Dark Souls: Death, Despair and how it helped me cope my Depression.

It was only just recently that I even realized what I had was actual depression, as opposed to just random bouts of sadness. It was getting to the point where I was calling it "That time of the week" where the stress of my job and my depression just turned me into a big ball of raging anxiety. I've started to work towards getting the assistance I need to make it less of a problem, but it's slow going, and some days are better than others. Days where none of my favorite pass times seem to do it for me. Not even Destiny, a video game tailor-made to be played when you don't feel like doing anything else. (Which I also have a long, sordid list of opinions about. Go figure.)

There is one thing that has been able to provide some solace in these low points. There's a group of people on youtube that produces video content practically every day of the week, called LoadingReadyRun. Along with comedy Micro-sketches called Crapshots, a webseries about a group of Magic players called Friday Nights, and a weekly funny news snark-a-thon called Feed Dump, They do livestreams of themselves playing video games on their Twitch.tv channel, LoadingReadyLive.



One of the many hosts is Alex Steacy, and on his show IDDQDerp (a reference to the God-mode cheat from Doom) he plays an eclectic mix of modded First Person Shooters, obscure-ish indy games, and pretty much anything that fits his preferred aesthetic of kinda-whimsical-yet-kinda-horrifying. One of these games is a little something called Dark Souls.

Dark Souls is fascinating as a subject of analysis. It is all at once one of a kind, a throwback to the classic old-school of video games, a piece of artwork, and a prime example of using mechanics and set dressing to tell an inferred story. It's one of the best games put out since the start of the decade.

And I don't think you should play it. At least not on recommendation alone.

*SPOILER WARNING FOR ANYONE WHO CARES ON EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE*

In Dark Souls, you die. A lot. Even the first enemies you fight in the game have killed many a veteran after being careless. You try to kill baddies before they kill you, and baddies give you Souls, the games form of both universal currency and XP. Every time you die, you drop all the Souls you gained before you died where you fell, so if you die again before you can get to them, you leave a new pile of Souls to pick up, usually a much, much smaller pile. It's a game focused on exploration, resource management, anticipating your enemies, and periods of thoughtful planning followed by a flash of reflex muscle memory learned throughout the course of the game. Dark Souls is easily lumped into a subgenre of games called Metroidvania, after the portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania, the first games to have this style of gameplay back in the Nintendo days. Something that these games were famous for was their difficulty, and Dark Souls is no exception. In the modern era of checkpoints, regenerating health and conveniently placed chest-high walls to hide behind, it's only somewhat surprising that the game was billed as "the hardest game of all time." The marketing didn't help either, with "Prepare to Die" being both the original tag-line and the subtitle of it's Game of the Year edition. But in all honesty, the relative difficulty of play is not what makes this game so difficult to approach. If there is one sin the game does commit, it's that it is deliberately obfuscating of some very important information early on. It tells you the bare bones of how to move around, swing your sword, and drink a health potion. After that, all bets are off. And yet, this is something else that makes Dark Souls unique among it's peers. You have character improvement through leveling, but you also have player improvement through learning. Some people would call it punishing, but I think of it not so much as punishing as a sort of testing. It rewards the player when they come to understand a nuance of combat that they didn't notice before, and it's surprisingly forgiving when you do happen to make a mistake The giveaways for traps and the like are somewhat obvious, so long as you are looking for them. While one player can feel frustrated by being killed over and over again after charging through, another player can feel clever by taking it slow and safely activating an arrow trap while protected by their trusty shield, which can easily turn into their best friend/security blanket. By the same token, the player who rushes in time and time again can and often will be able to find the pattern that allows them through alive. (Albeit with significantly fewer health potions)

I like this game because it forces me to be aware of my surroundings and to think ahead. I'm always using my problem solving part of my brain to tackle intricate combat scenarios. In most games that I play, I'm button mashing, just trying to make the other guy fall down before I do because I'm supposed to be this hyper-competent death machine. In Dark Souls, my character is fragile, alone, and  I succeed because I learned how to survive and have the willpower to continue doing so. This is a good time to bring up the story of the game, because the will to continue is an overarching theme in the entire game, and one of the ways it has one of the most interestingly told story in modern adventure games. The opening cinematic explains the backstory better than I could.


This is freaking Epic.

