Dark Souls is about a bald red bearded man named Dave surviving a dangerous world with scraps that randomly drops from the ghouls and rats that have usurped a once peaceful universe. A notoriously unforgiving game, Dark Souls doesn’t punish with an inherently crushing difficulty; instead, the game challenges Dave to master the rhythmic dance of combat with precise and strategically surgical enemy encounters.
So in a way, Dark Souls is simply an exploratory training exercise where progression is paced by the player’s skill and understanding. The reputation for its unforgiving difficulty is simply the result of this uncompromising system of mastery.
But Dark Souls is about Dave. The game opens with a monologue that introduces a mythological epic. And as with all mythologies, the description is apparent in its artificial efforts—that flawed human insistence on explaining everything to make sense of it all. There are dragons and dark knights and undead creatures inhabiting great castles, and Man needs to know why.
So of course, the origin story must be that these creatures have come before Man. And in this origin time of chaos, there must’ve been a war between these evil forces. And in this conflict, Man must’ve been forged from the elements. Then the war must’ve brought peace. And in this peace, Man has achieved all that is present. But as inherently chaotic forces must follow, entropy is the natural epilogue to order. And so here is Dave, trapped in the dungeons. Armed with a key, Dave must venture back into the world to witness the result of all this mythology.
Then as a linear narrative without a story, Dark Souls encloses the plot on the lonely survivor. Scattered around the world, Man has given up, taking in the sights or sitting in a back alley, waiting for nothing. The Non-Playable Characters are satisfied with this mythology. They understand the world. It made sense.
But to Dave, locked in oblivion, none of it made any sense. The world is new. And Dark Souls explores the curiosity of Man. We want to go forward despite knowing that death lurks behind every corner and on top of every tower. And we run towards the fire-breathing monster because the reward is an understanding. The reward is in knowing the mythology and in knowing that Dave is the unstoppable knight who single handedly took down a dragon.
Recommended: Yes