Was Dark Souls' Blighttown a Mistake? | Design Delve
Vložit
- čas přidán 12. 06. 2024
- In this episode of Design Delve, J & Ludo dive deep into the depravity of Blighttown to ask the question... Was it all a mistake?
Support us on Patreon: / secondwindgroup
Second Wind Merch Store: sharkrobot.com/collections/se...
Music used in order of appearance:
The Notebooks - Stray OST
The Abyss - HLD OST
Checking In - Celeste OST
The Notebooks - Stray OST
Reflection - Hollow Knight OST
Majula - DS2 OST
White Palace - Hollow Knight OST
Hornet - Hollow Knight OST
Dirtmouth - Hollow Knight OST
Nosk - Hollow Knight OST
Resurrections - Celeste OST
Reflection - Celeste OST - Hry
Really hope you guys enjoyed this episode! If you'd like to see me & Ludo do more level design breakdowns like this in the future let us know down bellow!
Also we have no begun paying salaries at Second Wind after 3 months of not taking pay to build up our war chest so now more than ever your support on Patreon means the world to us. Thank you all
Since you're apropos to a good puzzle game breakdown, an interesting one might be a look at Portal, or more specifically what makes Portal the model every first person puzzle game has been trying to emulate since it came out. That, or why the environmental levels in Portal 2 seem so much harder than the regular puzzles?
I'd love to see your thoughts on the merits (or lack thereof) in games that string map tiles to form larger maps out of RNG. Warframe does this for example.
❤❤❤❤❤
Awesome video, can tell you're passionate about this topic, would like to see you compare its design to DS2 & DS3 versions (The Gutter & Farron respectively) as "the swamp level" has returned in every souls title to date and 3ach team approached it differently with lighting and vantage points/verticality being handled very differently I feel ^^
I would love to see your thoughts on the clockwork mansion from Dishonored 2. It is genuinely one of the most unique and interesting levels I have played in a modern video game and I think it is one of the best examples I have seen of a game developer using level design as a way of teaching the player most fun way to play. Yes, you can go through Dishonored 2 quite linearly like an action game, but the clockwork mansion introduces a new enemy type that is very difficult to face in open combat, encouraging the player to explore different ways to approach the game, and in the process discovering how cathartically Dishonored 2 rewards creative thinking by the player.
Blighttown became far more tolerable on hardware that could run it faster than 3 FPS.
Yeah when it was lagtown the layout and enemies made it a horrendous experience. After the update the area still tends to run slower than the rest of the game, but it became at least tolerable, and in a sense I've started to appreciate what it does after so many playthroughs
Rusted iron ring
Pretty much. It would likely have never been a pleasant place or fondly remembered, but it probably wouldn't have built up nearly so much negative reputation without the atrocious performance issues.
I feel like everyone over exaggerates how bad blightown ran. I remember noticing the frame drop when I played the original on PS3 but it was never unplayable by any means.
@@uberculex: Maybe, never played it on original hardware myself, but I've heard tell that it was even worse on launch before a few patch updates lessened the lag. Also, things like temperature and humidity can affect how well hardware performs, so it might have been worse for some people depending on where they live.
I'm surprised that Poison and Toxic being different status effects didn't merit a mention here because that's a particularly memorable bit of cruel design
ITS SO DUMB!!
Good lord, Toxic infliction in a level already filled with Poison was such a garbage idea.
He literally gets this wrong in the video at 9:36, saying they "drop the poison resistant moss" without noting that they give you the wrong type of moss to cure Toxic
. Sometimes they do drop the blooming purple moss, but yeah, they usually just drop the regular purple moss.
@@ShinxBOOM247 I think they can drop the blooming moss, but it's been some years since I played now..
The best part of Blight Town is when you leave Blight Town. I'm not trying to be facetious either. When I entered The Depths, I didn't know if I was going to be able to beat the game. When I left Blight Town I knew I would get to the end.
Funny, Ornstein and Smough is usually the point where people know if they're going to finish the game or not.
Same. I just got through Blight Town and defeated Spider Mommy on my second try, then decided to try and topple Relentless Discharge because nothing could scare me after Blight Town.
@@cheezemonkeyeater I'd say that O&S is the main boss fight difficulty spike & Blighttown is the main level navigation difficulty spike.
It also helps that leaving Blighttown through Valley of Drakes (and entering it for that matter) is so much easier than it is through Depths. I never go through the Depths entrance anymore since the trip down the waterwheel is so much better than the tightrope bridges and jank platforms
@@cheezemonkeyeaterYou can tell if you have the skill to beat the game far earlier than that. If you can beat the Gargoyles you will be able to eventually get through everything else
From the sound of it, he never found the Bonfire mid-way through Blight Town.
Why would anyone NOT skip upper Blighttown? I have never went through that fresh hell again after my very first DS1 playthrough.
The only reason why anyone would want to set foot on there is the Power Within pyromancy, but frankly they can keep it.
I only went that way because it was the only direction I found, because the Valley of Drakes kept handing my ass to me.
Probably because he entered from Valley of Drakes. That route skips the bonfire up there. Unless you're like me on my first playthrough, and you decide to climb up the other side after reaching the bottom, only to be met with a locked door to the Depths at the end of that brutal climb. Oops.
@@XescoPicas Or the Iaito that's found in Upper Blighttown.
@@XescoPicas Because they played the game normally instead of following a guide the first time. Most people go that way because it's the way the game takes you
The best part of Blighttown was the feeling of isolation, being so far from Firelink Shrine with seemingly no way back. It was such an oppressive area that conquering it and leaving it for the first time was one of my favorite moments in gaming.
And that it also spits you out right near firelink shrine **chef's kiss**
@@MrWhygodwhy Yes, after all the oppression of Blighttown, being able to just walk right back in to Firelink Shrine is indeed a chef's kiss moment.
I wouldn't call that the "Back entrance" to Blight Town. I'd call it the exit. Assuming the Devs want you to experience all of the game, and considering the scaling of the enemies, I would say going through the Depths is the intended entrance, and leaving through the Valley of the Drakes is the intended exit. Especially as going back up that way brings you right back to the Undead Parish and the entrance to Sen's Fortress. With a Blacksmith right there to upgrade your gear before heading inside.
And if you take the depths route to blight town you also should then have access to the merchant lady in the tunnel who sells purple moss clumps. So the route he's using in the video is probably the hardest route to take for a first playthrough.
It is the intended route, definitely, but it's not the most intuitive route. Nothing about the level design, progression, or the key you need point back at the door by Solaire.
