Remodelling Dark Souls
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Because I'm brave (read: brave on the internet, sometimes), I realised that an article solely cursing Dark Souls for a lack of a developed narrative when I've yet to see that entire narrative would feel somewhat false. And slightly cruel, as this is a retrospective, and they're so often filled with nostalgia and toothy grins. So I decided to tag-team it with a topic I'm sure will have the game’s fans foaming at the mouth.
I'd like to tell you how I would fix Dark Souls.
No, seriously. I'm tired of trying to analyse it in a way that allows me to delve into it at a deep level when playing it feels like work — despite the promise of small tidbits of story and character development hidden behind kilometres of hostile entities and environments with little reward save bragging rights. This game is broken, not because it's low in quality, or because there's something mechanically wrong with it, but because it's not really quite sure what it is. So how would I go about finding it, you ask?
Well, it boils down two my two main issues — the cinematics and the soul system. Honestly, I’d remove them both. While this seems a little extreme and almost game-breaking (read: more brand-breaking, if anything) in the case of souls, there are sound reasons behind why doing so would make Dark Souls a better experience for someone who wants the subtle narrative elements and unsettling theme of isolation to step into the spotlight. First up, the story issue.
Strip out the cinematics.
No, really, strip them out completely. You can't promise people an experience based on a strong back-story and then dump them in a narrative wasteland, with nothing to guide them towards the next snippet of exposition save the odd reasonably-placed NPC. (Although I think "reasonably placed" is a little too complimentary given From Software’s sadistic approach to twisting or removing traditional gaming conveniences).
What I'm suggesting instead is keeping the small snippets — those rare allusions to a greater series of mechanisms operating out of sight of your noble warrior, slowly revealing themselves as time goes on. Dark Souls thrives on mystery, and people celebrate this aspect of it without considering the impact that total narrative isolation would have. In fact, I wouldn't even give you a character customisation screen — I'd fire you screaming into the Undead Asylum and watch you figure it out while all sorts of violent creatures rained potential death upon you.
The reason for this no-holds-barred, minimalist version I have in my head is that Dark Souls is a game that I want to read into on a far deeper level. Take the currency of souls, for example. This isn't the first time souls have been used as a collectible item, but I've yet to see a character in a game, controllable or otherwise, ponder whose soul it is they're picking up. You go through thousands (if not millions) of them in Dark Souls, and despite the exposition awarded to knights, monsters and kings, there's never any mention of the millions that have died prior to your arrival.
Ditch the souls, and replace them with experience bars.
No, come on — put the pitchfork down and hear me out, for a minute. You're collecting souls — why? Because their experience assists your skill increases? Because they're currency? Why are you fighting to get them back again after you die? It makes no sense. Your player character knows the land, knows the enemies — one of them's just run him through with an eight-foot spear. In a world where narrative is so subtle, the world so well-crafted, it seems almost nonsensical to keep a spendable high-score.
I mean, who were they? Why, in a world where ghosts are a viable concept, do they not interact with you? It's an odd contradiction, and one that leads me to believe that fantasy-genre foes such as the malevolent spirits you're likely to encounter during your travels are thrown in simply to be ghosts. What defines them? Are they souls that have rebelled against the system, refusing to be collected and, as a result, are hostile towards you, the collector-in-chief?
The NPCs From Software have designed for both this game and its predecessor Demon's Souls are no different in their mysterious identities. You're never quite sure whom to trust, but let me tell you this: If it were me, I'd not be throwing my lot in with a bloke who sold me a mace for the souls of a thousand dead. So who do you see as the hero, in this piece? The NPCs who trade items for souls, or you, the one who consumes them like marshmallows at a bonfire in order to bolster your own abilities?
Dark Souls is bleak, man. There's no real victory, save the occasional, fleeting mechanical dodge-block-smite that you pull off with enough practice. What I'm suggesting is a little idea, but one I think would fundamentally change the way you read the game, if you're a narrative-obsessed pedant with a desire to choke every ounce of meaning out of the most barren of built worlds [In which case you’re certainly not alone around here. – Ed.].
I have no issues with the concept of souls as a resource, but in a world where you are one individual struggling against the sheer might of the many evil forces arrayed against you, why are they not coming to your aid? Who are you, exactly, that you simply reap the spirits of the dead in order to fuel your engine of violence and death as you drive it slowly towards those ultimately responsible for desecrating this vast land?
Within the genre itself, and the mechanics of the game, the souls system works, but to frame Dark Souls with an intriguing narrative and then devolve your saving of the world into a collect-'em-up does a great disservice to the potential of a tale worth telling. I'm just not entirely sure From Software realised how effective their game world could command exposition and motivation when they penned a melodramatic fantasy explosion to kick it off with.
