Or make the others prequels! There's plenty of stuff to explore in the past. The Undead hunts? All the big kingdoms? Anyway, DS3 kinda rubs it in further by giving you the opposite of whatever ending you want (at least for the basic two). If you link, it just fades anyway. If you leave the flame to die, it just goes "lol, I'm back" later. Kind of ruins the "maybe this is the last one" narrative.