. They copy the dickishness (sometimes, they're not nearly as clever as DS) for example in tough encounters, but the combat system is simply far too janky to not make it frustrating. For example, enemies don't really have turning speed, they just snap towards your position, many attacks that really should don't have wind-up animations, including most notably putting a shield back up after it's been bashed away. You can kick away a a shield (same button combination as in DS...), R1 afterwards to finish the fucker off, but the shield has already been put up again. Even the fastest of weapons won't be quick enough to hit the shield guy before he shields again. It's terrible and something DS would never do. Just a small example of many. Most especially though Lords taught me how valuable DS' art design really is. I get lost in Lords so, so much. Within an area, everything looks the same. They have a castle with watchtowers and each of the four or so watchtowers is exactly the same. The stairs leading to the next level of tower are inside a recessed wall, so you pretty much have to run in circles to even find the stairs. Treasure chests blend into the background even though they're overdesigned pieces of poo poo with spikes everywhere. Or maybe because! Chest in Dark Souls have a subtle glow to them. I can't think of one that's easy to miss. It's all of these little things that really do matter: DS had an insane amount of thought put into it. Lords of the Fallen...didn't.
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Sep 15, 2015 07:08
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Simply Simon posted:To me, Dark Souls is amazing because it very intentionally commits objective crimes against game design - dickish traps I can't really think of any traps in the game that I would call dickish. They all feel pretty fair, in the sense that when you fall for them, it's because you weren't paying attention to something in the environment. Maybe the first mimic chest you come across, but hopefully if you're playing online, hopefully you'll notice all the bloodstains and messages around it. And you probably won't make the same mistake twice. Basically, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oYLhAZvjvU
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Sep 15, 2015 07:38
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That you can spot most of not all of the traps somehow by being observant enough makes it brilliant, but the first few times until you learn to think like the game does, it feels surpremely like a dick move. Also, sometimes you miss the clue. The game isn't perfect enough to make every player notice everything at the same time/the same way. It still does it, most notably not expending Valve-like efforts to guide your vision up to the impending flaming barrel or whatever, that's your responsibility. Ultimately, it's still somehow the player's fault, but if the game were worse, it would feel like it's the game's fault, and that's a serious crime. You can argue for ages "but how could you not see that", some people didn't see that, got killed, got frustrated, called the game full of dick moves and started hating it. That this is not an overwhelming majority shows how good Dark Souls is, but it's not something that's true for everyone because DS doesn't want it to be true for everyone. EDIT: the video even mentions more examples like Capra and Bed of Chaos that are just plain bad. Simply Simon fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Sep 15, 2015 |
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Sep 15, 2015 07:43
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Fister Roboto posted:And you probably won't make the same mistake twice. That's the philosophy behind Dark Souls 'Dickishness' for 98% of the game. The only thing I would call a real dick move would be skeleton kiddies and even then they're toned down versions of the Plague Rugrats that hide in knee-feep dwampwater, kill you in less than a second and if you survive that they inflict Plague. Which will kill you almost as quickly. Fortunately they're in Demon Soulds  Meanwhile the Skeleton Kids are only a dick move because they're the only small enemy in the game and it's a PITA to hit them most of the time. Everything else you're equipped to deal with. Learning that you are and in what ways you are is what the game is teaching you. It took a couple tries for me to kill my first mimic chest but afterwards I didn't die to one.
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Sep 15, 2015 07:53
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There are some things you genuinely have no way to see coming, though, such as the forced death to Seath leading to progression or the various pits in the Tomb of Giants that you have no way to climb out of. In the early game I can think of only one trap you genuinely might not be able to avoid due to chance, and that's the giant at the top of Sen's Fortress who hurls down firebombs at you. If you time exiting the building and proceeding to the roof poorly, the first firebomb might just land on top of your head and kill you to no fault of your own. Iirc the first platform doesn't have any burned bodies or whathaveyou on it to let you know you probably shouldn't hang out there, only the second level (where the drop down to the bonfire is) up does. In general the game is clever about giving you a way to spot traps by just being careful but there are still a few times where player intuition cannot anticipate the outcome.
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Sep 15, 2015 07:54
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The platform does have a big ol' scorch mark in the middle of it. Although to be fair the game also baits you with a bunch of shiny item pickups. AWW YEAH A SOUL OF A PROUD KNIGHT hey wait what was that sou-
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Sep 15, 2015 08:10
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The first plateau has scorch marks, too. I don't quite know if it's possible to see that very first boulder in the undead asylum before it hits, but you can still dodge out of the way. The pits in ToG is the only thing that I find dickish, but even then there's always homeward bones, and if you didn't come prepared (ie without the bones) you can still darksign out of there. So arguably a dick trap. As for the waterway thing mentioned earlier: I was stumped by that (went down to New Londo first), too, but to be fair if you know what a waterway is and look around for just a few seconds, then you're golden. And for the poison rats: You can get Moss before then. Sure, it requires a particular starting gift, and knowledge of where to go, so it's highly unlikely a first time player will stumble on that, but still, it's technically possible. But still a dick move.
