From Software The Dark Souls Discussion Thread

[Jaedar]

I beat gwyn by using homing soul mass.

I think you can beat him without parrying though but it's probably tricky since he generally doesn't leave a lot of openings to attack. If you have enough poise you can probably heal through his attacks. Will cost more estus than usually, but it tends to work alright.

 

[Darklife]

I just pounded him with a greatsword. The fight didn't last very long and was probably one of the easiest in the game. Well apart from that humungous rat in The Depths you could bombard with firebombs.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

I just hit him with Great Combustions and Great Chaos Fireballs. I felt kind of bad, it was the easiest boss in the game for me

He was a little tougher with my Great Club Onion Avenger, but still pretty easy. I feel bad, the fight was so awesomely set up and designed that I did want a good challenge, and I'm not one of those people that pretend it's an easy game.

Artorias was pretty much what the Gwyn fight should have been, though, and was hard as hell. Kalameet just seemed utterly unbeatable, but wasn't too hard with Onion Avenger.

 

[Jasede]

The Gwyn fight was "easy" (haha...) on purpose. He's supposed to be old, burnt out, spent, about to fade. Why do you think the music is so sad?
But he still puts up a wonderful, appropriate fight... it is my favorite part of the game. The part where you are the murderer. The bad guy. Killing someone who gave his life for what he believed in, and has suffered for it the rest of his existence. And here you come... killing him because some giant penis snakes told you to. You don't even say hello.

By the way:
I didn't sell Dark/Demon's Souls
I found them in my... luggage. I don't know how they got there or why they were there but hey... now I can buy the DLC! These are good times in the kingdom of Jasedia.

 

[Niektory]

I beat him twice. The first time with a sorcerer, which was trivial. The second time with a somewhat squishy Dex fighter, which was pretty hard. I used Ricard's Rapier, not the best choice but it worked. Also Eagle Shield and the Gold-Hemmed set.

I didn't parry because I suck at it. I played very defensively, circling him and baiting him into attacking then dodging and counter-attacking. I needed to be carefully manage my distance to not bump into a wall. The best time to attack was when he whiffed his kick or grab. When I needed to heal I hid behind a stalagmite (not immediately behind, some distance away) so he couldn't charge at me easily.

Hope that helps.

 

[Damned Registrations]

When you think about it, Gwyn is kind of like an uber hollow. He has that one grappling attack, but aside from that he basically just rages at you in melee. And he's clearly gone mad and lost his humanity. I found him of medium difficulty on my first playthrough, easier than O+S or Capra, but harder than Sif or the fatty demons. Greatshields handle his attack spam a bit better than a black knight shield, but he still chips through with fire damage and wears the stamina down a lot. Black Sword +5 should be sufficient. Munching some stamina grass might help you recover between his assaults/after your attacks so you don't get caught with your pants down.

It's a pity the game didn't have any optional challenge modes/arenas. Would have been awesome to fight combos of bosses, like Gwynn + O+S, or multiple Gwynns, or just a horde of 30 black knights in a row, 3 at a time, shit like that. Would have been so fucking easy to add a place like that.

 

[Jasede]

While that would be nice it goes against the philosophy of the game: that everything should be in-character and be tied to the lore/game somewhat. Every weapon, action, every boss's attack. It would just seem... out of character.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It would, but I don't think it'd be any worse than the player messages ('Great chest ahead!' and 'Jump here' being two of the most egregious) or the pvp arena. And I'd certainly appreciate it's benefits more than either of those, which added basically nothing to my game.

Besides, I'm sure they could have made some sort of decent in game fluff for why you're fighting 30 black phantoms or illusions or whatever at once. The forest covenant is metagamey as fuck but it blends right in thanks to Alvina's little speech.

 

[Jasede]

Point taken.

 

[Jokulmorder]

They could probably justify a boss rematch mode as some sort of area you can go to where you'll receive the message, "The soul you carry seeks vengeance" or something like that.

