2021 was the year of Dark Souls.
I finished Bloodborne at the beginning of December 2020. I craved more of that type of game and you can bet I went searching – the Surge, Nioh, and Code Vein to name three examples. Whatever I tried, none could scratch that itch that Bloodborne had burrowed into me. I had been waiting to get a PS5 so I could play the Demons Souls remake, and then the Dark Souls trilogy in order so as not to miss any QOL changes.
Scalpers were putting paid to that plan, though, so I had no choice but to suck it up.
At the very end of the year I tried a bit of Dark Souls Remastered.
It was fine.
Going from Bloodborne to DS1 was a little rough. I am sad to say I was not quite as enamoured as I had been. Going from a speedy, zippy, quickstep laden hunter into a slow and cumbersome cardinal roller was tough.
I only managed to play a few sessions before the Christmas break.
I had fun, but I did not have Bloodborne level fun.
A couple of important tasks came up and caused me to stop playing. These needed to be completed before I could devote my attention to gaming so I took a short break.
That break was the wisest thing I could have done. It gave me just enough time to forget the feel of Bloodborne. That downtime instead kindled such a desire to return to Lordran, that I made it a priority.
Streaming Bloodborne had been wildly successful at making me focus and apply myself. So I set myself a schedule for streaming the game to completion.
(This has now become my secret weapon in getting myself to finish games).
I would play Dark Souls every Tuesday evening, Friday evening and Sunday afternoon.
And so I did.
A few week passed and I beat it. I immediately started Dark Souls 2. Then a few more weeks and I beat that.
Then I immediately started Dark Souls 3. Even more weeks and I beat that, successfully finishing the tale.
I am a little empty for not having any more Dark Souls to conquer but am overstuffed with discovering the truth that eluded me: That the Dark Souls trilogy is a master class in not only how to make a game, but how to not coast on successive sequels, create an engaging spanning storyline and test a player consistently with each encounter until a final boss makes you prove your mettle.
I want to get deep into what I love about each one of these games and why it has meant so much despite playing so many years after initial release.
The months taken have been a whirlwind of frustration and joy and contemplation and confusion. As far as I can recall, only the souls series has ever had this kind of effect on me.
People use the term soulslike to describe games but as a descriptor I think it misses what the actual core of a ‘soulslike’ is and it has a very simple answer.
A game made by FromSoftware.
That is all it is.
The Dark Souls trilogy is a collection of soulslikes in that all three are Dark Souls games. However, all three are very noticeably different to each other. They share similar ideas and similar systems sure, but really the biggest consistency across all three is that FromSoftware made these games.
This is also why games made by other companies try to emulate but fall short. It is the studio itself that imbibes them with the ‘Soulslike’ feeling. This is shown even more drastically when you factor Demons Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring into the mix. There is a base feeling in all of these games despite them being different to each other.
That core comes straight out of the FromSoftware studio.
So I more often than not use a different term: Fromlike.
Fromlikes have a feel that is easily imitated but rarely captured.
Their influence and experience permeates throughout the games they make and it is an indelible quality that strives people to copy it.
As of right now I played the Fromlikes in this order:
Bloodborne, Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, Dark Souls III, Sekiro, Demons Souls, Elden Ring and Armoured Core VI.
I have seen a distinct evolution of the kind of game they wish to make throughout my Fromlike journey. Watching a studio grow their concepts and refine themselves is a marvel.
It is certainly one that mirrored my own foray!
At the end of the day, this is the story of how a simple game player found a hidden power within and beat the whole of the Dark Souls Trilogy in 120 hours.
Part 1: Dark Souls (or I should probably heal)
Playtime: 27 hours
As I mentioned earlier, I moved from Bloodborne straight to DS1. (I nearly jumped straight to DS3 or Sekiro but thank goodness I did not – more on that later). I originally held it against the game. The movement set of Bloodborne is specifically tailored towards a certain kind of style that does not exist in Dark Souls. As such, I had a very real struggle to get used to it – one nearly as great as getting on with Bloodborne.
