We will be porting over a couple other episodes of Design Delve that used this animated style recently, so stay tuned! Don't forget to check out our Patreon to support as we're fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded! Even $1 a month helps! www.patreon.com/SecondWindGroup
To be fair was the first time they made this game so maybe the next game will be much better it was definitely an interesting concept and I mean it is some interesting bit of coding that will go into making like levels that just transform like that so I won't be surprised if it came to a point where it's like we have to produce something but we can't really go back and change all that much or there's just not going to be a game
I'm surprised that you can "reuse" anything developed at/for The Escapist! Design Delve and Cold Take are both keeping their original names? I'm glad to see the team taking the plunge, but I worry that some of these IPs aren't legally distinct enough right now. Hope y'all have good lawyers!
Hopefully the person that read the room soooo badly and fired Nick gets some karmic comeuppance, given his/her myopia has cost the company sooo much money and brand damage, and left them with a ton of positions to fill and retraining to do. It's such a poor management decision that it seems unlikely to go unpunished, surely?
@@overseastom Never underestimate an industry's ability to let these kind of people "fail upwards". But yeah, I hope they end up getting a wake-up call on this, especially if it leads them to become a better leader/boss.
@joetilleli3979 What's really funny, is this isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened. One of the precursors to the Crash of '83 was developers being locked up and contract bound to device makers. Atari felt the sting hardest when four game devs responsible for tens of millions in profit, left Atari to start the first ever third-party publisher. Two years, and a settled trademark infringement lawsuit later....ACTIVISON was established as the leading publisher for 2600 content. Once coders realized they didn't NEED to be bound to a device, they went off to the Gold Rush as well. Most failed and crashed the industry, but Atari NEVER regained momentum. From the 5200, to the Jaguar, Atari just did not know how to make quality GAMES....and even their hardware choices were pretty sus. :-) But that's all it takes to see the fakery of the Emperor's New Clothes: just one person saying "We can do this; we don't need an overarching corporate overlord....we can just do this ourselves."
I really think the whole forming of Second Wind is a blessing in disguise. The news coverage and reformation of the video team has revealed to onlookers like me that you all have a real team that is loyal and believes in each other and in your work. I might never have watched anything other than Yahtzee's work if you all remained on the old channel, but everything I've seen on Second Wind has been exemplary.
Same. Still don't know if I'll watch EVERYTHING, but the content here is curated and high quality enough and the people are passionate enough that I'm intrigued by almost everything that comes out.
I’ve literally never watched anything from The Escapist except ZP, but so far I’ve watched everything on Second Wind and I’m thinking “damn, is this what I’ve been missing out on?” Everything so far is top notch.
I agree I like that it all feels new and fresh. With a lot of the Escapist stuff it felt weird jumping in on episode #358 of a how but here everything is episode one again.
Fantastic piece. I developed AAA games for two decades, but I learnt plenty from your observations and insights. Loved your presentation style too. This will be a regular watch from here on.!
Thank you so much for supporting us gang it really means the world to us! What game design topic should I cover next? Lets discuss down below :D Consider supporting us on patreon IF you have the means
I would love to see a deep-dive discussion about how combining genres can become sort of a two-edged sword (like what we've seen with Hi-Fi Rush). These genre mashups are always hit or miss - often what happens is, instead of getting BOTH audiences, you wind up only really capturing the attention of the overlap.
Another element that's missing from most soulslikes is the interplay between enemy design and level design. There's a really beautiful example of this in Demon's Souls in the second level of Stonefang Mines. We have three types of enemies: -Pickaxe miners who attack if you get too near -Diggers who are passive, but will rally together with the pickaxe miners -Crystal lizards, who run directly away from you when they sense your presence and disappear after a time, but hold valuable loot Then we have a portion of the level, designed to use your understanding of the behaviors of these enemies in order to elicit a panic response: -You've just defeated the boss and step into the new area. With a narrow field of view, you see a round room in front of you and approach. -Before you have time to take stock of your surroundings, you hear the tell-tale twinkling of a crystal lizard and see it scurrying down a narrow mineshaft to your right. -Loot! But it's getting away! So, of course, you sprint after it, worrying you'll miss out. It's worth noting now that crystal lizards are very small and low to the ground and, as such, when you lock onto them, your camera points at a downward angle, obstructing your view of what may be further ahead. -You lock on and give chase. As you give chase, you run past some diggers. Then a miner. Then the path is obstructed by brittle fossils that pinch you into another miner. You're starting to panic. You smash through the fossils with a dodge roll. You see ANOTHER CRYSTAL LIZARD. Maybe you swing at it wildly once, just to miss and lose some ground. You continue to pick up more miners and diggers. You're smashing through more fossils. There's a god damn colony of working (lizard) men running after you, but they're slow and as you gain a little bit of composure you feel you can at least kill one crystal lizard before having to figure out the rest of this shit-show. Into view comes yet another crystal lizard, and before you can even process it, you realize the tunnel has come to an end. Its mouth opens into a pit. All three of your crystal lizard friends drop into the hole. You've come this far, it's already a suicide mission. You never stop sprinting. You plop down to the bottom of the pit. Revealed to you are several more crystal lizards. -It's a treasure trove. -And then, behind you, a waterfall of angry workers on strike. -But, you know what? They're not so tough. You've already missed killing all seven of the crystal lizards. They were too fast and you couldn't decide which to attack first with your mind being assaulted. But you're not going down without a fight. You can take these assholes. -And then it happens. -It fucking happens. -In all the chaos, you had no idea. Behind you was another kind of enemy. Quietly acquiescing into your world. Two of them. Black phantoms, both with giant hammers. Invaders like these have been some of the toughest and most unpredictable enemies you've encountered so far. And now you're stuck in a small pit with two of them, plus a horde of adoring fans clamoring for a handshake. -You are screaming. This entire encounter is about thirty seconds to a minute long depending on how long you survive in that pit. It's a section that comprises maybe 2-4% of the level. Demon's Souls is jam packed with moments like these. It feels like nearly every encounter is designed with an intense focus on the psychology of the player and how they will react to the situation they're presented. The interplay between the mechanics of the game, the design of the levels and the design of the enemies keep you on edge and at maximum stress while you explore while constantly subverting your expectations or "forcing" your hand into an unfavorable position that is both terrifying and exhilarating. The oppressive world of Boletaria and the corrupting fog that envelops it is felt constantly. Of course they have their moments of levity and everything which are super important to the loop and theming of the game as well. Anyway. Before I ramble tooooooo much, this design philosophy and utilization of the level design I believe is what really made FromSoft games for me in the beginning. Because you feel like the environment itself is alive, challenging you to overcome it. It takes a lot of time and care to design a game like this, and even FromSoft themselves have slowly shied away from this in favor of more "actiony" design where the enemies are relatively divorced from the levels themselves. There're a lot of tough (and well-designed) enemies and hordes to deal with, but the level itself is just kind of a space that you happen to find them in. tl;dr: FromSoft games need more fights on slippery scaffolding
The games set up these moments constantly but it does get very much de-valuated when you figure out that quitting the game and coming back resets monster aggro and respawns crystal lizards you haven't killed (though I am not 100% sure about that one in all their games). So there's typically no reason to run after crystal lizards until after you've secured the environment.
The interconnectedness of Dark Souls was also one of the key parts that made the level design click so well. As Yahtzee said: "If you see a castle in the distance, you'll know you'll be able to go there one day and there will be something in there who's favorite food is your face!"
@@ZeKnife Yeah, it's one of the reasons DS1 is still my favorite of the Souls games. Elden Ring's open world is cool too, but I still prefer DS1's approach. For me it was the first time I'd actually experienced that metroidvania style of interconnectedness in a 3d game. I love how much verticality there is, and how you can get to so many different areas from so many other ones in just a few minutes just by running and taking shortcuts. It's amazing how easy it is to get around without needing fast travel in the first half of the game.
Noah Gervais said it best in his review: Dark Souls is like a diamond, an interconnecting lattice of areas that all come together to compose the land of Lordran. Dark Souls 2 is more like a starfish, areas around a central hub, while Elden Ring is a wide open world with many secret passages and hidden areas, but not as much connection between. Bloodborne is the closest to going off of the first games' design, which goes a lot to explain why so many people like it, along with the first, as the best Soulsborne games. For him, Sekiro is impressive in how it creates the impression of a wider kingdom out of somewhat linear levels. I don't remember what Noah said about DS 3, though.
Highly agreed! That moment of entering darkroot basin, looking over the edge, and seeing valley of the drakes below? And knowing blighttown is even deeper below that? and turning around and looking up to see the undead parish above you? Pure joy. And there is some of this in DS3 as well, from the high wall at certain points you can look down to see the road of sacrifices and the cathedral of the deep in the far distance. It's so fun!!
@ZeKnife Not to "Um actually", but I do want to give credit where it's due. Even though it's my least favorite in the series, this WAS one of the things I appreciated about Dark Souls 3, and took some time playing around with noclip around release to verify. You CAN actually see almost every area of the game from the first door you open on the High Wall of Lothric. The swamps are visible from off the tower, Irithyll is visible with a slight aurora effect and clouds masking it, but the buildings are absolutely recognizable, and even the super-secret Archdragon zone is off on the mountain. All of the things DO line up with their in-game locations pretty decently, and even Firelink itself is located just off the back of the Lothric Castle, where it should be. The game itself is sadly too linear, but it IS all one connected and visible space like 1 was.
I think something a lot of people misunderstand about FromSoft games is that there are very crucial bits of levity in the design, and they're played very straight. It's not all grim and gritty all the time, there's goofy things like giant crabs and poop, and they're not pointed out and used for cheap laughs, they're just there, doing their thing and being goofy.
Man eater Mildred. Despite being a cannibal psycho, it’s kinda funny seeing a barely clothed woman running at you with a sack over her face, and a giant knife. And the way you can summon her afterwards too is just great. “Yeah um, i used up the last of my humanity trying to kill you. So like. I need some more.” “To what? Try and kill me again!?” “Yeah, probably.” “Aight cool, distract the spider witch for me!”
Souls games could use a bit more levity (players often feel disconnected with the game because they don't find much to latch unto. That's kind of what happens with settings where everything is dead or dying :/ ), but the presence of Onion Knights, Patches tricking people, Solaire, the "WOOO!" guy in Sekiro and other fun stuff is always welcome.
Oh yeah, unless you have a million dollar story, relentless seriousness just won't be embraced by the audience. Comedy media evolves to deepen it's characters, and serious media eventually parodies itself. I think the creators really understood this going in and knew that even tho they were making a dark and serious story, they'd still rather the players laugh with them than at them. Also as a side note characters like Solaire and Siegmeyer are so loved not just because they're goofy, but because they are positive and friendly when so many things you encounter aren't, they don't sell you anything and you might not even think you'll encounter them again, but just having a chat let's the player breath and gain some motivation before the next area.
I used to only watch Zero Punctuation, but after what happened, I think I'm going to branch out and try all the series that Second Wind has to offer. I wanna support this creative independent endeavor.
I'm much of the same way, I only followed Escapist because of Yahtzee and his content - but this time I'll give them all a shot and wait to see what they have to offer.
Agreed. I was there for ZP. While I did enjoy the Jimquistion, Unskippable, and Unforgotten Realms when they were a thing Zero Punctuation was what I was there for.
Really got into Adventure Is Nigh, and just started getting into Cold Take. They really do have a lot of talent, and The Escapist/Gamurs really dropped the ball by letting them go. Oh well, their loss
I really liked the one-time obstacles. Like big tough enemies that stay dead when killed, granting you a little progress for the next time you die. Or the poison rocks in the mine level in Nioh, find them all and the entire mine is free of poison gas. I love things like that.
Wow, first we got Yahtzee's new show then the very next day we already have a new Cold Take and a Design Delve coming out? You guys must be working so hard getting all this stuff set up so quickly.
It really helps when the whole team (talent, production, editing and publishing) comes along. They've been pretty clear about how everyone on the Escapist TH-cam team is now at Second Wind.
I know right. It's almost like Nick is great at his job and only a complete bellend would ever fire him. But hey, no one would ever be dumb enough to do that.
My guess is that they already had most of the written content sitting in the animator's inbox when the firing occurred. To pivot, all they had to do was get the animator to change the assets in order to _escape_ from any potential trademark/copyright conflicts.
Given how The Escapist would normally put out at least four videos a week (and since the exodus they have made none) I'm not shocked at all that they kept up the pace. Good job, team.
This is what they do, ZP releases weekly and it looked like Cold Take was starting to come out weekly and the last delve was a while back. It's the whole video team that was at The escapist so work wise nothing much has changed for them other than autonomy and freedom
That verticality you mention is something I REALLY love about a certain part of Dark Souls 1 because it also really creates player emotion that can change the feeling of an area whether you're going up, or down. Dark Souls 1 opens with you, the player, going up through the burg, parish, and ultimately ringing the bell after Gargoyles. You can see this isn't the highest point even at that time, but you still feel like you ROSE to the occasion and triumphed. Then starts my favourite part: The descent. Something that just can't exist in modern Souls games due to warping generally now being unlocked from the word 'go' but still. You go back down to the burg, but the parts underneath. Then the depths. After slogging your way to the Depths bonfire, you really feel past the point of no return, even if turning back isn't actually THAT far away. After that you go down a huge pit into Blighttown, and it just keeps going down and down. Every bonfire is a massive relief, but even resting at them you feel isolated, separated from familiar places, and pushed to go forward by this suffocating sense that you *can't* go back, whether that's true or not. How the game has you progressing, even in "straight lines", can really shake things up in more than just a gameplay sense. And I"m a bit sad that default warping means that organic isolation I feel at the upper Blighttown bonfire in any other Soulslike.
