Dark Souls: Unused/Cut Content - Weapons (by HellkiteDrake)

Awesome! Love that the spiked catch pole looks like the same one from Berserk.

My first design for the Dark Souls II Shield Design Contest.

Vote for me! Please :)

My first design for Dark Souls II Shield Design Contest.

Vote for me! :) 

Capra

Gwyn, Lord of Cinder on two pianos.

You are of the undead, forever without hope, forever without light.

Dark Souls II soundtrack - Mikolai Stroinski

LORE - Dark Souls Lore in a Minute! (by lore)

Mini Solaire Of Astora helmet made from Super Sculpey.

Dark Souls Dragon Slayer Ornstein sculpt.

Smough and Solaire to come next.

Nameless Song - Dark Souls - Composer: Motoi Sakuraba

Such a rewarding feeling hearing this at the end of the game.

Excellent analysis on the visual narative of Dark Souls.

When you ascend in Dark Souls, the environments become more fantastic and bright. The game still gets tougher, but the aesthetics become more warm and almost divine. Just the opposite is also true of descending, the world becomes more harsh and the environments more dark and desolate. Just compare New Londo Ruins to Anor Londo for the most direct indication of a really cool visual motif present throughout the entire game.

The first area after the tutorial (Firelink Shrine) is a microcosm of the visual motif of ascending/descending. The 3 possible routes (Undead Burg, New Londo Ruins, and The Catacombs) all inform the player on which route they actually need to take both from the beginning and for most of the game. The game accomplishes this in 2 ways: through its visuals and difficulty.

As I mentioned originally, the easier and more comforting (well comforting in Dark Souls terms) routes start upward.

Undead Burg is both the easiest route and the path to the first bell (which, by the way, is at the highest point you can reach in Undead Burg/Parish) and is visually brighter than the other two paths.

The Catacombs is the middling difficult path, it's gloomier and the skeletons along its path are tough as nails so it discourages you from taking that way, while still maintaining just the right level of manageable challenge that you know you can come back and kick ass once you've leveled up more.

New Londo Ruins is pitch black and damn near incomprehensible, an obtuse and punishing region at the bottom of a long ass elevator. Those ghosts will fuck you when you're just starting out and it'll be a long time before you can even figure out how to hurt them.

So after you realize that going up is the only way that doesn't cream you its just a matter of climbing through Undead Burg and Undead Parish to the first bell. While the second bell does take you downwards to Blightown before you go upwards through Sen's Fortress, it reinforces the idea that going down is where all the miserable shit lays in wait. Curse Lizards, poison swamps and long falls are all that await before you beat Quelaag and ring that bell (A kind of foreshadowing for Dark Souls third act).

Then you go up through Sen's Fortress, and up through Anor Londo until you reach the highest point to ogle Gwyndolyn. The game has grabbed the player through its mechanics, visuals and level design to say "look dude if you want to progress go up".

After Anor Londo, Dark Souls intentionally subverts this structure as a means of raising the narrative and gameplay stakes.

Immediately after you speak with Gwyndolyn you are directed to Frampt, the only npc to provide solid and consistent exposition to that point. Frampt will ask you to set the Lord Vessel and deem you the chosen Undead. What's important here is that Frampt takes you BELOW the world, BELOW everything else you'd traversed at that point, to show you where the Lord Vessel must be placed and that the Kiln of the First Flame is the narrative's new focal point.

A new conceit is established here, narrative progression becomes a downward journey.

Every new area reinforces this new conceit. The Abyss is a plunge below New Londo Ruins, the Valley of the Giants is is a continuous and corrupting spiral downward, Lost Izalith is distinctly below Blighttown, resembling Hell, a metaphor for how far down into Lordan you've traveled (and how grotesque it continues to get as you go lower).

While the Duke's Archives appears to be an exception to this rule it's actually the most clever example of this new progression. The Duke's Archives is the most obvious first choice of the four new routes you can take. Like the Undead Burg, it's brightly lit, easiest, and goes upward. So you start in the Archives whooping everybody on your way up the stairs to fight Seath. As anyone whose played knows, you can't win that fight, it's scripted to make you lose (the one exception in a game where every fight is beatable). Seath is teaching the player, he's saying "You're not supposed to go up anymore stupid." You respawn at the top at the Archives and must work your way back down through the Crystal Cave to actually beat Seath. Like Frampt, moving downward as a means of progression is reinforced through the gameplay, level design and aesthetics.

After you defeat those four final bosses, you go back to the Kiln at the very bottom of Lordan to fight Gwyn and beat the game.

Take note triple A games, you don't need big ass arrows to point to objectives, just incredible level, narrative, gameplay, and aesthetic design, although the arrow is admittedly easier.

 - Originally posted by CreamyGoodness7  on Destructoid 

Dark Souls - Knight Oscar's Old Plus 7 Estus Flask

Can't express how much I want this shirt.

Dark Souls Hidden Track - Trailer Music Full (Epic) (by Phrexeus)