A big example is the unique rally mechanic. In Bloodborne I would make glaring mistakes, open myself up to attacks and regain health by being aggressive.
I was absolutely the same level of aggressive in Dark Souls, but I was punished the whole way through. I constantly forgot to heal or look at my health gauge due to being conditioned that my attacking would return it all.
It became a running joke throughout the trilogy that I had to be told to heal because I brought my successful playset into a world where the benefits of it did not exist.
I did not use shields in any of the Dark Souls aside from wearing the crest shield on my back to give me a stamina boost.
Instead I preferred to dodge and run around and get hits in.
Blocking? No thanks!!
Eventually I got used to the big changes. Dodging in only cardinal directions, slower movement and more variety to levels and equipment. I felt a tad overwhelmed at the choice to Bloodborne’s rather sparse setup but I played more and more and Bloodborne fell away from memory. Dark Souls began to consume my thoughts and the game started speaking to me more and more.
Eventually, after 27 hours I finished all of Dark Souls 1 and its DLC. It had been a ride and one I was eager to remain on.
Dark Souls 1 was the beginning of a slice of gaming magic that will endure long into the future. We will look back at it the same way we look back at Mario and Pacman and it is very easy to see why.
The game on the surface is a third person action rpg but to distil it down to this is to do what it actually does a disservice. Dark Souls 1 and the two sequels are reimagining of an approach to gaming that was lost for a while.
There has been lots said about the way Games hold hands nowadays; with pointers at the top of the screen and mini-maps, and direct statements from npcs telling you were to go and what to do.
Dark Souls eschewed this in a year where some of the biggest games were all about that (Uncharted 3, Skyrim, Rage, LA Noire, and Assassin’s Creed Revelations to mention a few).
Dark Souls being a game where you are plonked into a world and left to decipher it on your own was so reminiscent of games from the earlier generations, that for a lot of people it was quite alien. Coupled with how tough it was to face even regular enemies if you were not focused, you could see how it would put off a ton of gamers and attract only a small set of others.
Not everyone enjoys a slog through a kind of game you had not really been playing since the late 80s – early 90s. Approaching this needs you to think more in the Ghouls and Goblins route.
Myself attempting this series 10 years later and all in a row gave me a rather unique experience compared to those who faced the Souls trilogy. Each hour spent in each game trained me and prepared me for the battles to come in each hour afterward.
This is true of every game but the Dark Souls methodology feels like a bigger accomplishment simply because of the lack of hand holding. It is a tight balance walk the line between obtuse and enigmatic and it is far easier to hide mechanics and story than to trust that the player will learn and discover them for themselves.
The game walks it with confidence.
It hides a complex narrative within an interconnected world that is exactly as engaging as you want it to be. You get given a lot of freedom to make the path through the world and be the character you feel like being without any detriment to the story.
To pull off this kind of storytelling, where the character decides how to approach these things, is always a feat and FromSoftware have demonstrated time and again just how adept they are. All three Souls games are open to any player picking up any weapon and set of armour and making their way of their own choices through the crafted worlds.
Dark Souls has probably the most tight of the three worlds and the DLC fits into the game more a little more seamlessly than the others (with the exception of the ringed city from DS3). Adding chunks of game after the fact often feels like a suddenly visible point on the game map that you go off and visit.
Oolacile, as a version of the past that has a tangible effect on the story that you may not even realise thanks to the exploratory nature of the narrative and npcs you can talk to, is completely optional and contains more for people who want more but fits firmly into the world as part of the multitude of magical things you will run across.
That it contains one of the two best bosses in the game is icing.
Dark Souls giving you viewpoints where you can look across the world and see where you need to go and reach it and look back up, like the undead parish and berg, is what goes such a long way to enhancing the ‘realism’ of the game world. Things like that have a subtle effect on your mind. Knowing that downstairs is a real downstairs and not just low poly textures as a background fleshes out how your mind recalls your journey and gives you the knowledge to run around the world without that pesky mini-map.
