This article was published Jul. 10th, 2014, on LeBlogJeuVidéo.be, a french-speaking video game blog, and created by Yours Truly, co-authored by the incredible Washisama.
Back to the prehistory
For the not-so-young among you, perhaps you remember a time when the Internet was still a very abstract thing, actually nonexistent, and when all information relevant to a video game was found in specialized magazines, or circulated word-of-mouth. Dear oldtimers, just like me, I’m sure you sweated blood and tears on Sierra’s very first point and clicks with the Leisure Suit Larry series, the various King’s and Space Quest series or even Lucasarts/gameslike the awesomely quirky Maniac Mansion or Monkey Island. And if I go even further down my memory lane, I remember playing on my C64 where we had only a small very vague instruction manual and the vague formulation of a goal for only introduction. Worse still, at the time, we were all happily and carelessly using pirated games, mostly delivered on two or three audio cassettes compressed via TurboTape, and of course no instructions at all, no tutorial, no ready-made walkthrough on Youtube or GameFAQ to guide us.
Take Fort Apocalypse, for example, a scrolling shooter where you had to infiltrate an underground complex by helicopter to destroy a nuclear reactor. We started the game with several paths, several possibilities of directions to take. A sort of labyrinth that fed our discussions in school. We tried to reproduce the tricks that friends had found. And after many trials and tribulations, and even cheats (remember POKE 36339,153 ?) we finally arrived in front of the reactor. The feeling of (quasi orgasmic) elation when we finally made the target blow up is still etched in my mind.. And then… the game sent us back to the very beginning, just to start all over again, this time with tougher enemies. I remember a Lucasarts game called Koronis Rift. You had to traverse canyons on a strange planet, find abandoned relics, while being chased by the planet’s security system, and trying to figure out what the relics could be used for. Nothing was explained, everything had to be tested to understand how the relics worked, interact with each other. And all this, under the constant threat of enemy fire..
Fast forward 30 years …
The Web is everywhere. Thousands of gamers do walkthroughs on Youtube, or even live on Twitch, and this, sometimes, even before the release of a game. There are detailed guides and FAQs everywhere. But the games themselves have also changed: extensive tutorials, messages and clues on the screen, linearity, lots of hands-holding. And we all very quickly got into the habit of this “casualization”.
Hardcore, the Return: Dark Souls?
Then, one summer day in 2012, while I was looking for a little chill in my attic apartment, I saw that this particular hardcore game from the PS3 console, Dark Souls had been ported to PC and was available on Steam. I had already heard a lot about this title, a spiritual successor to Demon’s Souls and renowned for its difficulty, another PS3 exclusive. I loved the look, total impulse buy. Couple minutes later, I threw my mouse in a corner and understand that without a pad, this was just not playable. Got the gamepad out of storage, and the experience did indeed change drastically but….what the heck… This demon is so big that … it is not even displayed completely on my screen! And what the heck, squared… killed in one fell swoop??? This is supposed to be the tutorial, and I die, and die, and die again? I must have started over at least 20 times before I realize that this specific demon should at this point be avoided (unless you know what you’re doing). I spent finishing the Undead Asylum, the starter area, even before I get to Lordran and the game really starts…
Death galore in Lordran
Arriving in Lordran, I look around and can see basically 2 paths – after searching, actually 3. I move towards the nearby ruins, and the adjacent cemetary, populated with what seems to be puny skeletons. But the skeletons hit like a hammer, and resurrectn and gang up on me, until I find myself stuck between a tombstone and a giant skeleton with a big ass machete which one-shots me again… and again… and again. Pad goes also flying in the corner of the room, and I have to stop playing for the day : I’m virtually shaking. The next day, I relaunch Dark Souls and walk a little further into the graveyard, avoiding the skeletons, coming to the catacomb’s entrance and getting slashed to bits. I start again and this time I fall to my death. Again and again. I’m starting to tell myself that this is probably the beginning of the end, I’m getting old, I don’t have such good reflexes anymore and I have to pass the torch on to future generations. A month later, having played and completed Sleeping Dogs and Darksiders 2, I realize Dark Souls is still taunting me on Steam. I’m relaunching the game. I’m still at Firelink Shrine. And I see one of the other players’ “ghosts” heading in the opposite direction of the graveyard. Towards the cliff. I decide to follow them. And..Oh, gosh… the path continues up there too! First enemy, NOT a skeleton but a hollowed soldier… I manage to best him and he stays down. I continue down the path and although I die lots of times, this path seems to be less hostile. And after lots of hours, I reach finally the second bonfire…
And I felt that same euphoric feeling that I hadn’t felt in years. The rest of course is now history: Dark Souls, I’ve finished it many times. And there was, from that second bonfire, lots of death and frustration to come. And I finished the game with different builds: Pyromancer, DEX / FAITH, pure INT, Tank… moving on after finishing and playing NG +. And yes I still die. B I always get so annoyed when the Capra Demon stupidly kills me because his dogs get me stuck against a wall. And of course, I also finished Dark Souls 2 which, while remaining in the continuity of Dark Souls, brings back a lot of elements of Demon’s Souls. Every game is a throwback for me to that blessed time when a game was hard, but fair. Reward and punishment. No big GPS arrow to show you the route to take. It’s up to you to make your choices, whether they are good or bad. Because in Dark Souls there are no bad choices. Just tough choices. Like a real role-playing game, it leaves you free to fail miserably or to succeed, but always forcing you to take responsibility for your actions.
Beyond history
In the Souls series, the player finds himself catapulted into this mysterious universe with a rather vague goal. Information gleaned here and there from the item descriptions and monologues of the NPCs scattered around this vast, twisted world helps you put the pieces of a somewhat fuzzy puzzle together. And then, once again, Dark Souls opens its true role-playing heart to us: we link the blanks in this apparently disjointed scenario, we find our story, we shape our character: hero or simple pawn? We gradually discover the fates of the protagonists and antagonists of Boletaria, Lordran and Drangleic. And the more time we spend there, the more we realize that absolutely nothing is left to chance. Each item placement, each character, each setting tells its story. Everything is nested so as to form a sort of grand scheme. And if ever a void persists, the imagination fills it. Not that different from the games of yesteryear. Okay after that, yes I went to see some tips on the web. There are bosses, I couldn’t beat them. I was trying. But I couldn’t. And suddenly I learned a ton of new things. Secrets I had passed by, alternative paths. And there, for the first time in many years, I once again felt this pleasure of discovery and sharing within a community just as lost as me. With Dark Souls 2, I made a conscious choice NOT to consult the web. To discover the game for myself. And that was indeed the culmination of all expected effects. The game opened up to me with all its beauty, its mystery, its pitfalls and challenges, which could be overcome as long as we take our time and reflect. Because we learn from our mistakes. And also because, like the other guy said, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.
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