Why does Dark Souls get so much praise?

[SqueezetheFlab]

If you don't feel like watching the whole 12 minutes, please just give the first three a shot, because that's the part that illustrates how the gameplay of Dark Souls tells a story through experience. Not experience points, but by making the player experience something about the world that is represented by the game.

I watched it all.

It probably boils down to the following anecdote:

Some 10 years ago I bought two containers of ice cream at my grandmothers behest (yes, she was still alive). One of the containers was an all-natural, high quality, not-so-sweet old school "artisan" ice cream that was costly. The other container was some crappy vanillin flavored ultra-sweet crap that was on sale.

I scooped out the good one for her to try.

She ate the first and I noticed that her expression hadn't changed. She was completely unimpressed . She left almost all of what I had given her in the bowl and sampled directly out of the container of the wholesale brand. She kept eating and eating it, which had upset me because I had spent an ass-load on the high quality stuff.

"Grandma, why aren't you eating the good one? I only bought that one because it was cheap."

"This one tastes like something. The other one doesn't taste like anything. It has no flavor."

"But... look at the ingredients! This is like the stuff you used to eat growing up!"

She tried it again and gave me an angry look.

"I don't like it, it doesn't taste like anything."

She went back to eating the crappy yellow-colored abomination straight out of the vat. She genuinely did not give a fuck that the other stuff was made with real ingredients and tasted like frozen cream instead of synthetic vanilla .

I ate the good stuff and enjoyed the hell out of, because it offered more to me than the generic stuff. I couldn't understand why she didn't like it. All she seemed to care about was how potent the flavor was.

 

[Trunkage]

I like Dark Soul but there are problems and they can be seen more clearly as the series progresses.
Firstly, PvP is always bad if you don't put plenty of hours into it.
Endless talk about the fire and the dark.
No endings, its just cyclical. You cant make choices. Nothing you do means something. They don't explain the choices.

Just thought I'd say something about these two. The first, PVP, is not that hard. Invading other players is relatively cost free, so it's a good way to practice that. If you're at a reasonable SL, you should be well matched to your opponent. If you've overlevelled, there's a higher chance of some brute in heavy armour who you can't even scratch, at least in the first ones. In the third, it's more likely you'll find some ridiculously OP mage there.

And the fire and the dark are what the endings are, and the endings are pretty well explained. Fire burning = things continue as normal, fire goes out, age of dark. The first game says directly in some of the few plot related conversations, those with the serpents, what they believe. Frampt wants you to kindle the First Flame, by gathering powerful souls for the Lord Vessel, like Gwyn did before him, being consumed by the fire to continue the Age of Fire. Kaathe wants you to abandon the fire, and instead let it die, bringing on an age of Dark, over which you become the Dark Lord. He sells it to you as the Age of Man, and a chance to start building on something, rather than the Sisyphean task of relighting the flame, but without the flame, everything will slowly die around them.

Either way, eventually an age of fire comes out of dark, or dark out of fire.

The third allows a real Usurpation of the cycle, where the player can take the Fire inside themselves, and rule the as Lord of Hollows and attempt to restore Londor, they may link the fire, or refuse, as before, etc.

The end of the game doesn't serve a plot purpose because plot doesn't really matter to Dark Souls. There's lore and history, but active plot is fairly thin. It serves a thematic one. The ending you choose is basically meant to be an expression of your interpretation of the world. They serve as commentary on the themes of the game. Where they fall apart isn't their relevance (Do we need a Fallout style summary at the end to tell us what happened next, like we cared?), it's that to get them requires knowing ahead of time far too much about how to get them. Depending on who you were going to side with in the first one, there's already an element of variability. For the third one, getting some of the endings requires a very specific course through the game, where it is very easy to miss out on what you need to do.

You know there is going to be a DS4. And you know its still going to be the end of the age of fire. You also know that the Usurpation of Fire is probably somehow just the same as the other endings.