There were a LOT of great bosses in this game and my three standouts were Artorias, Gwynn and the Bed of Chaos:
Artorias was tough and besting him felt extremely satisfying. I would say he was one of the toughest in the game and that made the solo victory against him in only eight tries one of the sweetest.
Bed of Chaos might be a controversial pick, but is one of my favourites due to the fact that I had been getting the hang of jumping in the game before this point. Having to run around and miss the sudden chasms with some funny jumping was refreshing and different and was a great change from a one on one battle. It did help that Lost Izalith and the demon ruins are my favourite areas in the game from a visual standpoint.
I did not use quite a few mechanics in the game, but it turned out I did not need to. My trusty axe, lightning great sword and great club were all fantastic weapons that helped me get through the whole game.
I like summoning friends and this is an aspect of the game that is a really wonderful idea. Other games should copy this because letting another player drop into your world to help you goes a huge way to fostering friendships and a game community. Likewise the trade-off being that you can be ‘invaded’ by users intent on causing harm feels like a good way to prevent the game from being a steamroll. This whole idea is better executed in later souls but works well here.
I am still sad I accidentally ate the Firelink Shrine maiden’s soul for my estus flask by mistake. I beat Lautrec to avenge her but my incompetence still stings. Maybe on another play through I will put right this wrong of the past.
Estus healing is a great mechanic. Having a limited health regen system that is replenished on death, is how I originally thought Bloodborne did its healing. Turns out if you die to Father Gascoigne 75 times but keep all those blood vials collected along the way stored in the bank, you will never run out and it will look like the Dark Souls method of healing.
The messaging system is a big plus. I always laughed when they would trick me with statements of illusory wall and I would often read aloud what they said before my brain would catch up with the words But and Hole used together so much.
Well played Soulsians, well played.
One of the central themes that runs through the trilogy is that of loneliness. There are npcs that you can talk to for sure, but the amount of them are sparse and the world you run around is large and quite empty.
You are at the end of a civilisation. Even the sound design ratchets up this feeling of isolation.
I always noticed how little music there was in the main game. In the places where you are guaranteed to hear some it is always for a specific purpose. Outside of those locations, it is just you and the ambience of a dead world.
The calm but saddened tones of Firelink Shrine let you know this is a safe haven, but a safe haven in a world that is close to death.
Whereas the boss battles generally have bombastic, frenetic and thunderous orchestral sounds to keep you anxiously on your toes as you know you are about to make irreversible changes to the world.
The one track that combines the two deftly is Gwynn’s theme and the best track in the whole game.
Gwynn is the final boss and when you finally meet you are expecting a thunderous and loud roar to go alongside the battle. Instead you face this King, this titanic warrior who controlled the first flame and destroyed the dragons, only to be me with a gentle tune played only on the white notes of the piano.
It is haunting and stark. It upends everything you believed about your quarry and underscores the poignance of your quest.
Gwynn’s defeat was a very special moment for me, because besting him meant I had beaten a 100% souls game.
He tested me well. His arena being these loose piles of pale ash with twinkling piano tunes culminated the very atmosphere that the game had been hammering into you.
Everything lead to this point in time, where you become the next king and make the choice only a hollow can.
I will not quickly forget the outcome.
Dark Souls, from beginning to end, was a game that seemed to subvert the preconceived notions of what games were at the time and it succeeded tremendously.
Part 2: Dark Souls II (or Clubbed to Death by Rob D.)
Playtime: 57 hours.
Near the end of the first Dark Souls I had switched my weapon over to a great club. I found it at the bottom of blight town and once I started levelling my stats into it, I discovered the joy of pummelling things right into the ground. It was a powerful and slow weapon and fit my souls playstyle. I had slowed myself down dramatically from Bloodborne. Being able to judge distances and do a huge whack helped me rejig my muscle memory.
