The early alpha screenshots showed some other weird things, like Giant Sentinels lifted straight from Dark Souls 1 roaming around, so it might speak to how From Software mocks up their early builds of the game, apparently dropping in and playing around with assets from the previous titles.
Huh- I don't remember the sentinels from the leak. What one does look like is Dancer of the Boreal Valley just hanging out like a really tall but otherwise normal NPC.
@@Matt-tk3lh i saw the leaked photo on google and the giant sentinel was in the forest with all the poison on the ground. Don’t remember the name at all. Strange.
@Dale Macarena yes, he’s covered this and more, Dark souls 3 had a bunch of ambitious ideas and concepts, the video lance did is a few years old by now lmao, but it’s super interesting to see how much different the game could’ve been.
Tbh this has been floating Abt for awhile Zullie just has been giving some more context tho she probably did find some of this stuff knowing how long she's been a part of the community particularly this portion of it
Do you think there’s a special appeal in this idea of finding material that was never intended to be shown? Seems Archdragon Peak kinda riffed off this, given that it was virtually impossible to discover alone
I like how you walked besides the model. It really helps showcase how big they are. Side by side comparisons with the player or a familiar model are one thing, but seeing it from a perspective that I'm used to does a lot to appreciate its size.
The whole mechanic of ds3 where there'd be multiple world states was pretty sweet. Especially the one with a sky full of dragons. Shame it was scraped.
Recent modding makes me think it was cut for performance reasons, as one of the major DS3 mods features multiple world states and alternate maps for each area, but requires a high end PC in the current year. Such performance was hard to come by when DS3 released, and making it on console would just be flat out impossible.
Reminds me of a couple item descriptions that mention Lothric Knights had some kind of wyvern-rider elites, and aside from the "Dragon Barracks" location there's little physical evidence of them existing. I wonder if the original plan wasn't to have a far more dragon- and wyvern- heavy influence in Lothric Castle that ended up being cut for the more standard sword and spear knights we got.
Considering the Age of Fire collapsing, it would have made sense for a ton of lesser Dragons and pure Dragons returning. The world returning to what it was allows those bygone creatures to return the same way they did originally, or even as refugees from that ancient age as a byproduct of time falling apart. I imagine they dumped that for lack of time though. It would have taken way more effort to weave the Dragon and Puss of Man motifs than they had to make it. A shame too. It inspires the imagination and actually reinforces old canon in ways current DS3 just neglects.
@@clayxros576 The Age of Fire gives way to the Age of Dark, though. Thats even *more* removed from the Age of Ancients where the dragons were dominant. Who knows if another Age of Ancients would ever have come again?
@@lenkagamine4145 well, it’s damn near an Age of Gray thanks to the first flame being rekindled so many times.. but never again rekindled to its full glory as done by Gwyn or the Chosen Undead
Since most the wyverns we find in-game are transformed humans (having human pus or dropping dragon stones) we can imagine Lothric lost most of its wyvern population and had to replace them with humans
Seriously Zullie I thought the well of things to find in dark souls was truly dry by now, but every notification I get makes me amazed that there's still so much to find! Thank you for all the content we appreciate it ♥️
@@mathieupr6391 Some people (Sinclair Lore, for example) still do Bloodborne and Dark Souls 2 lore videos and I am still finding them endlessly interesting.
I much prefer the Pilgrim Butterflies. These flying serpent things look pretty generic; the butterflies actually make you think, "What in the hell IS that?" They only get creepier when you see close-ups of them, and their connection to the angels in the Dreg Heap is neat. There's also the visual parallel they have with Sulyvahn's root-like wings, and the snippets about "becoming seedbeds of Darkness..." I don't know if DS3's lore was fully realized the way they might have wanted, but there's certainly enough fuel to feed the imagination.
@@Pepe-pq3om nah, like he said the PILGRIM BUTTERFLIES are a lot cooler. Now if you think that the low poly ugly character model would be alot better then you comment that yourself. You don't come on here telling that man nah lil boy
To my understanding the Dragons at Alida's Keep are experiments trying to recreate or "mimic" the originals. So them sharing the same character ID as the Mimic in DS3 might be some of the *deepest* of lore.
When you guys put it like that it brings a tear to my eyes of just how lucky we are. The souls content creators are just as amazing as Miyazaki himself.
@@k.katona9415 I can't really watch his videos because I just can't stand the way he speaks. It's just too annoying for me. He makes this awful fake old man voice...
i used to like vaati's video's but i think he goes too far with his assumptions about the lore. A couple times i noticed discrepancies too and that was enough for me. Im not sure the lore needs to be explained so much as discussed perpetually, like a really classic book, or movie. i.e. we will never know what was in the brief case from pulp fiction maybe we dont need to know what linking the fire means either.
there is actually video footage of these guys flying around too. lance mcdonald covered it in his video on the unused time of day system from the ds3 alpha. I recommend checking that video out.
I think early alpha and beta content you show is my favorite. Especially the bloodborne ones, so much of these games are a mystery and seeing things that were inevitably cut one way or another is always really fascinating with context of the whole series.
would love to see any kind of video about the invisible hollows in ds2 that can only be seen with a torch. maybe if theres any cut content regarding them, or if they spawn in an interesting way. idk. theyre so weird. they feel like one of the last holdovers of the very torch-heavy ds2 that was originally planned.