But in short, You, the Player, are one of the Undead, and the undead are cursed to one day go Hollow, losing their humanity and going insane, followed by becoming a shambling husk, and eventually just turning into a motionless empty shell. Each death and each century bringing it closer. You can stave this hollowing off by pillaging the humanity of other undead and offering it at a Bonfire, but because of the madness it brings, and the crimes required to keep the madness at bay, the undead are, or were, held in an asylum as the heat-death of the universe slowly approaches. But one day, somebody drops a body in front of you that has the key to your cell, and taking that key, you leave the asylum with your liberator's final words in your ears. He repeated an old saying from his family, "Thou who art undead art chosen. In thine exodus from the Undead Asylum, maketh pilgrimage to the land of Ancient Lords. When thou ringeth the bells of awakening, the fate of the undead thou shalt know." Thought to be some sort of prophecy for breaking this curse of undeath. The rest of the game is you surviving, following the only purpose that this unlife has given you. In your travels you meet other undead on the same quest, or at least others trying to get by, while you also fight off those who have gone Hollow and attack anything that encroaches on their old haunts. Great beasts, demons and drakes also terrorize the land, and every step you take towards one of your goals takes you past one variety or another or these monsters. Every level is designed to fill you with a sense of dread, with unknown threats potentially behind every corner. Even the friendly NPCs are not necessarily on your side. If they aren't actively backstabbing or misleading you, they're all still at least a little crazy. Every one of them ends a train of thought in a sort of evil chuckle, and each has goals that are far fetched at best and insane at worst. This affectation that these non-aggressive characters put on has lead to many players regarding them as just another resource to be used to make the game easier, the same way that subtle exploits such as shooting people from such a long range that they actually don't have an AI to deal with it are seen as perfectly legitimate, seeing as the game doesn't pull any punches when you make a mistake. But it's done soo much so that in many strategy guides it is actually advised you to"Waste that guy, he drops a sweet Katana." when you come across a truly harmless merchant very early in the game. Which, due to an odd quirk of personality, has encouraged me to cherish each person in it who isn't actively trying to kill me.

Some people call her Kate Moss

There's an undead woman, she has no name, in the sewers of an early part of the game. Some of her first words to you are about how nice she thinks it is down there. "I've got everything I ever wanted! Moss. Moisture. These nice Iron Bars... Nothing good ever happened to me in life, but since I've become Undead, I've never been happier!" She readily with her moss in exchange for the souls you've collected, which add a slight amount of resistance against poison and other ailments, but gets very grumpy with you if you go to her store menu but don't buy anything. But regardless of whether you waste her time, every time you speak to her, she'll always refers to you as "Dearie." She is absolutely loveable, but also a grim reminder that this is as happy as anyone will ever be to see you in this world (at least for who you are). And what's more, if you use her as a resource for Humanity, which she also sells, she is in fact trading away her own Humanity. Once you buy the last one from her, she completely goes Hollow and begins babbling in her corner, never to speak to you or anyone again. A cruel fate because of a cruel act, done to survive in a cruel world.

There's an entire series of youtube videos about how depressing some of the characters are if you pay attention to the set dressing and the item descriptions, giving both a deep appreciation for the lore and understanding of the many characters in it. It's called Prepare to Cry, you can find it here, and I'll leave one at the end.

But there is hope and humor also. You are constantly in search for Bonfires; save points, rest stops, sanctuaries from the creatures around you, and seeing one after a long and arduous journey just gives an overwhelming sense of relief. The Humor of the thing mostly comes out of very black comedy, partially in a "You've got to be KIDDING me!" kind of way whenever something very unexpectedly bad happens.

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Exhibit A
And then the flip side when you know exactly what you're getting into, knowing that you will almost definitely die, and then dying in a gloriously gruesome fashion that was also somewhat unexpected. Kind of like America's Funniest Home Videos, but with getting burninated by a dragon instead of foul mouthed babies. This level of humor is most accurately portrayed in song form my Gavin Dunn, aka Miracle of Sound.


This is some of the nerdiest music on the web and I love it.

But even that song came out of most of the reactions of the Online community, the other part of the humor stemming from in-jokes and memetic mutation of the games many quotable phrases. The strange thing about the online component is that it's simultaneously a core part of the game and something of an unnecessary feature. Another peculiar evolution on the Metroidvania formula in that if you are connected to the internet, you are playing Dark Souls online. Not that you would necessarily find that out during your first playthrough. Ghostly apparitions of other players, as well as messages scrawled on the ground belie the fact that other players are playing in the same area at approximately the same character level. These messages are (thankfully) combined phrases from a selection of stock words that are there to help guide other players. Stuff like "Go Left" or "Danger: Boss Ahead" being prime examples. But, with the world being what it is, these are also easily used to fake out less experienced players with "Try Jumping" in front of bottomless pits, and "Amazing Chest Ahead" leading up to a big burly blacksmith, with multitudes upon multitudes of people randomly saying "Praise the Sun!" a reference to the worlds main deity and one of the friendly NPCs who fights in his name. The Multiplayer isn't just for show, either. Friendly players can let you summon them to help with a boss fight, while malicious ones can invade you when you least expect it in the name of "It's part of the game!" I feel like there is a place for competitive multiplayer in a game like this, but I feel strongly that the fact that it's so easy to be thrust into it without warning is one of this games few missteps in design. At least there's no microphone support so you don't have to listen to anybody else unless you are deliberately using another means to do so.

