Level design question: How did I end up in Iron Keep?

[Cruna]

How did I end up in Iron Keep by going UP from Earthen Peak with an Elevator? Iron Keep is in the clouds or something? I don't see anything ABOVE from Harvest Valley

[Skull]

Originally posted by Cruna:

How did I end up in Iron Keep by going UP from Earthen Peak with an Elevator? Iron Keep is in the clouds or something? I don't see anything ABOVE from Harvest Valley

Magic

[Iri]

Originally posted by Skull64:

Magic

Pretty much that. The real question is whether Iron Keep is hidden within a magically expanded room at the top of Earthen Peak or if the elevator acts as a portal to somewhere far away.

[Cruna]

Seemed to me that it's a normal elevator with nothing special. It can take me up and down. If I go down with it again I will be again almost at the top of the tower which is Earthen Peak... It would make more sense if that elevator would take me DOWN and after a long hallway I would reach Iron Keep or a level between

[Krampus]

but then it would be underground =o

And the Iron king would be in a cave.

I much rather prefer it this way even with the stupid ass layout of the map

[MrRaggaedeman]

I always thought that someone at From just ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up and made the elevator go in the wrong direction. It still wouldn't be 100% sensible but at least it would make more sense than the lava lake in the sky...

[Hezz]

There's several areas that don't really make too much sense. Take Drangleic Castle, for example. First you're walking through some woods, relatively clear skies above, no sign of any castle or storm looming in the distance. You then walk through a tunnel for a few seconds, come out the other side, and WOAH thats a big castle, and suddenly its storming, not a patch of clear sky anywhere! Then you walk up the pathway to the castle bridge, take a look around, nothing but mountains as far as the eye can see, no sign of ANYTHING else in the world, just mountains.

I think the biggest thing we need to remember is that Drangleic clearly isn't a normal place. I mean, we enter the region by jumping into a weird swirling vortex thing and landing in a dreery place which the old hags call a "path between worlds". Which we then leave through a perfectly ordinary cave into Majula.

[Krampus]

Originally posted by Hezz:

There's several areas that don't really make too much sense. Take Drangleic Castle, for example. First you're walking through some woods, relatively clear skies above, no sign of any castle or storm looming in the distance. You then walk through a tunnel for a few seconds, come out the other side, and WOAH thats a big castle, and suddenly its storming, not a patch of clear sky anywhere! Then you walk up the pathway to the castle bridge, take a look around, nothing but mountains as far as the eye can see, no sign of ANYTHING else in the world, just mountains.

I think the biggest thing we need to remember is that Drangleic clearly isn't a normal place. I mean, we enter the region by jumping into a weird swirling vortex thing and landing in a dreery place which the old hags call a "path between worlds". Which we then leave through a perfectly ordinary cave into Majula.

You can actually see drangleic castle from majula. Also Heide's tower.

Edit: The vortex brings you to this whole world and things betwixt is just a cave next to majula i think.

Edit2: I just looked around in majula, there's also like a fortress in the distance with what looks like a huge stone buddha. Anyone have an idea what that actually is? Is that the FofG Fortress ?

[Cruna]

Originally posted by MrRaggaedeman:

I always thought that someone at From just ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up and made the elevator go in the wrong direction. It still wouldn't be 100% sensible but at least it would make more sense than the lava lake in the sky...

Okay I would take this a better answer. From just made a mistake with the elevator going up. Or they decided at the last moment to link Iron Keep to Earthen Peak, maybe in early development that elevator was going somewhere else. Then they just switched the level. But as long as Earthen Peak is not at the bottom of a Volcano, it doesn't make any sense for the elevator to go up and reach a place with lava in the sky

Originally posted by Chevy Celebrity:

but then it would be underground =o

And the Iron king would be in a cave.

I much rather prefer it this way even with the stupid ass layout of the map

No It would not be underground. Since all we did si climb. So we would go back to ground level at least

[Favkis Nexerade]

You are not looking to "boring" places. You just do not see that your character passes a bunch of kilometers. Take a look at this map. This is a whole country, you are just seeing big places, so it's not really 1 location, like in dark souls 1.

http://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/file/view/drangleic_map_dlc.jpg

[Krampus]

Originally posted by Nexerade <3 Tianshi:

You are not looking to "boring" places. You just do not see that your character passes a bunch of kilometers. Take a look at this map. This is a whole country, you are just seeing big places, so it's not really a 1 location, like in dark souls 1.

http://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/file/view/drangleic_map_dlc.jpg

Yes i am aware of that but even if the spans between the places are large there still needs to be a way that is physically here to be able to walk from one to another.
If that isn't the case, they should have made some transitions like in BL2.

