Is there a greater feeling in the universe than shield bashing

>>386928408
The story in Dark Souls is rather simple.... Nah I'm just playing you need a PHD in soulsology to really understand it, but I'll try to give my best summary of just what it takes to understand the basics of this game and worry about the other stuff and details later. The story takes place somewhere in a world that doesn't quite look or feel like our own. . Long ago the world was dark and stuff and everything was eternal like a steady state universe. The only civilization that thrived during this long boring eternity was Dragons, dragons thrived because like time itself they could exist forever and ever and ever. Well some burgeoning mortal races emerged or existed for a while under the dragons rule but they got sick of the never ending dragon society and in their extremely lucky circumstances they found a way to channel their grief and strike at their scaled oppressors. They found the lord souls, souls of such immense power and strength it literally made some beings gods amongst men, at the same time a particularly ugly dragon named Seath the scaleless decided to turn on his own kin and join the powerful mortals in exterminating about 99.999999999% of his own race in a war that lasted eons or days, who knows with eternity.

>>386928423
The beings who took on the lord souls were Gwyn, Lord of Cinder and some lightning shit, The Witch of Izalith who also likes fire a lot (redundant), Gravelord Nito who is a really powerful necromancer and disease wielder and then Gwyn gave fragments of his lord soul to Seath for helping the humans and four ghost kings for being knowledgeable or some shit. The last person to wield a lord soul was the "Furtive Pygmy." Their lord soul was different and it came to be called the Dark Soul, you know the title of the game, wink, wink, nudge nudge, say no more. The Furtive Pygmy decided to place a portion of his lord soul in all of humanity thus allowing them to survive the age of fire which brings me back to the other wielders of lord souls.
After the dragons died the Lord Soul wielders became heroes in a sense and established their own kingdoms in a land called Lordran and a relative era of peace, prosperity and cultural flourishing occurred now that the nasty dragons were dead and our lord soul heroes were free to go about the business of running a state. All was pretty good for a long while until Gwyn and the other lords discovered that the fire in the world was dying and fire is linked to peoples souls which means that a cataclysmic apocalyptic event was about to occur all over the world not just for mortals but also for the wielders of the lord souls.

>>386928470
As the fire started dying and things became more desperate the first of the lords to try something crazy to stop it was Izalith, she attempted to use her own lord soul to duplicate the power of the first flame, the place of power where the lords first found their lord souls. This backfired on her though and she eventually became part of a deranged beast called the Bed of Chaos a being who set fire to her own kingdom and spewed out hundreds of demons that started attacking the other lord soul carriers civilizations. Eventually the demons were pushed back to their domain of now "Lost Izalith" and Gwyn's silver knights sealed them there. Having this threat along with the dimming fire convinced Gwyn he had to "link the first flame" meaning he would sacrifice the majority of his own power and soul to keep the fires burning a little while longer. Gwyn arguably succeeded in this but before he did so he gave the portions of his soul to Seath and those four kings as stated above but he also empowered his children a little bit. After Gwyn linked the first flame the era of fire lasted a little while longer.

>>386928507
Between the time most of those previously stated events occurred and your "present" time in the game a thousand years has passed and the world has for a while started to show signs of the flames dimming again. One of those signs is people "hollowing out" meaning they become undead husks that are devoid of flame and humanity. These undead are sent to an "island" unattached from most of the rest of civilization in an attempt to "quarantine" them.
All of what I just said is backstory and serves merely as the setting details for what you're actually doing in the game which if I was to condense it down into the most basic way I could is this. You are a hollowed a person who comes to be called the "chosen undead" by the well endowed image of Gwynevere. You're locked in a cell in an undead asylum. You're given a key by a mysterious knight and you leave to start the game. The majority of the game is spent cleaning out the remnants of the worlds former civilizations hoping to gather enough soul power. You're trying to collect this soul power because you're told by two snake looking motherfuckers that you can either pull a Gwyn and link the first flame again prolonging the age even further or you can decide to end the flames once and for all and enter an "age of dark."

>>386928558
In order to have the power to do this the buxom image of Gwynevere gives you a lord soul vessel which allows you to use camp fires as a teleporter but is also a container that allows you to acquire lord souls from the remaining lord soul carriers four kings, Seath the Scaless, Bed of Chaos, Gravelord Nito and the hollowed remains of Gwyn himself. These beings aren't just going to give you these souls in a friendly manner of course you have to go through and systematically dispatch their remaining minions and senpai to have enough soul power to enter their "fog doors" and kill them. Once you have acquired enough soul juices and the rest of the lord souls and lord soul fragments you enter the Kiln of the first flame to slay Gwyn and make your choice regarding the fate of the flames.
You might think that one choice is the "good" choice and the other the "bad" in typical RPG fashion but in reality you would be very quite possibly almost certainly kinda sort of wrong maybe? I don't know it's hard to tell which choice is the better choice on your own by merely traversing the world. Well I have some good news for you, some people still "live" in Lordran and you can talk to them trade with them and some even come to live in your hub area Firelink Shrine.

>>386928603
So that is good news right? What do they have to tell us about the world and the choice we have to make? Well the first guy you meet on the mainland of Lordran laughs in your face and says it would be better for your own sake if you just rot in a prison cell... Well surely the other inhabitants have more to say about the dire and pressing situation you're in well ummmm, no actually. The majority of character interactions are mostly self contained stories to that character that establish their concerns or the stated aims of various "covenants" groups you can join that mostly give bonuses in PVP situations. Most of the characters are unconcerned with you or your task and are mostly trying to eek out their existence and get their last remaining affairs in order, before whatever happens, happens. In other words like people in real life they're self absorbed, apathetic simpletons who see very little value in playing a hero or concerning themselves with those who are doing that No one cares that you exist in Dark Souls and to the extent that your quest is a "heroic" one it is thankless. In my own theorizing I actually think the side characters you meet in a sense represent a third choice to the solution, that of doing nothing and letting everyone become hollow. I kept thinking while playing the game for the first time that eventually I'll run into "that" character that merely does a huge exposition dump that sets the story right, but that never happens. You get the story through implication, connections to things and through item descriptions.