I suppose this is the crux of my problem with Dark Souls: It doesn't really seem to know what game it is. Is it an elite arcade hack-and-slash RPG, or one of the most brilliantly crafted and subtly delivered tales in gaming history? I've no idea, but then again, I'm also busy preparing myself for the onslaught of angry denial. Are you as confused as I am?
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"It doesn't really seem to know what game it is"
Maybe the existence of this write-up proves that it is exactly what it means to be : )
That was smart, sir. You win. I'll get my coat.
I see your point, and agree with you on the points about the storytelling. I also agree that there is some cognitive dissonance on the whole "souls" issue.
But I disagree that souls should be placed with experience bars. Many modern RPG's (or games with RPG elements) allow the player to grind up to a level where they can totally disregard the hazards the game throws at them.
e.g. In Skyrim I eventually build to a point where even the giants no longer pose a credible threat.
Having the souls system ensures that there is always a level of risk the player must deal with. A permanent unchanging experience bar would permit players to simply brute force many of the challenges in Dark Souls.
I noticed on my second character that I was completing challenges a much lower level's than my first play. I was better at the game and my skill level was making up for my character's lack in experience. This is where I believe Dark Souls really shines. Skill can be just as, or more, important than your character's level.
Thank you for the interesting article.
I actually think the change from souls would have the opposite effect. The first time I killed an enemy in Demon's Souls I received a certain number of souls from that enemy. Why? Because that's how many of this ruined world's former inhabitants this monster has murdered! The terrible demons of this world have not only killed the inhabitants, but stolen their immortal souls to gain in power. When I search a hidden corner and find the 'Soul of a Hero', that's not just one big soul - that's another crusader, like me, who strove to free the souls of mankind from the demons. To me, the conceit of souls is the BEST narrative invention of either game.
DS does what standard RPGs can only dream of: it takes experiential growth and improvement away from "the character" and puts them into YOU, the player! My 'character' is not learning much of anything. He doesn't learn the enemy placements or attack patterns, he doesn't learn where to jump. He learns to cast a fireball, sure, but that's it. HE isn't the one improving through experience. *I* am. This is the central draw of these games for most people, I think, is learning them and improving as a player.
This is where the Soul conceit comes in so handy as a shorthand for character improvement. The stronger the enemy, the more people it has killed, therefore the more souls it has and the stronger it grows. The same is true for your character. Collect more souls and you become stronger. Die and those souls are taken from you. Unlike normal RPGs where the weak conceit of generic 'experience' is taken as an excuse to give you a sense of progression, in DS there is a clear and intelligible goal - save the souls of mankind from these monsters, and in turn their strength is lent to you.
The very best part is how this lets your character play God - are you saving these souls? Redeeming them through righteous and valiant victory over evil? Or do you amass them greedily, striving only to become the most powerful demon of all?
As far as I'm concerned, this is the only 'tale' either game has been able to tell at all. I love them both to bits, but the stories are total nonsense. Only, nonsense told in the perhaps most stylish and beautiful manner I've seen this generation.
Seconding the call on "sense of risk". Without the souls mechanic, there is little at stake in a game that has save checkpoints (unconventional in function as they may be), respawns enemies in the same locations every time, and provides the player with infinite lives.
Dark Souls handles leveling *well* - you have pre-reqs for certain actions and must work within the limitations of your stats, but grinding offers limited and diminishing returns. You get much further through upgrading weapons/armor, making choice purchases in the way of consumables, and so on.
As for calling them souls? It's a bit vague, but in my mind, it's pretty good when you consider that you're playing as an undead character in a universe where souls have some value but are ultimately inferior to the forces of fire, sorcery, and sheer physical force. In the face of fire -a force *key* to the world's history!-
Interesting and well put!
I like the idea of turning boss souls into weapons. I've started leveling up weapons just so I can kill each boss with the weapon that will eventually hold their soul. This has proven to be a dangerous and ill-conceived bit of vanity.
XboxLive: Clemenstation
Wraith: I'm not suggesting we ditch the risk factor, just the souls as items. The risk factor is an extremely important part of both games, and while it's frustrating, it makes you think very carefully before you act.
notomtolose: I 100% agree, having souls come from that enemy is a big signifier that they're a reaper, of sorts, and the more souls they contain, the more they must have consumed, so it's a great way of "scaling evil", as it were.
However, my issue is this: ghosts. There are ghosts in Dark Souls, and there are also souls in Dark Souls. This doesn't work for a very simple reason - you can't have both, and if you do, you need exposition to explain why these two concepts can co-exist. Even a little bit of realism (one soul per ghost killed) would help. I just thin the inclusion of spirit mobs in a game where spirits are seen as currency is a plot hole if it lacks the necessary explanation.
ianunderhill: Totally - the bleak aspect of the undead simply wanting souls to become more powerful is great, but as I said to notomtolose, the identity of a soul clashes with the identity of mobs in the game that are basically souls themselves. If they've managed to rebel against the system, are they embracing evil? Would they not back off if they saw you as an innocent human? Why can you reap other souls, but not even strike the ghost mobs until you're equipped with magical weaponry?
