PixlBit

An otaku troll with a sense of Japanese elitism, that's something fresh (!). It's annoying seeing it from any side western or eastern. I bet that since the success of The Witcher series in Poland there's probably a few Polish nerd trolls here and there that have a Polish elitism complex too lol. Dark Souls is Japanese but it's the most western Japanese game series you can imagine, similar to Dragon's Dogma. I don't see anything in the Souls games that tries to pander to the Japanese audience so I don't see where they get the sense of cultural ownership. There's not a teenager to be found in any Souls game, no wide eyes, upskirt shots, and no thought bubbles or anything. This game is more Scandanivian than anything with all the nods to Nordic mythology and the giant trees.

Japanese studio making a western designed game with mostly nordic influences. It's all over the map.

I've always wondered why dogs are able and willing to eat waste like poop. Is it a personal choice for pleasure or is there some kind of nutrition they are craving that they get from it? Like when you see humans that have mineral deficiencies and will sometimes have great cravings for eating their scabs, other people scabs, or doing weird things because they want to get the salt or other minerals from something. I can't imagine there's any nutrition in poop, it's waste for a reason, right?

They must have pretty strong immune systems/guts to be able to gobble up poop so willy nilly.

When I was in elementary school there was a bird nest in the big tree in our backyard and a chick fell out of the nest one afternoon. There were street cats that roamed around a lot in those days in the neighborhood so I thought the best idea would be to grab the chick. When I went to grab it a bigger bird, probably the mother, swooped down and did a fly-by of my head and I decided to leave the chick alone. Eventually it died and I think a cat was able to get some calories out of the situation.

On a side note I was playing outside one time back in elementary school and vomited, and my neighbor's dog lapped it all up like an afternoon snack. Henceforth that dog was my buddy from that day forward and I rubbed his belly whenever I got the chance. He was brave, a real team player. I'd never eat his vomit, but he ate mine.

Thank you for the encouragement!

I agree with you on Portal 2. The thing that's nice about the Portal lore is that they said Chell chose to be a mute and didn't want to speak to Glados, so at any time they can start making her speak and it would be understandable and easy to explain.

One of the craziest revalations I've seen during this whole generation of gaming was that Portal 2 confirmed to everybody that the Portal and Half Life universes are one in the same. I don't ever see people talking about that or wondering what's going to happen next but I personally think that the revelation that those two game worlds occur in the same place opens up both series for wild new ideas. At the end of Portal 2 Chell comes out of the facility to see the beautiful fields and it only makes you wonder where she is and when she is. Obviously there's still vegetation and blue skies so the world Chell is in isn't irradiated and destroyed. Tons of time passed when Chell was in stasis, so what was happening topside in the Half Life world? Is Gordon long dead by the end of Portal 2? Is the whole Half Life story arc concluded by the time Chell comes to the surface? Or is she coming up to the "real" world right in the thick of it when shits hitting the fan? Is Chell going to travel back in time to help the Half Life crew after she explores the world and finds out something horrible happened? Are the mechanics and gameplay from Half Life and Portal going to be seperate or are they going to get mixed up?

There's so many things they can do with the Half Life and Portal stories from here on out. They can really evolve both series in some interesting ways if they want to.

I upgraded the Bandit Knife that you were talking about to +14 and holy crap. I went through Undead Burg backstabbing undead knights and it was doing over 800 damage per backstab. Isn't there a ring that allows you to do 20% extra backstab damage as well? I know there's the ring that helps you do more counter-attack damage, it's called the Hornet Ring I think. I rarely look through my rings, I just have several I use over and over for different scenarios but I have a ton of rings just piled up that I don't look at much.

I was on this guys youtube page where he breaks down Dark Souls lore and tries to explain characters and concepts, some of his stuff is featured across the Dark Souls Wiki as well. I loved hearing him talk about the children of Gwyn because there's a lot of interesting stuff going on between them. Apparently Gwyns daughter (the one who Gwyndolin is creating a illusion of) left Anor Londo and married a Lord of Flame named Flann. Who's Flann?!

I was also fascinated to hear about the different arguments as to why some people think Solaire is the firstborn of Gwyn and other people that think he can't be. There's good arguments on both sides. Dark Souls is amazing in how deliberate everything is and how every item description and little piece of lore explained in the game is very purposeful and carefully written by the designers. It allows various interpretations and lots of discussion.

I really love Zelda, Half Life 2, Portal, and other games with silent protagonists, but over time I'm becoming much more willing to demand those characters start speaking. Bioshock Infinite was fantastic, one of my favorite experiences of the generation and it showed me that you can make these characters talk and not break something. Booker talks just enough, he doesn't overwhelm me or become a distraction, but nevertheless a ton of emotion and character comes across from his dialogue and voice actor. It's very well done. Infinite is one of my favorite shooters and action games of this whole generation, and yet it manages to let you experience a really compelling and layered yarn full of emotion, spectacle, and action.