 

[Fat Dragon]

The Gwyn fight was "easy" (haha...) on purpose. He's supposed to be old, burnt out, spent, about to fade. Why do you think the music is so sad?

Actually, From has expressed disappointment at how easy he was, saying he was meant to be the hardest boss in the game. It was mentioned in some big interview about the game's artwork, you can read it here:
http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/7f...esign-works-translation-npcs-and-monst/98089/

 

[Jasede]

That's very interesting, I'd never have guessed that. Sorry for spreading misinformation.
If anything, though, it's a credit to the game that I'd think something unintentional was intentional - since everything else seems to have been designed with a lot of thought put into the matter.

Thanks for the link!

 

[felipepepe]

Weird, I also tought Gwyn was supposed to be badass but "fragile", a dying god desperatly trying to keep it whole... even the music hints at that, not being a epic battle song, but rather a sad melody on the cruelty and despair of such fight... (at least IMHO)

 

[Jokulmorder]

I love all the boss tracks for this game. The rest of the game is very silent or subdued, so even the more melancholy and soft themes are clearly heard and stand out just as much as the more bombastic ones. In a game with music always on, I probably wouldn't have even noticed the awesome escalating start of Ornstein and Smoughs' theme because it would just be the background noise getting louder.

I noticed this applies to other elements of Dark Souls. Armor and weapon design is generally reserved and utilitarian, so the more exaggerated designs like the Demon's Great Machete and Shiva's Eastern Armor feel all the more powerful and exotic. Bosses do not always have opening cutscenes to establish their threat, so the ones with cutscenes like the Gaping Dragon stand out as something unique and impressive. Because not everything in the game is EPIC and LARGE, the biggest moments felt bigger. Hell, it even goes the opposite way; because we expect the more intimidating bosses to have introductory cutscenes, we are shocked when the main "villain" of the game doesn't have one at all!

There are still some problems: I think the Centipede Demon did not need its intro cutscene because I do not need to know that the menacing growling monster is growling menacingly before I fight him. However, I think Dark Souls has a good atmosphere because it doesn't just blow its load everywhere on the first level.

 

[betamin]

The Gwyn fight was "easy" (haha...) on purpose. He's supposed to be old, burnt out, spent, about to fade. Why do you think the music is so sad?

Actually, From has expressed disappointment at how easy he was, saying he was meant to be the hardest boss in the game. It was mentioned in some big interview about the game's artwork, you can read it here:
http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/7f...esign-works-translation-npcs-and-monst/98089/

Very very nice series there, Miyazaki is the man.

 

[Jasede]

You have no idea how many tries it took me to defeat Stray Demon at SL 1 with a +5 Reinforced Club and a +8 Pyromancy Flame (using Fireball and Combust).

Spoiler

Way too many.

Do you guys get this thing where you fail horribly at something over and over and then, for no reason whatsoever, pull it off flawlessly, with no transition between being terrible and doing it near-perfectly? Stray Demon was like that for me. I died over and over, never figuring out how to dodge anything. And then, without ever getting "better" in between tries, something finally clicked and I beat him never getting hit.

That's just like when I learned how to use chopsticks. I was never able to. Then, one day, without ever having gotten any better at it, I could suddenly do it. What the hell?

 

[J_C]

You have no idea how many tries it took me to defeat Stray Demon at SL 1 with a +5 Reinforced Club and a +8 Pyromancy Flame (using Fireball and Combust).

Spoiler

Way too many.

Do you guys get this thing where you fail horribly at something over and over and then, for no reason whatsoever, pull it off flawlessly, with no transition between being terrible and doing it near-perfectly? Stray Demon was like that for me. I died over and over, never figuring out how to dodge anything. And then, without ever getting "better" in between tries, something finally clicked and I beat him never getting hit.

That's just like when I learned how to use chopsticks. I was never able to. Then, one day, without ever having gotten any better at it, I could suddenly do it. What the hell?

I'm playing Metal Gear Rising now and felt the same with a boss battle. The game is hard as fuck mind you, and the boss just trashed me over and over again. And suddenly I just beat the guy. Not flawlessly, but without getting too much damage.

