How Dark Souls Turned Bad Ideas Into Genius - A Retrospective in Game Design
I have a strange relationship with the Dark Souls series. On the one hand, the only true Dark Souls game I've played is Dark Souls 3, and not for very long because I wasn't having fun with it. On the other hand, through watching other people play through the other games I have developed a fascination and kind of grudging respect for the series as a whole.
If nothing else, there's no denying the success and critical acclaim the series has received: anything that lends its name to a new sub-genre of role-playing video game is worthy of analysis. 'Soul-like' or 'souls-borne' games are reasonably commonplace now, characterized by difficult gameplay, branching path exploration and the developers taking sadistic glee in human suffering. The particular Soul-like I've played the most is Salt and Sanctuary, which is pretty much exactly the same as Dark Souls except it's a side-scrolling action platformer with better controls. Oops, shots fired.
It is through observing this growing genre in combination with my own experience playing Dark Souls 3 and Salt and Sanctuary that made me realize something: the defining traits of Souls games are actually very, very bad design choices on paper. There are a number of features that seem to be deliberately difficult, clunky, frustrating and time-wasting, which would be universally condemned if they appeared in a different series with slightly different execution. But the folks over at From Software and the more competent of their imitators have made it work somehow, creating a series of games that even I have to admit is very challenging without actually being unfair.
So let's get specific in discussing how the Dark Souls series has theoretically terrible design, yet makes it work anyway.
1. The Time Wasters: Bonfire Respawns and Recovering Lost Souls
One of the main reasons I stopped playing Dark Souls 3 is because I got truly sick and tired of trudging repeatedly to my inevitable death from my most recent bonfire. The varied enemies and epic fantasy scenery gets very repetitive very quickly after the ten-hundredth time you die and have to sprint past them screaming 'Please don't hurt me! I need to save my estus flasks for the boss!'
This repetitive back-and-forth sapped my morale and gave me a nihilistic feeling that no other video game has made me feel. I just stopped caring: the frustration, excitement, the emotional investment in my progress drained away to be replaced with gray blankness. It was extraordinary, to be honest: the game had managed to waste my time to the point where I had regressed to an almost amphibian-like state of apathy, which is hardly the kind of review quote you want on the box art of your game.
Being flung backwards in time to a bonfire, having to constantly retrace your steps and especially having to recover precious lost souls (which is simultaneously XP and currency in Dark Souls) makes for a very slow, grindy, repetitive experience. Apparently that's not for me, but it is exactly the right mix for others for the following reasons...
It makes death a real penalty
Unlike many other games in this day and age where death is barely a light slap on the wrist, Soul-likes really, really motivate you to play well and 'git gud' as the community is so fond of saying. You can't just waltz through the game, or even power-grind through it: you absolutely have to respect every enemy you come across, otherwise the game will punch you right in the gonads until you learn your lesson. |
| Pictured: Respect, with a bonus dose of raw terror. |
You crave bonfires
Even I will admit: finding a fresh bonfire in Dark Souls is better than Christmas presents on Christmas Eve. It is such a genuine indicator of progress and so deeply entwined with the metanarrative of the game that lighting one up feels... so... damn... good. And the reason it feels so good is only because the rest game is so punishing: if Dark Souls is like a desert that constantly pelts you with burning sand and scorching rays, the bonfires are like oases which you can actually proceed forward from, not to mention get a drink and a breather. Particularly after a boss fight, a bonfire (or the specific game's equivalent) feels like such a great reward for what is basically just a checkpoint and fast-travel location, and that's because the rest of the game sets your expectations so low.Souls are more valuable because they can be lost
It is a unfortunate happenstance in many RPGs that you get so much in-game currency that money just does not feel valuable. Combined with the fact that often you find better loot out in the world than in shops, and it's shockingly easy in a lot of games to end up being uselessly rich with nothing to spend the money on.Dark Souls solves that issue in two ways: souls are used both for leveling up your character and purchasing equipment (which means that even if you never buy or upgrade your gear they are still useful), and you lose the souls you carry upon death and need to recover them before you die again and lose them permanently. This means that no matter what, you always are craving more souls because they are always useful and they can always be lost. The exception is certain items that give you a set amount of souls/currency upon use, which mean that not all your precious progress is wasted if you hit a particularly bad patch of repeatedly dying. This makes the in-game economy both simple and dependent on how well you play, not just on how many hours you sink in.
2. The Clunk, Part One: The Camera Lock-On System
The z-axis targeting system endemic to Dark Souls originates and is inspired by the 3D Legend of Zelda games, particularly Ocarina of Time. Distinguished lineage, right?
