A Dark Souls 2 Story Retrospective

dark souls 2 is a brilliant game it takes into account the age of fire in the age of dark and asks the question why there are only two options and then continues this idea by shutting out both ages by making something else the main plot of the story something that i will explain throughout this video so without further ado let's get started so before we start talking about the story we need to address the game as a whole dark souls 2 requires a different mindset in order to grasp what the game is trying to tell you as we saw in dark souls 1 the game relied heavily on the cycles of the world to be the main plot it's all about the age of fire in the age of dark and what these cycles mean how they impact the world and what age we'll choose when we get to the end this means it also relies heavily on the world itself dark souls one was about our four lords how they rose to power and what they did with that power and what the state of the world is because of said power as such we play a very insignificant person in regards to the overall world but dark souls 2 isn't like that it's not about the age of fire and the fate of the world it's about one kingdom and how this one kingdom handled its own cycle wardram was important as it was the first kingdom in the age of fire but drang lake isn't important at all it's just one of the hundreds of kingdoms built on the same land and that's what makes dark souls 2 so special it's the insignificance of this game that makes it so compelling because it isn't tied down by the world's pantheon it uses what dark souls 1 created as a way to write its own story this game isn't about the cycles it's about one small part of the cycles the undead curse and the quicker you realize that dark souls 2 is reshaping the proverbial mold that is dark souls 1 the better this game gets but to explain why we need to start playing our opening cinematic shows our character collapsing in a rainy forest the narrator talks about the undead curse and how it will infect your mind how it has the ability to remove all that you hold dear and all that you remember with every minute the curse gets worse and worse until you go hollow as that is the fate for all undead but this narrator speaks of a kingdom called jerang lake and how we'll walk towards its gate without ever knowing why we know why we're here in drang lake as our character is trying to find a cure for the undead curse so they no longer feel its effects but they're unsure of why during lake specifically just as the mind gravitates towards the smell of food when hungry the mind of the undead is drawn to souls and drang lake has plenty of them to get to drain lake we must cross a lake and enter a portal the scene tries to portray this event as some marvelous spectacle but that couldn't be farther from the truth once we cross this gate we're never coming back we'll either be trapped here until we cure the curse or go hollow the gate is even surrounded by bright bugs which are known to comfort the dead almost like it's luring us to our deaths so for one final time we gather our thoughts and jump on the other side of this portal is the things betwixt a place stuck in limbo that serves as a connection between drang lake and the outside world like i said we're stuck here for good inside this limbo is a house of women three of whom are fire keepers that are being cared for by their housekeeper and they're very honest about our arrival you're finished you'll go hollow yes you'll become one of them hollows prey upon men feast upon their souls this is the fate of the cursed [Laughter] we aren't the first undead to walk through their doors and we won't be the last and all of them have met the same fate so what makes us any different dark souls 2 tries to set in this feeling of hopelessness something that's very consistent throughout the trilogy no one truly believes we can accomplish our goal but that's what makes the emerald herald so wonderful she believes that we can succeed in our goal and will help us in any way that she can and by providing us the means to level up she might be the most helpful person in the game this is why the level up ladies of the franchise have always been seen in such a positive light they don't discriminate and they don't bother questioning if what we're doing is working they have an undying motivation to help us succeed regardless of if there's something to gain from it they're like a bright light in a dark tunnel as all around them are people who have given up i am solden and like you i lost everything and now i'm here the location they both reside in is majula a small town on the outskirts of draeng lake and it's the music displays a feeling of peace a place that is void of death a place that you can feel comfortable in and in the world of dark souls a place like that is more than necessary i've always preferred when the main hubs were seamlessly integrated into the world something that would be eventually lost with the series going forward as it makes the world more believable and in the case of bajula without it you'd be missing this beautiful scenery after taking in the view we can speak to the emerald herald who reveal our objective seek those whose names are unutterable the four endowed with immense souls these four beings are known as the four great ones the lost sinner the old iron king the rotten and the dukes dear freya just like before we have four beings that need to be slain in order to continue and just like dark souls 1 how we go about killing them and in what order we want to go in is entirely up to us but one thing to point out though is that the emerald herald isn't a fire keeper at least she wasn't originally her real name is shenalocht and she was given this name by the dragons her purpose was to break the undead curse but seeing as there is thousands of hollows in drang lake she clearly failed her goal now is to just rest at majula guiding the undead on their journey to succeed king vendrick before we go though i want to talk about the npcs i think dark souls 2 really dropped the ball when it came to these characters many of them are extremely forgettable and seem to only be placed in the worlds that the player can be given a tangible item rather than an engaging story benhart of jugo is a good example as he seems like a compelling character that may have a memorable quest all for it to crumble almost immediately his whole questline revolves around his family heirloom the giant teal sword resting on his shoulder which you may recognize as the moonlight greatsword except this one is a fake it doesn't have the magical properties of the original but benhart believes that with enough strength he can unlock its true power i would have dropped this quest entirely if it wasn't for the fact that he gives us the sword at the end of it he provides a little to no substance to the world and this goes for a vast majority of characters we meet there are over 40 npcs in this game and about 90 of them provide the player with a service and some of their services are either outclassed or completely useless lenigrest is the majula blacksmith but the player may find mcduff another blacksmith except macduff can do everything lenograss can do but with the added bonus of being able to infuse weapons and gevlon is a lonely merchant who only sells five items four of which are poison he also has three set locations so in order to purchase his services you'll need to go out of your way