The "charles is going to get you" comment was meant in jest, though it was also impossibly stupid. The rest of the thread was going fine until your post with these comments: I don't know if that's true or not, but you asked for an elaboration (to put it simply) and someone linked to one; but you're acting like that's inadequate I guess. and maybe it is. Or maybe it isn't. And This, which is an observation almost too trite to comment on, but it certainly got some (over, perhaps) reaction. Some of the people are being pissy to you beyond this point but you are being pissy right back. Just don't act like you came in here acting nice and then people jumped on you for no reason; that's not really accurate. You're just as much a part of the eight-grade lunch table drama that is this thread as anyone else. *~*~*~*~*~*~* I play the game for "the melee combat", personally. Saying that playing the game for the melee combat is "playing it for one mechanic" is a sort of absurd simplification. It's not on the level of "enjoying chess for the tactical variety is enjoying it for one mechanic", but it's ballpark. The combat is a massive and varied part of the game. That's why people harp on it. It may not work for you (the editorial you), of course. Such is life. Personally, I don't give two shits about Dark Souls' story. From a higher level I like the sort of mythology building they are doing; I certainly love the minimal way the story (such as it is) is told (if it's not Planescape Torment, I want a game to shut the fuck up more often than not. This includes Bioware). I think it has some interesting characters though most of them don't quite fit into the game world (which is charming, in a way, and also thematically fitting). Oh look, it's a giant psychotic cat with zero Alice references in sight (thankfully). Hey, here's a dude with pointy armor who laughs with a leading hard consonant, violating the laws of physics and making me think the boogey man is real. Oh, there's a dude made out of spider eating hornets. I picture the end of the game being exactly the end of Things to Do In Denver When You're Dead, except I'm Jimmy the Saint and I'm serving boat drinks to the Siegmeyer, Solaire, and Chesty McHammerPants on our yacht. Outside of those people I'm not especially attached to the game world or it's characters. I mean, it's quite possible I'll spend the end of the last part of the game sucking the humanity out of every npc available so I have a nice store of it for the second playthrough. I'd never have done that in an Ultima. At the same time, I would rather explore this world than Gothic's or TES'. It's got character and I prefer it's vagueness and occasional "what the fuck"ness. There's some nearly-naked woman who will help you kill a giant spider chickafter she tries to kill you for no reason whatsoever. There is a reason for all of this stuff, I think (but who cares), but I it's harmoniously disjointed. On the surface the world is almost exactly like playing an RPG being DM-d by Gygax in 1977. It really wouldn't surprise me, or feel jarring, if a space ship appeared after I killed the last boss. I like that.
I honestly think that may be the case. Dark Souls is not going to feed you anything. You either have to struggle over it or look for outside guidance (most likely both). That's part of the pleasure of it. The same is true of many dense works of fiction, including the Sevarian series. One of the great things about the Dark Souls lore is that it actually bears interpretation; it is not obvious and people can differ on what it means. Like a really good book, playing Dark Souls feels like you're uncovering something. If that's not for you, that's fine. There are a lot of other games that cater to your taste. Play those games instead.
Just today I had this conversation on gtalk with my brother as I tried to explain the DLC to him: That the description of it sounds absolutely bonkers but it all meshes together quite well when you actually play it is some kind of achievement, anyway.
I just received the achievement for drunk posting, even though I haven't mentioned that I was drinking anywhere on the forum, and I have been drinking. I'm going to take that as an indicator that I need to shut the fuck up, and leave this subforum. You win.
One thing that's hard to convey is how well the story (or narrative or atmosphere or characters or whatever) is integrated with the mechanics. I somewhat alluded to it earlier but the game really is clever in how each one promotes the other. I've played a fair number of games where the cut scenes or the npc interactions really don't mesh with the actual game play are rather at odds with each other (Dragon Age and the blood everywhere come to mind) but that's not the case here. So one of the really lovely things about the game is how all of the mechanical aspects were looked at to ensure that they fit with the over all atmosphere and story. So it may seem that we're talking about mechanics but that's mostly because it's one of the easier things to break down and parse. The story/mythology/themes really are great as well, Lizard_King has posted a few good summaries of the lore which I've really appreciated. As you said though, it is somewhat ambient, but not in the sense that you don't notice it but more in the sense that it slowly seeps in the more you play.
