Dark Souls 3 Unseen Content - Archdragon Peak Alpha Design - Cut Boss Areas
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- čas přidán 28. 02. 2019
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Let's take a look at some never-before-seen, extremely early designs and concept assets for Dark Souls 3 Archdragon Peak. Earlier in development (in fact, even up to just a few months before the game was finished) the area was called "The Bridge", and today we can see some of the oldest designs, and even some completely cut areas. Please enjoy it! - Hry
![Oolacile is Darkroot in the past [Dark Souls DLC time-travel shown side-by-side]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0-DmxvELBE0/mqdefault.jpg)
So I mean... I didn't want to say anything in the actual video but... do you think it's meant to be an Archtree we go inside at the end? There's a cut enemy in Archdragon Peak called "Mother Dragon". Maybe she was someone we'd meet/fight in that room (It *is* specifically called "Boss" room)? Gives me conniptions.
Lance can you release the software for the freecam software for bloodborne because i cannot find any thing on it? Thank you.
Lance McDonald ❤️🇸🇦
The cut dragon boss was probably a prototype Midir...a lot of cut bosses ended up in the DLCs
It looks like it might have been a new archtree, perhaps this was all linked in some way to the "gods grave"? Archdragon peak might have originally been the bridge of pilgrimage?
Archtree was my first thought too, and makes the most amount of sense given that a lot of DS3's early development indicates things were meant to be a lot more final, people speculated this involved much more dragon and tree motifs as the world began to fade away. Fantastic work as usual Lance!
Nameless King: "Yes, you can stay here. Just clean up after yourselves."
Snakemen: *littering intensifies*
To have ruins you must first have buildings. A lot of developers like creating intact set pieces and afterwards wreck shop to get the ruined look
110% correct. Itd be actually kinda dumb doing it any other way
Frisk Reynolds yeah it's cool how they first made it unrruined and then made a ruined version to make sure that the lore is right. Like it's not just a fiction but an actual real world.
Cut content like this really makes you think about all the directions they could have gone with.
If this was the final version and you saw the actual current one, you'd say the exact same.
@@hatskeleton635 You say that as if it mattered. The fact that it's cut it's what matters.
Hat Skeleton! Well that is kinda obvious.
OwlOfInfamy I wish we had the Ashen Lake in the Ringed City dlc.
@@ArstotzkaEmpire what do you mean? The Ash Lake is in the main game, under the name Smouldering Lake.
of course the alpha / initial concept and idea for the HOME OF DRAGONS in a Souls game would be a friggin giant bridge
hahahaha that's a great point
Caerulean we could have seen a lot of things like for example the camps of the giants or where they came from or other cities and villiages in Lodran. Perhaps Londor and stuff.
You see, dragons, drakes and other overgrown lizards tend to inhabit bridges because its allows them to roast prey in confined spaces. Dragon Expert Ornestein Irwin would make many documentaries about their behaviour, habits and mating calls.
@@ArstotzkaEmpire for real. I mean, giants don't behave like animals, they're basically just large humans, even though the giants in the Souls games tend to look a bit more bizarre. But we haven't seen much of giant-sized architecture ingame. I would have liked the idea of a "giant settlement" where even chairs and such is larger.
We sorta got that with Anor Londo. The staircases have two sets, one normal sized and one larger for giants, and the elevators leading to Gwynevere's chamber are different sized for humans and giants too
This immediately made me think of that unused Bridge Key item:
"Key to the inner part of the bridge. Beyond the great bridge that couldn't possibly have been made by human hand, hides a mystery that has yet to be discovered. Some say that the realm of God awaits, but others…"
I thought of it too ... I'm wondering if it was originally a key to part of this area (being "The Bridge") but in the end... I think it might be related to the God Grave map. I'll need to think about it more.
I believe the "Broken Bridge" was the name of the giant, unnatural bridge which pass trought the Undead Settlement and Farron Keep
@@DebugMenu There was a post on reddit just after the god's grave stuff was discovered, very interesting, the guy was imagining the original playthrough of the alpha game, from god's grave he said you got access to the bridge, then carthus-archdragon peak.
