Dark Souls Diaries: Glory to Anor Londo

Here’s one more of those conversations exchanged between Tathagata (T) and Sahil (S), the ones that define the depths of fanboyism within the iLLGaming Panel, ranging from Far Cry to the obvious pick – Dark Souls.

Skipping back a few months:

T: So I finally beat the Witch Nashandra and took over the throne of Vendrick as the next undead champ.
S: Wait, you beat Dark Souls 2?!
T: Yep. The last bits almost felt like a speedrun.
S: And you did all this without summoning?
T: No sunbros, yep. I just waited, watched and contested her hex with the slash of my Uchigatana.
S: So did you like it?
T: Like what? I think Dark Souls 2 is one of the greatest games ever, the sense of victory and self-satisfaction is matchless.
S: How do you say that?
T: Umm… Because I just beat the game?!
S: You know you’ve missed a huge amount of this so called victory and self-satisfaction.
T: How?
S: You are yet to reach Anor Londo in Dark Souls the original.
T: I can’t get past the lizard men in Sen’s Fortress bro! But one day I will see the end of this booby trapped fort and you will be the first one that I’d celebrate with. Till then, I’m heading off to kick start NG+ in Dark Souls 2.
S: But you haven’t even discovered Anor Lo….

(Phone hangs up)

Of all the weirdest and cruellest things that have ever happened to me, I think the save game data wiping moment has to go down as the easy winner. Holding three important great souls in Dark Souls 2 and almost ready to go on a quest to find Rotten, my PS3 crashed and it took away all those save games, including the Dark Souls original save file, saved after killing Quelaag. And so I restarted my Dark Souls journey, discovering each content, remembering every nook, skilling up whenever necessary, but even so, this misery gave me a second chance. And second chances are meant to be taken, scrap down what you did back then, restart with a different kind of hunger, and you will reach your destination, earlier than before.

THE SEN’S FORTRESS CHAPTER

Piercing through the steel armour of the Bell Gargoyles, attacking the Gaping Dragon repeatedly in the fiery cage fight, and finally managing to come clean out of Blighttown, I was there again. In front of the gates of Sen’s Fortress. With a wrong footed step, I switched on a round of hard slicing arrows thereby announcing my first death in Sen’s Fortress. In my second or third try I managed to backstab the Lizard men and finally unravel the secret to beating them: engage one at a time, roll and keep knocking its back, release the shield and backstab for maximum damage. Moving onward, I meet death again, across swinging axes, mage Man-Serpents, and rolling giant balls?!  In a split second, I got tossed off a rooftop by a giant fire bomb, only to discover a secret bonfire location, tell me why would you condemn to be brutally punishing again? Resting for the time being, I seek to set out once again, because I have waited enough, better open the gates of Anor Londo before our times run out.

WELCOME TO ANOR LONDO

Taking each step with ease, I find one of those familiar faces: a shield drawn knight, slaying him I move on, only to meet an archer firing bulky arrows at me from the ceiling. I already heard about how people got wasted combatting archers at Anor Londo, I felt this one was pushing me closer to that moment. Meeting the Iron Golem was probably one of the craziest sequences in my whole run of Dark Souls. Why? Because I forgot to knock off the giant on top of the tower who hurls giant fire bombs at you. The first death was as casual as it could get, in the sequence of my second death I was thrown off the platform by the Golem itself. I was battling vertigo, fire and the slow colossus who blocked my only passage to Anor Londo. Running for his feet, releasing lock and running away from him as soon as he was powering up, I used every strategy available to me within that plank. The battle went on for good 10-15 minutes, because I didn’t want to be driven to death by the greed to strike another blow. I was down to the last trickle of my available health, and so was the Golem, we were at each other’s throat, luck choosing to be by my side, just this one last time. In an instant, came down a pair of harpies and took me upwards towards the sun’s source, my eyes watery with sleep and the gleaming rays of the rising sun. The camera changed its aspect, and the harpies carried the ant-like body across a huge wall, on the other side, rested the greatest place I’ve ever seen in my whole real and virtual life. The city of Anor Londo. The dream came true, the wait became a deed.

