About Dark Souls and our personality construct (1)

Across life we come across different products of our humanity that, in our bored brain's excitement, we awe-struck-ly give the name of "masterpieces". While some of these can achieve this level of praise from an objective point of view, since we can logically explain why the technique, virtuosity or arrangement is beyond ordinary or expectations, or simply because it impresses everyone, other "masterpieces" resonate with us on a more intimate level and we venerate these personal lighthouses alone on our ship. It gives us an immense sense of happiness and community when there are enough ships around the same lighthouse to build up a port. Or, in this particular case, enough souls around a bonfire.

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Not many people enjoy video games and that is completely fine. Explaining a random elder why Dark Souls is a work of art to me would fail miserably most of the time. But a lot of people do enjoy video games, and that is, again, completely fine. And yet, trying to convince them that Miyazaki's game is indeed a masterpiece could turn out to be useless. Why? Because we do not sail on the same seas.

Dark Souls was the first time I saw an outlined, clear correlation between the personality of the game and the fan base, between the kind of people that gave up and the kind of people that did not. For Dark Souls requires a particular kind of ship.

To start things off, Dark Souls it's not a game made for everyone to relax after a long day of work. It's not a good summer comedy that quickly goes away. It's The Godfather. Interstellar. Schindler's List. Inception. It's a game whose beauty comes from its difficulty and lack of a nailed path. I assume you, the reader, are familiar with Dark Souls, and if not, I recommend two articles to get an idea of the elements that form and surround this game.

When I am talking about "lack of a nailed path", I am not limiting this phrase to the open world aspect of the game, which is, let say, less open-world-y than most. I am talking about a lack of journal, map, directions and clear quests. The lack of an exposed lore or story. Instead, lore comes from the environment, the items' descriptions, those three and a half lines of dialogue, and your actions. And, God, what a rich, beautiful and heart-breaking lore that is! But the game only gives you the controls and that's pretty much it. It encourages you be curious. It encourages you to learn from your mistakes, which are great in number, to use what you have learned, and to overcome everything that stands in your way. I realized this one night before I went to sleep, and the next morning I woke up and started playing it in a different light (Morning? Get it? Different light?). There is nothing you can fall back to, only what you remember. The sense of vagueness does not render the game as shallow, though. Through the game, even if you fail to pay attention to everything that surrounds you, you still get the feeling that there is something behind all this. Behind every stone, dead body, candlestick smashed against the floor and crack in the walls. Dark Souls asks for your time, patience and curiosity, with the promise that it will make it worth your while. And it does.

Talking about the difficulty, things are a bit more straight-forward. The game is, indeed, difficult. I would not use "hard" though, as its reputation claims. The difficulty comes from the game mechanics that are designed to keep you on edge most of the time, requiring you to progressively learn how to exploit your enemies' weaknesses, while keeping a eye on yours. You can take breaks, but you can't pause the game. You have to learn when to dodge properly because the brief moment of invincibility (commonly referred to as "i-frames") could betray you if you use it too late or too early. You have to learn how to handle groups of enemies, or how to break them down so you can fight them one by one. All of these take time, require patience and, to some extent, inclination towards constant challenge. And possible rage quits.

But I am not here to discuss aspects of the game itself, since there are tons of posts and videos more organized than mine. I am here to discuss how Dark Souls it's a masterpiece due to its intimate influence on our real lives.