BrahmaBull96 we might have been able to see the Ancient Dragon's shrine again or a similar place like this. But since the archdragon peak is made by humans and it's on the mountain it makes no sense to have the ancient dragon area there. However it would be cool to see it again. I wonder what happened to the Ashen Lake. I just think that after all the events in dark souls 1 it was probably completely destroyed by darkness.
BrahmaBull96 However, we see a little bit of the Great tree in the ringed city which is cool.
"whats the lore for these carvings, miyazaki?"
"oh we just reused assets from bloodborne lol"
This is legit how I imagine 50% of interpreted lore is actually explained.
Same can be said for Bloodborne about DS3 assets. They were created side by side. Production for DS3 began less than three months after that of Bloodborne.
@@TheStraightestWhitest that kind of explains the fact that Dark Souls 3 pales in comparison to Dark Souls 1. In the DS1 time Miyazaki only had to direct one game, but during DS3 and Bloodborne he had to juggle two.
@@JKSmith-qs2ii And they're both far superior to DS1. Apparently he managed.
@@JKSmith-qs2ii i disagree. bloodborne is FAR FAR better then any souls game. and i prefer dark souls 3 to 1. dark souls 1 is so slow to play sometimes that it gets boring every enemy is easy. dark souls 3 is faster and actually feels like your doing things that make you use your brain
*Vaati is Typing*
It's super good seeing this area in a sort of "repaired" fashion. It makes me appreciate the architecture much more! Great video as always :)
Makes me yearn for a Souls where things haven't gone to shit and everything is shiny
Sanadsk reminds me of DS2 graphics.
Sanadsk DS2 would look cool as as a nostalgic game if it came out on GameCube but for the game that came out in 2012 it was shit.
Just like Anor Londo. That place is absolutely huge and would have taken thousands of years to build.
Arstotzka Empire I don’t agree much on that, but I honestly do get why some really don’t like it. Some of it’s mechanics like agility and soul memory...weren’t designed or balanced very well. (Design is for soul memory, due to issues like not having your soul memory go down when you buy items or lose souls. Balance is for agility since any class will be forced to push so many points into it to be able to have enough I-frames in dodge rolls....it makes it way too punishing to either vets or newcomers, to the point where I say,”...did you play other souls games? No? Don’t play 2.”
I'd never thought about this while playing, but look at the amount of individual bricks on the final version's walls. Those aren't normal maps or POMs, those are individual meshes stuck on the wall. You can tell how much it improves the look of the area when compared to the flat textured walls of the alpha version of the map.
Theyre likely tessellated, not individually modeled, but youre right, the attention to detail is amazing. Source: dude just trust me :)
12:05 Umbrella was behind it all, of course!
They must have been around for a long long time.
Despite the 1500ish hours I've logged in DS3, I literally *just* noticed that the dragon body being prayed to in archdragon peak isn't a real dragon, but what appears to be a fully ascended dragon acolyte, it's arms seemingly up in prayer, leading the congregation
You go up the Archtree and the Bed of Chaos is there...waiting...
Thanks Miyazaki!
Fascinating. So much detail. The final room felt so ethereal and other worldly.
That boss room is very interesting
1Hazee probably Nameless king or a dragon. It would be cool if there was another dragon boss but we have only two dragons for each Souls game.
@Kadimus Baratheon facing numerous dragon bosses would be annoying because they might have similar movesets, they are making dragons not that many different fight styles
anyone else getting ringed city vibes from the vines and architecture?
👍
Probably why everything here was either scraped or redesigned.
I couldnt imagine wanting a second DLC, which served as a send off to the series, being similar to an in game (though hidden) area.
I think Its pretty amazing if you think of it, the changed the look of the Archdragon soo when you go to the Ringed City, it feels like a more fresh area to go in, still hate the fucking swamp though, I wanted to explore the city way more :/
@@justanotherblackwhitemicke7817 at least it didn't poison you. :P That being said, I'd also like to see more of the city. Maybe in some far future...
@@martinmortyry7444 I legit thought when arriving the church I was just half the journey, I saw the background buildings of the city and I was thinking, "now the good part starts" my disappointment was inmeansurable and theres nothing I can do about it :///
Well written script to go along with the excellent content as usual.
Thank you for all this unseen goodness
Damn, I wish we could have seen the final and completed version of that final boss room. The scale of the dead dragon against the mountain was fantastic, but I can't help but to wonder what in the world they would have put in that tree.
