Earlier this week, we reported on how game engineer and dedicated Dark Souls 3 archaeologist Lance McDonald found a series of in-game epitaphs which would have offered bits of cryptic lore and warnings about upcoming challenges had they not been ultimately cut from the final game. Now, after a staggering 200 hours of work, McDonald, whose efforts to discover cut content in Souls games are widely known, has not only found all of the game’s cut epitaphs, he even managed to figure out what they all say.
Of course, McDonald didn’t work alone. After his initial discovery, he was dismayed to discover that most of the epitaphs he uncovered had uninteresting placeholder text which didn’t match up with the more intriguing epitaphs he first uncovered. Fortunately, another prominent Dark Souls community member who goes by the handle Sanadsk stepped in to lend a hand. Using a Japanese retail version of Dark Souls 3, Sanadsk was able to find a database which contained the unused final text for all of the epitaphs.
With Sanadsk’s help, McDonald then spent roughly 200 hours finding, translating, and compiling all 46 of the cut epitaphs into a video you can watch below:
As was previously speculated, many of the epitaphs offer cryptic warnings or references to specific enemies, and in fact many of them don’t even reference boss enemies but rather the more standard (yet no less dangerous) foes and hazards that players can encounter. For example, one early-game epitaph in the Undead Settlement makes reference to the giant archer who attempts to pelt the player with arrows, while another warns players of the poisoned water in the Road of Sacrifices area.
Why exactly developer FromSoftware chose to remove the epitaphs after it went through the trouble of placing their markers and text in the game files is unknown. Perhaps the studio felt the epitaphs did too much to telegraph upcoming dangers or maybe it ultimately decided they didn’t mesh well with the game’s other storytelling methods. Either way, thanks to the meticulous work of Lance McDonald and Sanadsk, fans can now view the epitaphs for themselves and draw their own conclusions.