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So continuing a project I began last week, I wanted to take a journey through various FromSoftware games to analyze how games teach their players to play effectively. We are not merely concerned with the mechanical presses of buttons on a controller or keyboard, but the larger techniques and rules that players must navigate in solving problems and overcoming obstacles. A game can tell you what a button does without helping you learn how to properly use that mechanic. And so breaking games down into more detail is useful.
So today we step into Dark Souls. I played through the “first” few hours of the game with the perspective of the new player. While we do not need to assume that this is the first game someone has ever played – because that process of onboarding a player into video games more generally may require a much softer approach – we do want to assume our new player is unfamiliar with, say, Demon’s Souls, or does not know anything about Dark Souls itself. Even the most basic knowledge like “it’s a difficult game” is information that can paint the experience of the player.
When I say “first” few hours, I am being extremely lax. Since Dark Souls actually is a difficult game, new players are going to spend a lot of time learning the basic rhythm of fighting, and will thus wind up dying a lot. The time it takes to beat the first few bosses could be nearly a dozen hours for some players, and so my relating of this first-time experience is going to be abridged. The process of learning via dying and making incremental progress will need to be assumed, rather than stated. Where a player is “intended” to die I will be making note of that and what it can teach a player.
While our hypothetical new player would not be familiar with Demon’s Souls, we certainly can be, and can use this as an opportunity to examine the ways in which challenges have been introduced and changed and how that might impact how players learn. I will make note of a few things here and there, but a more sustained discussion would require far more work, and I leave that as a personal exercise for readers. But we might ask to what extent any difference here is a change that is for the better: if so, how; if not, why.
Recap: Game Needs and Tutorialization
One argument I made in the previous essay was that different games have different “needs” that are constructed out of their systems. Games that have a lot of open space for players to explore need to teach and incentivize that exploration. Games that are built around spectacle need to teach players how to fight in a “pretty” way and master techniques. And so on and so on. We may not be able to fully articulate every possible need, and there is no way to know what these needs are without having a pretty strong familiarity with the game itself. Which is why understanding the success of tutorialization is something that can only occur with sufficient hindsight.
In that same essay I made the claim that the various FromSoft games all shared some basic needs:
First, they needed to prepare players for a challenge. Perseverance is a necessary skill that the player must adopt through the playthrough, as there is a process of encountering new areas and enemies and bosses, fighting and dying, and then reviving at the last checkpoint to try again. If players are caught off-guard by difficulty, they are more likely to abandon the game when it gets difficult. If they are introduced to the idea early, they can A) more easily decide if the game is right for them, and B) become mentally prepared for what will happen in the rest of the game.
Second, these games should encourage players to explore and look around. This part is important both for finding useful goodies, as well as avoiding traps. A lot of items might be just out of reach, and players need to find pathways to get to them. Or an enemy could be lurking around a corner, and players need to be aware of those possibilities and anticipate those positions. If the game does not encourage the player to look around, they will miss both of these things.
Thirdly, the games need to encourage clever thinking. While the game provides you with ample opportunity to repeatedly attempt the same section of a game over and over until you get it just right, there are often other options available. Sometimes those options include rethinking the strategy you’re using. Sometimes it may involve using items. Sometimes it may involve summoning someone to help. Sometimes it may involve just going somewhere else. Whatever the case may be, the idea that you just bang your head against the wall until the wall breaks – the “git gud” mentality – is contrary to the actual systems of the game. And they need to prepare you for that purpose.
So with that recap out of the way, let’s dip in to Dark Souls itself.
The Opening of Dark Souls
We aren’t going to be concerned about cutscenes. These of course will matter as part of narrative, and as part of a fuller breakdown of the game would be interesting, but for our purposes we can ignore this stuff.
I’ll be skipping over the discussion about character creation and settle on the same rules as with Demon’s Souls, which will carry moving forward: the “default” option will be the first character class listed, and when a starting item is provided we will pick the one that makes the most sense based off of the descriptions provided by the game. In this case, the Warrior class and the Tiny Being’s Ring.
The game starts us off in a prison cell where a body is thrown down to us with an item on it. This immediately introduces us to the process of picking up items, but it also introduces something else…
Some people have made jokes or just wondered about why a corpse is thrown down with a key on it rather than just a key itself. Wouldn’t the latter be much easier? But there would be a good reason to throw down the body from a design perspective. Because freestanding items (i.e. items that don’t drop as loot from enemies) exist on bodies. It’s a simple thing to overlook, but it is relevant a few times later in the game. You will occasionally find barrels and jars with a body propped up inside of them, or see some legs poking out from behind some boxes. Those are clues that there’s an item to pick up from smashing stuff. This becomes relevant once we finish the tutorial.
