Dark Souls | |
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Genre(s) | Action role-playing |
Developer(s) | FromSoftware |
Publisher(s) | Bandai Namco Entertainment |
Creator(s) | Hidetaka Miyazaki |
Composer(s) |
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Platform(s) | PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch |
First release | Dark Souls September 22, 2011 |
Latest release | Dark Souls: Remastered May 24, 2018 |
Dark Souls [lower-alpha 1] is a dark fantasy action role-playing game series developed by FromSoftware and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. Created by Hidetaka Miyazaki, the series began with the release of Dark Souls (2011) and has seen two sequels, Dark Souls II (2014) and Dark Souls III (2016). It has received critical acclaim, with its high level of difficulty being among its most discussed aspects, while the first Dark Souls is often cited as one of the greatest games of all time. The series had shipped over 35 million copies outside of Japan as of 2023 [update] . Other FromSoftware games, including Demon's Souls , Bloodborne , Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice , and Elden Ring , share several related concepts and led to the creation of the Soulslike subgenre.
The games take place within the land of Lordran, where the player's character fights against knights, dragons, phantoms, demons, and other monstrous or supernatural entities. The accretion, loss, and recovery of souls are central to the narrative and gameplay of Dark Souls games. These games are linked through their setting and an overarching cyclic narrative centering around fire, and are linked through common themes and elements, including interactions with phantoms and battles with demons. At the end of each game, characters may reignite the "first flame" or allow it to fade, recurring a choice others have made before.
The Dark Souls games are played in a third-person perspective, and focus on exploring interconnected environments while fighting enemies with weapons and magic. Players battle bosses to progress through the story, while interacting with non-playable characters. The protagonist of each Dark Souls game can have a varying gender, appearance, name, and starting class via character creation. Players can choose between classes, including knights, barbarians, thieves, and mages. Each class has its own starting equipment and abilities that can be tailored to the player's experience and choices as they progress. The player gains souls from gameplay battles which act as both experience points to level up and as currency to buy items. Souls gained are usually proportional to the difficulty of fighting certain enemies; the more difficult an enemy, the more souls the player will gain from defeating it.
One of the core mechanics of the series is the use of how it handles progress, death, and player improvement. Bonfires serve as a checkpoint within the series, restoring all health and other critical resources when used, but also respawning most enemies and obstacles, making repeated trips back to safety untenable for forward progress. Upon losing all of their health points and dying, players lose their souls and appear back at the bonfire where they last rested. If the player can return to their point of death, their bloodstain, without dying again, they can regain all lost souls. [1] If the player dies again before reaching their bloodstain, the souls are permanently gone. [1] Notably, using a bonfire manually and respawning at one after death have identical effects, save for the player losing their currency at their place of death, which can be retrieved with no penalty. In this way the player is encouraged to not fear death, as no progress is lost so long as they can learn from their mistakes.[ citation needed ] As the player retraces their steps after death, they will naturally defeat more enemies, gaining more souls and allowing their character to gain experience alongside the player themselves.
Online interaction in the Dark Souls games is integrated into the single-player experience. Throughout areas of the game, players can briefly see the actions of other players as ghosts in the same area that may show hidden passages or switches. When a player dies, a bloodstain can be left in other players game world and when activated can show a ghost playing out their final moments, indicating how that person died and potentially helping other players online to avoid the same fate in advance. Players can leave messages on the ground that can help other players with tips and warnings. Multiplayer can be engaged in both player versus player combat and cooperative gameplay using invasion or summoning mechanics. [2] [3] Players can also rely on covenants, which serve as "factions" that can allow players to delve further into the multiplayer experience.
