Dark Souls 2 journal

Was playing DS2 almost two years ago and was journaling it on Cohost.

Part I

Dark Souls 2 is interesting. I’m still very early in it (making my way through No-man’s Wharf and Lost Bastille), but I like it and I’m puzzled by the reaction to it.

Meta review

World design

The world’s not as interconnected. I’d be a fool to say it’s no big deal. But the areas themselves are larger and still have shortcuts, branching paths, hidden areas inside them.

The exploration and metroidvenia aspect is still there and it feels better on an area by area basis. I always felt it was a bit silly in The Surge and Fallen Order whenever you had to go through a detour only to arrive at the other side of a gate just in front of the resting place. It felt really cheap and disappointing that a corridor or tunnel led me to my starting point and I had to go through there only to open a door or flip a switch. Playing Dark Souls I saw that it was itself responsible for this design.

Now, in Dark Souls 2, since the levels are larger, those winding paths aren’t there just to take up your time until you manage to open up the shortcut from the bonfire to the next step in the journey. When you finally open the shortcut it really feels like a shortcut. Because there are still things you can do by taking the first path.

Up to this point I really like the look of the places. Having more space is the crux of everything the game sets out to do, both in its gameplay and its storytelling.

High level play vs intended play

Now that I actually have the context for the game, every video where the YouTuber complains about getting surrounded or ambushed by enemies seems misleading, I don’t understand how they got so many enemies around them as they’re showing, unless they purposefully gathered them to make a point. In what world do you fight five hallows at the same time in Forest of Fallen Giants? You go towards the sniper carefully, avoiding his shots and waking up as few hallows as possible, then you clear the rest of the ones in your way, if you want to.

Dark Souls allowed for a type of high level play, where some players deluded themselves that “every death was fair” and where through a combination of patience, kiting and cheesing you can move like a locust through an area, maybe only dying at the boss, then doing boss runs.

But c’mon! Sen’s Fortress is not fair! That’s fun about it. It’s a haunted house. You get a feel about it and learn to anticipate the traps, but it’s also funny when they get you and THEN you notice all the signs pointing it out. You have a laugh at yourself and try again.

Matthewmatosis and Matt Lees or whoever were so good at these, that they settled on a very particular type of play, that they promoted as THE way to go through Dark Souls. Avoiding attacks by rolling all the time, backstabbing enemies during a fight, running through enemies just to get an item, making a straight a straight line towards the boss ignoring the enemies on the path and usually not dying. But I don’t think that’s how most people were playing the games. We died. A lot.

People with these view were going as far as to say that Dark Souls isn’t really an RPG, but an action game, where the items and stats are there to allow the player to make a few more mistakes and end the fights earlier. That’s almost like saying the Divinity Original Sin is a box stacking game, with the RPG elements being there to help the player if they didn’t gather enough rocks. Just because it can be done, it’s not reasonable to expect to go from start to finish as a Deprived with the starting broken sword, never leveling up and still managing to finish the game without ever dying.

I think the game wants the player to play it a certain way. It wants them to engage with most of the enemies they encounter, unless they’re sleeping or patrolling. If they’re guarding something, the player should fight them. And the world is designed in such a way as it allows sneaking by and on enemies.

There are also a lot more enemies sleeping or waiting to pounce on the player that can be avoided; it’s not quite a boss run, but by noticing the sleeping or hidden enemies and walking, many encounters can be avoided while doing a boss trek. There are a lot more enemies guarding a route and leaving their back open. I’ve backstabbed more enemies in 15hs of *Dark Souls 2* than in the entirety of *Dark Souls* (partly also because I played the remastered, where the enemies track the rotation of player character and there were fewer opportunities to do it), because there are more situations where it makes sense diegetically to use it, instead of being a silly high level play.

The game wants the player to be more aggressive. None of the early shields have 100% physical reduction, and they have shit stability. The difference between guarding with a weapon becomes taking 30%ish more damage, not 50–60% and you lose life anyway. Might ass well pummel, use items and maneuver away from the enemies.

But the game also wants the player to be more tactical. Many of the early enemies and bosses are designed specifically to take the player out of the habit of rolling to the back of an enemy and pummeling on them.

It also wants the player to become human a lot more often and use summons. Beyond online play and summoning phantoms for boss fights, there was no point in being human in the first one. But there was a point in keeping that humanity counter as high as possible (better drops, better defense). So becoming human was a waste of a valuable resource. Now, the risk of getting invaded is always there, dying too much as a hallow makes you squishy, wastes healing and there are summoning sings outside boss arenas, for the normal enemies. Barely any point in not restoring humanity now and again.

I’m on the fence about the bosses, as I beat only four so far. The Dragonrider and The Pursuer had pretty different move sets and I fought them differently, didn’t feel like it was a samey, repetitive fight. Didn’t LOVE them, but I don’t really love boss fights. Flexile Sentinel was a cool concept. It does seem that there’s a little bit more quantity over quality, no Gaping Dragon moment. But fighting more knight-type characters and horrid humanoid contraptions is also part of the story the game’s telling. It’s something that should be engaged with, not treated as a disappointment that there aren’t all these strange, otherworldly creatures skulking around in the shadows of the world.