>>386928646
Are any of the characters helpful you ask? There are some exceptions, Siegmeyer and crowd pleaser Solaire who are both on "noble" quests themselves and they generally seem a lot more concerned about you than the majority of other characters. The characters you save at various points in the game also seem generally pleased that you did so for a short while at least. Even that sometimes backfires on you though, you don't always get the standard moral or emotional reaction you'd expect out of these people. The point being they generally aren't there to help you make decisions or have a general understanding of the world in a functional sense the characters in the story exist mostly as a way of giving flavor details. The big choice you make in the game becomes further murky when you realize you're being lied to by some of the people suggesting a particular choice to make and that what seems good may ultimately be worse for the fate of the world. It's hard to trust anyone and like a corpse who has brain rot you don't know much about the world yourself.

>>386928691
The attitude of the characters is an example of Dark Souls often going against typical convention when it comes to what an RPG story and characters would usually have you do or think. The characters aren't put in a static world to help you feel better about your self and help you care about the le ebin quest you're on. The same can be said about the quest in general, in a sense it's already futile as the world has already ended and civilizations are already lost and not coming back. The way the games geography is structured is to give the impression of lost buried civilizations placed on top of each other. It's world is mostly vertical, rather than horizontal like most games. A large potion of your adventure is spent making your way downward among endless ruins and sunless areas.

>>386928740
There isn't a big evil person to kill that is responsible for all of this either. In fact the "villains" in the game are the heroes of a previous age. They tried to do the best they could given the situation they were in. RPGs are filled with common cliches one of them is a quest that involves killing rats at the start of a game. So many games had this it has become a laughable trope that is often parodied at this point. In same vein "slaying the dragon" is about the most tired cliche a fantasy can have besides a wizard with a pointy hat. Yet the funny thing about this in Dark Souls is the heroes of yore who "slayed the dragon" in this RPG are now the people you have to kill to "save" the world. Also far from saving the realm, the price paid for killing dragons resulted in the current dismal circumstances we experience in game. Not only seeing them as heroes, but you might even go as far to say in a sense that Gwyn is a messianic figure who sacrificed himself for the good of the world. His world saving actions resulted in him becoming a hollow husk of his former power and glory. He lost everything and it gained the world a few hundred years at best. It's hard to see him at the end of the game and have hate and fury in your heart like you would for a Kefka, Diablo or most end game bosses from classic RPGs. That is until you die a MILLION FUCKING TIMES to his flame sword and then you'll have just the right amount of fury and hate in your heart. Most of the bosses make you feel some kind of regret for having to kill them, the one I've always had the most sympathy for is Sif and his story only becomes more sad with the added context of the expansion. On top of all this, making your choice is not going to make your player characters life any better. You will still be undead, you will still be putting off the inevitable and in both of the endings you most likely die (until the third games bullshit).

>>386928784
Dark Souls down to it's bare essentials is a game about a rotten hero, saving a rotten land, against old rotten heroes for thankless rotten people and at the end of all this it will probably all lead to a rotten future. The key to Dark Souls story is the death of glory and the lasting legacies of those attached to it. Entropy will destroy everything in the end, so your quest and your choice matters the most to you and you alone. In a way it's existentially freeing and harrowing at the same time, in knowing all is lost and that history as you know it is essentially over, nothing you do matters you're free to do what is in your meek interests and nature. The game builds on these existential and nihilistic themes in a lot of ways, but I'll end this note here for now.

>>386928836
The game may have some modernist themes, but the inspiration for a lot of the story is about as archaic as it gets. Gwyn and the other lord soul holders are akin to Greco-Roman gods and you might see Anor Londo as the games man made Mt. Olympus. The dragons can be seen as Titans, Gwyn is Zeus, Nito is Hades, Gwynevere as Aphrodite, Solaire if fan theories are correct might be akin to Apollo. The relation between these larger than life figures is also portrayed somewhat like Greek myths. Zeus is nothing like the monotheistic god of ironclad morals and general absolutism and neither are the lord soul carriers. Gwyn favors some of his children over others, is tough but fair to his soldiers and seems to do irrational things like Zeus did. He was a generally good "man" who had complex and sometimes just outright negative attributes to his character. Like the terrible treatment of his son Gwyndolin. The same can be said about the other lord soul carriers. Izaliths own hubris leads to the destruction of her once great civilization and her entire family becomes monstrous creatures or literal "Daughters of Chaos," how is that for a Homeric moral tale? The immense knowledge of the Four Kings leads to skepticism and a worshiping of nothing in the metaphorical guise of the Abyss. This is an often told slippery slope tale about sophistry and the influence sophists have on the moral decay of societies in Platonic dialogues. (A view I don't share for the record.)

>>386928890
Solaire worships the sun almost to the point of delusional merriment if only the Greeks had written a story like that... As long as we remember not to fly to close to the sun on wings of wax we should be able to live long enough to understand his hubristic folly. Solaire is a potential (again fan theory) son of a god who is equivalent to the (sun) in ancient religious beliefs and also christian beliefs. In his quest to seek the sun he is traversing the daedalian labyrinths of Lordran to seek his fathers forsaken light and unlike others he isn't fooled by his brothers false sun and sectarianism. Most of the characters that are "of Astora" resemble Greek gods. This is a possibly false interpretation of the character but I actually have an alternative more "humanistic" interpretation of him that will come shortly.

