While you no longer have to imagine your surroundings, figuring out how everything works through careful observation and experimentation is still the name of the game. It’s the same stuff, Dark Souls just takes advantage of the video game format and removes the obfuscating layers of statistics and dice. The same actions in a tabletop RPG, or a video game aping that form of simulation, would have the player rolling spot, search and stealth checks and remembering to tell the GM that they were moving defensively. However, you’re still playing the game, you’re still learning and honing skills. None of that, with the exception of holding down the block button, requires any real mechanical input beyond, well, walking. You have to adapt, move slower, remember to look up, keep your shield raised as you carefully edge round a blind corner.
There are hidden traps and lurking enemies, many of which will quite happily kill you in one shot. Much of Dark Souls’ oft-touted difficulty is really just being expected to take your time navigating the environment and paying attention to your surroundings. It’s the same poor understanding that leads to derisive sneering about “walking simulators”, but Dark Souls demonstrates why something as simple as walking is such a big part of a game. Most of it is invisible, because so much of the culture around games, both video and otherwise, only recognises the bits with dice rolling, button pushing or mouse clicking as the real game. The real magic is in carefully navigating an unknown world where danger lurks around every corner, anything is possible and no one, not a solitary soul, cares if you live or die. Here’s the thing: replicating that old school RPG feel isn’t just about clattering polyhedrals and +1 to save vs funge. It’s an action game, right? Sitting in that nebulous action-adventure genre, which is olde timey games journo speak for “doesn’t fit into any of our other categories.” For some, it’s the kind of truth pill that’s hard to swallow, and I’m not just talking about grognards who refuse to call anything that isn’t turn based with visible dice rolls an RPG. It’s fun, mostly, but it’s not why I’m picking Dark Souls over, say, Devil May Cry.ĭark Souls is, according to the objectively correct folks at this very webbed site, one of the best RPGs on the PC. Lots of big spectacle and learning attack patterns until you can avoid the dangerous bits long enough to do sufficient poking to the soft bits. Absolutely hateful rubbish, that.) It’s just that, by and large, the experience isn’t all that different to any other action game. (Except for the Capra Demon and his bloody dogs. There’s nothing wrong with the bosses in Dark Souls, they’re some of the best in the business. From speaking to friends and random strangers I accost in kebab shops at 2am, I’m not alone in this either.
Okay, okay, I’m being hyperbolic in a cheap effort to drag you into reading the rest of the article, but if you’re reading this, it obviously worked! Hilarious comedic exaggeration aside, the bosses in Dark Souls (which I’m going to focus on for clarity, though everything applies to the rest of the genre too) are often talked about as the high points of the game, but that’s absolutely counter to my experience.
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