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Continuing the recent project of analyzing the openings to the most well-known FromSoft games and how they teach players to play effectively, I wanted to move to Dark Souls II next.
The objective of this project has been to look at the various aspects of a game, namely its first handful of hours, and see how it combines explicit instructions, the placement of enemies, treasures, and so on to provide lessons that players can learn from. An observant player – admittedly not the “standard” player of these or any game (certainly few if any of these lessons are what I took away from these games to start) – can draw valuable information by paying attention to all of these factors.
Now one wrinkle to this project is that I have been attempting to approach these games from the perspective of a new player. Someone who is playing – in this case – Dark Souls II for the very first time, with no prior knowledge or experience with the game or with FromSoft’s development history as a whole. We can presume different levels of knowledge about games more generally, or different levels of skill, and those will dictate just how long these openings might take. It might take a handful of hours, it might take a dozen or two.
But familiarity with the game breeds a particular kind of approach to play. When we go in knowing that there’s a significant challenge, we will approach the game differently than if we know nothing. If we know how the stats and builds work, that dictates how we allocate levels. One of the biggest issues I’ve spoken about in previous essays and on the streams where I’ve been conducting these excursions is about defensive options: what you know about rolling and the invincibility it confers determines how you fight.
A lot of this information is stuff that the player might have accumulated from various sources – both the game and guides – in playing through previous games. Indeed, most DS2 players will likely come from fans of Dark Souls. And so in a way, the project ignores the actual experience of this sequel.
Certainly one of the problems of sequels is comparison. A good deal of how DS2 operates would be a major surprise to veterans of the series, and indeed these changes invite comparison. Processing all of those differences is part of playing for a veteran, but does not exist for a new player. Is it irrelevant? Doesn’t focusing on the new player lose sight of these differences?
However, we can’t do everything at once. There are times and places for such comparisons, but I wanted to focus on the hypothetical new player because it provides us with a baseline for understanding design. The more we rely on past knowledge, the less we may find ourselves paying attention to the messages provided by a developer – we assume we know well enough.
The less we know about a given game, the more reliant we are upon the game’s design to teach us. And that’s where our focus is. Can the game get us to the point that we no longer need its advice and help? Can it teach us how to solve problems?
One thing I should note about our approach to this game is that there are technically two versions of Dark Souls II. The original game was released in 2014, but received a major update the following year which altered things like enemy positions and behaviors. That update was called “Scholar of the First Sin,” and will be the version of the game I’ll be analyzing.
Recap: Game Needs and Tutorialization
NB: This section is repeated from last week’s essay. Feel free to skip to the next section if you don’t think you need the reminder.
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 II itself.
Dark Souls II
The beginning of the game – minus the cutscenes – plops us into the middle of a field with nothing. Some clothes and a cloak, but no weapons or anything. All we are left with is the ability to move, and that’s it. So we might as well start walking. The first clearing is devoid of life, but the second clearing has some small creatures that flee from us. We could experiment with our buttons and attack them if we so choose…though we might also be more inclined to just continue on and get some equipment.
So we go past and come to a bridge with a doorway lit up in the distance. Our eyes are meant to be drawn to this light source, making it a natural point to go. There is a hidden pathway to our left that leads to a rather large and powerful enemy…but our new player is not that likely to see the pathway. We haven’t yet been encouraged to search around, so why would we do that?
Upon entering the door, we are treated to a cutscene that allows us to create our character. I’ve talked about this in previous essays, but we will simply go with the first option for our character class in the absence of further information. The cutscene also gives us a hint about an item called “Human Effigies,” albeit a very subtle one. But the fact that being given this item effectively “restores” us is supposed to tell us about what these items are useful for. And lastly, the game warns us that we’re going to die. Over and over again. It’s admittedly not as useful as outright killing us, but we do at least get some upfront notification about the difficulty.
After exiting the cutscene, we are directed toward the door out. We could look around and notice the stairs leading up to a chest, but it’s unclear if our hypothetical new player would yet do so. Regardless, we move out to the tutorial area which will teach us our various mechanics. Locking on, attacking, bonfires, and so on.