to find him and that's if you really want poison equipment there's just so much clutter as half these characters could literally just combine into one general goods merchant thankfully it's not all bad lucatiel has a wonderful questline as she shows us the horrific reality that is the undead curse she was a warrior of mira but now she barely remembers who she is by the time we get to the end of her questline she's practically pleading for us to remember her name as she may not remember it herself it's unclear why she came to draeng lake in the first place but given that her brother aslutil will invade us only a few feet from her final location it's possible that she was looking for him but now both of them have succumbed to the curse's affliction never truly knowing what happened to the other thankfully lucatiel isn't the only character of note in this game as the feud between creighton and paige and the peaceful conversations with vengara were fantastic being able to take the role of a detective and truly uncover which one is telling the truth and then choosing a side before one prevails was a great investigation and the fact that a talking head can get me to listen to his life's story as he thinks about his past life and how much he despises it shows me that this game has some wonderful stories that are just waiting to be uncovered you just have to weed through the dozens of merchants in order to find them getting back on track we're still on the hunt for the four great ones once again this is similar to dark souls 1 but instead of ringing the bells of awakening and then finding the lord souls we just have to find the souls already if you remember from that video on dark souls 1 i said that the bells of awakening section was a bit slow as not much in terms of plot was happening it wasn't until we rang them that the story really started to take off well in dark souls 2 it's the same unless you look at the bigger picture before we get to the four great ones there are a lot of other areas we need to go through first for example to get to the lost center we need to go through majula to hayde's tower of flame to no man's wharf through the lost bastille and then to sinner's rise where the boss is located all of these locations will seem pointless and if you just only do this boss fight it will continue to feel like that it isn't until later in the game when the climax hits that things start to make sense no man's wharf is a small port town and its final boss is the flexile century the century's job was to take as many undead as they could fit on this boat and send them to the lost bastille which is a prison for the undead but this isn't the only location to have lore regarding the curse the huntsman's cops was a hunting ground for the old iron king's men who were tasked with killing any undead on sight but as you would expect they too also succumb to the curse next to this area is the undead purgatory where a chariot rider continually kills and punishes the undead it's also possible that these necromancers were purposely stationed here this may imply that the necromancers were used to resurrect the undead so that they can be repeatedly killed for entertainment like i said this game does not focus on the cycles of the world it's all about the curse and this is only discovered once we get further in the game but in the beginning it may seem a bit overplayed that's why it's required to have a different mindset going into this game if you're thinking about the cycles and this game's lore will be boring and repetitive but it's actually brilliant once everything comes together as these early areas are showing how different rulers are reacting to the curse and what their actions are as a result of it and speaking of rulers one of them happens to be one of the four great ones the old iron king resides in the iron keep but to get there we must pass through the huntsman cops which we know is the place the old iron king sent his men to hunt the undead behind this location is harvest valley and earthen peak two areas that are coated in poison thanks to one individual mytha the baneful queen but this story is rather tragic she wasn't originally like this monster we see today she was a beautiful queen but her drive to win her beloved's heart back is what drove her to such lengths myth's story though does have some complications she has named both queen and princess and that she loved a prince and sought the king's affection her story is very confusing because we don't really understand whether she was a queen and a princess or just one of them but whoever this person was is clear they did not love her and thus she began using poison as a way to obtain beauty but this came with its own set of problems as the poison started turning her into a snake-like monster and yet while she was sulking around her room day in and day out trying to win the heart of a man she unknowingly already succeeded in doing just that the covetous demon was a human who loved mytha and cherished her no matter what form she took he tried to showcase his love for her through gluttony but this too would change him and turn him into the monster we see today but despite his change in appearance his love for the queen never wavered behind the poisonous swamp of earthen peak is the iron keep home of the old iron king the old iron king was a lord of very little power but he would then eventually meet a knight called sir elon who trained his soldiers in the art of battle the old iron king would then eventually build his kingdom but doing so cost him almost all his assets but one day he discovered an iron-producing miracle this allowed him to control iron to his heart's content which led to the iron keep a giant fortress made entirely of iron he started creating soldiers made entirely of iron and even a demon of fire called the smelter demon this idea of creating things a free will with only raw materials is also related to the undead chariot which of course was his creation so he's quite familiar with this craft eventually for whatever reason sir alone would leave the iron keep and set out in search of unknown lands after losing his most trusted knight the iron king sought the council of a man named agel he was presumably a pyromancer due to his goal of trying to give fire a will of its own the two worked together to create the aforementioned smelter demon but this would bring disastrous consequences to the keep the two never considered that by giving something free will it has the chance to turn on its creator and the smelter demon did just that with one swing it obliterated the iron king and sent him into the lava it was born from this act also caused the lava to take on a much larger form and crash into the iron keep consuming it in lava as we see now but while the keeping its soldiers were scrambling to higher ground something else happened the iron king's body came in contact with an old soul the old king's soul to those in the present day he is known as the one who shall not be named but for us we know him as gwyn when killed the old iron king will drop the iron king's soul but it's only on new game plus that we uncover the truth that the old iron king has come to possess the very soul that gwyn possessed all those years ago but the old iron king isn't the only one each of our four great ones has come in contact with a soul that belonged to a notable character from the past game but not only did it give them strength it may have also carried with it