#121: Sekiro: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Deflect

As a fan of From Software's most recent works, from Demon's Souls to Dark Souls 3, I was honor-bound to play Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice the moment it was released. Going in, I felt prepared for another exciting adventure in an environment that would do everything it could to kill me. With how easily I breezed through the third Dark Souls game, I thought that there was nothing From could do to surprise or intimidate me. They must be running out of tricks, so I would be wise to whatever they threw my way. Many of my friends thought the same way, to the game's, the developer's, and our own collective disservice.

#107: Dark Souls 3: The Absence of Hostility and Loneliness

I have written about my experiences playing From Software's “Soulsborne” games a couple of times on this blog. For that reason, I can distinctly recall my time in these games, which colored my expectations going into Dark Souls 3. To my surprise, and somewhat to my disappointment, the game didn't feel the way I expected it to. Though it certainly is a shining example of what could be described as a Souls game, Dark Souls 3 felt different than its predecessors. 

As I explored the desolate lands of Boletaria and Lordran, there was a palpable sense of loneliness to the proceedings. It was as if I was cold and alone against a world out to kill me, with its bands of diverse and terrifying opponents setting their differences aside in a concerted effort to block my path and take my life. Despite in many ways going against those same odds, I never had that feeling of isolation and hostility in Dark Souls 3. Rather than a world against me, it felt as if every area was merely a stage for I and my fellow players.

Much of that simply stems from the fact that there are many more players in Dark Souls 3 than there were in previous Souls games I had played. My first runs of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls were both in the summer of 2015. By then, the games were 6 and 4 years old respectively. There were certainly stragglers like myself who were still engaged with them, but by and large most had already moved on to greener pastures. And even if people were playing these games, my efforts to work with them were minimal. In Demon's Souls, I spent almost the entire game in Soul form, preventing me from summoning phantoms to aid me. Likewise, I can count the number of bosses I defeated with other players on a single hand. My experiences in both games are mostly mine and mine alone. When push came to shove, I could only rely on myself to get out of a hairy situation.

I can't say the same thing when I look back on the total sum of my Dark Souls 3 experiences. Strangely, I was excited to, for once, be a part of the community as the game comes out, exploring it together with everyone. In a way, this ended up being counter to what I most enjoyed in its older siblings. Talking with my Twitter friends, being guided to secrets by random strangers, aiding other people and being aided in turn, these were all wonderful experiences in their own right. However, it meant that my journey was less a result of my own effort and accomplishments, and more the gestalt of all of those who joined me on my path. Random strangers who I will never know, and who will never know me, were all working together to achieve a common goal. Even when I was invaded/invading, it felt like a respectable contest between peers and less an attempt of one person to sabotage another. I could use many adjectives to describe my adventure, but “lonely” is not one of them.

The NPCs also seemed a lot more welcoming in Dark Souls 3 than they have been in the past. My runs of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are marked by a sense that there weren’t many people in the world that would even think to assist me. Outside of the Nexus, I remember that non-hostile NPCs were scarce. It was at least 10 hours before I brought my first new NPC back to the Nexus with me. Until then, the ones I had encountered had either perished unceremoniously (sorry Ostrava), or actively screwed me over (which is why, to this day, I murder Patches every chance I get). Just finding a truly friendly face was a rare treat. The same can be said of Dark Souls. While there are certainly a few kind folks who inhabit the Firelink Shrine, most of them are battered and broken when you find them. And by the time I finished my journey, the most friendly of the lot, like Siegmeyer and Solarie, had met with terrible fates.

By contrast, in my first 10 hours of Dark Souls 3, I encountered a Robin Hood-esque thief, a young woman who knows miracles and her protector, an old pyromancer, a Darkmoon blade from the Sunless Realms, and Siegmeyer's more capable descendant. All of these people had offered their aid to me in some form, either as a vendor or a companion. Where friendly faces were rare before, they were quite common place now. I did not have to look far to find someone with a vested interest in my success. Far from the isolation I once felt, Dark Souls 3 provided an almost constant comfort by offering me my choice of assistants and allies.

