Renegade Inquisitor with a Bound Daemon
Tied and gagged in the back of your car
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God dammit. He's gonna make me post it.
Dark Souls, an action role-playing game (RPG) by From Software, published outside of Japan by Namco Bandai Games, was released in October of 2011 (September in Japan) for the Xbox 360 (360) and Sony Playstation 3 (PS3), and with a PC version being released this summer. The game was a great commercial and critical success, marketed on its incredibly high difficulty level and unique and innovative mechanics. Despite the great success of Dark Souls, it managed to achieve such success by eschewing many of the principles that are common in most contemporary videogames with mass appeal.
While most games are built around empowering the player, making them feel greater than they actually are, Dark Souls does the exact opposite, at least, initially. Dark Souls is hard, and it wants everyone to know it. The slightest mistake can have the most adverse of consequences, a single wrong movement can lead to a swift and painful end, and every wrong turn (and even some of the right ones!) hides certain death. Challenges can seem insurmountable, even the massive scale of the game's level design is incredibly intimidating. It's not uncommon to be completely overwhelmed by the game's difficulty during the game's first few hours. But this is all intentional. When the player finally manages to overcome a challenge in Dark Souls, no matter how small, the sense of achievement is enormous. The entire world may be out to crush the player and everything they stand for, but even the tiniest success is more empowering and satisfying than many other games could ever offer. Every inch of progress is something that the player has truly earned for themselves.
As difficult, cruel, and downright hateful as Dark Souls can be at times, it is nothing if not fair. Every section of the game is carefully and expertly planned, every enemy and their placement methodically picked out in order to develop and test the player's skills and intuition. Because each portion of the game carefully builds upon skills developed through prior ones, each level of the game manages to constantly keep the player engaged.
With that in mind, what makes Dark Souls so successful is not so much the difficulty of the game in itself, but rather, the atmosphere it creates. Although Dark Souls is an incredibly difficult game for the uninitiated, and the game was advertised on the basis of that, the difficulty of the game is only a single part of what really manages to draw the player into the game and keep them constantly engaged. It's only a tool to help influence how the player feels while playing the game. The strongest princple of Dark Souls' core design is instead the entire atmosphere created by the game.
Every mistake made by the player in Dark Souls has considerable weight. With a single wrong move leaving you open for a considerable variety of punishments, and with the cost of death being all of the player's souls (currency and experience) and humanity (used for a variety of functions, such as online play), a series of deaths at the wrong time (and it will happen) can definitely have an emotional impact on the player. For as much time as one is willing to put into it, Dark Souls is more than ready and willing to take it all away without a moment's hesitation. Because of this, player action never feels inconsequential. For the player, something is always immediately at stake, and nothing in the game is ever trivial because of the costs associated with it. While many RPGs try to tout open-ended storylines with an emphasis on player choice, they can ultimately fail to be engaging because many of the choices made by the player are largely ineffectual. Dark Souls is a fairly linear game, but manages to give the player that sense of influencing the world around them by making their immediate actions --namely, their mistakes-- matter. This is further emphasized by the game's auto-save feature. There is no option to save manually, and no option to reload a previous save. Anything done by (or to) the player is finalized and set in stone the moment it is done. Because of this, the actions of the player have even more gravity. Players are forced to live with their choices, which makes them all the more poignant.
With the impact of the player's actions being made apparent through such a strong focus on negative reinforcement, it can be all too easy to frustrate the player to the point of alienating them from the game. Dark Souls succeeds at avoiding this by making the frustration caused by the game act not as a method of restricting the player's enjoyment, but instead as a challenge to the player. The game wants the player to succeed, even if it will make them go through hell to do it, and in subtle hints, it ensures that the player knows this. The most easily recognizable tool that Dark Souls uses to convey this is through the shear satisfaction gained by overcoming the game's challenges. Another major element is the game's colourful cast of characters, despite the fact that the non-player-characters (NPCs) never interact with the game's plot in a direct way (in fact, the player can get through the entire game without ever directly talking to an NPC). Still, talking to these NPCs is necessary to access shops, upgrade equipment, complete sidequests and learn new spells. But their personality is what really matters. As small as their individual roles may be, these characters exhibit great personality, and the fantastic voice acting only helps. The characters talk as if they address the player directly, rather than their character, and despite the grim nature of the world of Dark Souls, the intentions and emotions of these characters comes off as incredibly sincere, regardless of their motivations and desires (except for Patches, that two-timing snake!). Furthermore, if the player chooses to act aggressively towards an NPC (hit them), they act suitably and believably angry, surprised, or disappointed in the player. With that in mind, there are also NPCs who are more than willing to betray you or other characters, which makes the interactions between the characters and the player always have a sense of dynamism. Considering all this, how the characters feel so realistic and dynamic despite their roles being in the background, when they tell the player that they want them to succeed, or that they can't bear to watch them fail, the player instantly feels engaged with these characters, motivated by them. The world of Dark Souls isn't just a series of objectives and levels that need to be completed and beaten, but a world of people, no matter how important or insignificant, that need the player's help. Were the player to give up, the fates of everyone who rely on him or her would be sealed. This is very intelligently woven into the story of the game itself, with the player being an undead warrior, cursed to constantly revive whenever they die, but at the cost of losing their humanity and sanity with each resurrection. When the player has died enough times and lost their mind, they've gone hollow, and are no longer human but a mindless zombie. This specifically mirrors the players' frustrations themselves. Should the player die, there will be consequences, but they only truly lose when they give up.
