This modder has been exploring the Souls series’ mysterious out-of-bounds cities
FromSoftware’s games have inspired a host of dataminers eager to reconstruct their secrets and cut content. YouTuber Crest (opens in new tab) has 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 to bring new perspectives (opens in new tab) on the games’ worlds, as well as close-up views of FromSoft’s evocative background assets.
Most recently, Crest did a tour of the Boletarian town (opens in new tab) in Demon’s Souls, a far-off walled city you can observe from the heights of World 1, the Boletarian Palace. Crest and fellow modder Thens (opens in new tab) created an enlarged version of the faraway town with added collision detection, allowing you to walk through and examine it up close through the use of their mod (opens in new tab).
FromSoft’s haunting cityscapes have always captured my imagination, and the Boletarian castle town in particular resembles something out of Berserk (opens in new tab) or Drakengard (opens in new tab). 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 the streets of Anor Londo (opens in new tab), and they recently endeavored to upscale the textures (opens in new tab) in 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 the unnamed village visible from Firelink Shrine (opens in new tab) in 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.”
Crest has a Patreon (opens in new tab) and Ko-fi (opens in new tab) for those interested in supporting their work, and you can follow the modder on Twitter (opens in new tab) and YouTube (opens in new tab).
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