If people know Dark Souls, they think of it being a grimdark fantasy game that is relentlessly punishing. It’s hard AF, and all the bosses will destroy you. That’s the Cliff Notes version of how most people who don’t know From games well think about Dark Souls.
I’m not dissing people for that, by the way. They’re not wrong. The games are grim, dark, and utterly depressing at times. There’s a sense of nihilism* to them that can be disconcerting–even to me. I can see the hopeful spark in them–if I squint. But the darkness is pretty unrelenting. Here is my post from yesterday in which I waxed poetic about my love for the game.
That’s why the absolutely silly parts of the games are a blessing. Today, I was running through
*SPOILER*
the Grand Archives, which is a late game area because it’s a great farming area. I did it so many times in the past. You can clear around seventy K in one run through, which is a nice chunk of change. The thing is, there are these arms and hands that spring out of the books, and they can curse you if they touch you. They are everywhere!
The only way you can protect yourself from the hands/arms (and they’re a weird shade of purply-pink) is to dip your head in wax. Yeah, you read that right. There are pools of wax in strategic places in the archives, and there’s a prompt that says something like, “Dip your head in.” Did it say why? Of course not. Did it say what it would do? Nope! You were just supposed to trust that it was something you had to do because the game told you to.
Now, I will say that FromSoft rarely outright tells the player to do something detrimental (I want to say never, but there might be a case or two) , but I wanted to know why I was dipping my head in wax and making myself look like a candle. And to make matters worse, I lost my big hat in the process. Not literally as I still had the attributes, but it didn’t appear to be on my head any longer.
The enemies had the same waxy appearance (at least, the humanoid-looking ones), which made it even sillier. As you may guess, they are extremely weak to fire. My Chaos Bed Vestiges literally melted them. This will never not amuse me, by the way. Being a human candle, i mean. Especially as someone with a fondness for pyros. It just makes me laugh inwardly because it’s so goofy! But it’s presented so seriously, which makes it even more hilarious.