Elden Ring, Alan Wake, and the Trick of Getting Players to Care About Lore

 Because I remain obsessed with the game, I recently listened to/watched an interview with Sam Lake discussing the making of Alan Wake II. In it, he made a really interesting point about the delivery of exposition and lore in games - namely, that if you present characters with a lot of deep lore in some grand compendium, players will often ignore it. But if you hide that lore, making it a puzzle to piece together, you inspire players to seek it out.

I was talking with my best friend about the games of From Software, likely specifically Elden Ring. We were talking about game story, and he argued that From's games don't really have much of a story, while I thought they had a deep and interesting story that demanded to be unpacked and explored. Ultimately, we came to a compromise in positions: that we could separate the idea of "story" and "lore," and say that the story of Elden Ring is, while not non-existent, at least deeply enigmatic and arguably thin, while the lore behind that story was every bit as rich as someone who watches the Tarnished Archaeologist, Smough Town, Quelaag, and VaatiVidya would know it to be (Oh, and Ziostorm).

Remedy's games are, I think, present more of a true story in this sense, but there's a similar use of obfuscated lore to draw the player in.

In a sense, I think that the experience of From Soft's lore is almost an out-of-game experience. That game, so to speak, is played watching YouTube videos and, well, writing blog posts (I'm too lazy to be a YouTuber). From Soft's games also happen to be extremely satisfying to play in the moment-to-moment - I think the precision of control (and yes, the difficulty that requires mastery of that precision) makes it easy to come back to these games over and over (I think I've beaten Elden Ring on something like seven or eight characters, though the eighth admittedly hit a point where I didn't really have any new builds I was excited to try). But I think I've relied a great deal on the online community to piece together the world of that game - even if practically ever assertion becomes a matter of interpretation (for example, that the Omens are really just an expression of the wild nature from the Crucible Era).

I think Remedy comes from a place of being a little more accessible. While I think they like there to be some ambiguities in their lore, I think for the most part they want you to have the basic idea of what is going on simply by playing the game.

But, more broadly speaking, I think that Lake's assertion that hidden lore gets players' attention better is correct.

It has been over a decade since I finished the Mass Effect trilogy, but I remember that their approach to the game's lore involved a large compendium one could access in the pause menu. I actually thought this was a pretty successful technique, but perhaps only because that setting was such a detailed, well-thought-out science fiction universe. There were certainly some elements that were open to interpretation - for example, some believing that Shepherd, at the end, has become Indoctrinated by the Reapers (which I don't really believe,) but the setting was one of a technologically-advanced, highly interconnected galaxy where it made sense for this information to be easy to come by.

Still, the information in the compendium was simply there for people who were curious to read/listen to it, outside of the primary gameplay.

Final Fantasy XVI did something interesting, which was its "Active Time Lore," a cheeky riff on its old Active Time Battle system (a term that, frankly, they've re-used to mean different things - the Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy has characters build up "ATB charges," despite being a totally different combat system from the original game). Anyway, XVI builds up a Game of Thrones-inspired complex political landscape with many different factions warring against each other in a world with dwindling resources (it's the first Final Fantasy game I've played without one singular world-spanning empire to contend with - there is an empire, but it's just one of several factions). During any cutscene, you can pause and get little one-or-two-paragraph descriptions of the characters, the location, and any major topics that the characters are discussing, and you can also access more of this stuff via a friendly NPC.

But I think in both of these games, complex as those worlds are, I really don't find myself drawn into meticulously unpacking every element of the lore the same way I do with Remedy's Alan Wake and Control games, or From Soft's Bloodborne and Elden Ring (ironically, the Dark Souls series that put From on the map is one I've never been quite as interested in).

I'd also suggest that part of what makes Remedy's lore tidbits so exciting is the fact that they're in-universe sources. While there's a certain unreliability to the narrator of From Soft's item descriptions, there's not really any particular author of these descriptions whose motivations and biases we can investigate. Remedy's most common collectable lore bits are things like Alan Wake's manuscript pages or the various memos found in Control's Oldest House.

In the former case, we're often learning more about characters from the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator - but that narrator is also the eponymous writer, and we know because we're playing as him (or at least half the time as him in the second game) that he sure as hell isn't omniscient, and doesn't even remember writing these pages. Indeed, most of the time we're playing as Alan, we're really playing as the version of him that he is writing at the time, and that version of him is as ignorant as the player is.

Personally, though, I think it's the latter case where this style of lore development works best (I think Alan Wake II is the - as of yet - crowning achievement for Remedy as a studio, but even if I think AW2 is arguably the "better" game, I think I might like Control more. In fact, I might even say that I think Alan Wake II is the better work of art while Control is the better game - but we're comparing two monumental achievements here, so I don't make this comparison to make either sound bad). In part, Control's various memos and files hold a lot of different perspectives. We have, for example, the various Dead Letters, which serve as one-page creepypastas but also mysteries to interpret. Which are genuine and which are just people writing about nonsense (one heartbreaking Dead Letter is a woman who thinks that her neighbor's kid has somehow hacked reality to make her husband die, and is hoping that if the world's a simulation, someone could just fix it. In-universe, probably not actually true, but you can feel the desperate hope that has led her to thinking that just maybe it could be fixed. And, on a meta level, it is kind of true.)

The files, recordings, and other bits of information you can collect in Control can serve to give you some straightforward exposition (such as from most of the Doctor Darling videos) while others create a whole mystery to unpack. The entirety of the "Blessed Organization" is introduced through files and recordings that are not explicitly linked to one another, but when you find all of them and think about it, you start to realize the possibility that there's this grand conspiracy that could be a major threat to the FBC (and, I maintain, helped Alice Wake regain her memories and return to the Dark Place).

Control, of course, lives in that corkboard-and-red-yarn world (a trope I feel the need to point out pre-dated that It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode) and I actually think that this style of worldbuilding kind of activates whatever pleasure centers in the brain that addict the conspiracy theorist, but knowing it's all a work of fiction makes it feel fun and safe to explore. I've long felt that conspiracy theorists are seeking a feeling of esoteric revelation - to know something grand and exciting that others do not. (Such a drive is also part of mystical practices, and things like esoteric alchemy.) And I'll confess that if Control 2 or any other future Remedy title comes out and the Blessed Organization proves to be a major part of the plot, I'll feel a certain glee at being one of the few people who actually knows about it.

Even at this stage, while I think every lore-review of Alan Wake II I've seen is convinced that the "organization" that helped Alice Wake recover her memories was the FBC, there's a little smug nerd in me that feels... a bit superior, I guess, for knowing (not that I do know, as I could totally be wrong) that they've been mislead, and that they'd ignored the clues that I was able to piece together that suggest it was Blessed, not the FBC, that she worked with.

But the point of all of this, even the fact that it's showing a part of my personality that I'm not terribly proud of (I grew up in a very intellectual, academic household, and so I unconsciously developed something of a deep need to be the smartest person in the room - which is something I've been working with a therapist to unpack,) is that by making the discovery of the deep and complex lore of these games a game in and of itself, you get the player to actually care about it.

Control, Dark Souls, and Deep Lore in Games

 The games of FromSoft, particularly those in the "Souls-like" genre, which include Demon's Souls, Dark Souls I-III, Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Elden Ring, take an unusual but fascinating approach to storytelling.

If you want to go back a long ways, games would tend to tell their stories up-front and fairly simplistically - Super Mario games tended to let you know in the manual that Bowser has kidnapped Princess Toadstool (later called Peach in the U.S. - I actually think she always had that name in Japan) and you had to go rescue her. As the medium evolved, and technology improved, games began to have cinematic cutscenes that would play out like movies to situate you in a level or other phase of the game.

Now, there's always been some environmental storytelling as well - this could be as simple as the intro to Super Metroid, where you show up and all the scientists on Ceres Station are dead, and the glass cylinder where the baby Metroid was being kept has been shattered, which... gives you a pretty strong impression that someone broke in and violently stole it. That's confirmed in the next room when you find Ridley with the baby Metroid in hand.

But in the early days of video games, the story still tended to be simple. You can spend many hours exploring Planet Zebes in Super Metroid, but among the lore and story in the game you get, there's not a ton you can really confirm. Again, environmental storytelling gives you some intriguing hints - like, why is there a dead body in armor not entirely dissimilar to Samus' near the entrance to Kraid's boss room? And why are there weird jellyfish monsters who look a lot like Metroids in Maridia? But without going fully outside the game into supplementary materials, you won't be able to answer those things.

The Souls games (here referring to the list above, and not only Demon's Souls and Dark Souls) popularized a new approach to this. Every item and spell in these games has a description, and while some of it is fairly functional, e.g., "consume this to restore HP," they almost always come with some additional information about the world and setting, usually finding an in-world justification for the gameplay functionality of an item.