>>386928939
You might say the ultimate act of Hubris in the Dark Souls universe was the destruction of the dragons and the symbolic killing of eternity in favor of earthly mortality and finitude. The main emphasis of Greek Literature and plays was to separate gods place from mans place and to define what best exemplifies the attributes of mortals and immortals. That is why for instance, Odysseus leaves Circe's island paradise in the Odyssey, because he is a Greek hero which means he believes his place is among other men and not the gods realm of eternal leisure and plenitude. Being a human and hence being mortal means you can attempt heroic deeds that are heroic precisely because you might die doing them. In a sense you can the say the Lord Soul carriers most likely had a similar attitude when slaying the dragons. I mean they probably had other specific in game reasons as well, but I think there is a reason the game creators had themselves for tying the dragons and their lifestyle/civilization to eternity. The symbolism in the hubris of this act doesn't just stop at that though. Greek philosophy at least before Democritus and Plato was heavily centered on "the elements" and by that I mean earth, fire, water, air and aether. Heraclitus in particular was a proponent of fire as an element and he wrote extensively in works we no longer have but have references to about it's transitory and fleeting nature and related the rest of the world to this state of being. Meaning he thought humans lives were mostly illusory fleeting gestures of mortality and that everything like fire would turn to ash in the end.

>>386928992
. Dark Souls emphasis on fire makes a lot of sense when you look at it in this "light." By taking the power of fire in the form of the lord souls from the kiln of the first flame, "the gods" were freeing themselves from eternity but sealing their own fate by "linking" themselves and through the Furtive Pigmy all of humanity to fire and it's transitional fleeting nature they sealed their own deaths and the deaths of their civilizations. This hubristic sin is tied into their most heroic moment. By accepting fire they were accepting the end of eternity and the inevitability of mortal death. Heraclitus would also often talk about the transitory nature of water in ways similar to Daoism. So it's only fitting the Dark Souls games also have a lesser theme in this regard about water, in the first game it's mostly tied to the story line of The Four kings, but water and it's metaphorical nihilistic qualities build up until it overwhelms the story completely in the Third game. I have a personal hypothesis that water will become the dominate element in a Dark Soul's sequel if they move on from 3 and because they want money they will.

>>386929038
The opening cinematic talks about the contrasting nature fire or light has on an eternal world with no contrasts, with these contrasts comes many things we associate with being positive like light, life, heroes and prosperity, but by introducing all these things contrast brings the inverse darkness, death, villains and ruination. So in a sense the opening cinematic says exactly what I said just above but without the ancient Greek literary and philosophical context. The dragons in the Dark Soul's world did not understand contrast because the reality they perceived always stayed the same until mortals came along and changed it. The first contrast they ever experienced was their life contrasting with their death at the hands of the lord soul carriers. The concept of a "Dark Soul" itself is a telling contrast, if souls are linked to fire and hence to light and life what is meant by a Dark Soul? I would say what is meant by that is precisely the mortal reliance on contrast as presented by the opening cinematic, humanity relies on contrasts unlike the dragons so hence they contain in their very essence dark and light aspects to their being.

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>>386929092
You can see Solaire's attitude about immortality as being similar to Odysseus own views. He gave up his life and choose undeath to "Seek his own sun" possibly meaning he choose the possibility of a heroic life as defined above, amongst the dregs of humanity as opposed to that of leisure and assured eternal contentedness resigned for the living in Dark Souls and the gods in Greek myths. In the vein of this humanistic take on Solaire I'll make one last philosophical/literary observation and then we can get back to the other stuff. The common belief about souls and by that I mean the concept of souls in real life not the game, almost world wide with very little variation is the Augustinian/Platonic view that are souls are permanent and are bodies are just vessels. Even if you don't specifically ascribe those views to those two philosophers you have probably heard similar sentiments in Christianity in general. The bodies are vessels of sin, disease and corruption and it's primary purpose is to lead us astray from matters of the soul. Dark Souls however turns this view on it's head a bit your bodies appear to be able to live long past the point where your souls start to burn out but your souls which like fire are transitory and fluidic are dying in mass. Seeing as the majority of secular literature just presumes souls don't exist and most religious literature assumes it does, I have never seen a take on souls like this that reverses the equation instead of taking an affirmative or negative stance. I think an implication of this in the game world is that your soul and the souls you consume is really like gasoline towards the goal you want to attain in life. How much that goal means to you determines how hard you will fight to keep the "soul fire" growing and burning.

>>386929136
You can see other similarities and a lot of the art design is influenced by Greek art and architecture. The game takes a lot of inspiration from real life architecture and structures and not just Greek/Roman. Some of the shit in the game that looks impossibly complex and magnificent are replicas of real life buildings. I'd mention this at length but a search engine will bring up many lists with pictures about this subject and they can tell you what you need to know much faster than I can with words. Before we move on, heed these words of wisdom Achilles himself once said "I would rather be an undead peasant in Blight Town than heroic chaos bug ridden Solaire in Lost Izalith." He said that, #Truefacts.

The game also takes inspiration from a lot of Japanese myths, fables and manga/anime. Many people have already cited the similarities between Dark Souls and such things as Berserk. Rickert the Blacksmith is the most obvious example but many items, themes and enemies reflect this influence. Dare I say it Miyazaki is an otaku with "tributed" Griffith figurines in his dank as Blight Town basement. Not that I blame him of course, I mean.... T-that being said the game could have used some of that sweet short haired Casca, if you know what I mean... I mean fucking by the way, just to clear that up so there is no confusion.

>>386929192
Glad I could clear that up. Nito cant trust his most powerful minions and story wise the majority of them betray him before the events of the game because they fear his own destructive want for power and death. Nito is a tyrant in his own realm who like most Tyrants is holding his people and kingdom hostage to keep his own dream and power alive. The Themes of Berserk about a person sacrificing everything to gain power are reversed in the stories of Dark Souls characters. It's about literal God-Kings ruling over a place called Lordran or lord ran as in lord ruled and their response to ultimate power slipping out of their hands. In that sense their irrationality is somewhat rational from their point of view as rulers looking down at their own civilizations and how best to rule at a time of extreme crisis. Nito is basically a lord of Death but what good are those powers in a place where everyone is dead and the world is already dying itself? It gets worse for him when Pin Wheel stole some of his sweet necro juices and he cant even go get them back himself. Nito is a somewhat pathetic figure among the lord soul carriers. This serves to make his obvious ultra evil looks and powers far less obvious and understated. Along with the fact that again, he was a hero at one point despite his looks and powers. Don't judge a mountain of skeletons by it's cover you prejudiced shitlords. #NecroShaming... Ewww, not that kind of necro though. You don't have to feel too bad for him, his number one goal is still killing people with diseases and keeping the fires slow burning on human souls for as long as possible.

