Dark Souls III Has the Ethos of Rise of Skywalker
Bold new ideas give way to comforting nostalgia
Over the course of the 2010's, we were treated to a very noteworthy trilogy. A follow-up to an unexpected hit that resonated with tons of nerds, this trilogy wanted to recapture that feeling while also reaching a broad new audience. But there were some bumps along the way. The second part of this trilogy was, in many ways, a departure from the norm for this franchise, almost experimental at times. While it did not totally abandon the conventions that had been established, it tried a lot of new things. There were some, such as I, who appreciated this and felt it made the franchise as a whole stronger. But many hated these differences and demanded a return to comforting familiarity. And for better or worse, the third entry catered to those demands. I speak, of course, of the Dark Souls series.
I'm being somewhat facetious. For one, the first Dark Souls is a fantastic game, unlike the disappointing Force Awakens. Demon's Souls was a modest niche hit, not one of the most dominant film franchises of all time. And Dark Souls II, while I do quite enjoy it, is more of an interesting experiment rather than the unequivocal best entry in its series like The Last Jedi. But I do think this is a helpful frame for highlighting why I had a somewhat difficult time with the story of Dark Souls III when I finally had a computer powerful enough to play it.
Like the writers behind Rise of Skywalker, it seems like the developers of Dark Souls III made a conscious choice to walk back some of the more audacious story decisions from the second game, instead opting for a series of increasingly overt callbacks to the first game. They hug the familiar imagery, locations, names, and characters so tightly that at times it becomes baffling. It's to the point that, even excepting series regular Patches, there are two characters in the game who are literal carbon copies of characters from the first, from appearance to voice actor to basic function. I would say they did everything but hang up a sign at one point that reads “Remember Dark Souls?” but with the inclusion of one location and its requisite title card when you reach it, they basically did!
I'm getting ahead of myself though. First, we should discuss what actually happens in the stories of these games. In the broadest terms, the first game is about the fading Age of Fire and the coming Age of Dark. The central question here (if you can figure out there is a question at all, anyway) is whether you should sacrifice to extend the Age of Fire's life or whether it is better to let the First Flame die and embrace the Age of Dark. But then the second game, set far in the future, reveals that this choice is itself meaningless. The Ages of Fire and Dark cycle endlessly, the First Flame being sparked and smothered in turn over and over again in continuous decay. Only in the third game, when the world has become so worn and ragged that the Age of Fire's end can be delayed no longer, can we truly consider what comes next.
Those are the very broad strokes of what happens in those games, and in these terms I do think the transition from second to third works well. But the big scary goat demon is in the details. The cyclical decay of Dark Souls II and the meaninglessness of the choices offered in the first game were not just conveyed through the story as written, they were actively demonstrated in the world of the game. Though it takes place in the same world as the first game, time in its unceasing flow has rendered everything into new and unfamiliar forms. Great kingdoms have risen and fallen countless times between the first and second games, to the point that the events of the first game fell into legend and were forgotten. No one who lives remembers Gwyn, or Anor Londo, or Lordran, or any of the once-mighty figures who dominated Dark Souls.
As you might imagine, this is a source of some ire for some fans of the first game, but I think it's a smart and important step! These games are about trudging through the decaying ruins of civilizations, and the second game in particular is about how meaningless the pursuit of power and clinging to the past is. What better way to demonstrate that than taking the literal gods whose every action precipitated the events of the series, the towering figures you labored under the shadows of, and showing that their legacy is naught but dust and ash? There are some references to people and objects from the first game, but even then they usually come with an air of mystery and speculation, like no one can quite remember where they came from or why they were important. I'll admit some of these references can be a bit too cute, but on the whole I liked this aspect.
Even if you didn't care for this direction, though, think of the freedom it afforded the creators of Dark Souls III! It's now established that over the course of time everything is reduced to nothing and built back up again in strange and unfamiliar forms. No sequel is ever truly free of its predecessor, but Dark Souls II provided the perfect framework to push the boundaries, to experiment, to try new concepts! They could have made a radically new setting, a place teeming with new ideas and characters and places that fit the Dark Souls mold but expand on what we think of as belonging in one of these games! So did they?