They were added in SotFS. It's meant to wrap around to when you play the DLC and get the ability to see invisible stuff to fight the big panther boss, but it also unlocks the ability to see all those hollows now.
@@moonlightdream5483 oh shid by B then, I was thinking about the other ghosties it reveals then. "In the Scholar of the First Sin, the Eye will allow you to see the invisible Forest Guardians, the invisible Hollow Infantry and the invisible Great Moths." Still, bears reminding invisible hollows are a SotFS addition.
Heya, I always wondered, is there any cut content around Vordt at all? He always seemed to be missing something, since hes got such a long as hell theme and is paired with the fairly lore heavy Dancer.
Speaking of Taxonomy, real life snakes “lost” their front limbs well before their hind limbs. The way this evolution happened genetically means that snakes have very long torsos rather than long tails (I.e. most of their body has ribs, the tail portions of their body don’t have ribs). So it’s interesting that the flying serpents lost their legs first (their wings are basically just webbed hands with long fingers like bats). Evolutionarily, it seems like these flying serpents would probably depend mostly on flight for survival (hunting, locomotion, etc.) and perhaps only landing to sleep, so they don’t need legs and in fact legs would be less aerodynamic. Of course, even with time in DS being incredibly screwed up, I don’t think millions of years have passed between DS2 and DS3. However, the drakes in DS2 are probably magically created by Aldia (Magic Jurassic Park!) so anything is possible. I doubt Aldia cared enough about making sure their magic DNA was stable.
Yeah, Abyss1ne has been restoring the alpha and made notice of these winged creatures are just reused dragons from DS2. He’s also restored a number of other alpha elements of the game and ported over the lighting engine from Sekiro, making the game look nearly identical to how it looked in the old leaks.
This has become one of my favorite channels. I discovered it late, but you’ve given me so much insight in to the workings and connections of From’s games. It’s impressive how much there is to work with, but even more impressive how you drop videos on us daily. Just know us fans appreciate it 🙏🏼
I've seen these "dragons" (wyrms?) in a cut content vid before but the additional information and theories you provide on any content's origins/symbolism are always a great treat. The fact you compact them down to only the essentials in
the idea of them being a placeholder rather then an actual concept seems likely, its kinda hard to imagine how serpents like this would really fit in there honestly and certainly don't have the uniqueness factor the butterflies have
@@ManoredRed most likely but of course there are already dragons all over that area so these would of been kinda pointless given the direction of what the location ended up being
The serpents definitely would have given off a different vibe The end of the game really feels like the end of existence and the pilgrim butterflies feeling like effectively dead husks given movement managed to add to that feel A bunch of serpents in the sky would have more felt like maybe the dragons were going to get another shot at running the show
Can we just appreciate how God of a storyteller Zullie is?? Yes, I know, there’s not a story here per se…. But the way she draws the audience in, setting up and then subverting expectations, is really masterful.
Seeing early alpha content of DS3 is so cool, there was so much there that didn't make it! Have you looked into the cut slug variants in Consumed Kings garden? I think I've only seen 1 video that's ever showed them before
Man that purple sky in that screenshot and the lighting made it look so much prettier. I'm glad they aren't restricting themselves to dark gloomy, washed out environments in elden ring.
One thing I wish they stuck with from those sceenshots is the equipped gear showing up on the player's back. You could have two swords equipped and see them both, even when not being held.
Props to Zullie for introducing so many great songs in her videos. I didn't know about Subterranean Graveyard before and now it became my favorite from the KF soundtrack
Aren't serpents failed dragons in the lore? There are some theories that the Primordial Serpents are descended from the dragons. Maybe what we're seeing here is just like the drakes, a devolved version of the dragons. But these are even more devolved than the drakes. I might be reading to deep but these things are mentioned multiples times in the games and lore.
@@joedatius They aren't in the game, but its probably what the developers originally intended with these creatures, before deciding to take the lore in a different direction later on. That being said, these are prototypes so even if they had stuck with dragon critters flying in the skies, they might have been different. They might have been drakes, or proper dragons, or some new weird thing.
Something about that King's Field music really reminds me of Soul Reaver... It always surprises me what can be dug up from betas and network tests in these things, real interesting stuff. I'd never seen those leaked screenshots either.
I think your in-game avatar should swap out the MGS for a pickaxe, cuz of all that datamining you've been doing. Big thanks for what you're doing. As someone who takes a great interest in the inner workings and development of videogames, I really appreciate your content.