I always had more than one person invading me at a time. I ended up playing the second half of DS1 being hallowed because I was never good enough. By DS3, I could hold my own winning almost 50% of the time.

 

[SqueezetheFlab]

Different people like different things, who knew?

 

[DefunctTheory]

Spoiler

I like Dark Soul but there are problems and they can be seen more clearly as the series progresses.
Firstly, PvP is always bad if you don't put plenty of hours into it.
Endless talk about the fire and the dark.
No endings, its just cyclical. You cant make choices. Nothing you do means something. They don't explain the choices.

Just thought I'd say something about these two. The first, PVP, is not that hard. Invading other players is relatively cost free, so it's a good way to practice that. If you're at a reasonable SL, you should be well matched to your opponent. If you've overlevelled, there's a higher chance of some brute in heavy armour who you can't even scratch, at least in the first ones. In the third, it's more likely you'll find some ridiculously OP mage there.

And the fire and the dark are what the endings are, and the endings are pretty well explained. Fire burning = things continue as normal, fire goes out, age of dark. The first game says directly in some of the few plot related conversations, those with the serpents, what they believe. Frampt wants you to kindle the First Flame, by gathering powerful souls for the Lord Vessel, like Gwyn did before him, being consumed by the fire to continue the Age of Fire. Kaathe wants you to abandon the fire, and instead let it die, bringing on an age of Dark, over which you become the Dark Lord. He sells it to you as the Age of Man, and a chance to start building on something, rather than the Sisyphean task of relighting the flame, but without the flame, everything will slowly die around them.

Either way, eventually an age of fire comes out of dark, or dark out of fire.

The third allows a real Usurpation of the cycle, where the player can take the Fire inside themselves, and rule the as Lord of Hollows and attempt to restore Londor, they may link the fire, or refuse, as before, etc.

The end of the game doesn't serve a plot purpose because plot doesn't really matter to Dark Souls. There's lore and history, but active plot is fairly thin. It serves a thematic one. The ending you choose is basically meant to be an expression of your interpretation of the world. They serve as commentary on the themes of the game. Where they fall apart isn't their relevance (Do we need a Fallout style summary at the end to tell us what happened next, like we cared?), it's that to get them requires knowing ahead of time far too much about how to get them. Depending on who you were going to side with in the first one, there's already an element of variability. For the third one, getting some of the endings requires a very specific course through the game, where it is very easy to miss out on what you need to do.

You know there is going to be a DS4. And you know its still going to be the end of the age of fire. You also know that the Usurpation of Fire is probably somehow just the same as the other endings.

Well, they claim Dark Souls is dead. And they're waist deep in a new IP.

I guess it just depends on what happens. If the next IP works out, Dark Souls might actually stay dead (At least for a decade or so, until its time for a new remake cycle to kick off).

Or they could pull a Gearbox and fuck up their next IP so bad they have no choice but to run back to the colossal teat that is the old IP.

 

[Dalisclock]

For me, it's the intricate level design, the wonder, atmosphere and focus on combat and survival. The linear, scripted action games with all the cutscenes are so tedious most of the time, but Dark Souls I was able to play for hours and hours at a time. Sometimes whole days wasted away.

I hardly care about the story anymore. I find item descriptions lazy and unrealistic, since it doesn't put you in the shoes of the character learning the information. They don't grow from it. I prefer visuals.

Hell, I wouldn't mind just a sign or something every so often. I don't need a novel, but something like "Welcome to Anor Londo, City of the Gods, under the protection of Lord Gwyn" would be nice.

Apparently DS2 actually did/does have readable signs.

 

[chadachada123]

For me, it's the intricate level design, the wonder, atmosphere and focus on combat and survival. The linear, scripted action games with all the cutscenes are so tedious most of the time, but Dark Souls I was able to play for hours and hours at a time. Sometimes whole days wasted away.

I hardly care about the story anymore. I find item descriptions lazy and unrealistic, since it doesn't put you in the shoes of the character learning the information. They don't grow from it. I prefer visuals.

