{"id":22,"date":"2017-10-31T03:42:53","date_gmt":"2017-10-31T03:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/thehomoludens\/?p=22"},"modified":"2017-10-31T03:42:53","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T03:42:53","slug":"prepare-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/thehomoludens\/2017\/10\/31\/prepare-to-die\/","title":{"rendered":"Prepare to Die"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"DARK SOULS : Bartholomew Trailer\" width=\"525\" height=\"295\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/93LFz_j5fQA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>While <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Demon's_Souls\">Demon\u2019s Souls<\/a> (2009) served as a proof of concept for a new genre of RPG, it was From Software\u2019s spiritual sequel <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dark_Souls\">Dark Souls<\/a> (2011) that established the Souls brand and the Souls-like subgenre of RPGs.\u00a0 As the name may have given away though, the defining features of the \u201cSouls-like\u201d genre is based on similarity to the From Software Souls games.\u00a0 The term is as nebulous as the rogue-like genre, based on <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rogue_(video_game)\">Rogue <\/a>(1988), and while there are certain specific mechanical similarities players of souls-like games expect, the genre is rather defined by how these mechanics come together to create a specific emotional arc of player experience.<\/p>\n<p>So what is it that defines a Souls game; what is the soul of a souls-like?\u00a0 The first word you\u2019ll hear from ten thousand mouths is difficulty\u2014Souls games have a reputation for being extremely punishing or difficult.\u00a0 Players tend to be fragile and often have limited means to defend against attacks that can kill them in a single hit.\u00a0 Sometimes enemies are hidden around corners or positioned to fatally ambush players.\u00a0 As a result, the Dark Souls lived up to its \u201cPrepare to Die\u201d advertising tagline.\u00a0 However, that isn\u2019t to say that the difficulty isn\u2019t fair.<\/p>\n<p>There is a palpable sense of fair play in all Souls games.\u00a0 Death is handled in a very particular way in Souls-like games.\u00a0 Many games require players to start over from a previous save when they die.\u00a0 Death is considered a failure state in the game.\u00a0 In a souls-like, death is little more than a setback.\u00a0 Players are returned to the last bonfire they rested at (a form of checkpoint) with all of their equipment and possessions.\u00a0 They don\u2019t get to keep the treasure\/currency they collected from the enemies they killed before dying.\u00a0 In order to get those resources back, the player must return to the location the last died and recover the treasure from their own bloodstain.\u00a0 All the enemies they fought are reset to their original locations. \u00a0So enemies are extremely powerful, but their attacks are limited and predictable.\u00a0 Players frequently die in ambushes, but they\u2019ll be ready for them when they come back for their bloodstain.<\/p>\n<p>So the play loop consists of slowly dying your way through the level, slowly learning its layout and learning how to survive its monsters.\u00a0 Each failure, each death, is a learning experience.\u00a0 It places players back a few steps and says, \u201ctry again.\u201d\u00a0 The only way to lose a Souls-like is stop playing.\u00a0 This makes up the core emotional loop in playing a Souls-like game, however, they further elaborate on this loop by distilling a version of these loops into concentrated forms with boss fights.<\/p>\n<p>Boss fights in a souls-like are defined by the same features as the rest of the game, but bigger, unique, and more powerful.\u00a0 Players must learn the behavior of each boss enemy, their attack patterns, how they telegraph certain attacks, when to time dodges, and generally how to defeat them\u2026 usually while dying over and over again.\u00a0 This is the same process of dying over and over before overcoming a significantly more powerful foe.<\/p>\n<p>These are the mechanical features of a souls-like, but as I mentioned earlier, it\u2019s more important to the genre what effect these features have on player experience.\u00a0 What is that effect?\u00a0 Players with the determination to navigate to the end of an area and defeat the boss enemy there, they\u2019re left with a massive sense of accomplishment.\u00a0 They managed to make it to this point alone, unaided except by their own wit, grit, and fast reflexes.<\/p>\n<p>This sense of accomplishment is especially heightened by the fantastic nature and scale of boss enemies.\u00a0 The game rewards persistence and simple memorization, even if players aren\u2019t particularly skilled.\u00a0 Remember that souls-likes are a subgenre of the RPG, the Role Playing Game.\u00a0 This emotional loop rewarding persistence with the feeling of accomplishment is perfectly situated by From Software\u2019s minimalistic story in Dark Souls.\u00a0 The player character is a hero fulfilling an ancient prophecy\u2014so the gameplay should make the player go through the emotional journey of becoming that hero.\u00a0 And it does through the sense of accomplishment, finally succeeding where no mortal could have.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the genius of this move in Dark Souls specifically, however, is that while the game does not technically punish the player for abandoning it (leaving it unbeaten, and reaching the closest thing to a lose state) it does contextualize that player choice in the world of the videogame.\u00a0 The reason the player can be killed over and over again without serious issue is because they are undead\u2014which is nothing special because everyone in the world is cursed with being undead.\u00a0 All of the otherwise ordinary fantasy heroes the player meets in game are undead too.\u00a0 The undead flock to the game\u2019s setting in the hope that they are the \u201cchosen undead.\u201d\u00a0 But the undead characters are always talking about \u201chollowing.\u201d\u00a0 While the undead cannot truly die, they can still \u201cgive up\u201d and go hollow.\u00a0 They let go of everything that made them motivated, caring, rational beings with identities.\u00a0 They warn the player repeatedly not to \u201cgo hollow\u201d on them.\u00a0 The player even gets to see some of these characters go hollow themselves, slowly losing hope in their various personal quests.\u00a0 The implication seems to be that if they player does abandon the game, their player-character simply went hollow like so many other unfortunate undead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While Demon\u2019s Souls (2009) served as a proof of concept for a new genre of RPG, it was From Software\u2019s spiritual sequel Dark Souls (2011) that established the Souls brand and the Souls-like subgenre of RPGs.\u00a0 As the name may have given away though, the defining features of the \u201cSouls-like\u201d genre is based on similarity &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/thehomoludens\/2017\/10\/31\/prepare-to-die\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Prepare to Die&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8693,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1997,1218573,1223459],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-game-design","tag-play-feeling","tag-player-choice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/thehomoludens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/thehomoludens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/thehomoludens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/thehomoludens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8693"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/thehomoludens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/thehomoludens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/thehomoludens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions\/23"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/thehomoludens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/thehomoludens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/thehomoludens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}