>>386929246
Nito's looks in general remind me of the scene in Berserk where Guts confronts Griffith for the last time on that mountain of corpses he erected to achieve his dream of creating a utopia/ideal kingdom. As a ruler Nito is literally carrying the burden of what appears to be thousands of skeletons on his own body. So he is carrying the bodies of all those who he killed/died on his rise to power (interp possibly wrong). Similar to my views on the inversion of the idea of souls and souls being like gasoline, much like Nito and the characters of Berserk you're carrying the burden of all the souls of the people you killed on your way towards the Kiln. All throughout the series you meet characters who start to go mad from becoming full hollows like Big Hat Logan or lacking the will/want to prolong their life through soul consumption. You might say they lack the Berserkian will necessary to achieve their fleeting dream. This is the most interesting way in which I think Berserk was an influence on the Souls games. In that Miyazaki saw fit to take seriously the manga's and anime's themes and commentate on them in his own work. Now that were all done trying to make the create a character look like one of the characters from Berserk we can move on to other things.
I would say to Dark Souls 2's slight credit it carried on with this particular vein of Berserk inverse themes in some interesting ways.

>>386929304
Is Dark Souls the first piece of fiction to touch upon existential ideas and themes of despair? No, in fact we just left a whole century of existentialist and modernist literature mostly dedicated to ideas like this, but It's hard for me to imagine a game doing a better job of conveying them than Dark Souls. In fact it might just be in my aborted philosophy major opinion one of the better works of fiction in general to convey these themes. Is it the first series of games to reverse common tropes in its own genre or even the first RPG to do so? No the Bards Tale series took the piss out of RPGS a long ass time ago and Planescape Torment damn near already perfected meta-narratives in RPGS, most modern games attempt some level of comedic commentary or meta-narrative aspects to their stories. Dark Souls again though just did so in a way that I think really, really shines. It doesn't seem forced or an attempt to merely do these things just to do them but to have them be part of a broader framework of things they wanted to accomplish in a story telling sense. Is Dark Souls the first piece of media to incorporate Greek literature and philosophy into it's narrative? Well consider this quote:

"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."
Alfred North Whitehead

>>386929358
Ok, so I think it is safe to say quite a few people have done this then in the grand scheme of the western tradition in the past 2500 years. In literature a lot of what is great about it is it's reaction to early Greek ideas, literary techniques and stories. Most of the literary works considered masterpieces do this to some extent or another. The Aeneid, The Divine Comedy, many of Shakespeare's plays, Ulysses, Moby Dick and countless others serve as examples. Now allow me an absurd statement that may be wildly premature Dark Souls deserves to be put in that tradition. It incorporated these ideas in ways most gamers can safely ignore without knowing them and yet made them digestible enough that the basic concepts still managed to penetrate the skulls of even the most absurdly dumb assholes. It did all this without mountains and mountains of exposition and instead integrated most of it into the game play and the things you do or see. It further managed to use them in ways that to my knowledge have not been done before or at least to the extent that they were done here. Yes I'm saying a video game deserves it's place among literary greats and I'm not saying that to diminish great works of literature but to properly assess where Dark Souls belongs in the pantheon of philosophical media. Many people overstate the grandeur of video games stories and games being "le Citizen Kane of gaming" so the irony is not lost on me saying I think a game like Dark Souls deserves the treatment and careful study a true work of literature deserves, but it does. I'm not sure I have even yet scratched the surface of it's narrative in this regard either, which is more than I can say for any other video games story that I have yet come across.

>>386929425
Is Dark Souls the first Japanese role playing game to incorporate Japanese themes, ideas and popular anime into it? A very laughable no needs to be said here, since Japanese developers first took the initiative in making their own Wizardry clones these things have been the case. I think you can argue rightfully that some games have integrated more Japanese myths and cultural influences into their games but very few have done so while also juggling as many other influences themes and ideas. This is what is truly impressive about Dark Souls, the sheer amount of influences and ideas mixed in has created something far better than the sum of it's parts. I didn't even mention that it also adds some Norse influences and later I'll talk about other games people often compare it to or it took some influences from. This is what people respect and revere about the games story and lore. It rewards your exploration and makes connections to things and ideas that seem foreign and disparate to one another but make sense when you see them in conjunction. It has nothing to do with stories perceived over complexity or denseness to the point of absurdity to non-players... Well ok maybe a little bit of elitism is always a factor, but I ask you to really consider the themes and ideas in Dark Souls in a serious way and I believe you wont regret it or feel like your time has been wasted.

>>386929467

The general feeling all these themes and ideas builds in the player is one of oppression, hardship and toil. This is only compounded by the games most well known attribute it's "difficulty." The first thing you probably heard about Souls games or From Soft games in general is how hard they're. This was probably followed up by rabid foaming at the mouth praise for the game being hard and on the merit's of it being hard. Well I'm here to dissuade you from thinking that is what makes this game good. In fact I find peoples focus on games being difficult or not difficult is an entirely wrong headed approach to game criticism and reviews. For example I've seen many people criticize Mario games for not being difficult enough, but the point of Mario games is not to feel like your hands are being hammered into submission from the tough platforming and like a rail road spike is being shoved up your ass with erratic enemy difficulty. The point of Mario is to offer a light fun experience for people of all ages and a mild difficulty compliments its other design choices. If you want to shove something up your ass to compliment the game play you're free to do so, but it doesn't enhance the intended mood much or at least it didn't for me. Anyway, I actually think Dark Souls 2 was an example of a game going somewhat horribly wrong in this regard, it was too difficult for the wrong reasons in a lot of areas to play up on the perceptions people had of the first game rather than the reality of the game. In Dark Souls 1 the point of the games difficulty should not be seen as being difficult for it's own sake but to add weight to it's atmosphere and to make the combat seem more realistic. That is the point of the difficulty in a Souls game and to that extent I think it's just difficult enough that the game establishes a feeling of fear and caution in the player and a more acute sense of where you are in the world.

