Have patience, ask for help, and you will succeed
Dark Souls has spawned a litany of memes over the past seven years, including “praise the sun,” “the Dark Souls of,” and a rather important one that’s worth dissecting: “prepare to die.”
Marketing for the Souls series relied heavily on the “this game is too hard for you” mantra, which simultaneously drew people in and turned many away. For seven years fans have debated the merits of the series with the latter group, and slowly but surely, turned them toward the light. With the Switch network test for Dark Souls: Remastered behind us I’ve seen a lot of the same chatter spark up, with a lot of unhappy Nintendo-only people chiming in with the same sentiment that the below commercial perpetuates: “Souls is only hard for the sake of it.” But distilling Souls down to one quality is reductive.
Director Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team at From Software relied on decades of experience to craft a well-oiled machine that demands patience. Sure, there are times where you’ll want to smash your Switch against the wall into a million tiny pieces like the guy below. But if you cast aside your pride and ask for help, you could very well overcome that bump in the road, achieve your own personal miniature nirvana, and use that knowledge to forge ahead, conquer similar hurdles, and help others in turn. It’s what the series is all about and I hope that you’re able to take that journey with the rest of us if you haven’t already (with the obvious caveat that the Switch port actually runs well from start to finish).
Dark Souls: Remastered will launch on October 19 on Switch. Previously it was released in 2011 on PS3 and Xbox 360, before moving to PC in 2012, then the PS4 and Xbox One earlier this year in remastered form.