Mmmm. I do appreciate the sprawl of 2 for similar reasons. It's a good feeling to have 3, 4 things and directions you know you need to do, but not really have anything in particular in mind. Coming up on a new path that looks like a whole new thing, and deciding if you're going to abandon what you were doing to check it out, or stick a pin in it and come back later. That feeling of remembering a place to go, but not really remembering where it was. I agree that's cut a bit by warping being so available as well, but, for that game it definitely makes sense. It can be a LONG walk somewhere.
@@Brandon-kt1qh I don't know if it's a niche as it might first appear. I'm mean we probably all like gaming and who doesn't like to peak behind the curtain of the things we like. It's told in a interesting style with artwork that should be instantly recognizable to anybody familiar with Yahtze.
This was extremely well put. Lies of P did some similar things with similar issues. I loved LoP, but the amount of traps, ambushes, and enemies knocking you off ledges was tiresome. One if the worst feelings in that game was when a main character died and as you're ascending into the next area with somber music, processing their death, suddenly an enemy breaks through a wall and knocks you off a ledge. Bad timing all around that ripped me away from the feels and gave way to frustration.
Yes! I’ve been so confused by the way everyone is showering LoP with praise while stomping all over LotF when they both fail at the exact same thing. False failure points in LoP always return back to where they start, there’s very few places where you can see what’s ahead of you, levels are entirely linear with no attempt to hide it, there’s not one branching path in the entire game, enemies constantly ambush you not just from around corners but even through normal looking walls or shop windows, and the combat is just a mess. They tried several good ideas to innovate in the typical combat, but unfortunately all the ideas they implement work against eachother. Rolling is nerfed so blocking/parrying is incentivized, but blocking is weaker in LoP than any other souls game. Parrying still takes stamina and doesn’t break the enemy’s stance which is terrible when every enemy has a 12 hit combo attack. Instead it just builds up a meter and then you have to land a heavy attack or start all over again, so if the boss just got done with it’s 12 hit combo that you parried then good luck waiting for your stamina to regen enough to use a heavy attack when it’s slower than any other souls game and the boss immediately launches into another 12 hit combo 10 microseconds later. If these are the complaints about LotF then it sounds like an absolutely fine game compared to LoP
@aceplayer555 huh? Its a soulslike, not a story driven game. Its to be expected that there will be enemies even after "emotional moments". Also, i really dont think Lies of P had even close to that many ambushes. In fact, i can only remember it happening a few times. The thing that i do think Lies of P failed at, is make the ambushes believable. What i mean, is that sometimes, the enemy would burst through a wall, but if you look where they came from its just a small box with litterally nothing in there. that really breaks my immersion. But even that is super rare.
@Faint366 well i think you just dont get the game tbh. Its not Dark Souls, and thats the point. You are just complaining that it doesnt play exactly like dark souls or sekiro. I personally think the combat in Lies of P is litterally as good as From games, if not better. And i personally really dont care about branching pathes, and its entirely up to taste anyway, so i dont get why you are acting like linearity is just a negative. And just to be clear, it does have branching paths. They dont hide entire new areas behind them, but they do exist. And level design is most definitely not the only complaint people have about LotF lol. Bosses, enemy variety, enemy density and diffculty in general are straight ass. A lot of people also think combat feels terrible, me included, though that is not unanimous and more up to the person.
@@Conviter"you are just complaining that the combat isnt exactly like souls games" This counter argument is made by every litterly every community for a game with soulslike elements. When ever anyone has an issue with that game, and you have to wonder, is this is a valid counter argument or community denial? (yes even lords of the fallen community say the same thing to people who raise issues with it.) We may never know. But it definitely feels like an arbitrary statement to deflect criticism to me. All I know is Lies of P felt slow and tedious and my motivation for playing kept lowering the more I played. Not really difficult either, just trial and error for each attack and then the boss is dead repeat. The truth is, there are a number of people out there that like that kind of gameplay and proceed to praise soulsclone games including you, great no problem so far, every gets to have an opinion or life would be miserable with no verity. But it has nothing to do with "just getting it" and more to do with "putting up with it."
I mean if you don't enjoy LoP that's fine, everyone has a right to their own sense of taste. Several points you brought up I don't agree with though. Dodging is still very very good and can be used 99% of the time. I know this because that's what I settled on after experimenting with the various defensive options available, and it worked for me through the whole game. Parrying *is* definitely incentivized, but it's because it helps break the enemies stance faster by building up that stagger meter(or it just does a mini-stagger a percentage of the time if you grab the p-organ upgrade). You have an age and a half to land a charged heavy and the meter degrades over time if you miss the opportunity, it doesn't fully reset. I saw a lot of people play the game as if Sekiro-style parrying was the only option and getting pretty frustrated at it not always being the end-all-be-all answer. Now one can not find playing the game any other way enjoyable and that's fine but that again comes down to having a very specific taste in gameplay. I found LoP's level design to be like a very basic and toned down imitation of Fromsoft's (not the game's strong point), but where the game shined for me was the moment-to-moment combat which I felt had an excellent gamefeel, with good weighty attack animations, readable enemy windups, etc... The innovations in my opinion are chiefly dominated by the hilt/blade combination system and the healing item regain mechanic(pulse cell recharge). These two systems had the most (positive IMO) impact on the way I played the game and elevated it from a decent game to a fantastic one.
Honestly, I only ever watched ZP and Cold Take before, but getting introduced to these series with a methodical, spaced out introduction makes it easier than ever to check out new content. Especially opposed to the sporadic appearance of a new series amidst a flood of other content on *the other website*. What a great entry point. Really enjoyed the episode and I'm so happy for everyone here.
Yup that right there. The suits forced too much "stuff", whenever iwent to check if youtube once again just did not show me a new AiN i was always amazed by how many videos i do not care about are inbetween
I love how this is already the most viewed episode less than 12 hours after it aired. You guys are going to do awesome. Looking forward to all the shows.
I remember loving how the torch lighting system in DS2 allowed you to look back on a level like No Man's Wharf or The Gutter after finishing it, and seeing it almost completely transformed by the constellation of lights you left behind. Really made you feel like you made an impact on the world, even if all you were actually doing is lighting torches.
One of my favorite easter eggs is how you get invaded by Zullie if you light every torch in The Gutter. It sounds like a creepypasta but it's genuinely in the game, and it's the only way to get a particular status immunity hat as well (Black Witch Veil)
I love the concept of the lighting system in DS2, it was originally supposed to be a lot more complex and central to exploration but they ended up cutting back a lot. Still leads to some cool moments but I always wonder about what coulf have been if the game was less troubled.
@@paultapping9510 Yes. If you get every last sconce lit in The Gutter, when you travel down to Black Gulch you will get the NPC invader Gutter Denizen that will drop the Black Witch Veil Set.
@@paultapping9510 you have to also light the sconces on the way down the ladder maze after the fog gate, as well as the hidden area to the far right of the gutter from the first bonfire.
To me the environment design is the most important and crucial part that soulslikes usually miss. From games have tons of unique, memorable landmarks that beg to be explored. It’s the glimmer of a hidden item you see that draws you into exploring how to actually get to that spot. I take my time exploring every inch out of sheer curiosity.
I noticed this as a Fromsoft staple once I decided to replay Sekiro recently. I found it to be my favorite Fromsoft entry mainly because of the combat and having a clear narrative that engaged me further, but I also realised how I was underselling how fun exploring Ashina was, and all the cool and creative shortcuts I didn't expect to find. Fountainhead Palace was the crown jewel of a location that I wanted to explore as much as possible.
My favourite part of the first Dark Souls was a big reason why it felt like a large interconnected world: from the very beginning, you could see all of the places you could go visit next. Anor Londo up high on the cliff, the castles court yards below, etc. That was so cool. Like "holy shit, I saw those places from way back when I did early game stuff!" It made the world feel much more alive and real, despite how fantastical everything was.
It's this, but it's also that these areas begging to be explored also have hidden things that aren't begging to be found. Even games that have exploration like this tend to be so terrified you won't find the things they hid, while FromSoft games are perfectly fine with more than half the players completely missing things that they spend serious time and money making. You never see that from other devs.
I think that my favorite video game environmentally wise being Prey 2017 may explain this. Not only are the environments cool as hell to explore, but there's always something you're hurting for and cool choices to make! Recycler charges? Neuromods? Ammo? Medkits? I need them all, but I can probably find one out there, just gotta look!
My favorite element of FromSoft level design is seeing something cool really far in the distance, and then reaching that place a few hours later, looking back, and seeing where you came from in the distance, then opening some shortcut to that place. It really gives the impression of a connected, comprehensive world but it also gives the feeling of making progress. Dark Souls 3 executed this so damn perfectly, as did Dark Souls 1 up to Anor Londo
The example of enemy corner ambushes in Lords of the Fallen reminds me of a similar idea from Half-Life, which is summarized in the design principal of custom maps as "A headcrab in every vent is boring; a headcrab in one-fifth of the vents is terrifying." For corner ambushes to have impact you need to use them infrequently enough that a player won't be sure where they will happen and has a chance to be caught off guard, maybe even forgetting about the last time it happened by the time it happens again.
One of my models is Halo 2. Halo 2 has tons of "ambush" spawns that blink into fire lines when you walk over invisible lines. When this happens sporadically, it can be interesting. When it happens constantly, you just get in the habit of running forwards then dipping back, and memorizing those invisible lines. Basically the same idea, just a different flavor.
@@amelrick7603 yeah ESPECIALLY Scholars. It gets to a point where pretty ridiculous stuff starts bouncing off you, because why WOULDN'T a guy jump out here. For me it was Aldia's Keep where I reached the appropriate level of paranoia.
The ambush mechanic is the same gripe I had with the original Alan wake. It's supposed to be a survival horror game, meaning suspense. But if you get ambushed at every corner, it stops being an ambush and starts being yet another wave of enemies.
Good thing they pretty much perfected survival horror and suspense in the second game. Alan's segments in the dark place had me on the edge of my seat 99% of the time, 1% being the time spent in safe rooms
Not gonna lie, as someone who only watched Zero Punctuation, I can see myself falling in love with this series. The animated bits are the best and the writing and the ideas it presents are really good and eye opening too. If it keeps up with this level of quality, it might even become my favorite series of the channel.
I think having a consistent art style for all the content is a very good way to go. Extra Credit & Kurzgesagt use it for almost all their stuff, so it feels smoother, and you know what you get every time. It creates an identity that the Escapist struggled with.
I freaking love this style of deep analysis and exploration of game design and mechanics. I have a collection of books ("Videogame Atlas: Mapping Interactive Worlds" chief among them) that discuss these types of emergent storytelling using space and this series a perfect distillation of the best of these. Amazing, CONTINUING work and I'm so proud to be a backer.
This kind of stuff is solid gold for any game designer. As game assets become easier to create and engine tools allow developers to cut more corners--allowing for more newbies and solo designers to get into this space--they need this guidance more than ever. The level design and the storytelling is the soul of any game. Neglecting that is akin to bedazzling a turd and they don't have AAA marketing resources on their side to dupe the audience and sell a few copies. If they can't recoup their costs, they likely won't get a second chance and won't be able to learn from their mistakes organically. This kind of education will enrich the indie game industry greatly.
Hi guys! I'm at work at the moment, so I don't have an eye on the library, but I would certainly have a look at "Virtual Cities" by Konstantinos Dimopoulos (an exploration of art and virtual urban spaces), art books from the likes of BioWare, Horizon Zero Dawn, Bethesda, and others often discuss environmental topics and realization (along with some really lovely/interesting art concepts)....um...OH! "Making Videogames: The Art of Creating Digital Worlds" from Duncan Harris and Alex Wiltshire is a look at interactive space from an art/emotion perspective; how crafted areas evoke player feedback. Finally, you can't go wrong with anything from Bitmap Books, Read Only Memory, or Lost in Cult. More art and history than science, but an amazing library of insights into game dev, art, and thought. In fact, I've pro-ordered the full physical copy of "Heterotopias" from LiC (online mag available now!), and that might be THE word on the subject - at least, from an architect's eye. Sorry for the ramble - I hope there's something in there for you!
I also think a big part of what makes FromSoft's level design great is how effortlessly organic it feels. in almost any other game you can almost sense what the blockout state of the level looked like, while FromSoft's Leveldesign feels more like a natural brush stroke across a canvas. if you find a secret, even a small one, it never feels like the developers lead you there, even if they did. a very simple but also fitting example of this is one of the first little secrets you can find in DS1. as you walk from the firelink shrine towards the castle. you see that the aqueduct has a platform below it. and the path you walk along seems to be JUST close enough that you might try to jump across. given how early in the game that is the player might not have a strong grasp on the jumping mechanic, which makes this a nerve wrecking moment for a novice player. so you jump across, and you actually do it. now you carefully walk along the edge of that platform, scared to fall of the narrow edge that is only 1 wrong stick move away from killing you. but at the end you find a ring, a ring that lets you keep your souks upon death, but which also breaks if it's used. a great find for a beginner. but the danger isn't over yet. because the only way back to safety is to repeat the daring jump, this time in reverse. at no point does this feel like an artificially constructed scenario. it feels like you found the remains of an unlucky bastard that got stranded on a platform, to which you had to get to by doing a very risky set of actions. it feels organic. and while doing it it almost felt like it wasn't even an intended path for you to get to. it really feels like you discovered an unintended path that was naturally there.