Even though the abundance of other players and NPCs are large contributors to why I have lost that adventurous, yet isolating spirit of the previous games, there is another reason. At this point, I have played so many Souls games, and particularly so many Dark Souls games, that the mechanics and world are largely ingrained into my mind. When I was a new player braving the perils of Boletaria, and later Lordran, I often fell for the tricks and traps laid about. I would die to ambushes than I should have seen coming in hindsight. I spent many deaths learning each enemies attack patterns and figuring out the weaknesses therein. I crashed through broken boards and into traps that would be noted and avoided in the future. The designs of From Software were alien to me. Learning them was half of the battle, and half the fun.

Unfortunately, there's only so far the Soulsian “fair” ambushes can go before they reach the territory of just spawning in mooks in lieu of hiding them in creative ways. That's not necessarily From Software's fault, because it is infinitely easier for players to figure out their tendencies than it is for them to think of new ways to surprise those same players. But it does mean that I have gotten much better at predicting when an ambush is likely to happen than I used to be.

I don't remember ever being truly caught off guard while exploring the shattered remains of Lothric and the lands surrounding it. At the same time, I have a distinct memory of an archway in Irithyll of the Boreal Valley. I had not seen nor heard any enemies in the room on the other side, but I suspected that something was “off”. Looking down and to my left, I saw a ledge that I could easily reach by dropping down. Going into the hallway through the opening on this ledge, I climbed a ladder that lead me to the other side of the room beyond the archway, bypassing a group of enemies waiting to ambush me. By just following a slight “off” feeling, I had anticipated and subverted a snare that I would have easily fallen for before. At the time, I felt smart for having trusted my instincts. In hindsight, all I really did was just fall back on knowledge I had gained from 4 previous games' worth of experience. Not only wasn't I surprised by the enemies’ tricks, I couldn't be, because I had already fallen for them before.

Instead of making me believe I was a single man out against a world which wants nothing more than me to fail, Dark Souls 3 felt like reuniting with an old friend I hadn't seen in awhile. There's nothing inherently wrong with that quiet nostalgia. But the dreadful anxiety I experienced the first time, as I explored the worlds of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, is a large part of why I fell in love with the franchise. As disappointing as it is, I'm not sure that one could ever adequately capture that atmosphere that drew me in when I first started Soulsborne. Though I want so badly to feel that isolation, that growing sense of isolation and excitement. I just don't believe it's possible given how large an influence Soulsborne has become. It's hard to feel alone and afraid when in the comfort of your home, surrounded by the old and familiar. These games have become as much a home to me as the house I live in, and that's exactly what I don't want them to be.

#97: Game Invaders: Dark Souls vs. Watch_Dogs

As many of you know, I have been working on a Let's Play series with my friend, Sam Callahan. Together, we have been trudging through Watch_Dogs. One of the more heavily advertised features in Watch_Dogs was the ability for players to invade the game of another in order to sabotage them. Fans of the Dark Souls games might recognize this feature, since it also uses player invasion as a game mechanic. Having played both Watch_Dogs and Dark Souls, I realized that I was extremely annoyed by the invasions in Watch_Dogs. On the other hand, that same general idea worked for me in Dark Souls, adding to the game. This is when I began to ponder why this might be the case.

One of the fundamental reasons why player invasions irritated me in Watch_Dogs was that they were almost divorced from the rest of the game. As a player wanders about the city of Chicago, outside of a mission or side-activity, another player may choose to enter their game at any time. Until the outsider is either dealt with or succeeds in their mission to hack the host player, the host is unable to continue the main story or do any side-quests. Even if the host dies while being invaded, the event continues uninterrupted and the invader is able to continue with their objective. In other words, to someone who is looking to complete the game's story and/or side missions, an invasion is just a needless distraction, rather than a core part of the game. They have to put their game on hold in order to deal with this new problem. Sam and I encountered this ourselves a few times in our Let's Play. Though we eventually remember that we could turn off player invasions, that further speaks to how separate they are from everything else. With invasions turned off, the game is improved because players can get to the rest of the content without wasting time killing an invader.

