Indirect Story Telling and why it works in Dark Souls

Souce Story: Analyzing Narratives: Storytelling in Dark Souls by Steven “Kayos90”

 

There’s no doubt that games are capable of telling some of the best stories of our time, but some games do it so well that they leave entire communities ranting and raving over the story for months, even years after they’ve finished with the gameplay. Dark Souls is one of these wonders of modern story telling. But how does it achieve this level of renown, and how does this compare to other story driven games?

The first thing Dark Souls does right is it makes you fight for the lore. Every detail and fact can be questioned, reiterated and reinterpreted with every play-through, nothing is set in stone. Unlike some games that try to force an epic story on you with walls of text, every single piece of dialogue in Dark Souls is crafted to give you a tiny nibble of the big picture. There is no wasted space, and it is rare to see or hear anything that cannot be applied to the main story. Every enemy, ever item, where those items are, what their title is, even subtle similarities in the icon can change the way the lore works.

This isn’t the first example of this sort of storytelling. Valve has done amazing work in this area, especially with Half Life 2. It’s entirely possible that the fan base of Half Life could be buzzing about who the Combine really are or how the Gman operates if Episode 3 ever comes about, but that’s another article altogether. Dark Souls has done remarkably in this respect. Everything you need to figure out the entire story is available to you from the work “Go!”; if you fight for it. 

Something that needs to be noted is that all these interpretations of characters and events aren’t all correct. There exists a true, defined lore of the game, but From Software doesn’t release it. Why would they when hundreds of fans can spend thousands of hours playing and replaying and puzzling out details with the community? The fact that people will continually play a game so difficult it branded itself based upon it’s impossible challenges is a testament to the truly engaging and captivating nature of this indirect storytelling.