Honestly, I find the animated parts of this quite fascinating. This is the first DD that I watched as it dropped I suppose, and I enjoy the laid-backness of it all, while keeping it jampacked with information Looking forward for more 😊
The fact the team have continued on their own path for better things is a happy moment for communities like this. In a world of hate and negativity, the team of second wind have created such positivity
This was an absolute treasure to watch. I had no idea how good this was going to be and I'm looking forward to more from Design Delve. This is truly a second wind
I'm fiddling with the idea of doing a few toy game projects. I am probably going to be following Design Delve _very_ closely, even if my half-baked ideas never end up rising.
Design Delve? Oh, hell yes! I was quite disappointed when Dev Diary ended. Even more so now I learn that the series ended primary due to corpo meddling. Bring it on! Edit: Even if it's not the exact same thing as Dev Diary, I'm still totally on board for this.
Dev Diary ended because the old company banned Yahtz from self promoting his game. Now that they're independent, they plan on plugging their side projects more. So don't be surprised if we see a return of Dev Diary.
I think this is the start of something great, using similar avatar designs from Zero Punctuation/Fully Ramblomatic, but doing it as a story for you just going to a design mine and explaining games media. And yes, your doggo Ludo is so adorably a great star of this new show! I just love how fiercely determined he looks digging!
My personal best thing about Dark Souls and derivatives' level design is, to quote Yahtzee on that, "It loops back into itself like a handful of old tripe". I miss the Ds1 layout where 1st half of the game the checkpoints are scarce but easily accesible when you unlock a bunch of shortcuts. Ds2, 3 and Elden ring sorta lack this cohesion and there is a ton of pointless/redundant spots. Think Dragonslayer Armor into Grand Archives or Margit into Stormveil Castle. Fucking less than 100m walk, even in line of sight of eachother
DS1 really drops the ball in the second half of the game where everything becomes linear paths with no shortcuts. Duke's Archives, Tomb of Giants, Lost Izalith, New Londo all have one thing in common: you gotta go through THE ENTIRE FRIGGIN AREA to retry the boss. The only thing it's testing is your patience...
One of the funny things about this move is that you were making inroads even beforehand! I watched ZP since the beginning, and was one of the people desensitized to what the other channel was putting out. It was almost a year of TH-cam pushing Cold Take on my feed before I bothered biting, then I found I liked it. When you dropped the first Design Delve in this animated style it had only been a month or so since I tuned into my first Cold Take. I tuned in when I noticed the video in the feed. Me, part of that intractable Yahtzee-only block not long ago, tuning in on what amounts to the ground floor for a video series! The content strategy was working! Conversions were being made! I’m proof of that! Oh well. The clean break at least means a lot of people who were in the Yahtzee camp like I was not long ago should have that same jolt that gets them to try “new” shows like this one. I’ll be rooting for you!
How did I only know Zero Punctuation when this absolute gem was also available!? Can't wait to see more of Ludo, the real star of the show 😁I'm telling everybody and their mums about Second Wind and I am so happy to see that you get the support you deserve. Looking forward to more Design Delve!
Excellent video! Succinctly stated the problems, gave examples of what works, what doesn't, and explained why in a way that's easily understandable! To toss my two cents in on what makes FromSoft games so exceptional, I think it's the mastery with which each part of their systems and worlds are crafted and executed rather than any of the ideas or concepts they use. People often don't realise just how long From have been around, and how many games they've made before Dark Souls! They have a huge amount of experience, and a lot of it, importantly, is iterative; they've made multiple long running franchises with many complete games in them, and that experience of iterating and refining various concepts and techniques culminates in something like Dark Souls, something far greater than the sum of it's parts, something truly remarkable, made so by the careful, painstaking craftsmanship put into it, the summation not of 3/4/5 years of development, but of 20+ years of game making. FromSoft creation of Dark Souls was not a spike of inspired genius, it was the capstone of the pyramid they'd built with every other game they made, and that's why it's so hard to follow, even with an archetypal example to imitate, you just can't replicate the experience, practice, and knowledge base FromSoft has, so any game that tries to imitate them is doomed to fall short. That's why in my opinion, the best Soulsbourne games are those that have a strong differentiating concept of their own, like Remnant or Blasphemous, because they can stand apart and identify themselves as something distinct, different, not just a Souls-like.
I think one of the things that a lot of souls likes get wrong is the difference between difficulty and punishment. Dark Souls can be a difficult series but it is primarily a punishing one. It punishes you for not taking the time to learn it’s rules and plan your approaches, in this punishment it creates difficulty. Far too many games just feel like they over inflate the health and damage out out of enemies for the sake of creating an arbitrary sense of difficulty. I’d argue even Elden Ring fell into that trap to a lesser extent compared to earlier games
I'd disagree with that final argument because ER more than any other fromsoft game has a multitude of ways to outdo the health increase of bosses throughout the game. While also providing so many defense options that you really don't need to level health as much as most recommend. If anything I would say my main criticism of ER is the direct opposite, it levels the player too much I had to stop myself from levelling early and my friends had similar experiences (one stopping themselves from levelling their weapons instead).
Fromsoft games can also fumble the "punishment" part and make for really tedious experiences at times unfortunately. I think running back to the boss on later attempts was one of the worse examples of wasting time in older Souls games (which they have toned down thankfully in newer games). Bloodborne and Sekiro have their own quirks to this as well, with Bloodborne having players grind blood vials in the early game whenever they waste them on a run, or Sekiro halving your experience and coins on death. I like Sekiro a lot, but that mechanic specifically feels like it adds nothing and only halts your momentum while making you feel like crap.
@@theresnothinghere1745 I find ER to suffer in both directions when it comes to stats. The game encourages you to explore at your own whims, but you can risk unknowingly heading off into an area with overlevelled enemies (which kinda defeats the purpose of heading off wherever you want), but you can also find an area that you didn't know you were meant to explore earlier, which means that you will plow through enemies without much of any interesting challenge. I didn't go pick up a piece of the medallion untill late in the game, so when I headed back to retrieve it, I found it very boring as I killed the boss in 5 hits. I think the game could have benefitted from a toggle that boosts/scales enemies' a bit, maybe even to your current level. Sekiro had the demon bell, so there's clearly room for experimentation. You can even have an option to scale enemies stats down´and lower the Souls they give for a smoother experience. It would make the late-game a lot more fun when you don't get 2-shot by everything.
@@leithaziz2716 I think that's the root issue most people had with ER in general; the things they did to try to break the mold out into open-world gameplay compromised the core FromSoft experience, and in the end you didn't quite get the best of either experience.
There’s also the fact that no attack happens instantly, the enemy has a u inquest wind-up for every attack that keeps you informed on what you need to do. There’s trial and error, but the punishment for death is a slap on the wrist. Dark Souls 2 failed in this regard because it punished death by making you weaker. You couldn’t learn from your mistakes because you were too angry that you lost max HP, and that’s why they never did it again. Embers in DS3 feel like a boon, not just getting health you shouldn’t have lost back.
Came for Yahtzee, staying for the plethora of new faces. Your series is a fun one I look forward to seeing more of. Design Delve is very well put together. I love the animation, and you and your adorable pupper are great together. I look forward to seeing what everyone here at Second Wind has to offer! Hope you're all doing well and have a happy holidays!
This is my first Design Delve episode so hearing JM8 outside of his character in Adventure is Nigh SideQuest was quite the treat. So calm, humble, and soothing. Whilst breaking out carefully crafted points, making for quite a video essay. Beautiful, I'll be tuning in to watch more as I was pleasantly surprised and more pleasantly delighted!
The animation and audio direction in this video is absolutely top-notch! It really helped draw me into the presentation and set the tone of the video brilliantly. I am so excited to explore all the content and talent that I, regretfully, was not previously aware of.
In terms of topics I've always thought multiplayer co-op mechanics are fascinating, balancing the solo agency with teamwork requirements make or break games like Deep Rock, L4D, Darktide etc
Loved this so much!! I’m an aspiring game dev, and i’m super excited to learn more about game design in this series - it already made me think about level design in a more in depth way, and i LOVE the way this episode was structured and how it conveyed its key points!!
I'm so glad all of you decided to do it yourselves instead of letting the big money shred your team into slivers! I know it'll be tough at first, but you're really on a new journey now. Love to see this kind of solidarity, and I already loved @DesignDelve! Good on yah, mate.
Haven't played LotF yet, but I have played LiesOfP (fantastic game). Most of these critiques can apply to its level design. Ambushes get used frequently. I'm happy to see the genre grow with new devs creating new titles. It is like when we had Doom clones, which became the First Person Shooter genre.
From Soft worlds want the player to suffer, but From Soft levels want the player to succeed. Ambushes often come with rewards, levels are well signposted with items and lighting, and there are often many landmarks to determine where a location is in relation to the wider space. The use of vertical space and vantage points communicates a lot about how the player is supposed to feel about the situation. Two quick examples from Elden Ring: Redmane Castle and The Shaded Castle. In the former, you approach from a tower and work your way through the courtyard. You're an infiltrator, trying to carefully sneak your way through. In the latter, you start from the shattered outer wall, and fight your way up into the keep. The Shaded Castle probably "feels" harder because of the direction you're forced to travel through it.
Holy cow, why did I not watch this show before? The format of this is *GREAT!* 😄💖 I really hope you guys are able to upload the other episodes here on Second Wind, because I am hooked!😍 Where's the merchandise?😅
Like many others I only watched ZP, but I'm giving the other shows a go because I love that you guys stick together as a team and want to support you. EDIT: And having watching it, I'm looking forward to more from you!
Reminds me of when I started this game and Lies of P around the same time. I had a rough time getting through the first 30 minutes of Lords of the Fallen but with Lies of P hours went by before I realized what happened.
Saw this at the end of Yahtzees video and got excited that it would be already available. 😂 I guess need to hold on a while when the content builds. And for anyone showing up here from the future, oh hi you.
What is this production value OMG! Top tier editing, analyzis and voice over work! I'm almost glad this whole mess happened, I know it must have been extremely stressful for you guys, but Second Wind really seems like its gonna be the perfect venue for your talents and creativity :)
Something I'd like to see discussed is how games handle taking player suggestions. There's an ocean of bad ideas being suggested everyday and it gets exhausting to look through them to find the good ones. A lot of the time it feels like studios forego official means of suggesting ideas entirely and it feels like either goes really well or leads to a feeling of disconnect between the players and the developers.
A lovely episode of Design Delve! I had only watched one episode before, on the channel that shall not be named, but I quite enjoyed this and can't wait to check out more! This has lovely atmosphere, pacing, visuals and flow, it's just really nice!
I've long been considering starting a youtube channel based on philosophical and mechanical discussions of video games, their stories, their gameplay and the interplay of such. I might still do this, but one thing I do have to say is that I appreciate how well you handle concepts like this. You've done a great job transitioning to the independent space, and I'm happy to see you're all still so supported. If I ever do get my thing going, I'll definitely DM you. I'm sure we'll have a lot to talk about.
This manages to make the entire brand feel a lot more connected and less clogged. Im really impressed, and believe it'll work amazing to make people branch out to beyond yahtzee. Great video, and amazing production.
I only ever played one Souls game, being Elden Ring. But I think what made that experience fun for me was how the hard bosses so painstakingly hard and yet at the same time tangible to defeat. We've all seen bosses that are scripted to be unbeatable, or bosses that are so hard in an area that you are not supposed to be right now. But knowing that a titan can bleed to death is very subtle in getting you to try, try again and learn the attack patterns. One of the bosses, being the moss-y knight near the starting area, had hard-hitting strikes that in a JRPG would kill you because accuracy usually means all attacks hit. But being able to read and dodge attacks gives you a window of opportunity to fight back.
God it's genuinely impressive how quickly you guys managed to put together something of this quality (I mean, I know that's because you did it before, but I assume the switch must still be a bit of a challenge)
This isn't the kind of content I usually watch, but leaving a like and letting the whole thing run through to help the watch through time. Glad to see how much the Escapist fan-base, or I guess former escapist fan-base, is supporting Second Wind! Excited to see the rapid rise of this channel!
I am so happy you guys are able to crawl out from under the creative control you were under. I can't wait to see you all flourish creating freely and innovating on your own styles. Best of luck.
Great to see you guys hitting the ground running here! As for the darksouls formula... I think this is probably one of those things that might have to be chalked up to a creative or design lead who hit upon a powerful set of level design concepts that perfectly fit their aesthetic AND this lead has the personal energy and dedication to see that those ideas are consistently implemented throughout most of their games - or they were able to really communicate (and enforce) these design concepts throughout the wider team. Either is very hard to do, and without having worked at FromSoft I couldn't say whether their success is the result of excellent team coordination, a genius director, or some of both. I wish in my career in game dev I could claim to have achieved this sort of thing, but while I have my own content I'm very proud of, I never have felt like I was able to powerfully convey how to do that to others - at least not consistently.
That's an excellent point you raise about Souls' vantage points... I'd honestly never considered it before you mentioned it, but you're right, that's such a key part of these games. Having the opportunity to see the area ahead, see what enemies are in there, what their patrol routes are, and start to figure out which ones you want to take out first, and work out the path to take to only aggro the enemies you want, and not the other enemies... and then when that opportunity is taken away from you, things get scary. My primary example is Bloodborne when you're going through Old Yharnam, and you get down to the area right below the building that Hunter Djura is on top of with the gatling gun. You can't see what's in the area ahead, partly because of the smoke clouds, partly because if you poke your head out you're gonna get shot, so you have no idea what's in there and no way to plan your approach, and it's SCARY. You don't want to run in and get surrounded and die, and you also don't want to run in, get stuck on something, and obliterated by Djura's gatling gun. Giving you that information normally, then taking it away, makes you scared.
Watching this as I'm beginning my first Elden Rings playthrough. I'm sure it will help with the pain of getting murdered again and again by the first boss I've encountered (Margit). It was actually his DS analysis that drew me into this series in the first place. I'm really hyped about this.