OMG I LOVE THIS. First of all, happy to have seen it compared with the wyverns of Drangleic as it came to my mind in the same second I saw its head. Then, happy to have known that they have at least thought to make 2-legged drakes in the same game where's the only drake of the series to not have 4/8 but 6 legs, because can be seen as a sort of ecosystem balancing and disparity strengthening. Finally, happy to have gained a further addition to my cutom monster manual for DnD. P.S. I have only seen your "leaving" advice so, if you'll read this comment, I'd really like to thank you for your highly specific, passionate work. And as a dear blacksmith of our acquaintance would say: come back soon!
i have a glitched character where after beating all the lords of cinder, the sky on lothric castle never actually turned orange, but when i warp to undead settlement for example, the sky would show up as orange like normal, i have no idea why tha happens
Ahh, that makes sense! We thought FROM had planned a story that would include flying serpents in the skies of Lothric, but that may not be true at all. They may have always been planning to see Pilgrim Butterflies in the skies of Lothric, and the flying serpents in the leaked screenshots were just a WIP mock up of what would eventually be Pilgrim Butterflies in the sky.
I mean, the old images of weird serpent wyverns looked lit. the dark stormy sky alongside it brings this dead skybox to life. I get that ds3 has this theme of "the world has been recycled and it's just stale cookies now" but i always felt there were better ways to go about that without making the environments dull to look at. With the exception of irithyll, everything just looks so muddy or crusty. visually dull, which is a shame. Turns out a lot of ds3 was cut, in fact. Relevant characters and questlines gone which is another thing that makes lothric feel so devoid of most people that matter.
Lance McDonald also has an awesome video showing some of these off in action in unused "time of day"s, another cut feature that connects to the old self-made bonfires and invasion system.
I'd gladly give up that third weapon slot I never once used in DaS3, if it meant getting to see my second weapon appear sheathed on my character like in those leaked screens.
@@Pepe-pq3om i had a shield of want, parry shield, and torch for whatever i needed a torch for (mostly the maggots) on my left. then like my main weapon and a catalyst on my right
I bet the trimming of the spines on the head is an artifact of the auto-LOD detail-lowering process - the vertices at the end of the spines got trimmed, so the whole spine is shortened.
I love that this channel exists, to add to the historical record of niche gaming artifacts such as these. This kind of content enriches gaming culture.
I don’t even know what makes me like Dark Souls series more: the whole lore and characters of these games, or this crazy amount of hidden or unused stuff, and details you might miss at first…
only thing I like about dark souls is the weapons I played diablo and diablo 2 when I was a kid I really liked the weapons in diablo series like the claymore and the halberd and seeing them in dark souls and using them in a game with good graphics was awesome. simple af but thats the only reason I care about dark souls.
This is kind of fascinating. The flying serpents being based on the DS2 dragon models seems to disrupt a lot of the popular theories about DS3’s original plot, a lot of which hinge on these being Primordial Serpents with wings. If they were supposed to be part of the game at one point, I think there still is significance in their relation to the Primordial Serpents since the Serpent is an imitation of the Everlasting Dragons, but as you suggest they might’ve just been a placeholder.
Hello Zullie! LOVE your videos ^^ i want to ask you if you can make a vídeo about cinder lake, my favourite place from dark souls 1! Maybe some curiosities, maybe some hiden lore or something like "maybe they planed this for this place" . Cause honestly that place feels like is important, but nothing really important happens there, is a optional place. Thank you so much for your time and for your videos Zullie! You are amazing!
Can you explore which bosses have special animations for plunging attacks? It would be cool to see some have animations despite not being able to normally plunging attack them
Lance McDonald has a really good video on this. It's related to some kind of time of day ceremony mechanic that obviously didn't make it into the final game.
That flying serpent reminds me quite a bit of the "Garuda" from chapter 274 of Berserk, I wonder if any inspiration for it/its original dragon was found there (With regards to the general face shape and its horns, its tail, and wings being very similar, just without the legs)?
I would argue that the pilgrem butterflies are a stronger design then just Dragons. However, I would have liked it more had they played any connection to the Plot or at least what they are instead of just a cool visual.
I've always thought that a mod that is meant to change the progression of DS3 would be amazing. Like if you start the game in the catacombs or undead settlement catacomb area. Then you progress and branch out from there. I think that would make DS3 feel a lot more interesting. Have the OG starting area be a more tough area and so on.
Seeing as how the Flying Hollows, like the "Ascended" Form of hollows versus the "Fallen" Pus of Man forms, I think the original idea may have had them Ascend to become these little dragons, like Oceiros' attempt.
hints at something that could've been cool to add in Dark Souls III's Kiln/Ending area a converging in time/space Drangleic amdist Lothric and Anor Londo
Fascinating! I wonder what it was like to work on these games. I wonder what you would have seen, and how the final game would look to you with that knowledge.
Programmer 1: Flying winged serpents aren't creepy enough. Programmer 2: Should we replace them with something else? Programmer 1: Yea, let's turn the pilgrims into flying skeletal butterflies and put them in place of the winged serpents instead. Prrogrammer 2: Wat?
“the trees which produce frankincense are guarded by winged serpents, small in size and of various colours, which watch in great numbers about each tree, of the same kind as those which attempt to invade Egypt” Herodotus, “Histories” III, 107
Never has ‘look how they massacred my boy’ been more appropriate. It’s one thing to make a subpar version of dark souls 2 armor sets (looking at you ds3 elite knight armor) but now we’re extending it to full blown npc’s.
Could you please do an analysis video about the Crystal Sage fight? How dos the teleportation work behind the curtain? are there models under the map that pop up and down?