And yes i am aware that there are tunnels and stuff connecting these areas. That might explain the lengh but not the difference in height, since you go up in the Peak and you literally walk through an invisible tunnel going through the air.

[Hezz]

Originally posted by Chevy Celebrity:

Originally posted by Hezz:

There's several areas that don't really make too much sense. Take Drangleic Castle, for example. First you're walking through some woods, relatively clear skies above, no sign of any castle or storm looming in the distance. You then walk through a tunnel for a few seconds, come out the other side, and WOAH thats a big castle, and suddenly its storming, not a patch of clear sky anywhere! Then you walk up the pathway to the castle bridge, take a look around, nothing but mountains as far as the eye can see, no sign of ANYTHING else in the world, just mountains.

I think the biggest thing we need to remember is that Drangleic clearly isn't a normal place. I mean, we enter the region by jumping into a weird swirling vortex thing and landing in a dreery place which the old hags call a "path between worlds". Which we then leave through a perfectly ordinary cave into Majula.

You can actually see drangleic castle from majula. Also Heide's tower.

Edit: The vortex brings you to this whole world and things betwixt is just a cave next to majula i think.

Edit2: I just looked around in majula, there's also like a fortress in the distance with what looks like a huge stone buddha. Anyone have an idea what that actually is? Is that the FofG Fortress ?

Yeah, you can see Drangleic Castle, Heide's and Forest of Fallen Giants fortress from majula. You can see Majula, Bastille and Forest fortress from Heide's as well as what looks like the Majula monument yet the terrain looks nothing like Majula, and you can see Castle from the fortress.

Yet this kind of reinforces my point. You can see all of these locations from these places (though why you can't see Bastille from Majula I'll never know), yet from anywhere on Drangleic Castle, its PURELY mountains. No coastline, no forests, no lava-keep in the distance, nothing. Even the weather is completely different in Drangleic Castle than it is anywhere else, having complete storm-cover as far as the eye can see, nothing anywhere else.

I realise its the devs being lazy and not putting any attention to detail in the horizon, but it's still a rather large inconsistency that is somewhat similar to the Iron Keep being in the sky.

[Krampus]

Originally posted by Hezz:

Originally posted by Chevy Celebrity:

You can actually see drangleic castle from majula. Also Heide's tower.

Edit: The vortex brings you to this whole world and things betwixt is just a cave next to majula i think.

Edit2: I just looked around in majula, there's also like a fortress in the distance with what looks like a huge stone buddha. Anyone have an idea what that actually is? Is that the FofG Fortress ?

Yeah, you can see Drangleic Castle, Heide's and Forest of Fallen Giants fortress from majula. You can see Majula, Bastille and Forest fortress from Heide's as well as what looks like the Majula monument yet the terrain looks nothing like Majula, and you can see Castle from the fortress.

Yet this kind of reinforces my point. You can see all of these locations from these places (though why you can't see Bastille from Majula I'll never know), yet from anywhere on Drangleic Castle, its PURELY mountains. No coastline, no forests, no lava-keep in the distance, nothing. Even the weather is completely different in Drangleic Castle than it is anywhere else, having complete storm-cover as far as the eye can see, nothing anywhere else.

I realise its the devs being lazy and not putting any attention to detail in the horizon, but it's still a rather large inconsistency that is somewhat similar to the Iron Keep being in the sky.

Well that could be true but keep in mind, Drangleic Castle is where Nashandra is so maybe the weather is affected by her curse/darkness in some way or another.

That again raises the question why it doesn't change when you beat her but meh.
Probably just looking too much into it again :/

[.]

"lava but up!"

"lava but impossible ..."

"try horse"

I bet those messages seem familiar. I think the whole elevator-to-nowhere thing, as well as a tiny sewer chamber connecting Majula to Heide's despite the fact that you can see Heide's miles away from Majula at the death-stone at the top of the hill, is meant to be more implying that you took a journey there, and the elevator is just a metaphorical vehicle for that idea. Eastern games tend to be more show-don't-tell than others.

[Krampus]

Yes like i said before that point can be made so that you don't have to physically run all the way to heide's tower in the distance. So they just shortened the way but it's still logical that you can get there through that tunnel

But the elevator thing to iron keep is both illogical and implausible ^^

All in all it does look like iron keep wasn't supposed to be there in the first place
and the whole show-don't-tell thing is just a cheap excuse that comes in handy at that point xD

[.]

Originally posted by Chevy Celebrity:

the whole show-don't-tell thing is just a cheap excuse that comes in handy at that point xD

Umm...

It's my opinion?

There, I'm immune to criticism now!