This then becomes a way to flesh out the world beyond what's revealed in cutscenes and dialogue.

Now, the Souls games take this to an extreme level. These games often give you some goal that is not exactly clear. In Bloodborne, you are told (and only by a missable note evidently written in your own hand) to "Seek Paleblood to transcend the hunt." That's not, you know, super clear. And in fact, even after you have played through the game and overcome its final challenges, you might sit back and say "hold on, did I actually find this Paleblood?"

The Souls games treat both their primary narrative and their grand narrative (I'm avoiding using the term "metanarrative" because this could be confused with a fourth-wall-breaking story about the making of the narrative) as obscure archaeological finds, hoping you will engage in what is almost a second gameplay system - the communal effort to dig up and examine the obscure lore that paints a broader picture of what is going on. Even the "main story" leaves a lot of open ambiguities. Which ending to Dark Souls is the "good" one? Or, in Elden Ring, is Marika the benevolent queen who needs our help to rescue her from the husband/persona that has come to dominate her domain, or is she the tyrant who inflicted the world with chaos for her own nebulous purposes? Indeed, I think the aim in a lot of FromSoft games is to dispense with clear good and evil options, and instead embrace the idea that any philosophy comes with negative consequences, and your choice in the end is simply to decide which direction going forward outweighs its ramifications. (To borrow D&D's alignment system, it's like there's not really any clear good or evil, so you're left to choose between lawful and chaotic.)

Now, Control, which is a game that I kinda liked, then loved, and now am sort of obsessed with, does things a little differently.

Control's primary narrative is simpler than the Souls games, and far more straightforward. Jesse shows up to find her brother (notably, having a set protagonist rather than a character-designed avatar does allow for a more directly personal story) and goes on a simultaneous journey of discovery about the outlandish Federal Bureau of Control and its otherworldly headquarters, the Oldest House, while also battling an invasion by the sinister infectious mind-controlling resonance known as The Hiss.

This conflict against The Hiss is the basis of the primary narrative in the main game as well as the two DLCs (while both involve other elements, neither conflict would have occurred in not for the Hiss invasion).

But Control's grander narrative is primarily not about the Hiss, because the Hiss invasion is a recent phenomenon when you show up. It's implied that it may have started hours or even minutes before you arrived at the Oldest House, and while we never leave the building (not counting other planes of existence or the caverns beneath the building) and thus can't get a sense of precisely how long the events of the game are supposed to take, there's very little the Hiss have done there before the events of the game. You arrive in the early moments of a massive crisis, and notably, the FBC doesn't even have a name for the invading force until Jesse coins the term (comparing it to the hiss of a broken gas pipe, subtly poisoning the air).

Control is not an item-rich game, or rather, its items are not generally accessed in a menu and equipped the way they are in a Souls game. Your single weapon has multiple forms, but that merely reflects its metamorphic nature, and there's no separate "lore" for Grip or Spin or Charge, because these are all just different forms for the weapon called The Service Weapon to take - the lore being the same for each. The closest thing to "items" you get over the course of the game are Objects of Power, which imbue you with various abilities. When you bind the Floppy Disk, you get the Launch ability, but you don't pull this disk out and wave it around when you use this ability.

But that's fine, because the deep lore media in Control simply exists as its own thing. Unlike in Souls games, most of these documents exist purely for lore reasons, and a player who doesn't care about any of this and just wants to enjoy the game for its fun combat can ignore them (though I think such a person is a little dead inside). Control gives us memos, documentation, letters, and videos, which amount to an actually quite substantial amount of material.

What these do is contextualize the world of the FBC. And through them, we get tantalizing hints of mysteries that might be uncovered.

As an example, many references are made to the "Blessed" organization, which seems to be some kind of group that is using paranatural (read supernatural) objects and phenomena to inflict death and destruction upon random people, and may in fact be targeting the FBC itself, such as when they mail a fondue pot that incinerates the producer of the radio show America Overnight, which is secretly run by the FBC to influence the public. Furthermore, there's some potential implication that the Blessed organization is actually being supported by the Board, the enigmatic entity (or entities) that supports the FBC from the Astral Plane.

While the Foundation DLC's primary narrative does explicitly raise the possibility that the Board is sinister and hostile, and not to be trusted, it does not go so far as to imply that the Board would be moving against the FBC itself, which it has had a strong influence over ever since Director Northmoor moved the bureau into the Oldest House.

At no point in Control do you come in direct conflict with the Board, and the narrative of the Foundation DLC is still primarily about fixing the problems down there that ultimately trace their cause back to the Hiss invasion. But digging deeper, new possibilities of what is really going on crop up.

In a lot of ways, I think that this form of Deep Lore scratches the same itch that fuels conspiracy theorists in the real world. Control, and the New Weird genre in general, often likes to tell stories about conspiracy theories (and explore a fictional world in which the most outlandish of them are real,) and I think that is because the conspiracy theory is the latest manifestation of a very human desire for Revelation.

But while earnestly-believed conspiracy theories can become dangerous - such as when antipathy toward a politician leads you to believe that he could not have legitimately won the election that he did and you violently try to overthrow the government in favor of your own preferred candidate - the refuge of fiction is the ability to compartmentalize and experience these feelings safely, under containment in the conceit that none of this is actually real.

Like conspiracy theories, Deep Lore in games (and other artistic media) encourages a community to spring up around it. I've spent hours on YouTube watching videos discussing the lore of Souls games, World of Warcraft, and Control, the act of collecting and analyzing this lore becomes a collaborative form of gameplay that sits outside of the PS5 controller or whatever you're using to play these games.

The desire for Revelation - to see a hidden truth - is rooted deeply and firmly in human psychology and could almost be described as drug-like. I've been reading Carl Jung's The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, and while I'm still pretty early in the book (it starts off dry, and there are some archaic assumptions made about cultures and gender roles, but it gets pretty juicy pretty quickly) one thing he identifies is the notion that, in a growingly irreligious era, people yearn to feel religious awe. That's maybe putting too strong an emphasis on it, but I think it gets at what makes this sort of storytelling so compelling: somewhere hardwired into our brain is a desire to connect new information.

And the utility of this is fairly obvious: our curiosity has allowed us to develop our intelligence, and grow the collective knowledge base of humanity. Thus, I think, the appeal of this kind of Deep Lore is a way to exercise our ability to do so and challenge ourselves to find deeper, hidden truths - the more obscure, the more we have proven our communal intellectual prowess.

This got a little more profound than I intended it (if I do say so myself,) but I wonder if the development of this kind of storytelling in games will become more widespread over time.

Dang, I Forgot How Tough the Ringed City Was

 In my years-later replay of Dark Souls 3, I've mostly found the game somewhat easier on a later playthrough. While there are a couple bosses that remain a bit tough - Aldrich seems to be the big one from the main game before you get toward late-game folks like Oceiros, Nameless King, Twin Princes, and the DLC bosses - I'm sort of shocked to realize how a bit of careful character building and familiarity with level layout can make things pretty easy.

Indeed, there aren't a ton of non-boss areas in the base game that I've really found myself stuck on. The Grand Archives, which is technically the last mandatory "level" is simple enough that I've just been using it as a farming location for souls (the candlestick scholars seem to be vulnerable to fire damage, which has made doing so on my pyromancer build really simple).

This mostly held through the first DLC. Ashes of Ariandel has its tough stretches - simply getting to and then dealing with all the Millwood Knights in their area is pretty tough - but I realized that you can totally skip past a lot of it to get to Ariandel Chapel pretty easily early on, and then the route through the hamlet with all the gross bird people and then the woods with the Followers is not all that bad (it helps that this time I've actually realized that you can use rotten trees to create shortcuts back to the bonfire in that latter woodsy area).

Elfriede remains a tough fight, though the fact that you can summon Gael for free - no ember required - helps a lot (even if he doesn't show up until phase 2).

On two of my new characters, I've managed to get past Elfriede and into the Dreg Heap, which is the first part of the Ringed City DLC, and which is, I'd say, not too inconsistent with the difficulty of the Painted World of Ariandel, though you'll want to prioritize taking out the weird little pilgrim slugs that project the angels, as they make big stretches of that much harder - but there are only 3.

Anyway, I took down the Demon Prince on my "paladin" character (summoning both Lapp and Gael seemed to do the trick) and moved onto the Ringed City proper (naturally, some PvPer invaded me while in that first stretch with the Judicator Giant and his archers, so that ember disappeared pretty quick).

And then I was confronted with how tough this place is.

Throughout DS3, they're pretty generous with shortcuts and bonfires, to be honest. I remember going through Irithyll on these later playthroughs and realizing that there honestly aren't any super gruelingly long stretches of enemies to fight before getting a shortcut or a new bonfire. But, unless I'm forgetting some really important shortcuts, holy crap is the stretch between bonfires 2 and 3 in the Ringed City a slog. And once you get to the third bonfire, the area opens up enormously, giving you the whole abyssal swamp.

