"But did you really beat Elden Ring?"

 

If there is one thing about the Souls-loving community that drives me insane it's how utterly pathetically self absorbed and repugnant they are at all times. If it weren't for the games themselves suddenly growing so apocalyptically great that normies got drawn into the flurry, the genre would have literally no chance of taking of naturally just for how many gatekeepers litter this genre type and are encouraged to fester. At first it was the meme- "Get Gud"- an all that, as people acclimatised to the genre of game they were playing. A genre that held no hands, spared no quarter and rewarded the triumphant with the inexplicably intrinsic. But somewhere along the way the irony withered and what was left in it's place is a breed of folk who quite simply do not understand what the genre was ever about to begin with, lording themselves up as arbiters of it's virtue. And it depresses me.

The biggest weapon in the arsenal of any Souls-Like, the utmost goal at the end of the blood-strewn rainbow, is satisfaction. Satisfaction at having beaten a tough challenge and proven yourself capable at the other end of it all. It's the reason we play these games. It's not explicitly the challenge of completing a difficult task- that is merely the vehicle through which satisfaction is accrued. There is no guideline on the games about the way they should be played- which is kind of the beauty of them. Dark Souls through to Elden Ring provide an entire world with which to learn and tools to covet in your war to the credits. I'd wager that most players out there don't even realise that a lot of the consumables they pick up could actually trivialise a lot of their really challenging fights if they were to put them to proper use. The games give you the tools, you only need to use them.

Back throughout the Souls series there was an elitist attitude around the use of Summons- even though there are questlines that literally demand you pull certain NPCs into certain fights in order to progress them; apparently you aren't playing properly if you bring a buddy. It all stems from this belief that Dark Souls bosses were never designed to deal with more than 1 enemy at a time and the bosses become hopelessly confused to the point of trivialisation with a partner. Which is... strange. After all the praise that Dark Souls gets from a design standpoint, for people to believe that summons are were they totally forgot any sense of balancing. In truth, no- bosses always have sweep attacks, tend to keep themselves abreast of how many enemies they're facing and never 'glitch out to the point of trivialisation' as some would insist- as that would make them defective NPCs.

Now of course having a summon makes the battle easier- but so does wearing armour. So does wielding a weapon. So does learning the enemies attack pattern. As long as your sticking within the confines of the game and playing within the expected play parameters- what makes this the arbitrary point of 'breaking the experience'. That same snobbiness carried over to magic- which, due to what I can only assume to be an embarrassed reaction to someone not knowing about damage types vulnerability, was labelled a 'cheap tactic' by the community. Nevermind Sorceries demand a serious levelling commitment before they become actually useful. Nevermind none can be freely aimed so you need to be close enough to get a bop on the head to use them. Nevermind the vulnerable casting window that leaves you open to use them. They're unbalanced- someone said. Presumably someone who never realised you can coat your weapon in special effects that can double damage to the right enemies- or is that 'cheating' too?

There's this sense of superiority to playing ineffectively that totally boggles the mind to experience. Don't get me wrong- those that want to challenge themselves can reap all the plaudits they want- but I'm not going to accept being called a 'trash casual' because I slapped down 'Bayle the Dread' with a greatsword literally designed for slaying "Colossal dragons". That would be like criticising someone for solving a puzzle instead of bashing their head against the mechanism until it gave up- it's genuinely baffling. Yet for some reason that belief is allowed to permeate and really only exists within the Souls community of games- it is baffling.

If you were having trouble tackling a major optional boss in an RPG and went online looking for advice- you'll get advice that guides you towards gear you want to try, builds you may need to switch up your party to utilise, maybe even actual strategy advice! It was those sorts of threads that guided me through Neriscyrlas in Pillars of Eternity 2- and plenty of other big baddies besides him. Ask the same for literally any fight in any Souls game and I will tell you the advice right now- for every one of them. "You just need to learn the fight.". "It's actually really easy. "I beat it first try." "When you figure out the attack patterns it's literally the easiest fight." Genuinely, after wading through self-aggrandizing auto-fellatio the most constructive advice you'll ever find from the community is: 'Once you beat the fight it's easy'. Which at that point- you might as well have not bothered type the message to begin with, eh?

You know there is something fundamentality wrong with a community of gamers when you got more coherent and tangible information by scrolling through Fextralife! That badly formatted former Twitch bot-farm of a website actually stocks genuinely useful strategy guides that helped me pull of stunts like poisoning Darkeater Midir to death on NG+3. And why is that? Because these people worship the idea of playing through these games in the least innovative, most bare basic, manner possible. How many of these people know the supremely cool spells out there in the game? Or the really cool special consumable effects? Or the great Spirit Ash team-ups possible out there? At least the PVP community seems to have slide right past all that infantile regression and simply meta chase all day. At least that is somewhat respectable! 

To those that really question the legitimacy of Souls players who are resourceful enough to actually use the game's tools to overcome their enemies, really address yourself and ask what it is that makes your own, less elaborate and more blunt, approach appealing in your eyes. Is it that you completed the fight in your way? On your terms? Then why exactly are you trying to force you way onto other people who are achieving exactly that, going for those very same plaudits? At the end of the day, there is no easy button on Souls Games. I get it- I didn't use Summons throughout 'Lies of P', I know sometimes you want recognition. But not at the expense of trying to place yourself as superior over other players- that is just pathetic. 

Catching up with the Souls

 

You know, I actually wasn't all that invested in going out and playing 'Shadow of the Erdtree' at launch. I respect the heck out of Elden Ring, and consider it to be the most perfect form of the Dark Souls franchise- but I just didn't think I had the spare time to send it's way. And then I just kind of started playing Elden Ring again... which then made me realise that if I was going to access the DLC I'd have to get far enough in to beat Mogh, but I last stopped playing literally at 'The First Step' Bonfire on New Game +... so I just kind of grinded several hours and got to Mogh... and then I figured I might as well grind for some more hours to get to Radahn- as for some incomprehensible reason Miyazaki says we have to off him too! (I'm guessing the entrance to the underside realm is covered up before the Meteor shower.) And at that point I thought 'What am I doing- I might as well just get the DLC.'

But we have a few more days until the Shadow drops so what could I do to kill time in the interim? EVERYTHING ELSE! Everything I had put off doing in the Dark Souls franchise for so very long, would become my immediate goal there and then. That meant finally coming around to complete the DLCs for Dark Souls 3- in which are contained some of the franchise's most well regarded boss encounters, and I even finally bit the bullet on the Dark Souls Remaster after seeing that it would be cheaper to just splurge on the remaster than it would be to buy the DLC for the original. If that would even be possible- I don't think they sell XBOX 360 DLC anymore... Who knows, I don't- I'm getting to play the game at a resolution that doesn't make my eyes bleed and real honest-to-goodness frames! (I wonder if Gwyn's song actually plays and isn't slyly stuffed with miniscule micro-stutters like it does in the 360 version!)

Of course the biggest port of call was the Dark Souls 3 DLC- because anyone with even the most-passing sliver of interest in the community will know there's only two things that people never shut up about- Bloodborne being hard-stuck on the PS3, and Slave Knight Gael: the final boss of the latter DLC. Slave Knight Gael had amassed a genuinely mythical status under my perception of the Dark Souls franchise through sheer merit of his name becoming evoked in literally every single conversation about bosses under the FromSoft brand. "Oh, that boss was too hard for you? You'd never survive against Gael!" "Malenia was tough, but in a frustrating way- not the sheer perfect way that Gael was!" "Yeah, Soul of Cinder might have been the single most perfectly dignified personification of ever major theme that has run throughout the Souls franchise and thus soared as a final boss... But Gael is still the final boss in my eyes. Also did you know that Pontiff Sulyvahn was going to be the final boss?" (YES, EVERYONE KNOWS!) 

But does Gael live up to the hype? Well, I ain't answering that because I played Ashes of Ariandel first! A DLC which did the impossible and made the painted world not a nightmare to traverse. The idea of the other-universe known as 'the painted world' always fascinated me regarding how roughly it jars against the direction everything else seems to be heading. All the franchise emboldens the significance of impermanence and the dignity in death- whereas there is a world perfectly preserved in paint that houses creatures sequestered within. Then there's the little confusion about the naming convention. The Painting of Aramis from Dark Souls 1 is, it turns out, at least the base coat for the painting of Ariandel- as evidence by the fact that Pricilla's old tower is hidden away in the DLC. Both paintings are named after their creator's apparently, although Aramis is never seen residing in his painting, or at all- and Father Ariandel is a refugee in the painting, almost as though he himself is the subject. And then, of course, at the end of the DLC you are asked for your name so that the next painting can be named after you- despite the fact that totally spits in the face of the naming convention, although I guess that will come around in the Age of Dark so everyone will be a bit too preoccupied coming to terms with their totally rewritten reality to start penning angry letters to the painting-planning-council.

