I've never played a Dark Souls game. I see this picture posted quite often along with Dark Souls 3...

I've never played a Dark Souls game. I see this picture posted quite often along with Dark Souls 3. I'm genuinely curious about something - What is this character doing with his left hand? Is that something in-game or is that from a video? I mean, it's not obvious what that pose means to someone like me who has never played a Dark Souls game. Can someone explain what is going on in this picture, particularly what the left hand is doing?

Gibe thumbs up :b

Serious question. Can someone explain what is happening in this scene? Can you explain where it comes from? Is it from a cutscene? Does this happen in game after a kill or something? What exactly is he doing with his left hand? Is that sand pouring out of it? Is it smoke? Is it a soul? Someone who knows the Dark Souls lore please explain this.

he's holding ash which was made from the burnt corpse of the sunlight champion Solaire, who appears in dark souls 1 (spoiler alert, he fucking dies)

when you use soul items (which are found in basically every souls game) you gain souls which you can use to level up. This is represented ingame by your character usually holding out a white orb and crushing it. It seems to be what the main poster armor is doing. However it seems the soul has been dried up or something. Considering the set is the firelink set, which the final boss of the game wears, it could be some metaphor for how the flame is dying out (think of it as a magical power source in extremely basic terms) so it makes sense whatever he is crushing in his hands is turning to dust.
Also if you do plan to play these games don't start with 3 it's fucking infuriating.

Thank you much. The lore is very interesting with this game. I want to play it for the lore more than any other reason.

then play 1 and only 1 because the lore afterwards takes a big fat shit. 3 tries to fix it a little bit but ends up going nowhere.
Then play BB for it's lore because it's lore is just as good if not better than souls games.

he's not crushing a soul though. it has to be sublime bone dust

where did get that gay theory?

>my headcanon is real the post

you don't crush sublime bone dusts ingame though. Again, I'm pretty sure it's just a dried out soul or something. or a used ember?

idiot

he's holding ashes, they slip through his fingers.
Fire and things related to fire (like ash) are a big part of the lore.

except there's a strong reason to believe it. the description makes it clear. keep pretending DS2 isn't canon though, while I enjoy the souls game with the most replayability and best online

What are you talking about?
Why the fuck the guy from the poster would be holding Solaire ashes? Did you played DS3?

We didn't metion DS2 btw.

It could be the same

troglodyte
if you're not gonna give even a half assed explanation for why then just fuck off with yourself

hes just a furious das2 fag ignore him
I mean I get it das2 had positive contributions to the series that still make it fun to replay from time to time, and das3 intentionally ignored these changes because memezaki really wanted to block with the dagger in his offhand

it still has shit bosses and shit level design and shit weapon movesets and shit movement, move on Sup Forums, the devs themselves admitted they got screwed over by bamco and you guys STILL defend this game

Pretty sure he's trolling.

honestly by this point I'm just talking about Sup Forums in general, it blows my mind that this board hasn't unanimously decided on the quality of das2 and 3. Every fucking day theres a souls thread and it's just nothing but the exact same shitposting every time.

>it still has shit bosses and shit level design and shit weapon movesets and shit movement, move on Sup Forums, the devs themselves admitted they got screwed over by bamco and you guys STILL defend this game

Falseflagging is one thing, but it's pretty obvious why people defend Dark Souls 2 at this point. It at least leaves a lasting impression and is by far the most mechanically sound as an RPG.

The 'Action' side just happens to be the weakest.

The only reason why it gets any defense AT ALL is simply because it offers a level of build variety in pve no other souls game came within a mile of offering.
You want an edgy lmao2kat run? Okay go find 2 katanas. Congrats.

Oh you want to do that again in 3? LOL TO BAD FAGGOT BETTER WAIT UNTIL THE END OF GRAND ARCHIVES

you want to offhand a dagger? okay cool, you can parry with it, combo it with your mainhand, it has rolling attacks, running attacks, jumping attacks, even plunging attacks!

you want to do that in 3? Okay. You can do an r1 and uh, block. maybe do a parry depending on the dagger.
apart from this, a couple of areas early game with decent level design (FoFG, bastille) and the DLCs, 2 offers absolutely nothing another souls game or just another rpg in general doesn't do 10x better.

