PixlBit

Time to talk some Dark Souls.

The furtive pygmy is something I've been wondering about for a while. More than anything the furtive pygmy is the most under spoken and often overlooked aspect of the lore. I bet that ironically it might end up being one of the biggest fucking deals in the whole chain of events that took place when the First Flame mysteriously showed up and the humans went and found the Lord Souls in it and became deities and used their new powers to fight the dragons (If I remember correctly). The pygmy was mentioned right in the opening of the game, and then it gets rarely mentioned throughout the rest of the experience, but whatever sneaky stuff the pygmy was up to must have been big. The fact that they call it the furtive pygmy is interesting because the definition of furtive is:

"Attempting to avoid notice or attention, typically because of guilt or a belief that discovery would lead to trouble; secretive."

I heard that the pygmy was the one who discovered the Dark Soul (was the pygmy furtive because it found the "evil" Dark Soul and didn't want to get in trouble?), which is not only the namesake of the game but is supposedly the original source of all humanity, then it was bequeathed to all humans so that everybody carries some small measure of humanity in them. Is that a bad thing, is the Dark Soul related to the Abyss? The Gods got their power from the First Flame that showed up under untold circumstances and it gave them fire, sunlight, prosperity, and apparently all the goodies that seem necessary for life. In the Age of the Ancients everything was foggy and unremarkable, but when the First Flame came into being it created light and heat, but simultaneously created the opposites (shadows and cold) that always contrast a flame. The Dark Soul and Humanity only seem to be surrounded by darkness and using mass amounts of Humanity to summon the Dark Lord or whatever if the First Flame dies out. But then again, Humanity is what fuels all the bonfires and flames of the world, so all the goodness and warmth depends on Humanity.

This is one of the things that makes DS so great, it's high fantasy and appears to have all the typical trappings like dragons and magic, but when you dig into the lore it's very alien and unpredictable. I'm not sure if being human is a good thing in this game, I'm not sure if I fit into any of the factions in the game.

The Gods have light, warmth, and appear to have glory and honor (similar to many Greek gods in their defeat of the Titans), but they're also pretty shady and they want power, immortality, loyal worshipers, and they perform undead sacrifices in order to use humanity to keep the flames of all the fires going. You see somebody like Gwyndolin who was an effeminate boy and as a result was raised like a girl, and I get the impression that his father, Lord Gwyn, was disgusted by Gwyndolin and disappointed in him since his son would never be the big masculine lightning bolt throwing god that Gwyn was. And the lonely Gwyndolin is secretively masterminding the various operations of Anor Londo now that everybody has either fled or died, he runs two Covenants, he creates an apparition of his sister to pretend she is still in power when in fact she's long gone in another land married to Lord Flann. You see these weird Gods and family dynamics and like with the Greek gods you think, "People worshiped them?"

To contrast those Gods, the regular humans have Humanity and mortality and apparently nothing else. Then the Abyss seems to have only darkness, corruption, and madness to offer. And the dragons, who knows what the hell the dragons had going on, they were immortal and did God knows what back in the Age of the Ancients. My favorite place to visit in the whole game is still Ash Lake where you can look at all the arch trees surrounding you. It's my favorite area of the game because the description of the area in the Wiki says that Ash Lake is the last vestige of what the world looked like back in the Age of Ancients before the First Flame arrived. That time period where the flame arrived and men came "from the Dark" and began taking Lord Souls and power from it and it eventually led to war is the most climactic part.

It's a very textured, alien, creepy, and yet very human universe with lots of weird laws of nature, magic, and history. I was telling Julian Titus here at Pixlbit that playing Dark Souls is like playing a detective game but they never tell you it is. Experiencing Dark Souls is like walking around and trying to piece together evidence from historically significant events both big and small that occurred in the ancient past and everywhere you go there's evidence deliberately placed in the forms of item descriptions, art design, minimal cutscenes, and what NPCs say. It's totally a detective game dressed up in an atmospheric high fantasy RPG setting. Everything is dead and in some ways it's like a crime scene, but it shouldn't be called post-apocalyptic, it's more like post-calamity. You wander around finding evidence of the calamities that happened leading up to the war, during the war, and after it. The arrival of the First Flame is the most important event of the lore and everything after that is kind of like a side-effect or a ripple.

Ah, your eye's drawn elsewhere, I catch your drift, it's Patrick isn't it! That handsome devil. The gorgeous lady in amazing cosplay that works really hard on her commendable creations is okay I guess, but she's got some *stiff* competition from the ginger devil next to her. The only thing that could make that picture more perfect for this episode would be if somebody in Samus cosplay was in the background on the left side completing the Holy Trinity.

