On preparing to die, repeatedly
When I have not been doing other things (*cough*thesis*cough*) I've been playing quite a bit of Dark Souls. It's a great game that I like a lot, and its reputation for difficulty is not entirely undeserved, but part of what's interesting about the game is that it - intentionally, I presume - is that for a game that has "Prepare to Die" on the cover, it really has more bark than bite. It still has bite though, but no more than is absolutely necessary.
As a matter of fact, the game's had me thinking about how difficulty and lack of access to content impacts how a game feels overall. If you read anything about Dark Souls, you get a feeling that people fetishize its difficulty a lot. I don't think I fetishize game difficulty as such, though; in fact, I've played all of three games on the PS3 so far, and liked all of them; there's Dark Souls, which is hard (but not as hard as people say it is), Valkyria Chronicles, which is in that sweet spot where it feels like it's going to screw you over but it never does. And then there's Journey, which... basically has no difficulty at all since it's more of an interactive experience than a game, really.
That said. When I played Valkyria Chronicles last year, pretty early on I basically decided that I wouldn't save mid-battle and wouldn't ever retry a mission unless I actually saw a Game Over screen. As it turned out, that's something that only ever happened a couple of times through the game. A mission in Valkyria Chronicles is very much an environmental puzzle; once you know what to do, where to go and where the enemy is, it's smooth sailing, and even when you make a mistake, it's possible to compensate during the actual battle. In general, the enemy AI in VC is actually ridiculously passive, and the only way the game maintains the illusion that you're fighting an active and dynamic enemy is by having each battle heavily scripted and occasionally breaking its own rules.
Now VC is a fun game with great atmosphere, amazing visuals and a good battle system, so there's much to like there as it is. But my point is, in VC, it feels like you actually only have one shot to experience each battle the way they're meant to be, with all the surprises and sudden scripted events which screw you over in new and exciting ways intact that you have to scramble to survive. Once you retry a mission already knowing the environment and where all the enemies are and so on, planning an ideal battle plan becomes trivial, and it ceases to be particularily tense or dramatic. So in a way, a battle in Valkyria Chronicles is very much a once-or-never experience.
What I find really interesting about Dark Souls is how the game makes repeating large swathes of the game over and over again, in exactly the same form, so absurdly compelling.
Also dying repeatedly. Let us not forget the dying...
When I procured Dark Souls, mostly out of a certain sense of obligation, I didn't think I would actually care much for the game. Based on everything that I heard about it, it was a game with very little in the way of narrative, and a lot of fighting and most particularily a great deal of dying in a quasi-medieval fantasy world that tries way too hard to be dark and edgy. Which is all more or less true, but the game nonetheless exhibits a mysterious charm that I have been struggling to explain concisely.
The moment where the game clicked for me, so to speak, was several hours into the game outside the Undead Parish. After several fairly challenging fights and having struggled to make my way in and being quite low on healing I noticed a new, unfamiliar enemy standing guard in a hallway. So I considered the matter and decided not to risk fighting it. That right there is the greatest thing about Dark Souls. There are games where sneaking about, managing aggro to fight monsters one at a time, coming up with cheesy tactics and sometimes just plain going out of your way to skip fights makes you feel like a tool, but Dark Souls is not one of those games since you actually need to do those things to not die.
Of course, you don't want to die in most games, but most games tend to be founded on the premise that you are a heroic protagonist of a narrative. Dying interrupts the performance and breaks the illusion. Now in Dark Souls, dying happens to be part of the performance, which is good since you die quite a lot. The reason why you don't want to die is not due to aesthetic reasons, but more to the point because dying deals you a small setback, as well as a slap on the wrist through loss of resources and, oddly enough, a small carrot on the stick in that you can get them back if you make it back to where you died. It's the last point that actually gives Dark Souls its slow, but by no means relaxed pace. A lot of games deal far harsher and more crippling punishments for dying; what Dark Souls instead incentivises being careful.
That's what makes exploring in Dark Souls what it is, which is pretty great. A lot of people talk about boss fights in Dark Souls, but in my mind the genuinely juicy part of the game is really the exploration. You can't consume an area in Dark Souls in one go, not easily, at any rate - you take them one small bite at a time. There are dungeons where you step in, try to push in, die, slink back with your tail beneath your legs and come back later with better gear for another go. This sort of slow, gradual, crawling progress makes the world - which is by no means large, but cleverly interconnected - feel a great deal bigger than it actually is.
