Dark Souls 3 is the series at its most melancholic. It's a game that — despite being almost surprisingly fair for a Souls game — seems to hate both its players and itself. It's ugly and brutal in a way that would seem gratuitous, if not for the air of deep sadness that pervades every inch of its world. And behind its murky narrative veil of cycles and kingdoms and ages of fire and dark hides a game about artistic stagnation — about how art that lingers too long will find only collapse and self-subsumation. "There is nothing left in this world," it seems to say. "Go and find another." Paint one, even. With humanity as a guide.