the emotions of those it belonged to both gwyn and the old iron king share a theme of power gwyn wanted to keep his god-like power and as such took multiple steps in order to achieve that like linking the first flame branding humanity with the dark side and tossing things he felt could threaten the rule into the painted world of ariamus and while his feelings weren't as fierce as gwyn's the old iron king also desired power he wanted to ensure a protected and impenetrable kingdom while also relishing in the power that comes of being a king so he used his power to create a giant kingdom with skilled knights and dozens of monstrous creatures made from iron and then displayed his power by tormenting the undead for sport and torturing them endlessly simply because he could but while the iron king tortured undead against their will there was one person whose torture was self-imposed located in the center's rise underneath the lost bastille is a prisoner who willingly imprisoned themselves for the sins of their past according to shalakhar majula's resident feline her sin was that she tried to light the first flame but the key word is light implying that it had already gone out so how would this be considered a sin if anything it would be the opposite sadly we never truly know what any of it means one thing we do know is whose soul she possesses before the boss fight starts a bug crawls into her eye specifically a chaos bug the same one from lost izalith she is in possession of the witch of izalit's soul we know that these bugs have mind controlling capabilities as evidenced by the bad ending of solaire's questline so it's possible that the lost sinner intended to let us into her cell until the chaos bug felt threatened but that still doesn't answer the question regarding her self-imprisonment maybe she wanted to keep the chaos bug and in turn her from escaping as this crazed version of the law center could have run rampant and slaughter dozens of people or maybe she's somehow feeling the emotions of izalith who probably felt immense guilt for creating the bed of chaos so maybe this feeling of guilt is being transferred over to the lost center without her knowing to this day it's still a mystery but a very compelling one at that the witch of izalith had a desire to create life which is why she wanted to make a new first flame but she wasn't the only one who had desires but that being's legacy may have created even more devastation than intended the duke's dear freya is a spider who is in possession of seath's soul but seath's feelings and desires are able to engulf those who come in contact with it freya's soul talks about a writhing ruin and how this ancient thing casts a shadow over the land and that at some point in its life it came in contact with a solitary insect but grew its power feasting on the wealth of twisted souls found within the land if we defeat freyja we can enter the lord's private chambers which houses the duke of seldora himself and a cage that presumably belonged to freyja the writing ruin was created from seath's intense feeling of want he searched endlessly for a way to be immortal even when he was plagued by insanity and it's because of how powerful his desires were that they seemed to linger on past his death the writhing ruin would go on to possess others in an attempt to obtain something as he possessed a being that turned man scorpion tark and his wife into half-human creatures it has this insatiable urge to achieve something what that something is will depend on the individual seath wanted immortality and freyja may have just wanted strength or power regardless this writhing ruin will presumably seek something until it doesn't for eternity and ruin many lives in the process it's obvious by now that there seems to be a parallel between our old cast and our new ones in regards to their feelings and emotions whether they receive these similar feelings when they came in contact with the old souls or the souls were attracted to them because of their feelings is unknown but our old friends legacies continue to bring disaster even after their death but for one of them that may not be the case our final great one is the rotten in majula there is a giant pit and assuming you can get down there without dying you'll arrive at the grave of saints a catacomb that used to be a burial site before it was overrun by rats i was admittedly a bit confused running through here as i thought this was some ongoing joke i wasn't aware of as there's a literal rat talking to me calling me his servant in the most serious tone possible it's pretty pointless and it's best if we ignore it and moved on but sadly we won't be doing much moving as much as we will be falling dark souls 2 somehow managed to surpass blighttown and quality by making the gutter a darker version of blighttown all while being poisoned thanks to these statues just like blighttown the lore is quite similar as these are the citizens of various kingdoms that were tossed away out of sight from the rest of the world after the gutter is the black gulch the home of the rotten the rotten possesses the soul of nito but instead of their emotions being similar it seems to just be their appearance nido was an amalgamation of skeletons and the rotten is an amalgamation of dead bodies but whereas nido was hell-bent on administering death throughout the world the rotten seems to sort of embrace or comfort it these statues might possibly be the people who have died down here in the pits he might be trying to comfort these hollows in their new life and these statues seem to be a showcasing of his feelings towards his new community what is rather odd though is that these statues in the boss room don't shoot poison at us so it's possible that they weren't meant to shoot poison originally and it's because of this poisonous rot that has taken over the pits that they're allowed to do so through a discussion about the great ones you obviously notice the connections between our old and new cast of characters but you may have also noticed the lack of lore there is a lot of information that is either completely unclear or only given some amount of weight thanks to the abundance of theories from the community dark souls 2 is both the most understood and most confusing game within the trilogy it just depends on what answers you're looking for however i feel like i'm content with this one thing that bothered me about dark souls 1 as we discussed before is that i left some of these boss arenas with more questions and answers i wanted to know who the four kings of new londo were and how they rose to power i also wanted to know more about nito and his role in the world after the war with the dragons and while i definitely have similar questions regarding some of our great ones i left majority of these areas feeling complete like i had learned what needed to be learned and i uncovered the real story and that's the benefit of creating something like dark souls 2 we don't really need to know what these great ones did and how they shaped the fate of the world because they didn't despite how important many of the characters in this game may seem at the end of the day they're just another kingdom in a long line of other kingdoms no one is going to remember them and no one is going to care about them that is why i feel satisfied when leaving the black culture sinner's rise i've uncovered enough lore to get a generous picture of their life with a few holes just big enough for