Dark Souls 2 Could Let Players Start From Halfway Point

[weirdee]

After all, if all enemies are equally punishing to new players, how will you know if you accidentally wandered into the game's halfway point or not?

same way it worked in the first game

you get murdered horribly beyond comprehension

it's a pretty straightforward system that's been used since early NES games

 

[Souplex]

To be fair, other than Tutorial, Bells, Anor Londo, Lordvessel Dark souls was pretty open. Three areas required the lordvessel, but many more were just fun hidden stuff.
They had whole huge areas that they actually went out of their way to hide from the player. (Ash Lake comes to mind, and Painted World requires finding a terribly hard to find item, and taking it to a place you probably wouldn't go if it wasn't your first time exploring the area)