Priscilla: "Thou must returneth whence thou came."
"This land is peaceful, its inhabitants kind"
"But thou dost not belong."
Dark Souls 3 The Ashes of Ariandel drops on October 25th
And until then, I think you'll be impressed
With how much we can glean from a two minute trailer
The painted world of Ariamis was one of the most intricate late designed levels of Dark Souls 1
Accessed via a painting
Protected by the Painting Gardians, who
Have guarded the painting of Ariamis for so long
That their reason for doing so
Has long since past from memory
And Ariamis always was known to be a person
And he created this world with a purpose
Priscilla: "Didst thou not see why Ariamis created this world?"
The painted world is home to the unwanted
To the exiled and to the forlorn
"If you are like us another forlorn soul"
"With no place to call your own"
This piece of dialogue references two things
First, it references the Forlorn Set of Dark Souls 2
Which describes the forlorn invaders as
People without a world to call their own
Second, the other beings it could be referring to are
The Corvians, described by the Storyteller's Staff as
"Wretched beings with no place to go"
"Sharing tales of the Painted World to forlorn souls."
So already you're seeing a lot of characters from previous games mentioned here
And we talked about the Corvians in this video
We talked a lot about Velka and her crow symbology in this one
And I expect to see both related to this boss
This giant, violent womanly creature with a shawl of black feathers
In the concept art, it's even tied to a chair
Nailed to the ground
And in the video it's flagellating itself
While bent over this giant Lord vessel like bowl
Surrounding it are flammable wooden pillars
Which are reminiscent of those found in Lothric
And you probably learnt a new word, I know I did
Flagellation is a religious practice
Involving the mortification of one's own flesh
It's this act that seeks to put to death
One's sinful nature, and
It helps to separate oneself from your wordly desires
This reminds me of the mask of Velka's followers in Dark Souls 1, which
And I quote again:
"Symbolises their separation from worldly desires"
So flagellating yourself is very much related to Velka
And this boss has the crow feathers which is also related to her
Another slightly more tame example of mortification of flesh
Is the prostration pose, which is
This pose where you lower yourself to the ground submissively
And you kneel piously
The character in the trailer, he does this here
In the Cathedral of the Deep
Which leads me to believe that this NPC
Is likely the entrance point to the DLC
This man is offering us a beige and red sliver of canvas
Which is the exact same colour tone as the painting this girl sits at
And, as you know, touching the painting in Dark Souls 1
Was how we entered it, so
It looks like he's offering us a sliver of the painting also
And it makes a great deal of sense
For the painting to be related to the Cathedral of the Deep
For it was Aldrich who dreamt up the Miracle Lifehunt Scythe
Where he envisioned a pale girl in hiding
It should be pretty obvious who he envisioned
And it's his Deacons who surround the building below Yorshka
Where the original painting was once contained
And it's his Cathedral which makes the perfect early game entrance to the DLC
Not to mention this sword which is identical to the Candlesticks of the Deacons
A good question for this trailer is why does the man say:
"The ashes have come, at last."
I think it's possible he's talking about us, for
We are the unkindled ash, and
We represent the fact that
The fire has been linked so many times
That we are born from the ashes of the Undead who linked it
And, perhaps, our ash setting foot in the Painted World
Is a significant event
Or perhaps he's just talking about the actual Ashes of Ariandel
Which is something we don't know about yet
As the character arrives in the Painted World
Notice that the place looks to be
In better shape than in Dark Souls 1
Hell, the architecture even looks drastically different
The bridge is also unbroken, torches are lit
The main building isn't ruined at all and
There's even slivers of green at the end of the bridge
But so much is identical about this scene, though, and
It makes me wonder, how will they be putting a twist on this area?
How, from a story point of view at least,
Do you justify recycling the same zone?
My best guess is that this could be the Painted World of Ariandel
Not the world that Ariamis painted later
What if we are exploring the earlier painting of the world
Before it crumbled to ashes
And the painting of Ariamis is of the ruins it became?
I just really want to know what the architecture inside will look like
Look at this underground room for example
Doesn't it just look like the place you fought the Wheels Skeletons in Dark Souls 1?
I could be wrong about this but there even seems to be the wheel lever
That we turned to rotate the statue
All that time ago in Dark Souls 1, and
This isn't a lever that's seen in any other part of Dark Souls 3, so...
