This is the False God's Hymn.
A soundtrack for the Amygdala that's left over in the files of Bloodborne's Network Test,
And this hymn eventually became the track known as Hail the Nightmare, which is played as you explore
Yahar'gul, an area that's littered with Amygdala.
I'm playing that song for you in the background here, but I kind of prefer the original. Don't you?
The community has discovered so much hidden content in these games over the past year or so,
And it's all thanks to this small
But really dedicated community of hackers and data diggers who will all be listed in the description.
So let's start with something that for me made me want to make this video in the first place.
It's the recovery of every single epitaph description hidden within the network test files of Dark Souls 3.
So in case you've forgotten,
Epitaphs were those little gravestones that you could read in the network test,
And back then there was only four of them, but it turns out
43 of them were actually in the game's files at the time, and now every single unused epitaph has been
Extracted and then translated and then re-added to the game for our enjoyment.
That said though, most of these only add context to characters and not much more, the context is important
It gives flavor to the environment and the characters. One of my favorites is this epitaph which talks about the
Dedication of the Abyss Watchers. It reads,
"Grave of a brave army. A man who fights the abyss, will die with a dull blade."
There's also this really sad one which is about the half-dragon creatures in Irithyll dungeon
Whose misery was actually entertainment for the lords of Anor Londo. It reads,
"It was neither a human, nor a dragon. In sadness, he danced to the royal family. Here, he sleeps."
There's even a line about the dedication of the Lothric Knights, which reads, "Fear the night.
Loyalty beyond death to the undying King," which is cool because it's an example of a hollow Knight
Still being dedicated to the King even though they're hollowed.
And finally, we have this odd epitaph which says, "Viewers who clicketh the bell next to the subscribe button will be notified of
new videos."
Such good lore.
But perhaps the most interesting ones are those talking about the Pilgrims.
These descriptions make a ton of mentions of Heaven and Hell, and they emphasize how the Pilgrims have
This longing to climb the high wall, and
They're scattered all throughout the game and they really drive home just how difficult the Pilgrims journeys have been.
And considering the only Pilgrims to turn into angels are actually those who make it to World's End,
Maybe turning into an angel is their reward for making it to the end of the world.
For all of those epitaphs and more you can check out Lance's channel where he's dictated all
43 of them, but of all the things changed in Dark Souls 3's development epitaphs might actually be the most minor
Because here's something big. What you're seeing now is what remains of Dark Souls 3's
Scrapped bonfire creation mechanic. These animations were extracted by ZullieTheWitch and
Exposed by Sanadsk. Links in the description.
And can you imagine what it would have been like if it was possible for you to drag
Corpses to a location of your choosing and then create a bonfire wherever you like?
It's rumored that this is what you can see this character doing in the opening cutscene.
At its best, this mechanic would have made the world feel like a really grand adventure,
Because imagine if you were sort of pushing through a really difficult level.
You know you're risking death and you want to get as far as you possibly can before creating a next checkpoint, right?
So you finally decide, "Yep. This is as far as I can go."
So you create a bonfire and you sort of make a camp in that sense.
You rest up and then you push forward into unknown territory. I think that's a really cool feeling.
But in reality, I feel like this system would probably feel more like
Searching through an entire parking lot
Wondering where the hell you parked your bonfire. "Which level was it again? Was is a yellow level?
Oh, no, I think it was an orange level!" More questions arise from this though.
Could bonfires be created anywhere?
What if I want to put one outside a boss's fog gate? Where do we find bonfire creation tools?
And how many bonfires could I create? And honestly,
It would have been a nightmare for them to balance I think, and I can see why it was scrapped.
Anyway, once you decided where you wanted your bonfire you could do this.
Back then, this was likely called a Moonlight Ceremony,
And it would have changed the way that PvP works in Dark Souls 3. Thanks to leftover files in Dark Souls 3's Network Test,
Lance managed to hack back in the item that was required to initiate a Moonlight Ceremony.
This was called a Ceremony Sword of Darkness, and it reads, "When used,
Perform a ceremony to envelop the world in darkness."
I think we sort of saw the echoes of these ceremonial swords in Anri's corpse and as a part of
Anri's questline.
But this Ceremonial Sword instead
Envelops your world in darkness and the world becomes moonlit with thick fog rolling all around you.