Progressing through the tutorial will give us some things to make note of for later. The first section leads out to a cliff that gives us a view of a large enemy on a beach. It’s not much, but it may well pique our curiosity. Going further up leads us to a nest with an (invisible) NPC that asks for “smooth” and “silky” items. We may not have these items yet, but we can keep an eye out for them. And the last section is literally closed to us, being blocked by a statue that we can interact with, though all it says is that it blocks our way. All of these things may seem like weird barriers, but they point to the idea that it is worth making notes so we can revisit them later.
Upon finishing the tutorial, we are sent to Majula, which serves as our hub area. Out in the distance we see an NPC to talk to, who not only gives direction about our current goal (acquiring powerful souls), but also allows us to level up. We may not have enough souls to do so, but eventually we’ll get enough. She also provides us with an Estus Flask, which supplements whatever healing items we may have started with or collected in the tutorial.
Roaming around Majula gives us some introductions to covenants and merchants, and also some stuff to come back to. It’s possible that we might come to a small well near one house with a block teetering on the edge. Hitting that block causes a corpse to rise up with an Estus Shard item, which we can take back to increase the number of flasks we can use. That said, this item would also be very easy to miss, since we haven’t been taught to engage with this kind of stuff. Which leads us to a bit of a problem…
Theory and Practice: Player Messages
FromSoft has generally tried to push players to interact with each other in a variety of ways. These include both competitive and cooperative interactions. I talked about summoning in Dark Souls and the ways that the game pushes players to engage with this mechanic. DS2 mechanically does the same, but does not explicitly push it in the same way, making it seem more like something a player could do rather than something the player should do. Despite the fact that summoning is arguably much more valuable in this game.
However, I instead wanted to focus on player messages, which are somewhat hit or miss, and the ways that messages are an integral part of the game that nevertheless creates problems for the player trying to learn.
The intent behind player messages is that people will leave encouraging notes as well as useful warnings or hints for others. Did you locate a side path that other people might miss? Did you get ambushed by some enemies you weren’t expecting? Did you find a valuable item? Maybe leave a message for others so that they can keep an eye out for the same stuff. In this way, you as a developer can hide these things, because some players will find them and then tell others.
In practice, though, messages are a very mixed bag. It’s not that they can’t ever be helpful, but often players will leave messages that are just memes or even explicitly unhelpful. Engaging with these messages can leave players with the feeling that it’s better to just ignore the message system entirely. It’s possible that a new player may find just enough helpful messages to want to read more just in case, but we should not be surprised if the lesson drawn is that they’re useless.
And this creates a problem when we revisit the theory. If you want to hide secrets, you may now not be as worried about how well the environment points out those secrets, because someone will find those secrets and share the information through the message system. But what if people no longer are getting that information because they’ve been trained that player messages are pointless?
So take that shard in the well in Majula. To what extent might a player think to hit the block? It’s plausible, but the design there is more clearly set up for a player message to point out. It looks a bit odd, but not necessarily odd enough that a lot of players would say “I wonder what would happen…” Which is a bit of an issue for something so valuable.
Or take false walls later in the game, which we’ll be technically introduced to before fighting our first boss. Although that wall is there, we’ve never been instructed about false walls existing, nor how to open them. Which means we are entirely reliant on player messages to point them out. If, however, we’ve already been burned on that notion before, then why trust them now?
Thus even though player messages can still be useful, it cannot be a way to cut corners on other elements of design. No matter what, the game still needs to get players to keep an eye out for these secrets. They should be something findable for the aware player, and the player should be trained to be aware. That is the mark of good tutorialization.
Exiting Majula
Running around Majula we may eventually find a few pathways out. Perhaps the most obvious one is a set of stairs leading down to a sewer-like area, which eventually leads us to a new zone called Heide’s Tower of Flame. This area will likely be too much for us, as the enemies deal quite a bit of damage and require a lot of hits to take down.
They’ll also likely give us a good indication about the downside of using a shield. Since it doesn’t block 100% of the damage, we are still in danger if we rely on it. This admittedly leaves us with the question of what we do instead of just blocking…but I’ve noted before that the game hasn’t really given us good information on what rolling really does, and our ability to experiment with it is hampered by how invincibility frames and hitboxes work in this game. The problem existed in previous games, but is arguably even worse here, despite the fact that we might reasonably make the argument that the game is pushing us to roll.
If Heide’s Tower is too much, then perhaps we should head back and try somewhere else. We saw this same design in the previous game, and it serves the same purpose here: we are given a choice, but nevertheless being pushed towards a particular direction, allowing us to maintain the illusion of control while the developers make sure we’re on the “right” path.
