Posted by prismatic 1 day ago
New players to Dark Souls assume that they need to kill every monster in their way to proceed. But the design of the game itself, with its repeated corpse runs to boss arenas where they get splatted over and over again, eventually teaches the player that running past enemies where possible is actually an expected way to play. Furthermore, leveling up is not required to beat the game, nor is killing enemies the only way to acquire souls. And there are plenty of opportunities for the player to choose whether or not to kill entirely peaceful NPCs, most notably Priscilla, who is posed like a boss while standing in what looks like a boss arena in a place where you fully expected to find a boss to fight, and yet she begs you to leave peacefully and does not bar your exit. It's not as clear-cut as Shadow of the Colossus (in particular it's not actually clear what the ethics of killing hollows is, given that they're cursed to repeatedly rise in undeath for all eternity), but the core theme of the game is futility.
The article uses the word "dilemma" exactly once in the introduction, mostly because that's not really what the article is about. Instead it's a reflection of the melancholy of playing a game where, justified as your actions may be, the entire act of killing is surrounded in sadness.
In Dark Souls specifically (mild spoilers) your character is fighting to prevent essentially the end of a world that's falling into decay. Yes, you kill enemies, but the enemies themselves are corrupted creatures who went mad and you only kill them to prevent the corruption to spread even more. Your end may be justified, but that doesn't mean you can't be sad about having to kill them to begin with.
It's highly debatable whether players actually feel melancholy when fighting monsters in Dark Souls. Putting aside the fact that the story is notoriously cryptic and reliant on player speculation, yes, the lore of Dark Souls is tragic. However, this is the sadness of the 'lore,' not an emotion driven by the 'gameplay.' The problem is that this tragedy must be pieced together by reading flavor text. Does the game actually communicate this naturally during play? Not really. The player is simply thrown into a brutally hostile world and left to suffer. In reality, players hunt these monsters to buy gear or level up, not out of melancholy.
Shadow of the Colossus portrays tragedy brilliantly in this regard because you actively track down and stab peacefully existing creatures. But I strongly question whether Dark Souls and Spec Ops: The Line belong in that same category. Spec Ops: The Line forces you to commit atrocities just to emphasize a protagonist going mad, and in Dark Souls, every monster is inherently hostile toward you. I find it hard to believe a player would feel genuine melancholy from this kind of deceptive design, where the game fixes your choices entirely on a linear track just to force a tragic point.
Normally, when an enemy is that hostile, your only thought is, 'I just need to kill this bastard.' The sadness in Dark Souls is a retroactive feeling you get from piecing together flavor text. While I appreciate the depth of that narrative, it's very hard to put it on the same level as making unprovoked attacks on peaceful monsters (Shadow of the Colossus) or actually having the mechanical choice to spare them (Undertale).
It's more nuanced than that, and "in Dark Souls, every monster is inherently hostile toward you" is not true.
Most games have a clear division between hostile mobs you kill for XP and loot, and story NPCs which you cannot / are not supposed to attack.
That line doesn't really exist in Dark Souls. Most (all?) story NPCs can be killed, which has specific consequences if the player chooses to do so. And there are monsters throughout the game world that are functionally identical to hostile monsters - they look the same, drop the same resources if you attack and kill them - but are simply not hostile to you and are just minding their own business.
It IS more subtle than in other games, and might not even be obvious to the player at first. This gradual realization was actually one of my favorite parts of playing Dark Souls.
But there are definitely intentional gameplay elements that support this, it is not strictly text lore.
It's even more complex than that, because a small number of NPCs, if not attacked and killed without provocation, will go on to kill certain other NPCs.
That said, this is a common thing in articles about e.g. video games - "I wish they mentioned X". I too wish that but at the same time, one needs limits.
I tried emulating it a few years before that when I didn't have any workable screen for my PS2 and that was not so good. A game that pushed the original hardware to its limit also pushed the emulator past its limit. Might be better with more powerful hardware than mine?
However, I've heard the remake is perfectly good, and surely easier to play with modern PC hardware!
There also are plenty of cute-animal mobs that weren't going to bother you unless you started something. An example that still stands out for me is the first set of sleeping bears in LOTRO.
Taking shots on animals living their life in the forest and on the fields imposes a moral/ethical question, especially if you are not being attacked or would otherwise starve to death.
Assuming the deer were in such a social structure to begin with, they'll be alone for maybe a day before another stag steps up. Deer do not exist in a gender ratio of 6:1.
Must be quite the opposite of a real gamer, so I naturally like the simpler and less complex approach.
More or less the easy stuff, and I'm not completely alone.
I think first and foremost, a particular game should be fun from quite early on before you have developed much deep experience, and then any progress through different levels should be logical and straightforward.
In both respects from my simple-minded starting point I guess I enjoy it most when it's about as rewarding as finishing off an order of french fries :)
Talk about excitement rising to melancholy amounts . . .