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Sep 15, 2015 08:12
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You can't see the boulder, but you can hear it. And even if it hits you, it can't kill you, so it serves as a good first lesson.
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Sep 15, 2015 08:14
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Fister Roboto posted:The platform does have a big ol' scorch mark in the middle of it. Although to be fair the game also baits you with a bunch of shiny item pickups. Not that one, this one:  It turns out I was wrong and there is a scorch mark on it. There aren't any items to grab, but as I said if you round the corner at the wrong time, this can happen (spoilers for my own LP, I suppose):  Rounding that corner is the first time you can see the giant and his stack of firebombs. It's also the first spot he can toss bombs at you. It's a good thing I stopped to point that fact out because it would have killed me if I'd kept walking.
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Sep 15, 2015 08:19
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I'd argue the worst dick move From Soft ever put in a game is in Bloodborne, the way levelling in that game is locked is super rude in my opinion and none of the other games they made have it that way either. You either are forced to die to a boss, waste an item to get out of a boss or find a consumable that is exceptionally rare in the early game that I can think of only one that is accessible that early. Other than that I actually think Bloodborne is pretty good about those things in general but that one stands out to me as unnecessarily awful for the sake of awful, I do know the story reason but it's a dumb one at that in my opinion.
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Sep 15, 2015 08:57
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Lord_Magmar posted:You either are forced to die to a boss, waste an item to get out of a boss or find a consumable that is exceptionally rare in the early game that I can think of only one that is accessible that early. Well, you could also just beat the boss.
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Sep 15, 2015 10:07
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tiistai posted:Well, you could also just beat the boss. Yes you could but that's a tall ask of anyone who isn't really good at the game because your weapons do at best 20-40 damage to him at the time, and you really don't have the ability to reasonably visceral attack the more common first boss and the other one is a god-drat nightmare if you don't know what you're doing. You also can't really upgrade weapons before either of them because you just don't get the materials in large enough amounts until after you kill one of them. It's not impossible but it's also not reasonable and it's fairly obvious they intend for you to die to your first boss because you get a special cut-scene out of it from memory.
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Sep 15, 2015 10:23
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The cleric beast giving you your first point of insight is a tutorial on how just seeing things can give you insight in Bloodborne. The reason they did it that way is because previous Fromsoft Souls games don't have a mechanic like that; the only way to gain humanity in the previous games is to either use an item or kill a certain number of enemies in an area (or co-op, in the case of DS2). In future playthroughs you can avoid having to do that by just going and picking up the one in the sewer, which you don't have to fight a single enemy to reach- which by that point you already would logically know about, since it's your second playthrough. But this thread is about Dark Souls.
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Sep 15, 2015 10:26
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Also in Demon's Souls you had to beat the first boss before you could level up.
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Sep 15, 2015 16:36
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The first time you fight Seath you have no way of knowing, going in, that it's a forced loss and that furthermore he's going to curse you and send you to a bonfire you can't warp away from, forcing you to do quite a bit of an area with your health halved. That's a pretty legit middle finger if you ask me.
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Sep 15, 2015 16:48
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 Really it's more of an attack on CJacobs and Scheissmeister is the one DOING the attacking, but whatever I like the pun better this way.
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Sep 15, 2015 20:36
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I bow down before the glory of the Scheißmeister. Thanks for being considerate to the oppressed German populace! I fled to Austria to escape censorship clutches (seriously that's the ONE good thing about living here!), but it's appreciated nonetheless  .
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Sep 15, 2015 21:27
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Simply Simon posted:I bow down before the glory of the Scheißmeister. That's one way to get around the language filter.  Come to think of it, does DS1 even have one? I know 2 had a huge [and silly] list of banned character strings, which led to funny things like being invaded by Final Fantasy Tactics fan who named his PC "**ly K***ht."It's funny, I was going to comment something like, "Well, video 2 had CJ talking about Dark Souls rule 34, but 1 and 3 were fine; maybe this LP is going to be like Star Trek, where instead of every even episode being good, those are the ones where they talk about genitalia." Then the last 2 minutes happened.... * I've never gotten either pre-Archives Channeler to drop a trident. I've always gotten one there without too much hassle if I ever wanted to farm one, so I don't think it's that rare, just the number of chances you have are so few. * The Baller side sword is ridiculously rare, yeah. I've gotten 2, period. I've probably killed around 30 knights in my scavenger stream running back and forth, with 10 Humanity every time (and the Gold Ring for the last 6), and no sword (or shield for that matter, but at least you can buy it). * And I'm with CJ, if you're tallying up liars, Siegmeyer shouldn't count (misjudging his abilities doesn't count as a lie, and sometimes he totally does kill all 4 chaos eaters; I've just never seen him do it with more than 50% health left), and Priscilla absolutely does. 
