A Decade Later: Dark Souls Series Retrospective
Incipience, Smoldering, Decay
Just over ten years ago, Dark Souls 3 was released worldwide, bringing one of the most prominent and influential RPG series in recent memory to a close. If someone had told 13-year-old me in 2011 that Dark Souls and its yet-to-arrive sequels would not only spawn an entire subgenre of action RPGs, but that it would become one of my favorite games and most beloved series of all time, I’d have called them crazy. One of my closest friends, who was a Demon’s Souls fanatic, urged me to buy the game just a few months after release. Having just acquired a PS3 and looking to expand my horizons, I obliged. The adventure didn’t last long. I got to the Taurus Demon and quickly found myself hard-walled. I didn’t know it then, but I wasn’t quite ready… yet.
After that initial experience, I didn’t understand the hype. Worse yet, I was put off and even scared. The “git gud” attitude of certain segments of the community and the general buzz around the game’s difficulty only amplified my hesitancy to jump back in. Some years later, when I got to college, and I had grown a lot as a gamer, that same friend urged me to give it another shot and helped me through Dark Souls . I struggled… a lot. But I started to notice that this didn’t seem as bad or insurmountable as people made it out to be. I loved a lot of the lore elements, and there were some insane thrills along the way. So, I started Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin , entirely of my own accord and totally fresh. Then, everything changed.
[caption id="attachment_189326" align="aligncenter" width="614"] Teenage me was terrorized by the thought of this boss for years.[/caption]
Dark Souls II is often seen as the black sheep of the trilogy by some fans, but it holds a very special place in my heart as the game that finally made everything really click for me. Much has been made about the numerosity of its bosses and how some of them are underwhelming, but I found the lack of grandiosity and their numerosity to be encouraging, as it felt like a wider test of a player’s full array of skills than the first game. But more importantly, I felt like Dark Souls II did something truly special: it was different, and noticeably so. With the rabid cult following Dark Souls had gathered, it would have been very easy to spit out another game with the exact same themes, setting, and call it a day.
FromSoftware did not oblige, and Dark Souls II is unlike its predecessor in appreciable and important ways, both thematically and artistically. Dark Souls III follows this in its own equally interesting ways, offering a distinct visual style, themes, and a discrete metacommentary on the series. A decade after Dark Souls III put the series to an epic and valiant end, I wanted to look back at how Dark Souls succeeded at becoming the closest thing there is to a perfect trilogy.
Dark Souls: Triumph of Fire
More than its successors, it’s easy to recognize Dark Souls as one of the most historically important and influential games of the last twenty years. It came out at a time when difficulty in video games seemed to be falling by the wayside. More obvious tutorials and player guidance, seen by some as “handholding,” were becoming increasingly common, but Dark Souls stood out as a last bastion of old-school game design that even its sequels don’t quite emulate. It tells the player very little about its world, offers the briefest tutorial, and is very tight-lipped in nearly every regard, from the plot to the intricacies of gameplay. If Dark Souls could be summed up in one word, it would be uncompromising.
Much has been praised and discussed about Lordran and its world’s seamlessness, interconnected pathways, and abundance of shortcuts. At every twist, turn, crevice, or path, there are countless cruelly placed enemies that will push stamina to the limit, test positioning, and force players to analyze and remember their patterns. Clearing these hurdles, players find their way back around to previously-trodden ground, and there’s a truly brilliant and organic sense of gratification and discovery. It’s only about halfway through the game – after surmounting some of the game’s roughest challenges – that Dark Souls decides to reward players with the convenience of fast travel, an aspect its sequels noticeably do not maintain. There’s a staunch air of oppression and fear that hasn’t quite been recaptured in the same way since.
[caption id="attachment_189327" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The brilliant aura and gleam of the sunset cast across Anor Londo's ramparts and spires.[/caption]
Despite all three games offering highly oblique storytelling, with much of the lore and worldbuilding coming through environmental storytelling or item descriptions, Dark Souls is the least layered and most comparatively straightforward of the three – at least on the surface. For much of the game, players are encouraged to link the flame, and on a casual first playthrough, it’s very easy to walk away after the credits roll, thinking a heroic deed has been accomplished. This is especially true if players don’t encounter Darkstalker Kaathe (most won’t!), the other side of the game’s light-dark dichotomy. The splendor of Anor Londo’s sunlit cityscape against the imposing castle is an unforgettable image that imparts the grandeur of light, of man, and of fire’s triumph and splendor.
Dark Souls II: Disintegrating Darkness
If Dark Souls represented light and its triumph, Dark Souls II takes a decidedly different approach, focusing more heavily on the folly of man. Darkness plays a more central role: psychologically, visually, and even incorporated into gameplay elements. In its incredibly surreal opening, the narrator states: “None will have meaning, and you won't even care. By then, you'll be something other than human. A thing that feeds on Souls. A Hollow."
In Dark Souls , players step into the shoes of a hollowing Undead, or one who has been branded by the Darksign, slowly losing their Humanity; in Dark Souls II , this theme is far more ubiquitous. Every time players die, there’s a palpable sense of degradation not just in their body, but in their health as well, with maximum HP decreasing by five percent per death until it reaches half. It imparts a sense of doom, despair, even madness, at the plight of becoming Hollow. It’s even more uncompromisingly difficult in some ways, despite Dark Souls II giving the player so many more build options and mechanics to play with. But it’s not just the player character who experiences the impact of darkness – it’s readily apparent in the world, as well, consuming every aspect of Drangleic, the once-proud, prosperous setting of Dark Souls II . Many areas are draped in shadow so heavily that it’s nearly impossible to see without a torch.