The only major part of the game that I've yet to go over is the Boss Battles. Probably the most archaic element from it's Retro roots, it's also the most challenging and most satisfying part of the game. The first enemy you encounter is a boss, and you have a broken sword, no shield, and barely an understanding of the controls. Thankfully, you are actively discouraged from fighting this boss so soon, but because you have no way of defending your self, and the room is full of smashable jars, this first close encounter is appropriately terrifying as it swings a massive club that shatters an entire quadrant of the room and all you can do is run. It's particularly both fascinating and frustrating to watch a new player and see them hurl themselves at this gigantic monster again and again because they didn't notice that there was an escape route literally 10 feet away from them. But then this frustration is quickly replaced by elation when they finally do acquire a proper sword and shield and attack the monster from above, instantly taking about a quarter of it's hit points away before you begin fight it fairly. The fight is criminally easy for those who thought that the first time they saw him was the "real" fight, and it encourages the player to think that the game provides a way to beat it, even if it's not obviously apparent. This first level is all about teaching the fact that this game is about hitting you hard, but also teaching that if you're quick and if you're clever, you can hit back just as hard. The place where this shines the most, the place where you have to use everything you've learned about the game up to that point to even have a chance, the place where every ounce of wit, grit and determination is required, is the fight with not one, but two bosses: Dragonslayer Ornstein and Executioner Smough.

It's just music. Really, really cool music.

Biggy and Smalls; Jake and the Fat Man;
Abbot and Costello; Slim and Jim; Snorlax and Pikachu.

After ringing the bells of awakening, the chosen undead was told to go to the city of Arnor Londo, Gwyn's city, and obtain an object known as The Lordvessel from Gwyn's daughter, Gwynevere. But the way is barred, where she is protected by Ornstein, Captain of the Guard and renowned slayer of the Ancient Dragons with his legendary
Lightning Spear (many dragon heads adorn walls leading to the boss area), and Smough, Royal Executioner, favoring an impossibly large hammer over the traditional axe, is a pitiless brute, though the two warriors have become friends over their years of service. They guard their princess from all who would approach, waiting to be relieved of these orders from a king who would never return. Together, they are quite possibly one of the most iconic boss fights in video game history, up there with Bowser in Mario, Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid, the Stone Sword Guardian in Shadow of the Colossus, and the Big Daddies in Bioshock. Ornstein is both resistant to elemental damage and very fast, closing the distance of the great hall you fight them in in seconds. Smough is slow, but tough and deals large amounts of damage, often turning into an unstoppable plow that follows you around the room. Either on their own would be formidable, a memorable boss in any other game, but together, they are a prime example of organized chaos, making it near impossible to do the slow, calculating approach that many players employed up to that point. You can bring an ally to help you manage one at a time, but that requires humanity, and if you die to the many, many enemies that you have to fight through before you even get to the boss room, you lose that humanity and have to waste another one. And that's not the worst part. Once you somehow manage to kill one of them, the other gains their powers. If Smough dies first, Ornstein respectfully places his hand on his fallen comrade and suddenly grows to Smough's size and so hits half as fast, but twice as hard. If Ornstein falls first, Smough executes him, whether out of suppressed malice or grim loyalty is unclear, and he becomes electrified, doing even more damage. These characters have well designed, contrasting yet complimentary silhouettes, and the same goes for their attacks. Combined with the music, it all comes together as the defining moment of the Dark Souls experience.

When you do finally defeat them, you are able to speak to Gwynevere, who then gives you the Lordvessel and tells you your destiny. The music soars and you feel like the greatest person in the entire stinking universe. I had tried for days to beat them, and when I did, I felt so accomplished I treated myself out for brunch. And this is just the very top of a laundry list of incredible boss fights. There's a giant wolf who carries a sword in his mouth ala Amaterasu; there's two gargoyles at the top of a bell tower; there's a beautiful giant fairy moth; there's an actual Capra Demon; there's a dragon that uses his open, gaping rib cage as giant maw to eat stuff; there's a lady who's half spider-demon, half naked; there's a weird puppet doll kind of thing that's too complicated to get into. And then there are the Lords. The godlike beings who defeated the ancient dragons in the opening cutscene? You get to fight them. You offer their souls to the Lord Vessel to open the way to the Kiln of the First Flame, where Gwyn stalled the heat death of the universe for a thousand years or two. But doing so drove him hollow, and now you, the chosen undead, know your destiny. Use your soul to rekindle the first flame. Keep the light going, even if it's only for a few more millennia, and undo the curse of Undeath. But Gwyn wont go down without a fight, and so becomes the final boss of the game.