This is in stark contrast to Dark Souls, where the invasions are more nicely integrated into the whole experience. Normally, players won't be in danger of invasions. However, in order to invite other people to join their game and help them take down many of the game's bosses, they also have to spend a Humanity point and open themselves up to invasions in exchange. Invasions aren't so much a dedicated feature as much as they are a necessary drawback in order to balance out the act of asking for help. Even if the player is offline, there are NPCs in the world that can take the place of both co-op companions and invaders. In other words, this feature is so core to the game's fundamental design that From Software saw fit to include an NPC equivalent for those who, for whatever reason, cannot or will not play online. Opening oneself up to the aid of others will in turn open up the possibility that others will attack.

The difference between allowing oneself to be invaded in Dark Souls and the incidental invasion in Watch_Dogs is a very important one. Whenever I was invaded in Watch_Dogs, it was almost always at an inopportune time. Often, I would be about to accept a story mission, when the game informed me that someone had stepped into my play session, locking me out of the mission. It was an irritation that I had no interest in and gained nothing from. While an invasion in Dark Souls can be inconvenient, players must make a deliberate choice to spend Humanity and make them possible. This opting-in subtly prepares the player for the potential threat, which means they aren't surprised if and when it happens. In Watch_Dogs, player invasions are always surprising because they can happen at anytime. As a result, they will always mess up the player's plan and cause undue irritation.

Not only are the invasions in Watch_Dogs separate from the other gameplay elements, but they are also removed from the normal character progression. As players complete missions in Watch_Dogs, they acquire skill points which can be spent on skills in the various categories, like Hacking, Driving, and Combat. There is also another category called "Notoriety". Unlike the other skill trees, players can't use skill points to advance it. Instead, they accumulate "Notoriety" through strong performances in the various online multiplayer activities, including the invasions. Out of the 6 available skills in this tree, only two could be considered useful to players who don't play with others. The other 4 skills only affect elements of the online component, by raising the rewards or making it easier to detect an invading player. To put it plainly, almost nothing the player unlocks in the online mode affects them in the main story.

Dark Souls works differently. In order to gain Humanity points, players can enter another's game and help them defeat an area boss. Even if they fail in the attempt, they can still keep the Souls that they earned while in working with the host. Alternatively, the enter invade another player's game, gaining Humanity and souls by killing the host. Since they do not lose Souls in the attempt, they are incentivized to take advantage of this ability to gain Humanity. In turn, this Humanity can be spend to allow other players to join their game and hopefully gain an advantage in fighting many of the game's bosses. Both the aid of other players and the Souls obtained in these multiplayer events have a direct, positive influence on one's progression in the game.

Again, observe the difference between these two games. To the player who is only looking to complete the main story of the game, the invasions in Watch_Dogs are a waste of time. If they perform well, the rewards they provide won't help them in their ultimate goal, designed only to be used in online challenges. Dark Souls goes in a different direction. Even if a player only wants to beat the game, there is still a strong incentive to partake in the online invasions, or at least make oneself open to them. The aid of cooperative partners can greatly increase one's odds of successfully defeating a boss. Furthermore, there is a chance to earn more Souls and Humanity, which are used to further tip the odds in their favor. As someone who rarely participates in a game's online component, I still found myself making use of it in my journey through Lordran.

When Watch_Dogs was in development, Ubisoft said that while players could disable the option for others to invade their game, they considered leaving them on to be the "best" way to play. Unfortunately, the facts aren't in their favor. Without a way to prepare for them, or a strong reason to keep them enabled in the first place, it makes more sense for players to not even bother. As Dark Souls demonstrates, it didn't have to be this way. As rudimentary as they are, if Ubisoft had been a little smarter about the implementation, they could have been a seamlessly integrated and enjoyable aspect of the final product.

#95: Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Missteps

As you may be aware, I have recently began exploring the Souls games, starting with Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls. My opinions on both games are largely positive. My playthrough of Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First was informed by these experiences, which explained why I did not like the game as much. It was not a bad game. However, the game betrays a lack of understanding as to why many of the choices in the original Dark Souls were made. This manifests in design changes that cause a number of problems throughout the game.