This is unusual, seeing as most other points in the game give you some thread to follow to the intended route. I'd put this scavenger hunt on par with the closing hours of Souls 2, where you have to hunt down King's Ring doors and giant trees to make the final boss appear. Fine if you already know the route, needlessly needle-in-haystack otherwise.
i never looked at it as a entrance and exit but just 2 entrances.
@@psychicbeagle5106 it depends how much you explore, I guess. If you find the locked door, then a key soon after, it sort of points you back to the door, but it's not super intuitive, what with everything else there going on.
@@psychicbeagle5106It isn't unintuitive I would say. Part of the loop at this point is running through the forest region where you end up back at undeadberg through a locked door you couldn't previously move through. Considering you find a few locked doors in Ublndeadberg, To me, this signaled that I should re-explore the area a bit and see if I can get anywhere new. Structured like this, the inspiration from Metroidvania's becomes clear as this creates a 'home base' of the first few areas in a similar way Super Metroid did.
While you do have to explore to find it, I feel the breadcrumb trail is definitely there, and definitely draws you in that direction more than the Valley of Drakes, which is equally obscured and is a higher level area than Blighttown is. The game has already taught you with the graveyard that sometimes areas are just too high a level, so if you meet a lot of resistance moving through an area (attacks do little damage, you stagger and die really quickly, etc.) then you have alreasy been trained to turn around and come back later.
10:28 it reminds me a lot with how RPG games will ask you if you want to retry a boss fight only to have the items you used up still be consumed, encouraging people to just restart from a checkpoint to get those items back
Yes! I just finished an LP of the original _System Shock_ where the player kept dropping saves every 30 seconds. Because while the game did make attempts to mitigate the consequences of dying, none of them could beat just being able to essentially hit the Undo button. And because if you die on a level you haven't unlocked the respawn chamber in yet, you literally just get a game over and have to reload your save anyway. And I found myself thinking "If only the game worked a little more like Souls, where you _can't_ manually save unless you're quitting, but dying _always_ sends you back to the last checkpoint you hit and it's not hard to make up for whatever resources you blew on the last attempt."
Don't forget Blighttown also features a poison resistant armor set before you reach the swamp, and a poison-resistant shield in the Depths.
Poison immune shield even. You can completely block all the toxic darts with the Spider Shield in DS1, so long as you face the right direction. Once you have that, Blighttown is easy peasy.
Though it never made sense to me that a shield would need specific poison resistance to block the poison from darts in the first place.
I mean, the dart itself is the poison delivery method. As long as the darts themselves don't punch through your shield, which should be the explicit, in-game logic case for any 100% physical resistance shield, that should be the end of the poison right there. No further poison/toxic resistance needed because the poison was stopped along with whatever physical attack it was riding on.
@@Alloveck I suppose it could be toxic fumes and the coating/magic on the shield absorbs it.
@@MrWhygodwhy Maybe, but poison clouds aren't the point of darts. If the enemies were throwing some sort of poison smoke bombs, or maybe poison water balloons, or anything about dispersal rather than direct poison injection though, then sure, poison resistance would totally make sense as being necessary.
And the poison-resistant Spider Shield is also available in the Valley of the Drakes, so there's an opportunity to get it on either route.
If nothing else, it's a memorable level~ just not always for the right reasons.
Absolutely, everyone remembers and talks about Blighttown. I don't see much discussion about the intricacies of the Valley of Drakes.
The bonfire higher up that he didnt even mention was what made me truly love this game. Blighttown is such an unrelenting hellscape but that bonfire is a godly reprieve from the madness. You're crushingly alone, but that bonfire is your tiny bubble of safety, a literal light in the darkness. No other game has elicited the same feeling for me
Yep. Really every bonfire in that game felt like that to me. It wasn't as pronounced in the subsequent games.
@@divinecomedian2 That's because the later games made bonfires way more frequent, so you checkpointed a lot more often, taken to its extreme in Elden Ring where there are statues right before most bosses that soft save for you without even needing to touch or see them.
And you get doggy friends near that bonfire too!
Even the sound of the bonfires is calming. And that initial sound affect when lighting one is so glorious.
@@divinecomedian2DS1 is special precisely because it wasn't dopamine stimulator like other games. It didn't feel like the game was catering to the player. No other game was able to elicit the feeling of despair as well as ds1, blighttown in particular. And if games are to be taken seriously as art they must be capable of producing emotions other than ecstasy or feeling of triumph and accomplishment
2:20 There’s a few things overlooked here about the master key:
1: The master key has a 3rd obtaining method and thats picking “Thief” as your starting class.
2: Buying the master key from Domhnall is mainly for those who want to NG+ with the key as it is one of the only items to not reset when defeating the final boss.
Sounds like most folks wouldn’t know that on the account of them being swayed _away_ from thief stats wise
@@kitestar Yea it really is an obscure thing but the actual class description does at least state "Has the master key", but even then a lot of people have no idea. Another souls youtuber by the name of "Ymfah" had a running joke from one of his runs from a large number of comments going 'Master key + Black firebombs hmm??" cause he picked thief with the starting gift of the firebombs to kill the asylum demon.
More importantly, you don't need the master key for that door. The intended key is at the top of the elevators, making that door an intended exit, not just a master key only shortcut
I think master key in general was designed for replaying players. A new player getting access to master key by playing as a thief actually misses out on the the exploration as the easier path will mean you are heavily encouraged to take the shortcut. I think the issue is the game doesn't really tell you any of that.
@@SirKiller50 How do people don't know that? I didn't even play Dark Souls, and i know just from watching this video Oo
Maybe it's because I picked the key on my first playthrough, maybe it's because I found that hidden bonfire, maybe it's because I've only ever played the Remaster, and maybe it's because I only visited the Depths later to see what I missed, but Blighttown is one of the most hauntingly beautiful areas in any Fromsoft game, and I genuinely love it everytime I visit.
I vaguely remember the bonfire being much easier to find in the remaster, yes.
Blighttown adds so much to the game for me. Sure plenty of games have ostensibly huge areas, but descending the scaffolds of Blighttown actually lent a tangible hugeness to the world. Seeing the swamp below get closer and closer and closer genuinely made me feel like a tiny man crawling through the colossal skeleton of a omce great civilisation
I've always loved how the, like, second thing that the game makes you do after beating the Bell Gargoyles is going down, and down, and down, and down. From the Undead Burg, to the Lower Undead Burg, to the Depths, to Blighttown, to Quelaag's Domain. It certainly does wonders for an oppressive atmosphere.
The dart blowers did respawn in earlier versions. A later patch adjusted this specifically because it was too much.
