This modder has been exploring the Souls series' mysterious out-of-bounds cities
Crest most recently uploaded a video showing off the Boletarian town in Demon’s Souls.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
FromSoftware’s games have inspired a host of dataminers eager to reconstruct their secrets and cut content. YouTuberCresthas been dissecting the games for years, exploring the game in every possible way since Dark Souls' developer version leaked in 2014. Notably, Crest breaks out of bounds tobring new perspectiveson the games' worlds, as well as close-up views of FromSoft’s evocative background assets.
Most recently, Crest dida tour of the Boletarian townin Demon’s Souls, a far-off walled city you can observe from the heights of World 1, the Boletarian Palace. Crest and fellow modderThenscreated an enlarged version of the faraway town with added collision detection, allowing you to walk through and examine it up close through the use oftheir mod.
FromSoft’s haunting cityscapes have always captured my imagination, and the Boletarian castle town in particular resembles something out ofBerserkorDrakengard. It seems to have had a lot of thought put into its layout as well: the town’s arranged around a romanesque church, small fort, and their attending plazas, and it has wider thoroughfares cutting through denser residential areas.
You may have run into Crest’s work in the past with the modder’s exploration of thestreets of Anor Londo, and they recently endeavored toupscale the texturesin that out-of-bounds area for closer examination.
The streets of Anor Londo have always fascinated me because you get that striking, iconic first look at this city of the gods, while your explorations are limited to just two cathedrals and their immediate surroundings floating over the city. Crest’s out-of-bounds demos of Anor Londo satisfy this lingering curiosity I’ve always had, and it’s interesting to see this set dressing knowing that it (in theory) would become Irythill of the Boreal Valley in Dark Souls 3.
Back in March, Crest demonstrated an upscaled version of theunnamed village visible from Firelink Shrinein Dark Souls, an area that doesn’t quite correspond to anywhere you can explore in the game. It’s so detailed as to almost seem like a low-LoD version of a playable area, but it’s definitely not the Undead Burg or New Londo. It remains one of those unsolved mysteries in the game, but at least now you can ponder it up close.
“I really like how detailed these ‘hidden parts’ are,” the modder told us. “It’s always exciting to explore these places for the first time—they are often just normal everyday places that people used to live in like the lower part of Anor Londo. It brings a lot of life to the universe and this is something that we don’t get to see while playing normally.”
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Crest has aPatreonandKo-fifor those interested in supporting their work, and you can follow the modder onTwitterandYouTube.
Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister’s copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he’s not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch.
Crown Gambit, a stylish dark-fantasy card battler where choices matter, now has a demo
Today’s Wordle answer for Thursday, November 7
I chatted to an MIT-built AI version of my future, 60-year-old self and we did NOT get along
