Load Our Last Save: Load Our Last Souls: Part 01

Edit: Ah, nevermind. Video glitched when they intro'd him.

@lyfeforce: Its Engineer Ian! he used to have mad chops. Seems like a cool dude.

So this is being the shortlisted for 2013's 2011 Game of the Year right? because it didn't even get a mention last year :(

That was amazing, the ending was the best part!

Really looking forward to Part 2 -- but, above all, I'm REALLY looking forward to this "Pathfinder thing", is it going to be streamed in any form?

That skeleton is a garbage man!

Well, I definitely still don't like Dark Souls. But fuck is it ever fun to watch.

That was amazing. I alllllllmost want to give Dark Souls another shot now.

SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT.

Man, Dark Souls is the only game I've put more than 200 hours into in this century. Neigh, this MILLENNIUM!

And I could watch the bombcrew play dark souls forever :)

This was great! Makes me really glad I'm a subscriber. Was hoping you guys would get Paladin Leeroy to invade, but oh well. That same shit happened to me with that skeleton's kick and I lost something like 40k souls.

Purely as a thought experiment, if I were Vinny, here's what I'd do next: Nito should be pretty easy with BKH+5 since you can just sidestep his attacks. Given Vinny's playstyle I doubt he's killed Havel yet, so I'd go do that next. Havel's ring should allow him to midroll in poise gear (I believe he's poiseless atm, which makes things way harder). Plus even if he doesn't roll (which most new players don't) he'll have better armor. At this point, and with Vinny's intention to just beat the game, the Gold Serpent Ring is useless for him.

From there I'd go Duke's -> 4 Kings -> Izalith. Could do Sif before Duke's, who I assume he hasn't killed. He shouldn't need many more stats to clear the game, but I'd level pretty much just endurance since BKH+5 should carry through the game in terms of damage and he has a lot of HP.

And again, this is just what I would do. I doubt they'll do sidequests, which is too bad, but they are pretty obscure so it's probably for the best, although I'd also love to see Vinny's reaction to what goes down with Big Hat Logan. I hope they at least meet up with Seigmeyer and Solaire in Izalith.

Really looking forward to more!

DO IIIITTTTTTTTTT!

Revenge kick for having previously kicked off the edge all those skeletons in Undead Burg/Firelink Shrine. :P

These dark souls need to be reclassified as jerk souls.

All that information comes from within the game. It's from people who played the game. There are also mechanics so deep that people discovered it by accident. These are things like poise break points, dex casting speeds, and varying parry windows for different shields and the parry dagger. These have limited applications for beating the game, but mean a lot for the PVP scene. They were discovered by people fighting for 100s of hours with various builds and noticing small differences.

You can even find little secrets that have little to no value. Putting mimics to sleep with a lloyd's talisman is crazy random because who would think to throw that at the enemy? It allows you to retrieve their item without killing them. Then there's the fact that a fire bomb will insta kill a mushroom guy. No one carries fire bombs on their item slot because its only useful in the beginning areas and you can kill mushroom guys in a few hits anyway.

Claiming that the information is not in the game is insane. Where do you think it came from?

I do hope Rorie will play at some point as well. Maybe even Ian!

That ending was perfect way to kick this series off! Fantastic!

Tomb of the Giants is the worst part of the game, bar none. There's something cathartic about watching Vinny fail over and over again, because I've probably died in similarly stupid ways.

The end was grand. Can't wait for more of this content. :D

This was amazing, as expected, so thanks to all three of you guys. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long before another episode.

@meatsim: jerk store?

In my first play through, I ran through tomb of the giants even though I was way under leveled and wasn't supposed to be there, but I thought I was since that floating wheel boss before was so easy. I made it to the bonfire and realized I couldn't progress without a key. Now I'm stuck in this tomb and couldn't climb back up because I get 1 shotted. I was so heartbroken thinking I had to restart the game. After a million tries, I climbed up the dark tomb dodging 1 hit kill arrows and giant skellies, ran past those damn spinning skellies, and finally found a ladder for the exit which I didn't know existed since you drop down and meet a blacksmith when you first get in!

I signed up for premium because of this. Love Vinny videos.

Eh, Lost Izalith is the worst part. Tomb of the Giants is fine, especially if you have the sunlight maggot.

Awesome content. Keep it up!

Does Rorie seem to talk in circles/contradict himself like every other sentence here? Haha

This and some unprofessional fridays bits are the only reason for me to resubscribe. PLEASE make this a regular feature, ideally with a new character

People talk mad shit about Tomb but Lost Izalith is probably still my least favorite area.