>The Fires Fade
Remember, a piece of oak in a good fire eventually becomes a deep ember ...
Stop milking, like Dark Shit 2

He's holding a fistful of ashes (ash is the gimmick of 3) which slide out of his hand, looking down in despair.
Because DS is about despair.

The scene is a combination of two stills meshed together.

Firstly, I'll go over the background: Interestingly enough, while the castle shown to the right of the picture is indeed the castle of Lothric where you first enter the main world post-tutorial and spend the majority of the main game, you don't actually see Lothric from this perspective (Desert and ruins surrounding it) until the end of the final DLC, "The Ringed City". This may well indicate that the plan was always to have the final version of the game "end" in this manner, but what we can take from this as a promotional image without any of the DLC taken into account is that the Age of Fire (A prominent and recurring time period wherein most world development occurs) is well and truly coming to an end, with almost the entire world crumbling to dust, ash and ruins. This would make sense even from an early story perspective as not only has this been slated from early on to be the last Dark Souls game, but as I will explain soon one of the main premises of the game itself is Ash

Next I'll talk about the knight in the image

Now the knight in the image in of himself as the chosen promotional character is interesting because he is infact the final boss of the main game. Whereas all the humanoid knights on previous promotional artworks have been chosen as representative of the player character (A filler if you will) and have their armours in question obtainable reasonably early (Darkroot Garden for the Elite Knight set in DaS, first visit to Castle Drangleic for the Faraam set in DaSII) this is an armour set you'll only obtain at the end of the game, and an armour set worn by the final boss

Now, obviously when this promotional artwork came out we didn't know that this was going to be the case, so we'll work on the early assumption that this was representative of the player character. One look at the armour will tell you this knight has been through a lot of battles: His armour is misshapen, corroded and set aflame in key areas. Now this is important because a prominent aspect of all the games throughout the series is that you've never, at any point, seen anything at the height of its power. From the lands you've explored to the enemies you've faced to the allies you've had, not a single one has been at full power: It's essential to the story, as you're essentially meant to be playing an average joe fighting gods and the monsters those gods feared. You'd simply not stand a chance as an average (If somewhat humanity disadvantaged) member of the world if you'd taken this journey and ran into anything at its full power. So for this knights armour to be this damaged would indicate he's either a member of one of these fallen from grace civilizations, he's been fighting since his enemies were at (or close to) full power, or he's been fighting their weakened remains for a long, long time

That's seriously what it looks like though. I've never played a Souls game but this is honestly a shitty drawing, the immediate impression is that the guy is giving a silly thumbs up.

OP here. Outstanding info. Thank you for taking the time to write that.

Now whichever the answer is, this would tell us that the armour in question has been around for a long, long time, and in all likelihood so has the knight wearing it. Now this again is important as humans in these games, and arguably every single character and creature, are functionally immortal due to the hollowing (zombification) effect, wherein as they lose humanity they turn into walking taffy. Now yet another prominent aspect of the games is that you can survive as a hollow for a very, very long time so long as you're able to retain humanity. In the first game this was done by obtaining pieces of the Dark Soul, which were referred to as humanity. In the second game however humanity was replaced by human effigies, and a new aspect to the whole hollowing effect was introduced: Purpose

Essentially, a hollows ability to retain their sanity was based on their ability to find a purpose in their seemingly unending existence. This would of course be impacted by another aspect of hollowing, amnesia. As you forgot more and more of your pre-undead life, it would become harder and harder to find a purpose going forward, giving even the most willful and resolute a relatively small timeframe to cure themselves of their affliction, or at least complete the task they'd set out to accomplish

Now as this aspect was never really retconned, with humanity sprites only returning as a cosmetic affect in the final DLC, I personally assume that the idea of hollows requiring a purpose and the will to carry that purpose out in order to retain sanity is canon. With this as the case, and given the state of the armour the knight is wearing, it can be assumed that the knight in question is highly, highly determined to carry out whatever purpose they've chosen. Which as we find out later on in the opening cutscene, seems to be the continued upkeep of the First Flame

He’s right u bloody knob

Amazing how you wrote out all this shit but never actually explained what the knight is doing with his left hand, which is what the OP asked

he's using an item, you autistic fuck.