>>386929541
Meaning that I'm more aware of my surroundings and what I need to do to be safe in them in Souls/From games than I am in most games because my caution and preparedness is more rewarded than it is in other games. The overall point I want to make here though is that the difficulty fits the setting and design From wanted for this particular game and in that sense they do deserve a little praise for not making the game just accessible for the sake of more happy customers. They did not bend design for accessibility. That doesn't mean that every game should aim to be like this or that every game should be rated by it's difficulty. Games should aim to have a difficulty that fits their overall mood and design, the wrong consideration when making or reviewing a game is to make it easy or hard for the sake of players perceptions or aptitude. The measured difficulty in Dark Souls is only a small part of what makes the game great. I'll also say here and I'll touch on this more later that the game is difficult but fair, generally when you make a mistake you know what went wrong and why. There are much harder games than Souls games and games that much more punishing and unrewarding in their overall difficulty. 7th Saga comes to mind when I think of RPGs and I cant think of a harder less rewarding game then that in the genre.

>>386929602
That is generally how I would describe the game play, tough but fair. You might be asking what you actually do in the game? Well at the start of the game you pick a basic RPG class like warrior, magic user, agile attacker and/or some shit in between and then you traverse the world described above collecting souls which basically amounts to what "experience" usually means in most other RPGs. Soul also serves other functions, as a currency to upgrade weapons and armor. In order to spend souls to do that stuff you need to go to Bonfires which are generally the safest parts of the world and are used as checkpoints as you make your way through the game or to merchant NPCs that usually offer items and things in exchange for Souls or Humanity. As stated you're already undead in the game but for short bursts or until you die again you can take on humanity, humanity in general is kind of a counter state to soul power and it functionally mirrors its lore characteristics. You can use humanity for a lot of things in game that wont make much sense for me to explain in the scope of this review as they go far beyond the basics. The main thing is you can use it for is to hide your stinky rot face and see your fine sculpted potato chin face instead. Gwynevere I...

>>386929664
You need to spend souls at bonfires to upgrade yourself and your items or when you die you will lose whatever amount of unspent soul power you have left over. Now the good news is if you can make it back to the spot where you died you can recover that lost soul power, but if you die again it's gone forever and is replaced by whatever you lost at your new deaths location. I'm sure many people have stories where they almost made it back to a large cache of souls they lost and died one enemy or one room away from it... Not that this has happened to me multiple times or anything. Nah I'm a true pro... Fucking wheel bastards, dogs and demon fuckers if I die one more time I'll shield bash the fucking computer screen. Goddammit I was just one click away you couldn't just let me walk five more fucking feet game, really? You motherfuckers. Yeah... I also ran into "those skeletons" and the New Londo ghosts before being prepared a few times on my first play through. I saw the words "You died" so much I started to think of it more as a comedic catch phrase than a condemnation of my amateurish game play. Lets just say I wasn't making the brightest of decisions in fact I'd say the majority of my first run of this game was mistake after mistake after mistake. The good news, is like I said earlier it's generally easy to find out what you did wrong and how you can improve, I just refused to heed such obvious things in favor of my own stupidity and stubbornness.

>>386929713
This is made somewhat easier by the combat which was mostly perfected in Demon Souls and only got better in Dark Souls. The combat is the main star of the show in these games and what gets me to slog through the ones I didn't particularly care for like Dark Souls 2. Especially melee combat it's very fine tuned and accurate and although I don't expect every player to play the way self designated "Souls experts" tell people to play I would suggest not using auto aiming/targeting as it makes the game a lot more fun and realistic and the 3D combat is better suited than most games for accurate hits and counters. I find range attacks and spells to still be somewhat of a mixed bag, I can somewhat give Demon Souls and Dark Souls a pass on this, but even Bloodborne a game that relies heavily on guns for a sub/main weapon was still fucking this up on a regular basis. I know what I'm about to say will probably be seen as sacrilege to most "Souls" fans but I think ranged attacks should get their own quasi 3rd-person/first person perspective similar to other third person perspective games to accommodate for the general lack of accuracy the current viewpoint gives people. I'm open to hearing other suggestions to this problem but I think this would best fit the game without fundamentally changing large portions of the combat otherwise or making it too easy in other ways. Unless something changes as is, I'm not the biggest fan of magic or ranged classes in the game. I mean they're somewhat functional but the melee is just so much better that I feel that attack magic is pointless. Some spells for instance are way out of balance to in my opinion overcompensate for the fact that magic is mostly broken and hard to use.

>>386929792
So they made specific crutches within to deceive people into thinking it's functional when it really isn't. I also mean hard as in it's archaic and burdensome to use, not that my lack of skill couldn't grasp it as some people who swear by the magic in these games will no doubt think. I'm more than willing to be told I suck if I genuinely think it's me failing but after analyzing my own play throughs and those of other people online I suspect more can be done to make the combat more appealing outside of melee.
I don't think it's a huge knock against the combat to say what I just said. As stated earlier melee is more than functional it's excellent and the options within just that and using support magic is varied enough that I've yet to get tired of it through many play throughs of this and other Souls games. The combat shines best in boss battles. Specific strategies and sometimes specific items and setups are needed to beat the bosses. Each boss builds on the games mechanics and most feel progressively harder. A lot of people think Ornstein and Smough are the hardest boss in the game but I have to say that i don't share this opinion. They are hard for being near the start of the game but they are hardest against players who impose rules on themselves like not grinding and trying to attack things out of order. For most normal players who don't have these rules the bosses scale nice against an average timed play through. To me Gwyn is rightfully the hardest boos of the game. Each boss battle feels unique and important in it's own way. Most bosses give you some relief in that you can gamble and ask other players to come into the world, possibly to help you or gank you by request or you can ask Solaire to help. Some bosses also have certain things you can do before a fight that can diminish their chances of winning. Like entering a certain way or using certain items to make things easier.

