Welcome to Dark Souls: You’ll Eventually Love What You Hated

Dark Souls II will be available for the consoles in a few days, and the reviews are already out. Even though I have to agree to most of them, there’s one such review that struck off Dark Souls II saying that it is destined to alienate new players because of its open plot and lack of a direction, just like its predecessors. I was recently introduced to Dark Souls, and honestly, I left the game for 4 months before I took it up again to see what the hype was all about. Yes it was hard, yes it was not a stupid sandbox led game, but what I discovered from Dark Souls was even darker than most of the secrets at Lordran. Dark Souls invites new players more than it invites the old boys. It takes a hell lot of you, but it is unlike any other game, it gives you the reins and asks you to lay down the rules. In the process, what Dark Souls essentially does is it turns what you hate into what you absolutely love, like dying.

 “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil.” – Psalm 23:4

As I wake up while still trapped inside the dingy sewers of Blighttown, I look at the bonfire for the one last time, it’s light gleaming radiantly and throwing shadows on the walls, my images, amplified like giants, dancing all around me. The giant figures motivate me to take down the enemies, crush them if necessary, with one powerful sweep of my Halberd. For I am going to do the unbeatable today, I am going to defeat Quelaag and take away her soul. The bonfire reassures me that I should wait for my moment, that I should take each step carefully, or I might just perish like the shadow of the undead warrior that left behind a bloodstone. But I have waited, suffered and died enough; tonight is my kind of night.

A few days ago…

Woke up inside the Undead Burg. Walked a step or two when I knew this was not my neighbourhood. All kinds of hollows trying to finish me off, stabbing me, piercing my body with arrow rounds, or throwing giant fireballs my way. You sure can’t miss the view from the Undead Burg as you gently beat the Hollows at the entrance and climb upstairs, ready to face more of the Shielded Hollows. I felt weak, displaying my fight for survival with just one longsword and the hollows, they were in hordes, my Estus Flask saving me all the way. Like Tyler Durden once said, “Imagine your pain as a white ball of healing light”, I knew that there was light and life beyond the pain and death, so I carried on. And then I stumbled on my teacher again, death.

I remember facing the Sif, the Great Grey Wolf, in his own backyard; with my Drake Sword and a Knight Shield to protect me. I had no idea whatsoever how to make the beast tap out. In my 1001 not-so-unfortunate deaths I realised (slowly and steadily) that the beast had a weakness, just like me. Under his belly. The purist challenges of Dark Souls often look like a maths formula, for every action there lies a reaction. When the Sif swept me off my feet with the whoosh of the great longsword, it automatically made me roll in and out. Avoiding the lethal steel strikes, it so happened that I accidentally went under his belly, and until he sprung back, I had a window of 2-3 seconds to switch to dual hands and hit him under the belly 2 quick times. And good lord, he bled! I had to make sure that at all costs I was under his belly, rolling out of his strikes, and then changing hands to deliver mammoth pain. Sif tested my patience, and while my eyes were watery with heavy focus, I ultimately bled him to death with just the sword.

Dark Souls tests you when you would least expect it to, and with its bewilderingly untamed game map, it is easier to find death traps than treasure and relief. Inside the Undead Sewers, right after killing some basilisks and infected rats, I thought I made it through. So as I came out of a tunnel with all my pride and glory collated under my hood, a giant rat came and rolled over me, from nowhere. The game was teaching me to wait and inspect before stepping out into the unknown, all this while. In one flash, in one moment of absent mindedness, it may cost your life, your bag of souls, and above all – your human form. If you lack presence of mind, you may topple down the ledge while sword fighting a mere zombie, or fall from the scaffolding countering a giant insect.

Games would often invite us over, tell us what they expect us to do, what they expect us to believe, and there is Dark Souls. For days, I hated the storyline for not taking my hands and guiding me through the dark alleys and sun kissed gargoyle lairs. And then I realised, Dark Souls gave me more power than I ever deserved. Between me and the end of Dark Souls stood two bell towers, the rest in between was my story, how I approached it. My deaths were mere pauses to what I could possibly become and achieve out of the world of Lordran. The Gaping Dragon, the Capra Demon, the Stray Demon, they all were my teachers in disguise, and I transformed from being a no one to a one-of-a-kind demon hunter.

In Darkroot Forest hides a myth – the Cat Covenant. After you’ve done plummeting the baby shrooms and cat-like beasts, its time back to take charge of restoring balance to the mythical animal kingdom of Darkroot. Responsibility adds to the already existing pressure in Dark Souls, as you single handedly fight menacing phantoms and puny trespassers. In times when gamers crave for online content as soon as the story based missions are over, Dark Souls lays down a third kind – seamless multiplayer and single player sessions, something that is later adapted by the critically acclaimed Playstation Exclusive – Journey. Initially I was totally turned off by the random invasions by pure sadistic online gamers, but nothing comes for free in life. And to send a phantom back into his world, sweat and shame dripping down his mask, is a joy that is best experienced in Dark Souls. Wearing the ring turns on your fellowship to the order and you transform from being an attacker to a defender. Something that I heard is coming back on Dark Souls II in the manifesto of the Rat Covenant.