Since pontiff sullyvhan was meant to be the final boss it probably would've been meant for him
@@worlydee1712 he was WHAT?!! but pontiff is so easy how tf was he meant to be the final boss :0
@@Elutai he has a bunch of unused moves that would've made him harder, and he was originally knows as "old king of the eclipse"
@@Tulip_bip I googled after i saw this comment! :D also they nerfed him ALOT after the game came out to make him easier, I hadn’t played the game for the first time until 2019 so I just assumed he was always easy
@@Tulip_bip He doesn't have any unused moves. He has some older animations for his intro, but that's it
Seeing all this cut content makes me wish they had more time with the game (or that it was easy to restore and somehow mod it to the game).
The fact that there is a cut content in existence only shows that they got enough time to make game. You don't end up with adding scrapped concepts by extending development time. If something has been deleted, it's for the good reason. More is not always better and when they make a level they have to keep in mind pacing of the gameplay and purpose of the extra locations. Adding junk serves nothing.
If I worked at From I would pitch the idea of adding a 3d model viewer to the "Fire Fades Edition" so anyone could see things like this and it would make the purchase even more worth it
I never noticed how Byzantine this looks
At a couple of points in the video, Lance states that some assets were taken from Bloodborne, which came out in 2015.
I wonder, though... how different would our perspective of the connection between the universes of Bloodborne and Dark Souls be had these assets remained? Would we have poured over them, trying to make sense of why some long forgotten chapel's statues now sit on a peak, intended for the worship of dragonkind? Would we have drawn absurd connections? Would we have dismissed them merely as "recycled assets" and "lazy game design"?
Makes one think a bit, eh? A few simple assets might've defined how we interpret things in the game. Then again, maybe not.
Valve keeps reusing assets all the time lol
0:36 When an unfinished area in DS3 has the same lighting as a finished area in DS2
When an unfinished area had 5 years to be done and a finished game had 2
@@frawzch.048 Actually, DS3, DS2 and Bloodborne all had the same production time of 2 years. DS3 had the most polishing done and had its engine upgraded from Bloodborne for improved performance/graphics (which is very noticeable as it's the only game alongside remasters that actually ran well on release), but they did that solely because they couldn't release it alongside Bloodborne for the very obvious fact that it would hurt their sales.
Technically though, the game was just about finished in late 2015 already, a few months after Bloodborne was released. The reason DS2 sucked so much is because its first director, the inexperienced Shibuya, flew way too close to the sun. Only the best gaming software could handle DS2's graphics and animations. No console could even run it without crashing half a year before release. That's when Tanimura was sent over from Bloodborne and DS3 to basically fix the entire game. He had to dumb down an engine that was meant for so much more (different engine than DS3 and Bloodborne) just so the game could even run, and he went for all the essentials first, hence why it looked so uninspired. After all if you have six months to create a game, you're not gonna focus on detailing rooms. You're gonna focus on making it playable, period.
This is why everyone had the feeling that something was off about DS2, like there was more to it. There was. The engine was designed for it. It was just never used effectively.
Imagine what we could have had if Tanimura or Miyazaki had been in control from the start.
it's so wild how much detailed work FROM ends up discarding! I've often said, one could probably build an entire standalone game just from FROM scraps! Very interesting stuff Lance, thanks for your hard work!
Imagine taking bits and pieces of discarded content from a series that revels in being build from bits and pieces. I would be brilliant, if not nonsensical
@@Walamonga1313 that's not or less what they do though. Cut content from one game is used for later games. I'm personally looking at cut content from previous From Software games to see what kind of concepts we might see on Elden Ring
@@dr_ubo Elden Ring literally looks like an upgraded, open world form of DS3 cut content so far. Even the weapon arts are so damn similar. And I'm all there for it since I maintain DS3 to be the best game released in the entire gaming medium so far.
I really like the coloring of the alpha version. If nothing else, I wish they'd kept that.
Also - am I insane or does that boss room look like Oceiros'?
Would make sense, maybe in the early version you had to follow in the Kings footsteps to get to Arch Dragon Peak.
Amazing video. I love almost every single one of the videos you put out. That boss room though...if only we had gotten that.
Fantastic video Lance! Thanks for putting those out, much appreciated!