So I created my character, named Ruckus, and went out into the world of Drangleic in search of a great club.
From the very start of my Fromlike journey there were people who said to skip DS2 or that DS2 was terrible or made by a B team or not really a Dark Souls game and many other things. I admit when I started I genuinely was unsure what to expect. You hear all this gushing about the first and then all that is turned upon its head for the second. You feel a little worried approaching it.
After finishing Dark Souls it is obvious that any follow up to a game like that would be under severe scrutiny. The years between releases would have hyped fans to extreme levels. Three years is a long while for people to conjure what their perfect sequel might entail in their minds.
I did not have any idea what to expect. I went straight from DS1 to DS2 without a single clue in the world. I think my sheer obliviousness was a super power.
I like Dark Souls II much more than Dark Souls and throughout the 57 hours it took I had so many more highs that I was even uncertain if Dark Souls III could compare to it.
Dark Souls II could easily have been a cash grab kind of sequel. They struck gold with Dark Souls and releasing the same game with a different map would have been the easiest thing to do in the world. Dark Souls II said ‘Nah. I am going to do my own thing.’ and for that reason alone I respect it.
The reason I love it is due to the things it did instead. It caused me to fall head over heels again for Fromlikes, just as I did when playing Bloodborne.
Dark Souls II feels like it is approximately 3 degrees off from Dark Souls.
Some of the same mechanics are here: Bonfires, estus flasks, levelling up of the self and equipment but they are ever so slightly different.
Bonfires are plentiful and right from the bat you can use them to travel to any other bonfire you have found. There is also a helpful menu showing you the number of bonfires in any given area by making them misty, but also showing you the ones where your soul level means you are more likely to get invaded. The warping between bonfires mechanic was in Dark Souls but only to specific bonfires. This makes sense as the world of Drangleic is considerably larger than the world of Lordran.
To make up for this, the change to levelling a character and an estus flask means having to return to Majula, this game’s Firelink Shrine, and talk to the Emerald Herald (who I accidentally kept referring to Esmerelda). She will take your souls and level you up, much like the doll did in Bloodborne.
Estus flasks only being upgraded when finding an item in the world, as opposed to using humanity to kindle bonfires, is also a change I like. It being a reward for exploring the game world is never something I would shy away from. If a game world is good then I like diving fully into it and finding things. In this regard, Dark Souls was a sprawling behemoth of a world with much to find and locate.
The world not being as sensible or interconnected as Lordran from Dark Souls is often used as a point against it, but for me the fact that it is this way fits with how I absorbed the story.
I said earlier that a pervading sense of loneliness and isolation filters throughout the trilogy but Dark Souls II brings an extra dimension to its fear: memory loss.
From the opening cinematic of a family melting away there is a palpable fear of forgetting the very being of what makes you, you. This is a fear shown by many of the npcs you talk to throughout the game. One of the most memorable is a fighter named Lucatiel.
Her questline requires you to meet and befriend her, then bring her to three boss fights as a summon and keep her alive in all of them (one being the Smelter demon, who she absolutely trounced with me). At the end of her questline you find her in an abandoned shack outside Aldia’s Keep. She is struggling to breathe and keep herself from going hollow. She almost begs you to remember her name because she is aware that she is close to the moments when she will no longer be able to, but if there is just one person out there who can say the name Lucatiel then in some way she still lives.
It is a heart-breaking moment. An npc begging to be remembered in a world that is surely crumbling is a beautiful bit of storytelling and make no mistake: Drangleic is crumbling.
The game is set thousands of years after the end of the first game, in a world when the first flame being kindled too much has led to where we are now. This idea that deliberately preventing the age of dark and prolonging the age of fire is a mistake made over and over is fully realised at the end of Dark Souls III but it properly takes root in the series here and the story is stronger for it.