me to make some solid theories with all four great ones slain we can now go to drangleic castle or can we this is aldia the brother of king vendrick and the scholar of the first sin aldia's story is very unclear at the moment but we'll eventually learn more about him later once we enter drangleic castle we'll see this phantom by the name of weliger he's a sort of lore dump which admittedly might not be the best way to handle this information but given the nature of these games where you can go a whole play through without really knowing anything maybe it's necessary regardless welliger shares with us some backstory on durang lake and vendrick king vendrick conquered four great ones and built a kingdom upon their very souls he then met a lady named nashandra who warned vendrick of another looming threat these beings were known as giants king vendrick would eventually cross the seas and battle these giants completely decimating their civilization as a consolation prize he took most of them prisoner and ran experiments on them this is what led to the creation of the golems these beings we see inside the castle and with the golems he was able to build drangleic castle later in the game we'll acquire this item called the ashen mist heart this allows us to peer into the memories of some specific beings most of these memories are from dead giants we come across in the first level these all showcase different sections of dragon lake being overrun by giants and one of them even shows us the location of the giant lord we see the destruction that they left during lake castle in and we can also see how outmatched the soldiers really were even though they outnumber them three or four to one they're getting decimated at every turn but somehow they were able to persevere considering there's no giants in draen lake but i think the person responsible for some of this victory is us these memories operate like oolacile from dark souls 1 where we go back in time to alter the past and then go back to the present this may tie into a subtle hint very early in the game the first boss in dark souls 2 is the last giant whose boss soul description reads the lord of the giants who had brought wreck and ruin to the entire kingdom was said to have been felt by an unknown warrior his beaten and broken remains were then dragged beneath the stronghold where he was sealed away this random giant soul references the giant lord and also describes the exact condition this giant is in meaning this giant is the giant lord and that must mean the unknown warrior was us this might explain why he thrashes his arms around trying to break free as he remembers us and wants revenge this is the complete backstory of drang lake which gives us enough answers to our questions but simultaneously gives us new questions we want answers to such as the whereabouts of nashandra well close to the top of the castle is the queen herself the last king of this land king vendrick as he was called he found the strength to rule his people and when the undead were born cursed he found more strength to face them but in the end he never took the true throne visit vendrick we have no need for two rulers so nashandra wants us to find king vendrick as she says there is no need for two rulers but she also mentions that king vendrick never took the throne she just casually says this statement as if this isn't some huge revelation since gwyn people have been rekindling the flame but vendrick didn't but it doesn't mean vendrick wants to bring about an age of dark he doesn't want either this is even more unheard of as no one has even attempted to invoke a third solution to the fading of the first flame but to learn more we need to find vendrick he resides in the undead crypt but blocking our path is two bosses the looking glass knight and veldistad the royal aegis both of these fights were fantastic both from the actual combat to the design of the bosses i'm just upset that it took this long for this feeling to finally come to fruition i rambled for quite a bit about the bosses in dark souls 1. like how ornstein and smell were fantastic and how i despise the bet of chaos but i haven't found the right time to talk about the bosses in dark souls 2 as there really isn't much to say most of them were pretty underwhelming for the most part and this is down to a few factors one was simply over leveling since dark souls 2 has 32 bosses in the main game it's very easy to miss some i didn't find the chariot or old dragon's lair until much later when i revisited those areas so i was a bit over prepared for the boss fight dark souls 1 had a really great way of getting the player's progression while also guiding them down a path which in turn made every fight feel like a proper match it wasn't a one-sided victory for the most part there were a few exceptions like gwyndolin and pinwheel but they have very low health pool so it's a bit hard to judge them the other two reasons are just down to overall enjoyment and the summons the majority of the bosses in this game not only have summitable npcs but multiple at that i had two summons for the looking glass knight and while the game does attempt to balance this by adding more health we all know the main strength of the summons is to be an extra body for the boss to hit which means less attention on us and more time to get free hits in i will admit this trivialized many fights the smelter demon the rotten and probably a few others were really easy with summons but that comes to my next issue to complete some of these npc questlines we talked about earlier they need to be summoned for bosses as someone who's trying to get as much lore as possible in one playthrough i needed to continue these summons quest lines so while i was gaining more progress with the npcs it came at the cost of the quality of the fights this makes me even more disappointed as many of these quest lines didn't even go anywhere so they were just completely useless and wasted my time some of the boss fights though just sucked regardless i was pretty disappointed with chariot fight even though it was a cool idea i just wasn't a big fan of it and this game's obsession with gang fights is quite insane the ruined sentinels and the belfry gargoyles were just not entertaining in the slightest ornstein and small only worked because of how different they were in regards to their moveset and how the arena was designed and the bell gargoyles were okay for the most part since the second one didn't come until halfway plus they used different move sets the ruined sentinels were the same enemy copied three times with zero obstacles to separate them minus the one platform you start on and the belfry gargoyles got way out of hand with close to three or four at the same time in the same arena as the original fight which is not that large and very open i did manage to beat them on my own so i was happy that i won but only because i knew i'd never have to do that fight again as for the four great ones the old king was just awful even though i had a summon with me his moves would have been the same regardless and they were almost too easy to evade the other three were pretty good but nothing spectacular they did provide some intense moments but i did have to summon lucatiel for two of them so i may have missed some of that spectacle i will recognize though that this entire section is a very subjective take as a boss's enjoyment largely depends on the skill of the player and their build but