Actually, somewhat hilariously, I one-shotted the Dragonslayer Armor, which comes back for a rematch in one corner of said swamp (apparently countless ages later - assuming there are many ages that go between the main game and the Ringed City). I actually did this on my first playthrough as well.

I've also managed to find a weapon for which my 50 Strength is not high enough to wield - Ledo's Great Hammer. Having just done a lot of grinding to get other stats up to prepare for this area, I imagine it'll be a lengthy grind to get the 10 more levels I'll need to wield that weapon (though hopefully with some of my better-scaling strength weapons I'll hit less of a diminishing return - perhaps along the way my Fume Ultra Greatsword will overtake my Greataxe).

The lengthy stretch I'm talking about here starts at the bonfire past the first judicator giant. You go into a corridor where you're immediately ambushed by one of these hunched dudes, of which there are four in a bit of a straightaway, two of whom radiate a curse status effect. Then, you fight your first ringed knight, followed by two more of them. Then you get these crawling clerics, who cast these circular area effects, in a multi-story tower. One of them requires some careful jumping to get to them. Then, when you get out of that area, there's this lengthy stairway with a couple of Harald Knights (who will confront you before the NPC behind a closed door finishes her dialogue, which is frustrating), with a couple of paths that lead off from there. Finally, when you get to the base of those stairs, you get into the big swamp area, and have those locust people to deal with before you can find your way to a bonfire in one of the buildings around a corner.

I just ran after a couple attempts to fight my way past all this.

I feel like there has to be a shortcut I'm missing because it's such a grueling stretch.

Naturally, I think this bears comparison to the Fishing Hamlet in Bloodborne, as the endgame area of the DLC, and thus probably the hardest part of the game. But this is almost like just "the cave with the two giant shark monsters" specifically, rather than just that area in general.

The Quest for Karla - DS3

 Yes, that's a John Le Carré reference.

On my Pyromancer playthrough of Dark Souls 3 (altoholism is a great way to avoid dealing with the fact that you're stuck on some very tough late-game bosses) I dutifully held off on giving the Londor or Deep Braille Divine Tomes to Irina, allowing her to focus only on light miracles, and just held onto those tomes until I rescued Karla from Irithyll Dungeon.

They make you wait until you're pretty far into the game to do this, but once you get her, there are four tomes you can give to her - while you can give the dark divine tomes to Irina, buying any of the dark miracles will cause Eygon to take her away from Firelink Shrine and require you to kill him to get her back. And then, the Grave Warden and Quelana Pyromancy Tomes can only be given to her, as Cornyx will object on principle to the first one and then by tradition (he can't teach them because he's a man) for the latter.

Ironically, this means that Karla, who is a Sorcerer, only gets non-sorcery tomes. I actually had Logan's Scroll in my inventory when I talked to her, but you can only give this one to Orbeck.

Anyway, as a Pyromancer, getting access to Black Flame Orb, which is a dark version of Fire Orb, oddly enough. The timing is actually very welcome, as the headless gargoyles and the flame-keepers in the Profaned Capital seem to resist fire, so tossing this thing at them is more effective - though it does cost a bit more FP.

I've also infused a chaos gem into a longsword, so I now carry a Chaos Longsword and a Raw Longsword. Chaos infusion gives the weapon fire damage that scales with your Intelligence and Faith, so this is my go-to weapon for normal enemies. However, I have the Raw one for boss fights, where I'll use something like Carthus Flame Arc or other weapon-buffing spells, as I believe the physical damage is not decreased at all from those spells, so my damage should be maximized while the buff is up.

I am now more or less at both Yhorm and Aldritch - I tend to prefer going with Yhorm first. (I actually still need to kill the abyss monster in Anor Londo and open the big door, but that's a pretty quick sequence of events). I think my plan on Aldritch is to use the buffed weapon rather than hurling pyromancies from afar. When I fought him on my Sorcerer, this technique did work, but I had to spend a lot of time dodging his massive soul spear-like attack. His melee attacks are a little easier to dodge, and if I can keep him from doing his arrow spam, that'll be ideal.

EDIT:

I wound up taking down Aldrich instead with Great Chaos Flame Orb, which works very well on bosses that aren't super mobile. It hits for a pretty decent amount initially, and then leaves a puddle of lava that does even more damage after a second or so. This became by go-to spell for Aldrich and then the Dancer of the Boreal Valley - sadly, I got Dancer down to something like 3% or so on my first attempt and then failed to get out of the way of one of her attacks, so it wound up taking two more tries. Still, while she can move quickly when on the offensive, she's often slow enough that you can get both ticks of the spell off.

I've now gone through the Dragon Barracks and am on Dragonslayer Armor. I think Dragon Barracks might be my favorite "level" in the game - I think the first time I did it I really thought you needed to time your way past the dragons, but this is one of those classic FromSoft zones that seems expansive and labyrinthine, but by the time you open up all the shortcuts, it's shockingly linear.

I realized that the Mimic chest I left in Irithyll Dungeon actually has the Dark Clutch Ring, which could be useful as I start using more Dark Pyromancies and other spells. There are definitely a few things I want to go back for, but it's nice to make a lot of forward progress.

Even More DS3 Altoholism

 Well, I'm playing a Pyromancer now.

This is actually one of the characters I made back when I first got the game in... 2017 or something? It's funny how these games feel - your first playthrough feels insanely difficult, with you scrambling to hold on to every inch you make. And then, you come back to it, and you're like "ok, Catacombs of Carthus should take maybe an hour for me to fully clear." I had my cleanest-ever Wolnir kill on the first attempt - he hit me one time, but only pulled off basically one of his charges and then, as he was recovering, I took out his right-hand bracelet with my Carthus Flame Blade-buffed raw longsword. Easy peasy. I don't think he even had a chance to summon any minions.

The reason I'm excited about Pyromancy is that it's the build that can do all the spells. And, indeed, when you get into the late game, you start finding spell catalysts that scale with both Faith and Intelligence, and can often cast two types of spells. Thus, I figure, if I have good Intelligence as well as good Fatih, I'll be able to use these and really have a huge assortment of magic.

One thing I am being careful about here is not giving Irina any of the Dark Miracle tomes. Karla can only be rescued pretty late in the game, which is frustrating, but I'm going to dump a ton of tomes on her. It's ironic, actually, that I think that Sorcery Scrolls are the only spell item type that don't have any "dark" versions that Orbeck will refuse, when Karla seems mostly interested in Sorceries.

Still, on my pure Sorcerer, I've had to pass up most of the stuff Karla can teach because I have minuscule faith, and most of the Dark spells require a mix of faith and intelligence. Pyromancers, of course, get both in equal measures, so I'm currently standing at 25 of each, intending to push them both to at least 40.

Of course, that requires a pretty big level investment. Also, the basic spell attack - Fireball in early levels and currently Flame Orb - is a little trickier to aim than Soul Arrows, given that it goes in an arc. On the plus side, it does an AoE splash, so if enemies are grouped up, you can take out multiples at a time.

Also, being a ranged spellcaster, killing the Suleyvahn's Beast on the bridge to Irithyll is delightfully easy - you just run past the forcefield you need the doll for and then pelt them with just four Flame Orbs (this means I'll be able to help out Sirris with the first leg of her questline).

I'm just reflecting on the Catacombs of Carthus as a "level." One thing I find interesting is that you get about halfway through it before you even get the official bonfire for it (arguably more than halfway).

Anyway, I know there are some nuances to the way that various spell catalysts work on different kinds of spells - like, I think that some catalysts that are designed for dark sorceries only apply their faith scaling to that type of spell. So I'm not sure that I'll be able to just use, say, the crystal chime you find I think in the Grand Archives, which works for both Sorceries and Miracles, to be just as good with a Great Heavy Soul Arrow as my Sorcerer is with their Court Sorcerer's Staff.

But we're a little ways off from that.

DS3 "Paladin" Build

 So, I intended this character when I created him to be a pure-strength build that invested heavily in Vitality so that, if possible, I could wear Havel's Armor, use his shield, and wield a giant weapon.

Then I discovered Faith.

My Sorcerer was a sort of revelation to me - while it doesn't make the game trivial, it's a very different play style. Now, I'm not playing a pure caster here - I do have 50 Strength. But combining Strength and Faith makes for some powerful and versatile combinations.

While my +10 Heavy Greataxe is still used sometimes, I've taken to just using a +5 Dragonslayer Greataxe (which you get by trading in the soul of the Dragonslayer Armor). This thing scales slightly worse than the Heavy Greataxe, but the base damage is higher and on top of that, you get some Lightning damage that then scales with Faith. So, the total attack rating here is larger, and the mixed damage I think helps with some bosses. The downside is that it can't be buffed with miracles like Lightning Blade, so I actually wonder if that spell and the Heavy Greataxe come to higher damage overall.