Well, I hate it. I almost never use z-targeting in games which have them, because I always feel that I'm sacrificing spatial awareness and awareness of the environment for only a small increase of awareness of whatever is trying to murder me. In fact, because locking on to one enemy forces the camera into looking at them and only them, I tend to find that it increases the likelihood of getting blindsided by the three other wankers you didn't see because you were looking at the first guy. Which is a problem in a game like Dark Souls, because the combat system of the whole game is designed around camera lock-on and the game's design assumes that you will use it. Which means that if you try not to use it, you are going to slowly grind your teeth into a delicately fine frustration-flavored powder.
To me camera lock-on is usually implemented in games only because of horrible camera controls or (even worse) horrible player character control, which is why it tends to show up a lot on games designed specifically for consoles (whoops, shots fired again). I can understand why developers do it: it allows the player to continuously track the enemy they want to focus on, and (more cynically) it means they don't have to work on the comparatively much harder job of making the camera movement smooth, responsive and able to continuously show what is going on. But even though I personally cannot stand it, I can see one very important thematic reason why it was used and continues to be used: cinematography.
It's Cinematic as Hell
When I play games with z-targeting without using the lock-on system, most enemies tend not to be centered in the middle of the screen. This is actually why I do it: keeping them in the periphery most of the time means you can see them, you can keep track of where you are in the environment and you have a better chance of seeing the wanker who will blindside you and ruin your day (more on that later). While this is perfectly acceptable to play by my admittedly odd standards, it does kind of ruin whatever majesty the moment has. It's certainly not anything you'd see in a game trailer, as the big impressive enemy flickers in and out of sight like a Halloween ghost puppet show.
Which brings us to the bad-ass-ness of locking on to an enemy: since it centers them in the middle of your vision it allows you to see them in their entirety, which is vital for thematically important enemies such as bosses. In any souls-like, the bosses are at the absolute core of the gameplay: they are the obstacles which you must overcome to proceed forwards, they are the adversaries that the game is built around and they are the thing that tests every skill you've learned and every lesson the game has taught you, so you should definitely look at them. Aside from the fact that they will murder you if you don't, it is essential from a visual narrative standpoint to appreciate them before you murder them right back.
3. The Clunk, Part Two: Clumsy Gameplay
 |
| Pictured: a 100% accurate dramatization of the Dark Souls combat system. |
Dark Souls has often been praised for its well-designed combat, but I honestly have real trouble understanding why. When compared to other combat-centric RPG games (particularly competing titles like Dragon's Dogma or even the bare-bones system of Skyrim), Dark Souls feels very clumsy, slow and unresponsive in comparison. I freely admit that this viewpoint is partially my own fault, as these games were designed from the ground up to be played with a controller and I was playing on a PC with a mouse and keyboard. The reasons I did were twofold:
A. I was and still am really terrible with controllers, and Dark Souls seems like entirely the wrong kind of game to get used to them in.
B. I wanted to test how good From Software was at porting games to the PC.
The answer to point B by the way, is not very good at all. There are reasons for that, though: PC gaming only recently had a resurgence in Japan, and it was mostly the success of Dark Souls that prompted it. They still haven't quite got the hang of it though, with Dark Souls 3 having a small but definitely noticeable delay between pressing a key and the player character acting when using a keyboard on the PC version, which is absolutely crippling for a game that requires lightning fast reactions to enemies jumping you from behind. Which they do, with alarming frequency and startling enthusiasm (more on that later).
Combined with that is something that I now consider to a hanging offence in any form of game with real-time combat: move-queuing. This is where the player character in the game executes the exact commands you give them in the exact order you give them, carrying out all of them until they have completed the last one given. Visually, the queue would look something like this:
This is opposed to a system in more optimized games which don't queue commands at all, so that it is always the most recent command that has highest priority and gets executed next. With that system, the command chain looks like this:
The first model looks reasonable in theory, until you factor in that players change their minds at the speed of their own reflexes. That means that you might input a series of commands to the game, only to input a different series of commands as the immediate situation changes. When move queuing is present it prevents the player from inputting new directions until the previous ones have been executed, which leads to frustrating mistakes and futile cries of 'I didn't mean to do that!' Yes you did, dear player, you just responded to the changing situation faster than the game did. Now you are dead, and have the lovely bonfire trek to look forward to again because the game constantly moves slower than your brain.
