Back with more chatter about FromSoft games, difficulty, and me. In the last post, I wrote about whether or not I had imposter syndrome when it came to these games. A friend on the RKG Discord suggested this, and Ian has said something similar. Well, not exactly. He has argued that I am the exact target demo for the games. Miyazaki has said that he wants players to feel the struggle, but to ultimately overcome.
There is a debate that has raged in the FromSoft community (at large), which I doubt will ever be settled. One side believes that Miyazaki loves the player and wants them to do well. He is encouraging them to overcome the obstacles he’s placed in their way. Then, he’s happy and proud when they do.
In other words, he’s like a proud papa. That’s the one side of the argument.
The other side maintained that Miyazaki hated the palyer and wanted them to be miserable. To be honest, there was a lot of evidence on this side–mainly, everything in all of the games. Plus the fact thta the environments were grim and depressing. There was little joy to be found, and the NPC most people consider the best and most joyful lost his mind in the last third of the game.
Side note: I understand why people are so into Solaire (that NPC). I get why he inspires passion. In a world that is unrelentingly bleak, he is an almost literal ray of sunshine. He does the iconic ‘Praise the Sun’ emote, which I’ve shortened to ‘Praise it!’.
Here’s the thing, though. For me, he’s just….fine. But there is a tendency in these games to have the male NPCs that people care about be these bluff, useless dudes. To be fair, Solaire can hold his own in a fight–if you can actually get him in. But Siegmeyeris a total waste of space (as adorable as he may be)–not that you can summon him in a fight.
But even though Solaire is fine in a fight, he mostly runs arond looking for his sun and getting increasingly depressed when he can’t find it. I relate to that, but it just doesn’t hit me hard.
Anyway. My hot take is that Miyazaki is supremely indifferent to the player. He doesn’t love them; he doesn’t hate them. He doesn’t care about them one whit. He has created these exquisite worlds that are teeming with life.
One thing that caught people off-guard in the game was that the NPCs move. They don’t stay where you met them, and they have their own agendas. If you did not catch them when you saw them, well, you might not see them again for quite some time.
To me, that makes it much more enticing than other games with NPCs who just stay in one place. I will say this is one strike against the second Dark Souls–most of the NPCs didn’t have much of a questline. Once you found them and moved them to Majula, they did not go anywhere. And, in a weird decision, there are two NPCs who are purported to be father and daughter, who sit ten feet from each other, but never interact.
I have a hunch it was supposed to appear deeper than it did, but it was just irritating. Plus, one of them was the basic blacksmith, nad he was a jerk. I think the devs wanted you to associate him with a father (gruff, but lovable) and wildly missed the mark.
I’m someone who likes the second game, though it has not aged well after Elden Ring–though, weirdly enough, people who place Dark Souls II as their favorite From game are adamant that Elden Ring is a successor to the second Souls game. Well, at least the one guy in the RKG Discord. But the NPC questlines in that game were not great. Except for a few like Lucatiel’s. She was great. Some people derided her for being a knock-off of Soliare, but there is more to her than that. Her storyline with her brother is heartbreaking.
Yes, I’m just talking about FromSoft games again. Which is fine.
I’m worried about the DLC. It’s going to be incredible. It’s also probably going to break me. I have two characters ready to take it on. I should use my strength character because I know that the DLCs are always terrible for casters, but I am stubborn AF.
I intend to go out as I started. If this is my last From game, then I’m going out in a blaze of glory. Not that I think I’m going to die for a third time after playing the DLC, but that they increase the difficulty exponentially until it’s just OTT.
I love the games. I still insist they don’t love me. Oh, as I was saying, the worlds in the games feel as if you are incidental. Things happen whether or not you are there. I was saying that in most of the games, you could miss important steps in NPC questlines without a guide.
Side note: I don’t like the trend for this DLC of content creators telling you how to prepare for said DLC. I get why they are doing it (cha-ching! That’s not fair. It’s because they are known for their From videos, and everyone is hyped for the DLC. But part of the joy of playing these games is the exploration and discovery. Plus, for a first playthrough, who wants to follow a guide?
One of them was speculating on why you would not want to have advanced all the NPC questlines, but I don’t think that should matter. They said it did in the other games, but I don’t think so. I will say that the entry to the DLC is very late game (though you could get there very early), locked behind a really hard boss. Which is not how they usually roll. I mean, they do lock off the DLC behind a weird situation, and in the original Dark Souls, it was in the second half of the game, but–ok. To be fair, ratio-wise, it’s in the same place (slightly after the halfway point), but because Elden Ring is five times the game of the first Dark Souls (I’m exaggerating), it feels like it’s much later.
I’m done for now. I may get back to the point in the next post. Or not.