The world is a mess and nowhere is it shown more than the lift from Earthen Peak. Earthen Peak has a windmill sat atop it, and within the windmill are poisonous floors leading up to a circular arena where you fight a boss called Mytha, the Baneful. Think a sort of Medusa kind of creature. Once slew, you go to a small room behind her and into an elevator which begins to rise. What is at the top of this elevator?
Well. While walking into a lava filled world with a castle so heavy it is sinking into said lava would not be hidden at the top of a windmill does not make sense at first glance, it does make perfect sense in the broken world of Drangleic.
So much of Dark Souls 2 is reminiscent of past adventures in Lordran but like I said earlier, off by a few degrees. It is as the world is trying to form from foggy memories but they are so well forgotten that the form ends up misshapen. Earthen Peak may have had a road that lead to the Iron Keep at one point, but it was not via an elevator and it does not matter. Drangleic needs to end is what matters. The first flame needs to be extinguished because letting it be rekindled over and over brings us to this. An elevator into a sky full of lava.
I love this story so very much. Battling half remembered bosses in oft familiar locales is realised in a way that does not feel like a reskin of the first game; it feels thematically relevant to the point it is trying to get across.
In terms of the gameplay, much about it is improved. Being able to roll in more than just the cardinal directions is sorely welcome and allowed for a little more movement than one, even if I discovered very late into the game that my adaptability had been a bit of a hindrance. (That is definitely a weird move that I do not get). Walking and running ‘feels’ heavier somehow despite being quicker.
This crosses over into combat. Greatly improved upon, dual wielding weapons work so much better and there is a wealth of moves for your character based on what you are carrying. You can also power stance your dual weapons to combine them into a series of extremely powerful combo moves. At one point I was powerstancing two great club and while the move was slow when it connected it absolutely connected.
Being able to equip four rings instead of just two was very welcome indeed and considering just how many items you could find in game made experimenting with your build midgame a very pleasant affair.
In terms of the actual story, I blitzed through the game with my club, every session giving me more fun than the last. There were a ton of bosses and unsurprisingly to me all the best ones were in the DLC. There is something about the way FromSoftware is able to focus on making superb DLC after the fact. Again the DLC was part of the world itself and you could find the keys to open the doors to the places you needed to go with exploration. It is very easy to beat the game having never found them, but you would miss out on some of the best environments and moments in a Souls game.
Walking along a giant metal link chain to a tower full of ash, or stepping into a blizzard on the outskirts of a walled off castle, or seeing an ancient pyramid like structure with the base surrounded by water are environments that rival every other place in the main game.
The DLC is also easily the point where the games’ difficulty ramps up – far more than the DLC for the first did. They know that if you are wanting more then you probably need a challenge. Fume Knight and Sinh are two of my most favourite bosses in the whole series but both required me to summon for them. I needed that extra bit of help.
Aava and Burnt Ivory Knight, however, I did not summon. I managed to beat them both solo and I have to say that the feeling of overcoming bosses in Dark Souls II garnered even stronger feelings within than Dark Souls.
Dark Souls II can be accused of going overboard with bosses as there are almost double the number if you factor in the DLCs but as someone who likes facing the unstoppable foe I do not count this as a negative. I believe the majority of Souls’ bosses are tests for the player to ensure they have been paying attention to things in the game and keeping you on your toes.
One of the best memories I have of Dark Souls II is beating the Dark Lurker. I struggle exceptionally at bosses where the numbers are skewed against you. One versus One fights are something I can handle. Two (and higher) versus Me is a weak point of mine and the Dark Lurker splitting itself in two midway through removing its health turned it into a boss where I struggled. Did I ever struggle! I had done a lot of the run up to the Dark Lurker but was conscious that every time I made an attempt I lost a human effigy, and I had already bought out the supply from every merchant around. This finite resource plied pressure on top of me because it required me to make my way through the gauntlet of blue coloured enemies to then get to the Dark Lurker. They became a bit of a White Whale (alongside another boss that was 5 versus Me) and due to both being optional I had sort of resigned myself to perhaps not facing them.
