Alrighty people, so on top of some of the other issues with DS2 on the world and lore building side, new info has come to light. That being that whereas DS1 had a completely connected world where each area actually had physical space that places them where they should be, DS2's world is comprised of individually modeled areas that exist in empty space and load around you. To put it in a simpler way, looking across the world from The Duke's Archive in DS1, you were actually looking at the very areas you go to in the game, simply at a lower resolution. In DS2, looking at Heide's Tower or Drangleic castle from Majula, you are actually seeing individual models in the background and skybox. NOW... this isn't the problem. The real problem is, is that the way each area fits together makes absolutely no spatial sense.
What you see here, is showing that Shaded Woods, Doors of Pharros, Drangleic Castle, and Aldia's Keep all exist together in the same space within the game, but you will of course only have one loaded at a time. This doesn't exactly require a map viewer to notice, just think about how the road to Drangleic Castle turns right, which by all rights would cause it to lead into Aldia's Keep at the length the road goes. And that's only the tip of these spatial inconsistencies.
- The distance from Majula to Heide's seems a lot shorter than how far it looks on the horizon.
- Going into the ruin that leads to No Man's Wharf, you start out a couple dozen feet above sea level. Then despite going down about 3-5 flights of stairs, AND an elevator, you somehow end up still being above sea level.
- After the boat takes you to The Lost Bastille, take a moment and look up. That's right, they didn't even model a cliff for the Bastille to sit on, it just hangs floating off the side of a cliff, and you can see through the non-existent textures on it's underside to see right through the level.
- Despite being able to see the tower of rock that we ascend up to the Dragon Aerie from the entrance to Aldia's Keep, the other towers that the game implies exist while you are on the Aerie itself are nowhere to be seen in the rest of the world.
- Furthermore, despite the fact that you can see Drangleic Castle from Majula, the much much larger crags of Dragon Aerie that tower over the world and supposedly exist only several miles from the castle are still visible nowhere else in the world.
- Despite Drangleic Castle being arguably the second highest point in the game, no other area in the game is visible while standing atop it to my knowledge.
- And finally one that many players have already noticed, the trip from Earthen Peak to Iron Keep. I'll leave the arguments to other people to make, and simply post this picture showing where exactly the maps of the two areas line up physically to each other in game.
Now, the point I'm simply making of this, is simply that compared to the previous Souls games, DS2 has a lot of problems such as this in the world and lore building alone (ignoring other "issues" that are defined by personal tastes ie Boss and Monster Designs, PvP, etc), some of these issues being things that never came up in the previous games. It's well known by know that the former Director, and some would say father of the Souls series, Hidetaka Miyazaki was forced by namco/Bandai to step down as director in order to "let new blood influence the franchise" for DS2. Based on multiple interviews, it's been shown that the Souls series' signature attention to detail in the world and lore of the games was all tied to Miyazaki's passion. He would delve and sift through literally every detail in the games during development, be it level design, a character's story, the look of a Boss or piece of armor, and other things such as that. The usual term for such involved directors is often auteur.
What I'm trying to get at through this overly long-winded statement, is that the Souls series was very much a part of Miyazaki himself, and that he seemed to be the biggest influence on the world and lore of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1. While such details are not important to every player, many fans of the Souls series, myself included, are so drawn to this series because of Miyazaki's meticulous work and effort to create a living, breathing, believable world. Don't get this as me saying that the team behind DS2 are a bunch of shams. I believe that they did the best they possibly could on their own, trying to make a game to match and possibly surpass it's predecessors. I do however believe that a series as involved and detailed as the Souls series simply requires an auteur like Miyazaki at the helm.
Make of this info what you will. Whether we as fans can have any say or power on trying to convince Namco/Bandai to put Miyazaki back in charge is impossible to say. I can only hope that either that happens, or the new Souls team can learn their lessons and "Git Gud" by the time the inevitable next game in the series is created.
And feel free to call me a nutter for fretting over simple details like this in a fucking video game. I can't help being true to the critic I am at heart. To anybody who made it through this wall-o-text, I do hope I have not wasted your time.
