I came across this video on YouTube last week, in which HPRshredder defends the second half of Dark Souls (after obtaining the Lordvessel). Most people say that the second half of the game is a clear drop-off compared to the first half, but HPRshredder argues that most of the second half is actually pretty good, and that many of the things that people hate about the second half are actually in the first half.
HPRshredder argues that the second half of Dark Souls isn't so bad.
Many of HPRshredder's points are actually quite valid. I mean, some of it is pedantic nitpicks about defining "second half", but you know, it's not wrong. However, I feel like he missed the biggest complaint that people have against the back half of Dark Souls. Specifically, after the player obtains the Lordvessel, the player is able to teleport to many bonfires. The ability to teleport eliminated the need for From Software to maintain the tight, interconnected world design through the entirety of Dark Souls' campaign. Instead, the areas where the player must obtain the final 4 Lords' Souls are more linear dungeon crawls that are disconnected from the rest of the map. In fact, in all of these instances, the player cannot even walk out of the boss arenas, and must teleport out.
Of all the people who I talk to about Dark Souls, this is the primary complaint that they levy against the later parts of Dark Souls. Aside from Izalith and the Bed of Chaos (and sometimes the Tomb of the Giants), people rarely have specific complaints with the levels or boss fights in the later stages of Dark Souls. Mostly, people just believe that the world design suffers from the lack of interconnected paths between these final levels.
Many of the criticisms of the 4 Lords' areas in Dark Souls could have been mitigated, or headed-off entirely, with a little bit of extra creative level and world design. If these areas could retain the interconnectedness that people love so much about the rest of the game, then maybe that would have created more memorable moments that might make players think back more fondly of these areas?
Defeating Ornstein and Smough, and obtaining the Lordvessel, is widely regarded as the peak of Dark Souls.
Could the 4 Lords' areas have been interconnected?
If you think about it, these 4 Lords' areas aren't actually all as disconnected as they may initially seem. Izalith actually has multiple connections back out to the Demon Ruins and Blighttown. And New Londo Ruins, opens back out to the Valley of the Drakes. So it's really only the Tomb of the Giants and the Duke's Archives / Crystal Cave that completely diverge from the rest of the map. Every other area does loop back to another location. It's just that the boss arenas (Bed of Chaos and 4 Kings) do not allow the player to backtrack back out, which means those shortcuts back out to the rest of the world go un-used.
If we consider the Tomb of the Giants, we might recall that it offers 2 spectacular vistas of the Demon Ruins and the Great Hollow. But depending on what order you play the levels of the game, you might not have played through Demon Ruins yet. And you might never find the Great Hollow. In pretty much every other case so far, in which you see a distant vista in Dark Souls, that vista has turned out to be a place that you can go. But for many players, the more disconnected feeling of the Tomb of the Giants might make you forget that distant vistas are usually places that you can go. In the case of the Great Hollow, in particular, it might not ever register to some players that is anything more than set dressing. After all, you don't get any glimpses of the inside of the tree, or of anything that looks like a path winding in or around it, so it really does not look like a place that you can go.
Thus, one problem with Tomb of the Giants is that it gives players vistas of these other areas, but it does not allow direct access to either of them. When you get to the end of the Tomb and defeat Nito, your only option is to teleport back out. You can't even chose to climb out of Nito's boss arena, and back into the Tomb, even if you wanted to try to walk back out on your own. The same is true of Izalith. You cannot walk back out of the Bed of Chaos' arena; you have to teleport.
Tomb of the Giants offers vistas of Demon Ruins and Ash Lake, but doesn't readily connect to either.
But what if this wasn't the case?
