Dark Souls is famous for its cleverly interconnected world, with distant views telegraphing former and upcoming areas to help players orient themselves and establish a grand sense of scale.
Among them, one of the most striking vistas in Dark Souls is visible from Firelink Shrine as soon as players finish the tutorial. Far below the Firelink graveyard on the way to the Catacombs, there’s a surprisingly detailed town with a similar aesthetic to Undead Burg. But, unlike other distant landmarks, it’s totally inaccessible.
Since Dark Souls launched in 2011, players have been speculating about the purpose of the so-called “Other Burg,” and now, thanks to a modder, it’s explorable for the first time.
To make the Other Burg traversable, Dark Souls modder FromSoftserve used a game-changing new Blender plugin called Soulstruct that can import and export Dark Souls map pieces, characters, and even collision data. YouTuber and Dark Souls dataminer IllusoryWall called the plugin, which launched on Nov. 1, a “major milestone” that will lead to a “new era of Dark Souls modding,” and it’s clear to see why.
In the video, FromSoftserve shows off a new route to the Other Burg from the Firelink graveyard. Using the Soulstruct Blender plugin, he made multiple copies of the graveyard terrain and layered them to create a new piece of land leading down to the Other Burg, then added collision over the top. It’s obviously a work in progress, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen the Dark Souls map expanded like this, and I’m beyond impressed.
After descending into the Other Burg, FromSoftserve explores its streets and alleys. It’s easy to imagine this once could’ve been a fully explorable Dark Souls level: It’s the right size, and strangely, most buildings are fully modeled on all sides. There are winding streets, houses, doorways, and even smaller features like wells and foliage.
Given Dark Souls was designed for the 720p era when distant views were far less detailed, it’s perplexing to see an inaccessible area with so much detail. Dark Souls is full of cut content, and the lower section of Undead Burg already has multiple cut paths, so it could be possible one of them was initially supposed to lead to the Other Burg.
We may never know what FromSoftware’s original intentions were, but one thing’s for sure: The Soulstruct Blender plugin has opened the door to a whole new wave of Dark Souls mods, and FromSoftserve’s additions to the game serve as a fascinating proof of concept that shows entirely new Dark Souls levels and restored cut content could be just around the corner.
