Spoilers ahead, ye be warned....
The question of the "good" ending is interesting. The only real good one I can see is waking up. The one where you kill Gehrman without eating the cords seems like the evil one, like you are so invested in the hunt you cannot escape. The one where you become and Great One is the oddest of them. Is it good or bad? Are the Great Old Ones just naturally a bad thing? If you are Lovecraftian you know they are not inherently evil, they just see most humans as inconsequential and ant like, being totally on a different plan than they.
I personally find the easy ending as bad as the second ending. From how I see it, that ending implies your hunter has been cut out of the dreams completely. Who can say that the world he "awakens" in is the true one? I see it as the hunter's soul being put in a reality crafted by the great ones, no longer having control of his own fate(something akin to the matrix). In essence it's a game of monopoly, there are players and pieces. The true ending makes you a player, the second one makes you a piece. The easy ending makes you nothing more than a tile on the board.
I see it very much as a Japanese take on Lovecraft. And by that, it means insane insanity.
Even in Lovecraft, some Old Ones weren't necessarily evil. Some were even helpful to humanity is a fashion. But most didn't care. They were on a level that saw no consequence in their actions and they couldn't fathom why what they were doing was anything other than what it had to be.
Not just insanity (though that plays a large part), it also focuses on seeing the truth beyond the abilities of human eyes and mankind being a large part in it's own downfall. Eyes are a large part of the lore (and emphasized by several enemies, the witches actually wear cloaks composed of eyeballs) as a gift from the great ones (gift being similar to chaos's "gifts") is the giving of eyes, Rom was one who recieved such a gift.
There are several parts revealing mankind's part in the insanity. The main one is the church of healing being actually created to worship the great ones and enact their plans. A lesser example is the city's fall itself, it is implied that the "miracle cure" actual caused the city to be swarmed by the sick who wanted the cure, it remains to be seen if the cure was a tactic by the church to get more subjects for the great ones.
(Heavy spoilers, garnered from tropes wiki)
It all cumulates with Provost Wilhelm however, he caused it all to happen. It's the reason I compared this to a game of monopoly, he made a bargain with the great ones and they kept their end of the bargain. They were sold Byrgenwerth, Hemwick and Yharnam in exchange for Provost and his colleges to gain knowledge not meant for mortal minds. Upon receiving the gift of eyes he and his fellow scholars minds all became stillborn, Willem was the only one to live. The great ones are now using the cities as a kindergarten to raise a new great one.
In that light one could see them as not being completely mad and evil so much as eldritch beings making the most of a bargain, it's not their fault the scholars expired from the gift and their child needs playthings.
Patches was in both Dark Souls 1 and Demon's Souls. But he was a human those times. In Dark Souls he kicks you down a hole in Tomb of the Giants.
The whore and her spawn were so nasty. I felt really bad for her, it wasn't her fault at all, unlike the imposter Iosefka. Though in my game I killed Iosefka before Rom, so got her rune instead of a Cord. Only need three, so it's ok. I haven't seen the third ending, the Cord one, since that's the one I'm aiming for. I know roughly what happens but still don't want to watch it and spoil it.
Par the course for Patches really.
The whore spawning a horror and the red moon that ushers in a setting of madness are shout outs to Berserk(so is Patches, I believe). All the soul series have heavy influences from it.
Turns out there was plenty more of Unseen Yarglebargle that I hadn't actually, er, seen. Including another boss.
Well, one less boss now 
One Reborn, pff, more like One Rekilled, amirite?
Very reminiscent of Tower Knight, actually, although much yuckier.
Well done, Brad, nice to hear you bested that horror. Out of curiosity, what build do you use and what does your character look like? I'm thinking of doing something "special".
Also, what do you lads think of dark souls 2: First sin, worth getting or skip it?