Their look does make sense, given the decline of the world in Dark Souls III. The player's Dragon Form is a prime example. It literally looks like it's dying. Whatever majesty the Dragon ilk had, time and decay has stripped it all away, making everything in the world a mere shadow of it's former self.
I really wish they didn’t just ditch the art direction that made the first two games so majestic when they made 3, I’m tired of everything being brown or grey
I suppose its possible it was just a stress test, or they just wanted to get a general feel for how it would be like to have a whole bunch of critters flying in the background. That being said, I do think that its significant that they are flying serpents, which could be interpreted as proto-dragons, and that they occupied the niche that is now occupied by the pilgrim butterflies. The pilgrims are considered to be connected to a return of the Age of the Ancients due to the fact that many of them sprout trees from their corpses upon dying. However, they also transform into pilgrim butterflies. Its possible that originally the whole transformation thing the pilgrims undergo would have these flying serpents as the end result, which would be a much stronger reference to the Age of the Ancients. But From doesn't like to make its lore so obvious, so it may have given up on referencing dragons so strongly for that reason.
![ILLSLICK - THE KING'S LANDING [Freestyle]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/feIJJnNkTfk/mqdefault.jpg)
The early alpha screenshots showed some other weird things, like Giant Sentinels lifted straight from Dark Souls 1 roaming around, so it might speak to how From Software mocks up their early builds of the game, apparently dropping in and playing around with assets from the previous titles.
thanks zullie!
Huh- I don't remember the sentinels from the leak. What one does look like is Dancer of the Boreal Valley just hanging out like a really tall but otherwise normal NPC.
Reminds me of how the soulmass spell is seen in the leaked ER internal trailer.
@@Matt-tk3lh i saw the leaked photo on google and the giant sentinel was in the forest with all the poison on the ground. Don’t remember the name at all. Strange.
Hi Zullie =]
The sheer amount of cut/hidden things you keep finding in these games is almost as impressive as your upload schedule
Look up Lance Mcdonald. He’s covered literally every piece of cut content in dark souls 3.
At this point Zullie is just Crestfallen/Bonfire who actually uploads more than once a year
@Dale Macarena yes, he’s covered this and more, Dark souls 3 had a bunch of ambitious ideas and concepts, the video lance did is a few years old by now lmao, but it’s super interesting to see how much different the game could’ve been.
Tbh this has been floating Abt for awhile Zullie just has been giving some more context tho she probably did find some of this stuff knowing how long she's been a part of the community particularly this portion of it
Do you think there’s a special appeal in this idea of finding material that was never intended to be shown? Seems Archdragon Peak kinda riffed off this, given that it was virtually impossible to discover alone
The fact it coincidentally shares an id with mimics makes me imagine chests trapped with wyverns in the way a can can be trapped with spring snakes.
New dnd monster and nightmare unlocked
a bunch of small wyverns pop out and they have the size and hitbox of the parasites in demon ruins
I like how you walked besides the model. It really helps showcase how big they are. Side by side comparisons with the player or a familiar model are one thing, but seeing it from a perspective that I'm used to does a lot to appreciate its size.
Banana for scale is better tho
Yeah. It was waaaaaaaay bigger than I thought
I also like how she walked beside the model. It really helps showcase her legs.
The whole mechanic of ds3 where there'd be multiple world states was pretty sweet. Especially the one with a sky full of dragons. Shame it was scraped.
Recent modding makes me think it was cut for performance reasons, as one of the major DS3 mods features multiple world states and alternate maps for each area, but requires a high end PC in the current year.
Such performance was hard to come by when DS3 released, and making it on console would just be flat out impossible.
The world state system reminds me of what Bloodborne did; where you’d go from dusk, to night, to the blood moon throughout the story.
@@WildBandit300 what mod is that? I don't think my pc can run it if it needs something exceptional but I want to try.
Was it like World Tendency from Demons Souls?
@@bernardomartorelli6676 I was to type the same thing.
Reminds me of a couple item descriptions that mention Lothric Knights had some kind of wyvern-rider elites, and aside from the "Dragon Barracks" location there's little physical evidence of them existing.
I wonder if the original plan wasn't to have a far more dragon- and wyvern- heavy influence in Lothric Castle that ended up being cut for the more standard sword and spear knights we got.
Considering the Age of Fire collapsing, it would have made sense for a ton of lesser Dragons and pure Dragons returning. The world returning to what it was allows those bygone creatures to return the same way they did originally, or even as refugees from that ancient age as a byproduct of time falling apart. I imagine they dumped that for lack of time though. It would have taken way more effort to weave the Dragon and Puss of Man motifs than they had to make it.
A shame too. It inspires the imagination and actually reinforces old canon in ways current DS3 just neglects.
@@clayxros576 The Age of Fire gives way to the Age of Dark, though. Thats even *more* removed from the Age of Ancients where the dragons were dominant. Who knows if another Age of Ancients would ever have come again?
@@lenkagamine4145 well, it’s damn near an Age of Gray thanks to the first flame being rekindled so many times.. but never again rekindled to its full glory as done by Gwyn or the Chosen Undead
Since most the wyverns we find in-game are transformed humans (having human pus or dropping dragon stones) we can imagine Lothric lost most of its wyvern population and had to replace them with humans
Interesting how Drangleic had them but we never saw them riding either. 2nd attempt at the idea.
