Recently I finally got around to definitively completing Dark Souls 3, which means that I have successfully completed the entire franchise and now feel a void in my life knowing that the tale of the First Flame has come to an end. As part of my natural coping mechanisms, this means that I have to now go over my thoughts about the queries and questions that the game intentionally leave and delve into that final riddle which Dark Souls 3 leaves us with. (And who knows, it might be fun!) Of course, given the nature of such a discussion I must remind you all that this means mega spoilers will come out for the main story arc, so if you've any interest in the Dark Souls story then turn away. Unless you similarly have completed every bit of Dark Souls lore, in which case: Welcome friend, let's chat. (FYI, I'm still learning and theorising myself about chunks of Lore so bear in mind if I make a wrong supposition here or there.)
So the events of Dark Souls are preceded, and coloured by, the end of the Age of Ancients; an unformed world characterised by Great trees and Everlasting Dragons. After the Advent of Fire, creatures known as 'Hollows' were born unto the world and they sought out Souls near the light of the First Flame. With the power that these souls conveyed, these Hollows, now lords, fought and overthrew the Everlasting Dragons, thus ushering in The Age of Fire. What's important to note, is that of the four Lord souls which were taken, the furtive pygmy was the creature who came away with The Dark Soul. With this came the element of Dark into the world, which birthed nearly all forms of lesser creature, most notably among them being humans. That's right 'Dark Souls' essentially works as an off-hand to refer to humans, as we are merely Hollows imbued with that little bit of Darkness called 'Humanity'.
Now in the Age of Fire, those who claimed the Souls of Lords now assume their positions as Gods and invoke an age of prosperity for themselves. They now live in huge sprawling kingdoms with impractically tall ceilings and the like, seen to by droves of lesser beings who worship their ever move. It must have been quite the sight to see, but we'll never know as every single Dark Souls game takes place at the tail-end of the Age of Fire, wherein the First Flame which conferred all these brilliant powerful souls to the gods, thus fuelling our innovation, has begun to fade. Everything that happens in the Dark Souls series is coloured by this event, the First Flame flutters and the world begins to crumble and decay in it's wake. The leader of the Lord Souls stealers, Lord Gwyn, thus curses humanity with the Dark Sign, the curse of undeath. Under this new degree, those who die are reborn as undead, cursed to slowly lose themselves and their humanity by dying over and over again until they revert back to their base Hollow forms. The only way to prevent this, to die for seemingly good, is to seek out the First Flame and sacrifice themselves to it, thus kindling the flame. (At least that's my supposition for why Gwyn cursed humanity, it makes sense, no?)
But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. You see, Gwyn noticed the fading of the light a good time ago and he knew that he had to do something about it in order to preserve all he has built, to ensure his legacy. Thus Gwyn, who's soul had ballooned to perhaps the most brilliant in existence at that time, choose to sacrifice himself at the Kiln of the First Flame in an act that has come to be known as 'The Linking of the Fire'. He burns up his soul in order to feed the first flame and make it burn brightly once more, and if you put yourself in his shoes you can see why. Everything that was made in the world of Dark Souls was done with the power imbued by the First Flame, so it's fading doesn't just mean that magic will drift from the world or something arbitrary like that, instead everything will converge and disappear along with the light. No cities, nor castles nor any monument of old will stand. Be that as it may, Gwyn's sacrifice was still seen by some as 'The First Sin', because of the way he artificially prolonged the life of the flame instead of allowing nature to take it's course and the Age of Dark to come.
You following so far? Good, because finally we've come to beginnings of the first game and can start to talk about relevant events. Dark Souls 1 takes place as the flame is fading once again after Lord Gwyn's sacrifice. You assume the shoes of the Chosen Undead, who's tasked with gathering the brilliant souls of the Gods who fought alongside Lord Gywn and using them as tinder to reignite the fire once more. It is a harrowing journey, leading the player to explore the depths of each branch of fire, and resulting in a battle against the haggard, hollow body of Gwyn, who mindlessly guards the Kiln of the First Flame. At the end of the game the player is given a choice, either to light the Kiln (resulting in an explosion of fire as the cycle begins again) or walk away. (Thus allowing the flame to fade and becoming a Dark Lord.) Though in the end your choice is fruitless, because as Aldis, Scholar of the First Sin, explains in Dark Souls 2; there will always be one more who will choose to relight the flame at the last second. Thus spells out the severity of Gwyn's sin, there will never be a time when nature is allowed to take her course unimpeded. In a sense, Gwyn has locked the world in a cycle of endless entropy and decay.