I'm studying design and at the moment I'm most interested in level building and systems designing whether it be for stealth, battle, strategy, economic simulations, etc. Half Life 2 is one of my favorite games and it's the main game that sparked me to take this career path seriously and start falling in love with building. I use to defend Freeman's silence, but over time I grew out of it. Julian Titus from here at Pixlbit is one of the people years ago that started to get me thinking about why Gordon Freeman doesn't work well as a mute. Gordon's not really a character, there's not much to like or dislike, he's just a shell with nothing to chew on or ponder. Portal works perfectly with a mute character because there's no decisions to be made in that world, there's not nearly as many layers, you're not fighting a war and there isn't a host of side characters or a love interest like in Half Life. In Portal you just need to progress through the puzzles and there's very few NPCs but they are highly developed.

The Half Life world is full of science and experimentation, to simply survive and deal with problems like the super-portal they require the most brilliant human scientists to hatch a scheme to launch a missile that shuts the portal. Out of all the people who should have something to say, a theoretical physicist like Freeman should have things to say. Instead, he becomes a space marine without the space aspect, manages to learn how to use over a dozen weapons like a Krogan Warlord, and spends all his time fighting a war on the frontlines like a grunt. I'd appreciate Freeman to start talking. The overall Half Life story arc and character developments can't do it without Gordon being developed into something believable, expressive, and emotional. No matter how great Alyx Vance is and how amazing the writing, VO, and animation is during real time conversations between NPCs, this whole series will fundamentally be set up for disappointment if Gordon can't be turned into a relateable and expressive character.

Right now Freeman is stuck back in the 90s with the Doom Guy in terms of depth and believability. However unlike id with Doom, Valve is trying to tell a great story with the Half Life series so they need to bring the protagonist into the modern age and humanize him. Bioshock Infinite showed me that you don't have to fall back on the silent protagonist school of thought. You can voice a character, do it well, and still make the player feel like they're right at the heart of the action and experiencing/interacting with the narrative.

That sounds like a pretty awesome sword. I made it because it can do damage to the ghosts in New Londo, but once I took time to actually look at it I realized holy crap I bet this thing can pull some serious weight if you upgrade it and have the right stats. I do have that jagged sword that the ghosts themselves use in New Londo though, and I upgraded it all the way and it's crazy powerful! For now at least. I upgraded that little cursed ghost sword and it does like 230 some odd damage I think.

Another thing that I've been wondering lately in regards to your experiences is if your opinions of your armors change with subsequent playthroughs? The first question I should ask is how many playthrough have you done with a single character?

Did you have favorite armors in the first playthrough that became less and less useful in the second or third playthrough with the same character? I've been wondering because with my character I use light armors that I've upgraded. I have a variety of them that I use for different situations. I have a set of +10 Chain Mail that I use when I need pure physical defense. I have the Gold Black Hemmed set for when I go into Blighttown or into any fiery places with fire damage since it has great poison resistance and some fire resistance I think. I have the Crimson Set upgraded all the way for when I'm around curse damage enemies.

I bet that in NG+ my favorite armors will be less and less effective and I'll have to keep my skills and strategy sharp as ever. Which is really exciting, I'm actually looking forward to NG+ quite a bit because I want to be able to play with my seasoned character and all my goodies but be challenged again and feel similar to how Dark Souls felt the first time around.

That's makes more sense. I noticed earlier in the game that the bow I was using would go up 3 damage per level for quite a while because of likely some S scaling to DEX I would presume then. So it goes S, A, B, C, D, E? I created the cursed Greatsword of Artorias some time ago and saw that it has C scaling across the board, I bet that sword could be pretty powerful then right if you upgrade it all the way? I can't use it with my current build anytime soon since I only have 10/12 intelligence/faith and I need 18 of each to wield the sword properly and get full damage out of it. I'd like to be able to use that sword at some point though and see what it does.

One of the main things that I still don't understand about the game after all this time is the parameter bonus lettering. When I get weapons I see the letters and can tell that they scale with those stats somehow but I never understood how much it's scaling and what the letters mean. There's A, B, C, D, E, and S somehow. Maybe there's more, but those are ones I remember. What do all those mean and how does an S fit in lol?

Great video, you really tore through the Asylum. I remember the first time I went through there, it's a great beginning area and training ground for some of the basic concepts. The first character I ever made was a Pyromancer but it didn't last very long because I wasn't any good at the combat yet and the guy at the top of the Indiana Jones boulder trap staircase was chopping me down over and over. So I restarted as a Warrior and the heavier armor and higher vitality helped me survive more mistakes and get better with the shield and sword combat I wanted to do.

I look forward to seeing you go through Undead Burg, that's one of my favorite areas and it's the place where I started honing my combat timing and I learned how to do backstabs and counters there. Havel at the bottom of the stairs, Taurus Demon ambush, Dragon on the bridge, a couple Black Knights skulking around, Undead Burg is a lot of fun. I also first learned how to farm for souls at that bonfire under the bridge near where those firebombing guys are perched. I would kill the guys around the bonfire and use their souls to buy crap from the undead merchant nearby.