The lighting work here is gorgeous. You can really see the moonlight reflecting off the pavement and
Slowly, but surely we are piecing together the earliest versions of this game.
But what was the point of this moonlight state? Well, thanks to the presence of another item in the game's code
We can actually puzzle that out.
This one is called the Ceremony Sword of Flame. "When used, invade a world that has been enveloped in darkness.
Select this item to perform an invasion ceremony."
So therefore, instead of invasion being linked to your character's Embered state, it was actually once linked to your world state instead,
Making your world the arena to invade, not your character.
But there was one more ceremony sword and it was called Ceremony Sword Battle Royale Eclipse,
And before you freak out, don't worry:
They probably never intended to turn Dark Souls into Fortnite,
Even though I actually think a battle royale mode would work pretty well for Dark Souls.
No. In the past Battle Royale was simply a term that From Software used to describe their arena PvP modes, and
Perhaps this item would have invaded a bunch of friendly phantoms and enemy phantoms to sort of dish it out in your world.
But in the end the only world state we got was the Eclipse State. We could have had so many more,
Some of which are absolutely breathtaking.
This one is called Evening or Dusk, and it paints the world in these really nice sort of Twilight hues.
This one is called Moonlit Night, and it casts some serious shadows on the environment
With a moon sort of silhouetting your surroundings in a wonderfully cinematic way
Here in Irithyll, we see the moon which isn't too different to that of the final game.
But of course the world wasn't always devoid of light in these states
Because one of the most striking world states was this one with an enormous burning Sun overhead.
I kind of understand Solaire's obsession all of a sudden.
Then we have the Eclipse State which was a sort of blue variant with a ring of light around it. And finally we have an
Incredibly surreal scene that I never thought I would see in-game
So these
Dragon creatures were featured in one of the earliest leaked screenshots of Dark Souls 3, and
While this scene clearly inspired the scene that we got in the full game with the Pilgrim butterflies,
These worm dragon like creatures are pretty different.
They even cast shadows upon the ground which gives you a real sense that they're actually up there, above you.
Imagine if Dark Souls had a scene like this in game where the Dragons returns to the world.
This is the sort of thing that makes me hope that they'll get to Dark Souls 4 one day
Because it's clear that they have so many unused ideas
just waiting in the wings. Many of these ideas actually had to do with the concept of the past and
time travel. There actually is a time of day filter called the Past in Dark Souls 3, which gives a sort of
Grayscale look to the environment, and it's very very similar to what you would have experienced in Dark Souls 2's memory trips.
Lance, who discovered all this,
Points out that every area that's currently accessible does have a past filter applied to it,
And imagine how good it would be for the story of the game if we could sort of
See what the world was like in the past and see what changed in the future.
Speaking of the past the Dark Souls 2's original story actually used to be based around the concept of time travel and
No Soulsborne game has more cut content than Dark Souls 2.
So this was stated in the design works, but Dark Souls 2 actually had a really really troubled development.
About halfway through From Software thought that it was best to overhaul the entire game,
Which left behind a lot of old assets that originally had very different purposes. Luckily,
Echoes of the old game still remain in the files, and
Thanks to the work of Sanadsk and Lokey to translate, we get a rare glimpse into what the previous plot of Dark Souls 2
was going to be. Put simply, time travel was at the core of the story, and what you're seeing on screen now is a
Recreation of a very important scholar character named Vel Derek (?) who
Was obsessed with a powerful artifact called The Pendulum of Time.
Those amongst you with great memories will remember that this blue
Frozen globe was actually involved in some of the earliest marketing materials for the game,
But nothing about its design actually ended up making it through to the final game.
That is except for the dialogue of the scholar which was hidden deep within the game's files.
Vel Derek (?) says that to activate the Pendulum, we would have had to find two things.
First, we have to find the Dragon's Jewel, which was a rare gem that dwells within the womb of an ancient dragon,
Which is probably related to the ancient dragon we fight in the Dragon Shrine.
And second, to get the Pendulum to work, we needed to find the Drop of Time, and this one's really interesting.
So the Drop of Time was rumored to have been discovered by a miner who dug deep below a village that
Ended up being destroyed by demons. And apparently when he dug below the water there opened up a hole in space and time,
Teleporting the miner to a different location far above ground.
Does that remind you of anything?