Probably the most obvious element of the game's atmosphere, however, would be the design of Dark Souls' levels and overall aesthetic. Most of the game's environments tend to be dark, dull, and dismal, with suffocating corridors for enemies to ambush you within, and many winding paths to get lost in. That's not to say that the entire experience is claustrophobic, however, as many of the game's levels also have fantastic views for the player to take in. Each level is very distinct from the ones before and after it, and feature unique challenges and elements for players to maneuver around in addition to a varying aesthetic between the levels. Despite this variance though, every area of Dark Souls is connected, and each individual level is really part of one massive sprawl. The view from Firelink Shrine may be impressive enough as it is, but when you look down and realize that the area below is the destroyed city of New Londo, an area that the player can explore, it adds a whole new sense of scale to the game. The world of Dark Souls is massive, and the extremely vertical nature of the world's scale adds huge emphasis to this. The simple rule is that if you can see something in the game, you can go to it at some point. The scale of the game extends to the towers of the Duke's Archives that stand high above the clouds, to the underground Ash Lake, likely inspired by Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. With what can feel like many hours spent in underground tunnels or castle corridors, such a view is an incredible reward within itself.
Of course, how the levels of the game actually interact with the player is the most important aspect of the game's level design. As mentioned above, every element of each level's design is carefully chosen and methodically placed. Although the challenges and enemies the game throws at the player may seem to come out of nowhere, if the player advances at a methodical pace and is always conscious of their environment, they'll find that these obstacles are much less threatening. The player can't simply rush forward with reckless abandon in Dark Souls, every motion must be carefully made, or risk dying a terrible death. Dark Souls forces the player to play by its rules. Despite that, there are a variety of ways to actually approach most of the situations within the game, so long as proper care is taken on the part of the player.
As an example, in one level of the game, Anor Londo, the player must ascend a narrow buttress of a castle in order to infiltrate it. At the top of the buttress are two giant archers firing massive arrows at the player. Infamous as it is one of the most sadistic and unforgiving portions of the entire game, this area can be beaten in a variety of ways, so long as the player is willing to experiment, and, as a rule of thumb, they are careful about it. If they're daring enough and skilled at ranged combat, they could attempt to take the archers on with their own bows. Or they could take their time and poison the archers from range, waiting for them to die from the poison. Alternatively, they could simply choose to charge the archers, and with proper timing dodge the shots fired at them to finally reach the archers and push them off of their precarious position. Although some methods of overcoming the game's challenges can be underhanded or unconventional, being inventive about overcoming these challenges is only encouraged by Dark Souls' emphasis on survival. Because of this, not only does Dark Souls' cater to different styles of play, despite its rigid structure, but embraces the will of the player to exploit its very systems.
With that said, there are some portions of the game that seemingly delight in making the player feel as helpless as possible. In what I would attest to being the most difficult area of the game, the Tomb of the Giants, even the player's sense of sight is taken from them, as there is almost no light to be found in the level. In order to competently navigate through the darkness, the player must use a lantern which replaces their shield, compromising their defense in order to grant the player sight. In addition, this this lack of vision is combined with having to maneuver around very dangerous pathways with little to help the player should they fall, and some of the hardest hitting enemies in the game. In situations like this, the player is always vulnerable, so much so that it could even be suffocating at times. Add in the potential for invasion (covered below), and the entire area can really be a truly hellish experience.
Combined with the game's harsh penalties for failure, in situations like the one illustrated above, the player is genuinely fearful. Dying isn't just being returned to a checkpoint and being made to repeat the task, but they actually stand to lose something. The fact that the player has the possibility of losing something they've invested themselves in adds a level of intimacy to Dark Souls that is rare in most other games. Rather than simply losing the time needed to progress further upon failing, the player loses something that is measurable and of vital importance.