Next make a video with Anor Londo with the original sand textures in place of the snow
Ludovico Cammisa that's crazy.
Ludovico Cammisa snow looks way better in dark souls. It kinda shows that after all the burning flame the world become very cold and in the end the majority of the world is snowy mountains. From the dlc of the Ivory King we can see how the whole fucking world is in lava around his kingdom. Chaos probably destroyed some world. And after the darkness the world is almost dead and Lothric is the only place left.
Anor Londo has never been covered in sand, but originally it was supposed to be covered with ashes. I don't know what version of Dark Souls 3 Lance McDonald has access to but it it's past beta, there should be a map called セドリックテスト in the files with an earlier version of the buildings.
Awesome work!! It's so awesome to see all those awesome early designs that were cut
Definitely a cool video my man. Thanks so much for the upload!!
You are a blessing to this community, Lance! You've kept my interest in Dark Souls alive!
Another great video Lance, thank you as always for all your hard work on these!
Wasn't Archdragon Peak meant to be a part of the Carthus kingdom? Hence why the middle eastern theme of the area
I could see that tbh,look at what the man serpents are wearing it's very middle Eastern
@@abbashamdan2328 Sinclair Lore talked about it in his video about the original ds3 story...If I recall correctly, Archdragon Peak was the surface part of Carthus and it lead (through the catacombs) to a sand covered Anor Londo (one of the last levels of game)
@@ludovicocammisa9320 ohhh I'll be sure to check that out thanks man
@@abbashamdan2328 you're welcome man...It's a bit sad how the original plot, level design and boss placement made way more sense than what we actually got
@Distinctly - ST MD - Average oops, got them mixed up
legend Lance. Appreciate the explanation on the long-distance models in particular
Alpha looks like something out of Dark Souls 2.
@NimbleShadow
Not sure if intended, but *Oof*
Yeah, makes it seem like they released Ds2 with out finishing the textures.....
Space Ghost they did finish the textures in DS2.... they had to downgrade the game because it wouldn't run at a stable framerate.... even Scholar doesn't look comparable to what it used to look like.
@@logiclunacy606 And becauee the engine was unstable as hell.
@@notsogrand2837 the engine was actually better than the one they are using in other games. I noticed a lot of texture glitches, slow rendering, etc. in bloodborne and even more in dark souls 3.
Always surprised to see how much you're able to restore these! Great as usual!
WAIT A MINUTE I JUST REALISED THEY WERE GOING TO ADD THE DRAGON COVENANT HERE BUT DECIDED TO LEAVE IT
Very nice dude as always. Keep up the good work.
Great video! I love the old look of Archdragon peak. Surprising how much of it was already made at this stage.
It reminds me of the first painted world. A self-contained area designed early in development made optional in the end.
Dark Souls 3 already had such great presentation to me, and this series on cut content just takes that even further. I'm really amazed at everything you've been able to dig up and showcase, and my appreciation of the game feels deeper for having seen these videos.
That last area is just killer, what a shame it never made it in. The bizarre roots fit so well with the motif that appears everywhere in the rest of DS3 (except, ironically, the final ArchDragon Peak). I wish the Design Works had had an interview so we could've at least seen what they planned to do with all of this.
Looking forward to the next one.
As always, thanks you for you hard work !
You. Are. A wonderful. Person.
Thank you SO MUCH for your efforts! I have a lot of fun watching your videos, Thank you Lance!
Yooo, havnt seen anything "new" about ds3 in years! Loved finding this. I was going for a climax and you delivered! Subscribed. Seeing the presence of an arch-tree in ds3 made me very happy. Even tho it was probly a damnable erd tree.
I would just like to say i get verbally excited whenever one of your videos shows up in my notifications!
Great video! I love seeing what they was thinking of doing with these games 😊😁
Awesome job as usual Lance. Really love you’re content.
That tree/boss room kind of reminded me of the great hollow from DS1. Maybe something to do with the Everlasting Dragon that’s in Ash Lake after the hollow section.
Excellent video, can't wait to see you tearing apart the world of Sekiro!
Actually tree branches in the boss area are most likely a reference to the Bed of Chaos. It seems like the boss was originally meant to be related to the Chaos and/or the Witch of Izalith
So many times this game has left me completely awestruck
More of this stuff, and I will forsure subscribe! It was really cool to see!
