i'm not the biggest fromsoftware fan. i stumbled upon their dark souls catalog in 2024 via elden ring after specifically refusing to find out what "souls-like" meant for the first 29 years of my existence, and in that regard i live my life completely free of regret. still, engaging with what is probably fromsoftware's immortal masterpiece sparked a rare sort of fascination. in the blog post i dedicated to my feelings on cruelty squad, i noted that, once in a blue moon, a video game will come along and enchant you with every facet of its world, leading you deep into a comfortable wiki rabbit hole you could reasonably spend the rest of your life in, and by rest of your life i mean approximately three more days before you do end up getting bored. elden ring is another one of those games for me but with a strange twist i cannot explain without sounding insane but i will try
it's my opinion that dark souls and therefore elden ring have a most addictive gameplay loop that despite, or perhaps due to, its simplicity has managed to capture me for many tens of hours per souls iteration over only a couple of days and nights, with elden ring being the outlier at around 130 total hours played in what is practically two short bursts. in 2009, former(?) video game journalist fabian siegismund offered a contrasting opinion on the then-new wrath of the lich king expansion for world of warcraft. he dedicated his short paragraph to calling the widely praised game evil and blizzard masters of manufactured addiction. i would cast the same judgement on the dark souls franchise and its development studio, and i base said judgement on the fact that regardless of how little fun i'm having, i will still spend nights playing, willfully forgoing concepts such as my personal fitness habit, socialization or sleep, much like i did with world of warcraft, a game i was very much deathly addicted to for a majority of my teens. and much like classic wow, dark souls has attracted the kind of hardcore gamer(tm) crowd that affirms you in the core belief that an affinity for video game addiction is antithetical to the concept of being a good person, so one should do everything in one's power to stay away lest one lose their mind
that being said, my spiritual issues with elden ring run deeper than it brushing against a part of the human psyche that i find uncomfortable to engage with - it's the bleakness of its world constantly seeping through my monitor that truly disgusts me. elden ring is interactive misery porn taken to an extreme. everything in its world is sick or dying or sick and dying. the few npcs that are alive by the end are seemingly done a disservice by being put into a hopeless, desolate environment that, frankly, deserves to be destroyed, along with the endless number of diseased miscreants inhabiting it. there's this air of sadness constantly hanging over everything you do or that happens to you, and it gets to me
SPOILERS FOR EVERYTHING BELOW
you roam the roads of the lands between and stumble into the arms of the most horrific creatures you have never seen in your life, the burial watchdog being a prime example. while seeking respite, your sanctuary is invaded by one of its former guardians, ensha, who suddenly for some reason wants nothing more than to eviscerate you. rogier the sorcerer dies to a curse he contracted in the most terrifying corner of stormveil castle. D gets slaughtered by another inhabitant of the roundtable hold, his brother meanwhile losing his mind in some damp underground fortress and eventually dying as well after executing the murderer of his brother. corhyn loses his mind to zealotry and dies along with his former idol goldmask. yura dies to a miscreant, his body from then on inhabitated by an insane man that wants to cleanse the world of morality and immorality by literally burning it to the ground. speaking of insanity, edgar succumbs to madness after his blind daughter irina is slaughtered on the roadside and attempts to skewer you in the wilderness. you burn the erdtree and your guide melania with it, causing hewg, the friendly blacksmith, one of the only positive constants of the experience, to lose his mind, throwing roderika, his spirit tuner apprentice, into a state of sorrow as the walls around them are set ablaze. the only place of some solace in the entire game is procedurally dismantled by mounting tragedies. and beyond that? albus dies, thops dies, bernahl dies, blaidd dies, iji dies, diallos dies, the fucking warrior jar dies, millicent dies some way or another, the blind maiden hyetta dies. what's with blind women dying in horrible ways in this game? even if it's potentially the same blind woman dying multiple times, who cares. and what even is volcano manor? it's all just murder and madness and rot and blood and tragedy and tears, and it physically makes me ill thinking about it. you know shit sucks if you find yourself nodding in agreement when the aforementioned lunatic starts screaming about letting chaos take the world. and why not? it's already being taken as you speak. set it ablaze and turn the game off, man
i don't think i have ever played another thing that has evoked this strange of an emotional response and i never want to play it again for doing that to me. the rest of the dark souls games are the equivalent of frolicking through a dirty street in comparison. i did like mohg and his latin incantation, though. the "nihil" really sums it up for me