I’ve been playing a lot of Salt and Sanctuary, a game that takes the Dark Souls formula and translates it almost verbatim into 2D. It’s a good game, don’t get me wrong, but the list of things that aren’t straight-up copies of Dark Souls is short. So far the only differences I’ve noticed are the perspective (obviously), the character/weapon progression systems, some added generic NPCs.
Again, it’s not a bad game at all, but it did make me think about the effect Dark Souls has had on games. While Salt and Sanctuary seems to have decided the best answer is to take pretty much everything, the entire industry seems to have taken note of Souls’ success.
And the message the industry is taking is unsurprisingly kinda off-base. The biggest thing I’ve seen is the “git gud” meme taken non-ironically. More difficult games on the market are a good thing, that said, it’s a difficult thing to get right, and it’s something even Souls screws up here and there.
The trick to a good difficult game is to make it feel honest. When you die, you should feel like you know why you lost, and have some ideas to do better. The player should always be getting better, and there should be no cheap shots. Sudden out-of-nowhere deaths are anathema to getting difficulty right, but unfortunately that’s the easiest thing to do, so it’s what’s gonna happen the most.
The other one that devs are trying and I expect will continue to try is the boss fights. I don’t have a ton to say on the matter, as it’s not like impressive boss fights are new, but there are bits and pieces to learn from. Most of this ties in to what I’ve already said on difficulty and not taking cheap shots.
Probably the third most obvious thing about the Souls series is the narrative style. Item descriptions, conversations, boss design, all hint at a story without actually telling you most of it. While I do enjoy it well enough, I do fear that devs are going to use it as an excuse to be obtuse and vague without actually having a real detailed picture to work from. I dunno how that’ll turn out in practice, but I can’t decide if that would be more or less annoying than beating the player over the head with a stupid plot. Probably less, now that I write that out, so to devs without great writers, I say: go for it.
But what else should devs learn from Souls? Well, I’ve seen a good case for the intricate level design of the first Dark Souls, and I have to agree. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of coming out of a door that you’d seen but not unlocked, or kicking a ladder down into an old bonfire room. And I could go on about the willingness to hide entire zones in such a way that most players won’t even find it without help. There are very few games that capture that feeling, and Salt and Sanctuary seems to be one of them. Unfortunately, one thing lost in the perspective change is the feeling of seeing an area in the distance and knowing you can probably get there.
Another part of Dark Souls that has always stuck with me is the ludonarrative consistency. Everything in the Souls games fits with the narrative. Death, every item, every statistic, currency, and even the multiplayer are all explained in a consistent in-game manner. It’s honestly quite remarkable. This is one I sincerely doubt is going to be replicated. It takes a lot of thought and careful examinations of the limitations of what you’re doing and what you’re trying to say, and it seems unlikely that most will put in the effort. Prove me wrong, though, devs. Please.
The one that I really wish more games would take from, though, is the rythmic nature of combat in the games. Boss fights especially almost seem like dancing, as most of them stick to a consistent tempo. Honestly, I think that it’s worth investigating a more explicit combat-rythm game, though I’m not aware of any. It might very well exist, and I’d love to see it.
But enough about what Souls does right, what can we learn from it doing wrong? The one thing that’s always stuck out to me about Dark Souls is the sorta-wonky input. I don’t know if it’s just the PC version or what, but I’ve often struggled against the oddities of their control system. In particular, the input queueing is bizarre. I’ve died countless times to the character deciding to do an action in response to a button press I made seconds before. It even sometimes allows me to do other things in between! I don’t know if it’s a bug or what, and honestly I haven’t played enough of II and III (yet) to know for certain if they fixed it, but it’s just enough to pull me out of the gameplay in times when I should be the most invested.
I’m sure there’s plenty more to say and examine, but I’m calling it here for now. This is really just a brain-dump of what I’ve been struck by while playing, and I’m not a professional game designer, I’m just a guy who puts way too much thought into everything. I’d love to see more critical examinations of the series and its influences by someone more qualified than me.
Who knows, I might (probably will) come back to this later. It’s certainly something that I like mulling over.