So we head back to Majula, and perhaps take the second pathway that stood out, which leads us to another NPC and another statue holding on to a lever. This path is blocked, so we might as well search for another path. The intended path is, arguably, the most hidden, but yet that hidden nature makes sure we’re more likely to encounter the other pathways first.
This third pathway is much more manageable for our character, with the exception of the large ogre that will almost certainly kill us. We could try a number of times to take it out, or we could add it to the list of things to come back to later. Either way, we eventually reach another bonfire. And here we get some good introduction to combat and managing enemies. Twice over. We first encounter enemies by ones and twos as we move forward toward a ladder, and then at the top of the ladder we find ourselves at a clearing with a bunch of corpses. Yet getting near those corpses causes them to rise and attack, meaning we need to be aware of bodies which may actually be enemies. We also need to keep an eye out, as we might otherwise be caught off-guard by the soldier up top throwing bombs at us.
After the clearing, we move forward through a hallway and up a set of stairs, which gives us our first proper trap. At the top of the stairs is an enemy firing arrows at us. We might naturally want to run forward and take him out, but doing so will almost certainly get us hit in the back by a bomb. We could see this enemy if we looked, but we’re most likely focused on the bow and arrow. And this teaches us to be more patient and watchful. Otherwise we will fall into a trap.
Going up another ladder brings us to a room with a bonfire and another merchant. She sells a key for the blacksmith’s shop, making it very worthwhile to purchase. She also sells a number of other valuable items that might clue us in to how we get beyond some earlier obstacles (and some later ones), but we likely don’t have the money for that. But going back to Majula and opening the door gives us access to a blacksmith, which gets us started on upgrading weapons.
Back to the main path, we can head down a ladder and start encountering more enemies. Here that knowledge about enemies playing dead will be helpful, as a few of the enemies lounging about will get up and attack us if we’re not careful. Regardless, we can press through and climb to the top of the wall, where we’re faced by a big guy in heavy armor wielding a big mace. This may well provide us with an introduction to exploding barrels, since when he hits them they explode (often tagging us in the process). The intent of this is to then clue us into blowing up the barrels at the end of this walkway, which opens up a shortcut back to the bonfire. Although it’s arguable that this hidden pathway doesn’t make much intuitive sense. After all, unless we get lucky and an enemy blows it up for us, why would we want to blow up this wall? Sure, it looks cracked, but what so far has given us any indication we can manipulate the environment like that?
Along the walkway is a ladder leading up with a bunch of items, and upon reaching the top we’re greeted to a very tough enemy known as the Pursuer (though we don’t know that as of yet). Almost certainly this guy will kill us. But he only shows up the one time, meaning we can return and collect the items (relatively) safely. We’ve probably already died multiple times at this point, but if not this is a good introduction to the fact that sometimes the game will just throw challenges at us and we should be prepared for death.
Moving forward brings us to a ladder that we take down, and another trap. In fact, an arguably obvious one, though one we might still fall for. A hole in the wall shows a couple of items on corpses, and if we look several ballistae arranged in a semicircle. The clever person will notice that if we run for those items, we’ll get shot. Which is indeed what happens. But we can run in quickly, then run back out, causing the enemies behind those ballistae to fire and then chase after us. This will either serve as a reminder to pay attention, or as a reward for having learned the lesson already.
Within this room is another ladder leading down with a room with a chest. Opening the chest springs a trap, which serves as our introduction to trapped chests. There is, admittedly, no indicator of which chests are trapped and which aren’t, so we just need to be on our toes. The brief plume of smoke as we open it is generally just enough warning to do something.
We might also see the weird face on the wall that tells us we need a Pharos Lockstone. We would have seen one of those being sold by the lady at the previous bonfire, though it was pretty expensive. Whether we go back to buy it now or not, we have now been introduced to the concept and can either make note of it for later, or use the lockstone to learn about the mechanic and the goodies that (usually) lie behind them.
Back up the ladder, we encounter an NPC who tells us about a trap in the upcoming area. If we choose to ignore him, we can fight through a handful of enemies, maybe be introduced to the idea of false walls (see the previous section), and then return to him to get our item for cooperative summoning.
