Much Ado About Nothing - Why Dark Souls is Easy

Dark Souls pt. 4

progress

1. a movement toward a goal or to a further or higher stage
2. advancement in general

What I’m about to tell you flies in the face of everything you have heard (and, indeed, everything I have told you thus far) about Dark Souls.

Are you sitting down?

(Whisper it.) The game isn’t actually that difficult.

.....

Stopped spinning yet?  Good, because no matter how much you protest, how indignant you are, it is true – you’ve just got to adjust the way you think about things. 

The trick here is what do we mean by “difficulty”?  What makes a game “difficult”?  Well, in gaming, “difficult” is often shorthand for dying a lot.  It can mean going over the same bit of the game again and again or having trouble getting past a certain point.  It can mean a lack of progress, or being unable to finish the game.  All of these apply to Dark Souls except, crucially, the last one. 

You WILL die a lot in Dark Souls.  There is no getting away from that.  In another game this would mean that you are not progressing, that you are stuck.  This is not the case here.  In Dark Souls dying is all part of the process, and this is down to the function dying performs within the game.  Normally, when you die in a game, you are returned to the last save, or checkpoint or whatever and your progress since that last checkpoint is reset.  In Dark Souls you are returned to the last checkpoint but, crucially, all your progress is not reset.  You still have any items that you may have picked up.  The traps that you triggered remain triggered and won’t get you again.  Any bosses or sub bosses you killed remain dead.  Most importantly, the knowledge you gained of where enemies are and what lies ahead is still there, in your brain.  The only things you have lost are the actual physical headway that you made into an area, and any souls or humanity that you may have earned (and you can get all of those back.)  Souls are readily available.  Enemies are constantly respawning, their souls are infinite.  All it takes is time and, well I’m not even going to say effort because it’s so enjoyable, to get more.  Losing souls is a smokescreen to make you feel that you have lost something by dying.  You haven’t, it’s just an illusion.  Dying doesn’t matter, that’s the truth!  It’s difficult to accept, because it goes against everything that you have learned over years of playing video games, but there it is.  Death is meaningless, it’s irrelevant.  Embrace this fact!  Set yourself free!

                                                                      Progress!

Similarly, you will also often find yourself going over the same areas again and again, or having trouble beating certain bosses.  This can make you feel that the game is “difficult”,  but the important thing is that you are constantly improving both yourself and your on-screen character.  Let’s take the bosses as an example.  The first few times you encounter a boss it is likely that the encounter will last less than 30 seconds, and end with you smeared all over the environment.  However, the next time you fight them you might last a little longer (but still die.)  A couple more times and you’ll notice the little signs that tell you which attack is coming up and, eventually, you’ll work out the best way of beating them.  Once you’ve played the game for a bit start again and go back and fight Asylum Demon.  You will be astonished at how easy he is.  Your character is the same starting character you fought him with the first time but you, yourself, have changed.  You know what you’re doing now.  You know what he’s going to do.  How on earth did he ever beat you?  And this is the same right across the game.  Something that took you 20 hours to achieve the first time round can now be done in 5.  Nothing about the character on screen is more powerful, but you are.  You’re trained, you know exactly what’s coming, where you need to go.  You, yourself, your actual physical, real self has progressed.

One of the game’s greatest strengths is that you aren’t told where to go or what to do.  You get some vague pointers from people but nothing that makes much sense.  There certainly aren’t any flashing green arrows above people’s heads, no signs on a map - in fact there isn’t even a sodding map.  You are left to work out where to go and what to do and it can feel overwhelming.  But, once again, you are constantly learning, constantly progressing.  You can’t avoid it.  It’s inevitable.  This isn’t “difficulty”, this is exploring!  This is fun, isn’t it?  Try one direction.  If it doesn’t work out then try another.  Nothing bad is going to happen.  You’ll die if you pick the wrong one but the game will stick you back where you started and we’ve already worked out that death is meaningless, haven’t we?  You’ve still progressed, you know not to go that way again.