The third bugbear I have with the typical Dark Souls combat system is the use of stamina. This is a series staple, and extends to spin-off Soul-likes such as Salt and Sanctuary and Outward. This is something that I genuinely do not understand the appeal of and probably never will. The player character is apparently fit enough to run around for hours without any rest, but not so fit that they can't swing their sword more than a few times without running out of gas. The fact that in the main Dark Souls series the player character is also undead and logically doesn't even eat, drink or breathe also raises the question of why stamina is even relevant to them.
For me the implementation of a stamina meter is, ironically enough, immersion-breaking. It also makes combat much slower and forces you either to take regular breathers when fighting or to dump all your attribute points into Endurance so that you actually have stamina enough for swinging your weapon, dodging and blocking. Put lightly, I hate this system. It forces the player to relinquish control of engagements and adjust to enemies who do not have stamina limits themselves, permanently keeping you on the back foot. But all this crappy combat adds up to something good...
One of the bigger hurdles to overcome in any game where the player has a limited field of view is how not to let the player get constantly ambushed. The Dark Souls series series notably solves this issue by... not solving it at all.
There are numerous meme-worthy moments in the whole Dark Souls series where the player gets blindsided by traps, enemies, environmental hazards and even the occasional invading enemy player. Unless you are very, very observant or already know the area you are travelling through very well the odds are pretty good you will get sent straight back to the last bonfire by a threat that you didn't even see until the last second. The infamous Mimics inspired by the Dungeons and Dragons monster of the same name are a great example of this: if you're new to a Souls-game, you will probably get eaten by them at least once before you learn that treasure chests are not always a good thing.
Generally speaking, it is tremendously unfair in video games to get hit by enemies that you have no way of knowing about and is often a sign of poor design choices. Be it enemies that approach from behind and you can't hear coming, a field of vision that's too small or just dickish enemy placement, giving the player no chance or no time to respond is a good recipe for a not-fun experience and quite an unhappy player. Except not really, for the following very, very important reason...
This addition through gameplay of a constant atmosphere of paranoia and dread fits in perfectly with the depressive world: the whole environment actually feels like it's out to get you, the absence of music except during boss fights making the game feel even more bleak, oppressive and dangerous. On the note of the depressive world...
Good narrative storytelling in games is extremely difficult. It needs to hit that sweet spot between:
1. Telling the player stuff.
2. Having gameplay linked to plot-related stuff.
3. Filling the environment with enough stuff to let the player fill in whatever blanks remain.
Dark Souls is well known for approaching this balance like so:
1. Directly telling the player almost nothing.
2. Having an enigmatic environment filled with generally depressing-yet-epic scenery.
3. The items have descriptions. Good luck, genius. 😎
It is entirely possible to play through a Dark Souls game and not have a single clue about what the hell is going on. Which is fine, because the main draw of Soul-likes is the gameplay rather than the story, which mainly serves as a way to add context to what you are doing and as a way to justify the existence of the numerous monstrosities you fight. Even the path forward is shown not by story, but rather in a non-linear way by what section of the game you are actually able to get through with your character. This kind of storytelling has received quite a lot of praise ever since the first Dark Souls blew all our minds back in 2011, but for people who actually like a cohesive story in their games there are a few issues.
Aside from a pretty fantastical and enigmatic cutscene at the start of the game, you need to go a little out of your way in a Dark Souls game in order to find out the plot. You need to observe the environment closely, talk to NPCs a lot and last and definitely least, read item descriptions. That last one is the one that personally bugs me the most: how does the player character glean paragraphs of information from items? Are the things covered in scribbles that we can just read? Does the player character know more than the player, despite just waking up from a coffin they've lain in for who knows how long, shaking the worms out of their ears? Half the time you only have any idea who or what a boss character is because their name happens to be on top of their health bar when you fight them. A lot of the time you don't even know why you're fighting them, save for the fact that they are immediately hostile upon seeing you.
Generally speaking, this all adds up into a terrible way to tell a good cohesive story. It also leads to the community having long discussions over what on earth is actually happening, all while I imagine the writers over at From Software are rubbing their hands in glee over people getting so invested in something that isn't even really there. Yet despite all that... somehow, it works.
A common theme across almost all Souls games (except Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which isn't so much a Souls game as it is heavily inspired and informed by them) is that the player character is no one really special: just another undead idiot who's managed to not go insane yet, faced with the impossible task of collecting powerful souls and moving the world onto the next stage (whatever it may be). And against the odds, becoming a terrifying badass along the way.