And the DLC itself? Fine. I've never liked how FromSoftware handles their snow sections- I think their swamps are always delightfully imbued with active mechanics that make them challenging but fun to conquer- whereas snow is consistently just a pain! Elden Ring's Consecrated Snowfields? Can't see a bloody thing! Dark Souls 2's Frigid Outskirts? Constantly spawning Unicorns- one of only two locations in the entire franchise to feature endless spawning mobs! And Ariandel is just stuffed silly with that most annoying breed of bad guy you can't help but hate! At the very least we get to see the themes of wider Dark Souls finally seep into the painted world as the concept of 'Rot' is introduced. A distorting organisim that consumes everything if the picture is not burned away and remade- presumably explaining the name change. Which of course births one of my favourite lines- voiced by a literally no-name NPC- "When the world rots we set it afire, for the sake of the next world. It's one of the few things we do right, unlike those fools on the outside!" (slightly related note: how does mister 'no-name wierdo' know about the goings-on outside of the reality he was born and spent his entire life within?)

But the real draw of these DLC are the bosses- and Sister Friede was an experience to say the least! Bare in mind that I was on New Game + 3 so already wasn't going to be having a fun time- Good lord did I not expect the mockery that woman made of me! Pulling my main girl Pricillia's invisibility move right off her corpse and doing it better- I'm ashamed to admit how many times I got manhandled by her until I figured out that gimmick. But even then the gimmick alone was just a prelude to the first three stage boss fight in the game- with three entire healthbars, mind you- not just three states of attack tactics! The fight was a thrill but so frustrating to figure out. Can't exactly call it a favourite of mine, I have to admit.

Which brings me to 'The Ringed City'. I'll cut to the chase- I liked the DLC. It reminded me more of the actual explorative adventures of Dark Souls 2's DLC rather than just 'an extended prelude to the boss' like Ashes of Ariandel felt like at times. But Slave Knight Gael is the big attraction. And after beating the man- I can understand the appeal. Gael is a supremely fun and fair fight that really doesn't hold any muck, no gimmicks, no hidden health bars out the ass- just an out-and-out slug fest against a worthy component. So many of Souls bosses from yore hold that one screw you move seemingly designed only to rack up player deaths rather than to add to the battle itself. Gael didn't feel like that, but he wasn't a push-over either. He's an example of the best of the series, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of The Soul of Cinder and Sword Saint Isshin. Which is probably why FromSoft made up for it by giving us Darkeater Midir. Screw Midir- screw his eyewatering high health bar- screw his one-shot laser attacks his farts out in his second act. I'm happy I gave on playing nice and chocked the bugger to death on his own overinflated healthbar. I know people say Pestilent Mist is not an easy kill like it once was at launch- but I'll just take the compliment if that's the case!

Dark Souls 3 really does feel like a whole different ball game with it's DLC- which I guess has always been the way that FromSoftware has handled their additional content. Chucking giant chunks of new difficulty ceilings at those kind enough to spend more money is really seeing what the community seems to be wanting and meeting them kindly, with a giant middle finger to the face and a loving clap around the cheeks. As a lifelong masochist who's dream is to torture enough self respect into himself that he one day grows confident enough to genuinely experience 'imposter syndrome': (What a luxury!) I love the carnage. Now I just need to actually finish the Dark Souls 1 DLC and I'll have officially experienced all of Dark Souls- putting the lid on a world I wasn't quiet ready to finish when I reached the final moments of Dark Souls 3- but which I actually feel ready for today. However it's pretty unlikely I'll beat all of Dark Souls Remastered before Shadow of the Erdtree releases- so don't expect a follow-up soon.

Response

 Is anyone in there?

What is the single most important aspect to the functional gameplay of any one title? A thousand different games could answer that query in a hundred thousand different, but no less valid, ways; but if we were to generalise, draw a line of distinction for what effects the most games, then I'd have to crown the art of 'response'. That is to say; the relationship between the player initiating a command and the character responding to that command. Now of course, the delicates in this matter are typically a degree of software engineering and hardware management as the baseline level of quality most want to reach in a near instant button-to-action ratio, but what I propose to talk about transcends merely the speed of reaction. What I'm talking about refers to the way that the responding action can sometimes interrupt the expectation of a player and sometimes reinforce it depending on the presentation of the game.

The Souls games are probably the best for establishing that ideal one-to-one ratio between the player pressing and their avatar responding. Whether that is a swing, or a dodge or a jump- the character simply has to be responsive in order for the core conceit of the game to work; for it to be a difficult journey wherein success or failure is purely down to the act of the player and not the fickle whims of an iffy response system. The only deliberate delay between action and animation would be in the use of items and spells, which is a balance measure to punish the use of potential advantageous actions with the cost of valuable seconds. But even then, even when the purpose is fully compressive and intuitive, still we get annoyed at the sight of our sluggish avatar laboriously lifting their Estus Flask, taking a look inside (What is he expecting to find in there?) and then taking 3-4 seconds out of a busy boss fight to chug one down. It's infuriating, but only one roadblock in an otherwise highly responsive series.

Sometimes the delay in action is not down to intentional design decisions but rather the limitations of an engine not exactly designed to be the best at what it's been tasked with. Take the Gamebyro derivative, The Creation Engine used for the Fallout games. Maybe one of the most built-up-on in-house game engines in existence, the creation engine was designed to be malleable and easy to work with in the pursuit of creating massive open world Role Playing Games. But when those role playing games might happen to also involve high octane action such as shooting and explosions- then it might not always be quite up to task. Before Fallout 4 you could expect every step of the action, pulling out a gun, ADS, evasive manoeuvres, (jumping) to take just that few frames too long as the engine attempts to sluggishly catch up to what's going on in the game. Now unless the entire game is falling apart from bugs, (which can occasionally happen) the delay isn't tortuous, but compounding in it's consistency does make the titles ill-suited for being shooters, which is why the series has it's nose turned up on by the general, not typically RPG playing, public.

One of the biggest trends that really drove a wedge between action and response has to the classic, the QTE. The quick time event which would act as a tradeoff between a scripted event and a cutscene, wherein the designers wanted a specific set of events to happen but also make the player feel like they had an active part in causing them, thus take away the player's direct control and give them a single button prompt to 'initiate' the chain of events. When performed correctly these can feel like garnishes to big climatic action moments, seamlessly flowing in the battle such as with the boss fight finishers of 'The Force Unleashed'. When done not quite as eloquently, they can feel prolonged scenes of inactivity cut with pity-prompts that don't even line up with the proposed actions being performed, divorcing the player from the scene entirely, such as with 'The Didact' fight at the end of Halo 4. (What a let down.) 

Response matters most in those games where every split second of on-screen information matters; such as with the FPS genre of games. The best of the best offer near perfect button to action relation so that at no point can dissonance ruin those momentary bursts of exciting action and violence as they so often do. For me the original Destiny was the apex of this, with perfect popping ADS, weighty but not clunky movement and just the right amount of aim assist to not overpower the player whilst not leaving them feeling like blind mice missing every shot. So pinpoint was that perfection that even the direct sequel developed by practically the exact same team, Destiny 2, lost me for those slight tweaks to control that made the gunplay feel different. Not necessary worse, just different. Which just goes to show how precise the question of control and response can become in the highest echelon's of the craft. It's an artform all of itself.

Look sensitivity, dead zones, head bob- all values that can be tweaked to minute precision to create a different feeling experience for the person behind the screen. There's no golden ratio of FPS tweaking, maybe a range of ratios, but no specific number- the rub all lies in how the developer want their game to feel and that can be just as ephemeral as it sounds. Maybe they want a floaty feeling to the movement, to simulate the weightlessness of fighting on another planet for Halo, or the grittiness of being in claustrophobic and dank underground spaces like in Metro. We don't really think about the differences of the control values between the shooter genre, and when it's adjusted correctly the player shouldn't ever notice the difference without consciously looking for it- but developing to this level is the key for what makes some shooters feel professional and others feel cookie-cutter and boorish.

Redfall knows well the issue known as 'bad control' when it comes to how it's shooting functions. Not enough to be amateurish, but just bad enough to ruin that intuitive flow that shooters need to thrive. For one, despite being a game allegedly built to work well on consoles, the game features practically no aim assist, meaning console players are left failing around with imprecise aiming on an ill-fitting control stick. Weapons are lacking that 'satisfaction' of meaty ADS and smooth hit connection. There's nothing offensively wrong with Redfall's shooting, it just isn't good enough; which can be the death nail in a genre this specific when it comes to making the player feel comfortable in play. At least Fallout has it's solid RPG mechanics to fall back on. Redfall has nothing.

The more you play games, no doubt the more refined your tastes become about exactly what controls suit you. A seasoned gamer can tell within a few seconds if a game feels right to control, and when it's handled right you can put a pro F1 driver in a simulation racer and they'll be able to handle themselves with a few little tweaks. But the magic of the matter is that most of the important aspects of controls, especially response time, are invisible to the meddling of players in settings menus. That's just the cherry on top, the sponge of the cake needs to be prepared ideally first. Some genres can get away being more experimental than others, some titles can throw away the established rules of control as we know them, but all respect that sanctity of the controller and it's response as it relates to the user - that most sacred of gaming unions.

Making a villain (Part 1?)

 I'm the bad guy.