2011 | Dark Souls |
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2012 | |
2013 | |
2014 | Dark Souls II |
2015 | |
2016 | Dark Souls III |
Dark Souls is the first game in the series; it is considered a spiritual successor to Demon's Souls (2009). [4] [5] FromSoftware wanted to develop a sequel to Demon's Souls, but Sony's ownership of the intellectual property prevented them from doing so on other platforms. [6] It was released in 2011 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. [7] In 2012, Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition was released for Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, featuring the base game and the Artorias of the Abyss downloadable content. [8] The game takes place in the fictional kingdom of Lordran. Players assume the role of a cursed human character who sets out to discover the fate of undead humans like themselves. The plot of Dark Souls is primarily told through environmental details, in-game item flavor text, and dialogue with non-playable characters (NPCs). Players must piece together clues in order to understand the story, rather than being told the story through more traditional means, such as through cutscenes. Dark Souls and its predecessor Demon's Souls garnered recognition due to the series' high level of difficulty. [2] [9] [10] [11] A version featuring some graphical and gameplay enhancements, Dark Souls: Remastered , was released in May 2018. [12]
Dark Souls II was first announced in late 2012 during the Spike Video Game Awards. This is the only game in the series where director Hidetaka Miyazaki did not reprise his role, although he was still involved in supervision. [13] [14] It was released in 2014 for Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. [15] In 2015, an updated version featuring The Lost Crowns downloadable content was released for Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, under the title Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin [16] - with the latter two platforms receiving retail releases. [17] The game takes place in the kingdom of Drangleic, where the player must find a cure for the undead curse. [3] Although set in the same universe as the previous game, there is no direct story connection to Dark Souls. [18]
Dark Souls III was released in 2016 for Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. [19] The gameplay is paced faster than previous Souls installments, [20] which was attributed in part to the gameplay of Bloodborne . [21] The game takes place in the kingdom of Lothric, where the player must end the cycle of linking the Flame. In 2017, the complete version containing the base game and both expansions (Ashes of Ariandel and The Ringed City) was released, under the title Dark Souls III: The Fire Fades Edition. Dark Souls III was both critically and commercially successful, with critics calling it a worthy and fitting conclusion to the series. It sold over 10 million copies by 2020, making it the fastest-selling game in Bandai Namco's history at the time [22] [23] (until the record was beaten by Elden Ring). [24] In 2015, Miyazaki said that Dark Souls III would likely be the last of the series, with FromSoftware choosing to move onto new games of unrelated IPs in the future. [25]
A comic book by Titan Comics based on the series debuted alongside the release of Dark Souls III in 2016. [26] A Kickstarter campaign for a licensed board game by Steamforged Games, Dark Souls – The Board Game , was also announced around the same time. [27] The campaign was funded within the first three minutes of its launch and was released in April 2017. [28] [29]
In February 2017, music from the series by Motoi Sakuraba was performed by a live orchestra at the Salle Pleyel concert hall in Paris. [30] In September of that year, a limited edition vinyl box set containing the soundtracks of all three games was released in Europe. [31] In Japan, a box set containing the enhanced versions of all three games for the PlayStation 4, the soundtracks for each, bookends, artwork prints, and dictionaries detailing every in-game item was released on May 24, 2018. [32]
Released in 2009 for the PlayStation 3, Demon's Souls is considered the spiritual predecessor to the Dark Souls series. [33] [34] It has also been described as a spiritual successor to the King's Field series of games, [4] [35] while at the same time being described as a separate entity "guided by differing core game design concepts." [36] It also drew inspiration from video games such as Ico , [37] [38] The Legend of Zelda , [36] and FromSoftware's Otogi: Myth of Demons , [39] as well as manga such as Berserk , Saint Seiya and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure . [40]
Unlike its successors, Demon's Souls uses a central hub system known as the "Nexus" where players can level up, repair equipment, or buy certain items, before venturing into one of the five connected worlds. The "World Tendency" feature is also exclusive to Demon's Souls, where the difficulty of exploring a world is dependent on how many bosses have been killed, and how the player dies. The gameplay involves a character-creation system and emphasizes gathering loot through combat with enemies in a non-linear series of varied locations. It had an online multiplayer system integrated into single-player, in which players could leave messages and warnings for other players' worlds, as well as join other players to assist and/or kill them. After FromSoft extended the server's lifecycle past the original 2011 shutdown date, the multiplayer component was finally taken offline in early 2018. [41]