@@grigorigahan yeahhhhh you maybe wanna level up a bit then. im guessing you've started as wretch too, or havent levelled up once as astrologer, bandit, or hero. The only people that psycho are speedrunners/challenge runners, and even they start as the level 9 samurai. I'd suggest going south first to a place called the weeping peninsula, it gives you a "legacy dungeon" castle to explore (meaning no horse exploration), and gives you a boss thats a lot easier than the fell omen. Youre literally supposed to play the game for about 4/5 hours or more before you take him on lol.
@@declancampbell1277 No, I didn't start wretch. I picked hero, got out of the tutorial dungeon and followed the sparkly lights till I got here. Then spent all of last night getting wrecked over and over. Thanks for the tips.
The thing I find most developers miss when copying dark Souls is the difficulty. They take the standard party line of "prepare to die" and instead of coming up with challenging but fair fights they throw swarms at you, bosses with OHKO moves that require near perfect timing to dodge, room wide AoE attacks where you need to be positioned properly BEFORE the attack even starts and other false difficulty things like that.
So glad Design Delve came over to Second Wind! The debut of Cold Take made me start watching other content on the old Escapist channel, and Design Delve was my next favorite alongside the Frost and Yahtzee shows! I don’t even play many video games, but I love listening to you lot talk about them!
As a lot of other people have said, I think now is a good time to branch out into the other stuff you guys do, because I only ever watched zero and extra punctuation. Also, awesome to hear the hyper light drifter music at the beginning, love that game and it's so underrated.
Great video, I often seen level design videos on dark souls, but you have efficiently narrowed down what makes it great and presented why some competitors fail in that area.
First off, thrilled to see you guys thriving after this whole Snafu... Best of luck to you all! Secondly: There are two things that I feel souls like take from Fromsoftware without really thinking it through 1) The level design is spot on. My most memorable moments from Fromsoftware games have been not only the challenging boss fights but feelings you get from exploring these ruined worlds, rotting between cycles, desperately waiting for someone to make the wheels of fate turn again. Seeing the ancient glory of anor londo and leyndell, while seemingly wandering their great halls. Exploring Lady Maria's laboratory while seeing and hearing the results of her experiments... It's a level of creativity that his understandably hard to replicate. 2) Difficulty. Maybe because it's one of the more popular things in their games people often make souls like to be brutally hard, while missing how fromsoft makes their seemingly "unfair" encounters actually mostly fair. Other than a few exceptions (blood-starved beast, bed of chaos...), whenever I die in a fromsoft game, I almos always know what I did wrong and how I can improve in the next run. Sometimes it was a matter of just going to sleep and the following night I'd instinctively know the boss's patterns. But a lot of souls like just make their bosses tedious for multiple reasons (not making clear wind-up animations, just adding insane hit-boxes or damage numbers) because they simply want to make it frustrating.
I don't have any ill will against people I don't know or situations I don't understand. But seeing all of the amazing talent that immediately came together to make something amazing... I am with you guys, and so happy you're still making content.
Best of luck to you guys. The Escapist used to be the ZP channel, but I now look forward to things like Design Delve and Frost's content just as much, if not more. I'm really happy that you guys are still at it, and are in a position to strike out on your own and make a go of it. The content has really been cream of the crop this past year, so I'm sure Second Wind will be a success. Gamur and The Escapist should be in awed epiphany at how badly they fucked up. All the best folks.
Normally i wouldnt really check the vids not made by yahtzee , but these vids on gamedev topics and other stuff are actually pretty great! Another voice also helps to stave off the monotony that eventually comes if you decide binge a channel to check on the vids you missed. This was a great vid that made me understand the topic that at first i didnt quite get , learning what "having the pieces of the puzzle fit" mean in the gamedev process. There's just some things i didnt quite get, like what is mechanical fear, game film, and what is the difference between being exploring a diff world and being forced to travel there. It's a bit crippling needing to check a different video to understand some of these concepts like mobius design and mechanical fear though, like i needed to do my homework before i see a vid that presents itself as a standalone experience. Other than that, good vid.
Truthfully, I always followed zero punctuation only on the escapist. That changes as of now! You guys are what all amazing and you got my undivided attention🙂
I only seek out games with souls-like elements. When it comes to actual souls-likes, I only ever play the From Software games. Every attempt by others to recreate their formula fell short for me, and I was never able to explain why, until this video. Awesome work, JM8!
@@halfastudioI adore Hollow Knight in a way few games have achieved, but I would classify it as a Metroidvania with Souls-Like elements, not a Souls-Like proper.
Much success on you going Independent! Now to your question: There are many memorable bonfires in Dark Souls. Those you visit often and return to after finding a shortcut or opening a door. Not only does it feel like progression and a "soft save point", for the lack of a better term, it also makes these levels feel like real places. How many buildings are just a straight corridor? How many gardens just a singular path? DS3s Cathedral of the Deep has at least FIVE paths from the central bonfire to the bossroom, plus two alternate routes with extra goodies and characters. Eleum Loyce has you return to the central bonfire multiple times and, after clearing the ice, becoming an almost new level altogether. It is easier to make a straight line and dot it with enemies, loot and traps. It is far harder, but much more rewarding, to turn a real place into a dungeon.
On ambushes in From Software games: One of the truly genius things that they do, is some of those ambushes only work when going BACK through the area. One that was simply and easily seen while going on the regular path is suddenly deadly and a surprise when backtracking for an item or another branch after having rested.
I think you hit the nail on the head. As with many games, or almost any design decision in any field, the why is perhaps more important than the how. You can copy the look and mechanics of something while completely lacking the feeling and meaning. This is why there is so much distain for AAA titles that all feel like cheap copies or episodes. It tends to tick all the right boxes of having various mechanics and visuals, but lacks any feeling or meaning in their application. They are put there to tick boxes on a requirements spec, not because they add to the feeling or enjoyment of the game. RPGs with their skill trees and crafting systems; rogue-likes with their random weapons, upgrades, and meta-progression; even puzzle games with the increasing number of mechanics and the overlap between them - many games have some kind of common pieces that perhaps help to define the genre, but they exist for a purpose. Too many clones (even big budget clones) throw in these mechanics without much consideration for how they add to the overall feeling and progression. How often do we get upgrade systems where the upgrades are meaningless? How many scavenging of materials where most don't matter and their products rarely matter either? How many neat puzzle or weapon mechanics that are introduced and used a few times, then completely abandoned? It's not enough to tick the boxes and include the features - you need to combine them in a way that makes for an enjoyable and meaningful experience. This is what design is about!
Wow. Absolutely great video! You encapsule a lot of my thoughts regarding "lazy" gamedesign so well. Never thought that such great videos came from the escapist. This gives me high hopes for Second Wind!
On the topic of lazy. Another common issue is running too far with the "Dark Souls is hard, so this is fine" design philosophy. Like, 80% of the enemies you fight in Dark Souls are extraordinarily easy, most of the time. They probably have a condition or circumstance that keeps them from being effortless. 15-17% are a bit harder, but still fall under the "this is probably almost free if it's alone, in an open space" group. Maybe you take a hit or burn some spells, maybe you backpedal a good bit of level and might be in a bad spot if you skipped enemies, and you might die on a first encounter, but probably won't ever again, unless something weird happens. Some of these might be made terrifying by specific scenarios, like the silver knight archers on the roof of Irythil, but in general, they're still pretty simple. Only like, 3-5% of random enemies are actually super threatening pretty much whenever, and many of these actually don't respawn from bonfires. They are also almost always put in environments where you can pretty easily fight them alone. Dark Souls 2 pretty much exclusively will make them respawn, but they're always an enemy that can be despawned. For the most part, what makes enemies actually difficult isn't their base properties, it's scenario design that plays around their myriad weaknesses, or enforces their few strengths. These big shield guys are really slow and take heaps of damage from the sides, but once you've seen a few of them, one will be in a tunnel. These torch guys are pretty weak, but will see you from really far away, and make a beeline for you. If you fight them head on they're pathetic, but if they get there while you're fighting someone else, it's rough. These crippled zombies are weak and barely move, but are very hard to see, and can put their low priority to work to get potshots in and interrupt you if you are in a situation where you're overwhelmed or distracted. Dark Souls enemy placement is very rarely difficult because the guys are just that strong, kill you in one hit with unreactable moves, ect, the enemies themselves are mostly very weak, but they are placed into a scenario like a puzzle, and almost every single scenario can be disassembled and wrapped up very easily, if you have the combination of tools and skills to do so. When there is a strong enemy, there's again usually something like puzzle elements to get an advantage, like noticing a path to get a good first strike, or maybe some environmental advantages, or else you're probably going to have good peace and space to take care of it. A lot of imitators just throw a half dozen super enemies in a room, see that it's hard, and call it a day. There's often also the thing where a lot of imitators genuinely buy into the Strength Only, No Shield memes, and the game just doesn't have things like spells, which Souls is always built with those in mind, just as part of the larger approach to scenario design. Everything is designed with the idea that any given player might have the tools to completely shut down this setpiece, and that's okay. Most every setpiece is also designed in a way that a character can usually get by using tools they haven't built for, in situations where their usual just won't work.
Thank you for keeping us inform about what the next show coming is until they are regularly up and running. The start-up to any show is always hard to keep track of.
Would love to hear your opinion on Lies of P because personally I think that hits the Dark Souls feeling perfectly while adding it's own little spin on a few things and having a more frontline story compared to Souls usual "Yeah just kill things and keep moving forward".
ha, as soon as I saw the title, my first thought was "I hope that he mentions the new LotF, seems like a prime example of the topic". So, yeah, excellent video and I agree with every point, it nicely puts into words why I always felt something felt off when playing the game. One more thing that I think is worth mentioning in this context is world design and its purpose. The reason why DS1 has this amazing world design is because you are forced to interact with it due to lack of fast travel. I actually suspect that LotF was meant to have no warping at all, but then they realized how tedious going through the world would be, so they walked back on that idea. Additionally, DS1 offered some meaningful alternative paths through the game, which is not really the case here. For example, there is this path through the locked door in an early area (you need to buy an expensive key for it), where you go for a while, fight some enemies, find a few items and then it just... warps back to the main hub? I know that there is a secret boss hidden somewhere, but still, that does not make it a good world design.
Dark Souls will make you feel like you are lost, but as you push forward you find a connection to a familiar path or a bonfire to give you some hope and relief. The relief of finding a bonfire or friendly NPC hits a very certain way.
Several thoughts: 1.) Enemies that stay dead. I really like this concept of unmarked Minibosses. Gives you a feeling of proper progress. 2.) Funny stuff. There's always pretty funny shit happening in Souls games, whether that is the whole Patches situation, the WOoo guy in Sekiro, some enemy dialogue in Sekiro, Gherman in Bloodborne, the pig fisting in Bloodborne, Onion Knights etc. Quite important to me. 3.) Enemy variety. In Fromsoft games, it very rarely feels as if you're fighting the same guys for too long. Can't really recall a time after Demon's souls.
The genius of From Software is that they create a genre that was born perfected. So many things in its foundation that was really well thought from the beginning that with others genres took years to develop, evolve
Ehh not really, it took several games like Kings field for them to get the formula down, but those games were far to punishing and never really took off. Whilst it may appear that they perfected it in the first game, they had made 10s of games with decades of practice before demon souls and then striking gold with dark souls where they proved their mastery, even if they ran out of time and budget towards the back end.
We will be porting over a couple other episodes of Design Delve that used this animated style recently, so stay tuned! Don't forget to check out our Patreon to support as we're fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded! Even $1 a month helps! www.patreon.com/SecondWindGroup
I love that all the creators on the team get their own dog.
To be fair was the first time they made this game so maybe the next game will be much better it was definitely an interesting concept and I mean it is some interesting bit of coding that will go into making like levels that just transform like that so I won't be surprised if it came to a point where it's like we have to produce something but we can't really go back and change all that much or there's just not going to be a game
❤
I'm surprised that you can "reuse" anything developed at/for The Escapist! Design Delve and Cold Take are both keeping their original names? I'm glad to see the team taking the plunge, but I worry that some of these IPs aren't legally distinct enough right now. Hope y'all have good lawyers!
We own both of those brands!@@ChrisKChandler
It's quickly becoming apparent that the escapist fumbling their video team is the best thing that could have happened to them
The video team, not the escapist
Hopefully the person that read the room soooo badly and fired Nick gets some karmic comeuppance, given his/her myopia has cost the company sooo much money and brand damage, and left them with a ton of positions to fill and retraining to do. It's such a poor management decision that it seems unlikely to go unpunished, surely?
And us.
@@overseastom Never underestimate an industry's ability to let these kind of people "fail upwards". But yeah, I hope they end up getting a wake-up call on this, especially if it leads them to become a better leader/boss.
@joetilleli3979 What's really funny, is this isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened. One of the precursors to the Crash of '83 was developers being locked up and contract bound to device makers. Atari felt the sting hardest when four game devs responsible for tens of millions in profit, left Atari to start the first ever third-party publisher. Two years, and a settled trademark infringement lawsuit later....ACTIVISON was established as the leading publisher for 2600 content.
Once coders realized they didn't NEED to be bound to a device, they went off to the Gold Rush as well. Most failed and crashed the industry, but Atari NEVER regained momentum. From the 5200, to the Jaguar, Atari just did not know how to make quality GAMES....and even their hardware choices were pretty sus. :-)
But that's all it takes to see the fakery of the Emperor's New Clothes: just one person saying "We can do this; we don't need an overarching corporate overlord....we can just do this ourselves."