I've had villains on the mind recently. I can't really nail the reason down to one recent experience in media because, truth be told, the very concept of villainous characters is just utterly ubiquitous with storytelling in general. Particularly in video games. We yearn to have some sort of foil to overcome, typically a humanoid one with sharp teeth and a scowl, But what are the ingredients that go into making the kinds of villains that we remember and harken back to time and time again, and what are the sorts of villains that end up as duds? Well, it's a topic that stretches back as far back as stories, to and likely beyond that famous Mesopotamian poem: the epic of Gilgamesh, and as such I doubt I'll be able to nail down the exacts in a single introspective blog here and now. But taking some baby steps, I want to talk about recent villainous character that I've experienced to ruminate over the things that work and things that don't. (I'll put spoiler tags at the beginning of each relevant paragraph.)

(Puss in Boots: The Last Wish spoilers) So The Bounty Hunter in Puss in Boots is a great example of a supremely effective villain, even as he shares that role with two others. Though he's not the most present bad guy on screen, he's the instigator, the motivation and ultimately- the closer. All this is achieved very clearly despite the fact his true intentions are cleverly concealed until the third act- and that's because of a very clever framing device. You see, spoilers, The Bounty Hunter is not actually a simple hunter gunning for the price on Puss' head who just happens to be more skilled than him in every way, he's literally Death. Hunting after Puss to to snuff out his last life because, as classical depictions attest, he hates little more than being cheated out of his prize and cats cheat death more than most. (And Puss does it so disrespectfully too.) This isn't a simple bait and switch, it's a switch up and escalation where the magnitude of the trouble the main character is in blossoms exponentially- skyrocketing the stakes. Death is also a fantastically rounded antagonist, making the most of his scenes to spur on the plot, drive at Puss' fear, and then symbolise his overcoming of the narratives conceit with his, particularly poignant, 'stalemate'. He only retreats because Puss has discovered a respect for the one life he has left, thus satisfying Death's clearly stated ethos, as disgruntled as the Wolf is to admit it. As far as villain writing goes, Death must be one of the most efficiently complex in modern storytelling.

(Also, Puss in Boots) Jack Horner, on the otherhand, is delightfully one-note and proud of it. An heir to a pie business he would turn into a empire, 'The Last Wish' is very clear to establish that Jack has absolutely no excuse baked into his backstory to explain his homicidal and utterly loyalty-free being. The man callously chases the last wish for an utterly selfish, and beautifully narrow minded goal- (literally just "I want to control all magic in the world") he spends the entire movie accidentally, but gleefully, murdering his own staff; and by the time his comeuppance comes even he seems unsure as to which one of his laundry list of crimes he should be getting punished for. Jack embodies all the ways that writers are traditionally conditioned not to write a villain, but these writers commit fully to the see-through villain concept in celebration of his utmost transparency. What results is a villain utterly pure in his intention and thus able to be enjoyably villainous- which makes a stark contrast to all recent Disney movies and their running theme villains of "My generation sees the world differently to how your generation does!"  

(Hogwarts Spoilers) If you want an idea of what happens when the Horner route isn't committed to fully, look no further than Hogwarts Legacy's Ranrok. Everything about that goblin is villainous, from his South-end gangster voice to his pointy teeth and evil eyes- but Hogwarts Legacy can't decide on whether they want to make him cartoonishily evil or darkly sympathetic. On one hand, he seems driven by nothing but a vague desire to be more powerful than wizards- which sounds mostly indistinct as far as plans go. On the otherhand, he's lionized a movement based on generations of perceived wizarding oppression, which itself feeds into the natural sympathy of the underdog. Neither angle is delved into significantly, which makes the entire characterisation feel very wafer thin. And wafer thin villains tend to verge towards the forgettable before long.

(FromSoft Soulslike spoilers) Every FromSoftware Souls-Like game pretty much has the same final villain who, naturally, serves as a microcosm of the narrative and/or game world. The biggest commonality in all of the Souls games is that they almost always depict a once grand kingdom that has fallen past it's prime and is, or has, collapsed(ing)- with Dark Souls specifically revolving around the idea of perpetuating the dying kingdom or letting it pass with grace. Which is probably why almost every Souls Games ends with a battle against a frail old man who was, at once, the stately king of that world. Even as his power and skill surges up to be that final game challenge, they always wear on their design the embodiment of their disrepair. Gwyn wears his charred robes and desiccated skin, such that he looks more a walking corpse or hollow than a once proud king. Ishin is reborn young, but we can see it's just a shadow of the broken body which had just a while ago passed on. In the Shura ending, you do fight that old body with it's boney limbs and brittle white hair. Even Nashandra from Dark Souls 2 sheds her healthy body in favour of puppeteering her marionette of bones- a personification of decay itself. In this way, FromSoft turns the tackling of the boss into a higher confrontation against the core conceit of the narrative itself. Higher conceptual ideas indeed.

(Spiderman PS4) Which brings we around to one of my favourite villains in a game I recently played, Otto Octavius from Spiderman. Now anyone with a passing knowledge of the Spiderman mythos knew exactly who Dr Octavius was within the lore; but the Spiderman PS4 reimaging of Peter Parker's world recontextualized the doctor as a brilliant confidant and mentor for the scientist and researcher inside of Peter. The writers devoted quite a lot of attention not just to establishing how indebted to the doctor Peter is, giving him a job when he had nothing, but also how much Peter looks up to the good doctor, as a personification of the underdog who rejects the easy sell-out route in favour of striving to the betterment of mankind. All this backdrop and contextualisation makes the inevitable moment where the doctor goes mad, from pushing too fast on his own experiments, all the more tragic- like a Greek play: you know what's coming and the only question is how high the play will raise the characters before their fall. But there's actually one moment which I think cuts deeper than all else. From the moment things start going wrong, the developers offer a softening olive branch to ease the pain of the doctor's betrayal. "It's his neural chip frying with his brain: this isn't the same man that Peter looked up to!" 

Whilst simultaneously playing both sides by hinting this darker side was always part of Otto, all the chip did was override his reservation and ability to self-mediate. This is that balance between committal and backtracking which I think a lot of writers get stuck within in modern storytelling; presenting ambiguity and confusing it with complexity. Not that there's anything wrong with such a set-up, indeed some of the best confrontations in fiction are the one's where you still can't decide who was in the right 10 hours after you put the book down; (Like with Huey from MGSV) but the greatest hit to the gut will always come from full committal. That's why I rate so much that moment, in the very last encounter of the game, where Spiderman is stopped just a few seconds before the seemingly inevitable 'rip off my mask to show you who I am and appeal to the human inside' trope scene which almost every major Spiderman story attempts at least once. He is stopped by the reveal that, Doc Ock already knew he was Peter. He always knew. And everything he did, brutalising and victimising Spiderman, he was knowingly committing on Peter as well. What a simply fantastic way to crash the worlds of Spiderman and Peter into one, which is again one of the running themes of that game's entire narrative. And a cold break from the expected into the cold truth of the stark and haunting. That moment, in print and in performance, might be one of the most powerful scenes I've personally experienced in Superhero media- all because the writers knew where to commit to really dig the dagger deep and twist the handle!

From this brief glance at some of the most interesting badguys of the past year (at least for me- I know Sekiro and Spiderman reach back quite a bit further) I think one general consensus we can draw is that the most effective villains marry the core conceit and theming of the story into themselves and commit to one extreme or the other. Whilst realism would demand the more mediated two-sided approach, our simple dopamine-craving minds respond much more to that clearly defined, cut between the lines, villain. (With a full stop) There is nuance, of course, for mediums, genres, themes and styles; but the talent of the storyteller is to recognise what works and figure out how to brew that same dish with different, sometimes wacky and bizarre, ingredients. Maybe unravelling these concepts will help enrich us, both in how we consume and conjure stories in the future. And maybe I'll try some similar investigations in the future, depending on how I feel about the topic.

Soulslike worldlike

 The future is bleak

So it's official at this point; FromSoftware's next game is not going to be a Soulslike, and it's not going to be directly building upon what they've been feverishly making game after game ever since Demon Souls. Now of course I don't begrudge anyone for wanting to do something different after literally making the same sort of game for more than a decade, and given Elden Ring recently won game of the year and mass appeal all in the same fell swoop, it only suits it would be the game that the FromSoft team bow out from this race with. Of course there will be lessons learned that are carried into Armoured Core, but at it's heart that mech game is about mission based mech combat, nothing of what makes Souls games Souls games is going to be carried over in that transition.

Now that I'm done wishing the team farewell in their endeavours, allow me to make this all about me for a sec. What the heck am I going to play in the meanwhile? The strange Warlock pact I made with the FromSoft team means that I'm not going to actually be playing Elden Ring until they make their next Souls-like, so I'm really going to be taking their absence from the genre hard! These are my favourite action adventure style games of the modern age and without them all we've got is lukewarm remasters of decades old games and indie titles. Indie action adventure games just don't do it for me, I need that Souls-like edge! So who is going to step up to fill this painful void in my heart and make me whole once again? Who will hold the Souls-like torch aloft in the absence of it's father?

