During rough periods in my life I always find myself coming back to play through the opening hours of this game; there's just something cathartic about the first few hours of Dark Souls 1 in how it reminds me that facing adversity is not hopeless. So despite the notoriously unfinished back "half" of the game, I find it difficult to not love the game. FromSoft's action RPGs are at their best when they allow you to form meaningful personal narratives within their worlds, not through dialogue trees or arbitrary event flags, but through the unconscious tapestry of synapses forming from both the strife and triumph you experience within their titles -- and the first Dark Souls, in my mind, is undoubtedly the best at providing a canvas for those memorable experiences to be made (at least during its strongest moments).
I don't say that last bit to devalue anybody who does find meaning during their time within Lost Izalith or the Tomb of Giants, I guess I just feel like I'm playing some weird ass experimental PS2 game during those points. Which don't get me wrong, that's cool as hell in its own way, it just feels wholly disconnected from the grandiose adventure I experienced for the first 50% of the game. And really, I can't blame FromSoft for really taking those big ass swings post-Demon's Souls. That game already hit like 15 homeruns within its more confined scope, so I can see the situation they were in and how confident they must have felt to attempt to actualize a version of that game with a fully connected 3D map and even cooler setpieces.
Likewise, it's easy to see why they kinda hard pivoted away from that when moving into Dark Souls II, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls III, with each of those game having their own set of priorities separate from the unachievable ambitions of the first Dark Souls. It really wasn't until Elden Ring that they were able to attempt a more actualized take on a similar large scope 3D map concept thanks to what appears to be an increased budget and elongated dev cycle, though that obviously came with its own set of pretty severe sacrifices that I'll talk about in its own review.
Either way, regardless of its technical and structural hiccups and its failing to perhaps really achieve what it set out to do, it's undeniably a special game that I think about a lot and will probably keep returning to -- even if my playthroughs do seem to mysteriously taper off shortly after completing Anor Londo. Also I just gotta say, Blighttown is a really cool fucking level and anybody who tells a new player to pick the Master Key as their starting gift is depriving them of an extremely important and formative experience.
I don't say that last bit to devalue anybody who does find meaning during their time within Lost Izalith or the Tomb of Giants, I guess I just feel like I'm playing some weird ass experimental PS2 game during those points. Which don't get me wrong, that's cool as hell in its own way, it just feels wholly disconnected from the grandiose adventure I experienced for the first 50% of the game. And really, I can't blame FromSoft for really taking those big ass swings post-Demon's Souls. That game already hit like 15 homeruns within its more confined scope, so I can see the situation they were in and how confident they must have felt to attempt to actualize a version of that game with a fully connected 3D map and even cooler setpieces.
Likewise, it's easy to see why they kinda hard pivoted away from that when moving into Dark Souls II, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls III, with each of those game having their own set of priorities separate from the unachievable ambitions of the first Dark Souls. It really wasn't until Elden Ring that they were able to attempt a more actualized take on a similar large scope 3D map concept thanks to what appears to be an increased budget and elongated dev cycle, though that obviously came with its own set of pretty severe sacrifices that I'll talk about in its own review.
Either way, regardless of its technical and structural hiccups and its failing to perhaps really achieve what it set out to do, it's undeniably a special game that I think about a lot and will probably keep returning to -- even if my playthroughs do seem to mysteriously taper off shortly after completing Anor Londo. Also I just gotta say, Blighttown is a really cool fucking level and anybody who tells a new player to pick the Master Key as their starting gift is depriving them of an extremely important and formative experience.
9 Comments
I didn't tell a new player to get the master key, but I did help out a struggling friend who was probably going to drop the game otherwise by telling them how to reach the back entrance the long way around, which I feel is a valid way to get to blighttown, even if its not the brutal gauntlet of the initial descent its quite the trek/adventure in its own way through dark root, past the black knight and drakes (and if you die to the club wielding trolls before you get the key to new londo ruins you have to do it all over again)
@LordDarias oh yeah that's totally fair, and i'm not discounting it as a valid way to get to that area of the map at all cuz that's the beauty of ds1, and i'd say i go that way in like 50% of my playthroughs -- and i do acknowledge that blighttown isn't for everybody -- i just wanted to come up to bat for it cuz i feel like how sick it is as a video game level sometimes gets drowned out by the contempt people have for playing through it
Yeah I get ya, I think its overhated. I much prefer it to Farron Keep for example
Real blighttownskipheads know you don't actually need the master key to skip it
For the record I love blighttown as a concept but when I'm replaying the game I'm often not in the mood for it but even more commonly i'm not in the mood for the depths and you can't reasonably do upper blighttown without doing the depths
not sure if you ever got to that Elden Ring review but I'd love to read it!!
@Rowan1312 nah i get that, sometimes i just wanna go immediately fight quelaag and get it over with, and yeah the depths is kind of a mid tier area. and tbf im talking purely about first time experience, but it's not a hill i'd die on or anything
@trinity i have a few drafts sitting around for it, played 300+ hours of the game and still not 100% sure how i feel about it. i kinda go back and forth between loving how much freedom the game gives you and finding the open world aspect to sometimes be detrimental to the pacing. i'll probably do a for realsies review once i manage to get another full playthrough done, cuz it's a cool ass game either way, i wanna give it the fairest shake i can
@trinity i have a few drafts sitting around for it, played 300+ hours of the game and still not 100% sure how i feel about it. i kinda go back and forth between loving how much freedom the game gives you and finding the open world aspect to sometimes be detrimental to the pacing. i'll probably do a for realsies review once i manage to get another full playthrough done, cuz it's a cool ass game either way, i wanna give it the fairest shake i can
ohh I see, I totally get that because it feels like everyday I wake up I flip a coin on whether Elden Ring is one of my favorite games or just a good game that's too flawed to be anything special. the bottom line is that as someone who never got to play anything by FromSoftware before it, my first playthrough was incredible and extremely memorable, it had me so engrossed that I had to take a break due to fatigue from exploring every single corner of the map lol
but I'm glad you still find it to be cool and worth replaying! personally I could never replay it until I do a mage playthrough some day.. after 300 hours it just feels wayyy too long and still fresh in my memory to do it all over again
but I'm glad you still find it to be cool and worth replaying! personally I could never replay it until I do a mage playthrough some day.. after 300 hours it just feels wayyy too long and still fresh in my memory to do it all over again
Shakkusu
5 months ago