^ What you say is nice in terms of lore but in terms of gameplay it's still a dragon slapped on a platform. That's like copy/pasting a swarm of enemies in an area to "make it more challenging".
Personally I won't defend FROM for making lazy changes like that just because it could potentially add to the lore (which still assumes that there is extra events/items/dialogue to support said new lore , just like you pointed out).
IMHO there is still a 50-50% chance this is all BS changes , doesn't take much thought to add some kind of relevant mob in an area , call it "director's cut" , change nothing else and leave people speculate/argue till next decade - that actually works quite well.
Having said all that this is just pure speculation based on 2 seconds from a trailer. Maybe there is a whole story for that dragon before he goes there - maybe he just waits there - maybe he won't even be in the final game .
Though I am disappointed in FROM for the DkS2 fiasco , I will be getting the "new super wow version" for my PS4... crappy or not DkS2 was for me the most interesting game I played in that period of time.
Hey, lazy is a strong word. We don't know the quality of these changes, I'm just laying out the lore implications of that one change. When Souls is good, it's when lore and enemy placement are working in sync. (Something they managed to pull off again in major ways in the DLC's)
As for Track Record, DS2 had a ton of problems, and a lot of it was probably because the scope was too big (make a game twice the length of DS1, make a game with several individual spokes that end in their own big boss, like demons souls) and it was something the new director probably HAD to cut his teeth on to know how to lead a team properly.
The DLC shows, to me at least (especially shulva, especially elleum loyce) that they've learned a lot, and have a better grasp on stronger enemy placement, better lore writing in items, and just better storytelling in general. all 3 of those stories, when you read into them, are pretty interesting, much more than the main game, probably more than most of the world stories of demons souls and I'm really excited to see them take those lessons and put them back into the main game. even the last gen version will be interesting, because of the adjusted lore and new story. (Possibly new areas, if dataminers are to be believed)
The change to Heide's of making it Dragon Infested, Dragons in the skies, Dragon on the ground. Possibly suggesting that the ruins are as busted as they are because of the dragons, rather than just "theyre oooollld". It seems like the goal of this is to....fix it. When talking, in the Famitsu article, about the new enemy layouts for the nextgen/DX11 version, and going into detail on their thought process behind it, they call it Director's Cut.
With a Dragonrider in the tower of flame, and an Old Dragon Slayer in a closed off Chapel...that's some careful changes. The Dragon will probably be on the one platform, it may have a new attack behavior even to give it that "dragon on the bridge" feeling. I feel like it's likely to be the only active dragon in the area, because it is on the platform that leads to the optional boss, and they probably want the critical path to be doable via offline play, with the big optional bosses of areas actually being reinforced as a "Come back later" kind of thing. We know that they're changing every area in larger and lesser ways, depending on the area, and I'm super pumped to see what's going to be around every corner, come April.