The first of these changes is the resurrection of consumable healing items. As I said before in my article about the Estus Flasks in the first Dark Souls, removing the ability to grind for recovery items was a drastic improvement from Demon's Souls to Dark Souls. Rather than reiterate points than I spent an entirely separate article making, I just want to comment on how strange it is to go back to using these items when they already had such an elegant solution in place.To make this worse, the imbalance caused by these items is exacerbated by the fact that the Estus Flask also made its return. It is given to them right after the tutorial is completed. With the reusable Estus Flask ever present in the inventory, players are encouraged to amass large stockpiles of items which they will rarely, if ever, use. I, personally, only used these Lifegems myself when I was absolutely out of Estus and in the middle of a boss fight. Otherwise, I would just hoof it back to the bonfire and try again to maintain my stockpile.

Another alteration to the game is in the way enemies respawn after being killed. In the original Dark Souls, returning to a bonfire revived every enemy that had been defeated, barring a few special exceptions. This is no longer the case in Dark Souls 2, as each enemy will only respawn a finite number of times before they will no longer appear (until the next playthrough). Two major problems arise from this change. First, like the addition of consumable items, it throws off the balance between the urge to continue on and the need to rest and replenish your inventory that I wrote about previously. Making a series of suicide runs in order to eliminate opponents has now become a perfectly valid tactic for making it through areas. Rather than continue to encourage that agonizing decision-making its predecessor was so famous for, Dark Souls 2 transforms every stage into a battle of attrition, as each run slowly depletes the enemy forces. I myself did this a number of time in stages like the Iron Keep and Shulva, Sanctum City.

And second, because there are only a finite number of enemies in the game, souls are also a finite resource. Players receive souls from defeated enemies, which they can use to purchase items/weapon upgrades and strengthen their characters. However, should they die, any unspent souls will be lost. In order to reclaim them, they need to return to the where they died and touch their bloodstain. Failure to do so before the next death will result in the permanent loss of those souls. Since enemies in Dark Souls never stop spawning, there is always a way to acquire more souls even in the event of heavy losses. Once an enemy stops appearing in Dark Souls 2, it is impossible to claim their souls by defeating them. Though I never reached a point where I couldn't obtain the souls I needed, the knowledge that my deaths were depleting the world's supply made each one much harder to swallow.

In the original Dark Souls, I have a very clear memory of exploring the Tomb of the Giants and amassing over 70000 souls. Just as I was about to return to the bonfire, my game was invaded by another player, who killed me in an instant with her barrage of magic and lag. As I attempted to reach my bloodstain, I was ambushed by a horde of giant skeletons. I had made a mistake in fighting them, and that mistake meant that those 70000 souls were gone. My anger at the loss was assuaged by the knowledge that it would be quite possible to replace those lost Soul by grinding later on if I had the desire.

During my adventures in Dark Souls 2, I had similar tales of losses, yet none exceeding 35000 souls at any one time. But even if the losses were momentarily lower, the knowledge that my ineptitude caused a decrease in not just the number of souls I had, but also the net total of possible souls in the game, made those losses sting a lot more. Enemies provide far more than enough souls for a given playthrough, yet just knowing than there is only a finite supply makes even small losses feel wasteful.

The biggest negative change that Dark Souls 2 made was in the way that foes attack. When an enemy attacked the player in either Demon's Souls or Dark Souls, they had to commit to both the attack and the direction in which they were attacking. Since the player was also bound by these same rules, fights were often fair. The best way to fight would be to stay on the defensive and look for openings in enemy attack patterns that could be exploited. Though some of the strongest enemies did have tracking attacks, it was only up to the point where they began to strike, and only to compensate for how slow the windup was for those particular moves.

In the sequel, they made a bizarre decision that I still don't entirely understand. Almost every enemy has an uncanny ability to track the player while they are attacking. This has an adverse effect on the combat, making it easier for them to land blows and conversely more difficult for the player to do the same. When I was exploring the Iron Keep in Dark Souls 2, I encountered an enemy that best demonstrates the problem. The Ironclad Soldiers held therein are particularly vicious foes with powerful attacks and decent armor. One of the advantages they have over the player is that when they wind up to unleash their overhead smash, they can hold their club in position over their head until the player is in range. Then, the portion of the move the inflicts damage will kick in quickly. They are also able to turn and face a strafing player while actively swinging the club horizontally. No opponent from previous Souls games have these same advantages to these degrees, and there is a very good reason for that. When the enemies are bound to the same rules as the player is, there is a sense of fairness born from that. The presence of that fairness means that most failures and deaths in combat can be directly attributed to the player. Taking it away leaves a sense that game is cheating in order to win, like a cruel, obstinate dungeon master in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign.

