A 2 Steam

Dark Souls & Dark Souls II 

I feel that I am not qualified to talk about Dark Souls. Not in a real sense anyways. Not after a combined 100+ hours between Dark Souls and Dark Souls II. Not after reading a book about them (You Died by Keza MacDonald and Jason Killingsworth, a really fantastic collection of essays, interviews and discussions). Not after watching dozens of videos on Youtube. And not after many hours of listening to podcasts about them. 

I know that sounds silly and a bit overblown but I really think there are two ways you can play Dark Souls. The first is to play through it as the tough as nails game that it is and taking what you do and see as face value. The other way is to dive deep into what the game presents, both mechanically, visually and story wise. I attempted the latter.

The pacing of combat is something that I had never quite got a full handle on. Attacks are often slower than you think they are going to be and the animation is priority - once you commit you are stuck until the follow through. Attacks are often faster than you think they are going to be - getting your shield up in time or being ready to riposte take a while to master. But they same goes for the enemies, you both fight by the same set of rules, regardless of how weak or powerful you or they are a caught mistake on either side can cost you or them. You pick weapons that suit the style you are comfortable with but not every weapon fits every job.

And it's not just combat that forces hard choices. Everything you do in Dark Souls feels very deliberate - once you've made your choice there is no going back. From attempting a jump across a broken precipice,as running and leaping have real weight to them, to casting a spell (they all seem to have such long casting times), to using a limited item with an obscure description (they all do). Even using your estus flask to heal is a drawn our animation that can be interrupted.

Every door you open and every ladder you climb feels dangerous. There is not turning back. There is no reloading a save. There is only hard choices and their consequences. 

And of course the YOU DIED screen.

A lot of talk about Dark Souls is about the difficulty. "Dark Souls hard" or "the real Dark Souls starts here" are tropes of these games. They are hard but not in the way most people think of difficulty in video games. An enemy can seem difficult, but over time you see their weaknesses, their openings, the timing of their attacks and then you learn to beat them. A trap can seem unfair and unpredictable, but then you see the signs, the markings, or sometimes just hear the audio clues and you learn to avoid them. An item received seems valuable, but the description is vague and once used its gone till the next time you find one, so you use it and you learn. 

That's really where the difficulty of Dark Souls is, in the learning of its lessons. It does not hold your hand or lead you with tutorials. It spells out nothing but prompts you consistently with "try this" and "look here". Experiment. Learn. Master. Conquer. I am reminded of the scene from the Princes Bride where Westely and Buttercup are confronted after making their way through the Fire Swamps and he says - "Ha, but how would you capture us? We know the secrets of the fire swamps. We lived there quite happily for some time. So whenever you feel like dying, feel free to visit." When you start to learn how to parse the information Dark Souls gives you the way the difficulty is perceived changes. 

That's not to say Dark Souls doesn't just sometime exploit your or seemingly even "cheat" you. Countless times I slammed by controller down in frustration shouting "oh come on!" at the screen for whatever fate has fallen me. But unlike most games Dark Souls also doesn't care, nay it even rewards you, for exploiting the game - "cheat like a human" as a friend of mine would say. Sometimes these exploits feel like you really have taken advantage of some crack in the system of the game, other times you're not sure - did they really just allow me to do that? 

Outside of the mechanics Dark Souls games have a deep lore that I have only scrapped the surface while peering into its dark depths. It's leaked out to you in tiny scraps. A small conversation with a NPC. A line or two of text description for an item. It forces you to draw your own lines between the world, its peoples and the evens that have taken place. The lands of Lordran in Dark Souls are world building at's it's finest but without the piles of exposition and walls of text that plague so many other games.

Dark Souls is a game that changed the way I look at other games. The design of how it plays, how its built and what it ask of you as a player is really unlike most other games out there. It's quite hard to describe. While playing these games they are all that I can think about. They have a pull on my imagination really effects me.

I have to give my thanks to Hidetaka Miyzaki for the games and world of Dark Souls. He's done something that will stand the test of time. I am really looking forwards to delving into Dark Souls III in the near future.

Praise the sun!