I finally completed Dark Souls III [official site] last week, a world that I have been dipping in and out of between bouts of listlessness since its release in April last year. It didn’t grip me like the first revered Dark Souls, but it still made me sad to know it was all over. Where could I go now for my Souls fix? The answer, it turns out, is loads of places. The games industry is quietly reverberating with the series’ influence. From small games boasting “souls-like” combat, to bigger games doing weird things with death and player messages. Meanwhile, our PlayStation brethren got Nioh, which took the “pocket full o’ souls” idea and simply renamed them “Amrita”. There is a popular complaint that everything in the industry is now being compared to Dark Souls, and it’s easy to forget that games embraced difficulty and strangeness long before the Bed of Chaos made you weep with frustration. Nevertheless, the mechanics and the tone of Miyazaki’s magnum opus is leaking into games everywhere.

That there’s an influx of Soulsian disciples out there isn’t a problem to me. My problem is that they are learning all the wrong lessons. At least, they are neglecting the most important one. But first let’s look at what sly tricks are being lifted from the series, and who is lifting them. Read the rest of this entry »

Warning! There are plentiful spoilers ahead for all Dark Souls games.]

You’ll meet his acolytes first – giggling ogresses in matted, sagging corsets, their belts jingling with torture implements, and red-cloaked porters who shoulder cages full of chopped-up bone and flesh. Deep in Undead Settlement – an area you’ll reach, in a portentous reversal of a key moment from the original Dark Souls, when two gargoyles carry you down the cliff from Lothric Castle – you’ll find rooms hung with carcasses, neatly bundled up in sackcloth for transportation.

Beyond that there’s the Road of Sacrifices, with its mutant carrion birds and its lone madwoman in rags armed with a butcher’s cleaver, a road that takes you via the Crucifixion Woods to the grounds of a befouled cathedral. And then there are his rings, obtained from the colossal fusions of wolf and spider which haunt that cathedral – magical artefacts that impart a little of the master’s terrible hunger to the wearer. Aldrich, Saint of the Deep. Aldrich the man-eater.

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Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock lizard for the past several months, you’ll know the wonderfully twisted and challenging action role-player Dark Souls returned to our PC telly boxes earlier this year. With series director Hidetaka Miyazaki reinstated at the (knight) helm, the third installment isn’t necessarily the best but is probably the most realised, and like its forerunners – and console cousins Demon’s Souls and Bloodborne – it’ll swallow you whole if you don’t know how to handle it. And even when/if you do it rarely shows mercy.

Out next week, Ashes of the Ariandel marks Dark Souls 3 [official site]’s first of two proposed DLCs before the series is laid to rest, which seems like a good time to explore the mods which might, just might, make reading the words YOU DIED over and over and over again that little bit easier to stomach. If not, they should at least help you have fun doing so. Git gud or die trying.

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Dark Souls has always been an incredibly obtuse series, and Dark Souls III [official site] is living up to that tradition beautifully. With a cast of characters who intersect your journey and a backpack full of indecipherable items, only the most observant players will be able to put together Dark Souls 3’s subtle clues to unlock the more interesting endings.

That’s where I come in. Armed with spoilerific knowledge, I’m going to cast back the mist and lay bare all of the ways your unkindled self can find some kind of resolution in the transitory lands of Lothric. Deciphering what each of these endings mean is going to be up to you, I’m just the one who will show you the way.

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Dark Souls III is a favourite here at RPS, but it hasn’t lit a fire in the hearts of the entire team. Recently, Alec jumped into the game, having observed the series from afar for some time, and shared his thoughts. He, Pip and Adam gathered to discuss the appeal of the series, and talked about its divergence from traditional RPG systems, the intimidation factor and the complicated nature of its much-debated difficulty.

Adam: Dark Souls III is probably going to be in my top three games of the year, despite the thousands of good games coming out this year. I’m continually surprised to see it selling quite as well as it does though, because so many people that I recommend the series to treat those recommendations as a form of sadism.

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When Dingle arrives at the circular ruins outside the old church, the first thing he sees is a man in a crown, holding a flaming torch – it is the man he must kill. But the crowned man shows no fear, he simply waves and beckons him over. Dingle is curious. He approaches with caution and looks into the grassy arena below, where he sees two dark spirits – red phantoms like himself – taking swings at each other. The man in the crown begins silently dropping glowing stones everywhere, one by one. There are two more red phantoms squatting on the stone ledge nearby, quietly watching the duel below.

Dingle (full name: Dingle Dongle) looks at the fight, then at the man he is supposed to kill, then at the spectators. Then he does something that more and more dark spirits in Lothric are doing. He puts his weapon away, he sits down and he waits his turn.

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