Again, I do not want to give off the impression that Dark Souls 2 is a bad game. Rather, it is a poor continuation of an excellent franchise. Though I believe that the director of Dark Souls 2 was a fan of the franchise, the changes made from one project to the next belie a lack of understanding as to what made the first Dark Souls, and Demon's Souls, such gems. The guidance of Hidetaka Miyazaki, who directed the earlier Souls games, was not needed to gain this insight. Taking a moment to see what worked with those two games, what needed improvement, and the trade-offs of each change would have been a boon to the production. Such analysis would have prevented many of the mistakes made in Dark Souls 2.

#92: Dark Souls: The Use of Estus

From Software is very skilled at what they do. Coming off of my Demon's Souls playthrough not too long ago, I continued on into its spiritual sequel: Dark Souls. While Demon's Souls allowed players to gather and grind for healing items, Dark Souls uses a new system to manage health. The first NPC that players interact with will give them an item called the Estus Flask. This flask has a finite number of charges, and consuming one of these charges heals the player. When resting at a bonfire, a safe haven where players can recover their health and manage their inventory, this flask will be recharged.

What I found was that this one change had a profound effect on the game's design. The most obvious of these changes is that the ability to mend wounds becomes limited. In Demon's Souls, there were several varieties of healing grass, and players could hold up to 99 tufts of each type. Personally, I recall constantly have at least 40 or 50 tufts of whatever grasses I was able to obtain at any given point during my playthrough. Towards the end, I had so much that I couldn’t pick up any more. In fact, grass was so plentiful that I had 99 tufts both on my person, and in the excess-item stash.This is definitely not the case in Dark Souls. Resting at a bonfire will only fill the Estus Flask up to 5 charges. It is possible to upgrade bonfires so that this limit is raised up to a maximum of 20. Doing so requires the use of “Humanity”, an uncommon resource that, like souls, is lost on death. The act of “kindling” a bonfire is rare for this reason. During my playthrough, I only upgraded most bonfires enough to hold 10 charges in the Estus Flask.

The difference in these limits strongly manifested itself in my playstyle. If a fight left me with even a small scratch during my adventures in Demon's Souls, I would immediately consume a tuft of healing grass (or several, depending on how wounded I was) before moving on. With 99 tufts in my back pocket, there was nothing stopping me from making use of one or two.

In Dark Souls, this same decision became a much more tactical choice. When I finished a battle with only minor damage, it would be smarter to keep going without using the Estus Flask to heal, because that healing will be more useful later on. Once I figured out where a stage's boss was and how to get to them, it was imperative to take as little damage as I could so I could save Estus Flask charges for the boss fight, where I would need them the most. Even without the looming threat of an impending boss, running out of healing while exploring a stage was a big enough threat that there is always a natural reluctance to avoid using it when I didn’t have to.

If a single run of a level in Dark Souls was going badly enough, me being badly injured surprisingly early on and heavily imbibing of the Estus Flask, a choice needed to be made. I would often seriously consider whether it was wise to keep going, or to just return to the bonfire and try again. While bonfires do recharge the Estus Flask and mend any lingering wounds, resting at them also respawns every single enemy at full strength. In other words, trekking back to the bonfire and restoring my lost Estus is also resigning myself to starting an area over again almost from scratch. Through the Estus Flask, Dark Souls moved away from the war of attrition that Demon's Souls sometimes wandered into. Instead, every area is a test of not just character build and player skill, but also of the ability to manage resources.

The Estus Flask also lessened Dark Souls’s need for grinding, especially in comparison to its predecessor. Despite having large quantities of healing grass in the original Demon's Souls, repeated attempts to clear areas and fight bosses could and would deplete reserves. This meant that it would eventually be necessary to revisit old areas and grind for additional grass to replenish the player's supplies. In the early game, I frequently found myself returning to the Boletarian Palace in between boss attempts, once my grass count had fallen below 20, to gather more. Consequently, this meant that the time between boss attempts would sometimes be a little too long.

