Hi, I’m Hamish Black, and welcome to Writing
On Games. It’ll probably surprise none of
my regular viewers to know that I am unbelievably
excited for From Software’s upcoming release
Dark Souls 3. Hell, Dark Souls 1 helped me
cope with major depression, and revisiting
Demon’s Souls after becoming enraptured
with its follow up illustrated just how fully
realised these games can be. Their worlds
are consistently beautiful even at their most
macabre, their lore is deep and respects the
player’s intelligence enough not to shove
it in the player’s face, the action is about
as visceral and perfectly tuned as action
games can possibly be, and whilst the player’s
losses are hammered home time and time again,
their achievements and victories are made
even more apparent. Essentially, every single,
micro element of these games felt like they
were placed with the most acute precision,
and judging by trailers and gameplay footage
released by Bandai Namco, it looks like Dark
Souls 3 will mark a grand return to this truly
artistic level of world building and weighty
action (with perhaps a slightly darker vibe
potentially taken from the latest From Soft
release Bloodborne – a game which, sadly,
I have been unable to play due to my lack
of a console to play it on). Notice how one
game in this venerable series has yet to be
mentioned here, and how I use the term ‘grand
return’ to describe the upcoming release.
That game, as the more astute viewers may
have already guessed (probably by looking
at the title of the video), is 2014’s Dark
Souls 2. I can say without a doubt that Dark
Souls 2 is one of the most disappointing games
I have ever played (and I say this having
played through the original release once and
having only recently begun playing through
Scholar Of The First Sin, whilst also having
completed Dark Souls multiple times, so take
that for what it’s worth). It’s not bad,
per se – just disappointing. That distinction
is important, because if Dark Souls 2 had
been released without the baggage that comes
with following perhaps the most fully realised
game of all time, then it could have at the
very least been considered an above-average
action RPG. Whilst none of the features present
in the game retain the polish that so elevated
the other games, the combat still feels relatively
weighty and largely feels more involved than
many of its contemporaries. That said, there
were many elements of Dark Souls 2’s design
that left me genuinely confused as to who
thought their implementation would be beneficial
to the game as a whole. So many deliberate
design decisions seem to illustrate (and obviously
it will be impossible to know the true impact
of this for sure, but it’s an interesting
consideration nonetheless) that without previous
director Hidetaka Miyazaki’s input (and
his subsequent return to the series in both
Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3), the team simply
did not understand what made those games tick
on an absolutely fundamental level. In this
episode of Writing On Games, then, I want
to attempt to break down as much as possible
why this game left me longing for the older
games.
In order to exemplify all of this, it’s
important to break the games down into their
key components and examine why they so worked
in previous instalments, and why the system
updates present in Dark Souls 2 didn’t.
To begin, let’s discuss arguably the main
thing that draws people to these games in
the first place – the action. In many critiques
of the game, I have seen much ephemera used
to describe the action in Dark Souls 2 – how
‘it just didn’t feel right’ or ‘the
action just wasn’t as immersive or fun’.
Whilst I believe that these assertions are
largely correct, I also believe that there
is evidence to back up the idea that the way
combat encounters were designed in 2 did not
lend themselves well to what many believe
the core tenets of the series to be. One of
the key areas where I felt this to be most
prevalent was in the enemy placement of all
things. The beauty of Dark Souls is that the
player never feels fully prepared for what’s
to come in an area their first time through
and it feels like anything could happen at
any moment, yet every enemy is placed very
specifically in order to test the player’s
skills in a number of different ways. In one
way, this precise placement of enemies is
what allows the game to truly teach the player
what they need to know mechanically in order
to best the obstacles their next time through,
as the enemies all return to their original
states, allowing the player to better prepare
for the encounter after they die. For example,
take the first time the player sets foot in
Lordran at the Firelink Shrine – the player
has many options as to where they can go,
yet the way the quote-unquote ‘correct’
route is illustrated to the player is almost
entirely through its enemy placement. If the
player goes down towards New Londo, their
progress is halted by an ambush of ghosts
that they won’t be able to attack without
a certain item. If they head towards the catacombs,
they will be ambushed by skeletons that are
likely to be significantly more powerful than
the player at this early stage. Not only this,
but if the player does decide to persist down
this route or simply choose to run past it,
they will be greeted with more and more skeleton
ambushes as they progress, eventually leading
to a cluster of skeletons, as well as massive
skeleton that will likely kill the player
in one hit. If ever there was a clearer indication
of ‘I might be going the wrong way here’,
I have yet to see it.