Seriously Zullie I thought the well of things to find in dark souls was truly dry by now, but every notification I get makes me amazed that there's still so much to find!
Thank you for all the content we appreciate it ♥️
Just imagine when Elden Ring comes out, there'll be enough content to last a decade
Just think about the amount of other games both smaller and larger than Dark Souls that has a plethora of debugging to explore.
Look up lance Mcdonald on youtube, his channel has covered this and more in dark souls 3, he practically leaked the entire pre alpha game.
@@mathieupr6391 Some people (Sinclair Lore, for example) still do Bloodborne and Dark Souls 2 lore videos and I am still finding them endlessly interesting.
@@thebigenchilada678 oh I follow Lance too don't worry, also Illusory Wall is great for souls content too
I much prefer the Pilgrim Butterflies. These flying serpent things look pretty generic; the butterflies actually make you think, "What in the hell IS that?" They only get creepier when you see close-ups of them, and their connection to the angels in the Dreg Heap is neat. There's also the visual parallel they have with Sulyvahn's root-like wings, and the snippets about "becoming seedbeds of Darkness..."
I don't know if DS3's lore was fully realized the way they might have wanted, but there's certainly enough fuel to feed the imagination.
Nah, the flying serpents are a lot cooler
@@Pepe-pq3om My bad, man
the butterflies look cooler but they do not move much so I'm personally torn on which end up looking better.
@@Pepe-pq3om winged snek
@@Pepe-pq3om nah, like he said the PILGRIM BUTTERFLIES are a lot cooler. Now if you think that the low poly ugly character model would be alot better then you comment that yourself. You don't come on here telling that man nah lil boy
To my understanding the Dragons at Alida's Keep are experiments trying to recreate or "mimic" the originals. So them sharing the same character ID as the Mimic in DS3 might be some of the *deepest* of lore.
the big ancient dragon is certainly a fake at least. it would be weird if dragon aerie had fake drakes, when there are eggs all over the place
@@R3m1ly Might be close to a Jurassic Park situation, where the Dragons are artificially created, but can still breed on their own.
@@RamAurelius Would that mean the Emerald Herald can breed too ? ho ho
That's actually genius
@@Tacticaviator7 DEEP LORE
Vaati: Digs the lore and explaings things
Zullie: Digs the internals of the game revealing all sorts of cool shit
Limit Breakers: Digs through all the obscure mechanics and memes them all
When you guys put it like that it brings a tear to my eyes of just how lucky we are. The souls content creators are just as amazing as Miyazaki himself.
Amen x2
@@k.katona9415 I can't really watch his videos because I just can't stand the way he speaks. It's just too annoying for me.
He makes this awful fake old man voice...
i used to like vaati's video's but i think he goes too far with his assumptions about the lore. A couple times i noticed discrepancies too and that was enough for me.
Im not sure the lore needs to be explained so much as discussed perpetually, like a really classic book, or movie.
i.e. we will never know what was in the brief case from pulp fiction maybe we dont need to know what linking the fire means either.
there is actually video footage of these guys flying around too. lance mcdonald covered it in his video on the unused time of day system from the ds3 alpha. I recommend checking that video out.
I think early alpha and beta content you show is my favorite. Especially the bloodborne ones, so much of these games are a mystery and seeing things that were inevitably cut one way or another is always really fascinating with context of the whole series.
would love to see any kind of video about the invisible hollows in ds2 that can only be seen with a torch. maybe if theres any cut content regarding them, or if they spawn in an interesting way. idk. theyre so weird. they feel like one of the last holdovers of the very torch-heavy ds2 that was originally planned.
They were added in SotFS. It's meant to wrap around to when you play the DLC and get the ability to see invisible stuff to fight the big panther boss, but it also unlocks the ability to see all those hollows now.
@@vj7248 the eye of the priestess doesn't let you see the invisible hollows though.
@@moonlightdream5483 oh shid by B then, I was thinking about the other ghosties it reveals then.
"In the Scholar of the First Sin, the Eye will allow you to see the invisible Forest Guardians, the invisible Hollow Infantry and the invisible Great Moths."
Still, bears reminding invisible hollows are a SotFS addition.
@@vj7248 does it?? i had no idea. thats awesome.
Heya, I always wondered, is there any cut content around Vordt at all? He always seemed to be missing something, since hes got such a long as hell theme and is paired with the fairly lore heavy Dancer.
He used to be covered in burnt babies
Maybe you were suppose to fight both together at one point
Vordt and Dancer originally were supposed to have NPC equivalents as well
@@DagothBob saying "supposed" is probably bit much.
@@TheStraightestWhitest People just making stuff up, as usual..
Wow, old screenshots really showed what the game could have looked like before they greyscaled everything.
It looks nicer not gonna lie. Not everything needs to be muted for the intentions to be there imo.
Yeah they made the game ugly by making everything grey. It lacks atmosphere. Show some color!
I think it looks better the way it is
This is one of the things that I really hate about ds3. Everything is so gray. So bland. No matter how many special effects they may have added.
