Talk about the dark souls and elden ring and what not here
>>4061996Not an RPG
any opinions on the meaning of the story of DS (all three), in other words what is the writer behind the story trying to convey, what does it all mean??
>>4062063Gotta keep going
Considering how much of Demon Souls and Dark Souls 1 is the player trying to parse esoteric mechanics like world tendency and how souls work, it's weird that the sequels mostly reuse the same mechanics and don't do much to innovate. The game Tunic reminded me of what it's like to play a game where you don't understand what things actually do until you experiment with them.
Sir, this is an RPG board.
>>4062063Do you think it's worth keeping the flame lit? It's one of the more elegant stories in vidya
>>4063728Why delay the inevitable? Let the fire fade, for all we know what comes next will be better anyway.
>>4062063>>4062583>Gotta keep goingThis, basically.It's a metaphor for a videogame. Don't go hollow (quit the game). The rest is just aesthetic, atmosphere, rule of cool and vague feelings stuff. Most of the meaning is just projection and headcanon.
>>4064022It reminds me of the russian revolution. Regardless, in the game you can roleplay and rationalize either way, because it's vague enough.
>>4062583I gotta agree. The world is crumbling, everything fucking sucks and you're going through hell and you only have two options:1) accept your inevitable fate, in other words, give up because the world and your life are very fucked, and just give in to what's coming to you. or....2) you can say "fuck fate, fuck what's 'supposed' to be happening, I'm gonna fight until my last breath and not give a fuck about how 'inevitable' death seems. I will impose my will upon the world and sure, I might fail utterly, but in the unlikely case that I actually succeed, the hell that I go through will be worth it in the end.Dark Souls games really helped me see life in a different light. I was ready to give up, to give in and just let life fuck me thoroughly, to be a leaf in the wind. But then I realized, "why not fight?" So what if I fail and die in a brilliant hellfire? I'm gonna die anyway, might as well die/fail gloriously, guns blazing and all...if anyone's interested in more Dark Souls philosophy, check out Gemsbok's excellent philosophical analysis of DS on YT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpf3KQBIoCYI could write about DS and its applicability to life for hours but I'll stop right here...
>>4062063I think there's three big ones.First is the one that's already been mentioned. Perseverance, but also movement. The avoidance of stagnation. Second, I think is the powerlessness of a person to control history and legacy. Any attempt to make or maintain a name is ultimately doomed to the whims of fate. One name is remembered, one is forgotten, one is vilified. The reasons for each ending where they did, were entirely things that took part well after those names were active. There's a level where nobody will ever truly know or understand the thoughts and motivations of Gwyn. How much of what he did was even intentional. The things he has become associated with, are things he couldn't have predicted. And then the vice versa; there is no concrete narrative of his actions any of us can ascertain, even with the glimpses of omniscience we get. There is no concrete narrative for us to follow.And then third, I think nearly entirely the territory of Dark Souls 2, is want. The driving thing that motivates a person, is always fueled by a want. Some people want for trivial things, others want only that what currently is does not fade. But others want complicated things. The things a person seeks are not always directly representative of their want, however. People are ignorant, they think things wil fulfill a want, and wish for it badly enough that whether it actually will, is an afterthought. Want can recurse, twine, and double back on itself. Want is the most primal instinct, it's something with roots in cellular biology. The complexities of people make it muddy, however. If someone wants companionship, perhaps they seek it, or perhaps they seek something they think will bring it. Power, money. And, perhaps someone mistakes that for what they actually wanted.
>>4062063I don't even know. I've beaten all 3 Dark Souls. I could read this book if I found an epub. I've been reading Grace Given which tries to explain Elden Ring and I've learned uhhh something something glintstone ghostflame deathrite birds.Dark Souls fans like the "linking the fire" concept more than ghostflame though for their own reasons. The criticism probably never had anything to do with Elden Ring's story realistically.
>>4070203Never heard of that book but one duckduckgo search and, if I'm not mistaken, here's the book in PDF and EPUB:https://archive.org/details/lokey-abyssal-archive-the-mythology-of-dark-souls-2023-tune-fairweather-libgen.li
>>4070259I kneel. Time to finally understand Dark Souls.
>>4062063Just the way the Emerald Herald in Dark Souls 2 (SOTFS) says:"Are you.. the next monarch... or merely a pawn of fate?"That alone speaks volumes about what this whole thing is about.
