Where does Dark Souls 2 fit into the canon? Seriously.

It's all so wrong but so right!

Yeah, this is another one of those blogs where I'm going to go in on something that only I care about, but that's what my entire online writing persona has been so far, so why change a good thing? So recently I've found myself thinking about Dark Souls, and that's been because it's shown up all over my Youtube recommendations for some reason. (Okay, I know the reason. I looked up Gwyn's theme to listen to it and that apparently opened the floodgates) And when you have a series with the level of complexity, nuance and esoteric context to it that Dark Souls does, when you start the thought train it's easy to derail into a rabbit hole. In fact, things grew so much that I literally redownloaded Dark Souls last night and am currently trying to do a light-armoured pyromancer run. (It's taking some adjusting but I'm getting there.) However, I'm not always thinking about the series in blind reverence of it. Sometimes my mind is grasped with other ponderous thoughts to the tune of "How in the heck does this work" or "Where does this fit in?" 

Of course, the beauty of Dark Souls is that these are the sorts of questions that you can debate about for hours without any resolution. For example; the theory of tracking down where the real Ornstein ended up, after coming to the contentious conclusion that the one who was guarding Gwynevere is apparently an illusion cooked up by her brother. (So her brother created an illusion to guard an illusion? Pretty metal.) One thread that came to my attention said, and bear with me here, Ornstein is actually the Stormdrake that The Nameless King rides into battle against you in Dark Souls 3. (Yeah, that's my reaction to.) Apparently based on the legend that one person managed to actually transform into a dragon a long time ago (something that the Dragon cults have been trying to replicate throughout the entire franchise) somepeople think that Ornstein also pulled it off and that's how his armour can be found discarded at Archdragon Peak and the reason why he became the student of The Nameless King, the reviled Dragon sympathiser that he was. (Like I said, Dark Souls lore gets freaking wild.) 

But if there's one question about Dark Souls in general that I think no amount of item descriptions, Titante slab rune deciphering, or wild half-baked metamorphosis-based theories can come to terms with, it's the question of where in the hell Dark Souls 2 fits in the franchise, because let's be honest, it doesn't. Recently James Davenport for PCGamer, who I assume had the exact same sudden reinterest in this franchise, also wrote a story about the spectacularly creative weirdness of Dark Souls, (Which is rather funny if you're interested; here) and I knew I had to voice my thoughts too. Now whereas he spoke about the thematic differences that Dark Souls 2 has to the franchise, I've been gripped by the narrative differences, but I think with both angles in mind you can really get an idea of what a weird game Dark Souls 2 really is in the grand scheme of things.

Firstly, allow me to hit you all with spoilers as I talk about the franchise as a whole. When you strip it down to it's base essence, Dark Souls is a story about the Age of Fire and its inevitable end. The Age of Ancients which preceded it was burnt away by this coming of the new order, and those who instigated that change are now terrified of the same happening to them and wiping away all that they accomplished. And if you think there's potentially some sort of analogue there, Janus Rose (sick name, by-the-by) of Vice wrote a pretty interesting piece on how Dark Souls can be seen as analogy for living in a modern world with capitalism. (Another recommended read, which you can see here) The first flame, the entity which is responsible for birthing all the powerful souls that give this world it's relevance, is the centre of almost every corner of this story and the question of whether to keep it alive, let it die or help in it's perishing, is the dilemma of the franchise.

Lord Gwyn, god of sunlight, rallied against the dying of the first flame and tried to do all he could to keep it alive. He ended up sacrificing his own brilliant soul to reignite things and keep it going but sometime before then he cursed those descendants of the Dark Soul, humans, with undeath for some unknown purpose. For the first game we are merely driven by legend and rumour about how the quest of the undead is to gather the Lord Souls and feed them to the flames, but by the final game it is the expected duty of the undead. In fact, those creatures of undeath that are condemned in the first game are regarded with honour in Dark Souls 3, because they alone hold the ability to keep the flame burning just that bit longer. So with that established, each Dark Souls story in some way should revolve around the duty of prolonging the flame of existence and what exactly such an act means, right?