@@theatheistbear3117 youre insane
Speaking of Taxonomy, real life snakes “lost” their front limbs well before their hind limbs. The way this evolution happened genetically means that snakes have very long torsos rather than long tails (I.e. most of their body has ribs, the tail portions of their body don’t have ribs).
So it’s interesting that the flying serpents lost their legs first (their wings are basically just webbed hands with long fingers like bats). Evolutionarily, it seems like these flying serpents would probably depend mostly on flight for survival (hunting, locomotion, etc.) and perhaps only landing to sleep, so they don’t need legs and in fact legs would be less aerodynamic.
Of course, even with time in DS being incredibly screwed up, I don’t think millions of years have passed between DS2 and DS3. However, the drakes in DS2 are probably magically created by Aldia (Magic Jurassic Park!) so anything is possible. I doubt Aldia cared enough about making sure their magic DNA was stable.
Maybe not even land for sleep if they had a sort of autopilot like I think sharks have(not sure if sharks but some sea creature)
@@donaghwilson7715 AUTOPILOT
@@Pepe-pq3om what else would you describe it as, huh?
@@donaghwilson7715 sleep swimming
@@elias.t that implies a similarity to sleep walking, which if it was what was happening, the sharks would bump into stuff which they don't
Yeah, Abyss1ne has been restoring the alpha and made notice of these winged creatures are just reused dragons from DS2. He’s also restored a number of other alpha elements of the game and ported over the lighting engine from Sekiro, making the game look nearly identical to how it looked in the old leaks.
This has become one of my favorite channels. I discovered it late, but you’ve given me so much insight in to the workings and connections of From’s games. It’s impressive how much there is to work with, but even more impressive how you drop videos on us daily. Just know us fans appreciate it 🙏🏼
Dude you’re like my favorite notification on TH-cam now. You’re like a noir detective for the souls series.
I've seen these "dragons" (wyrms?) in a cut content vid before but the additional information and theories you provide on any content's origins/symbolism are always a great treat. The fact you compact them down to only the essentials in
“Unflattering yellow sky” shame I like that skybox it’s got some nice subtle hues when you look at it more.
the idea of them being a placeholder rather then an actual concept seems likely, its kinda hard to imagine how serpents like this would really fit in there honestly and certainly don't have the uniqueness factor the butterflies have
Meant to be related to dragons probably. Deformed dragons, attempts to create dragons, etc.
@@ManoredRed most likely but of course there are already dragons all over that area so these would of been kinda pointless given the direction of what the location ended up being
The serpents definitely would have given off a different vibe
The end of the game really feels like the end of existence and the pilgrim butterflies feeling like effectively dead husks given movement managed to add to that feel
A bunch of serpents in the sky would have more felt like maybe the dragons were going to get another shot at running the show
After the age Dark that really should be the case so in my opinion we really should've seem these at the end of time.
Can we just appreciate how God of a storyteller Zullie is?? Yes, I know, there’s not a story here per se…. But the way she draws the audience in, setting up and then subverting expectations, is really masterful.
Ye
Seeing early alpha content of DS3 is so cool, there was so much there that didn't make it!
Have you looked into the cut slug variants in Consumed Kings garden? I think I've only seen 1 video that's ever showed them before
Damn Zullie these videos make my day and your attention to detail makes it so much better
Man that purple sky in that screenshot and the lighting made it look so much prettier. I'm glad they aren't restricting themselves to dark gloomy, washed out environments in elden ring.
One thing I wish they stuck with from those sceenshots is the equipped gear showing up on the player's back. You could have two swords equipped and see them both, even when not being held.
what benefit would that have?
@@joedatius Looks cool
@@joedatius Looks cool
Zullie, I appreciate how you still after years of its release you contribute to the knowledge we gather from these games. Just to let you know
You always choose the perfect music to accompany your very insightful investigations. Very well done ☺
I've never even played DS, none of em, but I still find your videos interesting and curious. Thanks for another one Zullie!
1:16 I could never figure out why a fire breathing dragon was seemingly kept in a wooden bird cage.
I will always be blown away by how freaking incredible lothric castle looks
Props to Zullie for introducing so many great songs in her videos. I didn't know about Subterranean Graveyard before and now it became my favorite from the KF soundtrack
amazing detective work over here, always awesome to see new stuff coming from you
Why does zullie always have pure bangers to use for each video?
I love that I'm hooked on the music for a game I've never played thanks to these vids
Aren't serpents failed dragons in the lore? There are some theories that the Primordial Serpents are descended from the dragons. Maybe what we're seeing here is just like the drakes, a devolved version of the dragons. But these are even more devolved than the drakes.
I might be reading to deep but these things are mentioned multiples times in the games and lore.
well these aren't actually in the game so no. at that point its just fanfiction
@@joedatius They aren't in the game, but its probably what the developers originally intended with these creatures, before deciding to take the lore in a different direction later on.
That being said, these are prototypes so even if they had stuck with dragon critters flying in the skies, they might have been different. They might have been drakes, or proper dragons, or some new weird thing.
I see more as the Primordial Serpents starting to attain the traits they coveted in their distant Everlasting kin.