Another major aspect that contributes to the game's atmosphere, and is often overlooked, is the feeling of weight the game forces upon the player. When the player is wearing heavy armour, they hear, and through this, almost feel the crunching of each plate as they move. When the player swings their weapon, the force behind it is felt, thanks to the excellent sound effects and the way the player's character recovers from each strike. The player is not a superman, and the weight of the game only helps to reinforce that idea. When the player is swinging around the better part of a tree (personally, my favourite weapon in the game, and viewable in many of the provided videos), not only does it make an incredibly loud crash upon colliding with the ground, but the player's character shakes and recoils with the strength of the blow. This is further juxtaposed by the agility of the lighter weapons, although they too can show appropriate force with some of their stronger attacks. The feeling of weight behind Dark Souls control makes it a much more visceral experience, and when the player performs an action, they are committed to it.
The elements above help make Dark Souls into an incredibly involving and unforgettable experience, with a unique sense of atmosphere that firmly grounds the player in the game's universe. However, Dark Souls is not just a single player experience. Interwoven within Dark Souls' main gameplay is its multi-player system, which is unique to both it and its progenitor, Demon's Souls.
In Dark Souls, there is no segregation between multi-player and single player gameplay. Over the course of the game, the player will switch between two forms, human, and hollow. If a player is in human form, if they die, in addition to losing all of their souls and humanity, they'll turn into a hollow. The only way to turn back into a human is to offer humanity to a bonfire (checkpoint). While in human mode, players can kindle bonfires (improve their functionality), NPCs will interact with the player differently, and the player can use the passive effects of humanity to increase some of their character's stats, item drop rate, and other features. But most importantly, being in human form opens up the bulk of the multi-player options in Dark Souls.
Before delving into the subject of multi-player itself, it's important to talk about the covenant system present in the game. Covenants are NPC led factions that the player may join over the course of the game. There are nine covenants in Dark Souls, and the player may only ever join one at a time, and each one has their own conditions for advancing in rank within the covenant, as well as circumstances that would cause players to be kicked out of the covenant. Covenants have their own extrinsic rewards (such as items, spells, and equipment) for joining them and ascending the ranks, as well as with many covenants providing more depth and background for the story of Dark Souls and the kingdom of Lordran, where the game takes place in. But most importantly to the gameplay itself, the covenant system is what integrates the multi-player aspects of Dark Souls with the story and single player progression. Although most covenants have multi-player functionality, how they actually encourage multi-player is varied, and a player's choice in covenant can often be linked to how they choose to play the game. Some covenants encourage helping other, less experienced players explore through levels, while others encourage hunting them down and mercilessly killing them. The covenant system is worth note because it's a unique method of using diegetic methods to combine multi-player and single player into a single, seamless system.
Over the course of the game, players will gain several different items that allow them to engage in various multi-player actions. Orange and white soapstones are the most basic of these, and can be used by both hollow and human players alike, without needing to join a covenant. When the orange soapstone is used, the player will leave an orange sign on the ground with a message. This message can be used to warn other players of impending danger, trick them into falling for traps, or simply voice a casual musing about the game (such as the popular “great chest ahead” at the entrance to a certain character's room...). Message content is limited to a selection of pre-made phrases and words, in order to limit communication. Although a player can see how many people have read and rated the message, they can't tell how well the message was rated without the use of a specific spell. Because of this, players must always take caution for false information, for as much of a boon as good information can be, bad information can lead to a premature death.
White soapstones, similarly to orange ones, also leave down a sign. In this case, the sign is either white or gold, depending on the covenant the player has joined (gold summon signs are associated with a covenant built around helping other players), if they are part of one at all. But instead of leaving a message, if another player in human form touches the sign, they may summon the player who planted the sign into their game as a phantom to act as assistance through the level they are in (up to 2 people can be summoned at one time) (see clip: “Fatboy and Slim”). If there are no player's available to help, NPC characters can be summoned to help fight against some bosses, although their AI is somewhat limited (see clip: “Iron Giant”). Outside of basic gestures, there is no way to communicate with the summoned phantoms. This is intentional, despite the fact that the players may be working together to achieve a common goal, Dark Souls maintains its dark sense of atmosphere and isolation. Additionally, the match-making in Dark Souls is largely randomized, in order to keep players from playing through the whole game together. While there may be a sense of community with players actively helping one another out, any sense of familiarity is fleeting, as the phantom who was your friend during the exploration and challenges of a level will disappear as soon as it is completed, and you may never end up seeing them again, or you may even end up seeing them again as they try to hunt you down...
