I read somewhere that the game’s director, Hidetaka Miyazaki, was intentionally abstruse because he wanted players to feel disjointed and confused. I’m not complaining, just noting the design choice. Put another way: the original Diablo had more going on, plot-wise. After the intro, any sense of narrative connection vanishes and the story’s what you make it, moving from one location to the next, clearing levels and taking on boss-style creatures that exist to serve up an object that unlocks the next level. A knight drops a body into your cell, and the body just so happens to contain a get-out-of-jail key. That’s where the game starts, in some northern asylum/prison.
Dark Souls is one of those games that snares obsessive-compulsive types: the completionist impulse to probe every dread-soaked pixel.Īs in Demon’s Souls, there’s an introduction video, this one playing the Manichaean light/dark creation myth card, culminating in a war between animist gods and dragons (the dragons lose), and something about the Undead more recently being locked up in the north. I made it as far as Sen’s Fortress playing a Warrior last weekend, then opted for a reboot to pull in the hidden items and rare drops I missed.