since this is all about my thoughts on the game my opinion was that they were pretty underwhelming for the most part it felt like instead of focusing on fewer bosses with unique engagements they created more but at the cost of their depth behind the looking last night is the shrine of amana and the aforementioned undead each of these places were created specifically for the dead both the milfonido and the finito watch over these respective places in an attempt to guide the undead to their final destination both of these creatures have interesting backstories as they were created by the old dead one who we know as nito both of them seem to be a reincarnation of nido's soul as if he created them we would have seen them in dark souls 1 but maybe they didn't plan that far ahead when making the games regardless it is a nice detail and finally gives us some actual story regarding neato so i was more than happy to listen to it it also continues to reinforce the old one's soul descriptions that mention how their souls still hold power over the land as the power of nito and his obsession with all things death are still utilized to this day as for what they specifically do it seems like the milfenido enchant or comfort the dead via song as their singing can be heard throughout the level and the finito are grave wardens who watch over the dead both of these groups seem to revolve around comforting the dead so maybe nito was a lot more like the rotten than i had initially thought at the very end of the crypt is velvet's dad and while the boss fight was great what really piqued my attention was his soul and the items acquired from that soul firstly his soul is a dark purple and black color this is the same as the dlc bosses from dark souls 1. i originally thought that this was made to distinguish the dlc from the main game but it wasn't until dark souls 2 that i realized that the soul's shape has actual meaning this is an image of a normal bossel in this game next is from one of the great ones and the other is of those affected by the darkness both manus and the royal ages have the same soul meaning they're both affected by the darkness and that's due in part to him being down here since vendrick locked himself away in the crypt another detail that is interesting about veldested here is that his soul can buy miracles specifically the sacred oath miracle which is used by warriors who once served the god of son so it seems like the royal aegis belonged to the same covenant as solaire however we can see that this miracle has either been warped or is unable to be casted as he never actually uses this in the fight and instead buffs himself with dark magic for the showing how dark his soul has become after the royal aegis we can meet vendrick and if you expected some grand entrance then you're playing the wrong game just like when the most powerful being in the game's world is reduced to a hollow and mindless state vendrick's condition actually seems to be much worse as gwen at least retains some of his combat abilities but vendrick can barely swing his sword if he choose to fight him all is not lost though for our king as if we return with the ashen mistart we can peer into his memories and be able to talk with vendrick prior to his hollowing do you intend to link the fire then you must first take the throne prove your worth find the ancient crowns seek adversity and they will be yours vendrick tells us to seek the crowns these crowns belong to three rulers and also happen to be r3dlc these dlcs not only provide us with additional lore regarding other kingdoms but also what caused these kingdoms to collapse when we finish each dlc we can gain a crown and after obtaining said crown we can talk to vendrick for more dialogue some of the dialogue is relevant later but a common theme throughout his speeches is the idea that we're given a choice all throughout dark souls 1 we were told to link the flame and that if we failed the age of dark would arise and that would be the end of the world but king vendrick is more than content with you making your own choice this goes back to what we discussed before vendrick didn't want an age of fire or an age of dark he just wanted to find a way to break the curse this also ties into his brother aldia and some of his dialogue when we meet him again all men trust fully the ideal of life but is this so wrong the construction aldia is definitely the most fascinating character in this game like vendrick he is completely aware that he is unable to change the world in their current states so he just observes and sees what happens aldia says that the joy of life is warm and splendid but it's a facade as the undead curse will eventually come back but because of that warmth that life brings us are we intent on shattering this illusion we live in and spoiling this false life we have or are we content with our lives and embrace the warmth and pleasure that comes with it knowing full well that it's a lie aldia just like the game wants you to actually make a choice and not blindly follow what some random person will tell us use your own experiences your own knowledge and your own beliefs to come to an answer the way this was crafted was absolutely brilliant and it shows how impressive the writing of this game truly is but before we get to the dlc and obtain the crowns we need to talk about the rest of the content as to actually get the ash and mist heart item we need to travel to aldi's keep in the dragon shrine both aldia and vendrick sought to cure the curse but had different methods of doing so vendrick shunned the undead as he wanted them as far away from the kingdom as possible that's why he threw them in the undead prison of lost bastille in here are hundreds of undead including some volatile variants as these were created by aldia whereas vendrick shunned the undead aldia embraced them as he felt the key to breaking the curse was within the undead themselves but he didn't welcome them with open arms as they were all subjected to his various experiments but aldia went even further with these tests and didn't just focus on the undead but other species he even recreated multiple dragons a race of beings thought to be extinct by now despite what their names imply though both the guardian dragon and the ancient dragon aren't actually dragons the guardian dragon soul can allow us to purchase the drake wing greatsword which states that the drakes are likely descendants of ancient dragons this implies that this is actually a drake and not a dragon furthermore we know the dragons especially the original dragons are gone as calamite was the last of the ancient dragons this is still true as the ancient dragon in dark souls 2 isn't a dragon as it drops a soul of a giant this thing used to be a giant and was somehow configured by aldia through rigorous experiments to look like an ancient dragon to get the actual ancient dragon soul we need to use the ash and mist heart again but this time in freyja's boss arena as it allows us to see the memories of the dead dragon hanging from the ceiling this memory seems to show the original resting place of this dragon before it somehow made it down here there's not a whole lot to learn from this place other than the fact that these large broken structures look similar to the ones outside aldia's keep there's only one place in the world that we know that has giant structures like this it is my belief that this is ash lake it might not be the entirety of ash lake as