>>386929847
Players can also engage in PVP and can join covenants throughout the games world that usually pertain to some aspect of this. Many people who play Dark Souls after hearing how great it is from other people start to question it's greatness after they have their first moment of PVP with someone an insane amount of levels higher than them and way more geared. "It's just unfair" they think to themselves as they turn the game off and go back to their boring, dull and quiet lives of easy comfort and safety. Well I'm here to tell you it being unfair is the point and not a detraction. The whole point of PVP in souls games is to add to the tense atmosphere of the world, it's not to make you feel more safe or welcome it's to make you feel more unsafe and unwelcome to the game. If a person connects and happens to be friendly that is just a bonus in your favor, but the whole point of these encounters are to add that extra level of uncertainty and tenseness that comes from the unprogrammed intentions of other players. Also for a guy to dress like Sonic and run around you before one shotting you... Ok so not all of these encounters work as intended but the point is there was a general intention to their design and it was precisely to make the world feel unfair and uncaring. This isn't supposed to be a DOTA like match of fairness and equality (laughs). Sometimes in Dark Souls you're ready for a fight and prepared to face the challenge and sometimes like real life you're not. You just have to take that chance every time the game goes online.

>>386929906
I would say the graphics were above average for the time this game came out, but the real areas in which Dark Souls excels in this regard is the art direction and the world design. I love the look of all the weapons, armor, enemies, bosses and environments. I'll say that humans kind of look odd in Dark Souls 1, the potato face is mash in this one. That is part of the reason why I think most humanoids in game have an outfit that covers their face and the few that don't usually reside in the darker areas of the game. I know for myself it's one of the only RPGs where I prefer to usually hide my characters face.
I think From games have the best collective art style of any companies games. So many great locations and views. I think the build up from the start of the game to Anor Lando should be an example taught to game designers everywhere on how to make something standout and feel far grander than it would have otherwise. Walking into Anor Londo for the first time after being in so many ruinous areas and dilapidated places made for one of the greatest moments in gaming ever for me. Just seeing it speaks for itself, there is something very important and grand about it. Even though we later learn it's an intentional illusion the fact that the game designers were able to make me feel that just shows how great of an "illusion" it was. The same can be said about a lot of the areas and things in Dark Souls, every thing looks as big and "epic" as it's supposed to look.

>>386929967
I think the most impressive thing the art style and graphics accomplished is that each area feels like it conveyed what the designers were aiming for with it. Caves really feel like caves, ruins feel like ruins, forests feel like a forest etc. There is a danger and adventurous feel to everything you see. A lot of people don't like Lost Izalith's looks, Even Miyazaki himself, but I'll say I like the way it looks and I would be sad had it been scrapped. I think the expansions areas and are some of my favorite areas in any souls game. The general sad tone and somber atmosphere is best displayed there and it manages to add just enough more depth and detail to the overall story to make it worthwhile but not overwhelming and better than it's own game like an Elder Scrolls DLC.
The sound design is just excellent. All the music is great, the voice acting is great and the general sound effects really make a dying world feel alive. I think the voice acting in most modern From games is excellent and Dark Souls have some of my favorite bits and voice acting. It isn't quite as MAJESSSSTICCCCCCCCC as BloodBourne's voice acting, but I mean what in the hell could be? I love that you can hear some bosses throughout a whole zone before seeing them. Sometimes I wish there was more dialogue and more chances to speak to some of the bosses in the game. Knowing their motives more clearly at least from their perspective would be very interesting, but it also might go against a lot of the other design choices they made in the game, so I guess I'll concede this might be a stupid want of mine.

tl;dr

>>386930025
I have heard many people compare Dark Souls to many other games and genres of games before in a positive and negative sense and just for the sake of argument and to firmly establish what I believe it's genre is I'd like to explore a few of those games and genres and what they might say about this game in particular. I want to make a note before doing so though, I'm not remarking on the quality of these games by saying they're either like or not like Dark Souls, my comparison is merely about their similarity and that may or may not coincide with what I think is good in their particular games.
The first game I ever heard a Dark Souls comparison to and the most enduring comparison is the 3D Zelda games and I have to say I disagree with this comparison. I think people see the 3D sword and board combat and just insert the games into one another without much thought. I think on the surface this seems like an easy association but it starts to fall apart in Dark Souls favor in most ways when you start to think of the complexities of the combat. I think Dark Souls can be played without using auto-targeting, where as I think you'd be an absolute fool to attempt playing a modern 3D Zelda without using Z-targeting. Another way in which it doesn't work is that exploration is very different in the games. Dark Souls exploration is more about combat readiness and preparation, where as Zelda's exploration is more about getting specific tools in a linear progression so you can get to new areas and find new tools until you touch the Triforce. Sometimes you need certain rings or consumable items in Dark Souls to traverse hazardous areas or to open secret doors, but it never quite reaches the height of pulling out a hookshot. I'm trying really hard to think back at all the Souls games and wondering if bows/range attacks are required for exploration. .

>>386930089
I know you can shoot a few "drakes" from far away to fight them earlier than usual/make them leave, but I cant think of any instances where a range attack is essential to traversing some environmental blockade like with bows in Zelda games. The majority of Zelda games are not very difficult and aim for a mid paced, ease of access use in their design. To that point the majority of them don't feel as intense as Dark Souls usually feels.
Is there any good justification to linking Zelda and Dark Souls? It's not a comparison that is completely unworthy of merit. I think game play wise Dark Souls does remind me of a Zelda game Zelda 2: The Adventures of Link. I mean that in a positive sense, before you start getting angry. Zelda 2 was the game that best utilized sword and board combat in a difficult setting. Enemies often required intense strategies to defeat. It had that same kind of difficulty Dark Souls had where it feels difficult but fair. Most mistakes are your own and not the games design. Except for the lack of check points that was a terrible oversight. It's one of the only Zelda's with a downward stab, an iconic move in Souls games that can help you significantly in certain boss and enemy fights. It's dungeons were as vertical as they were horizontal which makes it unique as most Zelda's and games in general are about horizontal exploration. Killing the bosses in the game was also more about attack techniques rather than specific item usage unlike most Zelda games. The story of Zelda 2 is not much like Dark Souls so for comparison in that regard I turn to another game in the series.