Also the mosquitoes have a chance to drop poison curing moss as well.
And if you take the intended path through the Depths you get a poison blocking shield. the shortcut from Lower Undead Burg to Firelink Shrine houses the female Undead Merchant that sells the moss which she even pulls attention to by specifically talking about the moss she sells. Even if you go through Darkroot, the most common enemies there drop the moss too. Honestly there was a lot of stuff relating to the trek to and through Blighttown that he missed mentioning. He missed that the moss that the snipers are guaranteed to drop doesn't cure the toxic they inflict, just regular poison, and he didn't say anything about the bonfire on the bridge in upper Blighttown either.
I also believe that thinking about the Valley of the Drakes entrance to Blighttown as a "back entrance" is a mistake. It's intended to be, and for the vast majority of players without the Master Key functions as, the exit, not a secondary entrance. It also skips the entirety of upper Blighttown which he seemed to miss at some point in the video because he mentioned making it through there and still having to go through the rest of the area and showed a picture of the upper area.
Strange I don't remember it. I recently played an Xbox360 proto-souls version, where I installed the game without have internet so the updates didn't happen. But I don't remember them respawn but maybe I forgot about it. And no, I don't think the mosquirtoes ever drop any item, at least not in the remastered. You can get a lot of the purple moss and few of the purple blooming moss if you farm the trees in the forest.
@@RikiazGaming You can get this shield 3 times in one game, it's funny. It's also one of my favorite shields in form and function.
If you start Barbarian class you get one.
Can be found in depths as you say, right above the area with the giant rat.
But also if you go in the valley of the drakes, that bridge with many of the blue lizards, the armor set of the barbarian among the shield is there.
One thing he overlooks is how that the blowdart boys dont drop antidotes for their toxic darts. they only drop antidotes for poison.
Lot of great points about Blighttown but I want to talk about the path there. It's linear! The description on the basement key tells you where to use it, and if it weren't for one wall you could see the door to use it on from the spot you pick it up. There's also two sources of poison moss on your way, the first being in Darkroot which is right off the bonfire you would have used by Andre. So, linear path: you take the key across the dragon bridge, down into Lower Berg, fight the Capra for another key, and the door for that one is _immediately after the Capra_. Right beside that door is not only a shortcut back to Firelink, but a shop that also sells more moss.
The back door you mention is the **exit**, that's why the key for it is in Blighttown itself - and right beside the door itself too.
Oh shit, I am HYPE.
Worst take I've ever seen is that the framerate dip is intentional, to induce more panic.
I have never heard that take, sounds like a pretty crazy minority.
Most dark souls fans consider it an awful and unoptimized part, yknow, cos it is.
@@noelrobles6334 saying souls fans have scarlet brain rot MAYBE true. However, never have I heard anyone in the souls community defend 15FPSOrLess town by saying the frame rate was intentional; and I find it unlikely for that to change anytime soon.
I think you fell for a bit. Then again I remember hearing someone say that the loading frames of the original Resident Evil games where it loaded between camera angles added tension and made the game better so you might be right.
I doubt that's a sincere take. The people who defend Blightown (like me) know that it sucks to go through but that the stress is intentional and it adds to the game as a whole while also being the part that people least like doing. Bad framerate and performance is never a design choice
@@uberculex You could at least make the argument that RE intentionally planned around it's limitations since the fixed camera angles themselves were very much intentionally used for horror. Bad frame rate though? I doubt it.
One thing to note is those darts inflict the much more debilitating Toxic status effect, an effect that requires a different (and rarer) type of purple moss to cure.
Once I realized that being poisoned by the swamp was inevitable, and that it doesn't actually cause much damage, I stopped worrying about curing it. Blight Town became a lot easier.
One of my favorite areas in the series is an attempt to retry upper Blighttown, The Gutter in DS2. It takes the rickety, narrow, and chaotic layout of Blighttown. But it has easier to manage enemies, and it utilizes the torches mechanic brilliantly. The path to the exit isn't that hard to reach, if you know where to go. But it's pitch black until you light the torches, which are arranged in recognizable patterns and seen from anywhere.
Black Gultch is exponentially worse than lower Blighttown, though.
really? Sure the enemies in the black gulch could be incredibly annoying but it felt more navigable than blight town ever did with the bonfire at the start it's also pretty short. Plus once you learn what pools have enemies inside them and what statues to destroy the area really has a feeling of incremental progress
I just like blighttown more because it feels less videogamey.
@@appelofdoom8211 That is true, but the statues were also not really a fun mechanic. They were mostly just a nuisance and made the area less enjoyable. I wish the statues stayed broken on death, that would have fixed Black Gultch for me.
The gutter is lamer to me I don't like it. Upper BT is neat.
I found the Gutter to be a pretty unmemorable experience. I don't think it comes close to having the impact Blighttown did. Black Gulch, meanwhile, is tedious without being challenging in any meaningful way.
Not even in horror games have I experienced such intense dread as in the crawl through Depths and Blighttown.
From a conceptual point of view I love the idea of Blighttown. The first bell sends you up to a soaring tower which is closely connected to your "safe space" of Firelink Shrine. The second (if you take what I feel is intended to be the "default" route, i.e. not through Valley of the Drakes/Master Key) sends you down to Lower Undead Burg. Then further down to the Depths. Then further down first through the "top part" of Blighttown to the first bonfire half way to the bottom. Then even further down to the sewage sludge of the world above. (And potentially even further if you go down the Great Hollow.)
By this point you're a long, long, long way from Firelink, or Andre, or any other familiar beacon of safety. As you say - the point is being trapped and being forced forward to the encounter with Quelaag. Yes, the level geometry during the descent is questionable to say the least, the enemies are annoying, and the toxic blow dart dudes can suck an egg. And while the experience is painful, I feel that's partially the point of the game sending you ever further down to increasingly hostile and frustrating environments (the Rusted Iron Ring from the Asylum alleviates at least some frustration in the swamp). The torches highlighting the path down feel like a begrudging concession to offer some hope to the player.
After beating Quelaag, you can try to progress further - you get a tease of the Demon Ruins, but you will eventually be blocked by one of the gates locked until you receive the Lord Vessel. So the only way out is up. You find the key guarded by way too many toxic blow dart jerks, see the elevator leading up, and eventually - literally - light at the end of the tunnel. You find yourself in the Valley of the Drakes, find the door to the elevator and .... Firelink at last. By this point you will feel like you've crawled through shards of glass and barbed wire, through mud and fire, and earning every inch of progress with your blood. But you're home. It's the journey from Undead Church to Blighttown, but the relief will be so much greater, because you had to master this ordeal without an easy way back to your home base.