At the same time, having things just out of your reach because you're not strong enough to get to them, as well as the risk of losing something almost tangible if you foolishy rush in, makes just about every aspect of Dark Souls feel more important than they would be in other games. Take loot, for instance. In a generic modern RPG - let's say Dragon Age II - I can't very well remember a single Goddamn item I found in the game, and why would I, since all loot is level-scaled and will be replaced by a better version with 3% higher DPS in an hour or so anyway? You just pick everything up since that's what you do in games. In Dark Souls, though, once you find the Wolf Ring, it is staying put in your inventory for the rest of the game because you can really use what it does for you. Finding a Shotel is enthralling because finally, you have a tool for butchering the kind of assholes who like to turtle behind Havel's Greatshield. And so on.
What's interesting is that this extends even to NPCs. I've wondered previously how characters with minimal dialogue in games like FFTactics feel so vivid; the answer, I think, is because they're actually trying to kill you and doing a good job about it. There's a similar thing going on in Dark Souls. Take the much-loved Knight Solaire of Astora. He has how many lines in the entire game, like, a dozen? But I was sold after three lines because he's the first person in the game you meet who didn't laugh at me, make fun of me and tell me I was screwed, but instead offers aid in good faith. In Dark Souls the NPCs matter not because they say funny things (they do sometimes), but because they give advice and render services that you can really use to progress.
Of course, I could have experienced the entirety of Journey several times in the time it took for me to get far enough into Dark Souls for the game to actually turn somewhat pleasurable, as opposed to something between interesting and actually pretty annoying. A game doesn't actually need tension to impress; Journey is more about a vague wistful feeling and beautiful landscapes, as well as, in multiplayer, being a sort of fable about sharing an experience with a stranger and offering and receiving anonymous kindness. It's a pretty sweet game, and it accomplishes a great deal for being about two hours long, so it's definitely good value for time, if nothing else.
And yet, I'm not sure I'm ever going to play Journey a second time. Nice as it is, I'm not really sure what another playthrough could add to the experience. It is, almost inevitably, consumed in one go. Meanwhile, Dark Souls, like some kind of archetypal tsundere, keeps playing hard to get.
And kills you. Repeatedly.
As a matter of fact, the game's had me thinking about how difficulty and lack of access to content impacts how a game feels overall. If you read anything about Dark Souls, you get a feeling that people fetishize its difficulty a lot. I don't think I fetishize game difficulty as such, though; in fact, I've played all of three games on the PS3 so far, and liked all of them; there's Dark Souls, which is hard (but not as hard as people say it is), Valkyria Chronicles, which is in that sweet spot where it feels like it's going to screw you over but it never does. And then there's Journey, which... basically has no difficulty at all since it's more of an interactive experience than a game, really.
That said. When I played Valkyria Chronicles last year, pretty early on I basically decided that I wouldn't save mid-battle and wouldn't ever retry a mission unless I actually saw a Game Over screen. As it turned out, that's something that only ever happened a couple of times through the game. A mission in Valkyria Chronicles is very much an environmental puzzle; once you know what to do, where to go and where the enemy is, it's smooth sailing, and even when you make a mistake, it's possible to compensate during the actual battle. In general, the enemy AI in VC is actually ridiculously passive, and the only way the game maintains the illusion that you're fighting an active and dynamic enemy is by having each battle heavily scripted and occasionally breaking its own rules.
Now VC is a fun game with great atmosphere, amazing visuals and a good battle system, so there's much to like there as it is. But my point is, in VC, it feels like you actually only have one shot to experience each battle the way they're meant to be, with all the surprises and sudden scripted events which screw you over in new and exciting ways intact that you have to scramble to survive. Once you retry a mission already knowing the environment and where all the enemies are and so on, planning an ideal battle plan becomes trivial, and it ceases to be particularily tense or dramatic. So in a way, a battle in Valkyria Chronicles is very much a once-or-never experience.
What I find really interesting about Dark Souls is how the game makes repeating large swathes of the game over and over again, in exactly the same form, so absurdly compelling.
Also dying repeatedly. Let us not forget the dying...
