Is Dark Souls the Pokémon of modern gaming?

The phrase ‘just like Dark Souls’ is a cliché, dull phrase that has been bandied about far too often. Gamers will rightfully groan when they hear these terms, as Dark Souls gets compared to increasingly unrelated and nonsensical games such as Crash Bandicoot and Cuphead. 

 

Is there more between Dark Souls and Pokemon than we think? Source: in-game screenshot

However, artistically, Dark Souls means and reveals a lot, and its effect on different players is profound. As a cultural phenomenon, Dark Souls is a game more than worthy of examination; in fact, its tropes parallel many other games including, unusually and controversially, Pokémon Red and Blue for the original Game Boy.

It may seem ludicrous at first to suggest this, but the original versions of Pokémon have a lot more in common thematically and design-wise with Dark Souls than one would think. There are many tropes in common between the two that are executed in an eerily-similar way. 

One of the most striking parallels between Pokémon and Dark Souls is in the way the open world is administered to the player. In Dark Souls, players begin with relatively few places to go in Lordran, but there are also areas where low-level, first-time players aren’t recommended to visit (the graveyard and catacombs). Additionally, free form exploration in Dark Souls is gated organically and appropriately by the game’s design and pacing. Shortcuts soon begin to open and allow easy traversal across the world, in interesting ways that reveal a kind of elegance in the map design. This gives the world of Dark Souls an authentic, memorable feel. On the same note, Kanto in Pokémon Red and Blue does many things similarly; free form exploration is allowed and designed into the game, where there is an elegance to the design guiding the player along, where shortcuts across Saffron City, and between Vermillion City begin to criss-cross the player along the world’s geography engagingly, lending the world more of a natural feel rather than a series of levels to be overcome. The way in which Cinnabar Island can be accessed from Pallet Town, the beginning area of the game, is executed with an applaudable design. 

Instead of being a linear progression, exploration and geography in both Pokémon and Dark Souls are handled as both a storytelling medium and a player reward, and the result is that both maps are authentic and offer their own exposition into the logic of the worlds in which players of both games reside. 

Not only this, but the way in which the game mechanics are designed between the two titles are also similar; in Dark Souls, if you keep getting back up after each death, and getting as far as you can into each area, and if you keep levelling up when you can, eventually the player will gain enough skill to beat the area, or they will level up high enough to fight through with less difficulty; theoretically, the game rewards persistence in its design. Although there is a penalty in how players will lose their souls if they don’t retrieve them from the spot where they died last, they will never lose the level-ups that they have already gained. In the same way, this kind of persistence exists in Pokémon, though with the easier design of the game it’s seen to less of an extent. Players may be punished after a loss in that they lose half of their in-game money, their Pokémon never become weaker throughout the game; keep getting up and eventually you will prevail. 

In many gameplay tropes, in their designs and mechanics, Dark Souls and Pokémon seem to parallel; the open-world design, gated progression barriers, shortcuts and geography, and in the very way that persistence pays off. Indeed, both being based on RPG designs, both will have many tropes in common in more obvious ways than this as well, ways that I would rightfully be mocked for pointing out as they are such simple and obvious tropes as part of RPG gameplay to begin with. However, I think one of the most important comparison points between the two games is in how their stories’ theming and styles seem to exist in parallel to one another. 

Okay, it’s clear from the outset that the games are vastly different in their style and execution; one offering a brutal, violent world where swords clash and people get driven to insanity by their failures, and the other offering a more child-friendly experience where people are much more co-operative, cute creatures play with children and you get given money if your cute creature beats others in competitive battle.

However, it is in how both stories found meaning in their player base that the parallels become clearer; how in both games, player growth seems to be one of the central points driving the game forward. Just as Dark Souls is a different experience for the first playthrough, so is Pokémon.

As Pokémon is a coming-of-age tale about becoming independent and celebrating the joy of doing so, Dark Souls presents a tale of learning the harsh realities of living, but also celebrating one’s persistence despite this lesson. That the latter game came out at the same time many of those who experienced Pokémon Red and Blue as children were starting out on their adult lives is all too fitting with this parallel. The lessons that Dark Souls teaches are particularly applicable to the same generation of gamers which Pokémon was aimed at years before. 

I speak about how the theming of Pokémon applied well to its main audience in another post, but I also find it fitting that both tales are equally relatable to their audience’s lives at the times they were played. At its centre, Dark Souls presents a harsh, punishing reality, where it can often be difficult to continue and where one’s ultimate purpose in all of this is shrouded in mystery. Moreover, it throws brutal, punishing challenge into the mix, testing even the most patient of players. The risk of losing all your souls and the crushing feeling that erodes at your patience and sanity is ever-present in the game’s system. But beyond this, Dark Souls is a game that celebrates players’ persistence and rewards those who keep getting back up. This is even mentioned in an oft-quoted critical review by Michael Thomsen of The Slate, which stated that:  

“There is real beauty in Dark Souls. It reveals that life is more suffering than pleasure, more failure than success, and that even the momentary relief of achievement is wiped away by new levels of difficulty. It is also a testament to our persistence in the face of that suffering, and it offers the comfort of a community of other players all stuck in the same hellish quagmire. Those are good qualities. That is art. And you can get all of that from the first five hours of Dark Souls. The remaining 90 or so offer nothing but an increasingly nonsensical variation on that experience.”

At the time of Dark Souls’ release, this all coincided with a generation of gamers entering adulthood, and finding it a harsh wake-up call to life, where many feel increasingly purposeless and depressed in a world increasingly indifferent to their struggles, and where many feel their souls being crushed by the hard reality of modern living. But, much as Pokémon related a coming-of-age tale that celebrated the time when gamers were gaining their first tastes of independence, so too does Dark Souls present a tale that resonates with its audience’s lifestyles, and celebrates continued perseverance in the harsh, punishing reality of the world and fittingly reveals such persistence’s reward. 

Is Dark Souls the Pokémon of modern gaming? Of course, I wrote this question in jest, as a tongue-in-cheek prod to videogames media headlines that present any moderately-challenging game as a Souls-like. As such, the answer to this question is a lot more complicated. But look at the parallels in both games; in their game design and in how this presents a loop such that obstacles can always be overcome with repeated effort, to their narratives that are fitting and resonating stories for their audiences. Looking at this with an analytical eye, it is hard to outright deny that there is some merit in comparing Dark Souls and Pokémon, and in how their experiences parallel one another.