I've currently got 35 Faith, and am working on getting it to 40.

One thing I'm hoping I can pull off is being able to be somewhat effective at range. My Sorcerer managed to take down the Nameless King by basically staying the hell away from him, and I'm hoping I can do something similar with Dorhy's Gnawing (or however that's spelled). So far, I haven't had as much luck, though I realized that I had forgotten to equip a Miracle-boosting ring, on top of the fact that my Faith is just over half what the Sorcerer's Intelligence was when I finished that fight.

Still, I think I'm only level 100 or so at this point, meaning that it actually doesn't cost an enormous amount to level up, so I could potentially get up there.

One thing I realized was a mistake is that I gave the two Dark Braille Divine Tomes to Irina, when I should have saved them until after I rescued Karla, as apparently Eygon will take Irina out of Firelink Shrine if you do so and you'll have to kill him to get her back. Good and evil in this game are certainly open to interpretation, but I think I'd prefer to not cause any drama. So I'm not entirely sure if I can get Dark Blade anymore without triggering that event.

Using an Ember to fight the pyromancer invader in Ariandel, I summoned a fellow player for Elfriede and actually managed to one-shot her (the other player snuck in for several backstabs). It's a cool fight, so it's a little sad to be done with it so soon, but on the other hand, I have zero compunctions about using anything the game gives me to make the fights easier.

Anyway, this means that this character and my Sorcerer are tied for bosses killed, with the Sorcerer taking down Nameless King and the paladin taking down the Twin Princes. I have yet to attempt the Demon Prince, though I am closing in on my original Dex (/Strength) character.

One thing I felt very happy to discover on my Sorcerer was the shortcuts toward the end of the Painted World - when you go into the wooded hills that lead up to the basement of the chapel, there are these rotted trees you can push over to make a bridge (two of them, and the second one allows you to only have to fight one Follower knight before going into the basement with all the bug-people,) and I don't think I realized that on my first run, which made that whole area feel like a huge marathon.

I'm curious to see how I'll feel returning to Bloodborne. I think the fact that I've actually beaten all the (non-Chalice Dungeon) bosses makes me feel somewhat warmer toward that game, though I also love the aesthetics of it. I really hope we get a sequel some day, and perhaps allow for more "spellcasting" play styles - though I think the simpler stat system is welcome.

That said, while I'm very excited for Elden Ring, I think it would be cool if FromSoft would experiment a bit more with look and tone... which, to be fair, I think they did with Sekiro. I guess I'd love to see their take on futuristic sci fi within the genre.

More Altoholism in Dark Souls 3

 While my sorcerer has been stuck on the Twin Princes (he's also on the Demon Prince, though that I've only attempted a couple times and then sort of went "uh, just... later") I've been futzing around with some other characters.

I have a Strength-based character who I'm now trying to level Faith in (after he hit 50 Strength) in the hopes of getting what I'm told is the very powerful "paladin" build. My initial intent for that character was to go with pure physical stats, getting his vitality strong enough to actually wear some of the insane heavy armor sets and use a great shield, but we'll see.

The Greataxe, which I just spent my first titanite slab to get to +10, has actually proven to be a very fun weapon. (I also finally took the heavy infusion for it, which I probably should have done earlier). I'd intended to go with the Fume Ultra Greatsword, which is cool, but so insanely heavy (even compared to the Greataxe) and I'm not sure I love its actual move set. In fact, with the heavy infusion, it looks like the Greataxe outdoes it in terms of damage at my Strength level, so I'm not sure it's worth going for.

I managed to take down Aldrich in maybe five or so attempts - I'd been acting too aggressively (I think a habit learned from the Sorcerer) and once I started acting a little more defensively I got a kill - though I died to his arrow-rain as I got the final hit in, which meant that I got teleported to the Dancer's room and then immediately died. Luckily, I was able to warp back to Aldrich's bonfire (I guess you don't actually have to light them when you kill the boss) and grab the souls.

And then I one-shot the Dancer of the Boreal Valley, which had me feeling pretty confident. Unfortunately, I failed to learn the lesson from Aldrich and went in too aggressively on Oceiros, so I finally lost the ember there (also, Oceiros' first phase on my sorcerer was trivial, so I didn't really think much about dodging his spells).

I also dusted off an old Herald character I'd created years ago but who had stalled out in the Undead Settlement. I've now just got Deacons of the Deep to take down and then she can be on to Farron Keep, though I snuck ahead to pick up Lightning Spear.

I then found out that if you buy any dark miracles from Irina, Eygon will take her out of Firelink Shrine and you need to kill him to bring her back. And... you know, I sort of felt like I was the bad guy (even if "Dark" is not necessarily evil in these games).

This character is intended to be a true paladin build, so I actually could use Eygon's massive hammer, but only after a lot of leveling. This character's still using the Deep Battle Axe, which is a great thing to find early in the game but also is so good that I basically use it on every character. I'm hoping I can get my stats to a point where the Saint's Bident will outpace it, as I haven't really played with a weapon that has such massive reach. Still, after the whole Eygon incident I felt kind of bummed playing that character, hence returning to my Strength guy.

He's now on the Dragonslayer Armor, which I've only ever fought using a summoned ally, and have never died to. So, part of me wants to continue that trend, though another says that maybe I should see how that fight is "as intended."

I also realized that the elevator up to DSA is way easier to reach if you just use the Dancer bonfire rather than trying to get to it from the Lothric Castle one.

Anyway, the game's fun. I still think Bloodborne remains my favorite of the games in this genre I've played, and I wish that Bloodborne were as extensive as Dark Souls 3 in terms of scope. I wonder if we'll ever get a direct sequel to Bloodborne. Elden Ring looks fantastic, but it seems to really be in keeping with the Demon's Souls/Dark Souls aesthetic, and I liked that Bloodborne took that gameplay to an entirely different kind of setting.

Part of me wants to see FromSoft do a futuristic sci-fi souls-like game, but we'll see. I guess I should try Sekiro, though I've heard that that's even harder than DS3, and I'd be happy to see DS3 be the absolute cap on difficulty.

Nameless King Down

 After years, I've taken down the Nameless King... on my Sorcerer.

As it turns out, blasting away at a distance with Crystal Soul Spear with a +10 Court Sorcerer's Staff is pretty effective. Not only do you avoid the camera issues with the first phase (I only closed in in order to take advantage of a riposte with my Moonlight Greatsword) but, it turns out, while the Nameless King is quick, if you keep running away from him, he'll give you some big opportunities to pelt him from afar.

Thus, I have now beaten a boss I hadn't on my original character, meaning that I've got one of these mixed games - some of it complete on one character and some on another.

I used the ember to attempt Twin Princes with the aid of Sirris of the Sunless Realm, but while she did a good job tanking for me, I wasn't quick enough to keep her alive very far into phase 2.

The only real problem with Crystal Soul Spear is the absurd amount of FP it burns - I have 20 Attunement and I get three casts off before I need to sip some Ashen Estus. But it hits like a freight train.

I'd actually been experimenting on my original character with bows, seeing if I could get some decent damage at range with a reasonably high dexterity build, but sadly, it doesn't really seem viable.

One thing I was shocked to find out is that, apparently, you don't need to be embered to summon Gael in the Fride/Ariandel fight. He only shows up when you get past the first phase, but he's a huge help, drawing the boss's attention and just generally making that fight less absurd. The length of that fight is epic, but the catch of any of these multi-stage fights is that when you've mastered one phase, it can be annoying to fight through it again (dear lord did I get sick of Micolash in Bloodborne when I kept dying to A Call Beyond in the final phase).

I've been exploring the Dreg Heap on the sorcerer, and grabbed the +3 Covetous Silver Serpent Ring, which is nice. I have (beyond) capped out on Intelligence at this point, so while I'm currently working on buffing my Endurance a little bit, I think I might start pouring levels into Faith now, to unlock pyromancies and miracles, and I think some dark sorceries require a bit of Faith as well. At this level, it'll take a long time to get my Faith to decent levels. I believe there is a way in which you can re-spec your character a finite number of times per game - I might consider doing that to drop from 67 Int down to 60 and then invest those levels in something more useful, as I'm given to understand that past 60 there's not much use to getting more Intelligence thanks to sharp diminishing returns. I am a little concerned that I'd already have maxed out the damage I can actually do, given how much left of the game I have (admittedly very little of the base game, but I still have all the Ringed City bosses as well as Champion's Gravetender, as well as the Princes and Soul of Cinder - though if my experience with Bloodborne is anything to go by, the Soul of Cinder should be a cakewalk after I've beaten Gael and Midir).