Dark Souls makes fun every time you slip up, but not with a giant laughter. It is sure fun to swing swords at an enemy with the auto lock on. And it gets even sweeter when your auto lock swings from one enemy to another, thereby completely befooling you and making you miss your targets, or more, as you receive damage in return. At times boulders will block your way, and at times the light coming down a flaming torch will completely blind you out. Dark Souls will not teach you how to become environment friendly, and it is up to you to make the enemy run into the boulder or be blinded under the torchlight instead. Dark Souls is your quintessential guide to how a warrior lives to die another day, an epic trajectory to knowing how beautiful and responsive the human mind is.

My last ride to New Londo was filled with moments of self realisation. By then I knew every route, every monster standing in my way, and every bonfire that I had to light from the Parish. I stepped exactly on the elevator stone inside the Parish, and before the elevator hit the ground, jumped out into one of those ceilings like I’ve been here for a thousand years, or more. Going down the spiral staircase, I could hear the cries of the undead, the sound of fierce waters, and whatever the wind could carry. I have been to New Londo previously, maybe accidentally, and lost more than two thousand souls. I had no plans to retrieve them because I was scared off my seat by the notorious ghouls that protect the ruins gate. But this time I had shoved away the fear, gutted to go and resist all the evil forces that can feed on my soul in the ruins. I was motivated by the simple fact of excavating new secrets about Lordran, and a new blacksmith to craft my first weapon based on demon souls.

Dancing my way across a variety of ghouls and filthy creatures I realised that I knew how to sway to their tune. The hours of suffering, and the times I dodged my controller away in disgust actually led me to this moment, when I could stand face to face with the shining moonlight as it cuts the reflection of me against the world. Distraction is your worst enemy in Souls, and the only way to beat the monsters is to… dance. Dance around, wait for the enemy to sting, while you dodge and block. Once the enemy has wasted its effort, it’s time for you to display a cold blooded sword swing, cut open a wound and drain the blood off, bathe in the enemy’s pain; it is Dark Souls way of returning an ace.

Dark Souls taught me in less than 100 hours how to best use revenge. Not everyone is capable of dishing out justice, and even so, it won’t be as cold as you would expect it to be. Dark Souls’ mesmerising rewarding scheme is based completely on dying a lot, learning about the enemy, and redeeming for those 40 odd deaths with one swing of the sword, at the right moment, at the right time. Dark Souls isn’t about carrying a horde of crazy arsenal and using each on different enemies. Dark Souls is realising what you are good at, speed versus strength, offence versus defence, harnessing that skill, and then becoming the best at it. Dark Souls, amidst a horde of competitive RPGs, is the only game that presents the world as it is, and shows exactly where you stand.

In that short time that you live, Dark Souls liberates you to go explore, take on someone ten times your size, and submerge in a world without maps. The levels are designed so brilliantly that it seems to take one off the main mission, i.e. to ring the two towers. Dark Souls doesn’t want you to beat the game over a weekend, it wants you to accept the world with all its rewards and deformities. It wants you to be a traveller before a killer. The axe rigged ledges at Sen’s Fort, the poisonous marshes in Blighttown, the enchanted Darkroot Forest and the glorious Anor Londo all call out to you in different ways. Even if it takes facing a thousand enemies while travelling from one place to the other, Dark Souls inspires you take the step, maybe a hundred times. And every time you take it, you will discover new things on the route, a dragontail hanging down the bridge, sleeping giants, and people locked inside rooms since ages. While some protest the live, die, repeat strategy of Dark Souls, it actually becomes your training manual.

There will be games that you will play, boast about, proudly share playthroughs and there is Dark Souls. The one game that needs your full attention; that wants you to attend every class, every tutorial, until you crack the main examinations and graduate as a warrior.

Fast Forwading to Current Date

Been contemplating my plans of late to take down the queen of Blighttown, Queelag. Once again the horrible murmurs resound from deep inside. I flinch a bit, shake the fever aside, and step out into the marshes. The only thing that stands between me and the mistress are a couple of deaths and a whole lot of learning. Walking across the poisonous marshes, slicing every single one of them trying to take me down, I arrive at the door. Succumbing to pain, majorly from the poison that embraced my body, I inhale the only purple moss residue remaining in my inventory. Applying Gold Pine Resin to my Halberd I stand right outside the queen’s lair, ready to take her down tonight. Because tonight’s the night, I can feel the gods, demons and demon gods betting on me tonight.