The Estus Flask fixes this problem. Since one can no longer grind for restoratives, there exists no incentive nor need to do so. For this reason, the downtime between boss encounters is reduced only to the time it takes for one to get from the nearest bonfire to the boss chamber. Even though my overall playthrough of Dark Souls was longer than that of my Demon's Souls playthrough, this reduced time between boss attempts gave the illusion of an accelerated pace. I could fight a boss as many times as necessary to defeat it without having to stop and grind for healing items, which is a boon in the Souls franchise.

Including the Estus Flask could be seen as a minor, seemingly meaningless addition. In truth, it is one of the biggest, most vital changes that came with the transition from Demon’s Souls to Dark Souls. This one change transformed the dungeoneering from a gradual and methodical war of attrition between the enemy forces and the player’s healing reserves to a test of how well they can management resources. When it comes time to brave the stronger enemies and boss encounters, it also accelerates the pace of repeated attempts. This kind of attention to detail is why people love the Souls games more than anything else. Each new design decision is carefully considered before it is implemented and the final product is all the strong for it.  

#90: Demon's Souls: Why Do So Many Like It?

Given how many people have asked me to try it, I find it surprising that it took me so long to play a Souls game. With an abundance of free time, I found myself enjoying my time with it. As I sit here, ruminating upon my new-found experiences with Demon's Souls, a question crossed my mind: Why exactly is Demon's Souls, and the Souls-series by extension, so popular and successful?

That might seem like a silly question to most, yet it makes no sense for Demon’s Souls to get so popular when one thinks about it. At the time of its release, the game had fierce competition from all sides. Batman: Arkham Asylum, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and Assassin's Creed 2 all came out in the holiday season of 2009, right when Demon's Souls first appeared on North American shores. These games are all remembered as some of the best in the console generation, especially for the PlayStation 3. A new IP with limited marketing from a fairly unknown developer, this stiff competition would make it theoretically difficult for Demon's Souls to gain footing in the hearts and minds of gamers.

Along those lines, Demon’s Souls’s unconventional design could have been considered a major obstacle in its success. Even now, it can be tough to tell non-Souls players why they work so well. Explaining this appeal when Demon’s Souls was new and not quite as popular would still have been even more so. This can be best demonstrated by the various claims that Demon's Souls is great because it is "hard". The punishing nature of its combat can make it seem “hard”, yet that is not truly the case. I will go into more detail later, but the game is only as punishing as it needs to be, and no more. Given the fact that so many people were introduced to the franchise on other such inaccurate explanations, it is logical to assume that they would avoid the franchise for fear of difficulty, as I did for a long time.

But Demon's Souls did not fall into the shadows of obscurity as one might expect. On the contrary, it grew as From Software continued iterating and reiterating on the core mechanics, transforming the ideas behind it into the very successful franchise we know today. That raises the question of why exactly this series became so popular and successful when so many other, more readily accessible games did not?

The most obvious reason is that its metric for success was significantly lower than that of most other games. There are many classic stories of publishers whose sales predictions for their games were "optimistic" at best. From the expected 7 million copies sold of Resident Evil 6 to the 5-6 million units projected for the Tomb Raider reboot, gamers have become familiar with excessively high hopes from laughably naive publishers. Though both examples come years after Demon's Souls's release, they represent the mentality of the modern AAA gaming space.

By all accounts, Demon's Souls was subject to much more realistic and manageable sales goals. Almost one year after the game came out, in September 2010, it was announced that the first entry in the Souls series soul-ed over 500,000 units. In the eyes of the various publishers responsible for each territory, this figure “nearly quadrupled sales expectations”. For From Software, who developed the product, it was enough to keep working on similar games. Under a different development house these numbers could have easily been interpreted as a failure, so part of the success and popularity of Demon's Souls could be partially attributed to From Software’s more conservative measurement of “success”.