But yes, the mechanics and everything are all kinds of jank in the area - I kind of guess they looked at it and decided that it just reinforced the theme of increasing despair the further you go down. 😀
Well, at least that's what I think was the intention with the overall design of Blighttown, and I might very much be talking out of my behind here (it's not a sexual thing 😛 ).
You mentioned around 10 min that enemies normally respawn in DS1. But there are several enemies who don't respawn you will have encountered before you reach blight town. There's the channelors, the berenike Knight, the black knight, the armored boar from the top of my head.
Those are all beefy "miniboss" type enemies. The regular trash mobs all respawn. The guys with the blowguns are WAY more like trash mobs than they are like the armored boar or the black knights. Nobody familiar with DS1 up to that point or even Fromsoft games generally would have assumed that the blowgun guys are non-respawning.
Personally when the blowdart hollows didn't respawn I thanked the heavens, because they're not guaranteed to drop the Toxic-curing moss, and I already had plenty for regular poison from exploring Darkroot Garden. The less Toxic I have to see, the better.
Design Delve, where you learn about game design and learn new swear words like "Gigabitch." And I'm all for it.
Amen 😂
JM8 also dropped "turbofucked" in yesterday's Hunt Showdown stream. Just quality compound swears all around.
@@jaredthomas5637 All brought to you in part of our lovely Patreons. Without them, we'd be up shit creek without a paddle.
My guess is they eliminated the navigation question with torches because they realised the zone was a complete nightmare if you had to search where to go on top of trying to navigate the space mechanically.
It reminds me of Dishonored where the developers added quest markers near the end of production because they realised people were lost without them.
Blighttown isn't linear at all like OP says. There are tons of side paths that you would easily lose track of if the torches werent added.
I guess for those like me who played Demon's Souls first and were traumatized by the Valley of Defilement, facing Blight Town knowing what to expect wasn't all that bad. When I got to the place I made sure to stock up on purple moss and even found the shadow set, which the game graciously offers you early into Blight Town, so I actually enjoyed my time down there.
I thought blighttown was pretty rough, then I went back and played Demon Soul's and could see his inspiration being channeled a bit because that endless sea of poison and unknowing when it would end couldn't have been worse. At least blighttown had visibility when it would end, Demon's Souls Swamp of Sorrow was aptly named.
They also let you go to that area in Demon's Souls right after all the worlds were unlocked, and I definitely did go there very early and had a difficulty shock lol. Took a while before I convinced my gamer ego to just try the other worlds which turned out to be much easier since they kind of expected you to go to that world last.
What I love about Dark Souls 1's design is how it teaches you that getting lost is a form of exploration, and as long as you are trying to get somewhere you are almost guaranteed to be doing some form of progress.
I did get to Blighttown through the Valley of Drakes. No Master Key, fed up with Capra Demon, ran into it by accident, got to the bottom bonfire and... Climbed all the wya up to The Depths becauss it was in the same direction as the entrance from the Valley of Drakes, so I went all the way back down and finally fought Quelaag. It was super time consuming and phenomenally relaxing with how methodical and careful the trip was. I also got a ton of levels from the wandering.
I get why it's a difficult area, and your points are all super valid, but man did I enjoy ny time down there.
As for the Master Key, I do adore it as a way for experienced players to break the game as soon as they start, it's my favorite starting item for a reason :P
I often do a tank build for co-op, thus I can get the Stone Armor, Partizan and Eagle Shield before killing a single boss... AND an Estus Flask +3, ans for that you need to remember to kick Lautrec at the right time
The dreaded Blighttown.
I find it interesting that in the example provided, you choose the most convoluted pathway as the more obvious one when I always felt that going through the Undead Burg and below through the Depths was the natural progression feeling. All the mistakes made in the depths pushes you further into Blighttown and many of the annoyances you speak of don't happen in the same manner.
Example, there's a Bonfire right next to the entrance of Blighttown from the Depths and is also next to the Gaping Dragon boss fight. Most of the perils of Blighttown are still a falling hazard, but the enemies aren't overwhelming and the game allows you to move forward slowly with little backpedaling. As you mentioned the lighting, this also guides you to the "hidden" bonfire once you get to the bottom level.
All of this feels more intuitive from how the level is designed when coming in from this point.
If you come in "the back way" as I refer to it, then you run into a lot of annoying enemies very quickly when you get through the cavern, you're more likely to not follow the expected guidance since there's lights leading you up and down. You'll run into an optional item area which has a ton of those toxic dart enemies (toxic is twice as bad as poison btw), and on top of all of that, the bonfire isn't easily visible when coming from this direction even when you get to the bottom level.
I viewed this entrance as more of the exit with a cheeky way to bypass the majority of the area using either the Master Key or by coming through the Darkroot Basin.
If any part of Dark Souls is a mistake, it's The Lost Izalith. It's extremely unfinished, the brightness is off the charts, it has inconsistent frame rate problems and the general design, both level and enemy, is just very bad
And if you do enter Blighttown via the Undead Burg, the Capra Demon boss fight is a way bigger hurdle than Blighttown itself.
@@Oscar97oYeah the Capra Demon is the worst boss in the game. Lots of people say Bed of Chaos but that is much later and it's bad because they tried to do something different which didn't work. Capra Demon is boring and difficult for stupid reasons (the tiny room and added dog enemies for no good reason) and it's really early so probably the biggest thing that ended people's playthroughs
@@theomegajuice8660I don't agree that it's bad, though that's ultimately a matter of preference. I think it's a kind of puzzle. You have to figure out how to prioritize the dogs and how to move in this tight space, then the boss becomes pretty easy. What people consider annoyances or oversights in that fight are, imo, the intended challenge. The issue is that people (understandably) don't realize this, and get frustrated.
@@theomegajuice8660 I disagree that capra is worse than bed or chaos, even though I agree with your reasons why. My argument is that capra is poorly designed, but bed of chaos is actual bullshit. As someone with 1000+ hours, I still die to bed of chaos but never to capra.