So why would a random undead have any idea what's happening anyway? Aforementioned worms in the ears notwithstanding, there's no way of knowing how much the player character knew about the world before they snuffed it. There's no way of knowing how long the protagonist of the first game languished in the Undead Asylum and how out-of-date they are on current events. There's no knowing how long the protagonist of number 2 was walking before they found Drangleic. And as mentioned before, who knows how long the Ashen One was just chilling in their coffin before their internal alarm rang and they hopped out only to find that they weren't in their hotel anymore?
As mentioned, this sacrificing of the plot allows the player to focus more on the challenging gameplay instead, and makes full use of environmental storytelling so you can draw your own (possibly satisfying, possibly not) conclusions. Whatever the player character (and by extension, the player) learns on their journey is just enough to give some meaning to what they do. These games don't really need more than that.
Ironically, writing this almost makes me want to go back and give the Dark Souls series another chance. Almost...
A. I was and still am really terrible with controllers, and Dark Souls seems like entirely the wrong kind of game to get used to them in.
B. I wanted to test how good From Software was at porting games to the PC.
The answer to point B by the way, is not very good at all. There are reasons for that, though: PC gaming only recently had a resurgence in Japan, and it was mostly the success of Dark Souls that prompted it. They still haven't quite got the hang of it though, with Dark Souls 3 having a small but definitely noticeable delay between pressing a key and the player character acting when using a keyboard on the PC version, which is absolutely crippling for a game that requires lightning fast reactions to enemies jumping you from behind. Which they do, with alarming frequency and startling enthusiasm (more on that later).
Combined with that is something that I now consider to a hanging offence in any form of game with real-time combat: move-queuing. This is where the player character in the game executes the exact commands you give them in the exact order you give them, carrying out all of them until they have completed the last one given. Visually, the queue would look something like this:
This is opposed to a system in more optimized games which don't queue commands at all, so that it is always the most recent command that has highest priority and gets executed next. With that system, the command chain looks like this:
The first model looks reasonable in theory, until you factor in that players change their minds at the speed of their own reflexes. That means that you might input a series of commands to the game, only to input a different series of commands as the immediate situation changes. When move queuing is present it prevents the player from inputting new directions until the previous ones have been executed, which leads to frustrating mistakes and futile cries of 'I didn't mean to do that!' Yes you did, dear player, you just responded to the changing situation faster than the game did. Now you are dead, and have the lovely bonfire trek to look forward to again because the game constantly moves slower than your brain.
The third bugbear I have with the typical Dark Souls combat system is the use of stamina. This is a series staple, and extends to spin-off Soul-likes such as Salt and Sanctuary and Outward. This is something that I genuinely do not understand the appeal of and probably never will. The player character is apparently fit enough to run around for hours without any rest, but not so fit that they can't swing their sword more than a few times without running out of gas. The fact that in the main Dark Souls series the player character is also undead and logically doesn't even eat, drink or breathe also raises the question of why stamina is even relevant to them.
For me the implementation of a stamina meter is, ironically enough, immersion-breaking. It also makes combat much slower and forces you either to take regular breathers when fighting or to dump all your attribute points into Endurance so that you actually have stamina enough for swinging your weapon, dodging and blocking. Put lightly, I hate this system. It forces the player to relinquish control of engagements and adjust to enemies who do not have stamina limits themselves, permanently keeping you on the back foot. But all this crappy combat adds up to something good...
You Must Use Your Brain in a Fight
Always being on the back foot is exactly where having such a clunky system is useful. You have to keep an eye on your stamina when fighting in Dark Souls, and you have to be conservative in how you use it. You can't mindlessly grind through Dark Souls like you can with other RPGs. It doesn't matter how high your level is, if you don't actively think about what you're doing in combat you will die quickly and probably embarrassingly, with only yourself to blame. You can't fully commit to either offence or defence, and you can't mindlessly attack or defend: you must pay constant attention to yourself, your opponent and your environment, and be committed to what you are doing or else you will fail. |
| Behind you! |
4. Surprises Suck: Getting Constantly Blindsided
One of the bigger hurdles to overcome in any game where the player has a limited field of view is how not to let the player get constantly ambushed. The Dark Souls series series notably solves this issue by... not solving it at all.
There are numerous meme-worthy moments in the whole Dark Souls series where the player gets blindsided by traps, enemies, environmental hazards and even the occasional invading enemy player. Unless you are very, very observant or already know the area you are travelling through very well the odds are pretty good you will get sent straight back to the last bonfire by a threat that you didn't even see until the last second. The infamous Mimics inspired by the Dungeons and Dragons monster of the same name are a great example of this: if you're new to a Souls-game, you will probably get eaten by them at least once before you learn that treasure chests are not always a good thing.