I hope Vinny sees this through! I remember listening to the Bombcast while playing this game religiously around its original release, and Vinny was the only one willing to give the game a chance (despite his voiced frustrations) while the rest of the crew was as dismissive as they were about Demon's Souls. I guess I never thought I'd see a GB stream of Dark Souls in 2013, although the fanbase has grown exponentially since 2011.

Thanks to Ian and Rorie for coming along for the ride.

Tomb of the Giants is absolute despair to go alone and "blind". I mean, you're not even sure you should go there and you find yourself trapped in a dark tomb with some of the weirdest enemies in the game... but with good guidance like Ian's or a second time through, I think it's weirdly one of the most fascinating parts of DS.

This is the greatest feature ever.

Watching 5 minutes of this makes me want to reinstall Dark Souls. This really is one of the best video games ever.

Would you say you're dark sold?

This was the best thing in a while!

The Eagle Shield used to be my favorite shield before they nerfed it. I'm sure it's fine for PvP since you only fight one or maybe two opponents at a time but I don't play PvP and that 5% adds up in PvE. I value high deflection in shields so pretty much the only shield I use now is the Iron Round Shield, which is the only medium shield with heavy deflection like a greatshield. I wish there was a greatshield a bit heavier than the Eagle Shield as the next lightest greatshield that is viable is the Tower Shield at 13 weight.

They're playing without dsfix? Why?

First L.O.L.S. where you play a game that's not boring as hell to watch. This feature is now justified.

Best. Ending. Ever.

uh, as in the game doesn't explain shit to you, ever. what are you even talking about? talk about being super defensive for absolutely no reason.

Cool, but will they play this to the max?

But he's right? All of that info on the wiki's came from people playing the game, not scrubbing the code. It just doesn't spoon-feed you that info.

@customotto: It's called "trial&error", maybe the concept got lost on this new generation of gamers. But I've spent hours upon hours doing the most boring crap in games, just to understand the underlying mechanics at work, which in the end lead to me being better at the game.

That often means doing the same thing 10-20 times and then doing it 10-20 times again with a small variation, writing all that data down in some excel chart and do some math magic to it with a calculator.

That's how you "figure stuff out" without the game telling you or dissecting the code. That's why i always have a notepad, a pen and a calculator handy when i play any kind of games.

Sadly not too many games value that kind of behavior anymore, either the mechanics are way too simple and obvious or the game does already a decent enough job of laying them out (that's actually pretty good).

dsfix does not work on the playstation 3

Still so weird to see @ltsquigs in videos and with the GB crew. I use to hang out with that dude from time to time back in Michigan.

Keep up the good work buddy!

I am so excited about this. Keep it up!

yes it's too bad most games today don't require you to spend hundreds of hours of testing, taking notes and doing calculations to figure out basic gameplay concepts.

A reasonable response to "the information isn't in the game" is not "IT IS YOU JUST HAVE TO SPEND HOURS AND HOURS FIGURING IT OUT ALSO HAVE A CALCULATOR HANDY!!" Getting defensive when someone says they would just rather the game tell you how that stuff is handled is absurd. Nobody is talking about dissecting code here.

I enjoyed this and hope we see more! Souls can be frustrating, but when you learn anything about the game, whether from a FAQ or a friend, it is very empowering and makes you better at the game. Rorie's Dark Souls streams are fun but I like seeing a room full of people react to some of the crazier shit in the game. If you haven't seen it, The Tricaster Party Part 2 video where Vinny teaches Ryan how to play Dark Souls is still one of my favorite videos on the site.

Lord Vinnicus just hit the front page of Reddit, for those who care about such things:

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1n492u/this_is_dark_souls_gif/

@customotto: You seem more defensive than golguin is with the snark and hyperbole. Dark Souls doesn't take 100 hours to learn everything you need to finish. All the basic controls and basic mechanics are explained in the Undead Asylum, the tutorial area, and you don't need to know everything to finish the game.

zevvion implied that you must need a FAQ to learn what everything does, while all it takes is to experiment. Take an humanity, hey, my curse resistance and item discovery increased. What's kindling? Let's try doing that. Hey, my estus flask capacity increased to 10. The game isn't forcing hours of trials and errors to finish the game, it encourages you to experiment and learn by experience.

ANNNNNNNNNNNNNND DOG....... hello?