The Dark Souls Affair
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The best games feel like siblings. They grew up with you, and you don’t see them much anymore but you know they’re there for you if you need them. I think of Chrono Trigger like an older brother, and I can tell you every little lesson it ever taught me, but I don’t need to see him too often. Planescape is like a long-lost stepbrother who I often meet and think, “Things will be so different now that I’m older,” but they never are. They’re never different, great games, not at their cores, and that’s what’s best about them. Recently, these brother games have expressed horror at my ongoing affair with Dark Souls. “Just break up with her!” Final Fantasy VI, my younger sister, tells me. “She’s no good for you!” I didn’t believe her, of course. I’d felt such fondness towards Demon’s Souls, Dark’s predecessor, until fate in the form of a broken Playstation 3 took her away; how could I not fall for it’s younger, darker sister? How could I not fall for Dark Souls? We played together, her and I. I was a sorcerer, then a cleric when I didn’t feel like being a sorcerer anymore, when Dark Souls decided to play rough and throw a massive goat demon at me. She reminded me of her older sister, but she was brighter, happier, more willing to try new things. She was excited about letting me go out and explore her worlds while Demon’s Souls had kept me boxed in little corridors. Then it all came crashing down.
I’ll spare you most of the details. There was overconfidence, there was swearing, there were some horrible frogs, and there was a death where my item that let me keep all my souls was ignored, my health halved unless I performed one of two horribly difficult tasks. The sort of cruel, unnecessary punishment Demon’s Souls would never have leveled. It was around this point that I broke up with Dark Souls on twitter. “You know what, Dark Souls? I hate you.” I tried again the next day to make it work, and it only got worse. With half health, everything killed me, and I quit. For good. Other games called and congratulated me. “She’s not worth it,” Final Fantasy VII told me, “she’s just going to make you mad.” VII offered me someone else, one of her best friends, Crisis Core, which I dove into with abandon. “This isn’t so bad,” I told her, and she nodded. A couple days later, Mass Effect (not fond of that bro thing he’s doing now, but a cool guy back in the day) called me, “You made the right choice. There are better worlds to explore out there.” He said that, and I realized how much games had changed, and how much I needed Dark Souls. I called up our bastard brother, Knytt (different mother, same father), and I asked him what he thought about it. “It’s such a world,” Knytt said, “why wouldn’t you want to explore it.” Knytt‘s always right, I thought. I thought about all the places in Dark Souls, all the places I hadn’t been. Epic, dark forests filled with dangerous crystal men and passive adorable mushrooms. Places like The Painted World and The Tomb of the Giants. I had to see these places. It wasn’t about the difficulty, anymore: it was about the things I could see, the places I could go. The exploration, the kind of world that’s so rare in a video game: the kind of place where you can feel the lore underneath every rock, every stone, even though the game doesn’t tell you things overtly. I needed to see the world, to explore, because it’s such a rare thing, exploration. So few games respect you enough to just let you bound through world after world, experiencing all there was to see, and I had to give Dark Souls a chance just for that. It feel like I understand Dark Souls, now. We’ve grown closer from adversity, and we’re better off for it. I can’t tell what the future holds for us, whether she will join my family, but I know, now, that wherever we end up we’ll be better for it. Even if she throws two bosses at me at once. |
“A couple days later, Mass Effect (not fond of that bro thing he’s doing now, but a cool guy back in the day) called me”
Excellent analogy, made me laugh anyway.
Exploration is king though, that’s a good shout and certainly why the early Tomb Raiders remain nostalgic favourites of mine, where I climbed every inch of cavern for the sheer joy of doing so. I don’t know if Lara’s a sibling of mine, maybe one of those celebrities you walk past in the street and think ‘hey, that looked like…nah couldn’t have been?’
“That couldn’t be Lara Croft; her knockers aren’t nearly huge enough.” A properly terrible analogy for the potentially terrible reboot.
I mean, if Mass Effect was a person, he would be that guy you knew in junior high who played D&D who’s now a popped collar bro in a pink shirt with a little polo player on it who listens to Dave Matthews Band. Nothing wrong with that–he still likes astronomy and secretly plays D&D every week. He’s just not the same.
I’ll agree that Crisis Core is not so bad, but there’s not much nicer you can say about it, and that’s certainly more than you can say for its head-slapping attempts at a “deep” story. HAY GUYS WE GOT POETRY
If you got cursed in the sewers, just back track to the entrance and buy the purging stone from de trader
there…, is that a horribly difficult task?
You forgot the collect thousands of souls to afford it part. That part is important, and impossible if you don’t have the super grinding spot unlocked.
6000 souls i think, if you kill the frog things at 200 souls each, you can get them in no time, and also get some humanity from the rats in the proccess, i mean, its a hard game and all, but its not impossible, if you get the drake sword, you should not have any problem in the game up to blight town, afterwards, is another story.
The problem with grinding is not that it’s hard. The problem with grinding is that it’s a horrendous waste of your time, and any game design that demands you to grind is goddamn lazy.
Rule of thumb.
Grinding after a game to collect all the secret materia and stuff is fine.
Grinding during a game? Aargh.
I actually agree with you guys about the grind, but still is nowhere near impossible…
The crappy camera and the lousy frame rate that is making the fight against the 3 cats a really tough bussines, bug me a lot more.
It’s not impossible, but a game shouldn’t make you spend two hours on death fearfully grinding to keep playing it. Also, it *probably* should have done a better job informing us that bleed and curse are instant kill status effects.
Impossible’s the wrong word. Unfortunate is better.
Totally agreed, by the way, i followed teh link from n4g to this piece, in gotta say i regret not knowing of this site sooner, great webpage..
Thanks man! We always appreciate new readers!
Two bosses at once?
hah!
Just wait ’til you have to fight 6 (that’s S. I. X. <- as in four more than two) Taurus demons at once!
Six wasn’t too hard, since you could pull them with arrows and they don’t respawn. Also, they die to fire.
Most things do!
It is the Age of Fire, after all bwahaha
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I want to like Dark Souls. Then I remember Demon’s Souls.
Not my cup of tea – but I love reading about it!
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