World and levels › Level breakdowns
Dark Souls: a world that folds back on itself
Know first: Gates and keys: a world that opens piece by piece, Layout: loops, forks and dead ends
This breakdown takes apart Lordran, the world of the first Dark Souls, made by FromSoftware and released in 2011. Its areas are joined into one piece: you walk for hours away from the first safe place, and a door or an elevator brings you back to it in seconds. The director Hidetaka Miyazaki and his artists talk about it in an interview from the book Dark Souls Design Works, and Miyazaki in a 2011 interview. The Level Design Book, a free online handbook, studies one of its levels. Two articles about the game add praise and criticism. What makes it a good example: the world is small in space and long on foot, and the game makes you discover that yourself.
The whole picture
Draw a long, winding road on a sheet of paper, then fold the sheet so that the end of the road lies right on top of its start. Walking along the road still takes as long as before. But a pin pushed through the fold joins the end and the start in one step. Lordran is that folded sheet, and its shortcuts are the pins. Put together from the sources, the world works like this:
world = one dungeon without breaks between areas
= a safe place in the middle + areas in every direction
+ shortcuts that lead back to the middle and to the bonfires
+ no fast travel until the middle of the game
| Part | The problem | The answer |
|---|---|---|
| One big dungeon | A world split into stages doesn’t feel like one place | Every area joined to the next, planned as a rough map first |
| Firelink Shrine | A player needs a safe place and a choice of where to go | A small shrine with ways out in every direction |
| Shortcuts back | Without fast travel, long walks back | Doors and elevators that fold the world back to the shrine |
| The way down | Danger needs a direction | The deeper you go, the farther from home, and you see the bottom long before you reach it |
| Anor Londo | The middle of the game needs a payoff | A city as a reward, with no clear road, and fast travel after it |