Well for my money, one of the best non-From Software Souls-likes, even if I question that label, is the 2D platformer Hollow Knight. Whilst not traditionally what one would equate to the same style of game as Dark Souls, Hollow Knight is a gorgeous bug-themed journey through twisted and broken lands, dripping with meaningful deep lore, peppered with delightfully enigmatic wandering NPCs and stacked with increadibly fun-to-duel boss fights. It's an incredible game and Team Cherry are already working on their Sequel to come any day in 2023. Of course, They've been working on this Hollow Knight: Silksong for just about ever now, and it honestly is starting to feel like Silksong isn't going to land before even Elden Ring is finished with it's post-launch content cycle, and then we'll be waiting even longer for Team Cherry's next followup then we'll have to wait for From Software to shake it's Armoured Core out of it's system and come back for their next Soulslike. I love 'em, but they aren't big enough to steal the crown and hold onto it.

If I were paying attention to the Game Awards showcase I would have been presented with the very outspoken answer to my little query straight-up. Because there it was, plain as day, waiting to stand up to the recently vacated podium: Lords of the Fallen. Wait- hang on that's not the title... oh- it's 'The Lords of the Fallen'. But I'm not overly excited about the proposition for one simple reason- I actually played the original 'Lords of the Fallen.' All of the uninformed criticism that Dark Souls gets from people who haven't played the game and just try to 'Eyeball it' is true for Lords of the Fallen. It controls sluggishly, it's environments spread out too far and meld together so you can get lost pretty easily, the story is weak and unimaginative. And this new title soft reboot is going to be 5 times bigger than the original? I feel like you should probably try nailing the gameplay loop before expanding your ambitions. I'm not holding my breath for that one.

There is a developer who has yet to prove themselves in the Souls-like Pantheon but might just be stepping up to be the Souls creators- Neowiz Games' Lies of P looks to be the Bloodborne style Souls game that FromSoft doesn't want to share with the rest of the world, (Bloodborne port when?) as well as a capoff to 2022's sudden inexplicable trend of Pinoccio adaptions. (I didn't know the original story was so well loved by people.) Lies of P looks gorgeous, promises much, and has many people genuinely excited for a newish take on Souls, even if I does kind of feel like Sekiro meets Bloodborne from some of the gameplay snippets we've seen so far. This is an indie studio handling it, so how satisfying the game is going to be is my only issue. It could end up being a really tight, but lean, 10 hour experience; which will make me smile, but not fill that rumbling in my stomach. I'm a growing man, I need my substantive 35-50 hour Souls games! 

On the AAA side of things there is actually a burgeoning game franchise that seems to have it's own designs on the Dark Souls formula. The Star Wars Jedi- series is technically Souls-Like for how it handles death, exploration and progression; even if they are lacking on the contextual explanation of 'Force Echoes'. I think the first game was sorely lacking when it came to truly incredible boss fights, with the game featuring only one show down I'd consider Dark Souls worthy; (The Ninth Sister fight) but the upcoming sequel is a chance to fix all ills! Chuck atop of that the fact that no self respecting Star Wars series would stop before they launch a whole trilogy and I think Fallen Order could present itself a decent successor in the Souls-like absence.

Of course, I'm just talking about the big mainstream examples of Souls games that I and many others can consume to fill the hunger. In truth, there are dozens upon hundreds of Souls-likes being worked on, each trying to pull for themselves a slither of that original flame which birthed this unique franchise variant upon the world. Like Hollows seizing at the first flame. The Youtuber Iron Pineapple has a whole series dedicated to exploring these endless Souls-like indie games on Steam, and honestly some of them are pretty interesting. A lot of them are stuck together by nothing but match-sticks and dreams, but potential bubbles in the cesspit too sometimes! So maybe the upcoming Souls breakup isn't going to be as lonely as we expect... although I'm still coming running back to FromSoft the second they show up in our lives again. I can't take it, I'm bad at rebound relationships! 

I hate: Platforming Puzzles where it doesn't belong

A said a Hip, Hop-

We all have our places in life, I am told. Our inexorable, inexplicable mortal duties to which we are chained and drawn like moths to a roaring open flame. To lash out against that fate, or to rove off in search of it, is the topic of many a philosophical piece; but the way I see it, the proposition alone contains the most salient tincture of truth. For if we are to accept the premise that somewhere out there, tucked behind the golden clouds, lays our marble-paved destiny draped and ready in anticipation, then wouldn't it track to say that there are plenty of paths in life simply not for us? Pitfalls to ruin? Dreams within which we simply do not belong? If there is one then there must be the other, and that's why I never shy to point out when I see an errant pilgrim, driven far from their field and languishing in a life not theirs. And today my finger points towards platforming puzzles.

For some reason or other, games absolutely love throwing sections of precision platforming into games that, rather pointedly, are not always platforming games. It galls because platforming is not some throwaway minigame you can just shove into your game when your think the loop lacks variety, like a match 3 tile game. Platformers are delicate and intricate machines, a masterwork of delicate control tweaking, mindful level design and balanced vectors for challenge. Platforming has been around for as long as home gaming as been (longer even) and still it's an artform being worked upon and reiterated towards; people have dedicated their professional lives to making sure their platformers play the best they possibly can. And then Valve comes along and just shoves a platforming section into their first person shooter.

Yes, Half Life, a game renowned for it's groundbreaking variety in mission structure, apparently abandons all vestiges of sanity near it's end act and sends the player into a notoriously fiddly platforming section. I haven't played the game myself so I can't attest to it from experience, but I have seen the section in question and heard tell of controls implicitly not designed for precision platforming. Because of course not, why would they be? The sorts of movement you need for a good first person shooter, smooth fluid movements, decent travel, subtle immersion touches; don't cross the Venn diagram for Platforming in the slightest. (intuitive movement weight, responsive and disciplined controls that start when you prompt and end when you stop.) And perhaps I can't add my own voice to the mix for this game; but I did play DOOM.

In DOOM (2016) there is one level in particular that tasks you with making large jumps over deadly pits of death whilst trading projectiles with a smattering of imps all scattered across a service pipe leading into your destination. This isn't the only platforming puzzle section, but it's the most frustrating to my mind. The large leaps to safety you are required to make, whilst the split second reactions you need for avoiding demonic balls of flame, often clash together to spectacularly frustrating effect. In the heat of it's action, DOOM is dance of call and response between waves of enemies and the suite of movement/violent tools at the player's disposal. All of which comes to a grinding standstill when you need to line up the perfect jump for fear of tumbling to your demise. For this one small section of an otherwise adrenaline fuelled game, it suddenly becomes most heavily advised to find a vantage point and pick off the imps from afar before getting all embroiled in the steelworks of the service bridge. It changes up the pace, I guess; but since when is DOOM not about getting up in the face of demons and blowing their jaw through their skull with a super shotgun? Consider me wholly unconvinced as to the necessity of that platforming section.

And speaking of platforming sections that wrestle with the genre of the game they're thrust into; who's played Dark Souls? Yes, the king of difficulty itself tripped into a vat of ill-advised platforming section for a few memorable awful scenes. Everytime it's been a case of 'you need to drop on these tiny ledges in order to reach the bottom of this pit', and everytime the result is you being reminded once again how pathetic Dark Souls' jump mechanics are. The way you hardly leave the ground more than a couple centre meters, heavy amounts of fall damage, the fact that the button to jump is the same as the one to sprint; everything about these sections are awful. Although little tops the platforming puzzle in the worst boss of the franchise. Which, incidentally, is the reason why this is the worst boss in the franchise. The Bed of Chaos requires a precision jump in order to finish it off, and that single leap alone is the hardest challenge Dark Souls has to offer. It's so unreasonably difficult, that this is the only boss in any Souls game where the progress you make on the boss (cutting his roots) actually stays completed if you die and respawn. Platforming so bad it challenges the traditions of an entire subgenre; that's impressively terrible.

Hollow Knight is a platformer. It's a lot of other genres besides just sharp and precise jumping from stage to stage, but the platforming element to the gameplay cannot possibly be overlooked or undersold. But does Hollow Knight dedicate itself to it's platforming? Well... yes actually. There's a plethora of abilities, some discrete others locked until found, that modify the way you explore the world in a way that meaningfully unwraps the corners of the Hallownest like any good Metroidvania demands. However, is that any excuse to give me something like the Path of Pain? For the entirety of Hollow Knight it's challenge proposition has been on the dance of boss fights, weaving between deranged swipes, crazy slashes and a prolonged assault of energy wave beams shot periodically at you from the boss who is currently rolled up in an invincible ball in the centre of the room. But the optional 'Path of Pain' forgets all that, and shoves frankly inane platforming challenges, squeezed one after the other with but a rare smattering of platforms inbetween hell to rest and checkpoint. They pull platforming tricks on you that the rest of the game never even hinted at. Suddenly you have to pogo bounce on thorn walls, jump-dash-jump through tiny slivers of free space between deadly spike walls and even master a bit of wall-dash cancellation. And what is the reward? For what do we endure these ceaseless attacks on our sanity and goodwill? An insultingly uncomplicated 3 second cutscene. Thanks for the rondo of pain followed by salt to fester the cuts.