If you think of everything in terms of progress then suddenly the game becomes easy.  Anything can be progress, and this is as true of you as it is of your on-screen character.  If Death itself, the great leveller, can be progress then what can't?  Learning the way an enemy attacks is progress.  Triggering a trap is progress.  Fighting, and being killed by, a boss is progress.  Improving a weapon is progress.  Getting a new shield is progress.  Going the wrong way is progress.  You just need to learn how to value every little thing that you learn.  You are always steadily advancing towards your goal of finishing the game.

So there you go.  Stop thinking in normal video game terms.  The greatest achievement of Dark Souls is that it subverts the standard conventions.  Death is a slight inconvenience, not the end.  There’s no “game over”.   If you keep plugging away then you will find the way forward, and all along, in the background, there is progress.

Prepare To Die - Why Dark Souls is Difficult

Dark Souls pt. 1

Dark Souls is famed for its difficulty.  If you went out onto the street and asked people what they know about Dark Souls then you would probably get a blank look and a quickening of the stride.  However, if you then went back indoors and asked some people on the internet who play games you would get one resounding answer "oh yeah, that's that difficult game."

Difficulty is central to Dark Souls but not, as some claim, because the developers are sadistic lunatics who want to make a game which is as difficult as possible.  The difficulty level of Dark Souls is there for a reason.  In fact it’s there for many reasons.

This is not something that the developers shy away from.  In fact, they love it.  They know their target audience.  This is a game that is presented to you as being difficult.  The box says "Prepare to Die!!!", the trailers say "Prepare to Die!!!"... everything says "Prepare to Die!!!"  You are told, repeatedly, that it is going to be a challenge.  This is deliberate.  They want you to be scared.

That feeling of trepidation as you're playing the game is one of its greatest strengths, and the marketing is designed to instil this before you've even put the disc in your console.  The whole game is based around you being scared.  Watch people playing it.  Their shield is up at all times, they stick their head through a doorway and instantly jump back.  Danger is everywhere, and that is a wonderful thing.  How many games can you say have really scared you?  Resident Evil 2 springs to mind, but even that was just cheap “jump” scares – anybody can do that. Dark Souls made me nervous.  Genuinely, and for long periods.

This is a good thing.  You are experiencing emotion as you play the game.  That is Good (see, I even gave it a capital letter.)  It makes you concentrate on what you are doing, it makes you pay attention to what is going on.  It also has another effect...

The feeling when you achieve something is amazing.  Just as there is no down without an up, no yin without a yang, so you need to spend 99% of your time scared and nervous to fully appreciate the moment when you teach that huge, slobbering demon who exactly is the Daddy round here.  There is nothing like it in gaming, there has been nothing like it in gaming for years.  When I beat Ornstein and Smough for the first time I was physically shaking.  It is a wonderful feeling, and you get it because you deserve it.  You did it! (To coin a phrase.)  The game didn’t do it.  The game didn’t hold your hand and tell you what to do.  The game doesn’t give a flying one.  You did it.  You.  Little old you.

Because modern games are dull, aren’t they?  Come on.  Be honest with yourself.  Look down, deep into your gaming heart and admit it.  Yeah, it’s great being a cyborg, or Batman , or the Dragonborn but isn't it all just a little bit tedious?  The chances are that the reason you don’t finish a game these days isn’t because you’re stuck but because you’re bored.  Follow the arrow, there’s some baddies, beat them up, maybe pick a bit of dialogue and get your reward.  Repeat, repeat, repeat.  Booooorrrriiinnnggg.  They’re not games any more, they’re gratification engines.  There are no ups, no downs, just a constant level of “quite nice”.

This game doesn’t do that.  Here there are proper highs and proper lows.  There are moments when you cannot see how you are possibly going to progress.  When you first encounter some of the bosses they kill you in one hit, they smear you all over the nicely rendered stonework in an instant.  This happens to people and they cry “it’s so difficult” but they don’t realise that this is the whole point.  For there to be achievement, there needs to be something to overcome.

Next: You're not alone.