Parallel Areas of Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3

 The first Soulsborne game I played was Dark Souls, though I only got it after the PS4 was out and I think I'd already seen a lot of buzz around Bloodborne. And on top of that, I never got close to finishing it. While it's true that I never beat Dark Souls 3 (I could go to the Soul of Cinder, but I want to beat all the optional and DLC bosses first) I have, essentially, seen every location in the game. The first game, though, I got stuck on Ornstein and Smough. I had actually gone to some areas "out of sequence," having beaten the Moonlight Butterfly, Greatwolf Sif, and Pinwheel (all of which I believe you're supposed to do afterward).

The two games are separated by ages of time - it's never explicit in terms of years, but given the deep fantasy nature of these games (deep fantasy I'm defining now as "everything operates on its own logic that defies conventional reason") it's sort of beside the point. I think we're meant to understand that Yhorm, the Abyss Watchers, Aldrich, and indeed Ludleth each bought a vast period of life and light for the world when they linked the fire, meaning that each might be from very different eras.

We sort of get hints of what we are to associate with each of their stories, like how the Catacombs of Carthus probably represent a kingdom that the Abyss Watchers destroyed given its ruler's connection to the Abyss.

I think even within the original Dark Souls we got glimpses of the overlapping eras at play - like how Oolacile eventually became the Darkroot Garden.

The very place in which the game takes place seems to be some kind of logic-defying amalgamation - at one point, Sen's Fortress is referred to as a "plane," and given that Anor Londo is basically the equivalent of Mount Olympus in this universe, it might be better to think of the regions less as just physical locations but their own godly realms, and we merely interpret crossing between them as a physical process. As an example, the Firelink Shrine we go to in Dark Souls 3 as our primary hub is not physically connected to "present-day" Lothric Castle, but the Untended Graves version of them, which exists in a world of total darkness and is seemingly in the past or an alternate timeline, does have a physical connection with the Lothric Castle in the "contemporary" world. (I believe that there are four sort of "load zones" in the pre-DLC game, with no "seams" in terms of explorable space, which are Firelink Shrine and the Cemetery of Ash, then Lothric Castle as seen at the start of the game proper and then in the final chapter of the main game, then the "converging lands" that include most of the game's locations, and then Archdragon Peak.)

While the world does not act in a clearly logical way, there are strong implications that we're actually traversing the same places we did in the first Dark Souls - only that they have changed profoundly over time.

The Undead Settlement is harder to place - it'd be easy to simply say it's the Undead Burgh, even though that area in Dark Souls bears a stronger resemblance to the High Wall of Lothric.

Next, Farron Swamp seems very likely to be Oolacile/Darkroot Garden. The existence of Oolacile's mushroom people (found here only as corpses) is, I think, the best evidence, but also, the Great Wolf of Farron seems like it might have a connection to Sif, not to mention how the Abyss Watchers modeled their order on Sif's companion, Artorias.

The Catacombs of Carthus could be the Catacombs. This is mostly just based on the name, though both are spooky, buried areas.

Irithyl is the easiest, because it's the one we get the clearest explicit confirmation. Once we get past the Silver Knights (as if that didn't give it away) past the various Aldirch Faithful deacons after we beat Pontiff Suleyvahn, we arrive at Anor Londo itself. Ironic, of course, that the highest area in the original game (except maybe the Duke's Archives?) is now in a deep valley. Actually, here we get some clear nods to Tolkien. The two cities on opposite sides of Osgiliath are Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul (the former the de facto capital after Gondor was forced to abandon Osgiliath and the latter being the headquarters of the Nazgul,) meaning "Tower of the Guard" and "Tower of Sorcery." However, before they had these names, they were Minas Anor and Minas Ithyl, the Tower of the Sun and Tower of the Moon, respectively.

Anor Londo was the city of Gwyn, the Lord of Sunlight, and thus "Anor" being part of the name makes a ton of sense (Londo could even be a reference to London, a rather important western royal capital). And when we find it in Dark Souls, it's awash in brilliant sunlight (which I believe turns out to be an illusion - again, I never beat Ornstein and Smough). By the time we find it in Dark Souls 3, though, it's now a snowy city that perpetually has a crescent (or perhaps partially eclipsed, given that we see a full ring of light, similar to the sigils for the various Darkmoon covenants) moon above it. Now, it is Irithyl of the Boreal Valley, which neatly has that Ithyl term for the moon from Tolkien.

An area you could very easily not realize even exists in Dark Souls 3 is the Demon Ruins, which you get to by cutting the bridge before High Lord Wolnir's room and descending the bridge like a ladder. I never got to Ash Lake in Dark Souls 3, but you find a big shallow lake there (with a horrifying corpse-worm and a ballista whose job it seems is to shoot said worm, though they aim at you instead), so I wouldn't be shocked if there's a parallel there.

Just below the Smouldering Lake, though, you find the Demon Ruins. This is, I'll be honest, one of my least favorite areas in Dark Souls 3, given that it's pretty much just a labyrinth with a lot of samey corridors and nasty enemies. But we get a near-explicit identification of the area when we bring the Izalith Pyromancy Tome back to Firelink Shrine, and we are informed that we've found the home of pyromancy. So, yes, this is, presumably, the remains of Lost Izalith (the presence of all the demons sure seems to support that).

An interesting question, then, is what exactly Lothric Castle was in Dark Souls 1 - if anything at all. I don't know exactly what Prince Lothric is meant to be - is he a Lord like Gwyn (and does that make him a god?) Lothric Castle seems to be the "new capital", perhaps replacing the Olympian Anor Londo (I've even seen a really fantastic match-cut between the circular stained glass window at the entrance to the castle - where you fight the Dancer of the Boreal Valley - and the one that is so prominently displayed over the entrance to Anor Londo's royal palace/cathedral. I believe there are some hints that, if Oceiros is Lothric and Lorian's father, Gwyndolin might be their mother, which would make them Gwyn's grandchildren.

Dark Souls tends to use the term Lord a lot, and really blurs the lines between "king" and "god."

I do wonder, though, if the Duke's Archives became the Grand Archives, or if the latter was simply built out of what Seath the Scaleless created. Again, I never got to that point in Dark Souls 1.

Anyway, I think there are some really intriguing ideas at work in these two games (I haven't played 2). I think there's something really interesting about looking at a world that has transformed so profoundly between our visits to it, even while fragments remain the same. I also think it's interesting that these outlying, seemingly human kingdoms like Astora, Carim, Catarina, etc., seem remarkably consistent

Dark Souls Altoholism

 Sorcery, as a strategy in Dark Souls 3, was something of a revelation. As a playstyle it made some things way easier and a few things a lot harder.

But I'm always in grass-is-greener mode, and while I was excited about all the spells I could learn (though mostly it just became "cast Great Heavy Soul Arrow") I found myself wanting to make a build where I could use some of the absurdly huge weapons.

So, I made a Strength build. As I think will be my standard operating procedure for future runs of the game, I've cleared Irithyl basically all the way up to Aldrich, but before I smash myself up against that fight, I'm heading down into the Irithyl Dungeon.

But today I did a bit of hopping around. I went back to my original main, who has everyone but Midir, Gael, Nameless King, and the Soul of Cinder down. I was actually kind of shocked to discover that he's only got 45 Dexterity - my strength guy just hit 45 strength. My sorcerer has actually overdone Intelligence - I think I have like 67 or something, when the cap (such as it is) seems to be 60. Having done a few attempts on Nameless King on my sorcerer, I wondered if going in to fight him on my much higher-level Dex character would be easy. The answer: no, not really. The second phase of the Nameless King is the deadlier one, but it's also a bit more conventional - you just have to dodge his attacks and get your hits in when you can. The first phase is a nightmare of hostile camera angles, and being able to cast from afar makes it go much smoother.

My Dex character is swimming in titanite - I'm still holding off on fully completing weapons with slabs, but I have 5 of them, on top of a maxed out Hollowslayer Greatsword and Elfriede's Scythe. I looked for a weapon with lightning damage on it, figuring that would help with the King of Storms phase on Nameless King. It did, but Sorcery does a ton of damage to him.

Again, grass-is-greener issues make me really want to try for a Faith build. My understanding is that there's less purely offensive stuff there. On the Sorcerer I've managed to get the Moonlight Greatsword, so I actually have a pretty solid melee option. Right now it looks like more things scale with Faith, but that might just be my warped perspective.

I will say that I think one of the things I like about Bloodborne is that, with fewer stats to level, the route for a "build" is a lot simpler. My favorite build in that game is Arcane (though I was shocked at how effective Bloodtinge can be, even though you have to get pretty far in the game to get the best weapons for it). I only wish that a Bloodborne 2 was in the works, though I am very excited about Elden Ring.

Anyway, with my roommates out of town and my LA family members cancelling plans due to a positive Covid test, it's a pretty lonely holiday, so I've been playing a lot of Dark Souls. Be sure to leave some humanity near the chimney for Santa Lloyd, or something.