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Sep 15, 2015 22:42
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I am not joking when I say we talk about dragon dicks a lot. We talk about dragon dicks a lot. Its one of our favourite topics of conversation for some reason. Full disclosure: I used to be a sex educator so talking about this stuff is super normal and not awkward or uncomfortable at all for me. Sometimes I completely forget that it is still those things for other people
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Sep 15, 2015 22:50
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Dick chat is hilarious. Just embrace it. Feel the warm, fuzzy embrace of dick chat.
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Sep 15, 2015 22:52
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Haha, as if anyone would need two arms to give your engorged meat column hugs!
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Sep 15, 2015 22:52
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How about butts? You spend a lot of time looking at butts in this game.
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Sep 15, 2015 23:38
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The bell-tower gargoyles are actually the first boss I defeated in Dark Souls. I don't count the Taurus Demon as I only "defeated" him by way of him slapping me around a bit, knocking me off the ledge, then somehow tripping and following me in a fall to his death. The gargoyles are miserable as an early boss. I had a few attempts, then just left them alone for ages and explored some other areas. I got really lucky (in retrospect) when a black knight in that forest basin area dropped a "black kite shield", I think it was, with quite a high fire resist stat. Great shield; I used it for the entire rest of the game. It was instrumental in getting past the gargoyles, once I learned that blocking with it negated nearly all damage from their fire-breath. I hadn't tried that earlier, as it really didn't seem like it should work. The other thing instrumental in getting past the gargoyles was learning that I could summon help if my character was in human form... because I didn't know that when I first tried to fight them. So yeah; Sun-bro got me through it. Edit: Oh right; I always assumed that Smough was pronounced "Smoff". There's no way a guy that terrifying is a "Smo". Antistar01 fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Sep 16, 2015 |
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Sep 16, 2015 01:33
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I disagree that Gwyn is a villain for wanting the flame to relight. He's more misguided by fear than anything else because he believes that the end of the Age of Fire would be the end of everything. He can't understand that it would only be the end of his rule, and considering it involves the sun going out and stuff we learn later on it's highly likely that ending the Age of Fire instantly hollows all of humanity except your character, as the living part of humanity is very much attached to the Age of Fire existing. In fact very few of the bosses are outright bad people they're just doing their job or have hidden motivations, for example Queelagg has a pretty awful reason to be doing what she's doing, and O&S have just been told to protect their Princess. The most outright villainous boss is Seath who is actively experimenting on people and abducting women because he wants to be immortal, and he's explicitly called mad by the time of the game from memory. Smough is also pretty nasty but that's because his actions are disgusting not his motivations.
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Sep 16, 2015 02:48
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Lord_Magmar posted:I disagree that Gwyn is a villain for wanting the flame to relight. Antagonist is probably a more accurate term.
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Sep 16, 2015 04:15
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I got the trident from the church channeler on my second character. He forever cooped gargoyles just so I could do the dance when I joined peoples' games.
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Sep 16, 2015 06:00
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anthrax posted:The first plateau has scorch marks, too. Every place the giant can throw a fire bomb to has a scorch mark. First thing I noticed when I got to the top of Sen's was the big ol scorch marks everywhere. I remembered the drake bridge back in the Burg. And then I heard the giant grunt as he threw the thing and I was like... gently caress. Antistar01 posted:I don't count the Taurus Demon as I only "defeated" him by way of him slapping me around a bit, knocking me off the ledge, then somehow tripping and following me in a fall to his death. A surprisingly large amount of people I've talked to got past the Taurus Demon in this way on their first playthrough. It happened to me, too, I was still in the phase where I was just trying to avoid getting squished and learn his attack pattern, and then he jumped backwards off the wall. Sindai posted:I got the trident from the church channeler on my second character. He forever cooped gargoyles just so I could do the dance when I joined peoples' games. The character I made to forever coop fatty and beanpole had to farm it. I was worried it was gonna be a pain but I remember getting lucky and having a drop within the first few tries. The trident of dancing and a healthy supply of prism stones are must-haves for jolly cooperation. You know, I never seemed to have all that much trouble farming the Balder Side Sword, either, when I wanted it, so long as I had 10 humanity and the gold serpent ring to max out my item find.
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Sep 16, 2015 13:28
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Antistar01 posted:Edit: Oh right; I always assumed that Smough was pronounced "Smoff". There's no way a guy that terrifying is a "Smo". Apparently it's pronounced "smo" but i always say "smoff" because it's consistent with how gough's name is pronounced.
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Sep 16, 2015 14:26
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SpruceZeus posted:Every place the giant can throw a fire bomb to has a scorch mark. Except for the crossroad-bridge-thingy that leads to the balder knight and the crestfallen merchant. He can hit you there, but there's no scorch mark there.
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Sep 16, 2015 21:38
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wrong thread
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Sep 16, 2015 21:49
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My first time through the game, back when streaming my progress still seemed like a good idea, I got the trident from the second channeler. I had no idea why everyone in the stream seemed so jealous because it didn't appear to be a very good weapon.
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Sep 16, 2015 23:54
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You guys missed the perfect opportunity for a ceaseless discharge joke. I'm extremely disappointed.
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Sep 17, 2015 02:04
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