Generally speaking, it is tremendously unfair in video games to get hit by enemies that you have no way of knowing about and is often a sign of poor design choices. Be it enemies that approach from behind and you can't hear coming, a field of vision that's too small or just dickish enemy placement, giving the player no chance or no time to respond is a good recipe for a not-fun experience and quite an unhappy player. Except not really, for the following very, very important reason...
Dark Souls Trains You to Be Cynical, Paranoid and Expect the Unexpected
Once again though, the folks over at From Software embraced the innate sadism of this feature and ran with it. Dark Souls and all decent Soul-likes train you to expect and learn to live with surprises. The opening area of Dark Souls 3 is a good example of this: you wake up in a coffin, and the path to the first boss of the game is through a windy canyon path with numerous blind corners and enemies hidden just out of visual range that will stab you in the back, shoot you in the head or bite your arse off if you try to rush forward too quickly or if you aren't observant enough. The game immediately teaches you that danger lurks around every corner, and that you need to be extremely paranoid and trust absolutely nothing if you want to proceed forward unscathed. |
| Pictured: very, very sensible paranoia. |
This addition through gameplay of a constant atmosphere of paranoia and dread fits in perfectly with the depressive world: the whole environment actually feels like it's out to get you, the absence of music except during boss fights making the game feel even more bleak, oppressive and dangerous. On the note of the depressive world...
5. Why Are We Even Here: The Pretentious, Smugly Hidden Plot
 |
| Yup, that about sums it up. Thanks, VaatiVidya! |
Good narrative storytelling in games is extremely difficult. It needs to hit that sweet spot between:
1. Telling the player stuff.
2. Having gameplay linked to plot-related stuff.
3. Filling the environment with enough stuff to let the player fill in whatever blanks remain.
Dark Souls is well known for approaching this balance like so:
1. Directly telling the player almost nothing.
2. Having an enigmatic environment filled with generally depressing-yet-epic scenery.
3. The items have descriptions. Good luck, genius. 😎
It is entirely possible to play through a Dark Souls game and not have a single clue about what the hell is going on. Which is fine, because the main draw of Soul-likes is the gameplay rather than the story, which mainly serves as a way to add context to what you are doing and as a way to justify the existence of the numerous monstrosities you fight. Even the path forward is shown not by story, but rather in a non-linear way by what section of the game you are actually able to get through with your character. This kind of storytelling has received quite a lot of praise ever since the first Dark Souls blew all our minds back in 2011, but for people who actually like a cohesive story in their games there are a few issues.
Aside from a pretty fantastical and enigmatic cutscene at the start of the game, you need to go a little out of your way in a Dark Souls game in order to find out the plot. You need to observe the environment closely, talk to NPCs a lot and last and definitely least, read item descriptions. That last one is the one that personally bugs me the most: how does the player character glean paragraphs of information from items? Are the things covered in scribbles that we can just read? Does the player character know more than the player, despite just waking up from a coffin they've lain in for who knows how long, shaking the worms out of their ears? Half the time you only have any idea who or what a boss character is because their name happens to be on top of their health bar when you fight them. A lot of the time you don't even know why you're fighting them, save for the fact that they are immediately hostile upon seeing you.
Generally speaking, this all adds up into a terrible way to tell a good cohesive story. It also leads to the community having long discussions over what on earth is actually happening, all while I imagine the writers over at From Software are rubbing their hands in glee over people getting so invested in something that isn't even really there. Yet despite all that... somehow, it works.
Considering who the player character is, the lack of information makes sense.
 |
| Who even am I?! |
So why would a random undead have any idea what's happening anyway? Aforementioned worms in the ears notwithstanding, there's no way of knowing how much the player character knew about the world before they snuffed it. There's no way of knowing how long the protagonist of the first game languished in the Undead Asylum and how out-of-date they are on current events. There's no knowing how long the protagonist of number 2 was walking before they found Drangleic. And as mentioned before, who knows how long the Ashen One was just chilling in their coffin before their internal alarm rang and they hopped out only to find that they weren't in their hotel anymore?
As mentioned, this sacrificing of the plot allows the player to focus more on the challenging gameplay instead, and makes full use of environmental storytelling so you can draw your own (possibly satisfying, possibly not) conclusions. Whatever the player character (and by extension, the player) learns on their journey is just enough to give some meaning to what they do. These games don't really need more than that.
Ironically, writing this almost makes me want to go back and give the Dark Souls series another chance. Almost...
 |
| Yeah, maybe not. |
Comments
Post a Comment