Have you tried or are you going off of the reputation? As others have mentioned, the reputation is overstated. There are few things that you have to get used to off the bat, mostly just being patient and perhaps understanding a few of the stats, but once you get the hang of those the game really does a good job of teaching you the rest. So if you ever find it on sale and are willing to be slightly patient (it can be frustrating if you don't like dying but many many games are worse) it's definitely worth trying!
I was indeed going off the reputation, actually. Maybe I'll rent it and see for myself. You are all making it awfully tempting!
Hey, no one was trying to win. What you asked is an interesting question and as the forum indicates this isn't exactly a game that no one likes to talk about. Having said that though, you gave the game a fair shot, you played for 7 hours, it didn't click with you. I'm not really sure that there's anything we could have said (although some of us tried) that would change your mind.
I'm an incredibly casual gamer, myself. I'm not hardcore or pro in any way. I'm 39, my reflexes are shit(to be fair, they weren't that hot when I was 18 either), I frequently game while having cluster headache attacks(it helps distract me from 'em), and so on. And I love Dark Souls. I love the mood and atmosphere, I love the visuals, and I love that bits of lore are sprinkled around the game in item descriptions, scenery and snippets of dialogue, rather than being pushed down over your head by crazily expository spiels from NPCs that serve as nothing more than vaguely animated infodumps. As the marketing says, you will die a lot. But the thing to keep in mind is that in these games, death is not a failure state. Even dying twice before you get to your bloodstain containing all your precious souls and humanity isn't a failure state. You keep going. You pick yourself up, push on, and find other ways around what's stopping you. That's what death in Dark Souls is. It's the game telling you, "That approach isn't going to work. Try something else. Try a different weapon, a different approach to the enemy, or even try going back a little and finding an alternate route." And there's always something else to try. No matter what you've done with your character, you'll never actually be stuck. Yes, even if you've pumped all your souls into the Resistance stat and not upgraded any of your weapons or armour(though I wouldn't recommend doing that). There are people who've completed the game on "Knight Mode"; no levelling, no upgrades, no magic, no ranged attacks, no kindling beyond 5 Estus, starting equipment only. It can be done. And that's also what I love about the game. People doing crazy challenges just to see if they can, and reading about their exploits.
No one can really be told what Dark Souls is, you just have to play it for yourself. And you must unlearn what you have learned, then learn anew when playing Dark Souls! It's the only way. What is so great about Dark Souls? The thrill of combat and exploring these awesome levels From has masterfully crafted. The level design is among the greatest achievements ever! Simply amazing how these complex and variable spaces interconnect to each other with no *warping and without need of an automap! *Barring the disconnected segments - Painted World, Asylum, DLC area, etc
Thread complete. You won't ever like the game, since you are willfully ignoring the most important part. Might as well go play Skyrim and pretend there aren't dragons in the game. Mod them out or something.
Yeah, the way they loop back upon themselves is often nothing short of amazing. And on replaythroughs I'm often surprised and amazed that what I took to be a pretty but non-interactive vista is actually another level. Lower undead burg is a great example of that: even though it's actually called lower undead burg, I never realized that it was, literally, sitting beneath (and beside) most of the walkways & passages of upper undead burg. While playing the upper, I thought all those chasms were just pretty deathtraps that the game put there because it was aware of my love affair with deadly cliffs.
Just last week, JeffD and I (coincidentally) asked that same question re: the reputation, and these guys explained that it's not hardcore controller gymnastics and constant die-reload-die-reload cycles, but a slower-paced, strategic action game... which might be right up my alley. I'm either getting this as a Christmas gift or buying it myself the day after Christmas. If it wasn't December I'd have bought it and would be playing it right now. So, point being, if you do jump in sometime soon, there will likely be other newbies doing the same. Now that DS has its own subforum, we could even have a Dark Souls 101 thread specifically for new players to help each other.
