Demon’s Souls is utter terror followed by exaltation. Describing how the game feels, how well wrought space wraps around every interaction, is impossible. There are pieces of stories strung together through imagination everywhere, and an uncomfortable sensation throughout the entire presentation, a greater question of the individual’s purpose in a game. Demon’s Souls is a clarion call to the death of the power fantasy and is itself a power fantasy. Such impossible juxtapositions are everywhere within the world of Demon’s Souls and yet such hypocrisy is a defining message.
Demon’s Souls is not a story unto itself, it is a story within the stories you will soon have of it. Many are likely to fail, falling to the difficulty of their inability to reconcile that games should be fun. Demon’s Souls is often not fun. But this reflects weakness. Demon’s Souls reflects a part of ourselves, a dark part which touches upon the irreconcilable. Many will not understand Demon’s Souls because Demon’s Souls is as much a game as it is a test. The individual with resolve shall pass, but many shall fail. Those failures will then become stories. Because Demon’s Souls is not so much a story as it is a reflection of what a story requires.
Without challenge, there is no story, and thus the performative aspect of any story must contain a challenge. Telling a story requires an acknowledgement of the story’s worth by those outside the storyteller, and thus for a story to be of such capacity, there must be something that is not easy about the story. There must be a discomfort, something which is unresolved, and that unresolved question can only be answered through the telling of the story. Demon’s Souls reflects what is uneasy, our longing for power and control, only to find that without discipline and skill, such desires cannot be met.
At the same time, there is a still larger question about the difficulty of what power means. The ability to fulfill one’s desires is rarely met with an easy choice, and in Demon’s Souls, there are few easy choices. Demon’s Souls is a challenge to the traditional videogame story, because here there is not so much a story that is being told, as much as stories are being made. Even those who have failed have a story relating to the game, and that could not describe better what Demon’s Souls is about. Not about what stories are within, but what stories we will ourselves have as the fog is lifted.
Demon’s Souls is the new standard for the role-playing genre. Some will love it, others will hate it, but its importance cannot be denied. What needs to be learned from the game is that stories are not what the designer wants to tell, but what the player will naturally create. As games continue to become like movies, they deny their ability to give players stories to tell. Demon’s Souls lets players have stories worth telling.
Recommended: Yes