Dark Souls
I'm almost two years late to this party, but I'm glad I made it.
It's been a long time since I experienced any enthusiasm for large studio games. They all seem to be the same. I worried that it wasn't the games, it was me, and that I had lost some capacity for enthusiasm after working on a doomed game for four and a half years.
However Dark Souls is the most positive game experience I've had since The Binding of Isaac. I am extremely relieved that I am able to sustain this level of engagement. What is it that makes Dark Souls great?
• Itemization and character RPG systems interact perfectly.
This is worth of its own post as this is an issue with most CRPG, and very few get this right. This game is now the best example I can think, usurping my decade-long favorite Diablo 2. Dark Souls is, in my opinion, the best example of how to itemize a game. It must be noted that it is possible to itemize the game in this way because of the depth of the combat system.
• The game is hostile, obtuse, and punishing.
You feel genuinely unwelcome in this world. Enemies attack, visibility is often limited, terrain has sheer drops that will kill you, nothing really makes sense initially. This is fucking great. Overcoming the feeling of being out of your depth, moving to understanding what is going on, through competence and finally to mastery is one of the most rewarding experiences I know.
• The game world is genuinely open.
If you can get somewhere, you can adventure there. And it is possible to get almost anywhere right from the start. You know, if you like dying a lot. Actually you'll be doing that anyway. It also delights you with reveals about how areas are interconnected. Areas loop back on themselves without you noticing, and as you explore and progress you often find yourself back where you started, only now with a shortcut available to you. The sensation of understanding how the spaces hang together is almost zenlike at times.
The take-home lession from Dark Souls is: observe, understand, master. This applies to how you deal with everything - the combat, the terrain, the rpg systems, the lore, and is harshly enforced. This runs counter to a lot of my more recent experiences in larger-studio games, and especially MOs (not even necessarily MMOs). Most often, the lesson they teach is: keep doing the same thing over and over again, and you will get better at it. This is a terrible lesson, since it applies to only an extremely limited subset of reality.
Dark Souls is a demanding game. It punishes failure. It is not a good game if you just want to blow off some steam at the end of a tough workday, at least not initially. If you haven't played it and want to, I'd set aside a good ten hours just to get to grips with how the gameplay and combat works. It demands a lot of you. This is part of its appeal - your reward for doing something right is to NOT BE KILLED.
I'm gonna wrap this up now - I haven't even finished it yet. But this is probably going to be one of those games I sink 100+ hours into.
Playing this game now makes me realize how far ahead of its time Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (1988) was.
It's been a long time since I experienced any enthusiasm for large studio games. They all seem to be the same. I worried that it wasn't the games, it was me, and that I had lost some capacity for enthusiasm after working on a doomed game for four and a half years.
However Dark Souls is the most positive game experience I've had since The Binding of Isaac. I am extremely relieved that I am able to sustain this level of engagement. What is it that makes Dark Souls great?
• Itemization and character RPG systems interact perfectly.
This is worth of its own post as this is an issue with most CRPG, and very few get this right. This game is now the best example I can think, usurping my decade-long favorite Diablo 2. Dark Souls is, in my opinion, the best example of how to itemize a game. It must be noted that it is possible to itemize the game in this way because of the depth of the combat system.
• The game is hostile, obtuse, and punishing.
You feel genuinely unwelcome in this world. Enemies attack, visibility is often limited, terrain has sheer drops that will kill you, nothing really makes sense initially. This is fucking great. Overcoming the feeling of being out of your depth, moving to understanding what is going on, through competence and finally to mastery is one of the most rewarding experiences I know.
• The game world is genuinely open.
If you can get somewhere, you can adventure there. And it is possible to get almost anywhere right from the start. You know, if you like dying a lot. Actually you'll be doing that anyway. It also delights you with reveals about how areas are interconnected. Areas loop back on themselves without you noticing, and as you explore and progress you often find yourself back where you started, only now with a shortcut available to you. The sensation of understanding how the spaces hang together is almost zenlike at times.
The take-home lession from Dark Souls is: observe, understand, master. This applies to how you deal with everything - the combat, the terrain, the rpg systems, the lore, and is harshly enforced. This runs counter to a lot of my more recent experiences in larger-studio games, and especially MOs (not even necessarily MMOs). Most often, the lesson they teach is: keep doing the same thing over and over again, and you will get better at it. This is a terrible lesson, since it applies to only an extremely limited subset of reality.
Dark Souls is a demanding game. It punishes failure. It is not a good game if you just want to blow off some steam at the end of a tough workday, at least not initially. If you haven't played it and want to, I'd set aside a good ten hours just to get to grips with how the gameplay and combat works. It demands a lot of you. This is part of its appeal - your reward for doing something right is to NOT BE KILLED.
I'm gonna wrap this up now - I haven't even finished it yet. But this is probably going to be one of those games I sink 100+ hours into.
Playing this game now makes me realize how far ahead of its time Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (1988) was.