But jolly co-operation is not the only facet of Dark Souls' multi-player experience. While exploring any level of the game at any time while in human form, the player may be forcefully invaded by another player as a red or blue phantom. During this period, the goal of the phantom is to kill the host (any white or gold phantoms the host has summoned can be killed, but don't fulfill any objective), while the host's goal is to either slay the phantom or reach the boss area, expelling the invader from the game. There are no formal rules in place, and most invasions end up being a no-rules game of cat-and-mouse where the invader must attempt to slay the player using any means necessary. Although invading players are unable to heal normally, they won't be targeted by enemies within the level, so it's encouraged to use the placement of enemies and traps within the level creatively to help ensure success.
There are many ways to actually engage in invasions, but the three most common are with the Dark Wraith covenant, the Darkmoon covenant, and the Forest covenant. Dark Wraith followers can forcefully invade any player at any time, and hunt them down normally (there are also items that allow players to do so without being a member of the covenant, but they are limited in use). If an invader slays the host, they steal that player's humanity and gain souls. However, players who invade in such a fashion can be 'indicted' by the people they slay. Darkmoon players can only invade people who have been indicted, acting as a faction that is a 'police force' of sorts. Lastly, the Forest covenant functions differently and independently from the above two. When a player enters the forest region of the game, players of the Forest covenant can be summoned to defend the area, acting as the region's enemies themselves.
With the multi-player in Dark Souls lacking any formal rules system, the multi-player components of the game can come off as somewhat anarchistic. Players are largely free to invade and be summoned at will, and while in another player's game, are free to do whatever they want (although phantoms cannot harm NPCs, but they can entice hosting players to attack NPCs by accident, see clip: Griefing 101). This style of free-form interaction gives players many options in terms of how they choose to actually interact with the host of the world they are currently playing with. For the host, this can also add to the atmosphere of the game. When the host receives the brief message informing them that someone has invaded their world, the entire dynamic of the game changes. It's no longer just about methodically moving through the level and simply surviving its challenges, but now about doing all of that while also not being slain by a figure that will hunt them down and fight them in a way that the game's normal challenges never would. Every single corner turns into a potential death trap (see clip: Invasion), and every encounter with an enemy suddenly has the risk of being interrupted by a back stab from a phantom waiting from just outside of your view. Being invaded in Dark Souls adds a level of tension to the game that simply cannot be matched. Nothing quite competes with the absolute sense of dread felt while being invaded in the pure darkness of the Tomb of the Giants, no matter how many times the player has cleared it or how well they have the place memorized. The invasion system within Dark Souls adds a whole new dimension to the gameplay while adding to the game's atmosphere, rather than taking away from it like so many other games' multi-player systems would.
With the community within the game not being bound by any rules, and without any intuitive form of communication, combined with the fact that the game does very little to inform you of the intricacies of Dark Souls systems, it could be surprising to see such a strong community thriving within the game. Invasions and summonings happen frequently at all level ranges and within all areas. But what is most interesting, and possibly as a symptom of the lack of formal rule system and diegetic dissemination of information is the way the community outside the game has grown around it.
Despite the depth of the game's core mechanics, and the massive amount of content within the game, a lot of it is driven by the player's own interaction with the game. That is to say that nothing is really given to the player, that they need to investigate things on their own. Keeping track of all this information alone would be a daunting task, but thankfully, ever since the launch of Dark Souls, the game's entire community has been working together to discover and share what they know about it.
Even before Dark Souls' North American release, there was a lot of commotion about the game on the internet. Although the GameFAQs forums1, as well as the official Dark Souls forums2 acted as a sort of central hub for a lot of Dark Souls discussion, they were only part of a larger machine. Japanese players, and players who obtained imported versions of the games ended up populating not just the forums, but other resources, such as the Dark Souls wiki3, with information. Although the validity of a lot of this information varied (I fondly remember one rumour that told of how to give a certain giant wolf boss a bone instead of having to kill him in order to become best friends with him that actually had quite a following for a long time), it kept the community always busy looking at, verifying, and waiting for new information.
By the time of the game's release, it was as if a certain flood gate had been released. Dark Souls didn't simply arrive to the community that had been waiting for it, it exploded upon it. From day one, it was a rush to find everything that could possibly be found within the game. Dark Souls' punishing difficulty and vast depths of hidden clues and information only served to spur the community to work to help and inform one another even more. Everyone was in it together, working towards a common goal of surviving through the game. For a game with no formal system for social communication, not even so much as a friend list, Dark Souls developed an incredibly strong sense of community through the simple fact that it forced people to work with one another, to help each other.