we don't really know how far these trees went but it seems to be at least some part of it in regards to time this is most likely during the war between gwyn and the dragons ashleigh existed back then but it wasn't the ash lake that we're familiar with as if you remember it was all grey before fire was born so the memory was during the war with the ancient dragons and the present day location of aldia's keep is where some part of ash lake used to be with all the areas covered we can head to the dlc and it's advised to finish all the bosses and content you missed before going which is why i retraced my steps and discovered the locations of the dark lurker and the old dragon slayer i didn't really find their stories that interesting but i figured i would cover them before we continue the old dragon's lair seems to be someone who is using orenstein's armor as a way to uphold his legacy as not only does ornstein have other plans which we'll learn about in dark souls 3. some have claimed that this is a fragment of orenstein's old soul that now possesses the armor which would connect with the running theme of old souls from the past games coming to the present just like with the four great ones as for the dark lurker there's pretty much nothing we know about this being at all their soul states that they're a remnant of some ancient dissipated being and the color of their soul is not dark implying that they weren't born or consumed by the abyss like the royal aegis or manus they also look very similar to these beings in the undead crypt that spawn when the bells are rung given the color of the dark lurker's soul it's possible that this being was actually here to fight against the abyss similar to artorius but there is very little evidence to support this theory but now we can officially start the dlc dark souls ii eventually released with three additional pieces of content the crown of the sunken king the crown of the old iron king and the crown of the ivory king given the disjointed nature of these dlc's they could be played in any order as they don't contradict one another but we'll just go on the order of release the crown of the sunken king starts near the shrine beside the rotten's boss room and entering the shrine will take us to shovel the sanctum city upon entering we are greeted by not only a gorgeous view of the underground city but also a dragon with a giant spear through its chest this dragon is sin long ago a race of people found sin sleeping in these caves and because they had most likely never seen a dragon before they worshiped him as a god these people ended up building a city around the dragon with the rulers of the kingdom being the sunken king and his queen elana but something happened a leader by the name of sir yorg found the underground city and mounted a siege against its inhabitants with the intention of slaying the dragon they were guarding sir jorg and his knights believed that killing dragons was a way to obtain a true understanding of life so they hunted it down after making it past all their defenses sir yorg was face to face with sin himself and that giant spear in his chest was from him but clearly sin lived this wound and that's because upon awakening from his slumber he released a giant cloud of poison that coated the entire city that may also explain why the black gulch is covered in this poisonous green liquid since it's right next to the city but there's no way to confirm before we fight sin though we have to fight alana so somehow despite the poison and the attack from sir york she managed to live well this might be due to her true form according to her apostle and weapon we can piece together that when the abyss dissipated it was broken into fragments and eventually these fragments came to create a life meaning that elana is the daughter of manus the reason the abyss was broken was that the chosen undead defeated manus back in dark souls 1 and since he was called the father of the abyss that would make ilana his daughter clearly she poses a threat to more than just shalva so we need to put her down after her death is when we gain access to sin as a final fight sin wasn't too bad his unique mechanic where the poison from his breath can break the durability of your weapon which could possibly kill the entire run if you're not careful the only issue is that this seems to do an insane amount of durability damage as my banded axe with only 50 durability was destroyed in a few hits i'm not entirely sure if 50 is on the low end of durability but going through all the weapons i picked up across my whole playthrough they were all between 40 and 70 so if anything i should be right in the middle this wouldn't have been that bad though if sin didn't act like the guardian dragon and just stayed put for more than a few seconds i think you could see from the gameplay the amount of chances i have to actually hit this thing are extremely low i think what makes shova so engrossing is the location how do you possibly build a giant civilization underground and for what reason that's at least what i was thinking when going into the dlc and while i got my answer i wasn't entirely satisfied with it one reason why is down to dialogue is there is no npcs in this dlc to talk or converse with we can't gain any new information as all the people that could have been npcs are now just walking corpses given that sin poisoned the whole city i wonder if adding one npc at the very beginning of the level who's the only survivor of the attack would have been a better idea as they could have provided the player with additional information surrounding the city such as why they worship the dragon or how they managed to build all these structures because in its current state it feels a bit unfinished the crown of the old iron king is our second dlc and is of course based around the old iron king from the main game this dlc takes place in one of the largest towers he erected called the broom tower to find the crown we need to traverse the entire tower all the way down to the bottom which was incredibly tedious there were a lot of traps and enemies that can be very annoying to deal with but given that the dlc seemed to want to spike up the difficulty these additions kind of made sense this tediousness also added to the realism of the level as it takes quite a long time to scale this entire tower which is logical given its size and the tower itself isn't just empty space as all the space is being used for some sort of purpose whether it's these smaller guys carrying these giant barrels or the vast amount of machinery within the tower that was made to produce iron it also fits in well with the theme of the old iron king's obsession with iron and how he gained a lot of power from his production of iron this dlc however adopts the same storytelling as the sunken king and that there are no npcs to talk to throughout the entirety of its run time but what makes the broom tower different from shulva is that we already have numerous levels and items filled with lore about the iron king shovel was a completely new area with zero reference to the main story which is why i enjoyed it a bit less regarding the npc interaction than the broom tower even though the first boss is technically another smelter demon the real first boss is actually the fume knife i have zero issues regarding this fight i actually thought it was perfect i've stated this many times before but i prefer the fast combat of the future from soft games as