When I procured Dark Souls, mostly out of a certain sense of obligation, I didn't think I would actually care much for the game. Based on everything that I heard about it, it was a game with very little in the way of narrative, and a lot of fighting and most particularily a great deal of dying in a quasi-medieval fantasy world that tries way too hard to be dark and edgy. Which is all more or less true, but the game nonetheless exhibits a mysterious charm that I have been struggling to explain concisely.
The moment where the game clicked for me, so to speak, was several hours into the game outside the Undead Parish. After several fairly challenging fights and having struggled to make my way in and being quite low on healing I noticed a new, unfamiliar enemy standing guard in a hallway. So I considered the matter and decided not to risk fighting it. That right there is the greatest thing about Dark Souls. There are games where sneaking about, managing aggro to fight monsters one at a time, coming up with cheesy tactics and sometimes just plain going out of your way to skip fights makes you feel like a tool, but Dark Souls is not one of those games since you actually need to do those things to not die.
Of course, you don't want to die in most games, but most games tend to be founded on the premise that you are a heroic protagonist of a narrative. Dying interrupts the performance and breaks the illusion. Now in Dark Souls, dying happens to be part of the performance, which is good since you die quite a lot. The reason why you don't want to die is not due to aesthetic reasons, but more to the point because dying deals you a small setback, as well as a slap on the wrist through loss of resources and, oddly enough, a small carrot on the stick in that you can get them back if you make it back to where you died. It's the last point that actually gives Dark Souls its slow, but by no means relaxed pace. A lot of games deal far harsher and more crippling punishments for dying; what Dark Souls instead incentivises being careful.
That's what makes exploring in Dark Souls what it is, which is pretty great. A lot of people talk about boss fights in Dark Souls, but in my mind the genuinely juicy part of the game is really the exploration. You can't consume an area in Dark Souls in one go, not easily, at any rate - you take them one small bite at a time. There are dungeons where you step in, try to push in, die, slink back with your tail beneath your legs and come back later with better gear for another go. This sort of slow, gradual, crawling progress makes the world - which is by no means large, but cleverly interconnected - feel a great deal bigger than it actually is.
At the same time, having things just out of your reach because you're not strong enough to get to them, as well as the risk of losing something almost tangible if you foolishy rush in, makes just about every aspect of Dark Souls feel more important than they would be in other games. Take loot, for instance. In a generic modern RPG - let's say Dragon Age II - I can't very well remember a single Goddamn item I found in the game, and why would I, since all loot is level-scaled and will be replaced by a better version with 3% higher DPS in an hour or so anyway? You just pick everything up since that's what you do in games. In Dark Souls, though, once you find the Wolf Ring, it is staying put in your inventory for the rest of the game because you can really use what it does for you. Finding a Shotel is enthralling because finally, you have a tool for butchering the kind of assholes who like to turtle behind Havel's Greatshield. And so on.
What's interesting is that this extends even to NPCs. I've wondered previously how characters with minimal dialogue in games like FFTactics feel so vivid; the answer, I think, is because they're actually trying to kill you and doing a good job about it. There's a similar thing going on in Dark Souls. Take the much-loved Knight Solaire of Astora. He has how many lines in the entire game, like, a dozen? But I was sold after three lines because he's the first person in the game you meet who didn't laugh at me, make fun of me and tell me I was screwed, but instead offers aid in good faith. In Dark Souls the NPCs matter not because they say funny things (they do sometimes), but because they give advice and render services that you can really use to progress.
Of course, I could have experienced the entirety of Journey several times in the time it took for me to get far enough into Dark Souls for the game to actually turn somewhat pleasurable, as opposed to something between interesting and actually pretty annoying. A game doesn't actually need tension to impress; Journey is more about a vague wistful feeling and beautiful landscapes, as well as, in multiplayer, being a sort of fable about sharing an experience with a stranger and offering and receiving anonymous kindness. It's a pretty sweet game, and it accomplishes a great deal for being about two hours long, so it's definitely good value for time, if nothing else.
And yet, I'm not sure I'm ever going to play Journey a second time. Nice as it is, I'm not really sure what another playthrough could add to the experience. It is, almost inevitably, consumed in one go. Meanwhile, Dark Souls, like some kind of archetypal tsundere, keeps playing hard to get.
And kills you. Repeatedly.