@@majinweabuu6679 I totally agree that Bed of Chaos is the worst for repeat playthroughs and even experienced players have a shit time with it. However I think Capra Demon is the reason why far more players never got to the stage of enjoying repeat playthrough. And it's also pretty easy to fix it and they just didn't! Whereas Bed of Chaos was a fundamentally flawed idea that they did their best with... kinda... maybe. If they ever do a full remake of DS1 I'll be super dissapointed if they don't completely overhaul both fights (along with most of Lost Izalith in general)
There is a bonfire on the descent down the silt village
Also of note for the level is the mobs at each entrance of blight town. The beefy boy and the beefy boys, respectfully, are tuned way off for the area. Their attacks do massive damage for this point in the game and the swing of their weapons does an enormous amount of knock back with HP pools as bloated as them. They encourage running past them but that almost encourages you to give gravity a hug instead of them. Kind of the first real kick in the teeth after fighting the gaping dragon
Their attacks can be parried though, so they really aren't that much of a hassle if you've gotten used to that earlier in the game. Which you can do easily because most of the enemies you encounter while climbing towards the first bell of awakening can be parried.
@@Oscar97o I don’t disagree, they are easy to parry, but that doesn’t discredit them from being a challenge both the first time you encounter them and subsequent times if you dont engage with the parry mechanic (I personally know a handful of people that didn’t parry anything until Bloodborne).
Their presence as gatekeepers to the level, regardless of entry point, can influence how the player engages with the rest of the area.
They are like gatekeepers to send unwitting players wandering into blighttown by mistake using the master key. If you follow the traditional route you should be leveled up enough to deal with them easily
@@Oscar97o that doesn’t change how bloated their health pool is, on top of how incredibly risky it can be to parry them, since failing the parry means eating a very large club with some pretty potent poison. Even with parrying, they are still time consuming. (I say that, even though when I fought them I was using a +3 Zweihander)
I'm 100% sure this video is going viral, great job on the video!!
Hope to see more of Design Delve.
Blight Town is why I plan to get a master key on any additional playthroughs.
I grab it so I can sprint directly to Havel. Equip load is especially tight in Souls 1, and that ring of his lets me fashion up quicker.
The reason I take the master key every time is that it's by several orders of magnitude the best starting item in not just Dark Souls, but any souls game.
@@psychicbeagle5106 Astora Straight Sword, free good shield on any class, slightly tricky access to grass crest shield, fastest access to wolf ring, fastest access to havel, fastest access to holy ember to give you something for the catacombs if you aren't at least dipping caster stats, several easily access twinkling titanite for any of several unique weapons, and an ass-load of free souls for feeding moonlight butterfly to the summonable NPC mage. And that's just guaranteed shit. Randomly dropped large shards, chunks, and even black knight equipment. There is no possible build in the entire game that doesn't benefit immensely from the damn thing.
Would love to see your next video on the other poison swamp areas from the DS2 and DS3, if nothing else than for comparison to see how the idea progressed though the games
Blightown is good area, complex layout in the first half and there's a path from the second bonfire to Quelaag that let's you avoid most of the swamp sludge. The area also has several highly poison resistant armors scattered throughout it.
Blight Town is basically the Valley of Defilement 2.0 from Demons Souls. The depravity is definately intended, but much like all of Dark Souls, not everything worked out design wise. Every Souls game has had their nasty poison level ever since, because the struggle is not only frustrating, but also very rewarding to overcome.
And also because Miyazaki unironically loves poison swamp levels.
Ive been playing darksouls for years and never knew about the candles!! thats a great tip
I'm gonna look for candles in all fromsoftware games now
Yeah I dont know why that never occurred to me, im familiar with light being used in games like Half Life to direct the player, but for some reason candles just didnt register in my head.
I just thought the residents REALLY liked candles.
@@Th3BadThing it's also interesting that in a game called Dark Souls light leads your way
I got stuck crawling all over blight town for a couple of days because after reaching the poison shore, I assumed that the lake of poison was clearly not the way to go, being both mandatory damage, slowing the player and being huge, it seemed that the game was clearly communicating "Go another route.".
I'm loving the Design Delve series, please keep doing more!
Nice vide.
Also great point at 11:38, I also think that getting trapped in games is a cool experience but never really thought about why
No but it's optimisation was
One of Dark Souls' biggest themes is that of overcoming depression, and Blighttown is the peak of that. It's dark, oppressive, dangerous, yes, and can only be overcome by either already knowing the secret to skipping it or by pure determination. While there are certainly ways to improve Blighttown while keeping to the theme--especially the "finding Blighttown" part, I literally had to use an online guide my first two playthroughs--I do think the unpleasantness of it is both intentional and needed, and the game wouldn't be as good without a lot of the aspects people complain about.
I remember the first time I played this area, the terror and how surprised I was to be afraid in an RPG game... it was etched in my memory with one of the most memorable moments in my gaming life, once you understand how and the hallways of blighttown it became one of my favorite areas
The toxic dart throwers aren't the only enemies to drop healing moss thankfully, as the tree golems in Darkroot Garden drop a steady supply of purple and blooming purple moss clumps provided one's willing to do some light farming, plus the lovely undead lady is all too willing to sell us some while laughing madly about how attractive we are to her. Also, one can easily get the Rusted Iron Ring right before they face the Bell Gargoyles if they bother to do a bit of exploring to avoid spending too long in said swamp water. Blighttown's just the same as any of FromSoft's areas, a learning experience. If you take the time to explore the side paths and not become too obsessed with finishing the story, you ultimately will have a better experience in the long run. That's how it was for moi back in 2011 anyhow.
Pretty sure the thief starts with the key, so you can still get an additional gift. Also, the gifts 9ther than the key are basically useless except maybe trading them to snuggly, especially for new players.
Theres a bonfire on the aquaduct about halfway down.
Once you get to the bottom you are not trapped. You can go back or climb the windmill.
The key to the gate should be in a chest during the windmill ascent to the valley of drakes.
I really liked blighttown. It was one of my favorite areas to be honest. Fighting the weird pink guys and fire dogs on the rickety moving bridges just never got old. Yoloing off the buildings, dudes stuck in pots. It was charming and it was fun. Idk. Being slow in the swamp was a bit unpleasant I'll grant you but come on it was a cool area and we all know it!
Have you played on PC with decent FPS by any chance?
I'm pretty sure most of Blighttowns hate stems from the fact that it is hard AND you have shit fps.
@nekrosis4431 actually no nover, only on ps3. I never got it chugging too badly to be fair but it would definitely dip. Idk what frames people were actually getting but, well let's just agree that you have to have a pretty high tolerance for that kind of thing. Like clubbing in a strobe light type situation :)
I hope this show gets more views, because I really dig every episode and hope they keep coming.
This series is so charming, I'm glad I gave it a shot with Second Wind!