Well not Dark Souls 2, apparently. Dark Souls 2 begins with the Bearer of the Curse being fraught with slivers of their life before undeath, visions that they end up chasing through the transitory plane of Things Betwixt. There they go in search of a curious goal when placed up against the rest of Dark Souls; a cure for undeath. Strangely personal of a quest in a franchise that usually tackles much more lofty concepts, huh? Once there, the Bearer is directed to the land of Drangleic to seek their answers, and one might be forgiven in thinking this will be a very straightforward tale of self discovery. For you see, that was just the sales pitch to get you through the door, from there everything goes out the window and the story becomes an insane free-for-all. (Forgive me if I forget some of the finer details, unlike with Davenport, this entire narrative blends into an insane dream to me.)

First of all you get told that you ain't getting into the Drangleic without first dealing with a few bosses that are scattered around the place, normal Dark Souls affair but not really tied with the discovery of a cure. Then once you get into Drangleic you get told, "uh-uh, You wanna be king then you gotta first deal with our Giant problem, because your Soul isn't big enough or something, I dunno." At which point you'll likely think something along the lines of, "No way, I already killed a dude called 'The Last Giant' in order to get here in the first place!" And then suddenly you realise that won't do, and you have to travel back in time and kill that same guy but back when he was strong. Oh, and you have to gather other Giant Souls too. Including one that belongs to a Dragon for some reason. (I guess he was a Giant Dragon, huh.) 

If you have the DLC then you'll find yourself dragged into another wild hunt that is only tangentially linked to whole 'arise to the throne' plot. You find yourself travelling to other kingdoms around Drangleic and find they've all fallen to ruin, not because of the fading of the flame like is the case of all the other stories in this franchise, but because of active sabotage by various Queens in these nations who, if you care enough to dig into it, are revealed to be fragments of Manus, Father of the Abyss, from Dark Souls 1's DLC. (Including the Queen of Drangleic, it should be said, so there's your connection.) So suddenly it's up to the Bearer to finish Artorias and the Chosen Undead's mission from the first Dark Souls and slay Manus for good. Great stuff, so then what happens at the end? Well with the DLC installed you have the choice to either sit upon the throne and await your eventual duty to relight the First Flame one day (That's right; you don't even get to do the one thing the series is all about!) or suddenly slap yourself in the face and realise, "Wait a minute, I came here looking for the cure to Undeath! This whole 'take the throne' garbage was sprung on me out of nowhere, that hag from Things Betwixt swindled me! I'm outta here!" That's right, the entirety of Dark Souls 2 is essentially a side quest.

Now I don't mean to rail on Dark Souls 2, I do still love the game afterall, but I just find it wild how literally nothing you do aides the wider narrative of the franchise at all. The whole plot about killing Manus' fragments merely works to resolve a problem that this story itself invented, Manus was as good as dead by the first game's story. The time-travelling battle with the giants is a strange diatribe in fighting and winning a war for a nation that, in the present day, falls to ruin anyway, so why bother? And the First Flame just feels like such an afterthought that Next Gen remasters of the game had to thrown in a new NPC who butts his way into the story after you slay each main boss in order to ramble about Lord Gwyn for five minutes so you can remember what franchise you're playing. Honestly, if Dark Souls 2 didn't have the name I think you could be forgiven for assuming it was a well done, but unrelated, spin off.

Usually people find themselves debating about whether or not Dark Souls 2 is a prequel or a Sequel to Dark Souls 1 and honestly, with how little it contributes to the overall narrative it doesn't even matter which it is! (Although, narratively it would be cleaner for it to be set afterwards because otherwise it tells the story of some doofus who accidentally gets himself set-up into being the successor to Lord Gwyn but then failed off-screen.) I just find it wild to think that a storyteller who appears as mysterious and meticulous as Miyazaki allowed the hilariously unfocused jaunt into the wild that was Dark Souls 2 to get made. (As that was the one Dark Souls he didn't direct) Although you know what, with how much it makes me smile to talk about, I wouldn't change a single thing about the nonsense plot or the crazy imaginative world. (With a stark exception given to 'Frigid Outskirts' from the Ivory King DLC. Literally the worst designed location in the entire franchise, bitterly hated that place.) I can only hope that future From Software and Miyazaki ventures leave room for the silliness of Dark Souls 2 in the future, it never hurts to go off on one now-and-then.