Welcome back to another episode of Dark Souls Dissected! Today’s video is all about the invisible walls of Dark Souls II, sometimes including a broader examination of how its collisions are used and what they can reveal about the game’s development.
0:00 Intro / Collision Types
6:54 Things Betwixt
8:22 Majula
13:47 Forest of Fallen Giants
20:57 Giants’ Memories
26:16 Heide’s Tower of Flame
30:23 No Man’s Wharf
34:27 Lost Bastille
41:45 Huntsman’s Copse
44:24 Harvest Valley & Earthen Peak
50:15 Iron Keep
54:38 Shaded Woods
1:02:27 Tseldora
1:06:42 Grave of Saints
1:10:11 Drangleic Castle
1:16:25 Shrine of Amana & Undead Crypt
1:20:48 Aldia’s Keep
1:22:29 Dragon Shrine & Aerie
1:26:06 Shulva, Sanctum City
1:30:00 Brume Tower
1:34:23 Frozen Eleum Loyce
1:40:04 Outro / Credits
Unreal Engine 5 Custom Collision Tutorial by @PixelPerfect_Dev
DS2 60 FPS Current Patch Parrywalking Guide by @distortion2
Dark Souls II Stairless in 31:15 by @noobest3
Glitches you can do in Dark Souls II by @PhobiaSoft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfIJFjTTz-s
Dark Souls 2: No Man’s Wharf Skip by @kingtheoden6242
Barrel skip from Sinner’s Rise by @lichbann6283
Playing the Dark Souls 2 Network Test Beta in 2023 by @fromsoftserve
Dark Souls 2 – My PvP Experience and my Opinion by @HyperSouls
Dark Souls 2 – Skipping Shrine of Winter (v. 1.00 ONLY) by @LobosjrGaming
Shrine of Winter skip tutorial on PC by @noobest3
Grave of Saints Staircase mod by @moonlight_ruin
moonlightruin.bsky.social
Dark Souls II: How Many Bosses Can You Cheese? by @splee5556 / BobDoleOwndU
PDCJ wall setup quick by @Stennis2
Gutter reset jump tutorial by @Stennis2
Special thanks to LordRadai and his DebugManager mod for making this video possible, Noobest, Stennis, and JeffTheBigLizard for for sharing their insight and tipping me off to a few things shown/ talked about in this video, and Moonlight Ruin for general assistance/ feedback.
Non-Souls music used in video, in order of appearance:
Jacob Lake – Shadow Tower Abyss Fan Soundtrack
Flashback (Sega CD) – Main Theme
King’s Field IV – City Ruins
Snatcher (Sega CD) – Cure
Eternal Ring – North Shore
Snatcher (Sega CD) – Spreading Die Hard
The Secret of Monkey Island – Scumm Bar
The Secret of Monkey Island – Searching for Treasure
Castlevania Symphony of the Night – Crystal Teardrop
King’s Field – Passage for a Monk
Eternal Ring – Taboo Words
Castlevania Curse of Darkness – Mortvia Fountain
Space Quest IV – Shop Theme
King’s Field III – Wood of Orde
Jacob Lake – Shadow Tower Abyss Fan Soundtrack
Spriggan Lunar Verse – Blind Alley
Castlevania Lament of Innocence – Ghostly Theatre
Spriggan Lunar Verse – Suggestion of Ruins
Castlevania Order of Ecclesia – Passing Into the Night
Snatcher (Sega CD) – Cold Sleep
The Secret of Monkey Island – Melee Island
Frame Gride – Track 20
Panzer Dragoon Saga – Chaos Amongst the Silence
Tomb Raider – Puzzling
Tomb Raider – Tomb of Tihocan
Ico – Castle in the Mist
Grim Fandango – Lost Souls Alliance
43 Comments
Hey Wall: How come the floor/walls show in only some places when you turn on the blue collision?
Is the collision just set lower/behind in those situatuons?
48:27 danggg the game looks sooo much better in vanilla here. We desperately need a ds2 remaster that restores all the art direction.
Me and my wife just finished a run of dark souls 2 funny you seem to post just about every time we either finish up a run or start a run spooky coincidence I suppose.. we are starting dark souls 3 soon wouldn’t happen to be cooking up any videos regarding that would you? 😅
I have a very clear memory of my first time playing Dark Souls II. I tried to make the Pursuer fall off the level. I did manage to get him off the ledge BUT THEN HE JUST FLOATED THERE, MENACINGLY. Needless to say, the ladies at the start were right — i died a lot.
me, who has never played ds2. (i do enjoy ds3 and elden ring) listening to a man talk about invisible walls for 2 hours…
I would have a loved a small section on weapons impacting the collisions, melee ones i mean, beacues it always seems to break my weapons more than the other games. And it isnt just because ds2 has lower durability numbers in general. Great Video otherwise!
