Dark Souls, Anor Londo, by Ario Barzan.

This is an overhead map of a section of Anor Londo, an area from Dark Souls. Whereas most of the game’s architecture is circuitously asymmetrical and suggestive of a deteriorating world, Anor Londo represents a bygone ideal in its preserved austerity and expansive symmetry (which has implications for the narrative, too). Were the whole game made up of its type of level design, it wouldn’t be nearly the success that it is; as a contrasting, distinguishing exception, Anor Londo works. Dark Souls is particularly involving for me because it is so intent on indulging the pleasure of seeing how a world, that never spatially contradicts itself, interconnects without the assistance of a map. A future project of mine might involve drawing a total map of the game to see how it would look all laid out.

[Josh says: really nice work, Ario, and thanks for the thoughtful analysis of Anor Londo in context.]

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, world map, Ario Barzan.

Lots of mistakes, here! Incorrect room sizes, unrealized links, and overlapping. I think we generally have a tendency to increase, rather than reduce, the scale of places in our memory, especially if the places are large to begin with. Aria of Sorrow has a few mysteriously connected rooms in its Floating Garden area, and they’re represented on the map by several “floating” rooms around the castle’s top. I couldn’t fit them in on the scanner. The room that was easiest to recall was the one near the center-bottom that sort of resembles a person, precisely because of that resemblance.

[Josh says: you’re killing me with these, Ario.  If I have a Castlevania relapse on my DS, I’m holding you directly responsible.]

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, world map, by Ario Barzan.

I forgot to draw the castle’s center where the final fights happen. If I had remembered, there would’ve been some significant overlapping. As is maybe evident to people who’re pretty familiar with the game, I had the most trouble remembering how parts in the castle’s middle connected. Harmony of Dissonance’s layout is kinda notorious for confusing a lot of players, in part because you have to switch in and out of two versions of the castle which are are often visually similar.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, world map, by Ario Barzan.

This is my first attempt at reproducing the entirety of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow’s map from memory. It was drawn on a large sheet of paper using graphite and a colored pencil. My attempt to be as exact as possible highlights the errors moreso, but I think that the errors are the most interesting part. As one example: in the bottom-middle, a little line connects two rooms in the Subterranean Hell sector. The line represents an intended linking that I could not complete. Another example: on the top right, you can see an erased horizontal space that links two towers. This was the correct placement. The final, second-guessed version is incorrect. In any case, I was surprised by my relative accuracy. The last time that I played Dawn of Sorrow was a little less than a year ago. I should also note that, rather than mentally consulting the image of the game’s map, I drew this map according to the actual rooms in the game. Put another way, I imaginatively played the game at high speed, and used that to generate the map.