What were the last five AAA games you played? Without having any idea what kind of games you play, I would bet even odds that one of those five was significantly more difficult than Dark Souls at the base mechanics level.
In game design, we specifically call that environmental storytelling. For example, in Fallout 3, you find a shack. In that shack, it is mostly clean and empty. But no bodies... until you get to the bathroom, where there's a skeleton in the tub, with a glass of wine and a book on the table next to the tub. This tells an obvious story that requires no words or writing. Dark Souls is absolutely masterful at it, to the point where you may not even notice it's there unless you are looking for it, as opposed to a game like Skyrim where there's a lot of junk everywhere and it literally means nothing, it was just placed there by the level designer in his haste to move onto the next area. Not a single thing in Dark Souls was placed in the game without a significant amount of agonizing over how it fits into the lore, the environment, and the backstory.
Here's how it's going to turn out, now that I've had my morning coffee, even though said coffee is terrible. I'm going to sum everything up for you in a few sentences, and at that point, I will likely be done answering your immediate question in the original post. But first, my earlier flippant response aside, you truly are hamstringing the game by not playing online. Also I'm not sure why you aren't; you are already playing the game, GFWL is already running, just play in online mode. Now, my one true answer: More than any other game I have ever played, Dark Souls rewards every single hour I put into it. And I have put over 250 hours into it at this point; I think LK is closer to 1000, and CheesyPoof (a self described casual gamer, I might add) is around 350. The game is so deep on every level, that there is always something new to learn. Except, it's not useless knowledge. Everything I learn can be applied in some fashion to make the game easier, and as I do that, I can build myself a constant stream of artificial challenges which then help me learn even more. I was learning new things last night. Despite the fact that I've seen every area in the game (outside of the new content) multiple times, every time I get somewhere on a new character (or on a new playthrough), it feels fresh and different. Why? Because I've learned so much in between, and it is all useful. How do I know all of this is true? Havel the Rock. On my very first playthrough, that guy lived up to his name, and I bashed my head against it so many times; I eventually just skipped him altogether. BTW, you can skip almost everything in the game outside of a handful of bosses, if you have the knowledge. Some people look at this as a negative, I see it as a huge positive in that it allows for more player agency than almost any other game I can think of short of Minecraft, which is 100% player agency and very little else. These are the skills I learned that helped me beat Havel: -Patience -Attentiveness -Flow The thing about Dark Souls is that even if you 'die', which is not actually a real penalty in this game, the most important thing you've gained is never lost. Because the real experience in Dark Souls is your own personal knowledge. I like Dark Souls because it is a masterfully created game. I love Dark Souls because I feel like I grow as a person every time I play it. So that's it. But really, if this thread has a moral, it's that some people just won't like it, and nothing anyone says will ever change that. If you don't like it, you should move on, and one day you will find your own personal Dark Souls.
After rereading the thread sober this morning, I've come to the conclusion that I was in fact being needlessly confrontational, reductionistic, and not expressing myself particularly well. Sorry about that. And thanks for the thoughtful responses, which I actually didn't deserve.
Steam tells me that an XBox360 controller is "strongly recommended" for this game. Is that accurate? I can get one from downstairs, but I'm not a proponent of using one on the PC. It feels like mixing white and red wine.
That seems to be a very common theme, yes - the KB/M controls are reputed to be less than desireable, and I've seen a lot of recommendations for controller usage here.
I use a 360 controller on my PC frequently. The New Star Soccer games, Alpha Protocol, Shmups, and of course Dark Souls. Great investment (for me, ofc).
Those days are long gone. Controllers offer a lot better method of control for many game genres. Worth having even if you are primarily a PC gamer.
