Dark souls 3 first boss full#
Dark souls 3 first boss software#
Dark souls 3 first boss code#

'The area was designed around Yhorm waking up from the coffin alongside you and he was a simple boss easing people into the game'. McDonald's shot of the Untended Graves featuring black knights.įor instance, the poster claimed that the Yhorm the Giant model encountered in the release version of Dark Souls 3's Profaned Capital was, at one stage in development, intended to be the first boss that players confronted - and was called Gundyr at the time. Happily, this description matches a screenshot that McDonald shared on Twitter, suggesting that the original poster's other assertions could very well be true.

This, they say, was 'filled with black knights to pay homage to the original '. 'Untended Graves was actually the beginning of a cut level that went all the way to Soul of Cinder through a ruined firelink and lower wall area', the tester explained. McDonald, for his part, says that he 'can verify huge chunks' of the (unnamed) QA tester's account. Not only does it appear to corroborate that Untended Graves was Dark Souls 3's original ending location, it offers a host of other, massive, pre-release differences, painting a surprisingly vivid picture of the game that Dark Souls 3 used to be. Pratti managed to locate a copy of this early account and shared it with McDonald. Interestingly, McDonald's revelations jogged the memory of another Twitter user, Eduardo Pratti, who recalled seeing a post from a (presumed) QA tester around the time of Dark Souls 3's release. Pontiff Sulyvahn, at one point known as the Black Old King, would appear in the third, Last Boss variant. tnk9sh98bf- Lance McDonald ApTo see this content please enable targeting cookies.Ĭhampion Gundyr (also referred to Old Old Hero Gunda in the code) would seemingly still be found in the default, daylight version of the Untended Graves area, as currently seen at the start of the game, with another now-completely-removed boss - referred to as both Evil Spirits and Snake Soul - occupying the dark, eroded version. Each state had a different boss in that area, listed here. The 'Ceremony' system was used to switch between these world states. There was originally 3 states the 'Graves' map could go into.

Dark souls 3 first boss full#

Alongside the familiar daylight and nighttime iterations seen in the full release, there was a third variant - these are labelled 'default', 'eroded', and 'last boss' respectively, within the game's files.įrom what McDonald has deduced, it was originally planned that players could perform some sort of ceremony to switch between the three versions of the area, changing the time of day on-the-fly, with a unique boss encounter found in each.

Dark souls 3 first boss code#

In a series of tweets, however, MacDonald explained that code references point to there being three distinct versions of the Cemetery of Ash/Untended Graves area at one stage. In the final version of Dark Souls 3, the Untended Graves is a pitch black, entirely optional area (seemingly an alternate timeline version of the Cemetery of Ash and Firelink Shrine that opens the game), and is accessed after the Oceiros boss fight, in the garden below Lothric Castle. Pontiff Sulyvahn's placement as a mid-game boss always seemed odd, given his prominence in Dark Souls 3's lore. Instead, it culminated in a battle with Pontiff Sulyvahn (now found in Irithyll of the Boreal Valley) in an unseen third variation of the Untended Graves. Be warned that Dark Souls 3 spoilers occur from here on out.Īccording to game file references unearthed by McDonald, at one stage in development, Dark Souls 3 didn't conclude with the fight against the Soul of Cinder in the Kiln of the First, as is the case in the final release.

Dark souls 3 first boss software#

It all begins with evidence uncovered by longtime From Software fan and source code sleuth Lance McDonald, who previously made some fascinating discoveries regarding cut content in Bloodborne. Fans have been piecing together a version of Dark Souls 3 very different to the one seen at release, combining pre-launch accounts of the game and source code plundering in an effort to reconstruct From Software's original vision.