This was both informative and entertaining. I remember back in the early 2010s when you seemingly couldn't go anywhere on the gaming internet without someone talking about Dark Souls as if it were...
This was both informative and entertaining.
I remember back in the early 2010s when you seemingly couldn't go anywhere on the gaming internet without someone talking about Dark Souls as if it were a sort of religious experience. It's like there were street preachers on every corner, sharing the gospel of the game. At the time I remember being a little baffled. I hadn't played the game, didn't really know anything about it, and nobody could ever properly articulate why the game was so magical in the sort of clear-cut way this video does. Instead it was all intangibles and feelings -- articulations of sentiments that I couldn't hold onto because I didn't have the framework in which to put them.
I remember eventually getting frustrated by these conversations because they usually came to a simple endpoint of "you wouldn't understand" that smacked of gatekeeping, but I was someone who genuinely did want to understand and couldn't -- because nobody was explaining it! I remember seeing a particularly curt response to one of the Souls evangelists at the time, and it said something along the lines of "One day I'm going to sit down and play Dark Souls, and I guarantee you it's going to be just another fucking videogame and not some moment of transcendence." At the time, I cheered this takedown on. It felt like a more incisive and definitive truth about the game than any of the discourse surrounding it which I felt was almost entirely ineffable, holier-than-thou bullshit.
In hindsight, I now understand that, when it comes to Souls games, there is a there there, and my judgment came from a bad place in myself and was completely undeserved. Nevertheless, I still only understand the appeal of Souls-like games in an intellectual sense and not an experiential one. I genuinely did try! I eagerly bought and played Dark Souls right after the PC port came out. Anyone in the know is probably rolling their eyes at me right now, because the PC port was notoriously bad on release, so of course I didn't make it very far into the game. To this day, it's hard to know if I didn't like the game because I simply don't like the design behind the game, or because I was playing an awful port of it (you can't even buy the original edition on Steam anymore).
Given what I now know about my own playstyles and the games themselves -- with their magic fully demystified -- I think it's safe to say that I probably won't enjoy them. Nevertheless, I still have a pull to give one a real try. I want to experience what others are experiencing and feel that glorious glow I would see in them when they talked about the game.
I never really got Dark Souls. I ended up playing it for quite a while, because the combat was fun, but I wouldn't say it ever clicked, so to speak — it was alright, but I still found the game as...
I never really got Dark Souls. I ended up playing it for quite a while, because the combat was fun, but I wouldn't say it ever clicked, so to speak — it was alright, but I still found the game as a whole rather frustrating and overly-punishing, so it never really became a favorite of mine.
IMO, it's a good reminder that there's a huge chunk of people who love games that are very hard to beat, but I'm just not one of those folks. Dark Souls has plenty of good ideas, but I don't consider it's difficulty to be as much of one as I constantly hear others claim. That part depends on the individual.
P.S., while I agree that "not directly teaching the player" a la Dark Souls is better than "force an obnoxious tutorial on the player," I don't think it's the best plan either. The best game tutorial is the one the player doesn't know exists, yet still exists nonetheless.
Did you mean to link to 695s into the video, @tunneljumper? I removed the timestamp from the link, since I assume you didn't mean to, but if it was intentional let me know and I can restore it.
Did you mean to link to 695s into the video, @tunneljumper? I removed the timestamp from the link, since I assume you didn't mean to, but if it was intentional let me know and I can restore it.
This was both informative and entertaining.
I remember back in the early 2010s when you seemingly couldn't go anywhere on the gaming internet without someone talking about Dark Souls as if it were a sort of religious experience. It's like there were street preachers on every corner, sharing the gospel of the game. At the time I remember being a little baffled. I hadn't played the game, didn't really know anything about it, and nobody could ever properly articulate why the game was so magical in the sort of clear-cut way this video does. Instead it was all intangibles and feelings -- articulations of sentiments that I couldn't hold onto because I didn't have the framework in which to put them.
I remember eventually getting frustrated by these conversations because they usually came to a simple endpoint of "you wouldn't understand" that smacked of gatekeeping, but I was someone who genuinely did want to understand and couldn't -- because nobody was explaining it! I remember seeing a particularly curt response to one of the Souls evangelists at the time, and it said something along the lines of "One day I'm going to sit down and play Dark Souls, and I guarantee you it's going to be just another fucking videogame and not some moment of transcendence." At the time, I cheered this takedown on. It felt like a more incisive and definitive truth about the game than any of the discourse surrounding it which I felt was almost entirely ineffable, holier-than-thou bullshit.
In hindsight, I now understand that, when it comes to Souls games, there is a there there, and my judgment came from a bad place in myself and was completely undeserved. Nevertheless, I still only understand the appeal of Souls-like games in an intellectual sense and not an experiential one. I genuinely did try! I eagerly bought and played Dark Souls right after the PC port came out. Anyone in the know is probably rolling their eyes at me right now, because the PC port was notoriously bad on release, so of course I didn't make it very far into the game. To this day, it's hard to know if I didn't like the game because I simply don't like the design behind the game, or because I was playing an awful port of it (you can't even buy the original edition on Steam anymore).
Given what I now know about my own playstyles and the games themselves -- with their magic fully demystified -- I think it's safe to say that I probably won't enjoy them. Nevertheless, I still have a pull to give one a real try. I want to experience what others are experiencing and feel that glorious glow I would see in them when they talked about the game.
If you still want to give the Souls games a shot. Dark Souls 3 is a great entry point to the series.
I never really got Dark Souls. I ended up playing it for quite a while, because the combat was fun, but I wouldn't say it ever clicked, so to speak — it was alright, but I still found the game as a whole rather frustrating and overly-punishing, so it never really became a favorite of mine.
IMO, it's a good reminder that there's a huge chunk of people who love games that are very hard to beat, but I'm just not one of those folks. Dark Souls has plenty of good ideas, but I don't consider it's difficulty to be as much of one as I constantly hear others claim. That part depends on the individual.
P.S., while I agree that "not directly teaching the player" a la Dark Souls is better than "force an obnoxious tutorial on the player," I don't think it's the best plan either. The best game tutorial is the one the player doesn't know exists, yet still exists nonetheless.
Did you mean to link to 695s into the video, @tunneljumper? I removed the timestamp from the link, since I assume you didn't mean to, but if it was intentional let me know and I can restore it.
Oops, no I didn’t. Thanks!