I think I answered Carnifex somewhere already? Anyway, if you are used to playing with a controller. Buy and play Dark Souls. If you refuse to use a controller on a PC (for whatever reason) but think this game looks super-cool - buy and play Dark Souls with the mouse+keyboard mod. Also, read the guide I'm going to post somewhere soonish.
If you have a wired 360 controller you can just plug it in, if not you either need a wired one or a receiver for it. Also get over the idea that using a controller on a PC is some sort of heresy. It is often times the best tool for the job and pretty sure everyone here (excluding Hammett) would agree that a controller is best.
Definitely get over that bias. I have my computer hooked up to a monitor and then a 35"-ish TV. Great to boot up Sleeping Dogs or DS, move it over to the secondary monitor and go recline with the wireless Xbox controller, plus getting all the better performance/graphical improvements of playing on PC.
No, I would agree that using a controller for Dark Souls is best. I'm just not in the mood to both learn how to play with a controller and how to play Dark Souls at the same time. All I'm arguing against is that it's impossible to play DS without a controller.
Yeah, Hammett here is an odd case since he's never played with a controller before, as strange as that sounds. I can understand the learning curve at that point.
I have to admit that I share baldr's sentiments. I bought the game on sale for $28 while I was off work due to shoulder surgery. Installed it, grabbed the wrappers, game still looked like shit to me. Couldn't get the controls to work worth a shit, the game's view would spin in fast circles. Had to go into device manager and disable my joystick and pedals, then I couldn't get it to recognize my 360 controller despite it being my primary game controller in Win8. So disabled that. OK, I can now move around my jail cell. Oh, the inputs are all whacky. OK, try changing those around a bit. Also notice the game isn't outputting the resolution I specified after installing the wrapper. Shoulder hurts, I've now fought with this game more than I should have, time to uninstall and play some Skyrim. So, yeah, I let myself be defeated by technical issues because we all know it's an uber shitty port. But obviously its gameplay must be as addictive as crack or heroine from the way people talk about it on various forums; which tells me that around the holidays I need to take another stab at getting it running on my system, especially now that my arm is out of the sling and I have a lot more range of motion returning.
The port is bad, but mostly in a graphics, hacking and m+k sort of way, but otherwise has been solid (i.e. no game breaking bugs or crashing). I'm using a wired 360 controller and Win8 and haven't had any issues. I hope that you're able to give it another shot and get it working.
Eh, that it runs on my computer at all is the kind of miracle that makes it an awesome port in my view.
This. 1000 times this. It's what people really fail to understand about the port: It will run on almost anything! There's a cost to that, obviously, but the cost is inconsequential compared to "You get to play Dark Souls."
One of the things I really love about this game is being able to see how other people met their demise. Sometimes you come across a bloodstain in an obvious location and you say to yourself, "Oh yeah, I know what happened here...". But then, you click on it just for funsies and then watch as the silly fool ends up not dying to the gargantuan monster up ahead, but rather to "controller spazzing syndrome' as they go and roll themselves off a cliffside. And then I have a good chuckle. Not that I've ever done that. ¬_¬
Yeah the bloodstains and random phantoms are fucking awesome. They add so much to the game, in a way they accentuate just how lonely the world is. It's beautifully atmospheric.
I actually kind of miss how Demon's Souls had a little more substance to the phantoms and gave the bloodstains what felt like a little more time for context. Or maybe it's just that death was that much faster in that game so you felt like you were seeing more of the story. In DS I feel like it does exactly what you say, but in Demons' I felt like I was being haunted.
I guess. I know in Dark Souls I stop every time I see a bloodstain or a ghost I pause to watch. And when - inevitably - that ghost crumples to the ground, I feel a twinge of sympathy. I'm not sure what it was like in Demon's Souls, but in Dark Souls the fact that it's sort of reinforcing the sense of failure adds to the loneliness and despair of the setting.
Demon's Souls felt more alive to me. More ghosts, more bloodstains, and I want to say more messages, too. Dark Souls has always felt relatively desolate.