Then, when you do hit upon the ‘correct’
path up the stairs towards the Undead Burg,
you are greeted immediately with what you
will face in this situation – there is no
ambush here, simply one enemy placed after
another, clearly visible to the player as
soon as they reach the location. The player
takes on the first enemy to find that this
enemy is unquestionably weaker than the enemies
on the other paths, giving them a better idea
of what to expect going forward on this one.
There is an item hanging from a corpse next
to a slightly more armoured enemy, and as
you approach you discover that the enemy above
you is throwing firebombs down your way, suggesting
that in order to get this item you will have
to either take a risk, or deal with the threats
first. When you discover you can aggro the
armoured enemy to a point where the firebombs
no longer affect you, you can take him out
with slightly more effort than previous enemies.
As you progress up the stairs, you find yourself
confronted with a group of weaker enemies
– a slight escalation of challenge, but
the game only requires that you prioritise
enemies based on their position and risk to
the player. They share the same design so
there is a visual indication that they will
all follow the same set of rules as each other,
meaning that all the player has to do is manage
the situation slightly differently. After
this, they can progress to the Undead Burg
with the indication that they are on the right
track, and they have also learned important
dynamics in terms of combat between individual
enemies and groups of enemies. None of the
other options are locked off to the player
in terms of where they go, but everything
about the enemy placement suggests that this
is where the designers wanted you to focus
your attention at this early stage.
Compare this situation to early encounters
in Dark Souls 2. Whereas with Dark Souls 1,
at least early on, enemy ambushes are used
as a means to deter the player from continuing
down a path that will likely get them killed
time and time again, in Dark Souls 2 the areas
that aren’t just straight up blocked off
by rocks or statues almost seem to use ambush
as their primary means of assaulting the player.
If you decide to head towards Heide’s Tower
of Flame, for instance, it is easy to see
what lies ahead of you, but these enemies
are huge and take a lot of hits to beat, so
the game doesn’t exactly encourage you to
take this path. However, take the path towards
Forest of the Fallen Giants, and the circumstances
change only slightly – this whole area thrives
on bombarding you with enemies that you have
very little chance to see coming, and so it
is easy to become overwhelmed. This is exacerbated
when you climb the ladder to the more open
courtyard and see huge amounts of corpses
lying around which come to life as you get
close to them, meaning that as you’re trying
to deal with one group of enemies, it’s
highly likely that another will spring to
life and begin attacking you as well. This
is the technique implemented in Dark Souls
1 in order to discourage newer players from
heading towards the catacombs, one of the
most difficult areas of the game. Difference
is, this is one of the opening areas of Dark
Souls 2 and is one of the few ways you can
actually go at the start. With the emphasis
on ambushing the player in 2, it feels like
the jump scare riddled trash flick to the
first game’s sombre horror experience that
truly gets under your skin. On top of this,
whilst the enemies are still relatively low
level, they don’t stagger nearly as easily
as the early enemies in Dark Souls 1, whilst
you can be staggered in as little as a couple
of hits.