On the day I beat the game I made a conscious effort to face them both. I had spent an hour on Aava and was feeling buffed by my successes. The Dark Lurker run had a couple more fails and I only had 10 effigies left.
The health mechanic in Dark Souls II is one thing that does not fully work. The more you die, the more you lose a chunk of maximum health until it stops at around 50% of your health bar. You can see the missing chunk and using an effigy brings it back to full.
I ended up never removing a ring that prevented this from being a big deal but it requires you to give up a ring slot until you get so good that you never die.
That taunting missing chunk can have a negative psychological effect and I do not bemoan anyone who dislikes the way they changed health. I did die a lot and even with the ring equipped I would still need to use an effigy to bump it back up to full now and then. A finite resource I was using to fight a boss that I was very weak to.
Effigies are also burned in bonfires to prevent invasions.
One of the biggest changes occurs with PvP. In Dark Souls you had to have become human in order for other players to invade and attack you. In Dark Souls II they can do it whenever they feel like (providing they are around the same soul level.) unless you have used up one of your finite resources.
In my very last session I ended up being repeatedly invaded by another player named TheCoolSmelt. Firstly, I was amazed at the name. Secondly, he absolutely destroyed me. I am not good at PvP. I am unable to hit people no matter what weapons I use and am always resigned to the fact that if I get invaded then I will die at their hands. People are so much less predictable and being able to tell their move set is not something I could ever manage. This is fine and while I tried, TheCoolSmelt too me to task.
About ten minutes later I was invaded by TheCoolSmelt again, who this time was wearing a completely different setup and proceeded to demolish me. We laughed again at the return of Smelt and went on with our way. Then I was invaded again. At this point we on the stream thought perhaps he was focussing on me. He kept appearing, always dressed differently, and always up for a battle.
TheCoolSmelt, though, lived up to his name and was exceptionally cool at how he approached me. He would leave me items and teach me tricks, all before battling and vanquishing me. He gave me a shield to use when my great club broke in the middle of a battle and waited for me to equip it and then fight with only shields. (He won of course). He gave me the items needed to transform myself into other forms after chasing me as a big chunk of ice and we had an impromptu prop hunt battle around the castle in DLC3.
We imagined he might have been watching my stream and laughing at my ineptitude but truthfully TheCoolSmelt popping up all over my game for those seven hours was proof that FromSoftware’s approach to PvP in games can be magical.
I could not use effigies to stop TheCoolSmelt from invading, and not because I needed them to fight the Dark Lurker, but because this was a living and breathing version of the Shadow of Mordor nemesis system in action and I did not want it to stop.
My effigies had another purpose. I needed them for the rest of the game in case there was a boss tougher than The Dark Lurker but I also was feeling down about this one boss being such a stumbling block.
I was forming a negative feedback loop. Every death to the Dark Lurker was two losses; a chunk of health and the means of restoring it.
With ten effigies to go as well as the end of the game I decided that it would be a mistake to keep bashing my head against this boss. I gave myself two more tries, just in case, but had little hope.
The following video is the end of that first try:
Whenever I see this moment I remember exactly the elation I felt at crossing off that enemy. This enemy that had been plaguing me taken down in the luckiest and ballsiest of moves. A twin club smash.
It inspired me and in that one session I smashed every last boss left and finished the game. The defeat of the Dark Lurker spurned me forward and gave me confidence and truly this is at the heart of why when these games work they really do work. Overcoming adversity is an emotion we can all feel in many different arenas of life. The Dark Souls trilogy has perfected the art of handing you out these moments of confidence building while overcoming struggles.
Dark Souls II was where I started to understand the reason these games were SO beloved by SO many people.
All in all, Drangleic was more than a jumbled recollection to me. It was a place I briefly and happily called home.
I will always remember you Lucatiel.
Part 3: Dark Souls III (or Twin Sells Words)
Playtime: 37 hours.