Progressing forward some more, we come to a hallway with a couple more traps. An item at the end of the hallway is guarded by another of those dudes in big armor, which we can even see if we are looking closely. Meanwhile, a gigantic stone sword sticking out of the building has an item perched right at the end, and running to get it causes multiple enemies to drop down and charge us. Hopefully we are learning to anticipate these kinds of traps, though if not they again serve as reminders to not just go for shiny items. Stop and think about where they’re placed and what could happen.
We then get a chance to open up a shortcut back to the bonfire and take an elevator down to our first boss: the Last Giant. The giant is, unsurprisingly, a huge enemy that relies mostly on stomps. And yet, being near his feet is the only way for us to do damage. So we need to be careful and learn his stomping patterns so we know when to go in for attacks.
One interesting factor of the fight is that while locking on is possible, it’s arguably not that helpful. Targeting his legs can be awkward when he starts raising them to stomp, especially if we then want to switch to the other leg. I see this as a subtle message that while locking on is usually possible, it may not always be such a good idea. This is something that veterans of the series have learned the hard way, but this fight gives a bit of a clue that maybe understanding how your character moves and swings is more valuable than just relying on the lock-on. A skill that is especially valuable with large bosses or against multiple enemies.
Killing the giant gives us a key that opens up a door back in the hallway. This leads us to another boss fight, facing off against the Pursuer properly. This fight – along with perhaps trying to get us to finally roll as a way of evading attacks rather than just blocking – also helps us to think about the environment. Two ballistae lie at the opposite end of the arena, and we might be inclined to see if we can operate them. Admittedly, lining up a shot is difficult on our own and we may well give up on the process, but at least we can be given the notification that it’s worth thinking about how we can manipulate the arena to our advantage.
Concluding Remarks
Beating the Pursuer was the last bit I did for my stream, and it marks a curious way in which concepts are introduced. By this same point in Dark Souls I had faced and defeated three bosses. Here I faced two, practically back-to-back (although if I had tried to fight the Pursuer without dodging, which was how I was generally playing per the rules I set about how players are likely to learn about these mechanics, I probably wouldn’t have even accomplished that). That bosses occur so late in the game by comparison feels a bit strange in comparison to the previous games.
Nevertheless, let’s step back and assess how well DS2 has taught us about the core needs of the game.
On the first front, it’s definitely taught us to expect challenge and death. The explicit warning at the beginning may not have meant much, but dying in Heide’s Tower or to the ogre in the forest or to the bosses definitely provides us with the wake-up call. Some of that warning comes late, and may come as a bit of a shock in light of the tutorial, but hopefully is not too late for us to have gotten comfortable with the difficulty.
On the second front, exploration is decent, though still leaves a bit to be desired. This problem was true in its predecessor, but a few of the side paths result in death, and DS2 does a better job of putting the idea that you should come back later into your head than the idea of exhaustively exploring side paths. A few elements are intended to encourage more thorough exploration – the well in Majula, the ballistae room and false wall in Forest of Fallen Giants – but really only one of them stands out clearly enough for our hypothetical player. We’re not completely discouraged from exploring, but we’re being taught more to look around to be aware of traps, not necessarily to be on the lookout for goodies.
On the third front, the game is definitely trying to get us to be more aware of our toolset and approach to problems, though in a bit of a roundabout way. DS2 can be a bit more forthcoming with helpful items that might make us more inclined to use them, and some mechanics like hollowing are meant to encourage us to summon and be summoned more frequently. And yet, since some of these mechanics aren’t adequately explained, it’s up to the player to experiment to realize how these things work and why they matter, or look up a guide. Both methods here are sub-optimal, because the player is not given the guidance by the game that they really should be getting.
On a similar note, the ballistae in the Pursuer fight are a clever device to get players to think about more than just what’s literally on them when fighting, and yet the fact that using them is so difficult teaches the lesson that we may as well not bother. Having more of those kinds of systems that are a bit more manageable would definitely solve the problem, though.
In several ways, I think DS2 runs into the same problems that its predecessor did in teaching players. At certain points it may stumble in ways the first game didn’t, but in other ways it does better (e.g. teaching the player how to jump and providing an opportunity to practice it). And DS2’s signposting for revisiting areas works much better by providing a lot more stuff to come back to. There are some interesting design choices in this sequel that, with some polish, could have been great teaching moments. In a sense it feels like a step forward and a step backward at the same time.
Abstracting Games 