While I won't defend blighttown as a whole, I think that some aspects of what you're saying are a bit wrong. the key to open the "Shortcut" door is in a chest on the path to the door from blighttown. a path that is incredibly hard to miss when you've beaten the boss and want to leave. that door isn't intended as a shortcut in, it's a shortcut out. the moss problem isn't a thing if you take the lower undeadburg path, as there's a merchant who sells it that you meet in the shortcut between lower undeadburg and firelink, and while it's not impossible to miss the merchant, it's unlikely. that being said, it's also the ONLY place in the game where the "Toxic" status occurs, a status which isn't well explained at all, and is essentially guaranteed to kill you if you aren't ready for it.
The path OP is talking about has those respawning bush enemies that drop moss so basically you have an infinite source of moss no matter which route you take
@@pramitpratimdas8198 True, though the ents only have a 5% chance to drop the blooming moss, and only drop 100 souls, so they're a worse return rate than just running upper undead burg and the parish and buying the moss.
@@thejackscraft3472 I mean you'd also be dying a lot if you are using that route meaning you kill more of those guys
@@pramitpratimdas8198 that entirely depends on skill. the ents tend to be one of the easier enemies to read, and they're really easy to deal with with a bow.
@@thejackscraft3472 no I meant dying onroute to blighttown
There is even an other way to get to blight town. You can go to New londo, kill Ingward and open the flood doors that connect to the valley of the drakes. Not sure if you would want to go that route , but it's there available right from the start.
That's not really going to be on a typical first run since most players won't kill NPCs on purpose.
@@uberculex true, and the darkroot garden route would make more sense any way. But like i said, It's there.
very quickly becoming my favorite series on the channel
Takes me back to the extra credits guys playing dark souls. Their commentary got me to buy a controller and pick up the game before they got to gargoyles.
I liked Blighttown, not so much on the way down, but getting cursed by the frogs behind 2 illusory walls and fighting my way back up the long way (didn't find the shortcut) was one of the most intense experiences I've had in these games and when I made it back to the depths it felt amazing.
The key is, imo, for later playthroughs that want to skip the whole ordeal. I tell people not to take the master key first run, since they'll likely end up somewhere they shouldn't. Only wish the ledge archers had a similar bypass (I'm bad I know)
I got into Dark Souls after playing Monster Hunter for years. This meant I was more familiar with the combat and the difficulty it presented. Going in completely blind, I actually took the skele-path on my first playthrough. I had heard the game was difficult and just assumed I was on the right path and pushed on.
It wasn't until the dark void that was Tomb of the Giants that I realized something was up.
Nice. I also jumped in after MH3U so I had an easier time than the average player.
7:07 This has excellent meme potential
Really enjoying this series. Loving the changes since the creation of this channel.
It's always fun to hear Hollow Knights Hornet and Nosks boss music in these videos.
Its not even bad with proper performance in DS Remastered
There are certainly mistakes in Blighttown, but it also features some of my favorite DS memories. You have to fight through the Depths to get there, so Firelink Shrine is a good distance away - this enforces careful planning as you move through. I carefully, CAREFULLY got midway through, burning all of my estus, humanity and moss until I was out of resources... I saw the bonfire in front of me, I sprinted... and I died a few steps away, succumbing to toxins from the last sniper I couldn't find. I quit playing for a week out of the heartbreak of having lost those souls (not knowing the toxin snipers didn't respawn), then came back fresh and easily waltzed up and claimed my bloodstain. Then I struggled down and got to the big mudpit. Well, everybody knows that you never go straight in a wide open area - you map out your surroundings by hugging walls. I went right and found the bonfire, and then went up the elevators and finally found SKY again. When I discovered that I had looped back to Firelink Shrine, I actually cried and... quit playing for another week. I was satisfied. I had pushed through some of the hardest stuff in any video game I had played, and made it back home.
The terrible framerate on my PS3 is a problem. The lack of respawning on the toxin snipers is a bit annoying as it takes away some of the achievement of fighting past them. The janky bridges are frustrating and the worst part of the whole experience. But the oppressive terror of Blighttown has never been recreated.
LOVE this topic for a video series. More of this please!! ❤❤
Design Delve is one of my favorite CZcams series. I love hearing breakdowns of great and not so great games. ❤
I think it was intentional. It's a clear hurtle you need to get through to get to the second bell. Not just the swamp, the poison, the enemies, and the lack of bonfires, but all of it together works to make sure you haven't become reliant on a single strategy. You will need to change your methods to deal with the area as a whole. I like it even if it's a love hate type thing.
One important aspect of artistic intent that I feel should be brought up here is that Miyazaki loves poison swamps. Not only is he on the record stating such, he went on to say that he is _psychologically incapable_ of stopping himself from adding them.
Fromsoftware as a whole loves poison swamps. There are poison swamps in every King's Field game and there's even one in the first Armored Core.
In the first run into the game back in 2011, i didnt even know there was a bonfire down there. Every death to quellag was a ticket back to firelink.
Oof, that's rough.
Love that you covered this!
As someone who went into dark souls heavily spoiled, I actually found the depths-blighttown gauntlet to be an enjoyable challenge. I farmed the ents in darkroot garden for (blooming) purple moss and understood that suicide running to kill the blowdart guys was worth it.
Also, the way to the bottom of blighttown is surprisingly short if you don't go on any optional paths of the area.
But if you go in blind, you don't know any of that, and you get punished with an extremely difficult challenge that leaves you basically no options to adapt in the moment. Because if you realize that you should have been prepared for blighttown, you're stuck at the bottom of the depths and have to fight your way back out to get the necessary equipment.
Tl;dr: Blighttown offers the satisfaction of overcoming a difficult challenge when you know what you're getting into, but it's way too rough the first time around.
I managed to get through Blighttown on my own as a kid. I'm fairly certain I just dashed to ol' spidermom and died numerous times in the process. I also used a janky as hell magic shotgun build
I actually really like blighttown after it's been figured out what you need to do to prepare for it. Rusty iron ring from the asylum, spider shield from the depths, a spear with reach. Unlocking the back entrance through the valley of the drakes letting you easily go back to firelink > andre is important. It's one of my favorite areas now, but it's also because I like invading people in the swamp.
I like that some areas in Dark Souls 1 are genuinely difficult to traverse. One of the biggest problems with 3 was that there were so many areas that were tedious to interact with, but trivial to just run through. I feel the same issue in Elden Ring where there are lots of areas that would be far more memorable if there was more challenging traversal.
Blighttown really isn't that difficult if you just play patiently and try to be reasonably aware of your surroundings - and I say that as a noob who sucked at DS1 on my first playthrough. It was obvious that the area was testing your situational awareness - I just think a lot of players weren't used to having situational awareness challenged at all.