The Satisfyingly Unsatisfying Lore of Dark Souls

 In Dark Souls III, the roughly seventh boss (there are a couple optional bosses you might face before him) is Pontiff Suleyvahn. He's the sort of halfway boss in Irithyl of the Boreal Valley, a city below the lands that are being drawn to Lothric, and whose true identity we won't discover until we've beaten him (though there are hints along the way).

Ultimately, Suleyvahn is a roadblock and checkpoint before you get to the area's main event - the horrific Aldrich, who is one of the four missing Lords of Cinder we need to collect in order to open the way to link the fire and refresh the world (if indeed that's what we want to do - I'm fully in the Usurp the Flame camp, as it feels like the most radical departure from a cycle that doesn't seem to be working anymore).

However, it's highly possible that this boss you fight roughly halfway through the game is actually the main villain of the story.

Breaking it down: between item descriptions, environmental hints, and the appearance of particular types of enemy we find in various parts of the world, we can eventually infer that Suleyvahn was born in the Painted World - a realm meant to give people who experienced tremendous loss in the real world a place to escape that pain and live peacefully (though, this being Dark Souls, it's now got its own problems). Living in a place of quiet grief clearly didn't work out for a person who had never experienced loss, so he ventured outside of it and became a sorcerer.

He eventually found his way to the Profaned Capital, where the Profaned Flame burned eternally, fueled by the darkness of the Abyss. That darkness inspired or corrupted him, and he set about doing several horrible things - he fed prisoners including children to Aldrich to increase his power, and he enslaved people and turned them into beasts with magic rings. It's implied that he was the scholar who convinced Prince Lorian to shun his purpose to link the fire and become a Lord of Cinder.

The way that the game is built, though, you wouldn't figure that out easily on your own. Dark Souls and other FromSoft games of the same sort are all about hidden hints and lore to be discovered by going all corkboard conspiracy theorist and linking tiny bits of information.

I think it's appropriate that George R. R. Martin was involved in creating the initial lore for the studio's newest effort, Elden Ring. While his Song of Ice and Fire series (the one that was adapted as Game of Thrones) has a story you can easily follow just by paying attention to the broadest strokes, the books (far more than the show) is chock full of stories-within-stories and lore that is bubbling in the background.

For example, a close reading of a few off-hand remarks can suggest that Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen fell in love after Lyanna competed in a tourney in disguise as a man going by the "Knight of the Laughing Tree." There's implications that Euron Greyjoy (whose show version was utter crap) is some kind of dark avatar of a horrifying kraken god, or he intends to become one.

One of the things I really find fascinating about FromSoft games is how it's never really obvious what the "good" endings are. The most complex ending to get for Dark Souls III is the Usurp the Flame ending - this has the unkindled one take the First Flame within themselves and become the Lord of Londor, ruling as the true face of humanity. On one hand, there's this sort of tyrannical feel to it - usurpers generally aren't a "good guy" trope. And this is a land of Hollows, meaning everyone there is kind of zombies, and all look really messed up and undead. But on the other hand, it seems as if the whole Age of Fire was kind of unnatural in the first place - that Gwyn's arrogance really screwed the world up (or maybe his naïveté). Perhaps, after so many ages in which gods have repeated these cycles of cruelty and exploitation, maybe Londor represents something new, recognizing an internal balance of light and darkness, and life and death, and perhaps finding balance between them.

Indeed, in these games, sometimes what we're even actually doing is left vague. Yes, we find these powerful bosses to fight and kill, but what exactly are we accomplishing by doing so?

And, I think, in lesser games, that unsatisfying nature would be infuriating. It would feel like a haphazard scaffold of a story that did not match the quality of the gameplay.

But, somehow, these games make the obscurity of their lore and story a feature, rather than a bug. There's a kind of abstraction to the storytelling here that invites speculation and interpretation, rather than dismissal as meaninglessness.

I wonder to what extent the creative forces behind the games have solid answers. I imagine that some of them, like primary auteur Hidetaka Miyazaki, probably consider their version just one interpretation that isn't inherently more valuable than a player's. The fact that so many hints match up so well suggests to me that they do actually have some firm ideas about hidden lore, and it's not all just a bunch of darts thrown at the wall.

But even if they really do not have the same degree of narrative depth that the fans assume they do, I think it's a testament to the potency of their formula that it can feel this fun to delve into the games and attempt to unpack all the subtle implications.

Oceiros and Gundyr Down

 Well, I just killed the two knights and the caster up on the roof in front of Oceiros' room, popped an ember, and summoned Hawkwood, and Oceiros went down a lot easier.

Summoning allies does help a lot, giving you more time to recover (especially as a ranged character) but it doesn't make the fight a pushover. I managed to get Gundyr mk. 2 down on the same ember, but when I went to the twin princes, Sirris of the Sunless Realm did a great job tanking for me for a good while, but when I got into phase 2, I was on my own, and things didn't work out so much.

Still, I've gotten all the items out of the Untended Graves (though I might not even give the Firekeeper the eyes, as I'm planning on going Usurp the Flame).

I think I am very cautious about finite resources, like embers, though I suppose I can always get one by helping another player take down a boss - I'm not really used to the online mode here. The first Dark Souls was tough because humanity was a resource that could be lost like souls, and you needed to restore your humanity at a bonfire, so having more than one didn't really help if you left your souls and such in the boss room.

Personally, I really prefer Bloodborne's treatment of Insight, where you just accumulate it over the course of the game and there's no "mode shift" that determines if you can summon allies. I certainly prefer the Embers over DS1's Humanity, but it does still create this thing where after you kill a boss the penalty for dying is rougher.

I know there are diehards who really want these Souls games to be as brutally difficult as possible, but while I enjoy them, I actually think it would be nice if they were a little more forgiving and thus allow a broader audience to enjoy them.

Accessibility seems to be the topic of conversation in a lot of gaming circles. I've always understood accessibility from a point of view of just making the game playable at all to as many people as possible. For example, creating systems that label things that would normally be just color-coded so that colorblind people can play.

When it comes to difficulty, I'm sort of of two minds.

Naturally, difficulty modes have been a part of games for ages - essentially, once arcade games were not the primary form of video game (and thus perversely incentivized to make the game hard so that kids would stick more quarters into the machine,) video games began to evolve a lot as a medium.

In some ways, I think Dark Souls and its ilk is not so much a new, unheard-of level of difficulty, but more of a return to the difficulty of early Mario games (and, actually, a lot of more modern platformers.)

I do think there is a bit of a promise that RPGs make in the video game medium that you can always grind a bit to make a boss or area easier. Ideally, you never want to feel obligated to do that, but you can.

And I think that applies to the Souls games to an extent, but there are very steep slopes of diminishing returns - not only does leveling up only raise a single stat by one, but the rate at which the cost of leveling goes up, as well as the diminishing returns on scaling with stats, does make it either less of an advantage, or demand a truly absurd amount of leveling.

I love the atmosphere and lore of Souls games, and I think that the rhythm of combat does feel very good (I will say that's one of the things that is a little less fun about playing a caster, though now that I have my Moonlight Greatsword, I think I might be doing more melee combat). And I can imagine how dialing down the difficulty might allow players to ignore those rhythms more - if you don't worry about taking a hit, you might just avoid dodging and let your blows land to take out foes and soak the damage you take.

Still, I would love to see someone take this genre and put the same love and care into its design and feel, but make a game that more players are likely to beat.

Anyway, after my one attempt on the Twin Princes (and no, it turns out you can't target Lothric on Lorian's back with your spells) I've gone to Archdragon Peak, getting ready to fight the Ancient Wyvern, which was a lot harder than I expected it to be on my last playthrough, so we'll see how it is this time.

Oceiros and a Painted World

 Man, Oceiros is not easy on a caster.

I've come to the conclusion that I just need to swap to a melee weapon in the second phase and stay under the boss as much as I can, as that seems to be the safest place, but he gets really fast when he goes into phase 2.

I think what's so strange about the fight is that the first phase of Oceiros is profoundly easy - you pelt him with Great Heavy Soul Arrows and he basically gets one attack in before he goes into the second phase. But that second phase is relentless.

I've also finally entered the Painted World of Ariandel. I got to the room with the unnamed girl who paints the new world (I've heard her referred to as "Ari") and now have the big woodsy area. I managed to clear that out but was out of both kinds of Estus flask and out of FP when I got to the two Millwood Knights guarding the basement of Ariendel's chapel, so I ran past them but died to the bloodsucking locust people when I tried to run through. I don't totally remember how to open the door there, or if there's a shortcut I can get to go back to the bonfire. Anyway, I lost over 40k souls when I didn't make it back there, which was frustrating.

