Linear Gameplay of Dark Souls 1, and Dark Souls 2.

[Autoro]

In your opinion, which of the two has a more linear story progression? Why do you think what you do? I'll start us off :D.

Dark Souls 1 is (In my opinion) the more linear of the two games. In terms of story progression, at least.

In Dark Souls 1, if you wanted to beat the game (From my understanding), you had to have the Lordvessel to unlock key parts of the game. There were a few shortcuts you could make to get the Lordvessel quicker, but to get to Gwyn you had to have it.

(I will give props to DS1 for making the map one massive interconnected world over straight "Dungeons" in DS2.)

In Dark Souls 2, however... If you so chose to, you could get past the Shrine of Winter, and access the entire game without having the 4 Great Souls. If you have one million Soul Memory, you can open the door early. Later on down the NG+ chain, it does get a bit rediculous with having to get eight million to open the door, meaning that getting the Great Souls would be technicallly faster... But it's an option..

[TrueArchery]

It's kind of swapped.

DaS1 - you need the Lordvessel for th e 4 paths.
DaS2 - you can do the 4 paths first and then have a rather linear progression (drangleic castle > crypt and aldias keep > dragon shrine).

However in DaS1 you can grab the master key and do like half the game before facing the first story-related bell-boss. It gives you overall a lot more freedom. Catacombs? Undead Burg? Blighttown, maybe Ash Lake? Valley of Drakes and Darkroot Garden (or whatever it's called, I forgot)?

[Autoro]

I do admit that the Map itself gets a fair bit more linear after Shrine of Winter.

To your second point; My point was that to beat the game, you have to have the Lordvessel, and that can be quite the annoying bit for Speedrunning, or avoiding bosses you truely despise that also happen to be Lordvessel related. In DS2, you could just skip all 4 main bosses, and head right to Drangleic if you wanted to.

[DamZe]

I would say that they are both equally flexible in early game.

In DS1 the master key can get you to Anor Londo in well under an hour from thereon you have to acquire the Lord Vessel and then you are free to explore the rest of the game as you see fit (my favourite order of play in DS1). If the player doesn’t have the master key then the game does feel more closed off than DS2, but NG+ cycles can introduce these new quicker paths for players who acquire the master key later from Domhnall.

In DS2 you are encouraged to go out and explore and find answers for yourself, the first parts are virtually completely open. One can buy a FBOY very early on in forest of giants (takes less than 5 minutes to rush to the bonfire where the old hag sells the FBOY) and open the stone statue/shaded woods passage.

The worst in the series is DS3, virtually on rails from start to finish with a handful of small areas tacked on as optional. Master Miyazaki in all his grandeur blew a perfect opportunity to allow early access to Grand Achieves by killing the Dancer from the start and thus facing the twin princes early on, it would at first mess with Grayrat’s storyline, but that could be fixed by making him still ask if he should go to plunder Lothric castle after he has been sent everywhere else in the same linear order. At least with this suggestion DS3 would have had a semi open progression where the player could at least choose two distinct paths from the beginning, as it stands now you are greeted with a “♥♥♥♥ you” message if you try to enter Grand Archives without killing 3 lords of cinder first, because apparently, some poor soul needs to drop the key to the Archives after the Dragonslayer Armor bonfire and always times it perfectly every time you dispatch of the first 3 Lords of Cinder.

For a Souls game, it’s an subpar game design decision in every way imaginable, prior titles were always known for the small secrets which could alter how you progress through the game! This flexibility and sense of mystery is completely gone in Recycle Souls 3 Linear Edition, it’s evident Miyzakai was bored out of his mind and wanted to make another Bloodborne seeing as he did everything in his power to nudge the combat dynamic as close to Bloodborne’s as possible while simultaneously destroying the traditional pace and poise mechanics from DS1/D2. I am no professional game designer, but if an idiot such as myself can see these glaring issues for what they are, obvious glaring issues compared to the other DS titles! Then how could the “A-team” not?

Guess the B-team wasn’t so “B” as these Miyazaki apologist scrubs would want us to believe.