I really think the whole forming of Second Wind is a blessing in disguise. The news coverage and reformation of the video team has revealed to onlookers like me that you all have a real team that is loyal and believes in each other and in your work. I might never have watched anything other than Yahtzee's work if you all remained on the old channel, but everything I've seen on Second Wind has been exemplary.
Same. Still don't know if I'll watch EVERYTHING, but the content here is curated and high quality enough and the people are passionate enough that I'm intrigued by almost everything that comes out.
I’ve literally never watched anything from The Escapist except ZP, but so far I’ve watched everything on Second Wind and I’m thinking “damn, is this what I’ve been missing out on?” Everything so far is top notch.
I agree I like that it all feels new and fresh. With a lot of the Escapist stuff it felt weird jumping in on episode #358 of a how but here everything is episode one again.
this
Fantastic piece. I developed AAA games for two decades, but I learnt plenty from your observations and insights. Loved your presentation style too. This will be a regular watch from here on.!
Thank you so much for supporting us gang it really means the world to us! What game design topic should I cover next? Lets discuss down below :D
Consider supporting us on patreon IF you have the means
Has there been a roguelike or a roguelite topic?
I don’t know if you’ve played 13 Sentinels, but maybe how game’s approach nonlinear storytelling?
I would love to see a deep-dive discussion about how combining genres can become sort of a two-edged sword (like what we've seen with Hi-Fi Rush). These genre mashups are always hit or miss - often what happens is, instead of getting BOTH audiences, you wind up only really capturing the attention of the overlap.
I'm not sure if this counts but how about EAC? (Easy Anti Cheat)
@@scrittleyes, iirc Cold Take is scheduled for tomorrow
Another element that's missing from most soulslikes is the interplay between enemy design and level design. There's a really beautiful example of this in Demon's Souls in the second level of Stonefang Mines.
We have three types of enemies:
-Pickaxe miners who attack if you get too near
-Diggers who are passive, but will rally together with the pickaxe miners
-Crystal lizards, who run directly away from you when they sense your presence and disappear after a time, but hold valuable loot
Then we have a portion of the level, designed to use your understanding of the behaviors of these enemies in order to elicit a panic response:
-You've just defeated the boss and step into the new area. With a narrow field of view, you see a round room in front of you and approach.
-Before you have time to take stock of your surroundings, you hear the tell-tale twinkling of a crystal lizard and see it scurrying down a narrow mineshaft to your right.
-Loot! But it's getting away! So, of course, you sprint after it, worrying you'll miss out. It's worth noting now that crystal lizards are very small and low to the ground and, as such, when you lock onto them, your camera points at a downward angle, obstructing your view of what may be further ahead.
-You lock on and give chase. As you give chase, you run past some diggers. Then a miner. Then the path is obstructed by brittle fossils that pinch you into another miner. You're starting to panic. You smash through the fossils with a dodge roll. You see ANOTHER CRYSTAL LIZARD. Maybe you swing at it wildly once, just to miss and lose some ground. You continue to pick up more miners and diggers. You're smashing through more fossils. There's a god damn colony of working (lizard) men running after you, but they're slow and as you gain a little bit of composure you feel you can at least kill one crystal lizard before having to figure out the rest of this shit-show. Into view comes yet another crystal lizard, and before you can even process it, you realize the tunnel has come to an end. Its mouth opens into a pit. All three of your crystal lizard friends drop into the hole. You've come this far, it's already a suicide mission. You never stop sprinting. You plop down to the bottom of the pit. Revealed to you are several more crystal lizards.
-It's a treasure trove.
-And then, behind you, a waterfall of angry workers on strike.
-But, you know what? They're not so tough. You've already missed killing all seven of the crystal lizards. They were too fast and you couldn't decide which to attack first with your mind being assaulted. But you're not going down without a fight. You can take these assholes.
-And then it happens.
-It fucking happens.
-In all the chaos, you had no idea. Behind you was another kind of enemy. Quietly acquiescing into your world. Two of them. Black phantoms, both with giant hammers. Invaders like these have been some of the toughest and most unpredictable enemies you've encountered so far. And now you're stuck in a small pit with two of them, plus a horde of adoring fans clamoring for a handshake.
-You are screaming.
This entire encounter is about thirty seconds to a minute long depending on how long you survive in that pit. It's a section that comprises maybe 2-4% of the level. Demon's Souls is jam packed with moments like these. It feels like nearly every encounter is designed with an intense focus on the psychology of the player and how they will react to the situation they're presented. The interplay between the mechanics of the game, the design of the levels and the design of the enemies keep you on edge and at maximum stress while you explore while constantly subverting your expectations or "forcing" your hand into an unfavorable position that is both terrifying and exhilarating. The oppressive world of Boletaria and the corrupting fog that envelops it is felt constantly. Of course they have their moments of levity and everything which are super important to the loop and theming of the game as well.
Anyway. Before I ramble tooooooo much, this design philosophy and utilization of the level design I believe is what really made FromSoft games for me in the beginning. Because you feel like the environment itself is alive, challenging you to overcome it. It takes a lot of time and care to design a game like this, and even FromSoft themselves have slowly shied away from this in favor of more "actiony" design where the enemies are relatively divorced from the levels themselves. There're a lot of tough (and well-designed) enemies and hordes to deal with, but the level itself is just kind of a space that you happen to find them in.
tl;dr: FromSoft games need more fights on slippery scaffolding
I deeply admire the whole storytelling you put here, from the vocab to the flow
The games set up these moments constantly but it does get very much de-valuated when you figure out that quitting the game and coming back resets monster aggro and respawns crystal lizards you haven't killed (though I am not 100% sure about that one in all their games). So there's typically no reason to run after crystal lizards until after you've secured the environment.
The interconnectedness of Dark Souls was also one of the key parts that made the level design click so well. As Yahtzee said: "If you see a castle in the distance, you'll know you'll be able to go there one day and there will be something in there who's favorite food is your face!"
Sadly only the first game actually does this (and elden ring but in a more sprawling, less interconnected way)
@@ZeKnife Yeah, it's one of the reasons DS1 is still my favorite of the Souls games. Elden Ring's open world is cool too, but I still prefer DS1's approach. For me it was the first time I'd actually experienced that metroidvania style of interconnectedness in a 3d game. I love how much verticality there is, and how you can get to so many different areas from so many other ones in just a few minutes just by running and taking shortcuts. It's amazing how easy it is to get around without needing fast travel in the first half of the game.
Noah Gervais said it best in his review: Dark Souls is like a diamond, an interconnecting lattice of areas that all come together to compose the land of Lordran. Dark Souls 2 is more like a starfish, areas around a central hub, while Elden Ring is a wide open world with many secret passages and hidden areas, but not as much connection between. Bloodborne is the closest to going off of the first games' design, which goes a lot to explain why so many people like it, along with the first, as the best Soulsborne games. For him, Sekiro is impressive in how it creates the impression of a wider kingdom out of somewhat linear levels. I don't remember what Noah said about DS 3, though.
Highly agreed! That moment of entering darkroot basin, looking over the edge, and seeing valley of the drakes below? And knowing blighttown is even deeper below that? and turning around and looking up to see the undead parish above you? Pure joy. And there is some of this in DS3 as well, from the high wall at certain points you can look down to see the road of sacrifices and the cathedral of the deep in the far distance. It's so fun!!
@ZeKnife Not to "Um actually", but I do want to give credit where it's due. Even though it's my least favorite in the series, this WAS one of the things I appreciated about Dark Souls 3, and took some time playing around with noclip around release to verify. You CAN actually see almost every area of the game from the first door you open on the High Wall of Lothric. The swamps are visible from off the tower, Irithyll is visible with a slight aurora effect and clouds masking it, but the buildings are absolutely recognizable, and even the super-secret Archdragon zone is off on the mountain. All of the things DO line up with their in-game locations pretty decently, and even Firelink itself is located just off the back of the Lothric Castle, where it should be. The game itself is sadly too linear, but it IS all one connected and visible space like 1 was.
I think something a lot of people misunderstand about FromSoft games is that there are very crucial bits of levity in the design, and they're played very straight. It's not all grim and gritty all the time, there's goofy things like giant crabs and poop, and they're not pointed out and used for cheap laughs, they're just there, doing their thing and being goofy.
Man eater Mildred. Despite being a cannibal psycho, it’s kinda funny seeing a barely clothed woman running at you with a sack over her face, and a giant knife.
And the way you can summon her afterwards too is just great.
“Yeah um, i used up the last of my humanity trying to kill you. So like. I need some more.”
“To what? Try and kill me again!?”
“Yeah, probably.”
“Aight cool, distract the spider witch for me!”
Souls games could use a bit more levity (players often feel disconnected with the game because they don't find much to latch unto. That's kind of what happens with settings where everything is dead or dying :/ ), but the presence of Onion Knights, Patches tricking people, Solaire, the "WOOO!" guy in Sekiro and other fun stuff is always welcome.
Oh yeah, unless you have a million dollar story, relentless seriousness just won't be embraced by the audience. Comedy media evolves to deepen it's characters, and serious media eventually parodies itself. I think the creators really understood this going in and knew that even tho they were making a dark and serious story, they'd still rather the players laugh with them than at them.
Also as a side note characters like Solaire and Siegmeyer are so loved not just because they're goofy, but because they are positive and friendly when so many things you encounter aren't, they don't sell you anything and you might not even think you'll encounter them again, but just having a chat let's the player breath and gain some motivation before the next area.
Exactly. Also, getting bonked by a giant mushroom.@@The_OwO_Shogun
I feel the wood carving equivalents are perfect examples of this.
"Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello."
I used to only watch Zero Punctuation, but after what happened, I think I'm going to branch out and try all the series that Second Wind has to offer. I wanna support this creative independent endeavor.
I'm much of the same way, I only followed Escapist because of Yahtzee and his content - but this time I'll give them all a shot and wait to see what they have to offer.
You're going to love Cold Take
Agreed. I was there for ZP. While I did enjoy the Jimquistion, Unskippable, and Unforgotten Realms when they were a thing Zero Punctuation was what I was there for.
Zero Punctuation was all there was basically
Really got into Adventure Is Nigh, and just started getting into Cold Take. They really do have a lot of talent, and The Escapist/Gamurs really dropped the ball by letting them go. Oh well, their loss
I really liked the one-time obstacles. Like big tough enemies that stay dead when killed, granting you a little progress for the next time you die. Or the poison rocks in the mine level in Nioh, find them all and the entire mine is free of poison gas. I love things like that.
Wow, first we got Yahtzee's new show then the very next day we already have a new Cold Take and a Design Delve coming out? You guys must be working so hard getting all this stuff set up so quickly.
It really helps when the whole team (talent, production, editing and publishing) comes along. They've been pretty clear about how everyone on the Escapist TH-cam team is now at Second Wind.
I know right. It's almost like Nick is great at his job and only a complete bellend would ever fire him. But hey, no one would ever be dumb enough to do that.
My guess is that they already had most of the written content sitting in the animator's inbox when the firing occurred. To pivot, all they had to do was get the animator to change the assets in order to _escape_ from any potential trademark/copyright conflicts.
Given how The Escapist would normally put out at least four videos a week (and since the exodus they have made none) I'm not shocked at all that they kept up the pace. Good job, team.
This is what they do, ZP releases weekly and it looked like Cold Take was starting to come out weekly and the last delve was a while back. It's the whole video team that was at The escapist so work wise nothing much has changed for them other than autonomy and freedom
That verticality you mention is something I REALLY love about a certain part of Dark Souls 1 because it also really creates player emotion that can change the feeling of an area whether you're going up, or down.
Dark Souls 1 opens with you, the player, going up through the burg, parish, and ultimately ringing the bell after Gargoyles. You can see this isn't the highest point even at that time, but you still feel like you ROSE to the occasion and triumphed.
Then starts my favourite part: The descent. Something that just can't exist in modern Souls games due to warping generally now being unlocked from the word 'go' but still.
You go back down to the burg, but the parts underneath. Then the depths. After slogging your way to the Depths bonfire, you really feel past the point of no return, even if turning back isn't actually THAT far away. After that you go down a huge pit into Blighttown, and it just keeps going down and down. Every bonfire is a massive relief, but even resting at them you feel isolated, separated from familiar places, and pushed to go forward by this suffocating sense that you *can't* go back, whether that's true or not.
How the game has you progressing, even in "straight lines", can really shake things up in more than just a gameplay sense. And I"m a bit sad that default warping means that organic isolation I feel at the upper Blighttown bonfire in any other Soulslike.
Mmmm.
I do appreciate the sprawl of 2 for similar reasons. It's a good feeling to have 3, 4 things and directions you know you need to do, but not really have anything in particular in mind. Coming up on a new path that looks like a whole new thing, and deciding if you're going to abandon what you were doing to check it out, or stick a pin in it and come back later.
That feeling of remembering a place to go, but not really remembering where it was.
I agree that's cut a bit by warping being so available as well, but, for that game it definitely makes sense. It can be a LONG walk somewhere.
I really hope more people give the other content a chance like this going forward.
This is great but certainly very niche. We’ll keep watching but I don’t know who else will sadly
@@Brandon-kt1qh I don't know if it's a niche as it might first appear. I'm mean we probably all like gaming and who doesn't like to peak behind the curtain of the things we like. It's told in a interesting style with artwork that should be instantly recognizable to anybody familiar with Yahtze.
Yeah, I'm kinda surprised by how many people have been completely ignoring these other series, they've been great for quite a while now.
This was extremely well put. Lies of P did some similar things with similar issues. I loved LoP, but the amount of traps, ambushes, and enemies knocking you off ledges was tiresome. One if the worst feelings in that game was when a main character died and as you're ascending into the next area with somber music, processing their death, suddenly an enemy breaks through a wall and knocks you off a ledge. Bad timing all around that ripped me away from the feels and gave way to frustration.
