Board Thread:Dark Souls II/@comment-24494913-20140319193521/@comment-5633574-20140324041109

About the Lingering Dragon Crest, that description could just as easily refer to Lordran, could it not? After all, the ring was in DS1 and used in that game too, so Lordran also fits the criteria for that.

And it's not just their faces, the giants themselves look radically different in terms of size and overall shape, as well as having different movements. Furthermore, the giants of DS2 seem more barbaric, feral, and war-like, in contrast to DS1's giants, which are all of slightly smaller stature and speak almost eloquently, with most of them being docile and friendly (I've seen people count Smough as a giant, but there's nothing confirming this, so he does not count.). Also, Lordran is the only place we know of that had giants as natives, but that does not mean it is the only place in the world of Dark Souls where they could have been native. There's more than enough differences between the giants of each game to make it more than likely that they're different kinds of giants from different lands.