Regardless, we pick up the key, exit our cell, and move forward. We’re introduced to some very basic movement and attack controls, and given harmless enemies to try them out on. As we keep pressing forward we encounter our first bonfire, with the notice that resting at them restores our hit points. We likely haven’t been hit, but just in case it’s probably worthwhile to sit there. Before us lies two doors: a smaller iron door which we can’t open, and a large wooden door that we can. The choice is pretty clear.
As soon as we step into the large room, we are attacked by the Asylum Demon that jumps down. Our natural reaction, of course, may likely be to attack. There is, though a message on the ground that just says “Get Away.” But trying to fight the boss is still a fairly natural solution for us to try out at first.
Hitting the boss with our starting weapon – a measly broken sword – deals just a few points of damage. Given how much that chips off of the boss’s health bar, this clearly isn’t viable. In comparison, the boss can take us down in a few swings, which we have no defense against: keep in mind, the game hasn’t taught us how to roll (we can press buttons and learn for ourselves, but we can’t rely on that impulse from the new player). So death is the obvious outcome here.
We might try a couple more times, but it will be painfully obvious that violence is not the answer here. If we take that plus the message to heart, then we probably want to look around for some other option. The door we came in through is closed and can’t be opened. Another door at the other end of the room is similarly barred. But if we run around we will see an open pathway which shuts behind us. We’re now safe, and we get another bonfire to rest at.
This sequence is probably one of the most valuable pieces of tutorialization we get throughout FromSoft’s games. It gives us so many little lessons in one fairly brief encounter.
Firstly, there’s the preparation for a challenge. You’re likely to die in this encounter, which not only gives you a heads up that enemies will hit hard, but also allows you to learn about the corpse run.
Second, it teaches you how to pay attention to the subtle signals of what you should be doing. While the explicit message telling you to run is important, just as relevant is the fact that you do practically no damage to the boss. You are not supposed to win this fight, very clearly. Whatever is holding you back, you need to do this when you are stronger. And understanding when you’re doing too little damage – and an enemy too much – is helpful for knowing how to solve problems.
Thirdly, the very fact that the solution here is to just run away prepares you for the idea of rethinking your approach to challenges. Rather than just continually attacking the boss until you finally chip it down, you’re supposed to stop and ask what else you could do. To look around for other solutions, which would then yield the exit. Not only are you supposed to stop and think, but also realize that sometimes you shouldn’t fight something right now simply because it’s there. Take the time to prepare and come back later.[1]
After our new bonfire we find a message telling us to get a shield, after which we reach a hallway with an enemy firing arrows at us. To our immediate left is a corpse with a shield on it, and inside some messages about how to use equip and use it. We thus can move forward, blocking the arrows, chase the enemy away, and then reach another item which is our starting weapon. Now we’ve got some real equipment.
Continuing forward, we reach a message that tells us about rolling. In the previous essay I talked about the problem of not communicating how the roll really works and what it does, and the problem is even worse here. But there’s not much value in re-litigating that topic.
To our left is a dead end, though up above us we can see an item hanging off another body. Clearly there’s some way up there, but we can’t reach it yet. So we go the other way, which brings us to two stairways: one leading up, the other down. If we go downstairs, we reach a door that we open to find the first bonfire, giving us a spot to rest at. Meanwhile, heading upstairs likely gets us crushed by a rolling ball.
This same trap was pulled in Demon’s Souls, and the lesson is still the same. Our natural inclination may often be to keep our camera pointed straight ahead. So as we climb the stairs, we are focused on the stairs in front of us, not looking at the top. Of course, if we do that, we get smacked in the face by a trap. So be sure to look around and observe your environment.
Whether we get hit by the ball or not, we might have heard a crash behind us. It’s not necessary, but we could turn around to find the wall behind us being broken apart. If we didn’t notice that noise, though, we could continue up the stairs and find a locked door. Which means we turn around and go back the way we came, and find the broken wall anyway.
