Writing About Dark Souls is the Dark Souls of Writing About Dark Souls

Unkindled Takes On Dark Souls III

It’s 2010, and I’m playing Demon’ Souls. I leave the character as the default, because why would I bother changing it? I delve deep into the game, looking up guides and reading posts on forums. I want to keep everything in mind, make my weapons just the right types and put all my points in just the right places. False King Allant is the coolest fight in the world to me at this point. A new game, Dark Souls, is coming out soon that is a spiritual successor to Demon’s Souls. It seems like fun, so I preorder it. I go to a midnight release at Gamestop, where three other people are present. It’s a popular game, moreso than Demon’s Souls. The wikis are already drafted, full of secrets discovered by people importing the Japanese version. Community springs up easily.

In the decade since, the Souls series has risen to even greater popularity. It’s inspired other games to adopt and adapt its component pieces. Hundreds of people have drafted thousands of hours of video essays about Dark Souls. Its lore, its history, its narrative, its difficulty, its mechanics, its design. Every angle of Dark Souls has been discussed, categorized, and enshrined as a deck of shibboleths. There are no subjects related to Dark Souls left unanswered, only trouble spots where consensus is impossible and conversations exist in frozen eternities.

And so, writing about Dark Souls is a lot like playing Dark Souls. I have nothing new to offer to the great cycle; I have no radical perspective that will break through the inescapable paradigm that is Dark Souls discourse. Like the chosen undead, or an unkindled, I have only myself. And that’s really why you’re here, isn’t it? When you read criticism, you want to experience the critic’s voice.

I’ll be honest: none of what I’m here to say is new. None of what I’m here to say is revolutionary. There is no usurpation of discourse, because we will always return to the same talking points, forever. But at least I’m going to bring a little character to it. Since the flow of time and space is convoluted, I’m not going to bother connecting these points together. I’m just going to give them to you.

Take Me To Church

One thing I really admire about Dark Souls III in particular among its fellow titles is its use of religious iconography to create strange and unearthly scenes. But the truth is, they’re all too earthly; while a church can be a site of comfort or community, it’s also true that a church can be a scar; a reminder of violence and control. I know what it is to walk into a church and be unwelcome. I know what it is to see others partaking in traditions you are silently excluded from and forging connections you can’t understand.

The churches and cathedrals of Dark Souls III are forboding not just because they’re decrepit and largely abandoned, but because you can see people, or things that once were, enthralled in this divine rapture that you can’t experience. It calls to mind all sorts of questions about its veracity; are they in the right? Am I what is broken here? Or are they misguided, being led astray by those with power? The answer, in Dark Souls, is much more clear cut. It’s much easier to navigate this kind of space with a halberd than with a pronoun pin.

We Are But Ash

It’s 2020, and I’m playing Dark Souls III. I’m playing alongside a few friends; one playing III with me, another working her way through Dark Souls II. I’m using polearms this time, and I have for the first time in my life created a truly aspirational body in a video game. Usually I only make myself, or otherwise create a character who is hot. But this time I stumbled into a character design that is honestly making me have gender feelings for the first time in years.

I would love nothing more than to be a skinny teal-haired knight with a cool halberd. Even more than that, I would love to have a body that works, that does what I want it to when I want it to. This is not confined to Dark Souls III; all video game characters I can think of grant you this kind of agency over your (virtual) body. But I can’t say it isn’t more noticeable when you’re rolling around in armor with a halberd. I don’t know if I could even swing a halberd.

Yuria of Londor tells you that Hollows are the idealized form of humanity, and seeking to become the Lord of Hollows means changing your body to fit that image. Our characters are never given an opportunity for internality, so going just off the choices they (we) make, it prompts me to wonder. Would someone with a body I see as ideal already take steps to change it for their own ideals? Of course they would. Our ideal selves are only ours.

In the end, you could steal the fire for yourself. You can kill the firekeeper and damn the world to kindle yourself. I wonder what that existence is, what that form is. I wonder if Vyn could be so content to dash everything against the rocks for a shot at becoming more than she is now. At my lowest times, I know I might.

Usurpation of Fire

It doesn’t actually matter whether usurping the fire breaks the cycle of Ages of Fire and Dark. It doesn’t matter if there really is an escape from the world. What matters is trying to change it, trying to make something better, even if you don’t know the endgame.

There is no radical ending for Dark Souls III. There is no unraveling the cosmic structures that twist the rise and fall of kingdoms, of worlds. Some day, there will probably be a Dark Souls IV, because we have our own cycles in real life. No Fire or Dark, just capitalism grinding along and recycling itself to stave off change. We can’t change that with the options the world gives us.

But we can break something. We can do something new, something drastic. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. Maybe life is suffering. But we won’t know until we try, and I’m ready to start trying.