Something about that King's Field music really reminds me of Soul Reaver...
It always surprises me what can be dug up from betas and network tests in these things, real interesting stuff. I'd never seen those leaked screenshots either.
These uploads always brighten my day
Your use of King's Field music is a chad move
I think your in-game avatar should swap out the MGS for a pickaxe, cuz of all that datamining you've been doing.
Big thanks for what you're doing. As someone who takes a great interest in the inner workings and development of videogames, I really appreciate your content.
long boys
I like the music you use it’s really neat
OMG I LOVE THIS. First of all, happy to have seen it compared with the wyverns of Drangleic as it came to my mind in the same second I saw its head. Then, happy to have known that they have at least thought to make 2-legged drakes in the same game where's the only drake of the series to not have 4/8 but 6 legs, because can be seen as a sort of ecosystem balancing and disparity strengthening. Finally, happy to have gained a further addition to my cutom monster manual for DnD.
P.S. I have only seen your "leaving" advice so, if you'll read this comment, I'd really like to thank you for your highly specific, passionate work. And as a dear blacksmith of our acquaintance would say: come back soon!
Imagine flying Primordial Serpents...
I'm amazed how Zull can never run out of things to discover. Or well, re-discover.
i have a glitched character where after beating all the lords of cinder, the sky on lothric castle never actually turned orange, but when i warp to undead settlement for example, the sky would show up as orange like normal, i have no idea why tha happens
Wow a majestic long boy
Ahh, that makes sense! We thought FROM had planned a story that would include flying serpents in the skies of Lothric, but that may not be true at all. They may have always been planning to see Pilgrim Butterflies in the skies of Lothric, and the flying serpents in the leaked screenshots were just a WIP mock up of what would eventually be Pilgrim Butterflies in the sky.
The King's Field IV soundtrack is still doing WORK. Forever and always
I’ll say it, I liked the old stuff better. “Piss sky” never brought me joy
I mean, the old images of weird serpent wyverns looked lit. the dark stormy sky alongside it brings this dead skybox to life. I get that ds3 has this theme of "the world has been recycled and it's just stale cookies now" but i always felt there were better ways to go about that without making the environments dull to look at. With the exception of irithyll, everything just looks so muddy or crusty. visually dull, which is a shame.
Turns out a lot of ds3 was cut, in fact. Relevant characters and questlines gone which is another thing that makes lothric feel so devoid of most people that matter.
I play way too much ds2.. I immediately went "Isn't that a dark souls 2 model?" purely from the vibe it gave off
Ds2 most boring in the series imo, is it still a dead game in late 2021
@@Chuckvsfrank1232 wouldnt say its been a dead game ever
@@unluckycatfish6866 it is on xbox
@@Chuckvsfrank1232 On pc at least I have seen a lot of activity even recently
Lance McDonald also has an awesome video showing some of these off in action in unused "time of day"s, another cut feature that connects to the old self-made bonfires and invasion system.
I'd gladly give up that third weapon slot I never once used in DaS3, if it meant getting to see my second weapon appear sheathed on my character like in those leaked screens.
agreed
Why t f would someone need a third weapon slot any way
@@Pepe-pq3om magic mostly. When you've got to carry a talisman, a catalyst and a pyromancy flame you need all the space you can get.
@@Pepe-pq3om i had a shield of want, parry shield, and torch for whatever i needed a torch for (mostly the maggots) on my left. then like my main weapon and a catalyst on my right
@@Duskwalker68 I dont see a reason not to use the pyromacy flame and a talisman on left hand
The leaked screenshots also showed all your equipped weapons on your body at once, which is a feature I've always wanted.
2:18 my exact face when I found out that Bloodborne is not coming out on PC.
I bet the trimming of the spines on the head is an artifact of the auto-LOD detail-lowering process - the vertices at the end of the spines got trimmed, so the whole spine is shortened.
it's looks like a sword model from a distance.
I love that this channel exists, to add to the historical record of niche gaming artifacts such as these. This kind of content enriches gaming culture.
Lol the title on my recommended says "giant snakes with wings" and when I tap it it says "they ripped their legs off"
They might have been place holder during the development, before they fully came out with the idea of pilgrim butterflies.
didnt know i need a T-posing drake in my life until now
I don’t even know what makes me like Dark Souls series more: the whole lore and characters of these games, or this crazy amount of hidden or unused stuff, and details you might miss at first…
only thing I like about dark souls is the weapons I played diablo and diablo 2 when I was a kid I really liked the weapons in diablo series like the claymore and the halberd and seeing them in dark souls and using them in a game with good graphics was awesome.
simple af but thats the only reason I care about dark souls.
This is kind of fascinating. The flying serpents being based on the DS2 dragon models seems to disrupt a lot of the popular theories about DS3’s original plot, a lot of which hinge on these being Primordial Serpents with wings. If they were supposed to be part of the game at one point, I think there still is significance in their relation to the Primordial Serpents since the Serpent is an imitation of the Everlasting Dragons, but as you suggest they might’ve just been a placeholder.
