Bashing Your Head Against The Wall For Fun and Profit
or : How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Dark Souls
You might not expect it, but I am secretly somewhat of a glutton for punishment. Not in real life, in real life I’m more of a people pleaser and someone who follows the rules to avoid punishment, but in this context we’re talking about FromSoftware’s notoriously difficult series of games known by the colloquialism Soulsborne. This Metroidvania style portmanteau is short for an entire ouvre of 7 games, which includes Demon’s Souls, three Dark Souls titles, Sekiro, Bloodborne and Elden Ring. All of the games are known for a high level of difficulty and an obtuse, bordering on opaque, storyline.
I’ve played a half dozen or so imitators of varying degrees of quality, from the French Revolution fanfic of Steelrising to the Warhammer-esque gruntfest of Lords of the Fallen. None of those really scratched the same itch, despite my many attempts to get the same feeling.
This March, after completing Sekiro fully for the first time, I sought the challenge again and went after the goal of completing all three of the mainline Dark Souls games from scratch. A single question lingered in my mind after I started Dark Souls : Remastered from the beginning and eventually ran headfirst into one of my least favorite bosses in the series, The Capra Demon.
The question : Why do I do this?
The “why” of playing difficult games is harder to quantify than my love of, say, horror movies is. I know a lot of people who like to watch the goriest slashers known to man - they seem to revel in the buckets of (fake) blood poured out on the screen and eagerly lap up the colored corn syrup like Mana from heaven. I am not that type of horror movie watcher. I love horror because, given its breadth and depth among films that have been released there are so many genres and subgenres within horror that you could, in one sitting, watch a horror/comedy about rednecks being mistaken for slasher villains (Tucker and Dale vs Evil), a horror musical (Anna vs The Apocalypse), several horror rom-coms (Life After Beth, Warm Bodies) and a horror drama about a father losing his daughter to zombism (Maggie).
Challenging videogames are also something of a smorgasbord. When I think about harder games from older eras, I think about the fast-paced combat of Metal Slug or the top-down shoot-em-up Ikaruga. Both of which were games designed to both keep you feeding quarters into machines and to keep you from reaching the end. Modern (read : home console) gaming has little need for this type of quarter-gobbling challenge and game developers actually want you to win. If a game is too frustrating, players will quit. If people play enough of those games and they associate those companies’ titles with being too difficult, those gamers will eventually take their business elsewhere. It’s a perverse incentive and a tightrope to walk, with some games being little more than walking simulators or carefully crafted experiences more befitting of a film or a novel. On the other hand are the sadistic indie developers who wallow in your misery and want you to suffer. What draws me to FromSoftware and their long history of titles is that, despite their reputation, they give you plenty of options and different ways to approach challenge and you will, eventually, win.
When Dark Souls became a household name 12 years ago, the version that came out for the PC was subtitled “Prepare to Die Edition.” When you combine this somewhat overdone branding and the off-putting online fan community, whose answer to any question for someone stuck on a difficult section is the default phase “git gud,” the result was a somewhat unfair reputation that these games were “impossible” “too difficult” and so on.
But Dark Souls as a whole are not “impossible” games. They exist to be beaten and the creators give you the tools to do so over and over again. And let me be clear, I have been playing videogames since the age of four years old (1985) and have beaten many a game. But it doesn’t mean I’m any ‘good’ at any of them. I frequently have to consult walkthroughs, GameFAQs and YouTube tutorials. I’m 42 now and, despite the many many years spent playing them there’s something about the Soulsborne series that keeps me coming back.
It’s not just the steampunk/cosmic horror mashup of Bloodborne, it’s not just the Kurasawa-via-Cronenberg nightmare of Sekiro, it’s not just the awe inspiring open world of Elden Ring and it’s not just the grim vistas of the decaying fantasy settings of the Dark Souls series. What really drives me to complete these games over and over and over again is one, simple thing. Catharsis.
You may have read YouTuber Yahtzee Crowshaw’s essay on the Three C’s of Game Design, but if you haven’t let me quote the relevant passage :
Catharsis is an emotional release. And for it to work, it needs to have some emotions to release, first. Otherwise you’re just pulling the flush chain on an empty cistern and wondering why the turd isn’t going away.
But what does the Soulsborne experience have to do with emotions? All of the games, to some degree, draw the player into a world that might, at first glance, seem inhospitable. You are alone, save for a few friendly Non Player Characters (NPCs). You are outnumbered. You are, at least when you start out, very weak. It is a pitiful, miserable existence and you seek any method necessary to alleviate some of those problems. Again and again you are beaten to a pulp and have to trek back to where you were, either running pell-mell past hordes of undead enemies that have respawned or carefully picking your way through them. Once you do, you’re confronted with the same boss that put your brains on the pavement and you try again.
If you’re stuck, you can expend rare and/or expensive items to get an edge. If you’re really stuck, you can expend other more rare and/or expensive items to summon assistance from NPCs or, more helpful, other actual players. This comes with its own drawbacks, since enemies get bigger health pools and become harder to beat. But most tend to stick to going solo.
Eventually, with enough time and practice and the right gear and maybe a few extra levels of a given stat, you can overcome and therein is the appeal. The white-knuckle battle itself is great, pitting your little guy against sometimes literal giants, but the feeling of achievement you get when the big guy goes down is something unmatched in gaming.
I’ve been trying for days to put into words what it feels like to finally beat a Dark Souls boss. I say this because I’ve just put the game down after beating the skull-crushingly difficult DLC bosses Slave Knight Gael and Darkeater Midir. My character, a nimble but strong pyromancer with a generous health bar, was thrown over and over into those two arenas only to be smacked down by a giant dude swinging a sword full of angry ghosts and a giant dragon shooting lasers from his mouth, respectively. I would spend hours trying and trying again, only to look up and find out it’s 3am. Days went by. Over and over and over and over, my little dude went trundling up to the biggest baddest bosses in the game and got squashed to a pulp.
Then, it happened. A breakthrough of sorts, I was dodging and moving and getting hits in and doing damage and avoiding damage and timing everything perfectly. With a last swipe of my bleed-inflused sword, the toughest enemy I’d faced in the whole series went down, the screen reading “HEIR OF FIRE DESTROYED” and I pumped my fists, hooting and talking all kinds of trash to the screen. Seriously, some of the stuff I said in that moment would never have come out of my mouth otherwise.
You might ask, was it worth it? To put it simply : Yes. The surge of adrenaline followed by the release of endorphins once victory was achieved was a primal and addictive feeling. A sort of “runner’s high” for videogames, something that was becoming rarer in the past few decades. Nothing beats that feeling. If you’ve never done it, it’s hard to describe in another context. A wave of something akin to joy or elation washes over you as your brain releases the good chemicals and you get this involuntary smile or your jaw pops open. Maybe you jump to your feet. Maybe you even fall back in your chair like Vince McMahon seeing Stacy Keibler dance
There’s an overwhelming range of positive feelings happening for several minutes as you process what just happened. Maybe you grab a screenshot for posterity. Maybe you text a friend. But eventually, you sit in a bit of post-bliss comedown and you think to yourself - what’s next?
The appeal of the game series as a whole is not only the brief and frankly exhilarating feeling of getting the win, but the similarly addictive feeling that comes after which is a desire for more. You come out of any given From Software Soulsborne title ripe for a rematch, ready to take on the challenge of anything the world throws at you. You emerge from the crucible of difficultly a confident, proud warrior, headstrong, ready to take on anyone.