Thanks for showing us this stuff!
I'm glad that we never had to experience that (Unnamed Asset) area. Because screw having to face the chain axe snakemen on those switchback pathways!
nice video
you covered a lot of details
Happy one year anniversary to your best video!
Great video (as always)!!
I love this channel, this stuff is fascinating
awesome vid!
Woah, colors in DS3 that aren't washed out?!
I'm amazed.
Seriously though it looks really good, thanks for that video.
Man...this makes me appreciate the level of detail that From puts in their games so much more. I know it's an alpha build but still, those assets look like a CS Source map at best without the attention that is given to them in the end.
There aren't many channels I click as fast as I click these.
Thanks for making these man!
Thank you for your work!
Just a guess but
I think in the beginning they had “nameless king” boss fight on the bridge as the first boss, guarding the dragon fight that would have taken place in the big arena. Through the whole map the second boss / dragon would have showed up and made your live worse till you kill em in the end. Due to time restraints they cut it short, final dragon boss got turned in to two smaller fights and nameless king became the main area boss.
(I also think that oceiros the consumed / mad king, his son and hawkwood had something to do with the final battle or the area)
Here’s where it gets interesting - they really liked the idea of having a dragon chase the player, that’s why they put it in the dlc as darkeater midir.
It’s always sad to see games like this, a world so rich in design but the story gets cut short due to restraints. I really love the world of dark souls, part III just shows, even if you have a godlike director, a grandios setting, a gifted developer team and a good publisher, in the end you have to release a finished product, everybody has to obey the budged / release date.
You can’t understand the story of dark souls without interpreting, I stopped that a while ago since what they though of in the beginning is not what got realized in the end. That’s just how it is in life, if you have a big project with many different people working on it, you will end up with some version of your vision, not the vision itself.
Just makes you think and hope, what would be if those guys had one more shot a developing a DS game, even more funding than DS3, no time limit or release date and maybe a timeline from start to finish, documenting from intention to realization...
Maybe in another world
That's the thing I don't get. FromSoft are one of the few devs (like naught Dog or Rockstar) imo that should be able to cut their own checks. So what/who was holding them back? After how DS1's late stage game was so compromised it surprises me the studio (and Miyazaki) wouldn't have wanted to see the game (series) out properly. I recognize all things have limitiations (financial, time, tech) but I'm genuinely surprised Dark Souls wouldn't have had a bit more freedom.
I can't say I'm overly fussed because I love what we got and all these new assets and cut content just reminds me how really all I want is more DS.
I subbed because these are really fun videos to watch so good job dude 👍
Still awesome to see your discoveries !
I love that "Izalith concept" in the end. Oh god, why this version is so badass?
THIRTEEN MINUTE VIDEO ABOUT DIFFERENT STAIRS AND HAND RAILS AWWW YEA
I recently discovered this channel and ... oh boy... I am so happy that I did
Looks like a prototype Oceiros boss room. I wonder if you were meant to fight him here since he was in the process of becoming a dragon.
you do a great job of showing this stuff off. most people would just skip over stuff and move on when you'd want a better look at a certain thing. nice job man :P
Thx for sharing!
The dancer's music really works if you want to speak over it cause it's not full of energy and someone can still pay attention, great choice !!!!
Great work lance! 👌
Well done once again xD I'll share this on my fb page
I love you for doing this
Thank you Lance, very cool!
I wonder if it’s possible to mod this area into DS3... it’d be awesome to have a modded “Beta DS3” that allows us to play with Beta content
i always find that concept Archtree on top of Archdragon Peak is great thing to see
Detailed, utterly beautiful art. The Bridge is a much more ominous name too. My favorite area in the game.
Also note, the collapsed floor building has signs of fire damage, maybe a dragon/the wyvern we fight in the main game did that?
I would have loved to see what boss they dropped from that area, thank you for the video I love seeing your work on the alpha stuff no matter the game.
Great work!
Amazing that they'd put so much effort and detail on to something that no one was going to see in-game.
I would hazard a guess that the final boss room would have been an attempt to grow a new arch tree, the idea likely being that the arch trees are a part of the everlasting dragon's life cycle or that they are critical to a healthy environment for the dragons, that said the bridge at the time may have had no lore significance in relationship with dragons so this could all be hot air.
