We’ll know for sure when Dark Souls 3’s final DLC expansion releases sometime next year. It’s a hopeful twist to a sad story, that these forlorn worshippers of a destitute god at least get relief after so much misery. After defeating the boss and kicking off the events that will presumably burn this world to the ground, we find our chatty Crow Bro standing outside, staring up at the chapel where the fire is kept. I may have a chance to redeem myself though. The Corvians are innocent, trapped in a slowly rotting purgatory where every now and then some jerk like me rolls in and kills them without a second thought. What was my reward? The painful truth and a heaping of guilt. The training wheels are off for a few minutes and the first thing I do is murder an entire cluster of harmless blob crows looking for salvation.Īnd then when I could save them, I opted to run away and let the AI do the work. Three entire Dark Souls games taught me that most environments are more threatening than they appear, but besides a few Corvian knights, the village is a breeze. In truth, they’re a harmless creature that deliberately sidesteps the myth of Dark Souls’ difficulty to put the player on edge and encourage them to look at the world in a new light. The training wheels are off for a few minutes and the first thing I do is murder an entire cluster of harmless blob crows looking for salvation.

I feel like I’m watching myself in the bird pool from earlier, killing Corvians just because. I hope some of the smaller Corvians fight back and do some damage for me, but they all die in no time. It’s a quiet moral moment I’m too scared to interfere with. Another Corvian Knight shows up and starts attacking the others. Whatever they’re looking for, it’s well protected. They’re headed towards a library, likely in pursuit of knowledge about the fire. In Ariandel’s case, they see shit.Īfter our chat, I step outside to a stream of passive Corvians trudging up the hill. As for the weakling Corvians, their knowledge is power, sure, it’s just the power to see things as they really are. The world is clearly rotting around them, but the Corvian Knights would rather live in a dying world than not at all, driven by selfish impulse. I feel like I’m watching myself in the bird pool from earlier, killing Corvians just because.įair enough. It’s a utilitarian approach to ending their suffering: destroying everything for the greater good. Like those fools on the outside.” He doesn’t want to exist among “fools” oblivious to the problems of the world and feels it’s better off wiped clean, himself included.

“Make the tales true, and burn this world away.” He continues, “I’m so terribly frightened, of timidly rotting away. After finding out who you are, he gets excited. Either way, it’s clear the limber Knights derive their strength from her, and the fire the vanilla Corvians are searching for is a threat to their new way of life, so they’re slaughtering them.Ī lone Crow Bro hanging out in one of the village houses speaks for the weakling Corvians’ cause. Maybe they were tired of suffering, and gave up their original devotions to Velka in the hopes that Friede could save them. After a vicious battle, I find the Crow Talons and Crow Quills weapons, and part of each item description reads, “In their infatuation with Sister Friede, the Corvian Knights swore to protect the painting from fire, and to this end, took to the execution of their own brethren.” It’s implied the Corvian Knights betrayed their original cause, drawn in by the teachings of Sister Friede, whose name suggests religious affiliation. I continue under an arch and into the Corvian Village where I meet my first Corvian Knight, one of the most aggressive enemies in Dark Souls 3. Whatever rot is, it’s turning the locals slovenly and contributing to the slow decay of Ariandel. He appears drunk on the stuff, content with lying in his “sweetly rotting bed” for all time. Either way, they are Forlorn, captive to Painted World of Ariandel, a clearly disfigured realm overtaken by “rot” as the mad, skeletal Corvian that greets the player on arriving in the DLC describes it.

Maybe they were too devoted, and in disfiguring themselves so violently, they lost the humanity that drove their devotion in the first place.

Dark souls 3 endings