...

He's dropping some sand or ash from his palm. Ash is a major theme in the game.

It's just Miyazaki's nuke fetish

there's an Easter egg you get Gwyn's soul after beating old iron king in ng+2, can only assume thats what he means and is getting confused

Represents his kingdom falling apart. The age of fire is finally coming tk the end and the soul of the founder is watching his kingdom crumbling away. Soon this game ends the age of dark (bloodborne) starts.

Supposedly (i.e. according to VaatiVidya), he's scattering the ashes/bone dust of an undead who failed to defeat him and, go figure, died.

he's the final boss

You get an "Old King Soul" which is more likely the fragment of the soul given to the Four Kings than Gwyn's actual soul.

In this thread we list things Dark Souls 2 did that were far better than Dark Souls 3. I'll start:

>No bonfire and no death challenge where you can beat the game without resting at a bonfire or dying to gain a reward and bragging rights

>Non-linear first half of the game allows you to rush straight to the areas of the game that contain the items for your build

>Chugging Estus immobilizes you, and the heal isn't instantaneous meaning trying to chug while someone is sticking close to you will result in death

>Stamina regeneration is tied to weight, so a character at 10% burden will recover their bar faster than a character at 70% burden, giving an advantage and a reason to make a low burden character

>Poise exists and armor provides relevant, but not overpowering damage reduction, giving an advantage and a reason to make a high burden character

>Phantoms and Dark Spirits cannot chug estus, spirits can only heal via spell useage which is slow. This makes fighting outnumbered even without mob assistance possible since any damage you do sticks

>Can only perform four rolls before running out of stamina

>Can only perform 5 attacks of a rapier or straight sword before running out of stamina

>Parrying has longer recovery frames and consumes more stamina, making parry fishing riskier and makes parrying require higher skill

>Power stance allowing for unique combinations of dual wielding and unlocking an alternative moveset for weapons

>Being able to use the full moveset of a weapon in your off-hand including running, rolling, backstepping, etc. attacks rather than just being able to do a basic R1 swing and blocking with the weapon as it is in Ds3 (lmao who would ever want to weapon block)

>Bell Tower covenant providing two unique optional areas to PvP for Titanite Chunks, Slabs, and Twinkling, making farming for upgrades fun

>Bonfire ascetics to replay bosses you like and or gain items from NG+ and beyond without grinding through the whole game again

It's just a guy trying to hold onto ash

Enough of the gay deep "art" full of symbolism like it is a poem. The guy just has cool armor

Why is having less stamina "better?"

Because if you have tons of stamina you just spam rolls and attacks forever without thought, having less stamina requires decision making and therefore a deeper gameplay

Stamina management is part of what made combat in DaS1 and 2 difficult. The fact that I can roll four times, swing my FUGS, and then roll three more times, is one of the main reasons why DaS3's combat is so bad.

Drangleic Castle is an endgame area though.

*bloks your path*

That bonfire does have a purpose though. It's faster to run to Twin Princes from Dragonslayer Armor bonfire, via the elevator shortcut after the small army guarding their boss room.

>Poise exists and armor provides relevant, but not overpowering damage reduction, giving an advantage and a reason to make a high burden character
This is for PvP right? Because armor did absolutely nothing against monsters in DaS2.

Armor's defenses scales heavily with strength in DaS2. If you're all Dex then armor doesn't really do anything unless you upgrade it. It's one of the things that helped balance speedy vs tanky characters in DaS2 that practically doesn't exist in DaS1/3.

So where is he going in this picture?

Dark Souls 2 will always be a "no red eye orb/10"

>Flails blindly for fifteen minutes.