So after months if not years of silence, there has been word on Elden Ring! Kind of. Ian has written about it over at PCGN. The first clip I saw was just the protagonist riding a horse around town. The clip was horribly compressed so it was impossible to tell how good the graphics actually were. I hate driving/horse-riding/etc. in games so my heart sank. The next clip I saw was of a dragon breathing fire (lol. Of course) and I felt a bit better. Then, I saw the longer ‘trailer’ and felt much better. It had everything I loved about Souls games. Magic, grotesque bosses, grim yet lush surroundings–I was reassured that this wasn’t just going to be Red Dead Redemption 3.
I’ve said over and over again that I want FromSoft to take their time with Elden Ring. I’d rather have a great game at a much later date than a game that came out in a short timeframe and then needed patch after patch to make it playable. And, given the pandemic, it’s understandable that production might have been slowed down and/or made complicated. The issue for me wasn’t that the game wasn’t out, it’s that we hadn’t heard a peep about it in nearly two years. Are we spoiled by having a new FromSoft game every year like clockwork? Yes.
That worked against them because when a year came and went with no word, people got nervous. That would have been around June of last year, right smack dab in the middle of the pandemic. I was fine with no info at that time, but then I got antsy near the end of last year. Again, I wasn’t demanding the game come out at the moment, but it was worrying that there had been nothing said about it. In the past few weeks, I’d taken to poking Ian every week or so to ask about Elden Ring news. Yesterday, I had the urged to poke at him again, but I didn’t. Imagine my surprise when I was greeted with Elden Ring news! The aforementioned leaks plus reassurances from industry sources that an actual trailer will come out this month. I think it’d be symbolic if it was released on March 22nd because that’d be exactly two years since the release of Sekiro, but I don’t want to wait that long.
At any rate, I’m comforted to have some info and am now willing to wait until whenever for the game to come out.
Speaking of FromSoft, the only game I’ve been playing lately is Dark Souls Remastered because of my wonky thumb. If I’m grinding, I can play for an hour or so without too much stress. If I’m playing the actual game, then half hour is optimal with forty-five minutes being my outer limit for comfort.
What I want to talk about is the difficulty of the game. It’s what the series is known for, and, indeed, all FromSoft games. How hard the game is. It’s become some kind of a badge of honor to finish the games, especially without summoning. The PC edition of the first game had the tagline ‘Prepare to Die’, for fuck’s sake. There are some in the community who say the games are not hard, they just–fuck that. The games are hard. I just want to get that out of the way. At least the first time you play them. And this is what the post is about because I’ve been playing DSR for the third or fourth time? I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s what I got my not-plat on, so that includes some excruciating bullshit. Not as excruciating as DS III, though.
First time I played Dark Souls, I was a n00b to games. I had never used a controller and had played games such as Torchlight and Borderlands. Fun games, yes. Hard? Not in the least. Why did I want to play Dark Souls? I’m not really sure. Ian’s brother played it when it ported to the PC and raved about it, saying Ian had to play it. That was one. Two, I dug the aesthetics which were completely my jam. Three, I was just intrigued by the idea of a hard video game. So, yes, the difficulty did play a part in my decision to try it out.
Did I immediately love the game and see why it was a cult hit? No. I hated it with every fiber of my being. It was so unrelentingly oppressive without a whiff of explanation that I felt completely out of my depth. Remember, it’s the first came I used a controller for. A notably difficult game. I’ve since learned that the controls for Dark Souls are considered shit, but it’s what I know. B is roll forever and ever, amen. I will say that the choice for jump is…a choice. A different one in each game.
Beating the tutorial boss was agony. I clearly remember thinking this was not the game for me even when I finally managed to finish him off. Afterwards, I was dropped off at Firelink Shrine without a how do you do. There are two NPCs in the nearby vicinity and three ways you can go from the bonfire. Oh, yes. Bonfires! The mainstay of Souls games. Something every Souls player knows as the only comfort in a bleak, cold, harsh world. What are you told about them when you first see one? Not a damn thing. Yes, you have a menu, but none of it is explained. Watching Rory of RKG (Prepare to Try at the time) fixate on the Rite of Kindling and being confused as to what it was brought back not-so-fond memories. The game throws all these things at you without explaining any of them. Yes, you can learn by doing, but it takes a long time.