7:56 Miyazaki wet dream
Riveting
the walls in Elana's boss room are funky i remember attempting to use splintering lightning spear on her as she as against a wall but it got caught and i watched all the bolts rain into one spot above her dissipating as it didn;t even reach her head </3
0:29 no
Hey illusory. I’m just some random person but I wanted to say how much your videos mean to me; and how much excitement I felt getting this on my feed. I loved your previous DS2 vids and hoped for more – now Christmas came early. Much love to you 💚
I’m just here for the midi Majula theme 6:35 : )
Scholar is better in every way. DS2 vanilla nostalgism is pure revisionism. It does not matter if SOTFS betrays the original design intent when the original design intent was bad.
i truly appreciate how much effort goes into all of this guys videos…. i love this stuff so much🤞🤞🤞🤞
Me just grinding out a fresh elden ring character while listening to illustration wall dissect dark souls 2 1
i spent a lot of time in ds2's heyday looking for spots to make weird jumps and get out of bounds or on scenery (sometimes after seeing a message in a weird place, and sometimes just having an inkling i might be able to get up a little slope or ledge) so this video's proving weirdly nostalgic for me!
YES!!!!! YESSSSS!!!!!
5:02 me when interact with the red lamp in the corner that my family doesn't see
ooh, do we know at what point during the ring-raising animation the low collision around dragonrider becomes active? it'd be fun to see if maybe you could have a summon pull the lever while you were in the arena, and if the low collision turned on at some point before the platform rose completely, you could have a brief window of walking around on air
A movie length video in my favourite game?
Oh, you shouldn't have 🙂
30:29 Monkey Island music for No Man's Wharf is such a nice touch
Loved the use of Scumm's bar music for No man's wharf 🤣 LEAVE US TO OUR GROG!
Sweet Jesus, 1hr42mins of my beloved DS2!
Sofa, PREPARE THINESELF!!!
Anyone know the name of the song starting at 1:27:00 ? I know it's from a Souls OST, but I can't remember which and it's driving me insane
We used to torch up for shrine of amana, as it highlights the deadly drops really well
57:40 i kind of resent the idea of "it's just a video game it doesn't need to be like real life." there are serious problems with trying to argue that video games should adhere to realism, however there is a distinction between realism and the quality of verisimilitude.
verisimilitude (veri – true + similis – like, resemblance) is the quality of seeming true or resembling reality. it is the appearance of truth, or the appearance of realism. the rubble being the barrier to vendrick's castle is funny, but also immersion breaking, because it mildly harms the purpose for the player's journey. the reason for the journey is harmed by the obstacle we need to overcome being defined only within the bounds of the game, and not congruous with the perception of the world within the player's head. realistically a person should be able to climb over that rubble, but in dark souls 2, you can't climb, but also in dark souls 2, you're meant to be convinced that you're playing as a human on a purposeful adventure wielding large weapons. usually when people complain about something being "unrealistic" in a piece of media, they most likely mean that something isn't verisimilitudinous. things don't need to be real, they only need to seem to be real. if the shrine of winter were placed in the middle of that path, it's likely nobody would complain, despite the fact that a person could probably circumnavigate around it by scaling the dirt cliffs.
this is a pretty brainy and long-winded way to explain a pretty basic idea, however i think this kind of analysis is important not just for video games, but for media as a whole. it's a fundamental idea for establishing the connection between the viewer/player and the narrative. things in a fictional world need to resemble things in the reality of the person experiencing the fiction, or else it won't feel meaningful, thus harming the ability to connect with the fiction.
It bothers me that the Pursuer is in so many places made to specifically NOT pursue you.
CAN you answer me why i have so little online interactions on Playstation? on PC theres always invasion or summoning. but on PS thats totaly spare
We’ll never get a masterpiece like Dark Souls 2
I think it’s hilarious and awesome that over 100k people tuned into this
forest of the fallen giants is one of the most expansive areas in the game, but you can skip almost 90% of it.
Aw dang, now you've got me seriously excited for a SECOND illusory wall video on DS3. Its by far the least loved game on your channel.. would be fun to see a video like this for it. Elden Ring's invisible walls might be a bit ridiculous to cover in its entirety, though. I'd still watch an 8 hour video on invisible walls all the way through tho, lol.
I just spent over 5 hours on Mario 64's invisible walls, this is nothing.
light green? that shit looks teal to me
I love these videos. I don't understand why. Yay
Idk if this happened to anyone else but when I was making my way to no-man's wharf when I entered the stalagmites area none of the textures loaded in, it was just solid white, everything, and it was insane cause idk why it happened, it never happened again, I was playing sotfs on PlayStation 4 or 5 I don't remember or know it could be reason why it happened
6:40 I've played this game like a million times, but I don't recognize this area, with the gravestones and the ghosts. Does anybody know what this is?
27:02 motherf- I've been confused by that for so many years now! (In all seriousness, though, great video, and a very fascinating topic! )
That Monkey Island music came as a pleasant surprise. 😀
I very much enjoyed your music choices for this video, sir
That overabundance of wariness in Majula actually saved my behind because teen me really wanted to see what was there and if not for those boundaries Id have gotten myself stuck between those ruins-
The wall of illusions has returned
I wish DS2 was real.