If we want to talk about frustrating level design, I'd have to say the bonfire run to Bed of Chaos is one of the more annoying ones. Right up there with the easy but needlessly long run to Ornstein and Smough.
@@CuriousKey Ughhh. The O+S run when trying to bring solaire with you, so you have to go to the other side of the giant room. Ugh ugh ugh.
@@CuriousKey Challenging traversal or just having the option to not be able to nope away from bosses/areas in Elden Ring would improve it. While I do enjoy that game, it's definitely not at the top of my list of favorite FromSoftware titles and I wish it either weren't such a big game or that they'd just not made an open world game at all. And if they didn't make so many caves and catacombs and such so similar. The Cave of the Forlorn, which I cleared just to get the achievement for all legendary weapons, is one of my favorites and it felt far more unique to me than most of the other crap I cleared.
As for DS3, I love that game, but it's also one where I actually don't like the DLCs much. I was getting so annoyed in the Ringed City that I really just ran past most everything in that swamp (I'm so glad it wasn't a poison swamp) except the Iron Dragonslayer Armour to get the shortcut to the bonfire unlocked. Why do those Judicators respawn? Why? With Ashes of Ariandel I like the Corvian Settlement a lot, but the area after it needed to get back to Friede was absolutely miserable and I just ran past everything. I didn't really do that in the main game at all; although I did skip all of Smouldering Lake beyond getting the estus shard and the 2 undead bone shards, because they put the boss right at the start instead of making us clear the whole area. I didn't clear it because I wasn't running a pyro build and I didn't care for the strength stuff either.
@@SolaScientia Excactly. There are two examples of clever bypasses in Elden Ring - Stormveil and the various ways of getting to Altus Plateau.
More of that kind of environmental puzzles that you could solve or stumble onto different routes would be good. As it is within an actual area you can usually more or less beeline towards a POI on Torrent without much care for the environment at all, excluding cliffs. Even most enemies are fundamentally unable to hit you if you're running past them on Torrent.
I think my issue with DS3 dlc is how irritatingly linear it was. If I encountered a frustrating roadblock, there wasn't anything I could do about it. It didn't feel much like exploration, rather than a series of increasingly weird corridors - which honestly is a decent summary of DS3 in general.
@@CuriousKey Enemies not being able to him while I'm on Torrent is nice. It works in reverse in that I nearly always have to dismount to be able to fight anything that isn't some scrub enemy.
I didn't mind how linear DS3 was, especially the DLCs. Part of my issue with the DLCs stems from being a bit burned out on the game by that point and the jump in difficulty, particularly with the Ringed City after the Demon Prince fight, feels unbalanced a bit. Bloodborne's DLC is very tough as well, but it still feels pretty balanced and fair to me. Then again, of all the FromSoftware games I've played, Bloodborne feels the most balanced of the lot. Yeah, I'd hit walls but it was never insurmountable and I never really got frustrated. Laurence was the worst thing of the game to the point that I went off and killed the Orphan of Kos and then was still dying Laurence and his bullshit attacks.
I feel like FromSoftware somewhat forgot how to do that kind of balancing with DS3 and Elden Ring.
I started my first ever Dark Souls playthrough this week. Finally beat the bell gargoyles last night and was about to try to head from firelink on to the skeleton path or the ghost path. What a perfectly timed video!!!!! I did not choose the master key as my starting gift and had no clue Blighttown involves backtracking through Undead Parish for two different keys. Thank you, and fantastic analysis. I now feel mentally prepared for the impending slog.
Something bad can be both intentional and a horrible, unfortunate mistake.
Blighttown was my favourite area in Dark Souls. Never had a problem with it and was surprised to find out it was devisive.
This is the first Design Delve episode where I wanna laugh at the host for being a wimp. Always love people actually needing to tackle something uncomfortable.
Blighttown wasn't even the first Souls poison swamp; I still remember trekking through Valley of Defilement 2's utterly MASSIVE poison swamp
But at least I wasn't be hounded at every step
And there's not even a benefit to tracing the perimeter like in Blighttown! You just get attacked by more mosquitoes (right path) or take the long way past absolutely nothing except that damn red phantom (left path).
Ive been playing through Dark Souls for my first time for the past six months, gradually working through the daunting hurdles and spikes created from my own lack of knowledge. I took the back route through Blighttown and had heard of the terrors that awaited, so I worked my way through patiently, arduously, until I reached the bottom - only to not find a bonfire anywhere. I took the lift up thinking it would be there - nope. I opened up the entire shortcut and got back to Firelink Shrine before I could rest. I only found out after I put the game down out of utter frustration that there was a bonfire in that little tunnel that you couldn't see because (at least in the Remaster) that tunnel was pitch black darkness until you went inside it, which I of course avoided. The worst part of Blighttown wasn't navigating or poison, it was that tiny bit of reprieve hidden away from me.
This has quickly become my favorite series on this channel!
I believe Matthewmatosis said it best - the first poison swamp you go through is an experience. Every poison swamp after that is just a slog.
That's because none of the later swamps are as well designed as Blighttown
That door in the valley of drakes is supposed to be a way OUT of blight town. You find a key on the way UP that can open it from the other side.
A small tip for Blighttown. Don't waste your moss curing the toxic, instead use Dung Pie's to inflict toxic on yourself. Why, you ask? Because Dung Pie's toxic deals something like 10 hp per second where as the blow dart toxic does 100 hp per second. Toxic doesn't stack meaning if you inflict it upon yourself first, you are essentially immune to the blow darts.
I don't think we can complain about the dart guys not respawning here 😅
Yeah, I don't get the lore complaints about that either, the game is littered with enemies that should respawn lorewise but don't cause fighting them twice would feel like a hurdle.
I didn't mind it even on my first run through.
I think the only issue is the toxic dart blowers. I'm not sure what they add other than annoyance.
Teach you about more deadly status effects, about quickly curing toxin at the right time, of finding cover and luring shooting enemies into your preferred range
The best part of Blight Town was the amazing chest ahead.
Demerits! There's only one Amazing Chest in Dark Souls and it ain't in Quelag's Domain.
Love the tone. Love the take of a level designer on an an area that I just can't love.
Me, a ZP enjoyer, on first design delve video: "eh this guy sounds overly timid, and a dog gimmick? Ok"
Me, now: "OMG hell yeh another design delve I can't wait to see what weird little interesting things he talks about today and what Ludo thinks"
There's a reason for the master key shortcuts being restricted to a specific starting item. The intended/new player-friendly path (well, as friendly as Dark Souls gets, anyway) is the one without the key, but the key is meant to be an option for experienced players to sequence-break and choose their progression order once they know what each area is like and what challenges they can handle when.