Actually, kind of, yes! There are some fascinating things in the world of Dark Souls III. The Cathedral of the Deep shows the clear influence of the team's previous work on Bloodborne, adding an infusion of that game's gothic horror inflected with catholic aesthetics. The Angels and their Winged Knights are a tantalizing mystery, forcing the player to consider what force spawned such horrific beings. Their apparent connection to the pilgrims that dot the game's landscape only intensifies the mystery and horror.
And yet, despite these steps forward, the game is unavoidably backwards-facing. Anor Londo, Gwyn, all the figures of Dark Souls hang around this game's neck like a lodestone, a gravitational well so powerful that everything in the game inevitably bends towards it, in the end either clearly referencing some element of the first game or literally being the same thing. By the time you visit the grand cathedral of Anor Londo, the most memorable location of the first game, it is already clear how much of this game will be a nostalgia-fueled retread.
Which brings us neatly back to my original point. Everyone knows that Rise of Skywalker was a disaster, even to those who disliked Last Jedi. But I don't think it has yet been fully reckoned how much its terrible story decisions were caused by this animating ethos of returning to comforting nostalgia. The Last Jedi dared to suggest that what was important in Star Wars was the constellation of possibility it represented, how figures like Luke could fail but still inspire others rather than being the center of the universe themselves. Rise of Skywalker tried its best to stuff that all back in the closet, to create a familiar space adventure centered on familiar figures: Palpatine! Death Stars! Big space battles with Star Destroyers! But even if you don't like it, you can't simply ignore what your predecessor did. In trying so desperately to walk back Last Jedi's bold choices, Rise of Skywalker renders itself incoherent.
Which is not to say that Dark Souls III is nearly as badly mangled as Rise of Skywalker! In many respects, I quite enjoyed it! But have you noticed the inherent tension in how I've described it so far? It's a game that wants to be about finally letting go of a crumbling past and accepting what comes next instead that also constantly retreats into uncritical nostalgia for its own history. Much like Rise of Skywalker, it tries to cram as many familiar figures as it can into the game: Andre is your blacksmith! Siegward is pretty much literally just Siegmeyer again! A whole group of Artorias imitators! Lost Izalith! Anor Londo! All your old favorites are here! There's an essential incoherence here just as egregious as a story that wants to pass the torch to Rey and her new generation while refusing to let anything really grow or evolve past the original preset molds. It's a problem that goes beyond just my own disappointment they've betrayed my quixotic affection for Dark Souls II. Unlike Rise of Skywalker, it doesn't ruin the story being told here, but it does weaken it, at times severely.
Making a sequel is always a tricky proposition. How do you honor what people like about the original without just doing it again but bigger? There's a reason why “what's a sequel that's better than the original?” is a perennially interesting question, because the occasion itself is so rare. But if we're going to live in a world stuffed to the gills with sequels and remakes and reboots, it's worth noting that bringing creativity and a spark of life to a property is not impossible! To see a franchise reinvigorated with fresh ideas that challenge its assumptions and bring it in a new direction can be as exciting as something truly original. And that makes this poisonous ethos that demands a retreat from the direction when it's met with criticism or disappointment from some quarters so incredibly disheartening.
I know that expecting boldness or artistic integrity from what are, ultimately, corporate brands is a fool's errand. But hey, somehow things like The Last Jedi and Dark Souls II still got made in the first place. And no amount of apologetic nostalgia can stop these experiments from influencing the next person who iterates a work or a genre or a medium forward. Because that's the silver lining of fighting a beast like the Rise of Skywalker ethos: it's self-defeating. People think they want comforting nostalgia, and to some extent they do. But everyone gets tired of it eventually. And while you can paper over the tensions and churn out a Dark Souls III, turn the tensions high enough and it collapses into a Rise of Skywalker. When that time comes, it's the experimental entries people look to for how to bring it back to life. It's a reverse casino, where the house will always lose one day. Ironically enough, all it takes is time.