Influencers

Maybe it’s wrong for a game to impose a particular playstyle so forcefully, but I don’t think it’s a style of play so alien to the majority of the players. It just goes against how particular members of the Dark Souls community were playing the game and making it seem like it’s the proper way to do it. Dark Souls 2, Scholar of The First Sin especially, nullified a lot the high level play these guys were doing land then they were upset when it was even punishing them for even trying. They made the experience worse for themselves by refusing to change their play style to the way the game intends to; and frankly makes more sense. Backstabbing enemies while they’re already engaged is silly. Rolling all the time is silly as is the alternative of keeping your shield up all the time. Running through enemies is silly. These are all very immersion breaking and yet they’re common advices from seasoned players.

I suspect that for some of them it was a marketing move as well. Being associated with Dark Souls was a big part of their online and critical persona and Dark Souls 2 was a much bigger release than the first one. If they were to stand out from the normie critics, they had to have a “take”. The normie critics would play it, give it a warm review saying that it’s more Dark Souls, some improvements, some disappointments, but a very good game still. But they could actually see the flaws at the seems, the hidden cracks in the game.

Mythic time and historic time

Maybe it’s wrong for the game to force a particular play style, but what all these changes try to do is to make the player more present in the world, to engage with the story not only through lore tidbits in character lines or item descriptions, but also through its layouts, enemy placements, the general architecture and not only the imposing, obvious monuments or statues.

What I think is interesting about Dark Souls 2 is that it feels much more historicized. Dark Souls was set in this mythic time, the architecture and landscapes reflected a hierarchy of beings, from the gods to the humans to the demons. It had obvious parallels with Greek mythology, with its cycles of pre-historical ages where miracles happened and that were often ended by an Apocalyptic War that was much less a fight, but a cosmic struggle. There wasn’t politics or economy or governance or logistics in the same way we’re thinking of those things. The characters didn’t have a psychology. It felt like it existed at a moment just after “God separated the waters from the waters”, where story and reality intertwined, where matter wasn’t fully solid and thought fully ethereal.

In 2 things are different. History has happened, for a while, but it’s halted. In Dark Souls there were the End Times, Dark Souls 2 feels more like the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, a World War and a great flood, all at the same time; very concrete, physical disasters, not The Apocalypse. The War with Giants isn’t so much a gigantomachia, but a series of conflagrations waged with foot soldiers and war machines.

The areas seem to have a sort-of logical function, their layouts hint to logistics, the enemies aren’t laid out ritualistically, as part of a ceremony awaiting the Player Character, but mindlessly carrying out their tasks from when they were alive, some of which are pretty mundane.

The difference between The Firelink Shrine and Majula makes this clear from the start. One is a sacred space, with knights and magicians, distressed damsels and after a while a huge talking snake that eats lumps of metal.

The other is a settlement, barren at first, that the player fills with craftsman and merchants. It has a well that must’ve provided water at some point and pigs that the people living there must’ve ate. Among the common houses there is a “mansion”, so social differentiation among common people. It’s not a realistic world to any degree, but it feels like a world that was on pace to be settled onto the yoke of history. Time would’ve flown linearly, the world could’ve been mapped, the gods that before could’ve walked the land, now forgotten, magic a superstition.

And then their version of the polycris hit. The war with the Giants, the Undead Curse, God knows what else. History averted and the mythic time claws back at the world. I have the feeling that the journey will trace this history, as the areas become once again more and more fantastical and unreasonable in their form and functions.

Now, once again, an undead has to go around, collect all the dispersed souls, scrape every last one of them from the skin of the world, and keep them at their bosom so another world might eventually blossom.

It’s disjointed and disorientating. Like the lady in the intro said, I barely have any sense of why I’m doing anything. I know the gestures of playing such a game and follow them more than anything. Despite what the Emerald Herald’s saying, there isn’t any sort of beacon guiding me to the four Great Old Ones. Dark Souls’ story was a purposeful ritual, this one an echo of it. I just seek larger and larger souls, I open hidden paths and fight bosses so I can seek even larger souls. I die, yet I’m going back at it as soon as I’m revived. And maybe that’s the experience of being hallow. I’m pretty sure that’s how the game wants me to feel.

Part II

Cooperation and dependency

There seems to be a theme of dependence and cooperation running strongly through Dark Souls 2 that I haven’t seen anyone touch on. Or at least it expands on something that was already in the first game, illuminating it retroactively.

In Dark Souls there are three forms of collaboration between the enemies.