Hell, I wouldn't mind just a sign or something every so often. I don't need a novel, but something like "Welcome to Anor Londo, City of the Gods, under the protection of Lord Gwyn" would be nice.

Apparently DS2 actually did/does have readable signs.

I can't remember if there are any in DaS, but Demon's Souls had them in a few places. Most notably 3-1, since it keeps you from getting lost.

Edit: Not the kind of sign Ezekiel was looking for, though, just a wing and floor level of a big prison.

 

[ryan_cs]

If you don't feel like watching the whole 12 minutes, please just give the first three a shot, because that's the part that illustrates how the gameplay of Dark Souls tells a story through experience. Not experience points, but by making the player experience something about the world that is represented by the game.

I watched it all.

It probably boils down to the following anecdote:

Some 10 years ago I bought two containers of ice cream at my grandmothers behest (yes, she was still alive). One of the containers was an all-natural, high quality, not-so-sweet old school "artisan" ice cream that was costly. The other container was some crappy vanillin flavored ultra-sweet crap that was on sale.

I scooped out the good one for her to try.

She ate the first and I noticed that her expression hadn't changed. She was completely unimpressed . She left almost all of what I had given her in the bowl and sampled directly out of the container of the wholesale brand. She kept eating and eating it, which had upset me because I had spent an ass-load on the high quality stuff.

"Grandma, why aren't you eating the good one? I only bought that one because it was cheap."

"This one tastes like something. The other one doesn't taste like anything. It has no flavor."

"But... look at the ingredients! This is like the stuff you used to eat growing up!"

She tried it again and gave me an angry look.

"I don't like it, it doesn't taste like anything."

She went back to eating the crappy yellow-colored abomination straight out of the vat. She genuinely did not give a fuck that the other stuff was made with real ingredients and tasted like frozen cream instead of synthetic vanilla .

I ate the good stuff and enjoyed the hell out of, because it offered more to me than the generic stuff. I couldn't understand why she didn't like it. All she seemed to care about was how potent the flavor was.

You're the grandma and can't enjoy the good stuff because you're too old? The annecdote wasn't really helpful.

I've never had another series where you can play an adventure archaeologist as good as Dark Souls. Most games that stick with me usually do something unique, and Dark Souls lets you piece together clues from a lot of loot to form a bigger picture. Add that you can guess where the traps are before they activate, and a combat that focuses more on figuring out patterns, you get a game where instead of reflexes you need to calm down, stay back, and think. Those two reasons are why Dark Souls stick with me.

 

[Vigormortis]

The thread you sourced literally has the answer you're asking for here.

The series is a masterpiece of atmosphere and level/world design, with an excellent story that's not 'entirely speculation,' and serviceable and fun combat.

Yet another case of 'different strokes for different folks.' I haven't the slightest idea why some people can't seem to process that.

And now you know exactly how I felt from 2008 to 2013 when this forum was almost obsessed with questioning people on why the Half-Life series is so popular and so praised.

Granted, the OP of this thread was a lot more cogent, coherent, and noninflammatory than most of the "Why do people like Half-Life" threads were, but still...

 

[DefunctTheory]

Spoiler

The thread you sourced literally has the answer you're asking for here.

The series is a masterpiece of atmosphere and level/world design, with an excellent story that's not 'entirely speculation,' and serviceable and fun combat.

Yet another case of 'different strokes for different folks.' I haven't the slightest idea why some people can't seem to process that.

And now you know exactly how I felt from 2008 to 2013 when this forum was almost obsessed with questioning people on why the Half-Life series is so popular and so praised.

Granted, the OP of this thread was a lot more cogent, coherent, and noninflammatory than most of the "Why do people like Half-Life" threads were, but still...

Well... I was here for that stuff too, you know.

In fact, we had a 'Why don't people realize Half-Life 2 sucks donkey dick' thread here only a couple of months ago. It got locked, if I remember correctly.