opposed to the slower more methodical nature of the early souls games it's not that one is objectively better than the other it's just a personal preference of mine and just like with artorias and manus the fume knight is another boss that is slowly ramping up the speed of its attacks they aren't incredibly fast especially by modern souls game standards where a 10-hit combo can be finished within mere seconds but the fume knight is definitely a far more faster paced fight compared to the rest of the game and this even continues with the other boss in this dlc which is sir elon it's just like the other boss fights of this game where you have to look at your health stamina and both your and the boss's positioning all at the same time and then calculate what to do given the parameters except much faster i understand this is not everyone's cup of tea but it's most definitely mine and even better the fume knight has actual ties to a previous character from the main game king vendrick had two trusted knights who he considered his left and right arm one was vel'distat and the other was the fume knight however the two clashed which led to the fume knight's defeat what's interesting is that if you defeat the royal aegis purchase his helmet and then wear it during the fight the few night will start his second phase almost immediately showing that he still has a grudge against him as for the few night himself he wandered the land in search of power and eventually came across the broom tower and met nadalya the bride of ash nadalia would have been the queen of the old iron king but she arrived at the keep after he died she fell into a deep despair because of this and ended up separating her soul across the broom tower inside these ashent idols which caused the tower to be covered in this thick black fog this fog has the power to control those who wish to serve her and kill those who refused when the few net arrived instead of destroying the fog like he could have done he actually just opted to be consumed by it which is why he sits at the bottom of broome tower defending the remains of nadalya since she has the ability to create this black fog and her soul is colored in darkness it is once again safe to assume that she is another daughter of manus if you're noticing a theme here then you're catching on to the point of these dlcs each one of them is centered around a kingdom that a daughter of manus inhabited and this goes for our final dlc but before we leave the broom tower there's a secret room we can discover with sir elon's armor and by using the ashen mistart we can go back in time to when he was stationed at the tower this leads to the boss fight we discussed earlier but it's a memory and if we take what we know about the memories and apply it here we can discover even more lore about sir elon if we assume that the unknown warrior that best of the giant lord is us since we went back in time then we're also responsible for killing sir elon so that statement i said earlier about sir elon leaving to search for new lands was possibly a lie as it may have been told by the old iron king so that his soldiers don't uncover his true fate which makes things a lot more sinister than they seemed our third and final dlc is the crown of the ivory king the ivory king was the ruler of the kingdom elaim lois upon entering we can see that it is covered in snow and given that there isn't any snow in draen lake we must be pretty far from the original kingdom as we approach though we are told to leave this voice tells us that the old chaos still hungers and that we are forbidden from entering clearly we're not gonna listen and charge headfirst through the front gate eventually we'll meet with the first boss of the dlc ava this is one of seven pets that the ivory king kept in his kingdom each one seemed to have a specific role in the kingdom as ava was tasked with guarding the king's child of dark this child of dark is alsana and as you would expect she is our third daughter of manus but her story is a lot less destructive when alsana was born she felt fear this is because she was a manifestation of manus fears all the daughters of the abyss are a manifestation of something nadalia seemed to be manus despair elana was possibly a manifestation of manus wrath and alsana was his fears but when alsana was born the king managed to find her and welcomed her into his kingdom he provided the comfort she desperately needed and was kind enough to not shun her away even after he discovered her true origins it's because of this kindness that she stayed in lam lois and continued to fulfill the ivory king's wish which was to hold back the old chaos the old chaos is the flame of chaos the same one created by the witch of izalith it's unknown when this was discovered by the ivory king but once he did find this ancient monstrosity him and his fellow knights set out to extinguish it but they were defeated as none had come back alsana wants us to defeat the old chaos so that we can uphold the mission of the ivory king to do this though we're going to need some other knights of elaine lois as they are absolutely necessary if you want the fight to be possible once we're all set we can jump down into the old chaos again just like we did with lost izalith and this boss is absolute perfection few fights in the souls games actually get better with summons and the ivory king is one of them i felt like i actually had to apply strategy to an encounter which was the first time the series has required me to do that i don't mean strategy in the sense of reading the boss's moves and making sure how to punish and win as that's just baked into the overall combat of the encounters but i mean the actual decision making i had to employ such as which enemy to attack and when which was something i did not expect i would be doing going into this fight i was running around finding knights who were outnumbered and assisting them or if it was the opposite side of the spectrum i would add myself into the mix making the fight easier this is almost necessary for the fight as well since you're going to be doing the most amount of damage compared to all the other knights so your decision in this fight will largely impact how the second phase will go i'm not entirely sure if the knights can die in the first phase given they have an obscene amount of health but if they can it just further adds to my point having two giant teams of warriors fighting against one another is one of the greatest things i've ever experienced and is without a doubt the best fight this game has to offer from the actual fight to the layout of the arena which is engulfed in the fire from the flame of chaos it was just all perfect and would have been such a great way to end this trilogy of additional content but never in my life have i seen a dlc do so well all throughout the entirety of its run time only to fumble at the finish line the frigid outskirts is an optional location that the player can discover towards the end of the dlc and it is awful it's not only painstakingly difficult just from the design alone it might actually be the worst level in any souls game ever made the bonfire before entering the coffin is the only bonfire in the area meaning you have to go from one end of the map to the other just to get to the boss fight which is just two more of the ivory king's pets their lore is thankfully super basic and not important at all as their job was just to hunt exiles that were presumably sent