this is the best piece of cinema ever created, much better than the game

So fucking good

I like how the intro at first is entirely focused on you and your curse, and then the old lady tells you the epic tale of Drangleic. This is a nod to the fact that you started the game to undo your curse, but eventually you forget your own goal.

10 years and we still have no clue what the fuck happened in this cutscene. Still the best intro to a Souls game.

That intro cutscene was way ahead of it's time and still is. What masterpiece! I wish elden ring scenes were this good

Such an incredible cinematic

DARK SOULS SAD MEME 0:11 SUPER SMASH BROS BAD ENDING THE END OF SUPER SMASH BROS BLUE ARCHIVE BAD ENDING THE END OF KIVOTOS AVENGERS BAD ENDING THE END OF AVENGERS COME AND LEARN WITH PIBBY BAD ENDING CORRUPTED WINNER THE END CARTOON NETWORK

Very Tarkovsky

While 1 and 3 have amazing intros that focus on your goals. The people you have to defeat... This one, how it deals with the undead curse, with the process of becoming hollow. It's sombre but does a lot for me.

My game crashed at the end of this cutscene, but I didn’t know I was at the end of it on my 1st playthrough, so I had to search this up lmfao

my first dark souls game

The intro was voiced by the lady who voiced High Matriarch Teersa in Horizon, Nicolette McKenzie. She also gave her likeness to Teersa.

Still best intro from all souls like games

Best souls intro by far imo

1:00 the older you get the more you understand what that means...

Still the best intro of any souls like

I lost my shit when I first saw this, then I played the game, How could this game have one of the best trailers and best cinematic openings ever but suck so hard

Am I the only one who thinks that this old lady is Emerald Herald / Shanalotte?

Man, so many years and progressively more excellent fromsoft games later, I still find this game to have the best vibe of them all. And (definitely) maybe it's not the best of the bunch as a whole but the way I feel watching this cinematic or just hearing the main menu music in my mind is just indescribable and so unique. I can't put into words how much I appreciate this feeling. Flame, oh, flame...

Best Souls intro by miles and you can't change my mind.

Why was he cursed at the beginning?

Loved the setting and story of this one the most. Still, is the one I hated playing the most, sadly. And reallt interesting that all this story that happened, as we see on 3, was just "one of the countless stories of kingdoms that rose and fell, forever forgotten".

Ahh, so much better than the Elden Ring's intro...

Hey hey. Breathe air in! Hi all! (God created all things. His son, Jesus, died to forgive us of all wrong doing via his unbreakable red blood. He rose again 3 days later.) :) :D

i replayed ds2 after finishing elden ring, i wanted to understand the story rather than just blind playthrough. can someone explain the whole story of the intro? are we really came from future?

Ah I love DS2. Good shit.

The worst souls intro so boring I always skip it, ds 2 its like the greatmoon sword in ds2 fake souls.

Well we all can shove it down their throats, cause if any one's beaten this game, we've proved them wrong!

i have played all souls game + elden ring , bloodborne and demons souls. dark souls was the most memorable and best in opinion. the home city was the best in ds2, the music, the boses and the gameplay and areas. the best change in this game was that you could light bonfires further so enemiess and bosses got stronger, and the bosses got reincarnated so you could take him again, you also got way more souls on lit bonfires

This game remains a gem. I do not know why it gets so much flack, it is very grand. That intro alone was wow, then the scene where they were trying to touch their memory of the long gone irretrievable past as the OP goes hollow and throws 'emself into the maelstrom that plonks em in the realm betwixed. The facts this plays perhaps thousands of years after 1 and this curse is incurable, but the fools errand will still try. Its like a long forgotten " Why am I repeating history?" through out all the souls games, its like this unknowable dejavu that you know you must somehow know been there before, and yet you never have been there in this life. Upon the ashes of one kingdom shall be built another and upon that another fire will burn it down. Miyazaki is a god and his mind a legendary tome of greatness. Not a single game he has made I disliked. I bow to greatness and he made this a great game too! In Straid's famous words " Feeble cursed one! Stop being so weak!" o;

DS2 works so much better outside the DS universe and age of fire because this intro feels more like waking up in Hades. A terrible life after death, where you must kill to preserve your life because you cannot die or be released from pain while your body still spoils, fighting to avoid the inevitable darkness of losing your sense of self in immortality; like a twisted, inverse transcendence. Meanwhile One person was named King of this underworld and you have no clue where you are, but the old hags are the Fates who guide you to escape the Underworld by taking the throne, but they don't see it in your fate so they laugh. It's the only game where getting an immense amount of souls is the same as getting Lord Souls, but they say taking the throne will let those souls be born again. It's like ripping open the gates of Hell, knowing the light will dim again as they get a new life, but life will one day end again.

The laddle says all

Was she right about the effigy? She was wrong player becomes lord, and effigy an effigy is nothing but humanity

2:45 Bloodborne reference xD

DS2's intro is incredible it feels like it gives more personality to the game and the character at first but when you actually play the game... well let's just say it doesn't live up to the hype.

"You'll lose your souls" Yeah no shit chief

by far best fromsoft intro

This game’s intro is freaking epic.

Is this oldman shanalote? The fire keeper?

Elden Ring is Yui Tanimura's baby, clearly.

ah yes dark souls 2 protag who came from bloodborne

Honestly the best intro out of all the games

My first entry to the Soul's game was DS2. I had so much fun with it. My friend and I co-op'd it multiple times, pretty much beating it around 10 times in total. I know a lot of people didn't like this one, but I love it.

DS2 had to walk so Elden Ring could run!

This game need a total remake that fit this intro and tge trailer we got, as well what has been left out.

3:31

The intro of DS2 felt so personal compared to 1 & 3. Here you're just an undead dude seeking for the cure for hollowing while in 1 & 3, they told you to kill the lords as it introduced in the intro and then link the first flame after

There is esoteric symbolism here. Wheel of samsara which is represented by the phrase "like a moth drawn to a flame, your wings will burn in anguish time after time". If you notice, as this is spoken you can see the "brightbugs" swarming into the abyysal vortex.) The wheel of Samsara is the idea of how until we are able to transcend this world through incremental (between lives) progress towards true acknowledgement of the Divine, we are subject to perpetual rebirth into this imperfect world, which is by design increasingly rife with suffering. The Fire keepers, (keepers of true, organic, noncorrupted life, still infused with Light) are easily associated with the Norns of Germanic mythology; the keepers of fate. This fate idea is further strengthened by the "Kind Old Dear" in the beginning of the cinematic, who spins a loom. This is a clear hearken to the spinners of faith in Greek mythos.. I forget their names psychopaths, but they are a clear spiritual cognate to the Norms of the Germanic traditions. psychopathy (which I believe is the result of gradual moral deteriation of the soul; not necessarily by one's own doing... Our souls can be stripped of Light by those already devoid of it themselves; the most cruel and malicious of people on this Earth.) To become "Hollow" is to be born as a psychopath. It is now known that these "people" we know as psychopaths are born this way, and have no real way of being treated. The only pleasure they derive from life is when they are able to be cruel in some way to others. They do not feel sadness, happiness, love, fear, or shame, to name a few, emotions we unfortunately assume are innate to all humans. Their goal is like that of a psychological virus: They wish you to be devoid of Light just as they are; not because they regret being stripped of it, but because they relish in the utter destruction of goodness.

Obvious Fates are Obvious.

Came back here after hearing a theory that this intro is in the age of darkness post DS3 and the entirety of DS2 is in the past.