[caption id="attachment_189328" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The obsidian tower of Drangleic Castle looms large against the tenebruous, moonlit sky.[/caption]
Where Dark Souls II cements itself as a masterclass sequel is in being a firm, wholly different rebuke to its predecessor. As players travel through Drangleic, there’s a much higher sense of dilapidation and ruination present throughout the world. Parallels are drawn to locations in Dark Souls , but they’re never one-to-one. Players can’t even remember their own name, and nobody really remembers much of anything about the past at all – entire eras, histories, and kingdoms rose and fell, only to fade into dark obscurity. This makes players ask, especially those who previously adventured through Lordran, what the point of linking the flame even was. Scholar of the First Sin , the expanded rerelease of the game, goes even further, asking players in one of its endings to perhaps picture something beyond the reach of light and dark entirely.
Dark Souls III: Ashen Exhaustion
Dark Souls III is the most popular and best-selling of the three games, having been released in 2016 and concluding the series. At this point, Dark Souls centered fire and the triumph of man, whereas Dark Souls II raised an important counterpoint, fully conveying the terror of darkness but also the futility of linking the flame while asking important questions about this duality and cycle – so what could Dark Souls III bring to the table? Ash. Ruination. But more clearly: Dark Souls III is tired.
Many are fooled by Dark Souls III and its faster, Bloodborne -inspired gameplay or its retread of locations and themes from Dark Souls into thinking it’s a game rooted in fan service and mass appeal. That it’s meant to piggyback off Bloodborne ’s speed, or to placate certain subgroups of fans who felt burned by Dark Souls II ’s narrative and mechanical departures from the original. But this takeaway can only really be gleaned from the most cursory glance at its world, and, in fact, its artistic direction and visual style convey something wholly different from Dark Souls ’ gross incandescence or Dark Souls II ’s gloomy shadows. Dark Souls III is a big, gray pile of ash.
[caption id="attachment_189330" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The hollowed-out shell of Anor Londo rests atop Irithyll of the Boreal Valley, an icy burgh.[/caption]
In Dark Souls III ’s setting, Lothric, the Age of Dark is on its way once again, and the local ruler, Prince Lothric, has given up on his duty to link the flame, which flickers fainter and fainter each time it’s relinked. This underscores the game’s core theme: the emptiness and waste of perpetual cycles. Everything as far as the eye can see is caked in gray ash, and the revisit to Anor Londo or any number of other previous locations isn’t an exercise in fan service; it’s an exercise in fan disservice. The layers of countless kingdoms lay atop one another; ruins covered in snowy, lifeless, ashen waste. Anor Londo is distinctly frozen over, devoid of life, and plastered atop another location. There’s no triumph or ceremony at all; it feels… hollow. In fact, the most beloved memories and details within the castle are actively conveyed with clear disrespect and abandon, and the grounds have been wholly desecrated. It’s a way of saying to players, “Want more Dark Souls ? Want Anor Londo again? Really? Okay, here, then have it.”
The beauty of Dark Souls III is perhaps best encapsulated in its final DLC, The Ringed City , which takes players to the far, far chronological reaches of the Souls universe: in fact, to the very end of time itself, after who knows how many cycles. Traversing down a cylindrical ashen vortex, players descend down the caked, stacked, ashen rings of countless ruined civilizations, all spiraling down to a pit of ashen oblivion. The mishmashed architecture of churches lay scattered in a mound of decay, with hopes, dreams, and entire generations haphazardly lost to the cruel repetition of the same cycle, doomed to repeat forever. Here, the final boss of the series brings everything to a most fitting close: it’s epic, but it’s also hollow. Everything is gray. There is no flame, no darkness. Spent ash can’t burn. It’s nothing. Hollow. And it was perfect.
[caption id="attachment_189331" align="aligncenter" width="640"] It all comes tumbling down, tumbling down...[/caption]
Snuffing Out the Guttering Ember
Dark Souls, as a series, has been so instrumental, not just to my personal growth as a gamer and for sparking my love of action RPGs, but to the whole RPG landscape. So many games chase the atmosphere, allure, world design, and gameplay rush of Dark Souls , with countless Soulslikes looking to deliver uncompromisingly difficult thrills, that detached and environmental storytelling, or the stark sense of fear in a heavily oppressive world. To catch that first spark that started all the way back in 2011 and birthed an entire subgenre.
But what makes Dark Souls so special as a series? It’s just how different its games are, even as part of a cohesive trilogy. It explored every aspect of its thematic considerations in three remarkably distinct and interesting ways. With Dark Souls III ’s success, it would have been very easy to turn Souls into a longstanding, flagship series. But FromSoftware was smart enough to recognize the series’ thematic cyclicality and realize when it needed to end, and the spark of Souls was rightfully and timely extinguished to make way for another path.
The post A Decade Later: Dark Souls Series Retrospective appeared first on RPGamer .
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