As I said earlier, after finishing Bloodborne I craved more Bloodborne. This kind of reaction happens to many who finish that game. Something about the way it was made grabs you like an Amygdala itself and drives you to want the experience to last forever.
At the time someone mentioned Dark Souls 3 as being the closest to Bloodborne and I admit I was tempted to play the Souls Games in a wonky order just so I could have more BBesque adventuring.
Not doing that was one of the smartest gaming decisions I could have made.
Dark Souls III is, in my opinion, the best Dark Souls game and as a capstone to a trilogy so incredibly influential it sticks the landing it knew it would have to make better than if the floor was metal and its feet magnets.
Dark Souls III is the last FromSoftware game to have a specific kind of Souls DNA and is the second most recent game they released.
Sekiro does its completely own thing from this point on so you can look at Dark Souls III not just as a cap to the story started in Dark Souls but as a cap to the kinds of games FromSoftware had been making. If Sekiro is a sign of things to come then Elden Ring also has the potential to be something drastically different from what came before.
Dark Souls III is a blendered version of all previous Souls games and Bloodborne and comes out with a mixture of their strengths and weaknesses. You would think it would suffer from it, but that is the beauty of this studio. They get their products much more than the average studio and were able to pick apart the majority of the high points of the previous games and assemble a ‘best of’ that stands just as tall as those before it.
Dark Souls III is confident about the kind of Souls game it wants to be, wears it proudly and scoops you up to bring it with you to the end of everything. If I want to be grabbed by a game, I want it to have the audacity and pride that Dark Souls III has.
Of all three this is the game where the combat has never been more refined and more in tune with how I played Bloodborne. It would have been so easy to switch from Bloodborne to Dark Souls III and I would have barely given it a second thought.
The speed at which you are able to attack enemies and move around the most stunningly realised environments in a souls game is unmatched and the environments in this game have never looked better.
Working my way through the trilogy though gives me the ability to appreciate it far more and that is the ultimate reason why I think this game is the best. It is something it shares with Mass Effect 3. Both games are superb but only because they have the foundation laid by those before it. If I had jumped straight to Dark Souls III I would have missed a story that takes into account two full games and explores the themes of finality.
Loneliness, Memory Loss and Finality are spread around the three games, but each one concentrates on a specific one for its main theme.
The finality of Dark Souls III is draped across the opening areas tantalisingly and grows with every step you make to the final boss where the cyclical nature of the games takes its final form.
Nothing lasts forever.
Nothing is meant to last forever.
The player in all three games (when completed) has been the one to protract the age and with thousands of cycles and years passing it has caught up to the Soul of Cinder, a boss surrounded by a chaotical map where cities rest upon other cities. Alternate universes collapsing in on itself because the age of fire is extended over and over and over. Everything in this world must end because it cannot keep revolving around reigniting the flame that has weakened with every cycle. The overlap of worlds between all three games is shown upfront.
You can probably tell how proud and happy I was to discover Lucatiel’s armour description explain that this armour belonged to a hollow who implored a comrade remember her name. That her memory still lives on, even in this collapsing world, is a comfort to me.
However, the references to people and items from Dark Souls and Dark Souls II strewn about the world of Lothric is a not just fan service to those who liked them but there to expound upon the message that ‘This MUST Stop’.
I suspected this was the case in Dark Souls, I thought I may be able to do this in Dark Souls II and I made it happen in Dark Souls III.
Seeing the world as it had become, a kaleidoscope of broken realities leading to a final boss that was the amalgamation of every kind of player character you could be in phase one, thus kindler of the flame, and Gwynn, the first to prevent the end of fire, in phase two was truly inspired.
You are fighting against your worst nature and the originator of Dark Souls.
When I beat the boss I got the ending that was neither continue the age of flame, nor extinguish the first flame. My character absorbed the flame and brought about the Age of Hollows and thus ended the continuing cycle.
