My Souls — O3C Games

It’s appropriate that I’ve saved my biggest gaming discovery of the last 3-4 years for my final amendment. And that discovery is of course the extraordinary near-faultless oeuvre of FromSoftware. I’ve already found a nice little home for Sekiro in my list, and I needed that to have it’s own place because of how much of a departure it is from the rest of their work. I’ve now played and completed Dark Souls 1, 2 and 3, the incredibly faithful Demon’s Souls remake, Bloodborne and of course Elden Ring.

I’m going to touch on Bloodborne first quickly because it’s not actually going to be finding a home on my list right now which is a huge shame because of what an amazing game it is - how mind-blowing the design is in the game, how much of a brilliant evolution it was of the classic Souls setup, how stunning the boss battles are, how amazing and immediate the combat feels and all the other brilliant things that impressed me about the game when I first played it. However, context is very important. The first From game I played was the Dark Souls Remastered port on the Switch. It had scalable resolution maxing out at 720p, and the frame rate was locked at 30fps, with occasional stutters. I then played Bloodborne, which is a PS4 game, 1080p HD, also locked at 30fps but often hitting around 20-25 as an average I think. This didn’t bother me too much when I first played the game, because it was about on a par with the performance of Dark Souls on the Switch. However, having then been really spoilt with 4K 60fps experiences in Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring, when I came back to Bloodborne fairly recently, I found the performance of it a real barrier. The lower resolution and stuttery frame rate made the precise, swift combat feel really unpleasant and chaotic, and the resolution variation across the game’s assets made the art design look frankly messy and hard to navigate at times. You know that I’m not one to favour technical specs over gameplay, but when the technical specs affect the gameplay, then I have an issue - and it’s a shame when the industry takes great leaps forward, because it can really take the shine off older games that you used to love. I couldn’t go back to playing one of the first person games on the Gameboy Advance now - it wouldn’t even pass as a gaming experience, but at the time I was loving that there was a 3D world in my hands, because I didn’t know any better!

So unfortunately, until Bloodborne gets a facelift or a remake, I think it’s going to remain outside of my list. And I can’t tell you how much I’d love to see it just get a frame rate patch to run at 60fps, and I think everything else would then be alright.

Demon’s Souls also isn’t going in my list, but that’s not because it’s not a great game - it was fantastic to play the remake on the PS5 - really beautiful experience, a great showcase for the new generation of hardware, flawless framerate and resolution performance, zero load times between deaths and loading areas, which is something you would experience a lot of so it was really noticeable. However, there’s nothing in Demons Souls that isn’t done substantially better in the Dark Souls games - it’s very much the foundation that everything was built on following it for FromSoftware. A lot of the technical design of the game was probably compromised by the technical limitations of the PS3, so when viewed through a modern lens, the stage based levels aren’t as compelling as the sprawling interconnected and open worlds of the Dark Souls games, lots of ideas that have been developed further like managing your inventory, weapon upgrades, health management, magic, even the co-op play - it was visionary at the time and has continued to improve with the games that came after it.

So Dark Souls - it took me a while to get into it because I was fiercely holding to my philosophy of you shouldn’t have to not enjoy the first 10 hours of a game to then enjoy the subsequent 30. But, also that first few hours in the game is what I needed to get my head properly around the concept of what Dark Souls was doing. The live die repeat game loop that I hadn’t experienced before took some learning. Even the shoulder button based combat took me a while to get used to after initially trying to remap the buttons to match a Zelda game like a fool! I was quite blown away by how well you took to the first part of the game Minty - you did it in about a quarter of the time that it took me. And the game didn’t really click until I had someone to talk with to guide me through the game, which was my friend Steve. He gave me words of encouragement, little guiding points to help ease me into the game, he even sat with me a few times whilst I played to help me get my head around how to tackle the game. But once it got it’s hooks in me, I was absolutely obsessed! It fit the pickup and playability of the Switch so well - the incredibly addictive gameplay loop of failing and learning, doing the death run to pick up your dropped souls, trying to push a bit further, try something new this time - that loop is genius for starters, and it was really useful to be able to play it in short bursts that the Switch lends itself to really well.

And then I was free to lose myself in this world - slowly uncover the piecemeal lore through reading item descriptions and getting a sense of the atmosphere and history of these different areas that I was crawling through. Being absolutely overwhelmed by every single boss that I came up against - having my breath taken away by their design, their size and their power! Slowly learning their movement patterns, finding gaps in their strategy that i could exploit and eventually overcoming them with a sense of victory and satisfaction that I’d never felt in a video game before.

I’ve always liked games with fairly straightforward concepts, that then do a lot with that concept. And Dark Souls really is that - it’s quite a big concept in terms of its structure, which is why it’s concept is now a genre of its own. But like the concept of a Metroidvania is a straightforward concept and then all of these other games using this structure can build and evolve on top of that. When I got my head around Dark Souls and even better - enjoyed it - I felt like I’d opened the door to a whole other world of gaming.