But while we're speculating, let's move towards
The old bosses that were depicted in this trailer
At first, I thought that this part of the trailer with the old bosses
Was just cinematic filler
I thought that From Software didn't give Namco enough b-roll
To make their trailer, but
Really, all of these bosses are related
Literally, all are a part of the royal bloodline, in some way
Oceiros is husband to Queen Gwynevere
Who mothered Lothric and Lorian
And who is also sister to the Nameless King
And sister to Gwyndolin
Who Aldrich is consuming
And, apart from the bloodline stuff,
The Nameless King would certainly qualify as a forlorn exile
Oceiros appears to have bred a dragon crossbreed
Like Priscilla, and
Aldrich, of course, is the one who
Dreamt of the pale girl with Lifehunt Scythe
Who lies in hiding
Immediately following these clips is what looks like
A short cutscene, based on the camera angle
Where a character wearing Cornyx's set is
Exorcised of several yellow soul sprites in the Untended Graves
Curiously, his hand is burning like when it does when you link the fire
Maybe this is a new ending?
It doesn't look like he's casting a spell
But he is wearing Cornyx's set
So maybe they're implying that this is related to pyromancy?
I'm just rampant speculating, but it's interesting
In terms of gameplay addition, this image
Confirms the return of the PVP arena
As we see four players face off in the area we fought the Soul of Cinder
In terms of new spells,
You know I've gone on in the past about how spells
Need to be more than just simple projectiles that do
Varying amounts of damage at varying speeds
And at least two of the new spells in the DLC
Do look interesting
This disc of light boomerang thing is great because
It requires you to position your character appropriately
To get a hit on the bounce back
And this frost sorcery could be interesting if
It actually slows our opponent and
Adds a element of crowd control into the magic system
Which I think it's all he needs
So colour me tentatively hyped for the new spells
But bear in mind, I've never actually been impressed with the spells they've added to a Soul game so...
The only new weapon seen is this axe
With the firestorm AoE effect
There this scimitar with a fairly standard spin weapon art
And of course the Candlestick Sword
That may or may not be buffing itself
With a type of colourless flame
Also, is there going to be a new torch
Added with this weapon art? Looks like it
New enemies include a wolf pack
There's the fly creatures
This stag-helmed warrior
A more deformed version of the Crow men
And you might have missed this but
In the blizzard are the silhouettes of dark-haired tree women
With small fires lit at the end of their branches
And to end the video, I'm going to pose to you
What I think are the biggest curiosities in the trailer
And in the DLC to come
First, the identity of this creature
I've seen speculation that it's Gwynevere
And the evidence for that is that it's clutching
A giant Lord Vessel like structure
And that it makes some sense for Gwynevere to have
Given up and been drawn into the Painted World
I've seen speculation that it's Velka
And I've mentioned before that that holds merit because
Of the crow symbology and
Because of the theme of self-mortification
That's brought up in the Black Set
What's more likely, though, than either of those two, I'd say
Is that it's some unnamed being
A simple Corvian perhaps, and it's even possible that
It's a man, not a woman,
Because the official Dark Souls Facebook page
Has labelled this as a man
However, I'm pretty sure that this page is run
By a simple marketing team, so
I'm not going to put too much faith in their captions
Second, I want to know who the man is who brings us to this world
Is it Ariamis?
Is Ariandel the female depicted upon the painter's ladder?
Is it her world, or is it still Ariamis's?
And this piece of narration is interesting:
"Then show my Lady flame"
Why does she need to be shown flame?
Does she want to see our flame so she can paint a new vision perhaps?
And what are the Ashes of Ariandel?
In Souls, ashes are remains, so
I'm not too sure that Ariandel's fate is a happy one
Is this wolf Sif?
It certainly seems larger than the other wolves
Look at the trees for comparison
But Sif has no real connections to this place
And most importantly
Why does the boss attack us with Estus soup?
Time will tell
And by the way remember, I recently did a lot of postulating on
How I thought the two most likely themes for the DLC would be
The Angels of Lothric of the Hollows of Londor
And you can see these videos here
But I couldn't be happier that they seem to be throwing us
A sort of curve ball, as usual, and
They're hitting us with something we didn't quite expect to see
And it's not too late to talk about the Angels of the Hollows
This DLC could still answer some of those questions
Maybe some answers about Gwynevere's royal family
Exist in the Painted World, or
Maybe we'll learn about the significance of Velka
Through the crow symbology or something like that
So, on October 25th,
Two months from now, I hope you make
This channel the place to be, but
Until then, let's get into some "Prepare to Cry"
Thanks for watching guys