And finally, the very reason which I bring this topic up: Blasphemous. Crossing over with another big Metroidvania should have been a cause for celebration, specifically when that game is 'Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night', the much-beloved spiritual successor to Castlevania! But then the team at The Game Kitchen conspired to have us associate Miriam forever with hatred after they unveiled the five Miriam platforming challenges that made up this collaboration. Movement in Blasphemous is decent, it's not the draw and it's platforming challenge typically comes from frustrating movement elements, such as the way this game breaks the rule of 'whatever your sprite can touch, it can climb on', due to the Penitent One's lengthy conehead that doesn't count to his climbing hitbox. Or the unexpected heft which makes you sink like a rock the second after your manual jump is done, so don't expect to angle-glide to your destination. Which makes the concept of challenges that are only platforming related just a nightmare. And indeed, the Miriam Challenges are that nightmare. Precision jumps when the Penitent One is liable to combust the second his pinkie toe scratches a spike's hitbox. Prolonged and timed stringed-together challenge hallways wherein a single death restarts the entire three minute sprint. Oh, and lamp jumping. A mechanic absolutely never explained in the game wherein you attack a lamp mid-air in order to stunt the momentum of your fall briefly. Sounds simple right? Wrong. Because the only time it works is if you hit down as you swing, a variance in attack with absolutely no visual indicator whatsoever, and which makes it difficult to make forward momentum for the way you have drag your analog forward-down and then forward again. Of course, a little tip on that front: you get the same Lamp-jump effect automatically if your just hold the 'dash' button whilst you hit, something else the game goes through great pains to never tell you! I completed these once and they were easily the most frustrating and unrewarding challenges this game had to offer; curse that poxxy Miracle!

And so you can see my problem; when you shove platforming challenges into games not built for them, you are no longer adding to the gameloop but you're throwing in the game's own controls as an enemy to wrestle with. Even games like Hollow Knight, with great movement, feel a little out of place sending us up against a platforming-only battle. Yet despite saying all that, I do recognise the desire to diversify content and would myself wonder about the viability of a game who's only battles are against platforming sections. I suppose at the end of the day this comes down to a question of how you handle it and if your game is built to sustain it; which in that case leaves no room for justification for games like Dark Souls and bloody DOOM; Learn to stick to you lane a little more, devs!

Is Miyazaki a filthy casual?

 Or did he git too good?

As with any auteur video game director out there, the name Hidetaka Miyazaki has stretched beyond the confines of his position and very much coloured the works of all From Software games. And it makes sense, often we're told how large chunks of the heart of Souls games originate in his reference-addled psyche, and it's the testament of his team's skills to be his scribes that they can consistently  and faithfully recreate his mad dreams for his project. That's why he's called the Father of Dark Souls. Without him there would be no Souls series like we know it today and likely no Souls mini subgenre, which means no Bloodborne, no Elden Ring, no 'Salt and Sanctuary', no Blasphemous and, worst of all, no Hollow Knight! So his is a legacy worth defending and commending in equal measures, such to the extent that we all blindly worship the ground he walks on and never dare to ask the question: has Miyzaki beaten Dark Souls?

It seems odd, almost sacrilegious, to even raise such a query, and yet that very idea was thrust upon us just recently when snippets of a Miyazaki interview started appearing around the web. And well, you'd just assume that he had, right? Isn't it internet bottom-feeder shorthand to say that if you haven't beaten Dark Souls then you can't be a high tier gamer? (Because gaming is obviously segmented into the commonly known 'tier system' which we all agreed on back in the day.) So that very simple barrier to gaming worthiness, that gate for which one needs to bypass it's keeper, (if you will) should surely have been childsplay for the father of Dark Souls himself. Right? I mean he can likely beat the game in his sleep. He probably does a full broken sword speedrun every night instead of closing his eyes. It's his baby, he knows it inside and out. And he does, but he doesn't.

Doesn't play his games, that is. So he likely has never beaten Dark Souls. This comes as something of a shock, obviously, because it's not as though Miyazaki is one of those work-a-holic addicts who loses all time in his life for anything other than making games. We know he's a big fan of Magic the Gathering, such to the point he created his own unaffiliated fan game and called it 'Bloodborne'. The guy does like to kill free time having fun, which is likely the only way how he can lead design games razor focused to ride the gap between challenging and rewarding. Except that he doesn't sit down and enjoy the finished product himself, bask in the journey he laid down and scale the mountains he placed. Our man is a Dark Souls unbeliever, in a way, and somehow I find that just fascinating. So many of those classic fan-loved studios have that exact same mission statement to "Make games that we wanna play", but here's a director who just hasn't got the time or love for that goal.

Of course he has a reason, it would be quite weird if he just left it at that and walked away. He says that this policy comes because Miyazaki doesn't feel there's anything left to discover in a game that he helped create. Which makes some sense given the amount of creative control he's said to have over the majority of creative decisions that go into this franchise. He lays out the story, designs the conceptualisation of the monsters and locations and apparently even gets down and dirty with the balancing of the bosses if the story about him personally nerfing Dark Souls III's Pontiff holds any weight. These games are his baby, but a baby he has nurtured excessively to the point where he has no investment watching it thrive in the world. Imagine pulling enough weight that your parents are finally proud of you, only for them to immediately lose interest because they played such a role in your raising that you hold no surprises to them. It's just a lose-lose all around, huh.

Which isn't to say that Miyazaki necessarily has never played his own games at all- I think it would take a pigheadedly stringent policy for the man to somehow avoid ever grabbing a controller throughout the development process, for early build testing at the very least. I guess he just thinks that the very moment the thing goes off to test for gold status that he's done with it forever. Although that does also mean that he apparently doesn't have time for games that others make, such as the incredible Demon Souls remake by Bluepoint. He commended their work, says they reached heights the team could only dream of, but won't actually play the thing itself for the emotions and memories it dredges up. (Talk about 'tortured artists' syndrome.) So... what does mean about Dark Souls II then? He didn't direct that game, and it's not a remake of a game he made a decade ago... so has he played that? Or did he too hear about the Frigid Outskirts and just thought "You know what? There's more to life than this."

But just because I might reach some understanding for why Miyazaki feels the way that he does when it comes to Dark Souls and his relationship with that- you best bet that doesn't mean I'm happy with it. Oh no. Because whereas he is depriving himself of a polished playthrough of an incredibly influential back catalogue of his own games, he's also denying himself the punishment that every developer needs  to suffer- the bite of their mistakes. That's right, even Dark Souls is not a perfect game, and beyond annoying enemies and questionable level layouts (Blighttown) we have a single boss who I think can easily be crowned the worst in the franchise. The Bed of Chaos. What a mess. A boss who forsakes the entire game of timing and build management before and after it, asking instead for the player to undergo an impromptu platforming challenge with these woefully undercooked controls and be happy about it. The fight is so bad that it's the only fight in the entire franchise for which the game saves your process, so that the many times that you are expected to die, you can ride right back into the fray and only struggle with the remaining awful jumping tasks. That boss is an abomination, and it's only just now I'm realising that it's one Miyazaki dumped on his fans and didn't even suffer himself. What a villain.

There was a silver lining to this interview, underlying the actual point of all this talk regarding which past game Miyazaki would play. (apparently none of them. Not even King's Field.) Because when on the topic of Elden Ring, the man not only crowned it the best game that From have ever made (sure, it's the idea to keep getting better with each game, I guess) but went so far as to suggest that if he were to ever play his own games- this would be the one to win him over. Which I guess either speaks to the amount of overarching world lore that George R.R Martin contributed to the script, or just the general dynamism captured in this new open-world infrastructure. (I suspect the latter.) Even Miyazaki, mister 'I control everything' could find something new to love and discover in this game. Theoretically, that is, he still probably won't play it so that he can spend time mastering some new Magic booster deck metagame or something. 

Which I guess just goes to show how important it is that even men such as Miyazaki, giants in their respective fields, have a talented and passionate team working under them not only to bring their wild dreams to fruition, but apparently also to playtest the finished product in order to ensure it's all come together. Although I have to ask, how many other famous directors just aren't interested in their own games? Kojima usually puts himself in his games, is that in lieu of him actually picking up the controller and donning the shoes of the avatar in those games? Did Ken Levine sit down to slap his wrench about Rapture? Does Todd Howa- actually, I'm pretty sure Todd Howard doesn't even have a physical body outside of his Beach- he probably can't play games. Maybe all the best directors are so good they don't even play games anymore. Food for thought.

Dark Souls: The Ultimate game?

Totally undeserved rant incoming!

Dark Souls is a cultural phenomenon of a game within the world of the gaming community, and those who've fallen for it's depressive, fatalist, doom-trodden charms have a hard time hiding their masochistic love for this franchise. (It's me. I'm talking about me in the third person.) With the amount of love this franchise has received, spawning from a title that seems pretty outwardly janky to the uninitiated, it really is no surprise that this game has established its very own mythical space above the pantheon of gaming. I mean, this is a game that has influenced the creation of an entire sub-genre around it, dozens of copycats try to reshape it's formula and glean some new side of it's gameplay that they can explore, fans drool over the prospect of any type of continuation from it's premise, even the spiritual successors; and FromSoftware just can't stop making them. Which is good for them, I suppose. When you find your niche, you should stick with it. But is it the Ultimate Game of all time?