>>386930149
The Zelda game that most thematically resembles Dark Souls and who at some points seem to be directly referenced in both Demon and Dark Souls is Majoras Mask. It is one thing to merely reference the surface similarities between the games as many have done as I pointed out with Berserk before but I think a more fruitful effort would be to consider their themes and what Dark Souls has to say about Majoras Mask as I see it. The point of Majoras Mask when you strip away all the side quests and other details is a world in denial of an obvious impending calamity, the moon is about to collapse into Termina and the majority of the inhabitants of Termina are more worried about their daily lives, singular concerns or outright denying the threat of the moon even to the point that some of them don't acknowledge it up to a few moments of the moon collapsing into the town. The saddest moment to me in Majora's Mask was not the climax of the Anju side quest but the mailman needing to send himself a letter in order to reassure himself it was ok to stop working when the moon was going to hit the town. The moment is emblematic of the sad routines and linear thinking we can engage in when we want to hold onto the status quo beyond all rational or emotional thought even for our own sake.

>>386930205
The same can be said about the inhabitants of Dark Souls world and the constantly recurring crisis of the flames. The calamity is inherent in the very nature of the world set up and yet very few people in Dark Souls world seem to engage in it as if a crisis is happening and even those that do acknowledge it selfishly cling onto their own existence rather than addressing the problem directly of their own will. An easy question to ask about the situation in Dark Souls 1 is why don't Frampt or Gwyndolin ever consider linking the flame if the result would end the current crisis and make them heroes? Because they either know something we don't about the nature of linking the flame or they're too selfish to take upon themselves the same heroic act Gwyn committed and that they're asking you to do in their place. Either way their moral cowardice is noted in the face of this crisis. I'm not merely singling them out either they just seem the most obvious examples as they're actively pressing someone to do something about what is happening. That is one of the most absurd things about both games until Link and the "Chosen Undead" come along no one is prepared to do anything to try and remedy the obviously bad situation everyone is in. In Dark Souls the inhabitants have setup a messianic religion based on the fact that they think someone else is going to come and save them from their problems "The Chosen Undead" or literal zombie Jesus could in reality be anyone who has the will to actually try and save this land.
This allegory has obvious real world corollaries that we can relate to these games the most obvious being climate change. Am I saying that either of these games is implicitly about that or that was their intended meaning? No, I'm merely saying the situation and the denial of the impending calamity can be related to that real life situation. The denseness of Dark Souls story, lore and themes allow us to liken it to several real world situations.

>>386930256
think Dark Souls or From ARPGs in general now could do with integrating more aspects of Zelda like exploration into their game play it seems like it would make their worlds seem less static and more interactive and also give you more options than going up and down ladders or elevators millions of times. It could also help break the monotonous feeling their releases are starting to feel at this point basically every From ARPG is starting to feel structurally the same over and over with very little changes to the game play, even obvious improvements everyone wants but From never seems to address.
Many people have said that the Dark Souls games remind them of what a 3D Metroidvania would look like. Specifically the Castlevania side of that equation. When I play Symphony of the Night music over Dark Souls game play I can almost see it for a minute, but then things start to stick out to me. Like the fact that Dark Soul's is not a horror game. Sure it's got aspects of things we traditionally see as horror, but I think a big difference is the presentation. Castlevania games want to evoke the Universal movie monsters and a light version of the Victorian age. You can rightfully argue that Bloodborne does evoke horror and the Victorian age as well, but even in that game so much more is done with the premise and themes it's almost hard to compare. Dark Souls uses traditional horror elements but tries to present them as a realistic and regular part of the world they are in, they're not big bad entities like Dracula and his friends.

>>386930297
I would say the Metroidvania Castlevania's also are very much more like Zelda 2 or genre appropriate Metroid in their exploration. Exploration is based on items and forms, not so much your preparedness and abilities like with Dark Souls. Their exploration is also as vertical as it is horizontal there are some similarities in this regard particularly in the way areas are arranged but not by a whole lot. I would also say the combat for the most part is drastically different in Metroidvania's and Dark Souls. In that sense they feel almost nothing alike to me. I would say the comparison fails on more levels than it succeeds.
The game that I personally think most resembled Dark Souls before Dark Souls existed is Diablo 1. I considered writing a paragraph describing their similarities like with the games and genres above but they have so many I decided to just make this comparison a list to save me and you some time. Both games are: ARPGS rooted further in dungeon crawling, have a similar class and combat system based on progression of gear, stats and preparation, both have excellent melee but shitty attack magic and great support magic, both games are hard but in a way that seems fair to those who approach them realistically and with preparation, both games have exploration that is mostly vertical and the exploration is about how prepared you are, both have stories that are rich in lore, low on story and heavy on themes and atmosphere, both seek to have a dark oppressive atmosphere, both have a similar PVP system that is more about adding to the harsh atmosphere than being fair or balanced, both of the games have stories about the powerful being corrupted and a meta narrative about the insanity of the players quest, both games have lava filled hell areas and finally both games have enemies called the "The Butcher."

>>386930353
I think the PVP system is the thing that most makes this comparison work for me, the games are so much a like in this extremely unique regard I often wonder if someone at From Soft was a fan of Diablo 1 or at least knew of it. I'll also say on a functional level both games feel very much the same as you play them, it's the same kind of tense rhythmic game play I described in my Diablo 1 review. I think everything i said about Diablo's combat in that review could rightfully be added to this review of Dark Souls with only minor tweaks.