Supposedly I've hit a hard cap for the Court Sorcerer's Staff intelligence buff (and then actually spent some more levels on Intelligence because I didn't realize that). I need to figure out if there's any way I can continue to boost my damage, or if I really just need to invest future levels in survival.

One of the frustrating things is that the melee weapon I invested levels in to get the stats for it is the Moonlight Greatsword, which you can transpose off of Oceiros. I've gotten him down to about 20% several times, but there are very few chances to heal in his second phase and his hits take off about 50% of my health.

Oceiros is such a key boss - while technically he's optional, he is a prerequisite to get Champion Gundyr, the Ancient Wyvern, and the Nameless King. I mean, I intend to get every boss down, but it does feel like I hit a bit of a bottleneck.

Into the Grand Archives

 To be honest, at this point I think I'm officially "through" the Grand Archives - I believe I just have the bridge before the Twin Princes left to do.

But I will say that I found the area to be a little tricky for a caster. The other crystal sage relocates each time you damage him on the way up to the top levels, and pelts you with some pretty nasty magic spells - even as an Intelligence-based character with a fair amount of magic resistance, I was getting slaughtered fairly regularly.

Conceptually, though, I think that the Grand Archives is one of my favorite spots in the game. I love the way that the scholars there douse their heads in wax to protect their minds from the eldritch knowledge in the books there - signified by ghostly hands that reach out of them when you pass by. The wax protects you from these if you also dunk your head in there. It also seems to give you some immunity to the damage of spells cast against you by the crystal sage and the scholars, though that seemed inconsistent (and you still get knocked back).

If I wanted any evidence to support the notion that a ranged caster build made the game easier, the best evidence was the three player-like NPCs at what I believe is the route to the bridge. These guys were very tough when I fought them as a melee class, but while I did run out of FP (and Ashen flasks) before I got the last of them down, I was able to take all of them out in a single attempt.

Anyway, I have yet to go to Oceiros' area - I considered going there before even starting the rest of Lothric Castle, but instead went up to the Grand Archives. Naturally, I'll have to go do that for the Untended Graves area and Archdragon Peak.

Rewinding a bit, fighting the Dancer of the Boreal Valley, I was surprised that my spells took out an enormous chunk of her health - roughly a fifth per cast. But she's difficult to dodge, given the fluidity of her movements, so it was more about finding the proper opportunity (my ember was immediately lost when another player invaded me in Lothric Castle).

I'm trying to remember how to open the door near the Dragonslayer Armor, where I believe the Warriors of Sunlight covenant can be upgraded. I also have only taken out one of the two big dragons in the Dragon Barracks (and holy crap is having a ranged playstyle a bonus for that.)

Anyway, I'm nearing the end of the "main quest" areas in this playthrough, though naturally I have a ton of other stuff to do. I'm probably a little over-leveled (though I haven't done a ton of farming - I think I just haven't died as often and thus haven't lost souls as often.) With something like 63 intelligence, I think I might start putting some levels into other stats to help with weapons or other things.

Anyway, yeah, the Sorcerer build definitely takes getting used to if you haven't played one before (and I think Curse-Rotted Greatwood is a lot harder) but I do think it's something to check out if you want the game to be a little easier - the game isn't easy per se, but I definitely seem to be having a somewhat easier time.

Aldrich Down

 Aldrich is actually a fairly simple boss on a ranged character, but simple doesn't mean easy. If you stay away from him, he does basically three things: he summons the little purple missiles that lock on and shoot at you, he does his big magic blast (usually two in a row, though one time I got eight) and he does his arrow barrage. His various melee attacks only come into play if you get near him.

That said, it's not an easy fight. The arrow barrage is extremely nasty, but mostly because it can distract you. The big magic blast is what killed me on almost every attempt, and when you're casting Great Heavy Soul Arrow, you need to be damned sure he's not starting this off when you start casting yours (or drinking an Estus Flask) because it will hit you.

With both Yhorm and Aldrich down, I was summoned to the room where the Dancer of the Boreal Valley is fought, though I decided it was time to let my heart rate slow down (and allow my roommates to use the TV).

I've actually been looking forward to getting to Lothric Castle, which I think is a pretty cool area of the game. One of the really intimidating things about that area is all the heavily-armored knights, but on this Sorcerer playthrough, I've found that, well, actually, those types of enemies aren't actually that hard to deal with.

I'm trying to recall my general mental map of Lothric Castle and the Grand Archives, but I think that I'll be focusing on at least getting to the Twin Princes before I head into the Painted World. I suspect Prince Lothric is going to be tough give how long it takes to cast spells and how quickly Lorian teleports around the room. Of course, if I can get Oceiros down, that'll open up a few other avenues of exploration in addition to the DLC stuff. I'm hoping/expecting that I'll start finding significantly more Titanite Chunks in Lothric Castle, which will allow me to finally let my Court Sorcerer's Staff catch up in rank to my original Sorcerer's Staff (though in terms of Spell Buff, it's already ahead, and so it's the one I've been using.)

Oh, and I took out the Old Demon King, which I was profoundly over-leveled for. I didn't take a single hit, and I think probably got him down in like 4 or 5 casts of Great Heavy Soul Arrow. And he didn't give me enough souls to level up once, so... yeah. Poor guy.

I don't really like the Demon Ruins - they're sort of generic and same-y. I guess they're supposed to be a bit of a labyrinth, but especially given that you come there right from the Catacombs of Carthus, it's a bit... dull.

I am really curious to see if we some day get a much easier Souls-like game (probably from a different studio) with a very different visual design. To be fair, that might exist already, but I'm not aware of it.

Screw You, Aldrich

 Well, given that I spent several seconds mucking about trying to find the Storm Ruler to equip it, and then forgot how to actually activate its weapon art, I actually got Siegward killed while he was tanking for me, which it turns out is a one-time thing. Still, Yhorm is actually not terrible difficult to dodge, so on a third attempt I was able to get him down.

This leaves me at a point where all roads lead to Aldrich (well, also the Old Demon King, which I guess I could do). (Also, I've been spelling it "Aldritch" all this time, I guess thinking of the word "eldritch.")

One one hand, I got the Devourer of Gods down below 50% on my first attempt, but damn is it hard to dodge his arrow-barrage on the second phase. I'm contemplating doing some farming around Yhorm's bonfire to bump up my Intelligence a little higher and get him down just a little quicker. Unfortunately, I spent the two Titanite Chunks I got on my Sorcerer's Staff, and while at a +6 the Court Sorcerer's Staff outdoes it at +7, I don't think I'll be able to get the upgrade materials until I get past Aldrich and then the Dancer of the Boreal Valley (I assume Chunks only drop in Lothric Castle, with those few exceptions.)

The scaling on the Court Sorcerer's Staff is already quite fantastic, so any Int I get will be a big help. I did spend four levels getting my Strength up from 8 to 12 so that I could wield some more weapons. Looks like I'll need 4 more to get the Moonlight Greatsword, though if I can get up to Lothric Castle, there's an absurd farming spot with a single beefy Lothric Knight that is in the room with the bonfire.

Two things are tough with Aldrich - there's the aforementioned arrow barrage, which I only sometimes survive on phase 2, and then there's the tricky part on phase 1, which is that his really huge spell blasts are sort of hard to dodge because their hitboxes are so enormous. At the very least, as an Intelligence-based character, I do have significantly better magic absorption, but one of these still takes off about half my health.

Anyway, I've hit a bit of a bottleneck here, but I figure once I can get to Oceiros, I can go do Untended Graves or Archdragon Peak (very curious to see if the Nameless King is easier on a caster. Phase one I bet is, though phase 2... maybe not.) I do think I'm going to wait until I at least get through much of Lothric Castle before I head into the Painted World. I might go there before I take on the Twin Princes, though, since that's a boss I kind of want to be overpowered for.

On Yhorm, Past Suleyvahn

 I'd been worried about Suleyvahn, but it turns out that, especially as a caster, you can just summon a friend to tank and he's a pushover (I had actually found him surprisingly easy on my Dex-based melee character, as his attacks can be somewhat easily parried).

Again, I have no shame whatsoever about summoning NPCs to help out with bosses - the game is still very hard, and this is one of the ways they make it easier (though Embers being so finite makes it a bit tougher - I think in Bloodborne you can just keep starting new easy Chalice Dungeons to farm Insight, and I don't know that I ever used a Madman's Knowledge to get more.)

Having gotten Siegward out of his prison cell, I'm ready to take on Yhorm. I've done, I believe, a pretty thorough search of the Profaned Capital (which is, honestly, a pretty small area, though those hand-eye-elephant monsters are a nightmare, both in their visual design and in how tough they are (I think they have resistance to magic damage.) With the Court Sorcerer's Staff (still buffed less than my Sorcerer's Staff, but even at a lower rank, by now my Intelligence is enough to make its better scaling allow it to pull ahead) I'm landing some very heavy Great Heavy Soul Arrows - the only downside to that spell is how slow it casts. When dealing with Silver Knights past Suleyvahn, I've been packing normal Great Soul Arrows to make sure I can get a cast off before they shoot me with one of their enormous honking dragon-slaying arrows. (Ideally, if I can get one cast off before they notice me, I'll go with a Heavy/Normal one-two punch, which takes them down.)