In Dark Souls 3, events fast forward to countless linkings later. Many have gone the path of collecting powerful Souls in order to feed them back to the flame that created them, thus becoming a Lord of Cinder. The latest proposed lord, Prince Lothric, chose to shirk their duty which led to the resurrection of some previous Lords of Cinders to do his job for him. (See, even after sacrificing oneself, no one breaks free from undeath.) Once they too turn their back on the First Flame, the rejects are recalled. Those who failed their journeys to Link the Flame, resulting in the player, The Ashen One, coming back to unlife. The curious difference here comes from the fact that the very world seems much worse than it ever was in Dark Souls. In the original, everything had sunk into decay, but here it's almost as though reality itself has begun to unravel. The Lords, for example, have fled to their homes from all over the world, but converging reality moves these locations a trek's distance from Lothric. It's clear that there's something different with this loop.
What exactly that is cannot be made abundantly clear until the player manages to wrangle the Souls of the absent Lords of Cinder and travelled back to the Kiln of the First Flame. This time the flame is defended by a deific manifestation of all those who have linked the flames before (which actually informs a good chunk of his moveset) called The Soul of Cinder. After felling it and attending the fire (should the Ashen One choose to) they'll be met with a mirror scene of the first game's Linking with a rather notable difference; Instead of the roaring blaze from the first relinking, all we see is a gentle flame, not so much different to that of a bonfire. It makes sense, doesn't it? For countless cycles the Flame has been fed the same souls it regurgitated, they would get weaker and weaker with each cycle. So now there is barely anything left, and it's safe to say that this is the last cycle. The fire cannot be linked again and the Age of Dark is inevitable. The series then ends on that ominous note. (Provided you decided to link the flame, that is.)
It's a curious, yet fittingly dour, ending for the franchise and like any good ending it leaves us with one unanswerable question; what does the future hold? The Age of Dark is inevitable, sure, but what exactly is 'The Age of Dark' and what will it mean? A decidedly unreliable source, Darkseeker Kaathe, seems to imply that it will be an 'Age of Man', where no longer will nature suffer at the whims of Gods. But does that also mean an age where we get stripped of innovation, of magic, of all the grandeur of the Age of Fire? Almost certainly given the way the world literally warps and amasses in Dark Souls 3's Kiln of the First Flame. So will 'The Age of Dark' be a literal Dark Ages for the world? Or maybe something more ominous awaits, like the 'Sea of Deep' which that cannibalistic nutcase Aldrich foresaw, or maybe the rise of The Chaos which The Ivory King sacrificed himself to delay in Dark Souls 2. Or maybe just the return of the Abyss and Manus. (Though I'll admit that last one is excessively unlikely. We killed all his fragments in Dark Souls 2, right...)
So I guess the question that Dark Souls leaves us with is one of whether we choose to prolong the fire, even knowing that it's a futile act, or abandon it, welcoming in an unknowable age of Dark which may or may not spell the end of all life. It's a query that challenges concepts like legacy and the fallacy of immortality, which Lord Gwyn fought so desperately for, as well as raising more traditional questions like freedom of destiny, is a futile choice still a valuable one? There's so many layers and angles to the finale of Dark Souls that I'm just beginning to broach, and I'm sure those invested will debate over it for years to come. Whether they support the Fire or the Darkness, whether Aldis was right and a new Age of Fire will erupt sometime in the future, whether the entire plot of the game is really just about human's being exploited by Gods to preserve a world which ultimately wasn't even designed for them. I'm just scraping the surface and there's so many questions to think on. I just wanted to summarise, in words, how I think the story of Dark Souls played out and maybe if you're in a similar position this may have been a little cathartic for you too; here's hoping that From Software's Elden Ring remains even a glimmer as narratively rich and memorable.
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