out of the kingdom and into the frigid outskirts this area would not be nearly as hard if the horses didn't keep spawning every few feet not only wasting your time but draining your estus in the process making the boss fight that much harder it's just an awful location and i think the more that i talk about it the closer i get to going insane so we're just gonna cut it right here as a complete package the dlcs were pretty solid there were things in each that i found a little unpleasant like the method of storytelling or an entire area but there was many things i liked about the dlcs and due to this confliction i can't say that together they're perfect but they're nowhere near close to being bad it's hard to judge though whether this was an actual improvement over artorius of the abyss considering that was one dlc with half the content that played out over half the time this is also due to the souls game's business model if people complain about anything regarding the dlcs of the souls games it's that they're too short rather than too long whereas many games like to make additional content with run times of up to six to 20 hours dark souls is pretty much content with two it never overstays its welcome in fact it sometimes leaves too early and doing this gives us less time to learn about the dlcs in the locations they reside in but as i said at the top of the section as a complete package they were pretty great with all the crowns in our inventory we can revisit vendrick who will now provide us with some very important dialogue the abyss once had form but then dissipated and yet traces of its existence endured each fragment thirsting for power spread dark with no relent my dear chandra was one such fragment so we now know the fourth and final daughter of manus the chandra the queen of drain lake the chandra is a manifestation of manus feelings of power and want she came to this land in order to covet the first flame this explains why vendrick was in the undead crypt vendrick left the kingdom because he discovered nashandra's true origins and not only locked himself away in the crypt which was guarded by one of his loyal knights but he also hid his soul as vendrick doesn't drop this upon his death it's hidden behind a secret door only accessible to those who are human and nashandra never truly was that's why she's been so adamant that we succeed vendrick she figures that we'll blindly follow her order so that we can clear all the obstacles in her path because once we finally get to the throne of want and defeat the knights guarding it she appears similar to the ivory king i found this fight leagues better when the summons were included mostly due to the narrative aspect since both benhart and vengarl were helped due to me so it's only right that they return the favor her boss design is impeccable and continues to uphold the standard that the final bosses of the game have but not even nashandra is the actual final boss aldia is the actual final boss assuming you fulfilled a few tasks along the way which is just meeting him a few times in specific locations and then specifically killing vendrick before nashandra as a final boss fight though it felt like a bit of a letdown i think nashandra had way more intensity and narrative weight behind her aldi has been this ominous figure that just shows up says a bunch of and then leaves and now all of a sudden i'm supposed to care that we're fighting him i get why he's fighting us he's supposed to test our might to see if we're truly going to be the next monarch of the throne of wand but that doesn't make it right the same could be said for nashandra given she makes an appearance a whole two times in this game but that seemed to be intentional as the reveal of nashandra was supposed to be this mysterious event which makes this next part even more confusing as the emerald herald can literally spoil for us that nashandra will be coming for us i completely missed her on the way down so i never got to hear this which ultimately made the impact of this cutscene hit harder which begs the question of why it was mentioned in the first place i find it hard to believe that many people miss nashandra at the top of the castle so they're well aware of who she is so just keep the mystery hidden until the final moments it kills the entire impact of the scene if we're just told right before entering that she's gonna fight us after the defeat of the three bosses we can select our ending and while this game does have two endings what these endings represent is rather interesting our first ending is entering the throne of want this is sort of like the kiln of the first flame just a little bit different it allows us to choose the fate of the world but we never get to see our choice it is both the age of fire and the age of dark ending together it's never known what our character chooses but that's the part of the role play when it comes to rpgs we make up the rest of the story did our character choose fire did they choose dark or did they do something else and that something else is following in the footsteps of vendrick and aldia we leave the throne and search for an answer to the undead curse we don't know if we'll succeed but it's worth a try anyway doing this is sort of like operating a dig site yeah vendrick and aldia spent decades digging trying to find a solution and failed but now thanks to them we know of a decade's worth of methods that won't work bringing us closer and closer to finding a cure for the curse and that's the beauty of the second ending it's not only in perfect sync with the rest of the game as it continues to make the curse the main plot of the story but it gives us an option that we as players hadn't really considered up until this point dark souls 1 did a phenomenal job of grooming us into believing that there were only two choices but dark souls 2 refutes this claim and as a third as a final note dark souls 2 was a brilliant game i went into this game with mild expectations but was blown away by how impressive the story was and how surprisingly easy it was to grasp many questions are still left unanswered and will never be answered but i left this game with an understanding of its story its themes and what emotions it had intended to invoke in me and that is incredibly admirable but the world of dark souls isn't over the fire of the world will fade once more and yet despite the impending doom of the age of dark getting closer and closer no one seems to care but we'll talk about that in dark souls 3. thank you all for watching today be sure to like and subscribe if you're new i can't wait to talk about dark souls 3 with all of you as i have a lot to say about it so that interests you then be sure to stick around to hold you over though not only do i have other videos on the other souls games but other series as well as always thank you to my returning viewers for coming back to another video and take everyone goodbye [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Gingy

Views: 562,202

Keywords: dark souls 2, dark souls 2 story, dark souls 2 story explained, dark souls 2 ending, dark souls 2 ending explained, dark souls 2 lore, dark souls 2 lore explained, dark souls 2 video essay, dark souls, dark souls 2 dlc, dark souls 2 dlc lore, dark souls dlc story, dark souls 2 dlc explained, gingy, dark souls explained, dark souls story, dark souls lore

Id: gXSD2fH1HRE

Length: 48min 25sec (2905 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 11 2022