I honestly think the frustration, in all the forms this video describes, even the linear path that truly gives you no option but to press on and keep fighting, is simply the price you pay for such a rewarding and memorable area.
You’re absolutely right about the feeling of being trapped. On my recent second playthrough my weapon got close to breaking while I was fighting Quelaag and I was so scared it would break I made the arduous trek all the way back up to get it repaired. Obviously that was a horrible feeling - but it added that much more exhilaration to the moment when I was finally done with the damn place.
I really believe that the best design sometimes has to be a flawed design. It’s like you can figure out the “perfect” design through careful testing and logic, but if that’s what you go with it can end up feeling flat - and going that way every time leads to the kind of snoozefest that the worst triple-A games offer. Sometimes you really do have to embrace chaos and allow a bit of jank and shoddiness in to get an experience that feels alive and real.
I’m not suggesting From are such geniuses that everything about Blighttown is deliberate. Maybe they did aim for perfection and miss the mark. I just think that if they had hit it, we wouldn’t still be talking about Dark Souls today.
Yes. Because nobody could ever match its greatness
The best part about Blighttown will always be that it's completely optional.
Every first time player has that moment of realization when they discover the way out, explore all the paths, and realize they could have just gone around through darkroot basin and avoided everything from the lower city down.
Edit: So he did mention the back way out as an alternate entrance, but I think given the hidden path and wyverns you have to go through it's unreasonable for a first time player to find it and use it as an entrance. Plus using this way as an entrance doesn't give the 'proper' blighttown experience.
I think the reason why there's no bonfire at the back end of blighttown is that you are intended to seek the firelink bonfire for relief after making your escape, and then feel properly shocked when you find it, and Anastacia, dead.
I’ve never played this game but i could listen to people talk about the design of it for hours! Good episode M8
Believe it or not, Blighttown was an absolute standout in my first playthrough for me. It was the moment the sheer hopelessness of the setting truly sunk in. This is a horrible, forbidden, place where no living being should ever go.
nothing in DS1 was a mistake except Demon Ruins + Lost Izalith
Less a mistake, and more straight up unfinished (and the remaster, not being made by From themselves, didn't dare try to alter it)
Wait, poison darts? I thought it was toxic darts (worse version of poison that is healed with a different item), and that was like the salt on the wound and the reason why those enemies don’t respawn
Players seeing the messages relating to doors they can't open is an important element of the early game exploration. It's part what makes discovering the first couple of level loops so satisfying. It also serves to set expectations that they should build a list in their mind of which doors they should come back to once a key is acquired. Missing the key to Lower Undead Burg would suck.
The route through Lower Undead Burg and The Depths is a good expectation setter. Everything about that journey, down to the Blighttown key description, suggests that entering Blighttown is not going to be pleasant.
I think that Blighttown does serve its intended purpose of being an arduous descent to a major progression element. Much like how fighting the Gargoyles in Undead Burg is a big difficulty jump for a lot of players.
The jank of Blighttown adds needless frustration to the experience.
The locals firing toxic darts really needed to not respawn for the sanity of players doing multiple runs. I don't think the moss for curing toxic could have been made a guaranteed drop from them because that would eliminate any danger they posed, provided they could be reached in short order.
They aren't the first non-respawning NPC that the player is likely to encounter.The heavy knight in the Undead Parish, as well as the Black Knights and the Undead Boar, don't respawn.
This choice of what does and doesn't respawn does set some misaligned expectations throughout the series, however. I can't wholeheartedly defend the choice.
I think a lot about the entrances can be forgiven if you just take as a given that you are SUPPOSED to enter Blight Town from the depths, and every other way in is just a cheeky shortcut if you have played through the game a few times already. The level geometry and random kill-boxes in places that seem like you should be able to stand is pretty bad, but my biggest complaint about Blighttown is that the ring you need to efficiently traverse the swamp is hidden away in an optional location with no connection to blight town or swamps at all. If the rusted iron ring was somewhere you were more likely to find it either in or around the swamp then I would have almost no problems with the zone
To be fair, you really don't have to spend all that much time in the swamp water. Sure, there's a lot of optional stuff to explore down there, but the only mandatory thing is Quelaag's Domain which is an obvious straight-line path visible from the Bonfire, and said bonfire can be reached by hugging the shoreline after first reaching the bottom of Blight Town.
@@EmeralBookwise yeah, when you get to the bottom the only lit things are the bonfire right next to the bottom of the bridge and the door to Quelaag, both are very short paths through the swamp. The ring only really helps if you want to explore the area or go to the great hollow, both of which is generally not something a new player would try right away.
I personally never found Blight Town to be all that bad... Maybe it was just the way I happened to come in the first time, down past the Gaping Dragon and the Capra demon... And I remember being astonished when I happened to discover one of the alternate paths in, and the huge swath of it that I had missed through the flying buttresses...
Now, proto-blight town in Demon's Souls... that place can F* right off! At least Blight Town's enemies are easily dispatched with a bow, or some pyromancy. Pick your way carefully through blight town, and it's not so bad. But Demon's Souls has swarms of enemies, and those big lads that are actually difficult in a straight up fight, let alone one on a walkway barely wider than you are.
I couldn't agree more! I nearly gave up on Demon's Souls (my first Souls game) when I faced that hellhole they call Valley of Defilement...
Great video as always
It was only bad because back in the PS3 days the performance took a huge nosedive during Blighttown. As someone who played DS1 on PC at good performance, no, it wasn't a mistake.
I love the barks
On the other hand, Dark Soul's Blighttown, Ocarina of Time's Water Temple, Shadowland's early iteration of the Maw, taught me that sometimes it's OK for level design to say "fuck you" to players. These places are all absolutely memorable.
I honestly love the oppressive atmosphere of blighttown that manifests both in its environment and gameplay. There's definitely some jank that is frustrating, but the feeling of steep increase in difficulty serves well to ratchet up the tension and make every moment of safety that much more satisfying, like when you finally reach the bonfire at the bottom, or finally get out again.
12:10 The closest Bonfire to where you're standing is literally Firelink above you. It's a longer walkback than it needs to be because of the elevator, but it's also devoid of any threat until you get into the tunnel for Blighttown. Except our ever present and greatest foe, gravity. Even then, she only threatens us on the way in as we walk across a rickety plank to get to the tunnel.
The Door with the Masterkey is the way BACK from Blighttown. It is not suppossed to be used to get to Blighttown. The real key to open that door is IN Blighttown.
The Masterkey was a bad idea, because you skip so much with it.