Inside this room we encounter a dude in armor (the same dude who gave us the key at the beginning), who tells us to go to a place called Lordran and ring the Bell of Awakening. This is the way to solve the undead curse that is the turning point of the story. At the end, we get the Estus Flask, which serves as our healing item. We also get a key that opens the locked door at the top of the stairs.
Heading past the door gives us a few more tutorial messages, and faces us with a fog gate. The most relevant is about a plunging attack, which is performed when we use the attack while falling. Luckily, when we use the fog gate we find ourselves on a ledge, with the Asylum Demon waiting just below us…
Hopefully we react quickly enough to walk off the ledge and use our new knowledge to perform that plunging attack, which takes off a huge chunk of the boss’s life bar. If we don’t, though, then the demon will jump up and smack us off the ledge. Although even then we can be fine. Our new equipment allows us to do way more damage and block attacks, which means we have a real chance of winning. And we do. It may not be the first try, but eventually we get there. Which rewards us with a key to open the big door, which leads us to a cliff, which gives us a cutscene, and…we’re done with the tutorial proper.
Hang on a moment, though…what happened to that item we saw earlier? That was behind a locked door just before the boss gate, but we didn’t find any other keys, nor was there any other clear way to the item? Let’s just hang on to this for later.
The True Dark Souls Begins Now
We’re dropped off in Lordran in a spot called Firelink Shrine. This serves as our main hub, or at least the closest to it. It’s a central spot from which we can get to several different areas.
We immediately get a message about how we can now level up at bonfires, and since we’ve got a couple thousand experience points from the Asylum Demon, we may as well spend them. This serves as our introduction to stats and the like. I wrote at length in the Demon’s Souls essay about menu navigation and the difficulty of discerning what these stats all mean in context, and not a great deal has changed. One useful change, though, is that a functionality has been added to allow us to highlight all relevant statistics and get a very tiny blurb on what they mean. It’s not quite the information a player needs, but it’s more than nothing. Nevertheless, I’ll gloss over the topic of leveling and stats.
We likely would also notice two other options: one to “Kindle,” and one to “Reverse Hollowing.” Messing with the former option tells us we aren’t allowed to kindle while we’re hollow, which then pushes us to check out the latter option. Which tells us we need “humanity.” If we check our inventory we’ll likely find that we have one of those items, and so we might use it and by doing so learn that it ticks up a counter in the top left of our screen, near our health/stamina bars. Trying again allows us to reverse our hollowing, which makes us look like a human (as opposed to a dried out husk), at which point we can use that kindle option…which says we need more humanity. Okay, we at least know what we’re looking for. And there is actually a corpse nearby with some more humanity on it. If we try that, we find that we can’t kindle that bonfire any higher right now. Maybe not the best introduction to the system…but we do at least get some indication that by spending two humanity items we can do…something to bonfires. We don’t know what “kindling” means, and so this bit of tutorialization leaves us wondering what the hell the purpose of all this is.
Likewise, we’re not given information about what being human as opposed to hollowed does. We see a visual impact, and we know it allows us to interact with the “Kindle” option…but is that it? The game isn’t really giving us the knowledge that we’ll need later about the mechanic, and the tradeoffs it imposes. This would probably have been a great moment for a text box to explain the mechanic in more detail. Something that FromSoft would avoid for a while.
After messing with the bonfire, we see an NPC who fills us in a bit more on our quest. There are actually two Bells of Awakening: one up above, one below. We don’t get any further direction, but it’s still good to know.
We can explore around Firelink, and doing so reveals a few different paths. Around the crumbling structure right next to us is a cemetery, which is probably an obvious “first choice” to explore. Of course, doing so leads us to fighting skeletons which are likely to annihilate us. They take off a good chunk of our health and take barely any damage from our starting sword. We might bash our head against that wall a few times, but eventually we should get the hint that maybe we don’t bother right now.
There was also a set of stairs near the NPC. Heading down takes us to an elevator, which leads us to a new zone called New Londo. Exploring here might lead us to finding another NPC who is a blacksmith. We don’t exactly need those services, but it’s useful to keep in mind. Not much else here, but we might notice a corpse in a jar. As I noted earlier, one of the things the game wants us to understand (though we might not initially) is that corpses tend to have items on them. So if we break the jar, voila! An item called “Transient Curse.” What does that do? Who knows! Time to cross the bridge next to us.[2]
At which point we encounter some ghosts that we can’t hurt, and which also kill us quickly. We might use those Transient Curse items we just picked up and learn that it allows us to do damage to the ghosts, but even then we’re likely to get destroyed and run out of those items. So…back to Firelink we go.