>get around to DaS1>learn about soft caps>watch vid>shows 50 VIT costs 14,000 roughly>i'm at my bonfire pushing all my souls into VIT and only getting up to 30 costing 20,000 rough>realize i'm playing the original with no updates on my old 360>remaster must have made it easier
>>4070478>50 VIT costs 14,000 roughlyCan't be. You sure you got it right?
>>4070478>14000 soulslmao. 14k, assuming you start as the Knight for the highest base VIT, gets you to about 27 vit. Whatever math you did is fucked. You need about 150k to hit 50.
>>4070478>this was my reference:https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Aoyn1UcCzsI
>>4070504His souls go from 349085 to 144240 when Vitality is increased from 9 to 50
>>4070510nope. can you try to explain againmaybe i dont get 'req souls' yetmeantime i found things like souls planner
>>4070520"Req Souls" is the required souls for a single level up. His soul total goes from 349085 to 144240 when going from level 5 to level 46, meaning he would have to spend a total of 204845 souls for 41 total levels.
>>4070522okay okaymugenmonkey lays it out differently to the menu(soulsplanner is kill)thanks anons
>mathwell fuck, we aint doin geomertywe tryna play some gaaames
>>4062063Nihilistic existentialist slop.
>>4062063I'd say the main theme is traditions and idols. The first game is mainly a more grounded hero's age story told from the perspective of someone coming after. Do you follow in the Hero's footsteps to prolong the age of man? Do you lose hope and go hollow? Or do you curse the world and let it return to the wild? It's not specifically about never giving up or anything, but rather how stories can influence people and how cultures degrade over time.While DS2 is sort of a retrospective on that. Is it really a binary choice and people are forever bound to the laws of reality IE you need to relight the flame or let it die out, or is that all just empty tradition predicated on myths? Is it right to destroy these concepts in the first place, or is faith necessary for humans? DS1 puts forth the idea of entropy and how people dealt with that knowledge by clinging to things like legends, while DS2 is more of a science centric line of thinking where people are questioning the status quo and trying to create a new path.It's like DS1 is the Age of Heroes or nearing the end of it, followed by DS2 as the Iron Age where the gods and legends are starting to become more mundane in the eyes of man. I didn't like 3, so I don't know much about it.
>>4070833>Do you follow in the Hero's footsteps to prolong the age of man?Gwyn didn't go after boss souls, but you could say player can follow his decision to fuel the new age
>>4070833>DS2 is more of a science centric line of thinking where people are questioning the status quo and trying to create a new path.Also I would remind that on release DS2 doesn't offer anything more than sitting on the throne of want. Everything else came with paid DLCs afterwards. With the remastered version even rewriting things..
>>4070833>I didn't like 3, so I don't know much about it.3 mostly boils down to the system reaching a breaking point. 3, it is patently inevitable that the cycle is going to end. You can kick the can again if you want, but, it's a foregone conclusion. Each age of fire is getting shorter, more and more malignant remnants of past ages are around, and people are coming up with their own plans more and more. 3 is probably best described as being about futility in the face of something guaranteed to fail, and, I don't know how to phrase this, but the lateral thinking others employ when faced with such inevitability. In DS1, not lighting the flame at all was a radical decision. DS2 adds the idea of making a third decision (though we don't know what that is). By DS3, there are like five or six different third options floating around. Sullyvahn & Aldrich's age of deep, the profaned flame (though that failed), the Londor age of hollows, hiding in other worlds like Friede and the painting. Whatever the fuck Oceiros' plan with a dragon linking the fire was. If you want to run with headcannon, you can also conclude that Wolnir as the stand in for the DS2 protagonist means that third option was also not viable. These have varying degrees of reasonability, varying levels of being a good idea, but the circumstances of the world in DS3 have forced all of these things into motion.Now, 3 ultimately fumbles a little here because of the murderhobo nature of the protagonists of these games. Your only choices are kick the can, let it end, let it end (asshole), or age of hollows. If you want to stretch, you can say you can pick the duck and cover ending after you do Gael.I think more of 3's themes actually revolve around the Lords of Cinder. Why each of these beings is given their title, and what kind of people they represent. The Lords of Cinder are actually a pretty decent capture of a board of directors or similar collection of powerful shitbags.
>>4070560Waiter I'll have another
>have memory of playing DaS1 with the radio onand this song came on...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy4mXZN1Zzk
>>4062023>tfw no Dark Souls crpgIt hurts bros. . .
>>4063728Will Gwyndolin visit and comfort me while I burn for his Fathers dream?