I'd prefer for Zelda to go the Souls route, but if they patterned their combat after DMC or Bayonetta that would be really cool too, I could imagine them doing a pretty good job of that making it really fun. I haven't played Skyward Sword but I really liked the combat in Wind Waker and in Twilight Princess maybe a tiny bit more I think. The Souls games have really improved on that style of combat and set a great precedent that people interested in the genre should study, but it's certainly not something Zelda should ever emulate wholesale. There's unique aspects of Link that should remain in Zelda games like his agility and varied moveset. I loved how you could do a half-circle roll around to the back of an enemy in TP and do a nice backstab if you timed it right. I liked how you could do the attack where you leap up into the air and attack them from above and then end up behind them.

Zelda doesn't need to be as grounded and squared as a Souls game, they can take influence from it but still have a unique Zelda feel since Link is always much more agile than a character in a Souls game. Link should still do awesome moves like jumping up into the air, rolling around back, and having fun and varied attacks like that.

On a side note I love the cosplay photo of Patrick and his buddy, their costumes look really awesome. The picture makes me laugh because my eye always gets pulled towards Luigi behind Patrick, he looks hilarious for some reason. His cap is pulled down and he looks like he's in Mario's posse. The Mario that's in front of Luigi is huge too, Luigi is suppose to be the tall one but that Mario bucks the trend.

I liked the discussion about Zelda quite a bit. I don't have any ideas for stories, just broad things for the structure, systems, and gameplay. There's two general ideas I'd have and it depends on the kind of narrative they want and how you'd deliver it.

When it comes to building the gameworld and planning how travel would feel I'd like to have a game that's built like Lordran in Dark Souls. People don't ever talk about how seemless the open-world in Dark Souls is. The only time there's ever loading screens in Dark Souls is when you're fast-traveling. You can literally be walking around the Artorias gravesite on one end of the world and then travel seemlessly across every area of the game until to you end up in New Londo or Lost Izalith in the bottom of the world without ever seeing a loading screen or having control taken away from you. Zelda should be as slick and clever. When it comes to the size of the world I liked how big the world in Twilight Princess was. Another world that might be a nice size for a Zelda game would be something akin to Fable 2, except all the areas are connected like Dark Souls and there's no loading screens.

Mechanically I need Zelda to feel more like Dark Souls, allowing me to control my shield and weapon independently, have a basic attack and heavy attack, use the good old lock-on, and allow for the kinds of backstabs, ripostes, and unique attacks that Dark Souls had, and to an extent Twilight Princess and Windwaker had. I think the puzzles and exploration in Zelda games are still pretty interesting, it's the combat that bores me. Dark Souls gave me a true evolution and improvement of the lock-on, sword, shield, and bow combat that Ocarina introduced to me when I was a kid. Zelda has catching up to do now. I don't feel challenged in their games anymore and combat is never rewarding, the only time in any Zelda game that I ever need a sliver of patience and skill is when you fight Iron Knuckles and have to backstab them. So only 3% of the combat in the entire game is mildly interesting, all the rest of it is just coming across lizards and skeletons and chopping them down like a hack&slash. I don't want Zelda to feel like a hack&slash anymore. I need to be vulnerable, I need to be wary of new enemy types, learn to fight new enemy types, and I need to fail from time to time. I can't remember the last time I ever failed at anything in a Zelda game, and it's not because I'm that fucking good, it's just that the game isn't very interesting.

I don't want Zelda to become a loot game or RPG like Mass Effect 1 and Skyrim, I'd like to see things expanded only slightly. I want a weapon and armor upgrade system in Zelda. There's always been multiple armor sets and weapons in each game all with their own unique effects like the Zora armor allowing you to swim and breath under water. There should be like 10 or less different armor sets and you can upgrade them with items collected in dungeons and they can all allow for more physical and aesthetic diversity instead of being stuck with a green tunic for 25 hours. You can use single and two handed weapons, swords, greatswords, maces, a big two handed shield fire resistant that could be used in dungeons to help you get through an environmental puzzle where you need walk down a hallway surviving oncoming fire from a dragon or traps.

When it comes to the narrative, Bioshock Infinite made me wonder if it would ever work to see a game where Link and Zelda talk to each other and are companions, she helps you in combat with her bow, gives you resources like Elizabeth does, and the narrative revolves around Zelda like it does for Elizabeth in Bioshock. They'd both need to talk obviously, sorry Patrick, I'm now in the camp that's tired of the silent protagonist school of thought. The people who enjoy reading text and not having voice acting have had the chance to play Zelda games like that this entire time, it's time to do something different and make the effort to create interesting characters. The lore and worlds in Zelda games are consistently pretty great, it's time for the characters to catch up. They need to at least try and give it their best shot, if they don't start reinventing these parts of the series I don't see any reason to care, I can just go play other games that are more unique and have better ideas, there's already games out that are doing Zelda better than Zelda is doing Zelda.

