🏆 Dark Souls and Legacy

Hey you,

Today's Listening: Everything comes back to... 

This one is not for the faint of heart, but hey, it is Dark Souls we are talking.

There is a good chance that if you have more than one gamer friend, you have connection to somebody that has played a Souls games. It's like the Kevin Bacon effect.

Dark Souls has become one of those things. Like how Kleenex means tissue, and bandages are Band-aids.

Most genres are defined by a number of titles, like "Metroidvania" (Metroid and Castlevania), "Roguelike" (Rogue, Slay the Spire, Hades), "Bullethell" (Super Meat Boy, Enter the Gungeon, Ikaruga).

But the Souls genre is just...Dark Souls. There are very few games that have such a resounding impact on the industry as a whole. So many games are constantly compared to Souls games, and of course, many clones have been created.

While other genres often have other developers take the genre to new heights, the Souls genre has almost exclusively been progressed by FromSoftware themselves. They led the charge with Bloodborne, more Souls games, Sekiro and most recently Elden Ring. Each one has added some extra spice to the mix, but it is still the same recipe.

There is always a "bonfire", there is always the "healing flask", and there is always soul crushing difficulty. Each game makes reference to the others, both in gameplay and presentation. And so the FromSoft games all have a shared quality that makes the genre what it is.

And it is something that other games have a very hard time replicating.

There is a distinct feel that every FromSoft game has, something intangible but particularly palpable. I know when I'm playing a clone because it does not feel right.

This is what keeps fans in bated breath for the next game. The developers don't need to reinvent anything, they just need to give us more. And with every game they release, more hungry fans enter the fold.

But how did this start? Tune in next time 😉