I'm not the kind of half-steppin bambi ass burg-dweller who makes a Drake style innuendo diss on someone or something from afar without telling you why I dislike it and seeing as I'm already comparing other games and Dark Souls it seems only fair to compare it to Dark Souls 2 (DS2) and make clear what I dislike about that game. First though lets talk about the good. I liked Dark Souls increased character customization, it's slight albeit not great improvements as indicated above to magic and ranged attacks. I liked the overall look of the game and the graphical upgrades. I'll say some areas looked more bland to me and a few areas looked like a redundant repeat of things we did in Dark Souls 1, but I wouldn't say this in particular hurt the game much. The art style stayed consistently excellent all throughout the series and I'll say it's the one thing From Soft has never really messed up on up to this point when it comes to this loose association of Souls games. A lot of people have harped on the technical details of DS2 not being up to snuff but I'll say, for the most part it doesn't feel much different to me and to the extent that it does it is mostly on the side of good rather than bad. Yes I think covenants needed an overhaul, yes the hub was nothing special compared to Firelink shrine and some of the character interactions or lack of interaction was downright ridiculous.

>>386930407
The difficulty was one technical problem that I felt was stupid and as I stated much earlier in this review I think was done to play up to player perceptions rather than being done as a good design choice to fit the game. A lot of people complained about some of the bugs/oversights with game but to be fair I'll say Dark Souls 1 had a lot of the same problems at launch and unlike a lot of players I didn't immediately buy DS2 at launch I was waiting for all the expansions to come out. So it is not something I personally experienced or can really comment on. I would say DS2 and DS3 for that matter got about 80% of everything right. So I'll state that I don't hate the games on a functional level, they still work as good and even better in ways than Dark Souls 1. So this isn't like a full dose of hatred. I can see why some people still find these games compelling but...

>>386930453
Ok lets make one last distinction before we start discussing what I dislike about the sequels. I generally like the story direction the sequels took as in their self contained stories and the bosses, enemies and characters that you meet. What I hate and absolutely hate is the lore direction the series took. Now a lot of people might have a hard time understanding the distinction between lore and story. To me the story is the information that is absolutely relevant to what is currently happening in the game world and how it directly relates to your game play. The lore is the backstory, the history, the flavor details, the side quests, its every thing irrelevant to the game play but central to the overall progression of the series. Especially a series about Dark Souls where lore is almost more important than the overt story you hear.

>>386930504
The worst thing I think Dark Souls 2 did and that 3 unfortunately had to build on was the mistake that was the entire lore direction of the series. I hate how they answer what happened with your choice in Dark Souls 1, saying neither choice mattered is the safest, dumbest and most uncreative route they could have taken the story. Merely saying nothing about it might have been a better answer because it wouldn't erase the weight and significance of everything you and Gwyn sacrificed. It also further cheapens it when Dark Souls 2 stupidly implies the lord soul carriers in each game are just repeats of the first game and then the third game builds on this stupidity by also saying the people who linked the flame are basically repeats of one another. If all we are doing is repeating these things over and over what is the point of the sequels at all? I can just replay Dark Souls 1 of my own accord and essentially have the same amount of the story progression and significance that the sequels offer.

>>386930545
Just pretend though that a game was made with either route in mind and you can imagine a much better lore progression than what we were given. I particularly like to imagine a world where darkness prevailed and the flames were quenched. Imagine playing a Dark Souls 2 in the aftermath of that choice in it's full implications it would be the desperation, struggle and toil of the first game but even more gruesome and destructive. I like to imagine a player embarking on a "life raft" like scenario where the remaining dregs of hollowed and humans just have to escape the encroaching darkness for what little time is left. I'm merely stating one alternative to what the current story is, but as I said earlier I'm sure you can imagine another of your own. Maybe it takes the Firelink route and shows how it actually backfires in some way or maybe the sequels could have dealt with something else entirely. The point is I wish they did something other than repeat the same game while telling us the last one wasn't that significant.

>>386930587
That is not to mention that the answer they give makes little sense as the death of all of humanity and the flame that embodies them seems to carry enough civilization and knowledge to keep Lordran intact enough for pale blob Gwyndolin in the third game to inhabit it. I don't know if the average video game player knows what would happen to humanities cities and technology without proper maintenance for hundreds of years even with our current level of technology, but with exception of stone structures and items very few of our settlements, technology and ideas wouldn't survive long past our extinction. Now a lot of those cities in Lordran ain't looking so good even during the time that you're playing, I mean sure You got Anor Londo but the rest of the game is virtually ruins and no one is actively building anything new in the sense of trying to prolong civilization further. So you mean to tell me "a few sparks of flame" manage to maintain a city the size of Anor Londo long enough for the third game to take place? It makes no goddamn sense and before you say magic, you should note that magic doesn't seem to help any of the other civilizations from crumbling into ruins. Did Gwyndolin get a hammer and start doing some maintenance work, how in the hell did his ass and that girl survive anyway? So their answer is unsatisfying and if they had the guts to tell players who choose darkness their answer wouldn't work given the timeline they created, they might have done something much more creative or risky rather than a rehash that makes no sense.

>>386930645
The main reason they choose that answer as I'm sure most people can gather really has nothing to do with player choice, but because they probably thought in their heads that it was merely the easiest way to continue the series without any "obvious" contradictions in the future lore. Which is laughable because as I stated above one route is nigh impossible without them either further elaborating on the possibilities or dare I say again them showing us the real consequences of our actions.
I would say I'd much rather Dark Souls had been a standalone game with it's own story and that they continued on with it in a sense by either giving Demon Souls a sequel or making more side games like Bloodborne. I know in Demon Souls case they didn't/don't want to be anchored to Sony forever but I think it's story is more conducive to a sequel than Dark Souls. There really isn't anything Dark Souls sequels added that really enhances the overall lore, sure we get some interesting details but the overall emotional, thematic and argumentative thrust of what were being told is the same thing over and over again only with less weight and importance each time. You can complain all day about minor details and little fuck ups they made in comparison to this or that game, but the real problem with the sequels is they just don't feel necessary. Dark Souls says everything the other two games say without feeling compromised or cheapened.

>>386930692
Now that I'm done stroking my own ego and other parts of myself. I think we can end this but before we do I have a lot more to say about the philosophical nature of the Souls games and literary political histori- YOU DIED. Alright, I get the hint. I guess I'll leave this extremely long review at that. This game is one of my favorite games of all time and a game I can see myself playing and pondering for quite a long while after I'm done with this review. Keep on shield bashing friends and Gwyn be praised.