Anor Londo is a breather, a magnificent destination worthwhile to be called the central point of a great story. Look down and you will find pure perfection, look up and you’ll notice how majestic the world of Dark Souls looks. Anor Londo is not only your priceless gift for faring well in all your previous battles, Anor Londo is also your next curse. Forget the Firelink Shrine, forget the Undead Parish and the Depths for a while, Anor Londo is here to make you pay for your weaknesses. Anor Londo in fact is a beautiful lie, a town that wants to protect itself from people like you. I had no clue about this new area, so I started hunting for bonfires immediately, what I did end up ruffling are giant guards and tons of tricky treasure box monsters. I was able to pick up the tons of souls I got from killing the Golem and finally unearthed the First bonfire. The first enemy to cross lines was the Gargoyle protecting the level. I’ve faced Gargoyles in the past, not one but two of them, this one was definitely a walk in the park. The scenic beauty and the near perfection atmosphere of Anor Londo told me somewhere inside that this place has to be the greatest mine of rare enemy drops. Killing the Gargoyle got me the Gargoyle Halberd, as I quickly upgraded it to +5, striking an invisible wall got me a Havel’s Armour set and on my way I ran from rooftop to balcony, unlocking doors creating shortcuts from the bonfire.

THE GLORIOUS BATTLE

The good part about Anor Londo is that the enemies do not come in hordes, unlike Sen’s Fortress, and even though the Silver Knights have good reflexes and high strikes, they are susceptible from the back. Backstabbing them with my Gargoyle Halberd +5, I kept pushing forward, discovering new booby traps and engaging with Titanic Demons locked inside rooms for god-knows-what. Everything about Anor Londo feels royal, even the dumbest of deaths, the natural richness in itself becomes the inspiration to go beyond and find out what lies ahead. I was immersed heavily into the Victorian age architecture and design, each step left my jaw dropped, be it outside or indoors, facing the Painted Bandits or surviving the archers who would deny me enough leg space to hold my body. For all you need to know, I was indeed ‘Praising the Sun’ and all its creations, bubbles and meandering rays permeating the rooftop. The level is equally balanced between the ragingly hard environmental structures to the beautifully created safe zones, and it all makes sense when you draw out that sword and fist your way through the final fog door. And meet the two Knights of this sun kissed land, Dragonslayer Ornstein and Executioner Smough.

I was coming straight from the blocks of Dark Souls 2, so I treated this battle as the Dragonslayer/Dragonrider battle from Drangleic Castle in DS2, and boy, I got murdered, repeatedly. All your doings, all that item discovery, all that soul farming inside the Chapel in Anor Londo actually serves a bigger purpose, this epic battle. The Silver Knights replicate the moves of the Dragonslayer Ornstein, the bigger colossus thumps you to thin air like Smough, and so you got to make the path up from the second bonfire your practice grounds. These two combine and thrash you into pieces, unlike the Dark Souls 2 version. While one thumps you from the air, the other dashes towards you with a lightning charged spear. Any other time of the year, I’d say do not strut into their territory, but if you’ve been beaten before in a Souls game, I’d say this explains it all. The Ornstein-Smough battle is a rundown of your emotions, skills, desire and of course, the very important bit about fighting two great knights at the same effin’ time – your reflexes. Killing one of them makes the other one absorb its soul and become even more powerful, seldom replicating the moves of his dead partner. The ideal way to enjoy (yes you heard it right, enjoy) this battle is to go solo, instead of taking a partner or in that case summoning Solaire. Going solo gives you the edge to choose whom to kill first. It also removes the kill dependency on your phantom, meaning you take the calls, it is equally important in this battle to maintain synchronisation. Poison your Halberd or a long range weapon, whack the R2 button when the duo is in proximity, or simply R1 them one at a time. I found Ornstein to be weak to fire, so make sure you have at least 8-10 firebombs to keep him at bay. The whole 15 minutes were perhaps the best 15 minutes of my gaming career, and when I did come out ‘unkilled’, I felt like I was the biggest boss (sans a fog door) in the whole of Dark Souls.

CELEBRATING THE ACCOMPLISHMENT

Reaching upstairs, the first thing to console your ripped apart, sweating heart is the vision of a bonfire. Light it up in its glory and upgrade your character from the 70k odd souls from the previous battle. As you proceed through the undiscovered corridor, you find the majestic princess of Sunlight, the only residing God of Anor Londo, Gwynevere.

Cut to a recent conversation:

S: Even after beating the level, I would randomly go to the Princess just to watch the sunlight halo appearing behind her, and hear her heavenly voice saying Hello to me. “O Chosen Undead”
T: I must tell you that I have been pinching myself at 3AM to really make sure I was watching all this, and not dreaming. This is Dark Souls, right?
S: This is DARK SOULS!

And I could only think of this track playing at the back of my head at the end of the war:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eONYrDA0B-I

Gwynevere Photo Credit: Wikia