Yes! I’ve been so confused by the way everyone is showering LoP with praise while stomping all over LotF when they both fail at the exact same thing. False failure points in LoP always return back to where they start, there’s very few places where you can see what’s ahead of you, levels are entirely linear with no attempt to hide it, there’s not one branching path in the entire game, enemies constantly ambush you not just from around corners but even through normal looking walls or shop windows, and the combat is just a mess. They tried several good ideas to innovate in the typical combat, but unfortunately all the ideas they implement work against eachother. Rolling is nerfed so blocking/parrying is incentivized, but blocking is weaker in LoP than any other souls game. Parrying still takes stamina and doesn’t break the enemy’s stance which is terrible when every enemy has a 12 hit combo attack. Instead it just builds up a meter and then you have to land a heavy attack or start all over again, so if the boss just got done with it’s 12 hit combo that you parried then good luck waiting for your stamina to regen enough to use a heavy attack when it’s slower than any other souls game and the boss immediately launches into another 12 hit combo 10 microseconds later. If these are the complaints about LotF then it sounds like an absolutely fine game compared to LoP
@aceplayer555 huh? Its a soulslike, not a story driven game. Its to be expected that there will be enemies even after "emotional moments". Also, i really dont think Lies of P had even close to that many ambushes. In fact, i can only remember it happening a few times. The thing that i do think Lies of P failed at, is make the ambushes believable. What i mean, is that sometimes, the enemy would burst through a wall, but if you look where they came from its just a small box with litterally nothing in there. that really breaks my immersion. But even that is super rare.
@Faint366 well i think you just dont get the game tbh. Its not Dark Souls, and thats the point. You are just complaining that it doesnt play exactly like dark souls or sekiro. I personally think the combat in Lies of P is litterally as good as From games, if not better. And i personally really dont care about branching pathes, and its entirely up to taste anyway, so i dont get why you are acting like linearity is just a negative. And just to be clear, it does have branching paths. They dont hide entire new areas behind them, but they do exist.
And level design is most definitely not the only complaint people have about LotF lol. Bosses, enemy variety, enemy density and diffculty in general are straight ass. A lot of people also think combat feels terrible, me included, though that is not unanimous and more up to the person.
@@Conviter"you are just complaining that the combat isnt exactly like souls games"
This counter argument is made by every litterly every community for a game with soulslike elements.
When ever anyone has an issue with that game, and you have to wonder, is this is a valid counter argument or community denial? (yes even lords of the fallen community say the same thing to people who raise issues with it.) We may never know. But it definitely feels like an arbitrary statement to deflect criticism to me.
All I know is Lies of P felt slow and tedious and my motivation for playing kept lowering the more I played. Not really difficult either, just trial and error for each attack and then the boss is dead repeat. The truth is, there are a number of people out there that like that kind of gameplay and proceed to praise soulsclone games including you, great no problem so far, every gets to have an opinion or life would be miserable with no verity. But it has nothing to do with "just getting it" and more to do with "putting up with it."
I mean if you don't enjoy LoP that's fine, everyone has a right to their own sense of taste. Several points you brought up I don't agree with though. Dodging is still very very good and can be used 99% of the time. I know this because that's what I settled on after experimenting with the various defensive options available, and it worked for me through the whole game. Parrying *is* definitely incentivized, but it's because it helps break the enemies stance faster by building up that stagger meter(or it just does a mini-stagger a percentage of the time if you grab the p-organ upgrade). You have an age and a half to land a charged heavy and the meter degrades over time if you miss the opportunity, it doesn't fully reset. I saw a lot of people play the game as if Sekiro-style parrying was the only option and getting pretty frustrated at it not always being the end-all-be-all answer. Now one can not find playing the game any other way enjoyable and that's fine but that again comes down to having a very specific taste in gameplay. I found LoP's level design to be like a very basic and toned down imitation of Fromsoft's (not the game's strong point), but where the game shined for me was the moment-to-moment combat which I felt had an excellent gamefeel, with good weighty attack animations, readable enemy windups, etc... The innovations in my opinion are chiefly dominated by the hilt/blade combination system and the healing item regain mechanic(pulse cell recharge). These two systems had the most (positive IMO) impact on the way I played the game and elevated it from a decent game to a fantastic one.
Honestly, I only ever watched ZP and Cold Take before, but getting introduced to these series with a methodical, spaced out introduction makes it easier than ever to check out new content. Especially opposed to the sporadic appearance of a new series amidst a flood of other content on *the other website*. What a great entry point. Really enjoyed the episode and I'm so happy for everyone here.
This is well said!
Yup that right there. The suits forced too much "stuff", whenever iwent to check if youtube once again just did not show me a new AiN i was always amazed by how many videos i do not care about are inbetween
I love how this is already the most viewed episode less than 12 hours after it aired. You guys are going to do awesome. Looking forward to all the shows.
I remember loving how the torch lighting system in DS2 allowed you to look back on a level like No Man's Wharf or The Gutter after finishing it, and seeing it almost completely transformed by the constellation of lights you left behind. Really made you feel like you made an impact on the world, even if all you were actually doing is lighting torches.
One of my favorite easter eggs is how you get invaded by Zullie if you light every torch in The Gutter. It sounds like a creepypasta but it's genuinely in the game, and it's the only way to get a particular status immunity hat as well (Black Witch Veil)
I love the concept of the lighting system in DS2, it was originally supposed to be a lot more complex and central to exploration but they ended up cutting back a lot. Still leads to some cool moments but I always wonder about what coulf have been if the game was less troubled.
@@paultapping9510 Yes. If you get every last sconce lit in The Gutter, when you travel down to Black Gulch you will get the NPC invader Gutter Denizen that will drop the Black Witch Veil Set.
@@paultapping9510 Either you missed a torch or you played the original because the invader only appears in the Scholar of the First Sin edition.
@@paultapping9510 you have to also light the sconces on the way down the ladder maze after the fog gate, as well as the hidden area to the far right of the gutter from the first bonfire.
To me the environment design is the most important and crucial part that soulslikes usually miss. From games have tons of unique, memorable landmarks that beg to be explored. It’s the glimmer of a hidden item you see that draws you into exploring how to actually get to that spot. I take my time exploring every inch out of sheer curiosity.
I noticed this as a Fromsoft staple once I decided to replay Sekiro recently. I found it to be my favorite Fromsoft entry mainly because of the combat and having a clear narrative that engaged me further, but I also realised how I was underselling how fun exploring Ashina was, and all the cool and creative shortcuts I didn't expect to find. Fountainhead Palace was the crown jewel of a location that I wanted to explore as much as possible.
@@leithaziz2716SEKIRO is the BEST game EVER MADE PERIOD!😊
My favourite part of the first Dark Souls was a big reason why it felt like a large interconnected world: from the very beginning, you could see all of the places you could go visit next. Anor Londo up high on the cliff, the castles court yards below, etc. That was so cool. Like "holy shit, I saw those places from way back when I did early game stuff!"
It made the world feel much more alive and real, despite how fantastical everything was.
It's this, but it's also that these areas begging to be explored also have hidden things that aren't begging to be found. Even games that have exploration like this tend to be so terrified you won't find the things they hid, while FromSoft games are perfectly fine with more than half the players completely missing things that they spend serious time and money making. You never see that from other devs.
I think that my favorite video game environmentally wise being Prey 2017 may explain this. Not only are the environments cool as hell to explore, but there's always something you're hurting for and cool choices to make!
Recycler charges? Neuromods? Ammo? Medkits? I need them all, but I can probably find one out there, just gotta look!
I had only started branching out from ZP a few months ago, now I'm giving everything a go. This is great 👍
My favorite element of FromSoft level design is seeing something cool really far in the distance, and then reaching that place a few hours later, looking back, and seeing where you came from in the distance, then opening some shortcut to that place. It really gives the impression of a connected, comprehensive world but it also gives the feeling of making progress. Dark Souls 3 executed this so damn perfectly, as did Dark Souls 1 up to Anor Londo
The example of enemy corner ambushes in Lords of the Fallen reminds me of a similar idea from Half-Life, which is summarized in the design principal of custom maps as "A headcrab in every vent is boring; a headcrab in one-fifth of the vents is terrifying."
For corner ambushes to have impact you need to use them infrequently enough that a player won't be sure where they will happen and has a chance to be caught off guard, maybe even forgetting about the last time it happened by the time it happens again.
One of my models is Halo 2.
Halo 2 has tons of "ambush" spawns that blink into fire lines when you walk over invisible lines.
When this happens sporadically, it can be interesting. When it happens constantly, you just get in the habit of running forwards then dipping back, and memorizing those invisible lines.
Basically the same idea, just a different flavor.
A lot of the ambushes can also be spotted ahead of time, though you rarely will spot them the first time through. I think that's also very important!
It's a thing that Dark Souls 2 failed to understand.
@@amelrick7603 yeah
ESPECIALLY Scholars.
It gets to a point where pretty ridiculous stuff starts bouncing off you, because why WOULDN'T a guy jump out here.
For me it was Aldia's Keep where I reached the appropriate level of paranoia.
Same with Dead Space 3. That game sneaks up on you from behind all the time. It becomes old real quick.
The ambush mechanic is the same gripe I had with the original Alan wake. It's supposed to be a survival horror game, meaning suspense. But if you get ambushed at every corner, it stops being an ambush and starts being yet another wave of enemies.
Yeah I feel yah, I’m literally playing Alan Wake right now and came to that same conclusion today, but the games super easy so it ain’t a big deal.
Good thing they pretty much perfected survival horror and suspense in the second game. Alan's segments in the dark place had me on the edge of my seat 99% of the time, 1% being the time spent in safe rooms
Not gonna lie, as someone who only watched Zero Punctuation, I can see myself falling in love with this series.
The animated bits are the best and the writing and the ideas it presents are really good and eye opening too. If it keeps up with this level of quality, it might even become my favorite series of the channel.
So glad Second Wind has brought my attention to the videos from others on the team. This series is about to be a routine jam throughout my weeks.
Good luck with this new path you guys took, the rebranding looks really cool!
Love Design Delve and so chuffed you're continuing this great series with Second Wind!
Chuffed...
I think having a consistent art style for all the content is a very good way to go. Extra Credit & Kurzgesagt use it for almost all their stuff, so it feels smoother, and you know what you get every time. It creates an identity that the Escapist struggled with.
I freaking love this style of deep analysis and exploration of game design and mechanics. I have a collection of books ("Videogame Atlas: Mapping Interactive Worlds" chief among them) that discuss these types of emergent storytelling using space and this series a perfect distillation of the best of these. Amazing, CONTINUING work and I'm so proud to be a backer.
This kind of stuff is solid gold for any game designer. As game assets become easier to create and engine tools allow developers to cut more corners--allowing for more newbies and solo designers to get into this space--they need this guidance more than ever. The level design and the storytelling is the soul of any game. Neglecting that is akin to bedazzling a turd and they don't have AAA marketing resources on their side to dupe the audience and sell a few copies. If they can't recoup their costs, they likely won't get a second chance and won't be able to learn from their mistakes organically. This kind of education will enrich the indie game industry greatly.
Can you give us a list of some of the other books in that collection? Would love to check them out!
Hi guys!
I'm at work at the moment, so I don't have an eye on the library, but I would certainly have a look at "Virtual Cities" by Konstantinos Dimopoulos (an exploration of art and virtual urban spaces), art books from the likes of BioWare, Horizon Zero Dawn, Bethesda, and others often discuss environmental topics and realization (along with some really lovely/interesting art concepts)....um...OH! "Making Videogames: The Art of Creating Digital Worlds" from Duncan Harris and Alex Wiltshire is a look at interactive space from an art/emotion perspective; how crafted areas evoke player feedback. Finally, you can't go wrong with anything from Bitmap Books, Read Only Memory, or Lost in Cult. More art and history than science, but an amazing library of insights into game dev, art, and thought. In fact, I've pro-ordered the full physical copy of "Heterotopias" from LiC (online mag available now!), and that might be THE word on the subject - at least, from an architect's eye.
Sorry for the ramble - I hope there's something in there for you!
I also think a big part of what makes FromSoft's level design great is how effortlessly organic it feels.
in almost any other game you can almost sense what the blockout state of the level looked like, while FromSoft's Leveldesign feels more like a natural brush stroke across a canvas.
if you find a secret, even a small one, it never feels like the developers lead you there, even if they did.
a very simple but also fitting example of this is one of the first little secrets you can find in DS1. as you walk from the firelink shrine towards the castle. you see that the aqueduct has a platform below it. and the path you walk along seems to be JUST close enough that you might try to jump across.
given how early in the game that is the player might not have a strong grasp on the jumping mechanic, which makes this a nerve wrecking moment for a novice player.
so you jump across, and you actually do it. now you carefully walk along the edge of that platform, scared to fall of the narrow edge that is only 1 wrong stick move away from killing you.
but at the end you find a ring, a ring that lets you keep your souks upon death, but which also breaks if it's used. a great find for a beginner.
but the danger isn't over yet. because the only way back to safety is to repeat the daring jump, this time in reverse.
at no point does this feel like an artificially constructed scenario. it feels like you found the remains of an unlucky bastard that got stranded on a platform, to which you had to get to by doing a very risky set of actions.
it feels organic. and while doing it it almost felt like it wasn't even an intended path for you to get to. it really feels like you discovered an unintended path that was naturally there.
Honestly, I find the animated parts of this quite fascinating. This is the first DD that I watched as it dropped I suppose, and I enjoy the laid-backness of it all, while keeping it jampacked with information
Looking forward for more 😊
It's really impressive that I knew most of the concepts but the way it's put in the video is absolutely amazing: always clear and concise.
