People say this is the cheap fan service/ds1 nostalgia one but idk man i’m not going to forget the pilgrim butterfly or the untended graves or the dreg heap for as long as i live and those are all ds3 originals, and even when ds1 stuff does show up it feels both thematically appropriate and aesthetically transformative enough to bring a completely different vibe to the table. Take the abyss watchers for example. I’ve heard them be dismissed as an artorias fan club and yes, that is quite literally what they are but look at all the good it did them. They clung to a falsified legend of a fallen knight and it led to both their home and their order being destroyed. Theirs is a story of the destructive folly of clinging to the past no matter how noble the intentions, an idea that’s extremely prominent throughout the game. This is why the abyss watchers are here, not to rouse fond memories of artorias, but to exemplify the nightmarish and tragic decay that permeates ds3. It’s a story about the end of the world, of an apocalypse brought on by the consequences of decisions made aeons before we come into the picture. Dark Souls 1’s world isn’t a point of reference to make the player point at the screen and clap, it’s a ghost of past sins coming back to haunt the present, it’s sickly, rotten fire spreading and devouring all that’s been built on top of it until entropy runs its course and all that’s left is ash, and idk I just think that’s neat