I bring up this most arbitrary of questions because very recently we saw the ever-famous Golden Joystick Awards come and go with such little fanfare that I totally missed it. (Seriously, who advertises for these things? Would it kill them to invest in ad space on websites?) There were a lot of gaudy announcements of the night, including the very question award of 'ultimate gaming hardware' which went to the PC. The PC? That seems almost like a pathetically cheap answer, doesn't it? That's basically saying "The ultimate gaming machine of all time is the one that you could theoretically make with imaginary unending funds, access to currently depleted resources and enough specialist technical knowhow." You gave your 'ultimate award' away to a freakin' idea! Heck, I have a PC that just about matches pace with last generation hardware and am simply in the wrong tax bracket to even think about upgrading- yet the PC is 'The Ultimate'? Not, the influential NES, the groundbreaking N64, or heck, the single biggest console of all time, the PS2? A game console that arguably did more for gaming than any other console before or after it thanks to it's proliferation into pop culture? Nah, "It's a computer because those desktop boxes can fit the shiny strobe lights", I guess.

So I'm not exactly jiving with the concept of the Golden Joysticks so far, that much is clear. Some of the big awards for this show are actually being handled either entirely or mostly by fan votes, and so we can expect a certain level of short-sighted 'excitable fan' syndrome with these rewards. Those contributing aren't taking the time to consider the award objective, ponder all angles, and then graciously picking the single choice that best exhibits the word 'Ultimate'. Nah, they're just picking what seems familiar at the time and sticking with it, which sort of takes the prestige out of these awards a little, doesn't it? I mean sure, 'power to the people's voice' or whatever, but when the stakes are set up like this then isn't scoring a win less a testament to your ability to stand the test of time in the minds of the thoughtful and experts of the field and more just- who has the most rapid fans that are going to jump on any online board voting opportunity? Who care rightly say?

I don't trust awards and award ceremonies, is the basic takeaway you should be getting from all of this. I think they're rarely awarded purely for the merit they pretend to be about, whether intentionally or otherwise, and more often than not turn out to be utterly meaningless on the general stage. So it's with a great amount of learned suspicion that I approach the grand claim that Dark Souls is the Ultimate game of all time. Don't get me wrong, I adore Dark Souls to a fault, as one can easily see from merely browsing this blog a little and seeing the more than two blogs I've dedicated to merely positing theories about it's lore, and my interpretation of it and it's meaning. This isn't the sort of mild passing interest of someone who played through the game once so that they could hang their 'I beat Dark Souls' award on some imaginary wall of accomplishments. I adore these games. But still I have to question this specific award.

Firstly, when we take a look at the other games that were up for the ultimate reward, holes in the steadfastness of this title start to form themselves. You've got your questionable entries like SimCity (for 'ultimate game'? Really?) To your cookie-cutter run-of-the-mill you-couldn't-have-this-vote-without-including-them old school titles, like Tetris, Pac-Man and Space Invaders. (No Pong... arguably the world's first video game... just going to ignore that one are we?) And then you get to the actual contenders here. Halo, well that game pretty much built online FPS standards, that's a world changer for video games. Minecraft, moved beyond a game into a cultural movement for it's time. Half-Life 2, defined an entire generation of games. Metal Gear Solid, raised the bar for video game storytelling in all facets. And then you see Dark Souls. Influential, artistic, stunning- but Ultimate? I don't know, something about that rubs me as wrong... or as a vast oversimplification at the very least.

Of course, at the heart of all this is the burning question: what do we even mean by 'Ultimate'? I mean if we're talking of 'best games' there are usually specific qualifies to help ground the candidates. 'best online game' 'best RPG' 'Best action game', and usually with an 'of the year' tacked on for good measure. But here we don't get that. No, it's 'Ultimate or nothing', and with that comes the question. Are we talking about what game is the best product? Because even then I don't think it's Dark Souls. Personally, I think Dark Souls III is more fun to playthrough, and most everyone else seems to agree that Bloodborne is the best Souls game. (Again, I haven't played, so I can't say.) Is it the game with the biggest influence on gaming? Because that could easily go to The Legend of Zelda, Call of Duty, GTA or Minecraft for their much more pronounced influence on the way that the gaming industry has trended, rather than just pioneering a subgenre offshoot of Action Adventure games. No matter what way I cut it, I can't find a slice of this conundrum that ends with Dark Souls wearing the crown of 'Ultimate'. In anything. Truly.

I think there's a sort of fetishization that surrounds the Souls games, and specifically the one's touched by Miyazaki, and I think it stems from genuine love that sometimes branches into something a lot less genuine. These game are art-house titles with a great director, a talented team and publisher money behind them, and that shows in their odd-ball aesthetic and oftentimes impenetrable charm. As far as art-house games go, Dark Souls has managed to beat the odds and become somewhat mainstream in perception (at least compared to it's contemporaries) but there's still a decently larger percentage of players who've heard the hype about it over those who have actually sat down to play the thing. But sometimes those that do, emboldened by the reputation, come away with a sort of brow-beaten reverence towards it. They've been told it's intelligent, flawless, a masterpiece, and they come away nodding their heads without ever having formed those thoughts independently for themselves. I mean if we're talking about this game like it is flawless, let me offer a single counter: The Bed of Chaos. There, literally the worst boss From have programmed in the last 11 years, is an unavoidable encounter in Dark Souls- what's that about?

None of this is to crap on Dark Souls, by the way. I love the game and if Miyazaki is as moved by this reward as his written statement seems to imply, then I cannot be more happy for a creator I truly respect and admire. But I just find the very concept of this reward totally vapid and meaningless, and undeserving of a game like Dark Souls. Or heck, any game it could have been stuck onto. Whatever 'Ultimate' was supposed to evoke (I suspect it was intended as a 'throw a bone to the audience' style reward of fluff and glided pomp) lies absent from it's significance and no one is going to better off for it. Dark Soul's team aren't going to printing that on any new physical release they have upcoming, (because they don't have any) people who hear about this aren't going to suddenly rush out and buy the game as if this is the validation they've been waiting for, and no one is going to appreciate the game any more or less than they already did. So well done, Golden Joysticks, you made a nothing burger and we all bought it. Yummy.

'The Abyss' Trope

Alternate title: It's okay to steal and why you should.

When it comes to crafting a narrative, even one that is made to be unique and explore untested waters, there are bound to be some basic themes and concepts that are borrowed from or inspired by other pieces of work; or maybe entirely separate concepts that line-up together from complete coincidence. These 'tropes' as we dub them may have a name commonly synonymous with a negative connotation, but they don't necessarily have to represent the mark of an unimaginative storyteller incapable of innovation and creation by themselves. Oftentimes, the fact that these concepts even become tropes in the first place is because they are so rich of ideas, with such range to them, that they can be used again in completely unique narratives, perhaps even to achieve a different purpose, and still be interesting. The very act of an idea becoming a 'trope' marks it as one of some value, worthy of revisiting or reconstructing time and time again. (I mean, as the adage goes: "Good artists take, great artists steal". Or something to that avail.) To celebrate and familiarise myself with that, I want to explore once such trope as it exists within a few prominent fantasy worlds; the 'Abyss' trope.

When it comes to creating various factions and world forces in a fantasy setting, purpose and function can really stretch the limits of the imagination as the storyteller can get to describing factions as mundane as trade blocks to forces as wild as governing bodies for the very laws of nature. 'The Abyss', as it most commonly exists in the examples I've noticed, generally leans towards that latter extreme; telling of a force, often somewhat conscious, made up of, or representative of, complete and total nothingness. An 'Abyss' between the material of reality whereupon nothing should exist, and yet does. Of course, it's not always called 'Abyss', that's just one of my more colourful names I've noticed for it, sometimes it has a more descriptive name in 'The Void'. A somewhat philosophical concept when you think about it: live substance representing the lack thereof, so you can already sort of see the legs of such an idea and how it gets around. Still, I've picked out four fantasy worlds who I believe all have examples of such a concept, to various extremes, to see the different ways one might approach it, and thus the variety with which any storyteller can approach any trope in general. (Savvy? Good.) 

First up, Genshin Impact. That's right, the game often accused of stealing it's very soul from Breath of the Wild, and the idea of various newer updates from other properties or games since. (I can definitely see the Windwaker comparisons for the Summer Island update) This game has it's own take on the 'Abyss' trope, and it comes in the form of the oft-ignored major enemy faction: The Abyssal Order. Rather than being anything as esoteric as a faction borne entirely from the lack of everything, there's an actual comprehensive, if still-in-process, explanation behind them that I think holds an interesting parallel to the Abyss trope. The order, as it is told, hail from the land of Khaenri'ah, the location of the upcoming penultimate chapter of the main Genshin story and the one land that doesn't actually exist in Teyvat.

