Dark Souls marries impeccably crafted combat encounters, environmental storytelling, elegant integration of gameplay elements and narrative, and perhaps the single best-designed world in the history of video games to generate the definitive statement of what video games as a medium can and should be.
Since first playing Dark Souls years after I should have (I briefly flirted with Demon's Souls shortly after its North American release and as a foolish youth despised it for its difficulty and spurned the series until I had a lot of time to kill and a used copy of Bloodborne taunting me from my shelf during a particularly dark time in my life) it has become my personal standard against which all other video games are judged.
With a single elevator ride down from the Undead Parish to Firelink Shrine, it evokes more awe and excitement than the biggest, loudest AAA action setpiece. With next to no explicit expository dialogue, it invites the player to co-create narrative out of gameplay, and it isn't surprising to me that war stories of battles with its notorious bosses or hard-won access to shortcuts remain fresh discourse even though we've had an intervening decade of daring plot twists and beautiful mo-capped animations vie for status atop year-end lists and Metacritic charts. No branching dialogue tree or stealth-vs.-combat decision-making has managed to match the feeling of total player freedom that Dark Souls provides. Beyond just build variety, the game never chastises the player for playing it "incorrectly." Rules are written, and they're written in stone. This combination of items that works in this way in this environment will always work that way and might help you to find a "cheese" strategy for overcoming a boss more easily.
If you're stubborn like me, you can throw yourself without items or co-op at the game's bosses and reach a much-lauded kind of high from perfectly getting down the specific rhythms and tells of a foe. The combat encounters are demanding and rewarding in kind from the very first few trash mobs that the player encounters, and the Souls series is rightfully lauded for creating almost uncannily balanced scenarios where player skill is the only factor in overcoming challenges. Compared to later entries in the series and pale imitations of the series as a whole, Dark Souls seems to almost go out of its way to avoid cheaply killing the player. Even the much-hated Bed of Chaos, though it might be better had it been reworked entirely to just be fair on its own, is balanced in its retention of damage over multiple attempts at killing it.
Exploration is fascinating, and the focused player can anticipate and map out how to progress pretty intuitively. The veteran player can look around the environment and, accounting for a small amount of artistic exaggeration, the world is unmatched in its cohesion. You can look from Firelink Shrine and see Blighttown and the Great Hollow, and they're exactly where they should be in the game world. Where a lesser team (or, you know, the same team in later installments as they got less focused on this bit) might have obscured vantage points in order to minimize player interrogation of the logic of their world, Miyazaki's team went a lightyear beyond. I often praise the world design in this game in the simplest way possible: I can close my eyes and walk through the entirety of the Lordran map and it makes perfect sense.
The environmental storytelling Dark Souls employs is excellent and a real show of how the medium of video games can uniquely engage a player in narrative. Instead of just trying to balance gameplay and narrative elements (though, as I said, Dark Souls does this elegantly and simply with an in-universe justification for repeated deaths in the hollowing mechanic), Dark Souls takes on the challenge of exploring how a player can interact with a story in a way a reader or a listener or a viewer couldn't. To once again compare Dark Souls to its successors, it ties this staggering amount of lore to engage with to a fairly simple fantasy story. You have clear goals at all times: get past this guy who's guarding the jail you're in; ring these two bells; find these four lords; link the flame or, if you found a hidden NPC, refuse to. Because Dark Souls knows that despite well-crafted lore and a straightforward plot, you as the player will have endless opportunities to generate your own experience and tale of navigating Lordran and overcoming its obstacles.
It's telling that the biggest criticism levied at Dark Souls is that its second half after placing the Lordvessel isn't quite as polished and complete as its first half. I can't think of many games where their biggest flaw is that they don't continue to be perfect and settle for being excellent. I find the level of dread I feel in Tomb of the Giants to be a big addition to its appeal (not to mention its open-ended puzzle structure where you can either find a way to light the way by being in-tune with the game's logic or just trial and error your way down it). Duke's Archives has a deviously simple puzzle at its heart that is one of the best aha moments in games. New Londo Ruins's gimmick helps it to channel a great horror vibe. And Lost Izalith feels like a great late-game victory lap over enemies who were powerful enough to have their health bars splashed across the screen earlier in the game. Would I be ecstatic if there were ever an effort to bring them closer to the team's original vision for them? Hell yeah. But what we got is still better than most games, and it's telling that the standard they're set against is this game itself.