The nature of how concepts like this are assembled into whole games makes me think lothric was going to be quite a bit more like lordran in miyazaki's early mental image of the game in that the new kingdom of lothric would have been built on the old kingdom of carthus, on top of whatever came before that and so on until we go below the tops of the archtrees and find ruins of the old world and anor londo, lothric being 3 different heights new middle age and age of conquest then the bridge out of lothric where the wyvern fight happened and broke the bridge in/before D3 would have been made by the carthusians, below that would be the carthus catacombs but likely a brief interlude to what became the swamp and cathedral, below the resting place of the dead would have been a helscape and that became the demon ruins, I think there were likely supposed to be multiple downward paths underneath lothric to old fallen kingdoms, actually fallen as in sinking, carthus is below, yohrm's civilization is below, anor londo having once been atop the higest peaks in the caldera of a great volcano is now certainly lower, layer wise it's probably about the same height as the bridge into lothric. I think miyazaki had a theme of sinking for D3, if that's also the case it's worth noting that what causes the world to move and shift is the arch trees which seem to be coordinating, I think the archtrees want their old uneventful environment back and although extremely slowly most of the time are involved in pushing the things atop their branches to the edge of the "world", this is probably just the edge of the arch trees forest, and actively sinking certain things between the branches down to the base of the archtrees and then using their roots to force them under. I don't know what rules govern that exactly but I get the feeling izalith was not built in the lava and that it was sunken by the trees, I think the trees may want to return the lord souls to the soil.
The boss fight could have just been a proto cursed greatwood that had a weird boss fight concept., instead of fighting the tree directly you fight the cursed objects or roots then shove them up the trees ass from that high point.
lts amazing how you can still find all this stuff, its also amazing how YT only recommended this 23 hours later lmao!
I've been waiting for this one ;)
That last room kind of reminds me of the old demon king boss room
That boss room looks amazing.
These are always so cool
I honestly prefer the majority of the alpha stuff that boss room reminded me of demon souls great content as always
It does have a Demon's Souls feel
This is cool. You make good videos.
Wonderful stuff :)
11:20 "...a boss room inside a colossal tree"
Fromsoft was clealry testing ideas for Elden Ring, and for Erdtree arena.
1:10 reminds me of the statues outside of the O&S fight. Believe me, I got plenty of time looking at them :(
I also want to point out the similarities between that boss room and the oceiros room. This could have possibly been the original room for him, or with vaati’s new video’s info, the room where you would’ve fought what became Iudex Gundyr.
That's a very unique area to discard.. and the tree root boss room.. WOW @_@
Lance, real shit bro I fucks with you a lot bro I can’t believe I didn’t subscribe when I first saw your videos so long ago keep it up
Imagine if From Software was actually allowed to finish a game without pressure from their publishers.
I would love to see a ds from them that is actually finished
You're saying as if Bandai Namco is Konami, who don't deserve to be called a Japanese company considering most of Japan is a free land, not a scumbag nation like Konami is.
That’s how you end up like Valve, who can’t make games because they constantly delete everything (including basically finished games) because they don’t like it and there’s zero pressure to make a product.
@@PhoenixPalmer88 but then every game they release is a banger, and is perfectly designed
@@Tulip_bip Ehhhh back in the day, sure. Now they’re pretty on par, all 2 of them. Artifact was an absolute flop, HLAlyx is one of my personal favorites but held back by playing it too safe (I think Boneworks was a fantastic vision of a VR Half Life), up to you if you want to count CS2 yet but it’s got some good and bad, really happy to see Valve slightly more communicative about this one though. TF2 is more or less support dead besides what Valve can have the community do for them, Portal 3 is pretty much having it’s writer strongarmed out of doing it by developers. And then L4D3/HL3 have been canceled time and time again.
Ayee he's back
The Alpha version have a dark souls 2 vibe
Because the lighting sucks?
@@noprz no, because it looks unfinished. 🤔
Bgm is so beautiful.
I wish archdragon peak had more vegetation like the alpha wyvern boss room, and it would work to the areas favor if the bricks were the more saturated color that they are in the alpha renders. A shame they changed it