Hello Zullie! LOVE your videos ^^ i want to ask you if you can make a vídeo about cinder lake, my favourite place from dark souls 1! Maybe some curiosities, maybe some hiden lore or something like "maybe they planed this for this place" . Cause honestly that place feels like is important, but nothing really important happens there, is a optional place.
Thank you so much for your time and for your videos Zullie! You are amazing!
Can you explore which bosses have special animations for plunging attacks? It would be cool to see some have animations despite not being able to normally plunging attack them
Lance McDonald has a really good video on this. It's related to some kind of time of day ceremony mechanic that obviously didn't make it into the final game.
This is so cool I wanna know more about those new and unused serpent- dragons
That flying serpent reminds me quite a bit of the "Garuda" from chapter 274 of Berserk, I wonder if any inspiration for it/its original dragon was found there (With regards to the general face shape and its horns, its tail, and wings being very similar, just without the legs)?
I would argue that the pilgrem butterflies are a stronger design then just Dragons. However, I would have liked it more had they played any connection to the Plot or at least what they are instead of just a cool visual.
This is one of the more interesting little finds, its such a clear peak at a WiP developement stage
Wow this is sick ! It could have been so cool, especially since lothric Knights are said to ride flying dragons in the lightning urn description !
there are already dragons in lothric tho
yeah, would also guess it was a placeholder till the butterflies were animated
I've always thought that a mod that is meant to change the progression of DS3 would be amazing. Like if you start the game in the catacombs or undead settlement catacomb area. Then you progress and branch out from there. I think that would make DS3 feel a lot more interesting. Have the OG starting area be a more tough area and so on.
Otzdarva's got a video about ut
Honestly if what you speculate at the end is true, I’m glad we got the pilgrim butterflies instead
Seeing as how the Flying Hollows, like the "Ascended" Form of hollows versus the "Fallen" Pus of Man forms, I think the original idea may have had them Ascend to become these little dragons, like Oceiros' attempt.
Man, at this rate I'll end up playing King's Field IV just because of the bangers Zulie uses for videos.
Wish we could've seen the day/night cycle.
hints at something that could've been cool to add in Dark Souls III's Kiln/Ending area
a converging in time/space Drangleic amdist Lothric and Anor Londo
It's interesting to come back to this after seeing crumbling Farum Azula. It feels like they achieved what they wanted to do here
Fascinating! I wonder what it was like to work on these games. I wonder what you would have seen, and how the final game would look to you with that knowledge.
Smooth transitions!
Programmer 1: Flying winged serpents aren't creepy enough.
Programmer 2: Should we replace them with something else?
Programmer 1: Yea, let's turn the pilgrims into flying skeletal butterflies and put them in place of the winged serpents instead.
Prrogrammer 2: Wat?
“the trees which produce frankincense are guarded by winged serpents, small in size and of various colours, which watch in great numbers about each tree, of the same kind as those which attempt to invade Egypt”
Herodotus, “Histories” III, 107
Never has ‘look how they massacred my boy’ been more appropriate. It’s one thing to make a subpar version of dark souls 2 armor sets (looking at you ds3 elite knight armor) but now we’re extending it to full blown npc’s.
Lol, I haven’t even noticed that there’s a time leap between your visits to Lothric castle.
lol I love this track so much, especially ever since the dancing Living Failures
I remember seeing a sky full of flying dragons in Elden Ring, so at least there’s a good chance we’ll have skies full of dragons again soon.
Could you please do an analysis video about the Crystal Sage fight? How dos the teleportation work behind the curtain? are there models under the map that pop up and down?
Can you show a zoom out of the High Wall to see how the level design looks like from high up? I've always been curious about that.
This King's Field music is so lit I feel like I have to play the game just for the music
The king's field soundtrack is surprisingly good
Their look does make sense, given the decline of the world in Dark Souls III. The player's Dragon Form is a prime example. It literally looks like it's dying. Whatever majesty the Dragon ilk had, time and decay has stripped it all away, making everything in the world a mere shadow of it's former self.
They didnt have to do Lt. Dan like that.
They fly for eternity in that hell, searching for their lost legs.
It started with a detailed look at souls 2 hitboxes
I really wish they didn’t just ditch the art direction that made the first two games so majestic when they made 3, I’m tired of everything being brown or grey
Everything in the first Darksouls was also, Brown, Grey, or Green lmfao. The only darksouls that actually liked the concept of colour was 2
@@skelitonking117 the only reason ds2 looks "colorful" is because they replaced the thematic lighting system with n64 lighting
@@EidasMusic I actually prefer the n64 lighting
I suppose its possible it was just a stress test, or they just wanted to get a general feel for how it would be like to have a whole bunch of critters flying in the background.
That being said, I do think that its significant that they are flying serpents, which could be interpreted as proto-dragons, and that they occupied the niche that is now occupied by the pilgrim butterflies.
The pilgrims are considered to be connected to a return of the Age of the Ancients due to the fact that many of them sprout trees from their corpses upon dying. However, they also transform into pilgrim butterflies.
Its possible that originally the whole transformation thing the pilgrims undergo would have these flying serpents as the end result, which would be a much stronger reference to the Age of the Ancients. But From doesn't like to make its lore so obvious, so it may have given up on referencing dragons so strongly for that reason.