Ultimately, Dark Souls is a game and a series that has striven to stand out by being entirely its own entity. Its continued intrigue and success speak to the fruitfulness of making daring creative choices and trusting players to co-create art with designers.
Since first playing Dark Souls years after I should have (I briefly flirted with Demon's Souls shortly after its North American release and as a foolish youth despised it for its difficulty and spurned the series until I had a lot of time to kill and a used copy of Bloodborne taunting me from my shelf during a particularly dark time in my life) it has become my personal standard against which all other video games are judged.
With a single elevator ride down from the Undead Parish to Firelink Shrine, it evokes more awe and excitement than the biggest, loudest AAA action setpiece. With next to no explicit expository dialogue, it invites the player to co-create narrative out of gameplay, and it isn't surprising to me that war stories of battles with its notorious bosses or hard-won access to shortcuts remain fresh discourse even though we've had an intervening decade of daring plot twists and beautiful mo-capped animations vie for status atop year-end lists and Metacritic charts. No branching dialogue tree or stealth-vs.-combat decision-making has managed to match the feeling of total player freedom that Dark Souls provides. Beyond just build variety, the game never chastises the player for playing it "incorrectly." Rules are written, and they're written in stone. This combination of items that works in this way in this environment will always work that way and might help you to find a "cheese" strategy for overcoming a boss more easily.
If you're stubborn like me, you can throw yourself without items or co-op at the game's bosses and reach a much-lauded kind of high from perfectly getting down the specific rhythms and tells of a foe. The combat encounters are demanding and rewarding in kind from the very first few trash mobs that the player encounters, and the Souls series is rightfully lauded for creating almost uncannily balanced scenarios where player skill is the only factor in overcoming challenges. Compared to later entries in the series and pale imitations of the series as a whole, Dark Souls seems to almost go out of its way to avoid cheaply killing the player. Even the much-hated Bed of Chaos, though it might be better had it been reworked entirely to just be fair on its own, is balanced in its retention of damage over multiple attempts at killing it.
Exploration is fascinating, and the focused player can anticipate and map out how to progress pretty intuitively. The veteran player can look around the environment and, accounting for a small amount of artistic exaggeration, the world is unmatched in its cohesion. You can look from Firelink Shrine and see Blighttown and the Great Hollow, and they're exactly where they should be in the game world. Where a lesser team (or, you know, the same team in later installments as they got less focused on this bit) might have obscured vantage points in order to minimize player interrogation of the logic of their world, Miyazaki's team went a lightyear beyond. I often praise the world design in this game in the simplest way possible: I can close my eyes and walk through the entirety of the Lordran map and it makes perfect sense.
The environmental storytelling Dark Souls employs is excellent and a real show of how the medium of video games can uniquely engage a player in narrative. Instead of just trying to balance gameplay and narrative elements (though, as I said, Dark Souls does this elegantly and simply with an in-universe justification for repeated deaths in the hollowing mechanic), Dark Souls takes on the challenge of exploring how a player can interact with a story in a way a reader or a listener or a viewer couldn't. To once again compare Dark Souls to its successors, it ties this staggering amount of lore to engage with to a fairly simple fantasy story. You have clear goals at all times: get past this guy who's guarding the jail you're in; ring these two bells; find these four lords; link the flame or, if you found a hidden NPC, refuse to. Because Dark Souls knows that despite well-crafted lore and a straightforward plot, you as the player will have endless opportunities to generate your own experience and tale of navigating Lordran and overcoming its obstacles.
It's telling that the biggest criticism levied at Dark Souls is that its second half after placing the Lordvessel isn't quite as polished and complete as its first half. I can't think of many games where their biggest flaw is that they don't continue to be perfect and settle for being excellent. I find the level of dread I feel in Tomb of the Giants to be a big addition to its appeal (not to mention its open-ended puzzle structure where you can either find a way to light the way by being in-tune with the game's logic or just trial and error your way down it). Duke's Archives has a deviously simple puzzle at its heart that is one of the best aha moments in games. New Londo Ruins's gimmick helps it to channel a great horror vibe. And Lost Izalith feels like a great late-game victory lap over enemies who were powerful enough to have their health bars splashed across the screen earlier in the game. Would I be ecstatic if there were ever an effort to bring them closer to the team's original vision for them? Hell yeah. But what we got is still better than most games, and it's telling that the standard they're set against is this game itself.
Ultimately, Dark Souls is a game and a series that has striven to stand out by being entirely its own entity. Its continued intrigue and success speak to the fruitfulness of making daring creative choices and trusting players to co-create art with designers.