If they want to eschew new narrative opportunities and continue going with the silent protagonist and text box experience that we've all done before than they should study Dark Souls and see how that game delivers its narrative. One of the biggest hoaxes in the last few years is the people who have convinced everybody that Dark Souls has no narrative or that the developer From Software doesn't care about narrative. The world in Dark Souls is as dense as Dragon Age or Mass Effect, but the difference is that From Software delivered it in a unique way that I've never seen before in a game. In Mass Effect and Dragon Age the lore is told through the codex, books, conversations, and cut-scenes. In Bioshock most of the lore is told through the voxophone recordings you pick up. In Dark Souls the lore is told through both the descriptions of items you pick up and the visual language and design of everything. When you play Dark Souls and you don't see any cut-scenes and you rarely converse with NPCs, it'll lead you to think that the game simply has no story to tell. But once you start studying all the items you pick up, and once you start studying the visual language of the world around you, the behavior and placement of all the enemies and bosses, you will realized that almost every little thing in the game is shockingly deliberate and makes you wonder how they got it all to work.

When you "randomly" come across a giant knight wielding a club at the bottom of a locked tower in Undead Burg you have no idea he holds any position in the lore. You kill him, pick up his junk, and you have the freedom to ignore it completely. But if you study all his stuff you realize he was a holy knight that helped the God Gywnn fight the dragons in the war to start the Age of Fire(ruled by Gods) and end the Age of Ancients (ruled by dragons). Havel was locked away by a dear friend in the tower when he went hollow (insane). As you progress in the game and get into later dungeons you find more evidence as to who Havel was, where he comes from, and what roles he played in the past. There's even a conspiracy that makes you wonder if he was involved in trying to overthrow the Gods once they defeated the dragons.

Every word in the item descriptions is deliberate and allows some aspects of the lore to be debated among players, while other things are more fleshed out. The bosses have reasons for doing what they do, the exact place they are at has purpose, their abilities have explanations, and their backstories are never as simple as "She was evil, she's a spider demon, kill her". Once you find out who she actually and all the layers to her story maybe you'll feel sad about killing her. It's a little bit like a Silent Hill, there's always sins, regret, and depth to the characters. When you're going through an area like the Darkroot Garden and you see Crystal Goelms, once you start connecting the dots it'll make you wonder if they are the side effects or evidence of the destruction of the ancient land of Oolacile and the involvement of a certain character that has been researching crystal magics you'll learn about later in the game. Julian would enjoy this kind of game because when you play Dark Souls it's akin to playing a detective game without having any clue that it's set up that way. When you scrutinize details the lore gets deeper and allows you to ask more questions and get more compelling answers. Some parts are clear, but many parts are carefully worded to allow for players to come up with theories and discuss them. Then again, you don't have to care about any of it. You can end up getting a great game by only doing combat and never paying attention to the lore.

For me It's actually a more interesting cast of characters and world history than I've seen in my other games. You can't quite tell if Dark Souls is post-apocalypse, pre-apocalypse, or if any concept of an "apocalypse" is just something that doesn't belong in this world at all and it's much weirder and deeper. You wonder if "humanity" itself is even a good thing in this world. Are the evil people really evil, is everybody what they appear to be? The obvious answers always appear obvious until you start wondering. It's crazy how From Software managed to deliver that narrative and handle it with such care and foster mystery and intrigue without using traditional methods. It's a fascinating thing that people have come to believe the game doesn't even have a narrative.

Zelda could do something similar by building a complex world with mystery, rebellions, light magic, dark magic, wars, conspiracies, atonement, sins, and internal struggles within families and kingdoms, and allowing players to investigate and ponder why things are the way they are and how they fit into the mix. It could give the developers a chance to show Ganondorf interacting with the royal family, convincing people to betray loyalties, gathering armies in the desert and having layers of personality and interaction with the world he's always trying to conquer. Ganon could be a real Game of Thrones type of mastermind and deciever. Windwaker was interesting because it made me wonder about Old Hyrule and the world under the ocean, since the old world was flooded and everything in Wind Waker takes place on the "islands" which are actually the tops of mountains from the old world below. Zelda could learn from Dark Souls and deliver a layered and complex lore without having too much talking and make it more of an investigative journey.

It's terrible what happened to Jeff. I always loved him as a guitarist and the stuff he wrote.

