Published in · 4 min read · 5 days ago
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Despite being a markedly simpler game than all From Software’s following titles, the original Dark Souls release is perhaps the most complicated of the bunch for me to talk about. It’s a self-imposed struggle born from a complex mixture of pressures to vocalize both exactly what this game means to me and to say something truly new. I’ve come to realize doing so is impossible, but that won’t stop me from at least trying.
Dark Souls is one of my favorite games of all time. While often considered archaic, too slow or primitive by fans of From’s more modern output like Elden Ring, Dark Souls truly feels like more than the sum of its parts. It’s in it’s age and earnest attempt to try something new that Dark Souls offers something it’s successors simply don’t for me. Whereas From Software’s following titles aimed to innovate on the foundations established within Dark Souls, I can’t help but feel that their quest to refine the formula and trim the fat invariably led them to lose some of that magic in each subsequent attempt. For example, Dark Souls III, while boasting undeniably smoother combat, jettisons any tangible sense of threat in much of its environments and enemy placements that leaves the lands of Lothric in Dark Souls III feeling like an afterthought rather then the focus of the game. Comparatively, traversal of Lordran in the first game feels so much more interesting since this thought and attention to the construction of its’ world makes its’ secrets feel more discovered and less stumbled upon as they do at the end of the trilogy. Dark Souls, more than any game in both it’s franchise and the rest of the ‘soulsborne’ banner, feels like a work of digital archaeology, with the importance of the player’s role as someone left to sift through a creation myth almost outweighing their character’s role as the next prospective Lord of whichever age you choose to define.
The fact that every successive Soulsborne project has failed to quite capture what it is about Dark Souls that made it such a special experience for me was something that used to make me feel quite upset. Don’t get me wrong, I wholeheartedly love the majority of From Software’s soulsborne games, but Dark Souls has something about it that keeps me coming back.
“There’s never going to be another game like this”, I would lament to myself while feeling salty over seeing that most discussions about these games would only glaze over this one and go on to complaining about Dark Souls II’s enemy placements or say Dark Souls III has the best boss fights in all of gaming or something equally as hyperbolic. The fact that Dark Souls may stand so much higher than the rest of it’s kin was something that used to make me quite annoyed, both with From Software for continuing to take their games in what I see as a much less compelling direction and their fans for begging for more and more of this flavor that I don’t much care for.
I don’t really feel that same way now.
I don’t think I want another game like Dark Souls anymore. Any attempt from anyone to try and recapture the essence of this game would undoubtedly try to ‘fix’ something about it. I don’t want any of it to change, even some of the more grating moments like the infamous Bed of Chaos. This is already the best version of Dark Souls that we could ever get.
I can’t say anything new about Dark Souls because everything has already been said: It’s a staggeringly detailed world, it’s a game that won’t wait for you to ‘get it’, it’s a little cheap, it’s a masterpiece, it’s a proper mess. The era of Dark Souls has faded, and rather than fear the dark, I have learned to embrace it. The cycle will continue.
I’ve come to learn that my experience with Dark Souls, while uniquely mine, is just another spirit in another world.
I am amidst strange beings, in a strange land. There’s no telling how much longer your world and mine will remain in contact. But through writing, we can cross the gaps between worlds.