As an end to the series I dig this finality so much.
I did the DLC after the main story and as an epilogue, I could not be happier with the way it turned out. While the main game deals with finality, the DLC involves the idea of leaving behind creations to move on elsewhere. It can be seen as the desire for the team at FromSoftware to tell another story and the danger of, again, continuing the same thing over and over.
The painting piece that Gael holds outstretched in the Cathedral is the reality in which the Dark Souls universe resides and both Ariandel and the Ringed City deal with the obsession caused by clinging on to this worn out universe.
It is no mere coincidence that Dark Souls has the painted world of Ariamis and Dark Souls III has the painted world of Ariandel.
Both these words start with an unusual combination of letters. The word meaning a self-contained piece for one voice as part of a larger body of work reflects upon the truth to these two places. They are one and the same just at differing points in the collapsed upon itself universe.
These painted worlds are parts of the larger body of work despite being solo adventures to one side.
Ariamis and Ariandel are cold and inhospitable places but in Ariandel it matters more, for nothing can survive in such conditions and should not. Friede knows that you alone have the power to end the painted worlds, just like Crossbreed Priscilla before her and this is why you are told to go back. She is under the impression that Ariandel is safe as long as the painting scrap it is part of no longer contains you.
Gael’s quest to find more ‘paints’ to bring the picture back is the obsession that dooms him and allows him to ‘save’ FromSoftware.
Getting through the ringed city, ‘safe’ from the collapsing of the universe will bring you to Gwynn’s lost daughter who has been in a slumber and kept this broken universe together all this time. The player reaching her and touching the fractured reality she guards brings you to the final moment at the end of everything. In a wasteland where existence itself has reached its own finality you stand atop mountains of dust from the erosion of everything. Corrupted from a long and uncertain amount of time feasting on the hollow souls of those in the ringed city stands Gael, desperate for paint to recreate the painting at the very end of eternity.
This battle is for the future of FromSoftware.
Should Gael (a boss who straddles the line between Dark Souls and Bloodborne) win, then FromSoftware is ‘stuck’ making the same game over and over. In a way they are Gael, looking for those paints to make their pictures. They are unrecognisable from the Gael you met in the cathedral and he has become a large unstoppable tank with his chest ripped open. His insides are visible and you can see that his heart is no longer there. His heart is not in it anymore.
You must win this, not just for your sake but for FromSoftware’s sake.
You must overcome a challenge that stacks everything you have absorbed from the first game onwards to help them defeat their avatar.
Gael is an extremely tough fight and requires you to be on your toes for the whole time, (perhaps a little bit of foreshadowing about what Sekiro was to bring to the table). He was a boss that pushed me further than almost any other boss and then when he fell a cathartic release overcame me. This was to be the last proper challenge of the souls game. This was me letting go of the Souls trilogy.
Taking Gael’s dark soul to a lone painter back in Friede’s chapel and granting her the permission to paint a new reality in my name, freed FromSoftware from having to return to the Souls universe.
Letting go is something that many people struggle with. Think about the numerous pieces of media that have been spoiled by continuing through extra series or sequels. Or the whole idea of sunk cost fallacy where you have put a certain amount of time and money into a venture or relationship that you no longer feel anything for but would hate to have feel you wasted.
This is FromSoftware and essentially you the player letting go of the Souls Trilogy and becoming content that these three games will be it. From here on FromSoftware will do newer things because you helped them move past.
It is poignant and complete, and if I was ending a trilogy responsible for changing the face of gaming then I could only hope to create something this memorable.
And now here I sit at the end of it all.
These games are masterpieces and the praise they get is deserved.
I can take pride in being able to say I did it, I overcame these games. It has been a true journey and there have been so many moments where I thought perhaps I was simply unable to progress further and that the next ledge of progress was beyond my grasp.
Never giving in to those doubts and tackling every single challenge head on taught me that even if I had not had the confidence in myself at the time, From Software did.