That is because this land, unlike every other in the game, isn't ruled over by a god, or Archon, making it totally unique against everything else we've seen in the game so far and linking to the concepts of false god hood that keep being bought up in the story. This society ends up coming to ruin, and the Abyssal Order are it's remnants striking out at the god-ruled lands with some unknowable end in mind. For this instance, the concept of 'the Abyss' is synonymous with destruction, or even just the absence of Divinity. As though being without the guiding hand of some sort of god is to be lost, creating some interesting interpretations for the message; is freedom itself 'the abyss'? That questions like this can be even be derived by something as ostensibly straightforward as Genshin Impact speaks wonder for the effect of the trope on the narrative, although until the story of Khaenri'ah is expanded we're working purely with speculation at this point. 

Next I've bought up the Divinity franchise, classic Role Playing games that I've often lambasted for their callously noncommittal approach to worldbuilidng that leads to large swathes of the universe and the forces that govern it being rewritten on a dime. Point-in-case, it wasn't until the Original Sin series that the games suddenly decided that the big-bad entity you should be struggling against is 'The Void'. Here we're talking about a much more literal interpretation of the concept, with 'The Void' representing the absence of matter entirely, a place of nothingness between space and time wherein nothing can exist. 

Yet from that void comes agents intent on dragging all that does exist back towards nothingness, and thus the ultimate goal of this 'Void' always seem to lay down a blanket of nonexistence over everything. In this sense, the trope presents it's 'Abyss' as a force of primordial nature intrinsically opposed to all that is, almost in spite of common sense and reasoning. An approach that feels like it excludes deeper introspection but I'm sure we could wax lyrical about the meaning behind meaningless if we were really desperate to search for meaning. We're not, however, and I'd call Divinity's interpretation of 'The void' as the prototypical approach from which to compare all others.

And now onto my favourite; the world of Dark Souls. In this universe ruled by primordial flames, wisps of souls and the dark essence known as Humanity, it only makes sense that the approach towards 'The Abyss' and it's role in the overall narrative is atypical. This is one of those games that also, famously, has a highly interpretive foundation for the lore, thus nailing specific concepts such as this one are difficult without coming to one's own conclusions on the matter. 'Abyss' seems intrinsically linked the concept of 'Humanity', (otherwise known as 'shards of the Dark Soul') and seems to represent the other end of the spectrum to the 'hollowing' we see throughout the majority of the franchise. Hollowing represents someone who has lost all their souls and humanity and thus lost themselves in the process, whilst becoming consumed by the Abyss appears to be (again, up to interpretation) given oneself over to the chaos of Humanity and being overwhelmed by it's influence.

Some significant moments throughout the franchise present pockets of Abyss as this chaotic consuming force that constantly threatens to corrupt and/or swallow all around it. (Although, crucially, still distinct from the wild nature-tied force known as 'Chaos') 'The Abyss' is still represented as overwhelming darkness, but it seems to stand for something more than just total annihilation, more like pure selfish consuming greed, perhaps even the hungry tyranny of Humanity itself. There's a lot to be said for allegory and the way it works within Dark Souls, but the take away I want for this blog is the plain fact that even a trope ostensibly presented like normal can still underlie deeper and interwoven concepts and thus evolve the original trope.

Last but by no means least is the version of this trope that I understand least, as it comes from that font of lore just a little too deep for me to get a complete handle over it all; D&D. This Abyss, or 'The Infinite Layers of the Abyss, is actually a plane of existence, rather than just the space between planes, placing it line with other realms such as The Prime Material plane (main setting for most of DnD) and the various other 'building blocks of reality'-esque planes. This Abyss is actually full with a great deal of substance to it, being as how it's home to The Nine Hells and several other antagonist realms besides. It's not perhaps the singular source of everything bad within the worlds of D&D, but it certainly houses it's demons, and demons make for pretty tempting scapegoats in any story

Interestingly, D&D's interpretation of 'The Abyss' is a lot less matter-of-fact and passive than other contemporaries. Whereas the Abyss might still be threatening in other stories, it's usually out of unconscious compelling of nature rather than concerted malice. This Abyss, though not exactly a sentient force of it's own, still stands to represent some form of pure evil; giving us an actual tag of the antagonistic on this version of the trope.  

There we have different shades of the same concept in merely a handful examples that still manage to drastically change the form, role and even purpose of the trope in question; making the idea seem wholly distinct in many interpretations. Although the Void/Abyss always does seem to be something to fight against, perhaps indicative of that natural human desire to stave off oblivion and the call of the void, everyone had a different idea of what form that takes and even how active of a foe this Abyss/Void is. (I even suspect Genshin Impact might try to make us feel sympathetic of the Abyss for it's final chapter, whenever that eventually launches) Perhaps from that you've seen the utter deluge of complexity and choice still available to a storyteller from a single borrowed idea. In conclusion; don't be afraid to steal an idea, because the way you choose to bring it to life can rewrite it's entire identity.

Elden Ring is NOT the sequel to Dark Souls

 Hearest thou my voice, still?

Okay, everyone's had fun with these concerted and absolutely conscious attempts to piss me off through way of getting the absolute simplest of facts wrong, but I think it's gone far enough. We're all really excited about the new Elden Ring game from Fromsoft, and I understand fully how anticipation for getting the scoop on a title as promising as this one is going to get in the way of some games reporter's ability to do basic research. (Trust me, I feel that all the way.) But there comes a point where you're hammering home an easily fact-checked mistake, to the extent where entire articles have been published headlining specifically it, and it begins to seep from innocent unfamiliarity to wanton ignorance. So let me make it very clear for everyone at the back right now; Elden Ring is not the sequel to Dark Souls. It is the successor, but there's a world of difference in that simple synonym which diverges the definition significantly. So let's start at the simple beginning.

This really began when people began to note how similar Elder Ring looked to Dark Souls, with them both going for European Medieval fantasy settings as opposed to the feudal Japan cultural influences of Sekiro or industrial Victorian influence of Bloodbourne. (I'm not as familiar with either of those two titles and the lore around them, so I won't bring them into this, which should be fine as no one else seems willing to do that either.) Rationality would dictate this is because of the same base inspiration within the hearts of these worlds, Berserk, but without having played Elden Ring that's merely a supposition. Whatever the reason, the indication is clear; this isn't just going to be another one shot, this could very well be FromSoftware's next flagship series that they come back to now that Dark Souls is buried. Making it the Dark Souls successor. But regardless to what some art trying to claim, that doesn't automatically make it a sequel series.

In fact, when we really break it down to it's core, theorising that Elden Ring is a sequel to Dark Souls doesn't even really make sense if you understand what the Dark Souls franchise was about on even a base level, not even touching on the deeper hints of the lore and the various factions. And I don't care what 'George R.R. Martin' had to say about his work on a video game he'll never play and a series of games he hasn't played. This is a man who doesn't care about games, just telling stories, so I'm sure that when he heard this was a game that would follow Dark Souls he just went "Sure, it's a sequel. Whatever." Let's not use the ramblings of a 72 year old man as conclusive evidence fully detailing the structure of the FromSoftware library of franchises, not when there's a lot more very simple explanations that we could be learning from.

Let me lay it out for everyone, and bare in mind I'm about to spoil the entire Dark Souls franchise right now; there is literally no way that Elden Ring could take place within the Dark Souls universe, because that universe doesn't exist anymore. Or at least, everything recognisable and identifiable which makes the Dark Souls world stand out, was erased at the end of Dark Souls III. That was the entire purpose of that game, to close out that franchise as conclusively as possible. And given the tidbits of lore we've heard about Elden Ring so far, such as it being set in a universe ruled by demigod warlords, the new game isn't a prequel either. Remember that Dark Souls, as a franchise, rather helpfully covers the birth of the world and it's death, aligning with one of the utmost key themes of the series in the natural cycle of life. Nothing is meant to persist, all things wither, and everything ends eventually. Just like Dark Souls ended. It would be a literal betrayal of theme to continue it on in a sequel.

At the beginning the Dark Souls of timeline there was the 'age of ancients', an age characterised by a world still very much in formation and consisting of just the basic elements of nature and some Dragons, because I suppose Dragons exist outside the natural order of nature. (I guess they can, as a literary trope, be largely allegorical, so it's thematically justified.) In this age are Hollows, soulless husks of beings devoid of any higher function typically required for tasks such as thought or assuming purpose. That is until they stumble upon the First Flame, a primordial force of nature representative of its element; the First Flame is the personification of life, desire, drive, and the very concept of a soul. It's from the First Flame that these Hollows are ascended, gaining the souls of Lords, transforming them into god-like entities. These are Gwyn, The Witches of Izalith, Gravelord Nito, Seath the scaleless and the Furtive Pygmy. Together they overthrew the Dragons and ushered in a new age, the age of fire.

