Beware of unmarked spoilers below!
Fridge Brilliance
- The move to 3D character models doesn't just give the game more dynamic combat sequences; it fits well with the change in how you handle your heroes. In Darkest Dungeon, you're encouraged by the system to develop a certain detachment: if your best Leper goes mad, catches a horrible disease, and dies on a run, well, sucks to be him, but you can always train up another one. Here, you're supposed to be much more invested in keeping a much smaller team mentally and physically healthy for as long as possible — and, to go along with that shift in emphasis, the heroes you can recruit suddenly have more recognizably human proportions, with smaller heads and more realistic body shapes, making it easier for the player to view them as people rather than pawns.
- Each of the chapter final bosses are based on an organ that corresponds to the theme of the chapter:
- The "Denial" boss is a giant brain and the shackles that wrap around it. Denial is a thought process, and one that tends to prevent any meaningful process or change in someone. The chains wrap around the Brain, weighing it down and keeping it from meaningfully processing the effects the end of the world has on it.
- The "Resentment" boss is a giant set of lungs and a trachea. When angry, a person may start breathing profusely as they try to contain their rage. If not, they may do things like raise their voice and start shouting. The Seething Sigh spends the battle constantly screaming at the top of its lungs, launching flames in a blind rage.
- The "Obsession" boss is a mass of eyes. The eye motif is simple enough to comprehend, as it stares down its opponents in the first phase, marking them as targets of its obsession that the second phase will focus on. The best strategy is to focus its obsessive gaze on someone who can handle its wrath, mirroring how obsession in real life can be detrimental to people.
- The "Ambition" boss is a mass of hands and fingers with low health but highly damaging attacks. If the boss tries to attack the wrong hero or the entire party while they have Riposte up, it can suffer massive damage and quickly be beaten down. Its ambitious reach exceeds its actual grasp, mirroring how ambition can become detrimental without a means of supporting it.
- While the "Cowardice" boss is, as the Academic describes it, the sum total of your failings, and therefore a combination of all the previous act bosses, the first thing you face off against is "the carious gut of the coward". The guts are usually the organ most closely associated with the concept of bravery, making its use as the representation of cowardice a delightfully grotesque example of irony.
- The Lost Battalion, an undead army reanimated by the corrupted wildlife of the Tangle, are appropriately resistant to Bleed. However, their resistance is nowhere near as high as their equally skeletal predecessors in the Ruins. Their models show that, due to having only died recently, they still have some skin left on their bodies, meaning they *can* still be made to bleed when struck right.
- The bleed effect might also represent cutting the vines and plant roots that animate the skeletons, wounding the living parts of the undead hordes.
- The Shambler "receives significant bonuses to DMG and Speed if you bring the Shambler's Spawn pet to the fight". Well, of course they do! It's called the Shambler's Spawn for a reason.
- It's strange that the Flagellant seems so against succumbing to death, despite his reaction to being selected to be killed by the final boss of the previous game. However, it's clear that the Flagellant's goal in life is to relieve suffering in the world, and will only accept death if it helps him do that. Dying at the hands of the Heart of Darkness would give the others a chance at defeating it. Letting Death get her hands on him, on the other hand, would get in the way of his goals.
- The main factions you fight represent the five stages of grief in how they have responded to the impending apocalypse:
- Denial: The Plague Eaters have embraced hedonism, indulging in worldly pleasures and ignoring the end of the world entirely.
- Anger: The Fanatics are lashing out at what they perceive to be the causes of their doom, burning entire cities to the ground in their fury.
- Bargaining: The Fisherfolk turned to an eldritch being, the Leviathan, in the vain hope it might save them from their fate.
- Depression: The Lost Battalion have given up all hope, retreating into a death-like stupor within the Tangle.
- Acceptance: The Cultists welcome the end and actively work to bring it about.
- In the full release, what each Academic's Study contains is revealed to you when you scout it. Since the Academic in question is helping you, it makes sense, as he remembers what he was working on in his various projects and has no objection to telling you.
- During the final boss, it summons a haunting specter of the chosen hero's past which can only be damaged by said hero, however, debuffs can still be applied by the other party members. While only you can overcome your past and regrets, you don't have to shoulder the burden alone.
- In the Shrines of Reflection, the Leper's portrait is the only one shown bathing in the light, facing it, rather than away. This is because the Leper is the only hero who isn't escaping any past guilt: he's already made peace with his actions and his fate, and the Shrines of Reflection merely help him reaffirm a resolution he's already achieved.
- In the Crimson Court DLC for Darkest Dungeon, using The Blood on a hero unafflicted with the Crimson Curse would give them a bunch of Stress and a debuff. In this game, giving heroes The Blood gives them a bunch of buffs and potentially a little Stress. This makes perfect sense when you remember that killing the Countess caused the Crimson Curse to be curable, so it likely rendered The Blood inert to a degree as well.
Fridge Logic
- How are Fanatics healed by being lit on fire?
- Probably through much the same reason the Runaway can use Cauterize to heal heroes bleeding out.
- Yeah, they basically stop the bleeding by roasting their wounds through fire instead. And them basically having the physiology of fleshy, melting wax-candles doesn't hurt them in the long run.
- It could also be psychological; due to their crazed zealotry about burning things, cautery pushes them to ignore their wounds rather then actually healing them.
- It's magic.
- Given how characters like the Flagellant can push their bodies to such absurd extremes thanks to their almost absurd willpower and belief in higher powers, it's likely the Fanatics rampant zealotry and worship of burning everything in sight has outright granted them fire-based magic powers.
- Why are the returning heroes seemingly unable to remember the events of the first game?
- Considering all that they had to go through in the first game, it would be reasonable that they would rather not talk about any of it or bring up bad memories they do not need on top of all the new horrors they face while accompanying the Scholar's quest for redemption.
- It could also be that this version of them has never experienced those events. It's implied that Darkest Dungeon takes place within some kind of nightmarish time-warp where past, present and future sometimes lose meaning (e.g. the Transcendent Horror greeting its past self into the Estate; the implication that the Ancestor has experienced that exact same cycle of events an infinite amount of times, etc.). It might not have ever even happened from their (present) perspective.
- When your coach breaks down, you're sent into an ambush encounter which is made more difficult by one of your heroes randomly having to repair the coach each turn during the battle. But couldn't your party just, y'know, deal with the enemies FIRST and THEN repair the coach so they're not gimping themselves?
- They don't finish off "all" of the enemies they're fighting at the time, just the front-row that got to them first. They basically repair the wagon, kill off the front-row within arm's reach and then ride as fast they can before the rest of the enemies can catch up to them.
- The Larval Carrion Eater pet is a baby version of a Large Carrion Eater, except that it was implied that normal Carrion Eaters grew up to be Large ones in the first game, when here they're revealed to grow into Carrion Devourers, and the baby version still looks like a Large Carrion Eater. Are they two entirely different species with the same name?
