Yesterday, I revealed my actual Game of the Year, and I’m sure it was a huge surprise to exactly no one. Most of the time, I have to make up a game of the year award that I can bestow upon FromSoft because it’s not as if they have a game releasing every year. This year, however, is one of the blessed years in which they released a new game. Well, at least a new DLC. I will admit that it feels like a lifetime ago, but it was definitely released within this year.
I shan’t go into why this year was so difficult for me because I did it in the last post. Suffice to say, I’m ready to throw 2024 away and not think about it any further.
There was such a big brouhaha about Shadow of the Erdtrree being nominated for Game of the Year. It’s funny. Now that FromSoft has entered the mainstream (somewhat), people are beginning to turn on them. It’s the weird thing when an indie band gets popular, then half of their hardcore fans don’t like them any longer. Or accuse them of selling out. That happened to Liz Phair when she released an album that she admitted was meant to be more popular than her previous works. Oh, the gnashing of the teeth by her older fans! Oh, the calls of ‘sellout’. I never got it because that old stuff was still there, and you could still enjoy it. Also, if more people bought her new album and listened to her older stuff, they might like that as well. And even if you didn’t like her new album, why would you be against her trying something different?
This was actually one of the issues with the second Dark Souls game. There were way too many expectations for it, and some of them were diametrically opposite. People wanted it to be like the first game, and yet, they wanted it to iterate as well. They did not like the things that were different–like losing health every time you died until you had half-health. There were ways to mitigate it, but it was pretty brutal in the beginning of the game.
And yet. That was similar to Demon’s Souls, which many people didn’t realize. You only had half-health when you were in soul form, but it was better for world tendency (never mind). This meant that people would jump off a high point in the Nexus after beating a boss and ending up in body form. There was a ring that mitigated that, which you could find in the first area. If you wore the ring, then you were able to have three-quarters health. There was a similar ring in Dark Souls II, so it was clearly a nod to Demon’s Souls.
There was also a light system that had things happening when you lit all the torches in an area with a torch you carried. It had a time limit as to how long you could use it, and you had to light it at a bonfire and carry it around with you. There was an item that allowed you to light the torch away from the bonfire, but it was very rare to find.
I am in the minority that I liked the game. I played it more than the original, and I appreciated it for what it was. I understood why people weren’t happy with it, but I thought they were expecting too much from it.
When it came to Shadow of the Erdtree, I felt the same about it as I did about Dark Souls II. People wanted it to be something it simply could not be, and that made some people feel very let down. It was funny, too, because in the first few days the DLC was released, many vets were so angry about how hard it was. They didn’t expect their shit to get kicked in over and over again because they were pros, damn it! It bruised their egos, and I found it pretty amusing.
What they didn’t realize (and , to be fair, no one did until several days after the DLC was released) was that it didn’t matter your level or how hard you thought you were. FromSoft introduced a system just for the DLC that was similar to the level up system in Sekiro. You had to find something called Scadu (pronounced Shadow, but I prefer Scadooooo) Fragments, and then you use them at the Sites of Grace to level up. Similarly, there were Revered Spirit Ashes that leveled up your spirit summons and Torrent (your spectral steed). Those hard bros who just beelined it for the bosses were getting their shit kicked in because they did not have their levels up.
The only way to level up was to find the Scadutree Fragments and Revered Spirit Ashes throughout the world. The Scadutree Fragments were found in similar places as the Sacred Tears (churches) in the base game, but that wasn’t the only places they were found. My issue with that system was that there was just enough Scadutree Fragments (50, I think) to level up 20 times and just enough Revered Spirit Ashes to level up 20 times 10 times (I think). If you didn’t find them all, then you were SOL maxing out your Scadu level until NG+. They did carry over from NG to NG+, thankfully.
To me, the DLC toed that fine line between being familiar and being excitingly new. The structure was the same as the base game, but the depths and intricacies of the areas were taken to the next level. I cannot tell you how elaborate and absolutely exquisite the level design was. It was elegant and simple at the same time, and I gasped more than once when one area looped with another that was on the other side of the map.
I remember one instance in which I was exploring a ruins. I was exploring the hell out of that ruin, and it kept going deeper and deeper. This was fairly early on in the DLC, and I was getting nervous. Where the hell was I going? Why was this path keeping on keeping on? I found a ladder, and when I climbed up it, I was in a whole different region. And I kept going in that region when something cataclysmic happened. And I fucked up all the NPC quests for the rest of that playthrough. I wasn’t even halfway through the DLC at that point–maybe a quarter.
This is something that I both like and don’t like about From games–how easy it is to fuck up the questlines. And they remain fucked for the rest of the game. I like to try to go through my first playthrough without looking shit up (though I inevitably give in at some point), and when the aforementioned event happened, I didn’t realize how thoroughly I had fucked things up.
I thought I had explored thoroughly, but I missed one of the NPCs in his second place, and it messed up his questline and another as well. Another time, I went down one path of three, and I forgot to check one of the other paths–so I missed another NPC completely. By the time I found him, it was too late to do his questline.
Because of this, the penultimate fight, the one that was supposed to be epic and a glorious battle among several foes, was sad and pathetic. I had one anonymous NPC on my side rather than the two named ones who were supoosed to be there, and the other side had two of the five they were supposed to have. Granted, one wasn’t there because I took care of him earlier (the one NPC questline I managed to complete) and one was there because I found him and did his questline, but it was sad and very limp compared to what it was supposed to be. I did it the right way the second time and got everyone into the fight–and it was glorious.
I’m done for now. More tomorrow.