Board Thread:Dark Souls II/@comment-24494913-20140319193521/@comment-10209824-20140327045155

The player is not roughly the same size as Smough ever! That's a ludicrous thing to say. You're smaller than Ornstein  by a couple of feet and Smough is easily twice him.

Most of the giants of Lordran barely spoke and their attack sounds, sound very similar to those of Dark Souls 1. Gough was known for being particularily intelligent for a giant, so he's more of an outlier.

There is no reason to assume that this Ancient Dragon and the previous one are the same. This one is clearly different looking and much larger. Plenty of Dragons have snuck through.

We don't really know if time is distorted in Drangleic. There are invasions and summons but those are the only inkling of it. Otherwise, all the characters seem to be in one world, the only consistency was that no one quite knew how they got there.

As for Ornstein, I suggest watching Vaati's video on Heide's Tower of Flame.