Even today, as much as this rush for information has slowed down as the community became more knowledgeable about the game, there is still movement. When the need for more information concerning the locations of items and maneuvering through the game's perilous levels dried up, members of the community began digging even deeper, looking for ways to optimize player characters for the most efficient builds possible, or to learn new techniques to dominate one another in the game's deep and challenging player-versus-player (PvP) combat. A standard was set for formal PvP combat, with rules that were generally accepted by the community, even if not enforced by any means within the game.
For many players, PvP is seen as the end-game for Dark Souls. While many players choose to invade the games of other players and hunt them down, many others prefer to have more organized duels. Because there is no formalized ruleset built into Dark Souls for any aspect of multi-player, let alone proper duels, these battles are fought using rules and customs established entirely by the community itself. Organized duels tend to take place in two locations within the game, Dark Anor Londo, and the Kiln of the First Flame, the final area of the game. In these locations, while players can invade and summon one another normally, the more common practice is for battles between players in these regions to be fought in a more organized, disciplined style. Although the customs followed by each player vary, there are ones that tend to permeate the majority of the dueling population within the game. Before the match begins, both players face each other and bow, to indicate that both players are ready to begin. Following that, the actual duel begins. For the most part, players will not use items to heal, and will not engage enemies within the level. These measures are taken to ensure that the duel is not influenced by tools that are not available to both players, that the duel itself isn't reduced to a match of who farmed the most healing items.
Of course, with no formal system of organizing duels, it's not uncommon to run into groups of players who group up specifically to harass people looking for legitimate duels (see clip: Poor sportsmanship and gangbanging), or players who don't subscribe to any set of rules. Match-ups like this tend to be frustrating, but tend to be rare in comparison to the actual amount of players who engage in more disciplined duels.
Duels in Dark Souls are just as engaging as the game's single-player content, with the added factor of the unpredictability of fighting a real human opponent. A single missed strike can lead to being punished with a crippling back stab or chain of attacks that can easily end a match in seconds. Much of the time in a duel can be spent sizing up an opponent and baiting them to make a wrong move, and can end in just a few seconds once that move is made (see clips: Dark Anor Londo PvP 1 and 2, Kiln PvP 1 and 2).
It didn't take very long for advanced techniques to be developed to take advantage of the Dark Souls' mechanics, and a metagame to develop around it. Prominent players like EWGF4 would end up sharing this information with the community at large, allowing the PvP element of Dark Souls to mature into a truly engaging experience with great depth. Additionally, with a wide variety of weapon types to choose from, there are a wealth of play styles that can be encouraged.
Dark Souls' mechanical elements also affected the expansion of its PvP community. In order to develop the strongest possible characters at the optimal PvP level (between 120 and 125), much experimentation was done with the game's stat building elements. To assist with character building and picking the right equipment, information was not only cataloged on the Dark Souls Wiki and other resources, but players within the community went so far as to even develop calculators for various features within the game5. Tools like these are a testament to the depth and intricacy of Dark Souls combat mechanics, and this depth is what keeps the game entertaining months after its initial release.
Furthermore, outside of the game itself, a series of memes have developed about Dark Souls6. It could be argued that because of the way the game's community developed around it, being so strongly linked together, coming together to also celebrate some of the more memetic aspects of the game would only be natural. A large amount of videos online document the trials of new players' frustrations in the opening sections of the game, while others showcase montages of PvP fights. Other imagery and videos poke fun at some aspects of the game, including the personalities of some NPCs, or the difficulty and cutthroat nature of the game. This evolution is important because in addition to existing as a way to share information about the game, the community of Dark Souls also exists as a way to celebrate the game, the experiences shared within it, and the “society” of sorts that the game and its community have established.
Dark Souls is a very ambitious title. Rather than achieving success by attempting to appeal to the largest market possible, as is common with most games released in this era, From Software chose not to compromise any of the values that comprise Dark Souls, instead developing the most challenging and deep game that they possibly could. It was a challenging proposition, as From Software ran the risk of alienating their potential audience through shear frustration. But through developing a darkly atmospheric adventure that encourages and challenges the player, it manages to immerse the them in its world. And through utilizing this immersion to stimulate the development of a dedicated community to support the game and interact with one another, Dark Souls takes full advantage of the challenges it faces the player with.
TL;DR: Dark Souls' difficulty is entirely reasonable, and the game is not made any worse for using guides, if anything, only better for enhancing the feeling of communal achievement.
Also, from your post, it sounds like you just kept trying the same failing strategies over and over again. I'd argue that the game actually does a pretty good job of following the rules in that episode of Sequilitis.
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