The sense of accomplishment from beating Dark Souls was so huge that I didn’t even blink before starting New Game Plus, playing through it all again - probably did about half the game in one sitting straight away.

Then I had to decide whether to play Dark Souls 2 or Dark Souls 3 next as I’d picked both of those up for PS4 as well. I made the logical choice of starting Dark Souls 2, but I also knew that what I was playing was the PS4 enhanced version, subtitled Scholar of the First Sin, which had also added more difficulty into the game since its vanilla release. And I was acutely aware of that when I made a start on it - it wasn’t long before it felt like the game was throwing enemies at me without much design. Like they thought - oh this section is a bit too easy, let’s just put 6 more of that enemy there. You weren’t able to apply strategy to these encounters the way you could in Dark Souls 1, and I was a little bit put off - especially as I knew Miyazaki hadn’t been involved in this game because he was busy making Bloodborne - so my first impression of Dark Souls 2 was that it was a bit of a letdown, the disappointing second album. And I decided to put it down take Dark Souls 3 for a proper whirl. I was expecting good things from this, because this was first and foremost developed for the PS4 rather than an upgraded PS3 game like Dark Souls 2 and I knew Miyazaki was firmly at the helm this time. So I was expecting to see a generational shift to it’s design, scope and scale. And boy oh boy do you get that!

Dark Souls 3 is the best example of a majestic game. Everything about it is sweeping and glorious, epic and magnificent, gloomy and gorgeous, overwhelming and inviting - it’s dripping in stunning detail in every single pixel. The combat has never felt better, the breadth of options available to you depending on what weapon you favour, what magic you may want to use, what sort of build of armour you want to go for - it’s so versatile to cater to anyone who wants the most incredible adventure.

I absolutely fell in love with Dark Souls 3 - I think that the original Dark Souls has become something like comfort food for me now - I’ve played through it a handful of times - I’ve just started a new playthrough on my SteamDeck too. But if Dark Souls is comfort food, Dark Souls 3 is the most decadent towering dessert that you are so glad to have gorged yourself on, you feel sick and exhausted on the other side of it, and you’re torn between wanting it again every day of your life until you become so spherical that you’re riddled with bedsores, or never wanting to see it again as long as you live whilst also constantly regretting that you didn’t take the first option.

I’m now quite hungry…

The original Dark Souls doesn’t scare me when I start it again - I’m excited - I feel like it’s knowable to me now, like I’ve got the upper hand. When I restarted Dark Souls 3 on my SteamDeck, I was terrified once again. Daunted at every single area. I remembered a fair amount of where certain items were hidden and where enemies were going to spring from, but goodness me, it’s still an overwhelming beast. But I also really want to play it.

I’m deliberately not talking about certain elements in the game to save some of these wonderful experiences for whoever hasn’t played it yet. I could easily talk about some of the specific boss fights that were most iconic, or the ones that gave me the most difficulty - maybe I’ll do a spoiler special bonus episode on that one day.

And I’m not talking about the stories of the games as well because piecing those together from what you find in your own unique playthrough is one of the things that makes it such a thrillingly personal adventure. There will be whole swathes of lore that I won’t discover in a playthrough that might cast certain events or characters in a very different light. I might find them on a second or third playthrough, I might never find them. It’s such wonderful game design and shows an incredible intelligence and wisdom on the part of FromSoftware to put trust in the player to meet them halfway to create an adventure together, and by doing that, you’re making something that touches each gamer differently and with more power.

And bringing people together is also part of what makes these games special. You feel so alone in these worlds - so isolated and vulnerable. Most things you meet want to kill you and have the power to do so very easily. The few people you meet who aren’t antagonistic are always really weird and slightly unnerving to the point that you often feel you’d rather be alone. But the shining light in this darkness is the summoning system which is present in all the Dark Souls games, Bloodborne and Demons Souls - whereby, if you’re struggling or suffering too much, you can call on somebody else playing the game to join you and help you through a section of the game, usually a boss fight. And that sense of reassurance you get when you have somebody fighting at your side, that renewed sense of confidence, does as much for your fighting skills as the extra blade does. But there’s always a risk, if you open yourself up to summoning friendly players to aid you, you are also then open to be invaded by unfriendly players looking to fight you and steal your souls. There’s always an incredibly fine balance in these games between failure and success, light and dark, life and death and learning how to keep yourself on the right side of this line is what makes these games so rewarding to play.

Dark Souls 3 blew me away, I think it’s a better game than the first Dark Souls, but there’s something about the familiarity of the first game and a personal connection to it that means it’s very hard for me to quantify them both really.

And there’s Dark Souls 2 - I was never going to write it off, not when I was on such a roll playing through From’s catalog. I knew I’d probably come back to it at some point. When I finish a soulslike game I usually feel pretty drained but also buzzing, and I’m torn between diving straight into a new one, back into the same one in New Game Plus or never wanting to play one again!