I think the only real downside to playing a character like this is that the range at which you can lock on to enemies is really short, and it's very hard to "free-aim" your sorceries. But, being able to blast a foe down before they get to you has made the game, I think, way, way easier. There's less of that rolling/dodging interplay, but honestly, that's fine.

I know some complained about how Bloodborne's gameplay is more or less the same regardless of your build. I still think I like that one the best of the Souls-like games, but it has been fun getting into the whole spellcasting style (though for the most part, it's just some variant on Soul Arrows to blast foes with.)

Anyway, I'm curious to see how Aldritch is on a spellcaster (and I'm utterly terrified of the Twin Princes.) I suspect I'm going to just get a good Int-scaling melee weapon eventually, though I used the one Crystal Gem I found on my Mail Breaker. (Will have to look up how one gets more of those... if one can.)

Anyway, getting to this point in the game I have to remind myself that there's actually a fair amount left - even just Lothric Castle is a pretty enormous area (especially when you include the Grand Archives,) and I've got the secret areas to look for as well. And then, of course, the DLC.

On my original character, the only bosses I hadn't defeated were the Nameless King, Dark-Eater Midir, Slave-Knight Gael, and the Soul of Cinder. To be fair, I never even attempted Gael or Cinder. I'm hoping that Midir at least is easier on a ranged character, because my experience fighting him on my Dex character has been nothing but pain.

But that was also years ago.

Irithyl and its Dungeon

 After futzing around in the Demon Ruins, I got a bit sick of the same-y hallways and I think already had the items most likely to help a sorcerer, so I decided to instead move on to Irithyl.

One of the things that has made playing a sorcerer so surreal is how some enemies become far less terrifying when you have powerful ranged attacks. The big dragon-dog thing that attacks you as you first enter the snowy city is stopped by the barrier you need the doll (from the Deacons of the Deep) to cross. But that barrier does not stop spells, so I was able to just whack him with Great Heavy Soul Arrows from safety, right near a bonfire. I think I even stunned him at one point, but figured I'd stay safe. Given that he does not respawn, it made the exploration of the marshes outside of Irithyl far less stressful.

Also, holy crap do the foes in Irithyl have a lot of souls on them! Just killing the first couple knights (and yes, getting killed by them as well) I'd find I had enough souls to level up after just two or three "pulls" (it's amazing to me how similar Dark Souls is to MMOs like World of Warcraft.) This, after getting like one level off of the Abyss Watchers and Wolnir.

Though not a cakewalk by any stretch, I was able to make my way through the city and I've just unlocked the last shortcut before Pontiff Suleyvahn - I remember finding him surprisingly easy by parrying his attacks, but on the other hand, I don't know if my Mail Breaker is going to be quite as effective. (I've got a +4, I think, Crystal Mail Breaker, which is lagging behind my +6 Sorcerer's Staff.)

Actually, after using the Heretic's Staff for a good stretch, I switched back to my original Sorcerer's Staff, as by this point my Intelligence is high enough that the scaling has finally matched the raw buff the former gets - as I level further, and upgrade the staff, it will come out ahead. (I believe the top-tier sorcerer staff is in the Grand Archives, which I think are still a fair bit away).

When I first played through this, I actually fully completed Irithyl up through Aldrich before even going into the Irithyl Dungeon, but this time I decided to try that path as well. I'm not quite to the Profaned Capital yet - I think I still have a bit of the dungeon to get through, but I got the Jailbreaker's Key and have at least glimpsed the capital.

It is funny to consider that Irithyl is sort of a mid-way point in the game - but it's very memorable (and only in part because of its association with Anor Londo). Still, getting a pretty important shortcut in the dungeon, I decided to go back and clear more of the city, in part because it's allowed me to level up pretty significantly. Honestly, I'm tempted to farm the various Fire Witches and knights for a bit.

Anyway, it does feel a bit like I've hit a stride of being a bit more powerful, which is nice.

Into the Woods - Farron Woods, That Is

 I don't know, I guess I wanted to make a reference to Stephen Sondheim, the absolute legend of musical theater. I don't know exactly how the Venn diagram of theater nerds and video games lines up (though TTRPGs most certainly draw theater nerds). Anyway, weird forum for it, but there you have it. RIP Sondheim.

So, my DS3 Sorcerer has finally broken through to make a bit of progress. I took down the Curse-Rotted Greatwood and the Crystal Sage in short succession, actually using the ember from the former to summon help for the latter, which honestly made Crystal Sage a cakewalk.

I think when I first played the game it didn't even occur to me that there was a branching path here. You can go past the Sage to the Cathedral of the Deep, or you can go the passage to the right of the keep that leads to the Sage and instead go into the Farron Swamp, toward the Abyss Watchers. While I think it's definitely easier to start with the Cathedral (you'll need the doll from the Deacons to get into Irithyl anyway) I did benefit a bit from sneaking into the Keep and grabbing the Sage's Coal, which allowed me to turn my spare Mail Breaker into a Crystal Mail Breaker, which means it now does magic damage and scales with Intellignece. Getting it just to +1 was enough to make it nearly as good as my Fire Mail Breaker +2, and I think I actually got it to +2, so I now have a decent weapon that scales with my primary stat.

While I want to focus more on actual sorceries if I can, having something that doesn't run out of juice is definitely nice.

One thing I've found is that the Sorcery build is really fantastic for dealing with those heavily-armored foes that hit very hard. The two player-like NPCs that guard the entrance to Ferron Swamp went down relatively easily (one kept dodging my spells, but I could catch him if I baited him into an attack) and the Black Knight you can fight in the kind of right-hand section of Farron Woods was a cakewalk.

I'm pushing to get my Intelligence to 40, and then I'm going to start bumping up some of my other stats to qualify me for some weapons and, importantly, get some Attunement so that I have more FP to spend and more spell options at a time.

I also discovered the wonder that is Spook, which now seems like the logical way to rescue Irina of Carim, rather than what I've done on previous playthroughs, which has been to just try to find the one spot I can drop into that chasm and have a tiny sliver of health left. Spook prevents all falling damage, which is amazing (and I think also reduces the radius by which enemies detect you, which is nice.)

Anyway, I've made it to the second Cathedral shortcut, so progress is coming along there.

Curse-Rotted Greatwood and the Path of Sacrifices - Sorcerer Build

 Playing through on a Sorcerer, I'm finding that, as usual, DSIII progress is not particularly easy. I'm at a point where I need about 4000 souls to level up and each foe is dropping about 90, so pretty quickly I've hit a plateau.

While my Mail Breaker with a fire infusion is meant to be a sidearm - for when the foe has just a sliver of health after a Soul Arrow - I do think I'll want to get some Int-scaling weapon at some point. One thing I'm very aware of is that to lock on (which is more important when shooting these spells off) sometimes requires that you get pretty close to a foe - sometimes close enough to aggro them.

The Curse-Rotted Greatwood is technically an optional boss - its primary benefit is getting the Transposing Kiln for all those fun boss items. But it's also usually not that hard a boss to go after in those early levels. However, I am finding that it's a bit hard to deal with on a caster. I have yet to make it to the second phase, unable to burst the big spore-bundle at its front while dodging the attacks of all the respawning hollows. And the lock-on doesn't make your spells home in on that targeted area, so I'm considering just moving forward and leveling up a bit more before going back to it.

I haven't yet raised my attunement at all, so I only have two spells prepared at any given time. I picked up Farron Dart, which is a very fast but also very weak spell, and with basically no poise damage, I find it to be basically useless compared to the normal Soul Arrow.

Also, once again, I find it infuriatingly hard to figure out how to drop into the valley you need to visit to rescue the blind priestess - she teaches miracles, which is admittedly not as important for an Intelligence build. I know you can do it, but I believe fall damage is percentage-based, and most spots do over 100% when you fall. Might just look this up. It actually now occurs to me that I think I forgot to pick up the pyromancy teacher - Pyromancy in DSIII scales with both Intelligence and Faith, so it should be useful to me.

Anyway, given that most bosses do charge you, staying at range isn't totally easy, but I will say that this is a very different playstyle. My main character is actually a Dex-based character (using the Hollowslayer Greatsword, which scales decently with both Dex and Strength) so I should probably consider trying out a bow with that one.

I still think that, of these games, Bloodborne remains my clear favorite. There is, admittedly, less variation in fighting styles, but I also think I just vibe with its gameplay a little better.