We might have already noticed the third path leading up along the cliff edge. If we take this path, we immediately find things much more manageable. Enemies do less damage – more in line with what enemies in the tutorial were doing – and go down in a reasonable number of hits.
The point of all this is threefold. Firstly, it gives the players options. The sense of freedom of “being able to go where you want” is valuable to players because it feels like our interaction is meaningful. Secondly, and somewhat paradoxically, it helps to direct us to the “right” path. Despite the fact that we have that freedom, we can tend to use it to make “poor” choices. Choices that frustrate us. So the game giving us options but still subtly pushing us in the direction that will allow us to make progress maintains that sense of freedom while still being able to push us into making fun decisions. Thirdly, it gives us an opportunity to stop and think about obstacles and what they “mean” in context of things like how much damage you deal, how much damage you take, and so on. If something’s tough, don’t just bang your head against a wall, find a different solution. Including just doing something else.
So we head through the Undead Burg, and our journey is likely pretty standard. We’re mostly learning to manage multiple enemies, especially a combination of melee and ranged opponents. It certainly takes some effort, and we may die a few times, but eventually we reach another fog gate.
Perhaps the most relevant lesson we’ll have learned by this time is making sure to look around the environment. We’ve already been taught this lesson with the rolling ball, and actually the same trap is sprung on us with a rolling barrel just before the boss. But just as important is a tower we might notice near the end of the zone. Downstairs of us are a couple of enemies, and if we run straight towards them we will likely be shot in the back of the head. A good sign to look around first and observe our surroundings, including noticing the stairs that lead up into the tower.
I mention this bit because the same trap is sprung on us again as we enter the boss arena. We could look around and notice a ladder leading up to two crossbowmen. But if we instead decide to charge forward, we’ll likely be shot in the back. If we’re really unlucky, we might trigger the boss jumping down before we get a chance to deal with the crossbowmen, making the fight all but impossible for us. Again, pay attention to the environment. Look around.
The boss here is the Taurus Demon, a big minotaur-like monster with a gigantic axe. It’s a tough fight that will likely take us a number of attempts, which gives us more practice in running through to the boss. This could be an opportunity for us to practice different forms of “boss runs.” For example, fighting each enemy one-by-one versus running past them all to get back to the fight as quickly as possible. Whatever our option, this gives us some chances to experiment with our playstyles.
Once the Taurus Demon is eventually down, we continue forward and find a long bridge with various enemies on it. To the right is a platform with an NPC named Solaire, who introduces the concept of cooperative summoning and provides us with an item for engaging in that cooperation. This gives us our proper introduction to multiplayer.
Game Design versus Player Obstinance
Since we got the key item that allows us to engage in cooperation and met an NPC that explicitly encourages us to engage in cooperation, it’s useful to take a moment to talk about game design compared to how players…well…play.
Having brought up the “git gud” mentality, we should think about the way that mentality flies in the face of what you are explicitly told to do. Upon encountering Solaire and being given the summoning item, you are very clearly told to help and get help from others. There are, of course, issues later on with how summoning works. Given that the player character needs to be “unhollowed” to be able to summon – which they may not necessarily have messed with and may not have triggered upon reaching their next boss fight – it’s entirely possible to miss the small markers that allow you to summon partners. So the fact that the mechanics of summoning are obtuse is relevant to explaining why players might not know how to engage with it. But we’re focused on the choice not to engage with it.
Part of the “git gud” mentality involves this overarching idea of what it means to play “for real.” Even where we do not hack the game or use cheat codes, certain practices are deemed “improper.” If you beat a boss using those “improper” systems, you didn’t really beat that boss. You need to beat that boss on your own to prove yourself.
This idea, of course, is nonsense. It stems from a competitive idea in which gamers must demonstrate their value through a show of skill – one that if taken to its logical conclusion would result in the vast majority of players looking like “fakes.” There may be certain cases where certain methods of play are invalid – such as cheating within a competitive multiplayer game. But outside of those contexts, the player’s choice on how they play their own game is what should matter most.
Players are of course free to choose to make the game harder for themselves, but this choice should be engaged with in light of the question of why they make that choice in the first place. That choice did not come from nowhere.