1. The tactical, human one in the Undead Burg and Undead Parish. It’s not as fleshed out as it’ll be in 2, but it’s there to some extent. Taken in isolation, no enemy there is dangerous, not even for a new player. It’s the way they support each other that raises problems. The same goes for the Bell Gargoyles. The first one is easy enough to manage, the fight become difficult when the second one joins in, supporting the first.
2. There is the higher being uplifting and controlling the lesser one. The Channelers buffing enemies, The necromancers resurrecting skeletons.
3. And there is the heroic comradeship. Ornstein and Smough, Artorias and Sif in the lore. I’d say that the Silver Knights as well. In a few moments some of them pin you with arrows while you duel with another, but the encounter doesn’t feel like a system, dangerous because of its design. They are dangerous enemies in and of themselves in ways a lone hallow soldier isn’t. And as opposed to the Bell Gargoyles, Ornstein/Smough becomes even stronger when he’s alone. For these beings, working together is a way to display their bonds of friendship and loyalty.

Part III

Beyond the layouts of the areas, with functions draped in appropriate forms, the sense of a historic time in Dark Souls 2 is also communicate through the ease with which the world can change.

Time unshakled

From Software games are famous for their poisonous swamps. They are also famous for their worlds where the flow of time isn’t so much frozen, but clogged, where an end is at hand, but those in power cannot bear to face it letting it all fester. In Dark Souls the main route between The Firelink Shrine and The Undead Bourg is a dried-up aqueduct, now filled with rats. New Londo Ruins had been flooded to keep the Dark at bay and is now a gloomy, haunted place. The poisonous swamp at the base of Blighttown is linked with the heretical pyromancy, some of the god’s attempt to recreate the fading First Flame. On the other hand, in Oolacile, the world’s fairytale past (as corrupted by the Dark as it is) still has some time left so water flows from small springs.

Water is everywhere in Dark Souls 2. Running water. From Things Betwixt, to The Forest of Fallen Giants water runs in streams, it comes down as rain in Lost Bastille and Drangleic Castle and smashes upon the land from a surrounding ocean in almost half of the game’s areas. Even where it gathers in bodies of water like in The Shrine of Amana, it seems to be just a stop on its circuitous journey.

There are exceptions, of course, but they are illustrative themselves. Loyce is a mirror of Oolacile (or an echo of the whole first game), a distant memory of a kingdom from a long time ago, buried in ice and snow by a king who cannot face the end, so he stretches the last moments of existance to a thin eternity. And the most curios of all is Earthen Peak, where a giant windmill powers a sort-of mineral processing plant, forcing the water to flow upwards and filling it with poison. The games’ trademark poison swamp isn’t created by a clog, by stasis, but by forcing an abnormal direction to the flow of water.

A modal world

Dark Souls’ world is for the most part static. It is deeply interlinked, but almost all the shortcuts are opened by unlocking doors or activating elevators. In the few instances where the Player Character affects the world’s layout, it is done with a godlike sheen. Anor Londo isn’t just a city of spires in the sky, it is a Mount Olympus or an Asgard, it is part of the gods themselves and displays the fickle nature of the world’s matter. So, with great effort, the Chosen Undead throws switches that lower and raise great pillars to climb and down the city’s spires. The same goes for opening the floodgates in Valley of the Drakes to drain the waters in New Londo Ruins. Not a dam, but literal flood gates, put there in place by Lord Gwyn, whose will is now challenged.

Light is similar, it’s not the emanation from a source of heat, but the presence of a mystical will. Light can be challenged and controlled and it can be denied. It cannot be conjured through a simple flame, it cannot be carried on a torch. The golden rays of Anor Londo are an illusion, dispelled through the player’s decisions if they so choose. To make their way through The Tomb of Giants, the chosen undead has to place a parasitic bug, fed on souls and plucked from heretical flames, on their head conjure magics or obtain an arcane implement from hostile sorcerers.

Dark Souls 2 shifts all of these. One of the first locked doors can be broken down. It’s the only one where this is the case, but it makes a statement. The world isn’t set in stone. There are shortcuts created through opening doors or elevators, but to a much lesser extent and much fewer ladders that drop or doors locked from the other side. No, the Bearer of the Curse blows up walls, drops down dried-up tree trunks to improvise bridges and operates various contraptions, sometimes in unaccounted ways. They forge their own path forward through the world by changing its architecture and geography to create new topologies.

Light exists now as the emanation of fire and the PC can carry a torch around to light scones and illuminate dark spaces. Slowly lighting up an area doesn’t just allow the player to explore it more easily, it alters its look, its atmosphere, it marks it as conquered, as tamed. Light is a tool to be wielded by everyone, to scare away creatures or to lure them. Light coming from fire, from heat, hints at the increased materiality of the world.

And matter exists in relation to matter, its properties are emergent from these relations and as the relations change, so do the properties. Thick oils can be burned, gunpower dust can be washed away, characters drenched in water suffer much less from flames, but become more vulnerable to lightning.

Some area can be dramatically changed by the Bearer of the Curse through the interplay of light, fire and mechanics. In No-Man’s Wharf, a great torch can be raised to illuminate the whole hidden port. This will keep the spider-monkeys at bay, forcing them to hide in alcoves and in the back of ruined building, but will also allow pirate archers to target the player character from much further away. In Earthen Peak, burning away the pales of the wind mill will stop the refining process and drain most of the water in the upper levels. This uncovers hidden items, allows for greater mobility in some key places and even changes the boss arena.