When I first went up against him, I was amazed and frightened by just how fast he was. He would cut me down whenever I tried to drink a health potion, my shield did little to block his huge flaming greatsword, and my armor was the highest possible ratio of high defense and high movement speed. (I ended up looking kind of like a Meat Wizard.) And while my greatsword was also huge and imbued with lightning, he was altogether more agile. As Freudian as it sounds, it doesn't change that I spent the following week banging my head against the wall, trying every odd weapon, armor and passive buff combination to try and beat him when he was just a better version of the character I was currently playing. I tried exploring magic, but I had started too little, too late and an enchanted shield only lasted a few seconds. My character was an adept pyromancer (which is a subtle but important distinction from magic), but that did little against someone who had literally lit themselves on fire to save the world and came out of it with his body mostly intact. I didn't know what to do, and was tempted to give up, start all over with a different build, even though I was so close. I decided that I would try one more time, this time going back to my original weapon, but keeping a stronger shield that I was now able to use effectively due to all the level grinding that I did to try and do new stuff. And this time, the shield worked! I was able to resist all the damage while able to take multiple hits at once. Now that I have time to get my bearings, time to try my sword effectively for the first time. I swing with my heavy attack and.... He's staggered?!? Yes! Now I can hit him and have enough time to back off, chug a health potion and raise my shield. I have him down to Half Health and--! Oh, he killed me... Too Bad! I have a strategy now, and that's more than I've had all week! It was slow, it was methodical, and it was brutal, adding another 30 deaths to my already innumerable death count, but a few hours later, beads of sweat pouring down my face at 9:30 pm on a weeknight, I did it. I actually stinking DID IT!

Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.
(Side Note: I'm so happy that this is one of the emotes)

I beat the game by playing the same game I had been playing from the start.

I know that saying it out loud, it doesn't sound like it's much, but in so many games that I've played over the years, in order to give the final confrontation some amount of weight, they completely change the rules of the game. Bioshock added a final boss battle when the entire game had been about avoiding classic game tropes. The most recent Halo game had a quick-time event in place of anything resembling a final confrontation. When a game is able to remain consistent, yet still have lots of variety, its a sign the game knows what the heck it's doing. That being said, Dark Souls is far from a perfect game. Graphics-wise, they took a lot of short cuts to make it look as good as it does. Gameplay wise, it could do a lot more to tell people about the Humanity and Bonfire systems, while still retaining an heir of subtlety to it. From what I hear, it's spiritual successor, Bloodborne, has come along way in having better systems more elegantly presented. A few of the bosses, such as the Bed of Chaos, one of the Lord Souls, even the creator of the game, who is a self described masochist, said that they screwed up when they made that boss so hard. The goal was to make the game hard, but fair, so that you could do the whole thing in one life if you were clever and crafty, but that one boss decidedly makes that goal impossible.

But now to bring it all back down to how this ties into my depression. In the literal month since I started writing what amounts to an Essay, I started taking Lexapro, but there are still bad days. Why would I play this game if it's hours of frustration and dread for maybe 5 minutes of triumph? Dark Souls is not a "fun" game. That's one of biggest barriers to entry, for certain, and one of the reasons why there's a good chance you wont like it if you do try it. But I would call it "enriching." There's a  joy in Dark Souls that comes from doing something that the game said was impossible. Alex Steacy described it as such: "Dark Souls is like a Army Drill Sargent. It yells at you that you can't do it because it wants you to prove it wrong." It breaks down your preconceived notions and reshapes you into a smarter, more capable individual. I played Dark Souls, and jumped into its literal Abyss, because it was something that required my full attention and kept me from becoming overly anxious about things that were not worth getting anxious about. It taught me that patience and determination can overcome any obstacle, even ones that seem impossible at first. Granted, most of the problem solving was combat related, but in general it does poke it's head in the real world from time to time. Having finished the game, I haven't really picked it up since, but there is a New Game Plus mode, where you start out at beginning level at the very start of the game, but you get to keep your gear and all of the enemies are even harder. I may pick it up again one day, but at the moment, I'm hoping to get myself a PS4 in the near future, and Bloodborne is on the very short list of games to get for that system, so that I can start the magic of grinding my face against a wall all over again.

If you want to see the game for yourself, but don't want to play it just yet, there's a boat load of videos going over it, but one in particular has been brought to us by the folks behind Extra Credits and Extra History, two series about game design and how it meshes with the player, and various often overlooked parts of history, respectively. This webseries, called Side Quests, follows the voice of the show as he stumbles through his first time playing it while the writer of the show guides him through some of the rough patches while providing superb game design and development commentary.




And so it's done, finally finished by chipping away at it for way longer than was probably necessary. "Like a Boss" so to speak. *awkward leering smile*                 Anyways. here's a good starter episode of Prepare to Cry, by VaatiVidya, featuring the loveably useless adventurer, Siegmeyer and his Zweihander.