In addition, of the three ways you can go from the start, two will flat-out kill the fuck out of you. The skellies in the graveyard are especially cruel because in all other games, skeletons are pushovers. In this game, not only will they hurt you, they’ll cause bleed. Not that you’ll know it’s bleed because the meter is never explained. The second route is one in which you can’t attack the enemies without a specific item. They are ghosts and you need a Transient Curse (or a curse in general) in order to attack them. There are two on a body in a pot on your way to New Londo, but you’re not going to know that as a newb.
Some in the community have argued that the fact that these two paths are so extremely hard is on purpose because it’s a way to signal that you’re not supposed to go in those directions. That’s bullshit, though. What’s the one thing most people know about Dark Souls? It’s a brutally hard game. A path through nearly unkillable skeletons? That makes sense. Another path of literally unkillable ghosts? Sure, why not? My point is that someone who just started Dark Souls for the first time isn’t going to be able to gauge what is too hard and what is just game hard. Even the canonical right way to go is hard the first time you meander down it.
Full confessional: It took me nearly 150 hours for my first playthrough, including the DLC. That’s very much an outlier, but that speaks to how shit I am at the games–also to how much I grind. Even now, it can take me 30 to 40 hours to do a playthrough because of how much I grind. It’s the way I play and there’s no shame in that. Getting through the Taurus Demon (first real boss) probably took me 10 hours the first time. I did it in less than an hour this go around.
First time I met up with the infamous duo, Ornstein and Smough, they took everything out of me. I went in with a Battleax, probably +7 or so and my Furysword +2 or +3. I hadn’t met up with Quelana because I didn’t know she existed. I did probably had the Great Chaos Fireball which you get for joining the Chaos Servant covenant, which I would have done because I’m all about the fire. I lost to Biggie & Small so many times. I set it up that I would only try to fight them ten times a day because I knew myself too well. I could see myself bashing my head (ha! I wrote hands first) for several hours until I wanted to break my controller in frustration. By the way, the only time I’ve done that was while fighting the Nameless King in Dark Souls III. Remember when we thought he was the hardest FromSoft boss ever? Good times.
I grinded so much in order to beef myself up while fighting O&S. I got to know that castle very well. I nicknamed the blacksmith Cuddles and I got to talk to him so many times. I killed those Silver Knights more times than I care to remember and I still couldn’t manage to kill the goddamn wonder twins. I was running out of gas and the will to keep on playing the game. I remember one night, probably the seventh day I was fighting the dynamic duo, I texted Ian saying I couldn’t do it. He said I could and I decided to try one more time. I put on The Pina Colada Song on loop to relax me and decided that this was my last try.
By the way, that happened to me before as well when I was fighting the Gargoyles. They were my first big stumbling block and I couldn’t beat them, not even when I summoned Solaire. It was another time I texted Ian with my woes and he bolstered my confidence. I had one last Humanity left and decided that if I didn’t beat the Gargs this time with the help of Solaire, I was done.
Needless to say, I won both those fights. I say needless, but it’s not true. I may feel as if I would have quit if I hadn’t beaten the Gargs with my last Humanity or Biggie & Small at two in the morning with The Pina Colada Song playing in the background, but I probably would have tried again. Maybe after a break, but I would have tried again. Or maybe not. At any rate, I still remember those two moments with a thrill. There is nothing in games like beating a Dark Souls boss, nothing. Or, should I say, beating a FromSoft boss because the final boss of Sekiro is definitely in that pantheon. As is the early heat check boss who owned my ass for so fucking long. Weirdly enough, there are no Bloodborne bosses on that list–well, that’s not completely true. There’s one who is on my ‘really fucking proud of how I beat her’ list, which is a different list completely.
This is running long and I haven’t even gotten to my main point yet. That’s how it goes when I start talking about Dark Souls and by extent, FromSoft. I’ll end this here for now and pick it up in the next post.