The fact the team have continued on their own path for better things is a happy moment for communities like this. In a world of hate and negativity, the team of second wind have created such positivity
This was an absolute treasure to watch. I had no idea how good this was going to be and I'm looking forward to more from Design Delve. This is truly a second wind
I'm fiddling with the idea of doing a few toy game projects. I am probably going to be following Design Delve _very_ closely, even if my half-baked ideas never end up rising.
Design Delve? Oh, hell yes! I was quite disappointed when Dev Diary ended. Even more so now I learn that the series ended primary due to corpo meddling. Bring it on!
Edit: Even if it's not the exact same thing as Dev Diary, I'm still totally on board for this.
Dev Diary ended because the old company banned Yahtz from self promoting his game. Now that they're independent, they plan on plugging their side projects more. So don't be surprised if we see a return of Dev Diary.
I think this is the start of something great, using similar avatar designs from Zero Punctuation/Fully Ramblomatic, but doing it as a story for you just going to a design mine and explaining games media. And yes, your doggo Ludo is so adorably a great star of this new show! I just love how fiercely determined he looks digging!
My personal best thing about Dark Souls and derivatives' level design is, to quote Yahtzee on that, "It loops back into itself like a handful of old tripe". I miss the Ds1 layout where 1st half of the game the checkpoints are scarce but easily accesible when you unlock a bunch of shortcuts. Ds2, 3 and Elden ring sorta lack this cohesion and there is a ton of pointless/redundant spots. Think Dragonslayer Armor into Grand Archives or Margit into Stormveil Castle. Fucking less than 100m walk, even in line of sight of eachother
I always wondered what the hell happened to the interconnectivity in the later games. Still there, but DS1 was nuts
DS1 really drops the ball in the second half of the game where everything becomes linear paths with no shortcuts. Duke's Archives, Tomb of Giants, Lost Izalith, New Londo all have one thing in common: you gotta go through THE ENTIRE FRIGGIN AREA to retry the boss. The only thing it's testing is your patience...
@@GameDevYal True. But the immediate surroundings of Firelink are great
One of the funny things about this move is that you were making inroads even beforehand! I watched ZP since the beginning, and was one of the people desensitized to what the other channel was putting out.
It was almost a year of TH-cam pushing Cold Take on my feed before I bothered biting, then I found I liked it.
When you dropped the first Design Delve in this animated style it had only been a month or so since I tuned into my first Cold Take. I tuned in when I noticed the video in the feed. Me, part of that intractable Yahtzee-only block not long ago, tuning in on what amounts to the ground floor for a video series! The content strategy was working! Conversions were being made! I’m proof of that!
Oh well. The clean break at least means a lot of people who were in the Yahtzee camp like I was not long ago should have that same jolt that gets them to try “new” shows like this one. I’ll be rooting for you!
How did I only know Zero Punctuation when this absolute gem was also available!? Can't wait to see more of Ludo, the real star of the show 😁I'm telling everybody and their mums about Second Wind and I am so happy to see that you get the support you deserve. Looking forward to more Design Delve!
Honestly it feels criminal that I missed this. This is incredible stuff.
I'd love something like this for like, TTRPGs even.
Excellent video! Succinctly stated the problems, gave examples of what works, what doesn't, and explained why in a way that's easily understandable!
To toss my two cents in on what makes FromSoft games so exceptional, I think it's the mastery with which each part of their systems and worlds are crafted and executed rather than any of the ideas or concepts they use. People often don't realise just how long From have been around, and how many games they've made before Dark Souls! They have a huge amount of experience, and a lot of it, importantly, is iterative; they've made multiple long running franchises with many complete games in them, and that experience of iterating and refining various concepts and techniques culminates in something like Dark Souls, something far greater than the sum of it's parts, something truly remarkable, made so by the careful, painstaking craftsmanship put into it, the summation not of 3/4/5 years of development, but of 20+ years of game making.
FromSoft creation of Dark Souls was not a spike of inspired genius, it was the capstone of the pyramid they'd built with every other game they made, and that's why it's so hard to follow, even with an archetypal example to imitate, you just can't replicate the experience, practice, and knowledge base FromSoft has, so any game that tries to imitate them is doomed to fall short. That's why in my opinion, the best Soulsbourne games are those that have a strong differentiating concept of their own, like Remnant or Blasphemous, because they can stand apart and identify themselves as something distinct, different, not just a Souls-like.
I think one of the things that a lot of souls likes get wrong is the difference between difficulty and punishment. Dark Souls can be a difficult series but it is primarily a punishing one. It punishes you for not taking the time to learn it’s rules and plan your approaches, in this punishment it creates difficulty. Far too many games just feel like they over inflate the health and damage out out of enemies for the sake of creating an arbitrary sense of difficulty. I’d argue even Elden Ring fell into that trap to a lesser extent compared to earlier games
I'd disagree with that final argument because ER more than any other fromsoft game has a multitude of ways to outdo the health increase of bosses throughout the game. While also providing so many defense options that you really don't need to level health as much as most recommend.
If anything I would say my main criticism of ER is the direct opposite, it levels the player too much I had to stop myself from levelling early and my friends had similar experiences (one stopping themselves from levelling their weapons instead).
Fromsoft games can also fumble the "punishment" part and make for really tedious experiences at times unfortunately.
I think running back to the boss on later attempts was one of the worse examples of wasting time in older Souls games (which they have toned down thankfully in newer games). Bloodborne and Sekiro have their own quirks to this as well, with Bloodborne having players grind blood vials in the early game whenever they waste them on a run, or Sekiro halving your experience and coins on death. I like Sekiro a lot, but that mechanic specifically feels like it adds nothing and only halts your momentum while making you feel like crap.
@@theresnothinghere1745 I find ER to suffer in both directions when it comes to stats. The game encourages you to explore at your own whims, but you can risk unknowingly heading off into an area with overlevelled enemies (which kinda defeats the purpose of heading off wherever you want), but you can also find an area that you didn't know you were meant to explore earlier, which means that you will plow through enemies without much of any interesting challenge.
I didn't go pick up a piece of the medallion untill late in the game, so when I headed back to retrieve it, I found it very boring as I killed the boss in 5 hits. I think the game could have benefitted from a toggle that boosts/scales enemies' a bit, maybe even to your current level. Sekiro had the demon bell, so there's clearly room for experimentation. You can even have an option to scale enemies stats down´and lower the Souls they give for a smoother experience. It would make the late-game a lot more fun when you don't get 2-shot by everything.
@@leithaziz2716 I think that's the root issue most people had with ER in general; the things they did to try to break the mold out into open-world gameplay compromised the core FromSoft experience, and in the end you didn't quite get the best of either experience.
There’s also the fact that no attack happens instantly, the enemy has a u inquest wind-up for every attack that keeps you informed on what you need to do. There’s trial and error, but the punishment for death is a slap on the wrist. Dark Souls 2 failed in this regard because it punished death by making you weaker. You couldn’t learn from your mistakes because you were too angry that you lost max HP, and that’s why they never did it again. Embers in DS3 feel like a boon, not just getting health you shouldn’t have lost back.
Came for Yahtzee, staying for the plethora of new faces. Your series is a fun one I look forward to seeing more of. Design Delve is very well put together. I love the animation, and you and your adorable pupper are great together. I look forward to seeing what everyone here at Second Wind has to offer! Hope you're all doing well and have a happy holidays!
This is my first Design Delve episode so hearing JM8 outside of his character in Adventure is Nigh SideQuest was quite the treat. So calm, humble, and soothing. Whilst breaking out carefully crafted points, making for quite a video essay. Beautiful, I'll be tuning in to watch more as I was pleasantly surprised and more pleasantly delighted!
The animation and audio direction in this video is absolutely top-notch! It really helped draw me into the presentation and set the tone of the video brilliantly. I am so excited to explore all the content and talent that I, regretfully, was not previously aware of.
In terms of topics I've always thought multiplayer co-op mechanics are fascinating, balancing the solo agency with teamwork requirements make or break games like Deep Rock, L4D, Darktide etc
Loved this so much!! I’m an aspiring game dev, and i’m super excited to learn more about game design in this series - it already made me think about level design in a more in depth way, and i LOVE the way this episode was structured and how it conveyed its key points!!
I'm so glad all of you decided to do it yourselves instead of letting the big money shred your team into slivers! I know it'll be tough at first, but you're really on a new journey now. Love to see this kind of solidarity, and I already loved @DesignDelve! Good on yah, mate.
Haven't played LotF yet, but I have played LiesOfP (fantastic game). Most of these critiques can apply to its level design. Ambushes get used frequently.
I'm happy to see the genre grow with new devs creating new titles. It is like when we had Doom clones, which became the First Person Shooter genre.
I admit, I was new to watching Design Delve but I gave it a shot and I like it!
Looking forward to watching more.
From Soft worlds want the player to suffer, but From Soft levels want the player to succeed.
Ambushes often come with rewards, levels are well signposted with items and lighting, and there are often many landmarks to determine where a location is in relation to the wider space.
The use of vertical space and vantage points communicates a lot about how the player is supposed to feel about the situation.
Two quick examples from Elden Ring: Redmane Castle and The Shaded Castle. In the former, you approach from a tower and work your way through the courtyard. You're an infiltrator, trying to carefully sneak your way through. In the latter, you start from the shattered outer wall, and fight your way up into the keep. The Shaded Castle probably "feels" harder because of the direction you're forced to travel through it.
Holy cow, why did I not watch this show before? The format of this is *GREAT!* 😄💖 I really hope you guys are able to upload the other episodes here on Second Wind, because I am hooked!😍 Where's the merchandise?😅
Thank you for putting my idea of diving into TUNIC's game design near the top of your video list, I'm excited to see what you find in the Design Mines
Like many others I only watched ZP, but I'm giving the other shows a go because I love that you guys stick together as a team and want to support you. EDIT: And having watching it, I'm looking forward to more from you!
Reminds me of when I started this game and Lies of P around the same time. I had a rough time getting through the first 30 minutes of Lords of the Fallen but with Lies of P hours went by before I realized what happened.
Saw this at the end of Yahtzees video and got excited that it would be already available. 😂
I guess need to hold on a while when the content builds.
And for anyone showing up here from the future, oh hi you.
What is this production value OMG! Top tier editing, analyzis and voice over work!
I'm almost glad this whole mess happened, I know it must have been extremely stressful for you guys, but Second Wind really seems like its gonna be the perfect venue for your talents and creativity :)
Design Delve is cash. Love the ZP2.0 Fully Ramblomatic and I can't wait for Cold Take neither!
Something I'd like to see discussed is how games handle taking player suggestions.
There's an ocean of bad ideas being suggested everyday and it gets exhausting to look through them to find the good ones.
A lot of the time it feels like studios forego official means of suggesting ideas entirely and it feels like either goes really well or leads to a feeling of disconnect between the players and the developers.
A lovely episode of Design Delve! I had only watched one episode before, on the channel that shall not be named, but I quite enjoyed this and can't wait to check out more! This has lovely atmosphere, pacing, visuals and flow, it's just really nice!
I've long been considering starting a youtube channel based on philosophical and mechanical discussions of video games, their stories, their gameplay and the interplay of such. I might still do this, but one thing I do have to say is that I appreciate how well you handle concepts like this. You've done a great job transitioning to the independent space, and I'm happy to see you're all still so supported. If I ever do get my thing going, I'll definitely DM you. I'm sure we'll have a lot to talk about.
This manages to make the entire brand feel a lot more connected and less clogged. Im really impressed, and believe it'll work amazing to make people branch out to beyond yahtzee. Great video, and amazing production.
I only ever played one Souls game, being Elden Ring. But I think what made that experience fun for me was how the hard bosses so painstakingly hard and yet at the same time tangible to defeat. We've all seen bosses that are scripted to be unbeatable, or bosses that are so hard in an area that you are not supposed to be right now. But knowing that a titan can bleed to death is very subtle in getting you to try, try again and learn the attack patterns. One of the bosses, being the moss-y knight near the starting area, had hard-hitting strikes that in a JRPG would kill you because accuracy usually means all attacks hit. But being able to read and dodge attacks gives you a window of opportunity to fight back.
God it's genuinely impressive how quickly you guys managed to put together something of this quality (I mean, I know that's because you did it before, but I assume the switch must still be a bit of a challenge)
This isn't the kind of content I usually watch, but leaving a like and letting the whole thing run through to help the watch through time. Glad to see how much the Escapist fan-base, or I guess former escapist fan-base, is supporting Second Wind! Excited to see the rapid rise of this channel!
I am so happy you guys are able to crawl out from under the creative control you were under. I can't wait to see you all flourish creating freely and innovating on your own styles. Best of luck.
Great to see you guys hitting the ground running here!
As for the darksouls formula... I think this is probably one of those things that might have to be chalked up to a creative or design lead who hit upon a powerful set of level design concepts that perfectly fit their aesthetic AND this lead has the personal energy and dedication to see that those ideas are consistently implemented throughout most of their games - or they were able to really communicate (and enforce) these design concepts throughout the wider team.
Either is very hard to do, and without having worked at FromSoft I couldn't say whether their success is the result of excellent team coordination, a genius director, or some of both. I wish in my career in game dev I could claim to have achieved this sort of thing, but while I have my own content I'm very proud of, I never have felt like I was able to powerfully convey how to do that to others - at least not consistently.
Another amazing video from Jm8 and Ludo, always learning new things from this series. LOVE IT!