 

[loa]

Yeah, we have so many timing-based combat games with focus on atmosphere and good design, we need more of them half-circle forward + b ultra combo meter fillers with platforming because that works so well in third person games.

 

[Kerg3927]

"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization."~Agent Smith, The Matrix

I think that sums it up pretty well. People complain constantly. They say they hate stress and discomfort and fear. But if we are given it all on a silver platter, with no obstacles overcome to obtain it, there is no sense of accomplishment. It quickly becomes boring.

Developers have been gradually listening to the complainers more and more over the years, making games easier and easier, thinking that's what people want. But they failed to realize that what people say they want is not what they really want.

Prehistoric human existence was a world of misery. Constant threat of fighting with neighboring tribes and invaders. Constant struggle against the harsh environment just to survive. That's how we're wired by evolution. Take away the challenges and everything suddenly feels empty because it doesn't jive with our nature. We want reward, but it is meaningless without risk.

Add in the genius area design and atmosphere, with zones that are not too big or too small (in an era where bigger is always deemed better, even if it sucks), and a fun gear/leveling system that lets you customize your character in any number of ways, and you end up with a great series of games.

 

[Rattja]

Okey, it is actually very simple.

Because it is not those things you want it to be, and a lot of people like that.

It does not bog you down with tons of story and make you wade through endless dialoged you hardly care about when all you want to do is fight. And It does not have you bounce around and mashing buttons like a madman doing anime like combos with hidden supermoves.

No you are a slow wandering knight, lost in an atmospheric strange world where timing is everything, and that is actually something that a lot of people seem to enjoy. You feel heavy, as a character in full armor wielding big weapons and shields should.

It just scratches that itch you don't seem to have.

 

[SqueezetheFlab]

For me, it's the intricate level design, the wonder, atmosphere and focus on combat and survival. The linear, scripted action games with all the cutscenes are so tedious most of the time, but Dark Souls I was able to play for hours and hours at a time. Sometimes whole days wasted away.

I hardly care about the story anymore. I find item descriptions lazy and unrealistic, since it doesn't put you in the shoes of the character learning the information. They don't grow from it. I prefer visuals.

Hell, I wouldn't mind just a sign or something every so often. I don't need a novel, but something like "Welcome to Anor Londo, City of the Gods, under the protection of Lord Gwyn" would be nice.

Apparently DS2 actually did/does have readable signs.

Well, to be fair about Anor Londo, you are introduced to the city with actual dialogue.

"Welcome to the lost city of Anor Londo, chosen Undead. If you seek Lord Gwyn's old keep, exit here and head straight yonder."

But yeah, a lot of the information has no way of being communicated to the character. Reading it all instead of seeing or hearing it gets a bit dull. By Dark Souls III, I had stopped reading most descriptions. It doesn't help that every time you pick up an item, you have to move through a very long inventory to find the description for it, if you can even remember what it was or had it on the screen long enough to memorize the name. I'd like a way to organize them by time acquired.

The game announces each location as you first enter, but I get what you're saying. There is also a balance though as to how much should and shouldn't be explained/presented/announced/etc. in a series built upon mystery and intrigue. Too much show and tell would make it just like everything else out there, and I think a lot of what people like about these games are that they're oddly relaxing by contrast. It wears on my nerves to have to sit through someone yapping about something, or having to watch some scripted action play out whenever something special happens. The Souls games indulge the player's ability to think for themselves and just play.

One thing I'd like to see more of though from games in general, which may undoubtedly be unrealistic due to resource constraints, would be accurate physical representations or renders of items and gear acquired within the game world. Like stuff you can actually see instead of a glowing orb. They could still have written descriptions accompanying them in the menus, but it would go a big step further towards immersion.

Having said that, this would create a big problem with inventory capacity, as where is all this stuff going to go? So in this respect, it's something that would drive the need for a huge design change as far as what's relevant to keep on your person.

Maybe in this respect "gamier" will always be better, as it simply gives the player more options.