 

[UserNamer]

I figured out how to beat most of the bosses, except for the goat demon, which I defeated by mashing the buttons randomly until we died simultaneously.

The problem with the game is that after 70 hours I'm absolutely fed up with it. I'll be checking out dark soul 2 but I'm currently burn out on dark souls. 70 hours is three-four weeks worth of playing and the game hasn't introduced anything significantly new gameplay wise, something to keep you interested I mean.

 

[Elwro]

OK, Kalameet is down

But that Obsidian Greatsword doesn't (of course) scale. Would you say it's worth it to put all my dragon scales into improving it? I usually fight one-handed so I have my doubts.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

I read it as saying that the archtrees and primordial dragons inhabited a somewhat grey world before the coming of the flame. But since all of these elements were of an eternal unchanging variety, what the fire introduced seems to be, fundamentally, the capacity of things to change. In other words, eternal stasis was replaced with growth and decay. Now that the period of growth is coming to an end as the fire runs out of fuel, decay becomes ascendant.

I'm with you on the eternal stasis in the age of ancients, but I think what the fire did was not so much introduce change as just break a bunch of shit. Now there were broken parts, hot parts, and cold parts. Dragons that had died, and life spawned from whatever the remains of the broken/dead shit was. Without the fire, the trend towards entropy begins (just like in reality) but not in any sort of impending doom sense. Fire was just what stirred things up, the capacity for life and death was always in the stuff of the world, it had just wound down to eternal stasis long ago. The world could easily continue to grow and evolve for millions of years without the fire around.

The fire is essentially just an immense, alien power that has the capacity to destroy and upset that which is otherwise immortal and unchanging. One could make the argument that the only people made better off by this power are the ones who possess it, and it really is in the best interests of humans to not link the fire and return that power to Gwyndolin and Frampt.

I would agree with that. Maybe replace "change" in my take with "chaos", which is what the game seems to associate with the flame (flames of chaos anyone?). Chaos shakes things up and breaks some things, but but it also allows for new combinations and growth. So chaos is change, but its also alot of other things, including what you identified.

As a sidenote, it's interesting that chaos weapons scale with humanity. Perhaps the Dark soul allows humans to harness the power of the flame?. So if you link the flame, you are allowing the gods to harness its power. If you choose not to link the flame, maybe it doesn't mean the flame goes away and, instead, it means the dark souls (i.e., humanity) will now harness its power directly instead of relying on the gods as proxies.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Chaos flame isn't the same as the Fire though, but the result of the Witch of Izalith's attempt at creating a second Fire when the first was fading. And the Chaos flames are clearly NOT a good thing.


Anyway, have OnlyAfro's videos been posted in the thread yet? They're hilarious.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Chaos flame isn't the same as the Fire though, but the result of the Witch of Izalith's attempt at creating a second Fire when the first was fading. And the Chaos flames are clearly NOT a good thing.

I don't know if its as clear cut as that. The question of what went wrong and the difference between chaos flame and the first flame is described fairly vaguely; all we really know is that Izalith failed and as a result the bed of chaos makes demons. But, presumably, the flame created by the witch would have at least some similarities with the first flame it was intended to mimic.

There's also a bit of ambiguity as to what, exactly, went wrong. We know the Bed of Chaos was created and that the Witch of Izalith was unable to control it. But was it inherently uncontrollable, or did the Witch overestimate here strength? In other words, does the bed of chaos represent something entirely different from the first flame, or does it represent what flame in its incomplete or degraded form could be?

 

[Damned Registrations]

One thing that just occured to me: Unlike Gwynn, you're a human, descended from the Pygmy. What if your linking of the fire is fundamentally different than his because of that? You're essentially dumping humanity into the fire, instead of just souls.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Not criticising the game (never played/seen it, heard only good things about it), but my god there's a lot of codexers who own consoles.

 

[Jaedar]

Humanity is just a fragment of the dark soul though, so is it any different?