That's an excellent point you raise about Souls' vantage points... I'd honestly never considered it before you mentioned it, but you're right, that's such a key part of these games. Having the opportunity to see the area ahead, see what enemies are in there, what their patrol routes are, and start to figure out which ones you want to take out first, and work out the path to take to only aggro the enemies you want, and not the other enemies... and then when that opportunity is taken away from you, things get scary. My primary example is Bloodborne when you're going through Old Yharnam, and you get down to the area right below the building that Hunter Djura is on top of with the gatling gun. You can't see what's in the area ahead, partly because of the smoke clouds, partly because if you poke your head out you're gonna get shot, so you have no idea what's in there and no way to plan your approach, and it's SCARY. You don't want to run in and get surrounded and die, and you also don't want to run in, get stuck on something, and obliterated by Djura's gatling gun. Giving you that information normally, then taking it away, makes you scared.
Watching this as I'm beginning my first Elden Rings playthrough. I'm sure it will help with the pain of getting murdered again and again by the first boss I've encountered (Margit). It was actually his DS analysis that drew me into this series in the first place. I'm really hyped about this.
good luck friend, it only gets worse from there hahaha
@@declancampbell1277 well I think I'm not supposed to be here yet.. I'm level 7. I basically ran straight here from the tutorial dungeon
@@grigorigahan yeahhhhh you maybe wanna level up a bit then. im guessing you've started as wretch too, or havent levelled up once as astrologer, bandit, or hero.
The only people that psycho are speedrunners/challenge runners, and even they start as the level 9 samurai. I'd suggest going south first to a place called the weeping peninsula, it gives you a "legacy dungeon" castle to explore (meaning no horse exploration), and gives you a boss thats a lot easier than the fell omen.
Youre literally supposed to play the game for about 4/5 hours or more before you take him on lol.
@@declancampbell1277 No, I didn't start wretch. I picked hero, got out of the tutorial dungeon and followed the sparkly lights till I got here. Then spent all of last night getting wrecked over and over. Thanks for the tips.
Forget Margit, head south towards Castle Morne first and do a few mini dungeons on the way
The thing I find most developers miss when copying dark Souls is the difficulty. They take the standard party line of "prepare to die" and instead of coming up with challenging but fair fights they throw swarms at you, bosses with OHKO moves that require near perfect timing to dodge, room wide AoE attacks where you need to be positioned properly BEFORE the attack even starts and other false difficulty things like that.
So glad Design Delve came over to Second Wind! The debut of Cold Take made me start watching other content on the old Escapist channel, and Design Delve was my next favorite alongside the Frost and Yahtzee shows! I don’t even play many video games, but I love listening to you lot talk about them!
So are all the new shows featuring the creators dog?
Because i support this whole heartedly
As a lot of other people have said, I think now is a good time to branch out into the other stuff you guys do, because I only ever watched zero and extra punctuation. Also, awesome to hear the hyper light drifter music at the beginning, love that game and it's so underrated.
Awesome! Love design delve. Cant wait.
Great video, I often seen level design videos on dark souls, but you have efficiently narrowed down what makes it great and presented why some competitors fail in that area.
Design Delve is really good of an idea, very comfy to watch and listen to. Please do more.
First off, thrilled to see you guys thriving after this whole Snafu... Best of luck to you all!
Secondly: There are two things that I feel souls like take from Fromsoftware without really thinking it through
1) The level design is spot on. My most memorable moments from Fromsoftware games have been not only the challenging boss fights but feelings you get from exploring these ruined worlds, rotting between cycles, desperately waiting for someone to make the wheels of fate turn again. Seeing the ancient glory of anor londo and leyndell, while seemingly wandering their great halls. Exploring Lady Maria's laboratory while seeing and hearing the results of her experiments... It's a level of creativity that his understandably hard to replicate.
2) Difficulty. Maybe because it's one of the more popular things in their games people often make souls like to be brutally hard, while missing how fromsoft makes their seemingly "unfair" encounters actually mostly fair. Other than a few exceptions (blood-starved beast, bed of chaos...), whenever I die in a fromsoft game, I almos always know what I did wrong and how I can improve in the next run. Sometimes it was a matter of just going to sleep and the following night I'd instinctively know the boss's patterns. But a lot of souls like just make their bosses tedious for multiple reasons (not making clear wind-up animations, just adding insane hit-boxes or damage numbers) because they simply want to make it frustrating.
Wait, Design Delve isn't owned by the escapist? NICE!!!!
Nice to meet you! wonderful voice, edit pacing and analysis. so happy to support this indie media group!
It's amazing how broad the opinions on Lords of the Fallen are purely among the Second Wind crew! Didnt Nick say it was probably his GOTY?
I don't have any ill will against people I don't know or situations I don't understand. But seeing all of the amazing talent that immediately came together to make something amazing... I am with you guys, and so happy you're still making content.
Best of luck to you guys. The Escapist used to be the ZP channel, but I now look forward to things like Design Delve and Frost's content just as much, if not more. I'm really happy that you guys are still at it, and are in a position to strike out on your own and make a go of it. The content has really been cream of the crop this past year, so I'm sure Second Wind will be a success. Gamur and The Escapist should be in awed epiphany at how badly they fucked up.
All the best folks.
Normally i wouldnt really check the vids not made by yahtzee , but these vids on gamedev topics and other stuff are actually pretty great! Another voice also helps to stave off the monotony that eventually comes if you decide binge a channel to check on the vids you missed.
This was a great vid that made me understand the topic that at first i didnt quite get , learning what "having the pieces of the puzzle fit" mean in the gamedev process.
There's just some things i didnt quite get, like what is mechanical fear, game film, and what is the difference between being exploring a diff world and being forced to travel there.
It's a bit crippling needing to check a different video to understand some of these concepts like mobius design and mechanical fear though, like i needed to do my homework before i see a vid that presents itself as a standalone experience.
Other than that, good vid.
Looking forward to this so badly!
Truthfully, I always followed zero punctuation only on the escapist.
That changes as of now!
You guys are what all amazing and you got my undivided attention🙂
I only seek out games with souls-like elements. When it comes to actual souls-likes, I only ever play the From Software games. Every attempt by others to recreate their formula fell short for me, and I was never able to explain why, until this video.
Awesome work, JM8!
Aw man even hollow knight couldn't grab you attention? ):
@@halfastudioI adore Hollow Knight in a way few games have achieved, but I would classify it as a Metroidvania with Souls-Like elements, not a Souls-Like proper.
What about Lies of P?
@@VaasMontenegro12DEFINITELY a Souls-Like proper, complete with all the problems JM8 mentioned plus many more.
@@paultapping9510I've played it and as a massive fan of FromSoftware's games, it's easily on par with their work.
Much success on you going Independent! Now to your question:
There are many memorable bonfires in Dark Souls. Those you visit often and return to after finding a shortcut or opening a door. Not only does it feel like progression and a "soft save point", for the lack of a better term, it also makes these levels feel like real places. How many buildings are just a straight corridor? How many gardens just a singular path? DS3s Cathedral of the Deep has at least FIVE paths from the central bonfire to the bossroom, plus two alternate routes with extra goodies and characters. Eleum Loyce has you return to the central bonfire multiple times and, after clearing the ice, becoming an almost new level altogether.
It is easier to make a straight line and dot it with enemies, loot and traps. It is far harder, but much more rewarding, to turn a real place into a dungeon.
On ambushes in From Software games: One of the truly genius things that they do, is some of those ambushes only work when going BACK through the area. One that was simply and easily seen while going on the regular path is suddenly deadly and a surprise when backtracking for an item or another branch after having rested.
I think you hit the nail on the head. As with many games, or almost any design decision in any field, the why is perhaps more important than the how. You can copy the look and mechanics of something while completely lacking the feeling and meaning. This is why there is so much distain for AAA titles that all feel like cheap copies or episodes. It tends to tick all the right boxes of having various mechanics and visuals, but lacks any feeling or meaning in their application. They are put there to tick boxes on a requirements spec, not because they add to the feeling or enjoyment of the game. RPGs with their skill trees and crafting systems; rogue-likes with their random weapons, upgrades, and meta-progression; even puzzle games with the increasing number of mechanics and the overlap between them - many games have some kind of common pieces that perhaps help to define the genre, but they exist for a purpose. Too many clones (even big budget clones) throw in these mechanics without much consideration for how they add to the overall feeling and progression. How often do we get upgrade systems where the upgrades are meaningless? How many scavenging of materials where most don't matter and their products rarely matter either? How many neat puzzle or weapon mechanics that are introduced and used a few times, then completely abandoned? It's not enough to tick the boxes and include the features - you need to combine them in a way that makes for an enjoyable and meaningful experience. This is what design is about!
Wow. Absolutely great video! You encapsule a lot of my thoughts regarding "lazy" gamedesign so well. Never thought that such great videos came from the escapist. This gives me high hopes for Second Wind!
On the topic of lazy.
Another common issue is running too far with the "Dark Souls is hard, so this is fine" design philosophy.
Like, 80% of the enemies you fight in Dark Souls are extraordinarily easy, most of the time. They probably have a condition or circumstance that keeps them from being effortless.
15-17% are a bit harder, but still fall under the "this is probably almost free if it's alone, in an open space" group. Maybe you take a hit or burn some spells, maybe you backpedal a good bit of level and might be in a bad spot if you skipped enemies, and you might die on a first encounter, but probably won't ever again, unless something weird happens. Some of these might be made terrifying by specific scenarios, like the silver knight archers on the roof of Irythil, but in general, they're still pretty simple.
Only like, 3-5% of random enemies are actually super threatening pretty much whenever, and many of these actually don't respawn from bonfires. They are also almost always put in environments where you can pretty easily fight them alone. Dark Souls 2 pretty much exclusively will make them respawn, but they're always an enemy that can be despawned.
For the most part, what makes enemies actually difficult isn't their base properties, it's scenario design that plays around their myriad weaknesses, or enforces their few strengths. These big shield guys are really slow and take heaps of damage from the sides, but once you've seen a few of them, one will be in a tunnel. These torch guys are pretty weak, but will see you from really far away, and make a beeline for you. If you fight them head on they're pathetic, but if they get there while you're fighting someone else, it's rough. These crippled zombies are weak and barely move, but are very hard to see, and can put their low priority to work to get potshots in and interrupt you if you are in a situation where you're overwhelmed or distracted.
Dark Souls enemy placement is very rarely difficult because the guys are just that strong, kill you in one hit with unreactable moves, ect, the enemies themselves are mostly very weak, but they are placed into a scenario like a puzzle, and almost every single scenario can be disassembled and wrapped up very easily, if you have the combination of tools and skills to do so. When there is a strong enemy, there's again usually something like puzzle elements to get an advantage, like noticing a path to get a good first strike, or maybe some environmental advantages, or else you're probably going to have good peace and space to take care of it.
A lot of imitators just throw a half dozen super enemies in a room, see that it's hard, and call it a day.
There's often also the thing where a lot of imitators genuinely buy into the Strength Only, No Shield memes, and the game just doesn't have things like spells, which Souls is always built with those in mind, just as part of the larger approach to scenario design. Everything is designed with the idea that any given player might have the tools to completely shut down this setpiece, and that's okay. Most every setpiece is also designed in a way that a character can usually get by using tools they haven't built for, in situations where their usual just won't work.
I mean design delve having a dog was already a thing, but now fully ramblomatic has one too, im fully expecting cold take to have a dog now too
Love this series
Welcome back. I hope your new home leads to many years of great videos.
Thank you for keeping us inform about what the next show coming is until they are regularly up and running. The start-up to any show is always hard to keep track of.
good work at second wind!! gonna support all your content!!
Would love to hear your opinion on Lies of P because personally I think that hits the Dark Souls feeling perfectly while adding it's own little spin on a few things and having a more frontline story compared to Souls usual "Yeah just kill things and keep moving forward".
ha, as soon as I saw the title, my first thought was "I hope that he mentions the new LotF, seems like a prime example of the topic". So, yeah, excellent video and I agree with every point, it nicely puts into words why I always felt something felt off when playing the game.
One more thing that I think is worth mentioning in this context is world design and its purpose. The reason why DS1 has this amazing world design is because you are forced to interact with it due to lack of fast travel. I actually suspect that LotF was meant to have no warping at all, but then they realized how tedious going through the world would be, so they walked back on that idea.
Additionally, DS1 offered some meaningful alternative paths through the game, which is not really the case here. For example, there is this path through the locked door in an early area (you need to buy an expensive key for it), where you go for a while, fight some enemies, find a few items and then it just... warps back to the main hub? I know that there is a secret boss hidden somewhere, but still, that does not make it a good world design.
Dark Souls will make you feel like you are lost, but as you push forward you find a connection to a familiar path or a bonfire to give you some hope and relief. The relief of finding a bonfire or friendly NPC hits a very certain way.
Several thoughts:
1.) Enemies that stay dead. I really like this concept of unmarked Minibosses. Gives you a feeling of proper progress.
2.) Funny stuff. There's always pretty funny shit happening in Souls games, whether that is the whole Patches situation, the WOoo guy in Sekiro, some enemy dialogue in Sekiro, Gherman in Bloodborne, the pig fisting in Bloodborne, Onion Knights etc.
Quite important to me.
3.) Enemy variety. In Fromsoft games, it very rarely feels as if you're fighting the same guys for too long. Can't really recall a time after Demon's souls.
Really enjoy these design deep dives. Very creative and informative!
The genius of From Software is that they create a genre that was born perfected. So many things in its foundation that was really well thought from the beginning that with others genres took years to develop, evolve
Ehh not really, it took several games like Kings field for them to get the formula down, but those games were far to punishing and never really took off. Whilst it may appear that they perfected it in the first game, they had made 10s of games with decades of practice before demon souls and then striking gold with dark souls where they proved their mastery, even if they ran out of time and budget towards the back end.