Well.
So-- up until last night, I was starting to lean towards the "meh" crowd. As in "meh, more of the same, which is nice and all, but been here, done this, done that too." As is typical of me, I didn't wander too far during my first play through; first run's for learning the ropes and the basics of what is needed to finish. More elaborate lore-exploration and PvP stuff can wait. Onward!
Then, last night, I finished the game. Basic ending, do the good, noble, self-sacrificing thing, link the fire, restore the world, tralalala ... oh. Shit.
[spoiler]"Only embers remain." Too fucking right.
At the end of the first game, the restoration of the world was a conflagration. Standing in the Kiln of the First Flame, your character links the first bonfire. The flames, this time, do not stay in their firepit: they spread, to your hand, to your shoulders, they engulf you. The kiln explodes into a heart-of-a-star inferno. The camera goes white. Credits.
Okay, fine; you sacrifice yourself, the world is renewed, yaaaay! ... I always preferred walking away and becoming the Dark Lord. Mwahahaha!
This time ... Jesus.
Standing in the Kiln of the First Flame, your character links the first bonfire. The flames spread, to your hand, to your shoulders. You do not explode into an inferno. The ash-and-cinder hued flowers growing in the kiln remain undisturbed. The flames that wreathe you flicker sullenly.
Beneath the light of an obviously dying sun (locked in permanent eclipse, no less), its light literally bleeding from the sky, you hunker down to wait-- and burn. Perhaps this world has been prolonged a little; how long, is impossible to know.
This much is clear: you have not restored the light and power of the First Flame. All your sacrifice has done, all that everything you've suffered and all the death and misery you have spread have achieved, is to stir the embers into a flickering, miserable, dying fire, one more time.
There had been signs, hints. Of all the five Lords of Cinder, only one was willing to be sacrificed for this; the others fled, and had to be hunted down-- and not even by a fellow being of fire, however tainted, but one of ashes, dark, and borrowed fire, something that ordinarily would never have been considered fit to gather the power for this rite. There's a new nation in the world, Londor, land of Hollows, previously merely insane, accursed Undead-- now building nations? Founding religious orders?
And the Fire Keeper fears there's something important she hasn't been told, something that's being kept from her....
DS3 is not merely a continuation of the cycle. This is not the same game. At most, the cycle might peter on a little longer. If DS1 was youth, and DS2 middle-age (maybe in need of a midlife crisis), then DS3 is a life reaching its end.
I haven't had a game ending disturb my sleep like this in freaking forever. Or that I've found myself abruptly respecting more as a work of art. I wasn't a savior; I was a life-support machine for a terminally ill patient.
Well, then. Time for another playthrough. Vesper, let's see what obvious-agent-of-Dark Yuria of Londor's got to offer us-- and, perhaps, this dying world.[/spoiler]
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Topic: Dark Souls 3 (Read 9965 times)