And likewise it needs to be made with the understanding of what is being communicated to us. We are told to play cooperatively, and even enjoy it – it is referred to as “jolly cooperation” after all. And indeed, the next boss, the Bell Gargoyles, is pretty much tailor-made for cooperation. What begins as a one-on-one fight with a single gargoyle suddenly becomes a two-on-one fight, one that is possible but still difficult to manage thanks to one of the gargoyles breathing fire almost 100% of the time. Summoning a partner – whether another player or an NPC – is an excellent way to regain control of the battle. Make no mistake: this is the game telling us to summon. It is trying to beat into our heads the idea that we should think of summons as tools to use just like our weapons and spells.
The fact that so many players are insistent on not summoning (even if only for “the first time”) – and I certainly am among them – is an interesting facet of the nature of game design. You can try to communicate mechanics in various ways, but eventually if players refuse those mechanics, what can you do? At best, you can hope that the player does not get too frustrated with their own decisions – that they do not poison their own experience. But we as players should probably ask why we keep doing this.
Concluding Remarks
My trek through the opening went just a touch further, ringing the first Bell of Awakening and revisiting Firelink Shrine, but this is ultimately a good place to stop. We’ve certainly learned a lot along the way, and there’s plenty for us to work on processing.
So how does this game measure up in terms of teaching us what we need to know?
It’s certainly prepared us for death and challenge. The encounter with the Asylum Demon may well have killed us once or twice, and if not we’ve probably hit some walls trying to find our pathway out of Firelink or facing off against the Taurus Demon.
Exploration, though, is a bit more iffy. On the one hand, it has given us a lot of pathways to explore. But the problem is that it hasn’t really trained us to exhaust them before moving on. In fact, it’s done a bit of the opposite. The opening section shows you only a single optional pathway that you literally can’t get to. And then once you enter Firelink Shrine the clearest pathways are ones that will likely get you killed. These two decisions have value on their own: the item in the asylum signals that you can return later; the pathways to New Londo and the cemetery help push you toward the Undead Burg. But these also carry the implicit lesson that you can just “come back later.” In fact, you should. Don’t bother with exploring, just keep going down what seems like the intended pathway, because those side paths probably are locked behind tough enemies. I didn’t mention the Black Knight enemy shortly before the Taurus Demon, but he too would be a good signal of this same lesson. Why keep an eye out for side paths when those side paths are probably “for later”?
Clever thinking, though, is being communicated. The Asylum Demon fight and the opening exploration out of Firelink Shrine are both there to teach us not to just hit our head against the wall over and over again. To rethink our approaches, up to and including just going to do something else. And of course the fact that the player is more clearly keyed in to summoning and encouraged to use it as a tool. Arguably it could have done a better job by giving us more items to use and play around with and getting us to think about how we could use those items to solve problems. But in comparison to Demon’s Souls, we’ve at least made some movement towards getting players to think more critically about their play.
So perhaps it’s a bit of a step forward and a step backward. It’s always going to be tough to hit that perfect balance, and given that this is only the second attempt we’d expect that there’s still more that needs to be learned. However, the fact that so much of the game is able to balance these problems fairly well is a good sign.
[1] I’ve talked before about how knowledge of a game can influence the way we play, and not always for the better. Familiarity with FromSoft’s games often breeds this problem among a lot of fans, who may have been introduced with one game and then find themselves uncomfortable adjusting to anything else: they have expectations for “more Dark Souls” that cannot be met by a different game. To help illustrate a perfect example of this, I will relay a story of a streamer I observed in this exact situation. He had never played any of these games before, but was familiar with them through watching others play. So he was at the very least aware of the fact that the games were hard, and much of what he observed were other players repeatedly fighting the same boss for hours on end. So as a bit of fun he decided to start up Dark Souls and play for a bit.
Upon encountering the Asylum Demon, he died. And then went back in and died again. And again. And again. For a while, because he kept trying to fight the boss. Why? Because that’s what he had observed others doing. Why would he bother with other solutions? Surely FromSoft put this here to be a challenge, because that’s what they do. And yet, the expectation that had been given to him by others led to him not learning how to play. He couldn’t digest the lessons of the game’s design because so many of us had not internalized those same lessons.
[2] I’ve mentioned this before, but one issue with the games is that they want you to take the time to stop and read the item descriptions. And certainly some players will. But given how complicated the menus are to navigate and the fact that the game hasn’t really taught you to do this, many players could be forgiven for just ignoring the new item and moving on.
Abstracting Games 