What if, after beating Nito, you could open up a passageway or transitional level that leads back up to, Quelag's Domain? After all, there is that closed off passageway on the far end of Qualag's Domain that doesn't go anywhere. Perhaps that could have been an unlockable tunnel into the Tomb of the Giants? From that hub location of Qualag's Domain, you would have direct access to the Demon Ruins that you saw earlier. In fact, the path back up from Tomb of the Giants to Qualag's Domain could even have other, closer vistas of the Demon Ruins (or maybe even a brief view into Lost Izalith proper). Alternatively, you could go back into the Blighttown Swamp to look for that giant tree. Or you could go through the Chaos Covenant shortcut to Izalith.
In fact, I always felt like From had intended to include a more direct connection between the Demon Ruins and Tomb of the Giants. After defeating the Demon Firesage, there is a weird, staircase area that connects to Izalith, and which includes the elevator back to Quelag's Domain. That particular area always felt ... incomplete to me. As if it was intended to have some other passageways in or out. I honestly wonder if there was an older draft of the game's design in which this passage after the Demon Firesage might have included some connection to the Catacombs or Tomb of the Giants.
There's a weird area after the Demon Firesage that I felt was incomplete.
Similarly, after killing the Bed of Chaos, there could have been a path that lead out from under the Bed, and which spirals back up to the elevator behind the Firesage Demon. This would grant access back to Blighttown, or, as mentioned above, could also have a shortcut back up to the Catacombs, which would give access to the Tomb of the Giants. Or maybe there could have been a path after the Bed of Chaos that winds back up to that closed-off passage in Quelag's Domain? Connecting the Bed of Chaos with Qualag's Domain would make thematic sense.
And if there were a way to exit the 4 Kings Abyss to get back out to New Londo, you could use the elevator to go back to Firelink and the Catacombs, or walk through Valley of the Drakes to Blighttown in order to access the Demon Ruins, instead of having to teleport out.
This leaves only the Duke's Archives / Crystal Caves as the only disjoint portion of the map. So can we wrap that back into the rest of the world?
The Crystal Caves feel the farthest away from any hub location, but could have looped back to Anor Londo.
Sure, we probably could. But it's going to be a lot more tricky. The problem is that the Duke's Archive is at the top of the world, and is only accessible through Anor Londo. Without being able to teleport, any walk back to Anor Londo is going to be exceptionally long. Hypothetically, there could be a massive, vertical shaft that could connect Anor Londo with the lower areas. This shaft could have an elevator. Or it could have a golden ring, similar to what is found after defeating the Iron Golem, which causes winged demons to fly down the shaft to fly the player back up to Anor Londo.
The Crystal Caves could then have a shortcut that winds back along the base of the Anor Londo cathedral and drops the player off at the bottom of the spiral staircase. This would grant relatively easy access to the rest of Anor Londo, and to the vertical shaft that could lead back down to the Lower Bell of Awakening.
With that, we kind of turn the Lower Bell of Awakening into a second hub location, similar to Firelink Shrine, with connections to all 4 of the Lords' levels. This would make the entire world of Dark Souls (except for the Painted World and Undead Asylum) walkable, and would eliminate the need for bonfire warping.
The Lower Bell of Awakening could have become a second hub location, similar to Firelink.
An idea for any future remake?
If Dark Souls ever gets a full-blown remake along the lines of Resident Evil 2, Dead Space, or Silent Hill 2, then I think this is something that would be worth considering for the new developers. Imagine playing a remake of Dark Souls in which you get the Lord Vessel, but the Lord Vessel does not unlock the ability to teleport. You'd be like "WTF?! You mean I have to do all the 4 Lords and not be able to teleport back to Firelink? That is BS!" But then you actually play those levels, which are redesigned to be better in their own right, only to find that they open up completely new areas or transitional paths that link back to other parts of the map, such that you don't actually *need* to teleport. That would probably blow people's mind!
Would connecting these areas up to each other make the 2nd half of Dark Souls as good as the first half? I don't know. Maybe. It does have the potential to create memorable moments for the player, along the lines of the elevator ride from Undead Parish back to Firelink, that might make people look back on these other areas more favorably.