In case you’re not aware, the Dark Souls trilogy is a series of games made by FromSoftware, and directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki. Demon’s Souls was the predecessor to the trilogy, and many of the same elements were carried over from it. There was also a spiritual successor in the form of Bloodborne; fans of these games (myself included) often refer to these games altogether as the “SoulsBorne” series.
You may have heard the term “souls-like” in reference to other games, or heard someone call a game the “Dark Souls” of the genre –
this is because the games are… hard. Really hard.
Everything about the game is made to challenge the player, but not in the way you might expect; the player knows how to play, and by exploring each new area they enter they’ll eventually find the location of the boss (the big-bad-guy blocking the way to the next area).
The challenge that the SoulsBorne series presents is one of endurance.
To understand what kind of endurance, let me paint a picture of what the game is like:
You make a character, and pick your class; each class starts with different equipment – one class might have a sword and shield, another might have a magic staff, or a heavy ax, or even start with little more than a club and a piece of cloth to cover one’s… bits. And in all of the Soulsborne games, you are some form of Undead – cursed, never granted a true death and afterlife.
You start the game, and walk through the first area – a ruined castle, a graveyard, or maybe a cavern. An enemy approaches! You try to fight it off, but it lands a few hits – and does more damage than you thought. Your health bar (depending on your chosen class) is small compared to the amount of damage dished out by enemies.
Maybe you defeat that one. And the next, and the one after that. But eventually, you’ll die at the hands of an enemy…
and then you appear right back where you started, with every enemy you encountered right back where they were before.
Each game deals with death in its own way – you might lose some of your health bar each time you die, or just lose a portion of it the first time, or simply miss out on bonus health. Either way, each death makes it easier for enemies to kill you again.
The challenge of endurance presented in SoulsBorne is that of emotional endurance. A recurring theme throughout the games is that of cycles of life, how they repeat, and how the player is tasked with continuing them.
Characters in the series often remark on how there is little hope in the player’s success, or that continuing the cycle is fruitless in the long run – that the world is ruined and bad and cannot be fixed.
Sound familiar yet? Climate change, disease, whatever it is, the message that the world is messed up is no doubt what the younger generation is getting. And depending on who you ask, there’s not really a way to fix it and make things go back to “the way they were” – the damage is permanent, and might even end up in life being impossible on Earth for the generations after them.
What makes the Dark Souls series relevant, then, is its underlying message to players: keep going. Keep striving, moving forward, trusting in Humanity.
We can see this in a select few of the characters the player meets; my favorite of these is Seigward of Catarina, a surprisingly jolly knight who shows courage and determination in everything he does.
You encounter him in different places in Dark Souls III, but my favorite scene is in which you find him sitting alone by a fire, in an abandoned kitchen in a snow-covered city called Irithyll. When you talk to him, he says this (among other things) :
“Won’t you join me for dinner?
I make a fine estus soup. I’ve got some stewing right now.
Even we Undead deserve a little normalcy, from time to time.“
That line, “Even we Undead deserve a little normalcy, from time to time,” always sticks with me. Despite everything, despite the prospect of the end of the world, or of the challenging enemies and bosses that wait the player – Siegward believes that he and the player still deserve at least a semblance of normalcy. That perhaps life does not have to be terrible and soul-crushing all the time.
(For the record, the “estus soup” he speaks of is a real interactable item in the room; in a pot there is soup that the player may drink, and it restores their health).
This series of games is more relevant today than ever because of its underlying message to the player: yes, the world is ruined and messed up and not what it used to be, and yes trying to fix it will feel like running through the same level over and over, and yes there will be some who insist that there is no way to fix it, or that to fix it now is just delaying the inevitable –
but you must keep going. You will arrive at the end eventually – and in the meantime, it won’t hurt to have a bit of normalcy from time to time.
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