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Dark Souls, La Invención de Morel and the Role of Art in Society
Thoughts on my time with Dark Souls, the Painted World and the Novel of Adolfo Bioy Casares. Spoilers for Both
When I was in college, I used to play the game Dark Souls with my friend Dan. The game is known for being wickedly hard, but in my opinion, that was more a marketing gimic over anything else. Dark Souls is a game about patience: slowly learning the move sets of enemies, how to roll, dodge, use different weapon types,and avoid the repeated deaths that are the trademark of the franchise. This learning curve is often very frustratingly steep, causing players to give up on the game. This phenomena is reflected in-universe by the concept of “hollowing”. Since most humans in the universe of Dark Souls are undead, they cannot die. Instead, they gradually lose their memories and purpose, becoming little more than zombies. This is the implied fate of the player character when you stop playing the game.
Dan and I made it pretty far in Dark Souls, beating the first game and getting two thirds of the way through the second. We traded places every time we died, which was much more frequently for me than for Dan. Dan was good at Dark Souls, as he was at pretty much everything else: running, guitar, girls, school, and being a good person. I looked up to him like a brother, even when my failure to put “bros before…