The King's Field series, also developed by FromSoftware, is considered a spiritual predecessor to the series. It debuted in 1994 with King's Field for the PlayStation and had three sequels. [4] [35]
In February 2016, Bandai Namco Entertainment partnered with American retailer GameStop to release Slashy Souls , a free-to-play mobile endless runner, to promote Dark Souls III. The game was presented in a pixel art style, and shares the series' level of difficulty. [42] The game was met with highly negative critical reception, [43] with reviewers such as Chris Carter of Destructoid and Jim Sterling both giving the game a 1/10. [44] [45]
Game | Year | Metacritic |
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Dark Souls | 2011 | PC: 85/100 [46] PS3: 89/100 [47] X360: 89/100 [48] |
Dark Souls II | 2014 | PC: 91/100 [49] PS3: 91/100 [50] X360: 91/100 [51] |
Dark Souls III | 2016 | PC: 89/100 [52] PS4: 89/100 [53] XONE: 87/100 [54] |
Dark Souls: Remastered | 2018 | NS: 83/100 [55] PC: 84/100 [56] PS4: 84/100 [57] XONE: 87/100 [58] |
The Dark Souls series has been met with critical acclaim, with the first game often being cited as among the greatest video games of all time. [59] [60] [61] [62]
The "bloodstain" gameplay mechanic has been given praise by critics. David Craddock of Shacknews called them one of the core tenets of the series. [63] He stated that the harshest punishment one can receive in a Souls game is "not dying once, but twice." [63] GamesRadar+ called bloodstains, in combination with Demon Souls's message system, "a graceful, elegant way of letting players guide each other without the need for words", and said that "rarely has the price of failure been balanced on such a precarious knife edge" as being forced to retrieve one's bloodstain. [64]
The bonfire concept was similarly praised. Matthew Elliott of GamesRadar+ called bonfires a powerful symbol of relief, and "a meaty cocktail of progress, exhaustion and joy", [65] and that, while other games evoke emotions with their save points, no other game does so as effectively. [65] Vice called the Bonfire a "mark of genius" that "reinvented the save point" and allowed the player to reflect on their progress. [66]
As of March 2023 [update] , the Dark Souls series had shipped 35.18 million copies outside of Japan. [67] Dark Souls III broke sales records upon release, selling over three million copies worldwide by May 2016 and was Bandai Namco's fastest-selling game until being surpassed by Elden Ring in 2022. [68] [69]
The Soulslike genre was inspired by common features of the series, resulting in many games using similar mechanics. Other FromSoftware games directed by Miyazaki, such as Demon's Souls, Bloodborne , [70] [71] Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice , [72] and Elden Ring , [73] share many of the same concepts of Souls and are often associated with the series and grouped under the "Soulsborne" label. [74] [75] [76] [77]
The series has also been cited as an influence on several PlayStation Network features, including asynchronous messaging, social networking, and video sharing, [78] as well as for the television show Stranger Things . [79]
Soulcalibur is a weapon-based 3D fighting game developed by Project Soul and produced by Namco. It is the second game in the Soulcalibur series, preceded by Soul Edge. Originally released in arcades on July 30, 1998, it ran on the Namco System 12 hardware, and was ported to the Dreamcast console in 1999 with new features and improved graphics.
FromSoftware, Inc. is a Japanese video game development and publishing company. It was founded by Naotoshi Zin in Tokyo on November 1, 1986. Initially a developer of business software, the company released their first video game, King's Field, for the PlayStation in 1994. Its success shifted FromSoftware to focus fully on games, with them producing two more King's Field games before the first release of the mecha shooter series Armored Core in 1997.
Soulcalibur IV is a 2008 fighting video game developed by Project Soul and published by Namco Bandai Games for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It is the fifth installment in the Soulcalibur series, featuring greatly improved visuals over its predecessor and three playable guest characters from the Star Wars franchise. It is also the first Soulcalibur game to not receive an arcade version.
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Demon's Souls is a 2009 action role-playing game developed by FromSoftware for the PlayStation 3 under the supervision of Japan Studio. It was published in Japan by Sony Computer Entertainment in February, in North America by Atlus in October, and in PAL territories by Namco Bandai Partners in June 2010. The game is referred to as a spiritual successor to FromSoftware's King's Field series.
Dark Souls is a 2011 action role-playing game developed by FromSoftware and published by Namco Bandai Games. A spiritual successor to FromSoftware's Demon's Souls, the game is the first in the Dark Souls series. The game takes place in the kingdom of Lordran, where players assume the role of a cursed undead character who begins a pilgrimage to discover the fate of their kind. A port for Windows featuring additional content, known as the Prepare to Die Edition, was released in August 2012. It was also released for consoles under the subtitle Artorias of the Abyss in October 2012.
