Another Dark Souls Success Story

This isn’t the first retrospective of Dark Souls with a personally inspiring angle and it certainly won’t be the last, but it’s hard to think of a more gratifying and satisfying experience in my time with the medium of gaming than that of the one I had with Dark Souls. A three year journey that required me to overcome my personal limitations with the mechanical grind the game asks of you to become competent with, as well as the vulnerable and hesitant time of my life I found myself in and in a lot of ways still am.

The works in the medium that I have connected with most trade in narrative in the foreground with gameplay not necessarily being in the back, but slightly less demanding of an aspect. Contrast that with Dark Souls, a game so mechanically tight and punishing, expecting the best of players to master it’s trepidatious exploration and it’s brutally challenging combat, while having only a light narrative delivered as subtly and daintily as imaginable, flavor text accompanied with items, in loading screens, and environmental storytelling, being your main source of context for the events occurring in the undead world of Lordran. The cold, hostile, and at best indifferent NPCs offering you only the clammiest of guidances, uncaring of your presence in this marathon of macabre. You are just another being in this mostly empty void of existence. Leaving a trail of progress in your wake as you can look back on the places you’ve been suffering through to get there. Weary, but weathered. Your souls (the currency and experience points system of the game) intact from being wiped clean by an untimely death, only one chance to receive them again before they are gone for good.

In more ways than we’d like to admit, it mimics that of the outside world we’ve become accustomed to. Even more so in recent times. Head down, focused on themselves and their own personal plights, the precious few we do have in our corner can only assist as far as they know themselves and their own journey. And within the game world it is through messages you are able to leave for other players and vice versa, to aid them through difficult enemy encounters, identify traps and so on, that you able to feel the presence of those who want you to succeed and in turn, you want to help succeed yourself. A selfless cycle as it were.

It was through my own arduous and labored odyssey, learning the ins and outs of combat, proper item usage, and land traversal that I started to gain more intrinsic experience within the function of Dark Souls. Each punishingly devastating death brought with it a stern reminder of the learning curve, each success showing me how far of come, intrinsically through my own ability and extrinsically through it’s beautifully and masterfully interconnected game world. Being able to look back and tangibly see the areas in which I struggled through to get where I am. It was a mirror I was looking through, not only in my own life, but a glimpse into what my future might look like.

I’ve been out of the work force for longer than I’d like to admit, due to a myriad of physical and mental health problems. The fear and uncertainty of what my future looked like was only something I could think about for so long before I was shut down by the reminder of what I was unable to accomplish. And the lack of ability to actively practice any sort of craft that would be required of me as I dreamed of contributing to society, came with it a taunt. “I can’t do anything.” Is what I would tell myself. And it wasn’t until I finished Dark Souls that I was able to realize through a simulation, I had just done what I thought I never could, improve, grow, and that ultimately is what my goals have always been, as opposed to something concrete. Now as I begin the application process and trying to emotionally steel myself for my integration back into society, I remember how much I struggled at the beginning of my time with Dark Souls, I remind myself to lean on my loved ones when necessary. Trust in my girlfriend’s guidance and remember that it won’t always be this scary. That eventually, just like this type of game

I think ultimately what Dark Souls is trying to say through its breadcrumb trail narrative strands and its gameplay is that, we as human beings often get fixated on a destination. A logical end goal that fulfills everything we’ve been working and toiling on for so much of our lives. When in actuality it is that very grind and the minutia of honing one’s personal craft that is the ultimate value. The very proof that you can break through the doubts and existentialism to become the reason you’ve been searching for.

What Hidetaka Miyazaki and the team at From Software have done is not only create a work that is the single most influential of the millennium in the medium of gaming, showing it’s influences in numerous other games released in the last 10-plus years. It has even ballooned into an entire genre of “soulslike” games, all completely against the odds, but through it’s steep barrier of entry created a work that through it’s dire repetition is able to instill a sense of hope and possibility in each and every player that is able to crack it’s code. There is, and will never be anything quite like it. And as time goes by, my reverence and appreciation for this series, From Software, and the man behind it all, Hidetaka Miyazaki, will continue to grow as I continue to grow into the capable person I’ve always wanted to be.