It’s all part of the Fromsoft experience but man, who writes these things?
https://youtu.be/vIbKALhzHVc?si=WRAQs77WG2QwVkt5
More topical, I do actually appreciate some of the persistent jankiness like this that hasn't changed since their original games. They experimented with different approaches in DS3, where certain NPCs you encountered would essentially evaporate after you exhausted their dialogue, and they would later materialize back in the hub. I personally hated this -- one element I really enjoyed in the earlier games was this sense that the world doesn't revolve around you. The NPCs feel like rich characters with their own goals and motivations
Having them leave when you're finished talking to them sort of reduced them to utilities, which of course they are ultimately, but the gamefeel suffered a bit from making that more explicit. Don't me wrong though, I love DS3, but I didn't care for that particular change
Anyway, handling NPC progression in this way where the player needs to reload the area is more about navigating a technical limitation than anything else. But like many constraints it conspires with others to produce a certain gamefeel that I enjoy. It would feel a bit less impactful if Hyetta just moved on the instant I exhausted her dialogue -- it's more interesting for me to return and see that she has moved on
Another example of this sort of thing is FromSoft supposedly historically being bad at animating eyes, hence many critical NPCs being blindfolded or with faces hidden by helmets or otherwise obscured. This imagery plays nicely with their other sensibilities around character design and is thematically pretty rich
I can't really talk about DS2 because I didn't play very far in that one, but in DS1 there are a few NPC who do that, like Laurentius, Griggs and Ingward
According to [1], earlier versions of the EMS editor were built on Microsoft Excel, took 30s to open, and didn't support undo/redo. They rewrote it for Elden Ring, but Dark Souls quest design makes a lot more sense when you realize how hard it was to change anything.
Like, are you shitting me? Why? After a while, I would do this to every NPC, every time. But, yeah, it's a bad design.
"Make the person repeat what they just told you" as a process is very immersion breaking.
It makes for a deeply unique experience overall
Perhaps the one you’d most object to is the DS1 DLC, that people paid money for, lacking instructions for access. It involves killing a specific enemy and returning to a previous location.
At the time, people forked over cash and had to prowl the whole game playing spot the difference.
And the Consecrated Snowfield is only accessible if you find two parts of a hidden medallion, the first in a castle later in the game than the lift it operates. The second is hidden in a jar underneath a mountain. But you can't just smash the jar, you have to talk to the NPC inside the jar twice before you'll get the medallion.
The market rewards abstruse design.
Also, all you have to do in the Snowfield is to take a teleporter: that's not very secret, is it?
And even then, while an item may say "use it here", if it's been dozens of hours since you got it you may just straight up forget about it.
That said, I think that the target audience for the DLC was always people who thoroughly played through the game.
Same with the other games' DLC; for Bloodborne's you need to be yoinked by an invisible enemy while in posession of an item; while it's very possible people were accidentally yoinked on their first playthrough, they will forever know that the item is a trap and will avoid getting yoinked.
(unless the item in question explicitly said "get yoinked to go to DLC", I forgot)
FWIW, after you get one half of the medallion, get invaded by Gideon's lackey and then talk to Gideon, he will tell you to look for the Albinauric woman, so at least they give you this much.
All in all, I find the quests in the base game relatively straightforward, but anyone with any prior experience in their games will have an inkling that if they care about quests' results, you need to double-check with the wiki.
That's true, but it is strange that you get there and get early-game upgrade materials, like Smithing Stone 2, etc. It seems like they wanted to emphasize that the Scadutree Fragments are the important things for scaling, and not your Base Game level, but you already have to be pretty high level and upgraded to beat Mohg.
To some extent it's a design decision maybe. From makes games that are harsh and unforgiving, but not too harsh - you can mess up bits of quests but not end up unable to get an ending (afaik) which kind of matches the gameplay (harsh but not rage-quit inducing).
The NPC / quest thing means that, unless you go online, you will need multiple playthroughs and exploration to get every quest done, OR you need to engage in a community - the quests and lore are often all discussed, disseminated, notes compared, theories crafted, etc in the community after the release of a new game.
Whether that's good or bad design I'll leave up to opinion, but it's interesting.
(personally I don't have the time to do multiple 100+ hour playthroughs so I followed guides online)
Fromsoft wants to do major seperate quest lines, so they have to cut corners elsewhere. I guess they choose a robust system that is sometimes annoying for the player.
The JRPG logic is annoying, but From uses it to beg important questions about the game world and the player. Fromsoft characters like Lautrec live in infamy for being so slippery and deliberately misleading.
a) you lucked out and it turns out your brain works exactly like the designer's and the cryptic hint make sense to you,
b) you use a guide/ask a friend/call a hotline,
c) you like the game so much you end up brute forcing your way through all of that stuff,
d) you just ignore that sidequest. I sure hope for you that finishing the main quest doesn't need you to guess something unreasonably obtuse... *COUGH* Legend of Zelda's final dungeon's location *COUGH*
And yet, that's still way better than having a quest log UI, constant screen notifications, and narration that babysit you all the time, treating you like you have never played a RPG before, acting like you are too stupid to read and listen to npc dialogue and items lore
I'll take the jank over what the western industry is filled with
For their first real open world, it holds pretty well