Dark Souls II is a 2014 action role-playing game developed by FromSoftware. The second installment of the Dark Souls series, it was released for Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 by FromSoftware in Japan and Bandai Namco Games internationally. Taking place in the kingdom of Drangleic, the game follows a cursed undead character searching for a cure to their affliction. Dark Souls II was released in March 2014 after some initial delays, with the Windows version being released the following month.
Bloodborne is a 2015 action role-playing game developed by FromSoftware and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 4. Bloodborne follows a Hunter through the decrepit Gothic, Victorian-era–inspired city of Yharnam, whose inhabitants are afflicted with a blood-borne disease which transforms the residents, called Yharnamites, into horrific beasts. Attempting to find the source of the plague, the player's character unravels the city's mysteries while fighting beasts and cosmic beings.
Hidetaka Miyazaki is a Japanese video game director, designer, writer, and president of the game developer FromSoftware. He joined the company in 2004 and was a designer for the Armored Core series before receiving wider recognition for creating the Dark Souls series. Miyazaki was promoted to company president in 2014 and also serves as its representative director. Other similar games he has directed include Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring.
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Dark Souls II: The Lost Crowns is a set of three downloadable content packs for the 2014 action role-playing game Dark Souls II. The first of the trio, Crown of the Sunken King was released in July 2014 and was followed by Crown of the Old Iron King in August and Crown of the Ivory King in September. The DLC, developed by FromSoftware and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, were met with positive reception and drew praise for returning to the complex interlocking and looping level design of Dark Souls.
Dark Souls III is a 2016 action role-playing game developed by FromSoftware and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows. The third and final entry in the Dark Souls series, the game follows an unkindled character on a quest to prevent the end of the world. It is played in a third-person perspective, and players have access to various weapons, armour, magic, and consumables that they can use to fight their enemies. Hidetaka Miyazaki, the creator of the series, returned to direct the game after handing the development duties of Dark Souls II to others.
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The bonfire is a place of rest and form of in-game checkpoint for the player character in the Dark Souls series of action role-playing games created by Hidetaka Miyazaki and Japanese developers FromSoftware. Making its debut in the 2011 video game Dark Souls and reappearing in its sequels, Dark Souls II and Dark Souls III, bonfires take the appearance of a pile of ash and bones pierced by a coiled sword and emitting an orange flame. Bonfires, which are scattered across many areas, serve as both a means to save in-game progress and as a utility area for leveling up, repairing gear, and replenishing a player's health, magic, and healing items, or "Estus Flasks". Resting at a bonfire will respawn most enemies, and, upon their death, players will return to the last one they previously used. According to Miyazaki, it was meant not only to serve utilitarian purposes but also be an area to relax in an otherwise harsh fantasy world.
Anor Londo is a fictional city in the Dark Souls series of action role-playing games. Appearing in both Dark Souls and Dark Souls III, it is the seat of the power of the gods, deities of the Dark Souls world who used the power of the First Flame to destroy the Everlasting Dragons that once controlled it. By the time of Dark Souls, however, it has become an abandoned lost city, as Lord Gwyn had long since sacrificed himself to rekindle the fading First Flame. Anor Londo has been cited by critics for its design as well as the level's high difficulty, including a section guarded by two powerful archers, and the level's final boss duo, Ornstein and Smough.
Elden Ring is a 2022 action role-playing game developed by FromSoftware. It was directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki with worldbuilding provided by American fantasy writer George R. R. Martin. It was published for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on February 25 in Japan by FromSoftware and internationally by Bandai Namco Entertainment. Set in the Lands Between, players control a customizable player character on a quest to repair the Elden Ring and become the new Elden Lord.
The Game Award for Game of the Year is an award presented annually by the Game Awards. It is given to a video game judged to deliver the best experience across creative and technical fields. The award is traditionally accepted by the game's directors or studio executives. The process begins with over 100 video game publications and websites, which collectively name six games as nominees. After the nominees are selected, the winner is chosen by a combined vote between the jury (90%) and public voting (10%).
A Soulslike is a subgenre of action role-playing games known for high difficulty level and emphasis on environmental storytelling, typically in a dark fantasy setting. It had its origin in Demon's Souls and the Dark Souls trilogy by FromSoftware, the themes and mechanics of which directly inspired several other games. The "Soulslike" name has been adopted by a number of critics and developers. However, there have also been questions whether it is a true genre or a collection of shared mechanics. A subset of these games, named Soulsborne, refer to most of the Soulslike games developed by FromSoftware.