My issue is that Dark Souls offers you a grand tale, and then dumps you in the same black hole of exposition the first game did, minus the focus of the Nexus for NPC interaction and storytelling. Now, while I enjoy that black hole and think it's one of the most bold and creative approaches to storytelling in modern games, it's also turned into a disappointment for those who see the opening cutscene and don't understand why that strong narrative basis isn't followed through on.
In Demon's Souls, the game opens with a cutscene depicting combat, and the ally mechanic. That's it. There's no storyline, no nothing - everything reveals itself slowly and painfully, and that reflection of how difficult information can be to gain about your surroundings in real life (minus the internet) is pretty great. Dark Souls momentarily leapfrogs it and throws souls and spirits into the mix in a way that makes me feel that fantasy mob clichés were more important than thinking through aspects of the narrative that would negatively affect people who enjoy reading games as much as they do playing them.
Wait, does the souls "problem" essentially just boil down to wanting them to be renamed? Because if renaming them as "life essence" would solve this issue I'm going to go ahead and assume this is a non-issue. And given that in western european mythology only a rare few people go on to become ghosts, there doesn't really seem to be an issue that souls can go on to have varied different fates.
Also within the mechanics of the game souls are presented as singular objects that you can consume (A Soul of a Proud Knight, The Soul of the moonlight butterfly and so on), it isn't presented as though the sparkly objects are literally 800 souls. It seems to me that the numerical values are a reflection of how important/powerful that soul was. Sure, there is a bit of a game-y disjoin in converting these objects to a numerical value but what you lose in narrative disjointedness you gain in the system being both expedient and understandable.
Personally, I have no problem with the 3 minutes of exposition at the start of a 70 hour game. Now that I'm actually thinking about it I suppose I kind of like the way the grand narrative is immediately counterpointed by what is a very singular, lonely, individualistic tale. The game is literally full of the grand and monumental being held in contrast against the diminutive (typically the player).
Gaming hipster : I remember games from before you were born.
Rule 34 or it didn't happen.
DanB: Basically, yes. I'd rename them and just go with experience, although to be fair, that is somewhat immersion-breaking as the souls are part of the world. Perhaps something worth thinking about in more detail in terms of what to replace them with.
RE: the large souls, it's a good point - they are supposed to reflect more power, but I read them as the souls collected by the individual who drops the item, i.e. bosses drop more because they're capable of racking up more kills and harvesting more souls than say, an undead stumbling about by itself.
I like the way you view the exposition at the start, but I do think it can throw players, especially considering how the previous game started with none and built it up slowly, whereas this one promises you the world and then delivers none of it. Sure, it adds to the bleak nature of the game, but for those not going into the game with any prior knowledge (I knew the game and its predecessor, so that's not me), I think it might be somewhat confusing, or even misleading.
I came in to the game with no prior experience of Demon's Souls and little knowledge of the game beyond "it's hard!" and it seemed to fit for me.
That said, I have a slightly irrational love of Cate Blanchett's opening narrative at the start of the first of Peter Jackson's LotR films. The opening narration in Dark Souls is so reminiscent of that I think I would find it hard not to like it
Gaming hipster : I remember games from before you were born.
Rule 34 or it didn't happen.
DanB: That's fair enough - personally, having seen the way Demon's Souls did it, this felt a little off, but I really do like your mindset on the opening cinematic and then nothing. Totally turns it around, for me. Maybe worth keeping in mind if I delve in again.
I too have come into the game relatively fresh. I played a very small amount of Demons' Souls before I gave up. I can see you point about the lack of story, and how calling them "souls" can disjoint the system from the narrative of the game.
I like the point ianunderhill made about souls becoming the dominant currency of the land. In fact you can even find gold coins in the game that thus far I have found no use for. They simply are there to remind the player that this world has seriously fallen apart.
The mobs holding souls ascribes them a sense of morality since when?
They have souls on them which they lose upon death, same as the PC, so those are souls they haven't consumed - they're holding. If you have any complaint, it should probably be focused on rampant overloading of the word "hollow". In the sense most relevant to the matter at hand, we can look at an NPC who stops being communicative and goes hollow - they become hostile to the PC because hollowing completely (which you, being branded with the Dark Sign, can't) involves a loss of sanity. Who's to say this is specifically hostile to you, particularly when you have other PC ghosts running around who belong to varying covenants (or none at all)?
Also, I'd imagine that the (enemy) ghosts that can pass through walls and defy gravity without perceivable physical exertion would require something special to take damage. They interact with the material world differently, end of story.