Honestly, this sounds borderline identical to the ruined city cutscene that's seen in the opening, especially since there's water,
There's a giant hole in the ground,
It teleports us to a place above ground in a different time, and
You even see the city untouched by time in the reflection of the water.
So once you put the Pendulum of Time together with the Drop of Time and the Dragon Gem,
This presumably would have led us to another character who is discovered within Dark Souls 2's files,
The child version of the Emerald Herald. This might be the cutest character to ever grace the Souls series.
The Emerald Herald, in case you've forgotten, was half-dragon and she was half-human, and
She gives you the aged feather which apparently was an item from her childhood
That she looked at and with it she conjured up a world of endless possibilities.
The way that she gives our character this item in the opening cutscene is
Honestly kind of heart-wrenching,
Almost as if she's imploring us to sort of remember her, as if they completely filled out her story,
We actually would have gone back in time and have known her when she was still a child.
You can check out Senadsk's video on the topic for more.
In recent years even Bloodborne has been dug into which is a
Notoriously difficult task as there's no PC version for the game. Nevertheless, the community always finds a way.
This is an unseen animation from Bloodborne.
It was once used to crush a liver above your character,
For before there was cold blood there were fresh livers. There were large fresh livers,
There were very large fresh livers and so on, which could be crushed to give you some blood echoes on demand.
In our bodies, the liver can actually hold up to like 10% of the body's blood at any given time,
So it actually makes some sense for this item to be a realistic source of blood echoes
Although at the time the resource given was still called souls, and just like souls,
You could actually get the fresh livers of bosses as well
Which reveals the names of the original bosses that were planned to be in Bloodborne.
Some of the most interesting ones up on the screen.
Bloodborne even had a character editor at one point which was a way to reverse any horrible
Abominations that you regretted making at the start of the game. All you had to do was step up to this mirror
I bet most people haven't even noticed in the hunters dream and then just wear clothing to change appearance.
This never made it into the game, and I'm not really sure why because out of all the games
Being able to change your appearance in a dream actually make some sense.
But unlike the mirror I can see why they removed these.
These were called Warp Chairs and there was something for your character to sit in, fall asleep in and then
Drift off to the Hunter's Dream in. There was an assortment of chair designs, but no matter what they look like,
There's a problem with these because in some environments they barely even look out of place. So
Imagine being about to die in Bloodborne. You're out of blood vials,
You're desperately going up to random chairs and just hoping that it's a checkpoint.
Yeah, I can see why they removed it.
It's also possible that they simply moved this concept over to Micolash and his students who
all drift off to their nightmare in a really similar fashion.
And number 10
Finally is a personal favorite of mine and it's something that I actually wish I could have come up with an excuse to talk about
At the time because put simply, a
Dedicated group of Chalice Dungeon prospectors recently discovered a whole new
Labyrinth that had never been explored before and it had some fascinating bosses inside.
There's a full explanation in the description,
But put simply, this small team of dungeon prospectors managed to
Identify a glitch that causes only 32 out of
200 possible Chalice Dungeons to appear in its chalices which means that we've been locked out of ton of
Dungeons until now. So to get around this, they painstakingly
Rolled back their saves every single time that they wanted to
Explore a little bit further, and they kept doing this and mapping out the dungeons until they stumbled upon something
Really special. They found wandering bosses.
So these bosses actually appear simply, without fog gates or a giant health bar,
Just wandering through the dungeon. And according to their Reddit post, 5 have been found so far.
There's the Abhorrent Beast, there's the Blood Starved Beast, there's the Pthumerian Descendant,
There's the Pthumerian Elder, and there's the Watchdog of the Old Lords. And they're just wandering around
Like other aggroable enemies. For me personally, Chalice Dungeons have always been one of the most tedious things in the Soulsborne series,
So I respect the hell out of anyone who's capable of having the patience to explore hundreds of these dungeons and
Map them out. That's crazy.
And the fact that they managed to discover something in a three-year-old game without the use of digging into the data of the game is
Really, really impressive.
So in conclusion, all of these people have kept content for these games going long after many of us have dropped them,
So we should show them some support and check out their channels and the users below in the description because
There is some seriously good stuff down there.
Thank you all for watching and I'll see you next time and the next video is a Prepare to Cry. I promise.
(Subs done By A Trash Can, edited by DoctorAgon)