this is not exactly a new realization but: so everyone talks about how dark souls has this sense of space and location and connectedness, and a lot of the time the way people say that is like "if you can see something, you can go there" -- all those connected bits, like seeing blighttown from firelink shrine, or darkroot garden from the undead burg, or whatever. but i think in practice that's not anything unusual -- any big "open world" game gives you, basically, the same situation: you can see places from other places. what's interesting about dark souls is that you basically never travel in a straight line from one place to another. you'll see some vista with a big landmark in the distance, and then go inside and crawl around aimlessly, and then when you eventually pop back out you look around to reorient yourself and, oh, you're right under that big landmark! and now that place you were is basically just another big landmark in the distance.
(this is also a thing in demon's souls and bloodborne; there are all these landmarks you can recognize, but you basically never travel for any period of time with them directly in view -- you travel without much of a sense of the surroundings, and occasionally step out onto vistas where you can see your progress abruptly, and all your routes are extremely circuitous.)
(this is also a thing in demon's souls and bloodborne; there are all these landmarks you can recognize, but you basically never travel for any period of time with them directly in view -- you travel without much of a sense of the surroundings, and occasionally step out onto vistas where you can see your progress abruptly, and all your routes are extremely circuitous.)