And I came to Dark Souls 2 at a very strange, entirely unprecedented time in my life…

When my daughter was born and we were deep in a lockdown in a global pandemic, we were in a bit of a new setup. We were totally on our own, we weren’t allowed to have friends or family over to help us navigate this mind-blowing new part of our lives. It was very much a moment of intense teamwork on behalf of my wife and I. I still don’t know how my wife’s instincts were so incredible - I was asking her at every turn what I should be doing with every element of looking after this baby - does she need feeding, is she too cold, is she too warm, how should i clean her, what type of nappies do i need? Fortunately Sami had answers to all these questions, but no-one ever gave her those answers, she was just an extraordinary force of motherhood, of parenting - she’s never been anything other than a paragon of person in every sense when it’s come to being the best parent to Nora.

So when I say we were figuring it out together, for a long time it was Sami figuring it out and me being confident that she was right! Now in the early days the big thing to figure out was sleeping, and Nora had no trouble sleeping if she was on us. Lying on our chest or in a sling, no problem whatsoever! Now unfortunately for us, it’s not safe for us to be asleep when she’s asleep on us in case we roll over or, in my case, have a night terror and think she’s a goblin trying to attack me or something. So me and Sami took to working in shifts, we’d have a couple of hours each day when we’d both be awake, but we really were like ships passing in the night, except we didn’t pass in the night, because the nights were my shift. And it’s difficult to stay awake at night, so I was chain-drinking coffee and red bull every hour whilst Nora slept on me, gently waking her up every 3 hours to give her a bottle of expressed milk, and she would generally fall back to sleep again and I’d do that loop a couple more times, go and wake Sami up, go to bed, sleep, wake up, repeat.

Now obviously at this point in my life, when I felt very isolated, looking increasingly hollowed, exhausted and facing the most overwhelming challenge of my life, I knew the best way to make all of this better was to finally play Dark Souls 2!

And Nora was wonderful company for this return to the game, and it was actually, exactly what I needed - something to keep my senses sharp whilst also something to get lost in and have a bit of escapism whilst the world was seemingly falling apart just outside our front door. And it’s true that there were these elements in Dark Souls 2 that I wasn’t too keen on, especially what they did with shaking enemies up to give more of a challenge -but now i don’t really remember that. What I do remember is a beautiful expansive world that actually felt more organic than anything in Dark Souls or Dark Souls 3. I saw someone saying recently that Elden Ring is Dark Souls 2 2 - and you can certainly see a lot of elements that have then been taken on in Elden Ring, developed further and made obviously quite extraordinary.

But I was so glad to have the opportunity to play Dark Souls 2, it was my nighttime routine, my bonding time with Nora which was such an important thing to have, especially for dads and especially in those early months when babies don’t give anything back really, they’re fairly helpless and they just need to be looked after, and dads haven’t had that biological connection that the mum has had carrying them for 9 months, so having Nora in the sling sleeping on me, I wasn’t even necessarily aware of the bond that was being built, but it really really was and I miss having her in the sling, taking her to meetings in my office or keeping me company whilst I make my way through Dark Souls!

I was very pleasantly surprised by Dark Souls 2, it is surprisingly different to Dark Souls 1 and 3 and for that it’s a really worthwhile entry in the series and I’m so glad that all 3 games exist, I wouldn’t want to trade any one for any of the others. And I’m also really glad that they got a collective release on PS4 as the Dark Souls Trilogy, so I don’t need to worry about ranking them individually!

I don’t think that a subgenre of games has taken a hold of me in the way that soulslike games have - I’ve said throughout this season that it’s mad to think of a time when soulslike games didn’t define me as a gamer, yet that’s what the entire show was up until this season! And I still don’t know exactly what it is about these games that makes them resonate with me so much. I could probably pull some extraordinary psychological parallel between my struggles with mental health disorders and facing off against giant demons of darkness that seem insurmountable; but through courage and determination and embracing failure you can find a way to overcome them and emerge the other side stronger and closer to the light.

But I’ll leave the existential gaming reflections to Chris for talking about Microsoft Paint or something another day!

And remarkably… FromSoftware have made a better example of the soulslike subgenre, and that’s by taking everything that has made each one of the games incredible, putting it together and elevating it to a point of transcendence in Elden Ring.

I’m not going to cover all the reasons why, because I spent most of the Addendum season doing that. But saying that it’s the best example of the genre, it’s the best work that FromSoftware have made, it’s the best video game ever made.

I knew it when I was playing it, I knew it when I wasn’t playing it, and I knew it when I played it all again!

It is with greatest pride and deepest respect, that Elden Ring has shotgunned its way past every other video game I’ve ever played to sit in it’s rightful place on the throne as Elden Lord!