That said, a lowered bar for success is not enough to achieve it. Like any game, Demon's Souls lives and dies by its design. Even now, years after the initial release, the game represents a genuine effort to cater to an underserved niche. The same design elements that would intuitively lead to its demise could actually be credited for Demon’s Soul’s popularity. There exist many people who dislike various aspects of modern game design. These people may not necessarily enjoy having an objective marker telling them exactly how far away they are from where they are supposed to go. Linearity of both game and level design might not satisfy their urge to explore and discover. Combat in many games may require too much of a focus on reflex and speed. It is for these people from whom Demon's Souls was designed. That, in turn, is the largest contributor to its success.

The world of Demon's Souls is deliberately designed to counter many of the expectations in more modern game design. No objective marker is present. In order to figure out where to go and what to do next, players must pay attention to both the visual and audio cues throughout the environment. Guidance does exist, but it is not as readily apparent as it may be in other games. One has to use their own logic and intuition in order to not only figure out what they need to do, but how to do it.

All of the various hidden weapons, armor and trinkets also serve to encourage exploration. Entire essays could be written exclusively on the placement of items in Demon’s Souls. Not only are they just far enough off the beaten path that players will naturally want to wander around areas to look for them, but they are placed in areas where one could logically be expected to find them. For example, players can find the Graverobber’s Ring, which shields its bearer from the vision of evil spirits, on the body of a corpse in an old jail cell. Though the game never draws attention to it, this one item tells the story of a man who used the ring to protect himself from the vengeful spirits of the graves he defiled. Yet, he ultimately could not outrun the law, and died once the chaos that started the game broke out. Almost all of the items in the game tell such stories. Attentive players looking to explore will find themselves enjoying the act of piecing together Boletaria’s history in this manner.

As I mentioned earlier, while combat in Demon's Souls is routinely described as "hard," the truth is not quite as simple. It is a learning process, where players have to figure out how to defeat the foes standing in their way, and even the ones charging at them with reckless abandon. It is less about placing an arbitrary challenge before the player and more about rewarding them for properly analyzing the enemy and capitalizing on moments in their animations where they are made vulnerable. The damage players take is only as high as it is to draw attention to their own mistakes, that they might correct them. Because these windows of opportunity tend to be fairly large, precision timing is not as important. The emphasis is on recognizing both the chances enemies give to attack and those the player gives for foes to do the same. Tactics are at the forefront.

By using these principles in its game design, among others, Demon's Souls caters to audiences that many other games simply don't or won't. I posit that these oft-forgotten gamers are very loyal to both Demon's Souls and the Souls games because it is one of the few franchises that satisfy their specific needs. Of course no one would argue that modern game design conventions are bad. But the same design philosophies that appeal to the largest subset of all gamers are not the ones that scratch the same proverbial itches that Demon's Souls will. So while Demon's Souls is meant for a specific niche, my guess is that this niche is both wide enough and so generally unappeased by other franchises that they took what they could get and ran with it.

Even if it were the case that the target audience was better served, the mechanics and design of Demon's Souls strongly encourage the creation of a community. The lack of hand-holding in the game almost forces players to collaborate and share their accumulated knowledge with others. Even without the aid of dedicated websites, the note system, where players can leave messages for others to take advice from, and the bloodstains that show where and how others died, both make it easy for people to aid one another indirectly. With these in-game tools, players are more likely to offer their knowledge to others that they have never, and will never, meet.

Even outside of the game’s systems, this spirit of cooperation exists in fans of Demon’s Souls. The moniker of a "wiki game," that expects one to look online for item information, character builds, and strategy, is often criticized. While I can definitely acknowledge that it is not a design that everyone will like, those that do will form healthy communities around them. As someone who invested 250+ hours into The Binding of Isaac, I know all too well how fun it can be to just talk and share advice with others. During my playthrough of Demon's Souls, the friends I knew who had played it previously were all too happy to offer tips whenever I asked. The community, and the loyalty born from it, are not accidents. They are logical consequences of the way the game was designed.

Seen in this light, what initially seemed like a freak accident could also be interpreted as an inevitable result of many interlocking circumstances. Given that Demon's Souls had such low expectations, served an undervalued niche, and encouraged this niche to work together and build a community, of course it would catch on with such fervor. It is counter-intuitive, yet the logic is there. As for me, now that I have acquired a taste for Souls, I plan to delve deeper into the Dark.