Looking for feedback for a Dark Souls feature article

Hey everyone. I'm a professional writer and editor, and one aspect of my work is writing video game features for related websites. I'm currently writing an article on Dark Souls, specifically the pendant and the whole mystery / ruse behind it:

1. How director Hidetaka Miyazaki stated early on that in terms of the player's choice of starting gift, personally he would choose "the pendant or nothing".

2. How over the following months the Dark Souls fan community exploded with theories and speculation regarding the mystery behind the pendant and its purpose, with a number of players coming up with countless ideas (some inspired, some ridiculous) on how to unlock the secrets of the pendant.

3. And finally, how Miyazaki eventually admitted that the whole thing had been just a prank, confirming that the pendant in fact held no mystery.

As such, I'm going to be rummaging through the history of this forum to find threads and posts concerning the pendant, tracing the history of what players thought and how many different ideas were attempted to unlock the pendant's secrets, my intention being to write about how the whole pendant issue played out over time.

Secondly, I'm looking for current feedback - you longtime fans who were there throughout the whole pendant issue, did you have any feelings about it? Beliefs or doubts? Did you try to do something with the pendant? If so, what were your methods and how did they come about? Do you have any thoughts on how the pendant can be related to Dark Souls as a whole?

I'd also be interested in any pendant-related forum links people could post here or PM me. As I said, I'll be searching this forum myself, but I'm sure a couple of things will pass me by, given the amount of material on here.

As you can see, the focus of my article will be very much on how the pendant impacted the Dark Souls community, and the tone of my article will be a positive one - for example, I'll be talking about how the pendant mystery helped to foster the sense of cooperation and teamwork that the game already inspired, and also emphasised how easy it was to believe that the game held such mysteries, as new secrets both big and small were being exposed all the time.

Anyway, thanks in advance for any feedback, I'll be looking forward to hearing any and all thoughts and stories on the mystery of the pendant.

I can help some.  I was late to the community party regarding the "mechanical" search.  Aka, if it actually did something in game.  As such, apart from a few really vague ideas (drop the pendant at "X") I didn't help much with any testing.  I can tell you a few lore based ideas for drops we did try though.  

For threads the archives would be a great place to peruse.  Glyphblade's old thread that got brought over (painstakingly I imagine) would be the best starting point.  

When I entered the picture the idea was that mechanical ideas were slim and if there was going to be a "this is it" moment it would probably be story related.  I was guilty of going all in with theories and as such I can claim credit for one of the bigger sources of fuel to the fire.  

When I was evaluating paintings in Anor Londo I stumbled across a portrait that appears female.  A pair of portraits to be exact.  When I was having the gears click away and wondering if they were meant to be Gwyndolin portraits (I still like to think they are) I saw it.  In one of the portraits, the subject has what absolutely looks to be the pendant.  It's the only in game connection I still stand by.  If it's not supposed to be the pendant fine, but it sure as hell looks like it is.  

If you can't find a thesis paper of mine on the topic I can PM some more info on this idea if you want.

Thanks for the reply and the advice. Gameplay mechanics or lore, both are fine - basically, if it concerns the pendant then I'm interested.

I'm currently searching through the history of several forums, so if you could PM me more information as you offered then that would be great, thanks.

It's funny, but I thought about the pendant again the other day. I wish I had one on me to drop at Dusk's body in the Chasm of the Abyss, "just to see."

Another thought I had was that Rhea drops a Pendant (when Petrus kills her) so maybe it has something to do with faith (or lack thereof), while Dusk was a light mage.

How many other people still wonder about the Pendant?

Green__Eagle wrote:It's funny, but I thought about the pendant again the other day. I wish I had one on me to drop at Dusk's body in the Chasm of the Abyss, "just to see."

Yeah, the DLC is definitely going to feature prominently in my article, for obvious reasons. It certainly added fuel to the fire in terms of pendant speculation, even if Miyazaki did make his admission pretty soon after the release of the new content.

I'm still carrying out my research at the moment, so if anyone else has any thoughts on the pendant, feel free to chime in here. My article deals with the Souls fan community in terms of the whole pendant mystery, so it would be good to receive feedback from more players.

I wouldn't call what he did a prank, I think he was honest that he would just pick the pendant for melancholy (and possibly lore) reasons.  The vast, multi-year scavenger hunt undertaken by the community was based on a misreading of that, but was still ultimately a success in my view.  It tied the community together, triggered all sorts of creative builds/runs, and led to a lot of other discoveries -- as well as getting Miyazaki to eventually state that there was no secret.  What still makes me chuckle is the theoretical possibility that it was all misdirection -- that an utterly mundane and ignored object like the Rubbish really does have some use everyone missed because of the pendant chase.

befowler wrote:I wouldn't call what he did a prank, I think he was honest that he would just pick the pendant for melancholy (and possibly lore) reasons.  The vast, multi-year scavenger hunt undertaken by the community was based on a misreading of that, but was still ultimately a success in my view.  It tied the community together, triggered all sorts of creative builds/runs, and led to a lot of other discoveries -- as well as getting Miyazaki to eventually state that there was no secret.  What still makes me chuckle is the theoretical possibility that it was all misdirection -- that an utterly mundane and ignored object like the Rubbish really does have some use everyone missed because of the pendant chase.

"Prank" isn't my personal choice of words but Miyazaki's own - in the IGN interview where he made his admission, Miyazaki says, "When it comes to the pendant, I actually had a little bit of an intention to play a prank." Even taking translation into account (if Miyazaki made his comment in Japanese, which I assume he did), I'd imagine this bombshell would be a particular point where IGN would make sure the translation was totally correct.

As for your comments about the pendant mystery having good things emerge from it, that positive viewpoint on the whole thing is the approach I'm going for with my article - that the real point is the journey, not the destination.

Finally, as for the Rubbish actually holding the true secret... My God... we're through the looking glass here, people.

https://soulswiki.forumotion.com/t1515-glyphblade-s-all-secret-s-revealed-major-spoilers

https://soulswiki.forumotion.com/t2319-pendant-theories?highlight=pendant

http://darksoulswiki.wikispaces.com/Pendant

I believe that's everything useful I have to offer you

Serious_Much wrote:https://soulswiki.forumotion.com/t1515-glyphblade-s-all-secret-s-revealed-major-spoilers

https://soulswiki.forumotion.com/t2319-pendant-theories?highlight=pendant

http://darksoulswiki.wikispaces.com/Pendant

I believe that's everything useful I have to offer you

Thanks, much appreciated.

The pendant description says it holds memories. It would be cool if you could do prayer animation with the pendant to show your thinking about memories. It would be funny if you killed a noob in pvp and then did that. It would be an item i would use.

Rubbish does have a use; trade it with the Crow for a titanite Chunk.

It has been confirmed a few months ago by Miyazaki that he was just trolling everyone when he talked about the Pendant like that.

What he truly meant in that interview was that the Pendant was the best item for Roleplaying, in other words, choosing the pendant, imagining who gave it to you, what it meant to your character etc. As I said, a few months ago, he confirmed that he never answered the question because he loved how everyone was looking for an "actual" use of the item.

Source: http://www.vg247.com/2012/11/05/dark-souls-pendant-mystery-resolved/

http://www.destructoid.com/dark-souls-director-tells-the-truth-about-the-pendant-237907.phtml

http://kotaku.com/454629735

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/11/02/dark-souls-miyazaki-talks-artorias-of-the-abyss