This is actually an interesting point, as
one of the key differences between Dark Souls
1 and 2 is the level of fairness. Again, much
ephemera is spouted about the first game’s
‘harsh but fair nature’, which again is
absolutely true, but I think it goes deeper
than that tagline alone. The way enemies stagger
compared to the player is actually one of
the biggest indicators of fairness within
the two games – in the first game, if you
hit an enemy and they had their shield up,
you would either be staggered yourself, or
suffer a massive penalty in terms of stamina,
leaving you at least partially open to a counter
attack. Thing is, the enemies were just as
open to this risk themselves. One of the most
effective strategies for some early enemies
is to goad them into attacking, only to stagger
themselves and leave themselves open to a
player counter. The enemies follow the same
rules as the player does in Dark Souls 1 – this
is why the game is considered so fair. Even
with the Ornstein and Smough fight later on
(one of the most difficult boss battles in
the history of gaming), the tension and anxiety
comes from the fact that you now have to manage
two very different bosses as opposed to just
one – it’s a way to test the player on
enemy management and prioritisation between
dodging and attacking rather than just two
powerful enemies with longer health bars than
most (exemplified by the fact that the first
half of the battle is arguably far more difficult
than the second when you only have to fight
one of them). The enemies never cheat, and
as I’ve stated in previous videos, difficulty
is not the be all and end all of the Souls
series. In Dark Souls 2, however, it often
feels as if the enemies follow a completely
different ruleset to the player, rarely opening
themselves up to counter attacks whilst bombarding
the player with flurries of their own, and
at an early stage the player can only effectively
block a few of these hits before their stamina
runs out and they become staggered. Layer
on top of this the fact that it takes more
souls to level up in 2 than in 1, and you
are at a clear statistical disadvantage between
games. This isn’t even to mention the way
enemy placement was handled in the game’s
rerelease, Scholar of the First Sin. This
was supposed to fix many of the issues people
had with the initial release, but for me only
ended up exacerbating them. For example, in
Dark Souls 1 it would feel incredibly off
if suddenly the amount of enemies in an area
or where they were placed was changed in any
way. As I have stated previously, every enemy
feels as if it is placed there for a reason,
and it usually comes down to minutely tuning
the exact challenge the player will face at
any given point. If you head to Forest of
the Fallen Giants in the second game, however,
you’ll find that there are quite simply
random enemies placed there in Scholar of
the First Sin, including one that especially
early in the game would be near impossible
to beat. Make your way to the more open area
up the ladder and there are far more enemies,
as well as one of the white knight guys taken
away from the area. Head to Heide’s Tower
of Flame, and suddenly there are two of these
white knights that weren’t there before.
Why are they there? What purpose do they serve
narratively? Why do they not aggro unless
attacked first? It is not made clear to the
player, and so their placement in the rerelease
when they weren’t in that area at all to
begin with just makes the design of the game
feel inconsistent, as if any enemy could just
be forced in at any point for the sake of
difficulty. It’s as if the developers of
the second game looked at the marketing push
for the first game, saw how well the idea
of a ‘difficult game’ with ‘PREPARE
TO DIE’ as its slogan resonated with masochists
complaining about ‘too much handholding’
in modern games and thought ‘we need to
up the ante’ as opposed to examining why
that difficulty was implemented both mechanically
and thematically.
Which brings me onto my final point – the
ways in which both games handle the idea of
difficulty in terms of their plots and general
tone. If you watched my last video on Dark
Souls, you’ll know that I posit that the
game actually maintains a celebratory tone
rather than merely wallowing in the macabre.
This is apparent for many reasons – for
example, the way the game handles death is
far different to the way its sequel deals
with the concept. The key to Dark Souls 1
is that the world ultimately is grossly indifferent
to your presence, and ultimately the reason
you are fighting through this harsh world
is to gain enough agency over your own existence
to recognise triumph as well as failure and
appreciate the little moments in life. Death
is trivialised – it happens so much and
the enemies trudge so lethargically back to
their positions after cutting you down that
it almost takes on a humorous quality. This
means that when the player succeeds, however,
it is highlighted by the game – whether
that be through a moment of precious respite
from combat, or a new area to explore or an
item, these occur just rarely enough and are
brought about solely by player skill (remember,
all enemies in Dark Souls 1 follow a set of
rules just like you do) that when the player
wins, the sense of accomplishment is palpable
– this, in turn, encourages the player to
keep going. This is why, as I have previously
argued, the game is such an effective allegory
for depression and how to cope with it or
overcome it, even if it seems insignificant
at first.
Dark Souls 2, on the other hand, from the
very start, illustrates to the player a complete
misunderstanding of the tone of the series.
Like I say, it feels like the developers thought
that ‘more difficult’ meant ‘better
game’ and this is clear from the piss-poor
excuse for narrative at the start of the game.
