kory
Great episode! I think this was also a measurable step up from the first–I feel like there was a greater amount and density of information, but still presented in a very natural way
Thank you! Part of this was from some feedback from my spouse, who was listening to the episode without the visuals, and noted that the playthrough part had some big gaps in the dialogue. So I made myself a list of “stuff to talk about” and during the playthrough part I just tried to fill pretty much the whole time with either gameplay commentary (I’m sure some people at least partially are there because they just like to watch people play Dark Souls) and archaeological observations or topics.
Some of these look startlingly similar to the Burg. Here’s a few examples from a book I picked up at an exhibition a few years ago
Oh wow! Those are awesome. Those almost have to have been an inspiration right? Part of this comes from the towns these are based on, which are pretty ancient themselves, and come from a period long before urban planning when things would have just been so much more compact. That tradition really dates back many thousands of years.
As you move inward to the heavily fortified center, we will see more and more opulence and decadence.
I buy it! I think this phenomenon is even more apparent in Dark Souls 3. @Gaagaagiins mentioned before how it’s hard to imagine some of the areas in that game as being cohesive spaces the way they do in Dark Souls 1. I haven’t thought about that deeply yet, but there does seem to be some really big deviations in class between areas in DS3. That game has more of a renaissance vibe to it than an ancient vibe, like DS1 (to me). That’s funny since I think both are presumably going for a medieval vibe. I’m going to follow up on this as we move closer to the center of Lordran. Which I guess is Anor Londo? Anor Londo always struck me as a sort of Mount Olympus kind of thing, rather than the actual royal seat. It’s both I suppose. Again, unlike in DS3 where there is a clear royal center as you move towards it. As we’ve mentioned before, the far superior DS2 does some interesting stuff with this and has much more of a regional scale, rather than a single kingdom level of scale.