Lately I've been listening to this symphonic black metal band from Russia called Grimorium Verum. I didn't like them much at first because I didn't know what to make of them, they don't have a drummer, their live performances are weird and the singer is a giant bald man that looks like he's fixing to molest the crowd, and their sound is basically just a really solid and great impression of Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir combined. But the more I listened to it the better it was and I really like the album Reborn that they've done. I was listening to these songs all throughout the weekend with headphones on as I played Skyrim. You should give them a listen, I don't know how many people even know about this band in Russia even, let alone the Americas.

I agree. Dark Souls 2 is my most anticipated game that I know is coming out. But I'm still hoping that nothing too drastic changes about Dark Souls 2. They have a new lead designer on it so I'm wondering what ideas and features they want to bring to the series now. I'm hoping they build on Dark Souls and fix some of the technical things that weren't great about it instead of changing everything fundamentally. I really love the bonfire system in Dark Souls but you're right it's a big change from Demon's Souls. It's a big fundamental change that worked for the better I think. But big changes like that can easily go the other way.

From the gameplay demo they showed the game is looking really good, the patient methodical combat looks intact, pacing and atmosphere looks intact, bonfires are there as well. So far it just looks like Dark Souls but slightly more refined and with some neat new particle effects and lighting. I wonder what the boss battles will be like, if there will be fast travel, and how they'll handle the tutorial first area of the game. They're trying to make the game more accessible but I hope it just means messages left on floors by the devs with clear concepts and more transparency in how the systems interact. I think that's what they'll do, because if they actually try to use cutscenes or take control away from the player or make them less vulnerable it'll be a terrible way to handle it. The tutorial dungeon in Dark Souls was great, it wasn't too long or short, it had all the enemy types you need to see (melee, ranged, boss) to get a introductory glimpse of the combat and it was tough and they made you vulnerable at every turn, and the Asylum Demon jumps down out of nowhere and can hit a new player like a ton of bricks with how aggressive it can be and how much damage it deals with its hammer.

There's some things they can improve on and make better in Dark Souls 2, I just hope they don't loose all the good stuff that didn't need to be changed.

The vocal minority like that kid from Reddit have a perspective that Japanese games are tougher, smarter, and get dumbed down for foreigners. The two markets are more similar than morons like that care to think. The top 30 best selling games in Japan in 2012 didn't have a single Souls game, Etrian Odyssey, Ninja Gaiden, DmC, or any other game mentioned today as being difficult. The point is that the eastern and western markets have the exact same minorities of gamers that love the challenge and gobble up a game like Dark Souls. It's not the majority, it's not a defining characteristic of the culture or industry there just like it isn't like that here either. They're quite like us.

Each market has people trying to bank on blockbusters, build for different difficulty levels, follow trends in what's selling, and in some ways dumb things down. Elitists on either side should be treated like the brats that they are.

Sometimes difficulty is subjective as well. Some people probably think shooters are for dumb apes but I've had more challenge playing Halo on Legendary by myself than in Dark Souls. Dark Souls is my favorite RPG and it's the most satisfying time I've ever had in an action-RPG but I can die way more times in a single 12 hour Halo 3 campaign than in 100 hours of my Dark Souls playthrough. In both games I can be challenged, die, come back and learn from my mistakes and I end up feeling rewarded and satisfied. Halo on legendary is quite a bit more challenging for me than Dark Souls. I like how in Dark Souls the enemies get more aggresive and have much higher HP and damage in NG+. In Halo I love how entire encounters and experiences can change as difficulty increases. Enemy classes and weapons can change, aggression and tactics change, their evading skills increase, and things get much tougher and they start allowing the AI programming to access and use more advanced options.

Lol I thought that was the case. Those Eidos games in general it seems like their western and European developed games are the kind of things keeping them afloat or saving them from the huge blunders like FF14. I mostly get that opinion from hearing Julian talk about it here in podcasts on the site. FF14 was a money spender to begin with I bet, and then it failed horribly and they went and redid the whole thing so it was like a huge money pit that probably could've driven the company under if it wasn't for the mild successes and even "failures" they refer to from some of their western developed games.

I don't really keep up with Square Enix like others do so I just like to listen to others analyze them, but from the sounds of it they kind of owe their survival to Eidos, Crystal Dynamics, and other companies cranking out some good games that don't seem to get appreciated as much as they should from the big wig Japanese execs.

I know you're using some sarcasm and the charm I always love, but I can only hope the Deus Ex HR disgraces comment was part of the sass and charm lol. That was a fantastic game with great stealth and systems design in general. That's the only reason I have a lot of faith in them in the upcoming Theif 4 game they're making.

I agree with Chris, the Japanese kid doesn't have a leg to stand on. Japanese aren't known for difficult games anymore than western games are. Japanese are known well for easy games, simulations, and social games too.