You are told at the very start of the game,
with what feels like scraps out of a particularly
emotional teenager’s poetry journal, that
‘like a moth to a flame your wings will
burn in anguish’ as ‘that is the fate
of the cursed.’ It hammers home the inevitability
of succumbing to your curse, which if we’re
looking at the idea of being cursed as allegorical
to suffering from major depression, is actually
kind of dangerous. The women in the house
laugh at you, talking to you like a child
as if they understand your condition far better
than you ever could. It insinuates that the
idea of trying to fight is absolutely futile,
before laughing at the idea that you could
possibly survive in this world, and that you
will lose the very thing that makes you feel
like you’ve conquered something, your souls,
‘over and over again’, before descending
into fits of laughter once again. It may sound
like I’m being somewhat pedantic or looking
into this too much, but this was genuinely
one of the worst first impressions a game
has ever left on me, and arguably soured the
experience. Most of the NPCs in the first
game, like the enemies, felt like they were
operating on a similar emotional framework
to the player. That is to say, regardless
of whether they acted hostile or friendly,
they were all informed by a sense of fear
of losing themselves, and so for the most
part they encourage you to keep going. As
the pyromancer you rescue from the Depths
says to you as you return to Firelink Shrine
(and as expertly analysed by my fellow YouTuber
Fork whose video on Dark Souls you should
definitely check out), ‘don’t you dare
go Hollow.’ The game and its characters
want you to succeed, if only to show them
that at the very least, someone in their predicament
can succeed. Dark Souls 2, on the other hand,
revels in the grim and the macabre in a way
that feels completely opposite to the message
Dark Souls 1 communicates to the player. As
I previously stated, it feels like the enemies
all follow completely different rulesets to
you and they can often overwhelm you in sheer
numbers and without warning, and so overcoming
them unscathed often feels like sheer luck
rather than skill. This transition from luck
to skill means that as opposed to the first
game, winning feels trivialised as opposed
to losing. The developers, like the women
at the start of the game, laugh at the idea
of you succeeding, and by pummelling you with
hordes of stronger enemies, limiting your
abilities through stats, renovating the healing
system so that healing items are limited and
you only start off with one Estus Flask, modifying
weapon durability so weapons can break well
before the enemy numbers are depleted, and
various other mechanical and design factors,
the developers state in no uncertain terms,
that difficulty trumps all, regardless of
what it’s used for. As opposed to all the
characters that tell you they don’t want
to see you go Hollow in the first game, everything
about the second game suggests that that is
all the game wants for you. The only way you
can overcome any of this is if luck happens
to favour you, and that is exactly the opposite
of what I look for in a Souls game.
So yeah, that is a very abridged version of
the basic ways Dark Souls 2 got it wrong.
It’s a slightly longer episode today, but
only because I feel there is so much to be
said on this game and its place within the
series. Like I say, I don’t think it’s
a bad game necessarily and there are certainly
some mechanical elements that still place
it above many contemporary RPGs in my mind,
but within the canon of the Souls series,
it just doesn’t hold up. Hidetaka Miyazaki’s
absence as director for 2, and his return
to the widely revered Bloodborne suggests
that without that singular vision at its helm,
the developers completely missed the point
of why these games are supposed to be difficult.
It’s important from a mechanical, design
and narrative point of view – it permeates
every element of the game’s design. In 2,
however, as opposed to merely informing the
design, it felt like the primary objective.
There is so much I didn’t get to talk about
here regarding world design and such, and
I was only able to analyse a couple of early
encounters in both games, but I feel they
are indicative of the larger issues here.
I dunno, have I got this all wrong? I know
of some defenders of the game, but I also
know that the general consensus is that the
game is disappointing (I’d highly recommend
checking out Matthewmatosis and Matt Lee’s
videos on the subject for more reasons why
this game just doesn’t work). I’d be really
interested to know what you think, so leave
a comment down below regarding your thoughts
on the game, whether they be positive or negative.
Anyway, thank you all very much for watching,
and as an aside, thank you all so much for
supporting the channel! New subscribers are
coming in every day and I genuinely appreciate
every one. If you like the videos then if
you considered sharing them with other people
you think might be able to take something
from them then I’d be eternally grateful.
You guys give me the energy to keep doing
this on a semi-regular basis, so thank you
all so much. I know the channel is still relatively
tiny compared to others, but that doesn’t
mean that your support means any less to me
– quite the opposite, actually. In short,
you guys are the best. And with that said,
I’m Hamish Black and that concludes another
episode of Writing On Games. I’ll see you
next time.
