I found a way in which I can ignore Fillmore at the beginning allowing me to go straight to the boss without talking to him at all.
Imho, this does not seem like something that creates a problem… you can kill the boss, you are not locked anywhere, if you change your mind, you can go back to the coast and rescue him still.
Does the gate open by itself? Just curious… because that would mean that “he got out by himself and opened it”… Thats actually some nice little detail. If he would later say something about it… like “I know you heard me, coward.” that would be even better.
(and what about the bridge?)
The gate opens by itself after you kill the boss. And unless you bind yourself to the whisp outside the boss, you can go back and rescue him before you move on with the story.
Basically, the game treats it as if you rescued him anyway after you sleep in the tower.
And I do agree that its an interesting tidbit, him being strong enough to actually manage by himself and escape on his own.
maybe i imagined it, because i can’t find it, but i read somewhere, that when u free him before u reach sacrament, u get free repair. if not u missed out on that. so maybe this is in parts on purpose, that it is optional to rescue him?
correct, until you beat the intro boss and sleep in the tower, you get free repairs from him.
You also miss out on being able to sell extra gear before you fight the boss. But that all just comes with the fact that you cant interact with the npc.
true. but all this does not really sound like a bug to me. it rather sounds that it was intended, that there are multiple solutions to that specific situation.
could be wrong tho…
I’m curious—if you bypass Fillmore this way and never rescue him, does he still appear in Sacrament?
That’s the only thing I might consider to be a bug rather than something intentional. Getting somewhere in an unexpected or different way seems by design to me.
Which is why I put it under “Feedback” and not “Bug report”. I just don’t know how much of an issue it would be if it is skipped Unintentionally. Imagine a player who misses him for one reason or another and then dies continuously to the boss and breaks all their gear.
To me it was very clear that I had to find the key, because of that I think it’s very well telegraphed and there is a lot of signs that lead to the player wanting to go and open a locked door. So the only two reasons to skip would be by accident or intentionally.
And even afterwards you need to not die and survive up to the whisper.
Writing this all out shows how slim of a chance that a new player would have to actually get all the way around and lock themselves out of the keep. I suppose it only leaves a very small percentage of people who are able to get through all that.
I think if you manage to not realize that there is literally someone shouting for help, you may have deserved it 