All the Dark Souls games take place at various points within the Age of fire, and the worlds we explore, Anor Londo, Dragleic, Lothric, are all kingdoms birthed from the age of fire, crafted through the power granted from the First Flame. These are kingdoms ruled by gods and other wielders of immensely powerful souls, and the size and prosperity of their domain is a direct reflection of the strengths of those souls. As such, it's no mistake that every single Dark Souls game takes us through these kingdoms in their twilight years, when the grandeur has faded and decay has set into every stone tile across the land. That is because Dark Souls tells the story of the time when life has reached its end for the first flame, because fire, as something which consumes to live, can never last forever. Lord Gwyn, however, was a man who built all he was around the power granted to him by the flame, and thus the reason these stories exist is because he struggled to prolong the flame indefinitely, and spat in the face of the natural order through doing so.

And make no mistake, prolonging the flame is an affront to nature. We're told right away how The Witches of Izalith tried to create their own artificial flame to replace the dying one, and in doing so created a profane uncontrollable chaotic flame that lashed out and destroyed their home, burning and mutating all in it's wake. As a force of nature, it is the fate of the First Flame to burn gloriously, to shine resplendently, and then to sputter and to die, but Gwyn couldn't accept that. For whatever reason, I suspect pride, he tried to keep the flame going by feeding it with the very souls it had granted him, anything to preserve the life and world that he had cultivated. His stubborn refusal to accept the inevitability of the end marks him as an enemy of fate itself, and the more he defies fate the more the world and its people suffer. It's even indicated, as the series goes on, that some of the most grotesque and twisted parts of the Dark Souls world are a direct result of this process of recycling souls that artificially prolonged the Age of Flame far beyond its appointed time. The suffering of the Dark Souls world comes from nature screaming out, begging to be allowed to die, because from that death something new can be born.

The age of Dark is foretold to follow Dark Souls, and though we don't know what that actually entails the promise is that it will resemble nothing of the god-ruled age before it. It's an unknowable quantity, a literary device given value for the very fact we will never see what it is and can only guess as to its look and function. Somewhere on the otherside of that will likely be a new age of Fire, but nothing of what Dark Souls is right now will survive to that new age, because as the fire dies so too does everything its power built. (As evidenced by the literal implosion of the worldspace in the final scenes of Dark Souls III) Dark Souls III ends, no matter what choice you make, with the First Flame either dead or moments from dying, granting the inevitable end of all Dark Souls was. It's a beautiful finale, and an exhale of relief for the struggles that characterised Dark Souls.

As such, Elden Ring cannot, under any circumstance, be a sequel to Dark Souls else it would be a total invalidation of what that ending, 5 years in the making, meant. Theoretically, at the furthest stretch, we could look at the world of Elden Ring as the next age of fire, but there seems to be entirely different world rules and overarching forces of nature, which have no relation to some primordial flame; that tells me we're seeing something entirely different. Sure, one might draw some base conceptual parallels between the Urdtree and the First Flame, as central forces of something important probably tied to the nature of the world, but that's just a trope of fantasy worlds. Or else are we going to wind in the Crystal from the various Final Fantasy games as evidence of how FF is within the Dark Souls universe? Make no mistake, no one who went to the effort to tell the story that Dark Souls did, about fighting against and then accepting the ultimate end, would sully that with a sequel; it would be the height of dishonesty to your own message. Dark Souls had been put to rest, and now something utterly new has arrived, it's time we approach that reality with the respect it deserves. And stop with the "is this a sequel?" articles, for everyone's sake.

Dark Souls: Nightfall

 And then there was fire

Well would you look at that? A mod after my very own heart given my, often overbearing, adoration of the Dark Souls franchise. Anything that happens in this Dark twisted plain, forever situated at the very edge of a dying world, has my absolute attention right off the bat, which is something I didn't think I'd need to take into account anymore now that the series is good and dead after the successful completion of it's story. (Hear that? The series is over. No amount of Elden Ring is going to change that, because that game isn't a sequel!) But even having come to terms with that, there's still that nagging part of me which loathes to abandon a video game universe that once meant so much to me, because those memories, lasting and forged in sheer pain, tie me down. Thus I can only imagine it was in sort of recognition of those lingering memories, that Youtube Recommendations immediately hit me with the trailer for a brand new ambitious fan mod coming for Dark Souls Remastered, which looks to expand upon a game series I love.

Now mods aren't anything new to the Dark Souls world by any stretch of the imagination, but a lot of the most famous ones aren't really... designed to extend that Dark Souls experience. You know, that carefully constructed and weighed balance between tough but achievable which fans are forever butting heads against. The mods we see for Dark Souls games are typically huge overhauls that seek to just completely throw out pre-conceived notions of 'balance' and just make the game as hard as possible. Spawn several hundred more enemies in the game to stand in-between baked in spawning grounds? Sure. Enchant some enemies with a red-eyed aura that makes them Sekiro back to life after their first death, stronger then when the went down? Why not? Give us a randomiser mod so that the exquisitely intentional placement of the world and its items become a mismatched jumble of AI dictated chaos? You betcha, we're all over that! But what about that one mod which just wants to keep what makes Dark Souls special and provide more of it? Well, that's a tall ask and some might say an impossible one for someone who's not a trained and practised Game Developer. And to be fair I don't know the credits of the entire Team involved, but that's at the very least the mission statement for Dark Souls: Nightfall. 

To be brutally honest with you, I don't really like the name all that much. 'Nightfall' sounds a little obvious of a title for a Dark Souls related product, and certainly lacks the panache of another Dark Souls mod by one of this mod's creator's: Daughters of Ash. Speaking of which, it seems that the Daughters of Ash mod is a direct predecessor to this project, or at least that's the impression I get from looking at the personal web page of one involved developer: Grimruhk. But whilst that was an expansion upon the Souls world, this actually pitches itself as a direct sequel, which immediately makes me think about the sequel that was already made for Dark Souls, but then I remember how that was a surrealist journey through a land of no-consequence wherein you fought time travelling tree-giants and spent the entire length of the plot engaged in a side mission that didn't even address your primary reason for starting the journey in the first place. I can see why one fan took it into their own hands to make a sequel.

But what does a 'Sequel' even imply, what would something of that kin even look like? Well much like Daughters of Ash, the mod appears to be taking assets and world pieces from the base Dark Souls game and recycling them into this new mod space in the form of new encounters. An elegant solution, a gardener's solution actually, for it assures that everything we see will look and feel will fit as if it's from the Dark Souls that we recognise, and with the exception of some inflated models and added effects, it very much is. (Plus, I don't think Dark Souls has official Modding tools. Creating and adding in a whole new game's worth of original textures and meshes would probably be much more of a pain than it's worth.) The results actually do look inviting, even for someone as familiar with the base game as I am, for when the base game we're talking about is Dark Souls, more of the same is all great with me.

Of course, all that isn't to say that there aren't some new surprises waiting there for the hopeful who wants something new from their Souls adventure. One of the stand outs for the trailer was a new Katana type that appears to be two handed and is worn on the back of the player, like a Dai-Katana. Whatsmore, this weapon comes with a curiously new looking moveset that features a quick backdodge that I swear lifts the effects from the Milkring of Carthus from Dark Souls. The whole 'disappear like a phantom' thing brings back those sore PVP memories at the very least, even if the effect is wholly custom. The mod promises to have other little surprises like that, and a diehard is certainly going to find it a special moment to stubble on something they think they know only to have it totally surprise them in a fun way.

    

Recent years have seen an huge influx in all of these types of crazy Modding projects that go on for multiple years and aim to cure cancer or something, to the point where they're almost becoming as big events as a new game release itself. The Witcher 3 similarly just dropped a brand new anticipated Quest mod that has some groundbreaking, and slightly controversial, technological techniques in it's construction. Personally I love to see the way fans are taking control of the games they're given and turning it into their spot in the limelight, it's a special dedication to something you love as well as a wonderful way to market oneself and your talents, all and all it's a win win! (Though I wonder what the FromSoftware team make of projects like this. Are they flattered or insulted that one would deface their work? They're a weird company, it could go either way.)

We're due a glimpse into the realms under the Undead Asylum as soon as this December, which marks it as one of the few big mod projects out there with an honest-to-goodness release date and not just a- "Hey, this is cool isn't it? Well we're expect it come 2030 and be happy if it comes at all." Whatsmore, this release date it exactly one month before when Elden Ring's first, almost certain to be delayed, release date is due. I hope that's a coincidence and not a matter of "Oh crap, Elden Ring's release date was just announced! We need to hurry and get this out before it gets buried under the new game!" As it plays out right now, the average Souls fan can find themselves enjoying this remix of a classic masterpiece as an entrée to the Elden Ring main course. One last send off of the franchise we've loved for the past 10 years now. (So no pressure to the mod team.)

The age of fire will never truly die whilst there's the calibre of creator out there willing to devote years of their personal life to projects like this. And those that can't let the Souls universe go can rest easy in the fact that neither can others out there. It's gaming royalty now, and getting mods with stupid amounts of love and effort in them is par for the course. I'm just glad to see that the original Dark Souls is finally getting the modding love that the other games were getting due to it actually now owning a decent port. (Prepare to die Edition was a sin against computer gamers everywhere.) Can't wait to play it for myself once Elden Ring gets indefinitely delayed and we're all desperately crawling for a souls-like to fill up that heart-void. Till December!