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syzygyzip · 6 years

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Wolf Dreams a Video Game

This essay can be read on its own, though it is a continuation of another essay titled “A Matter of Some Ceremony”. Together these essays explore the psychological symbolism of Farron Keep and the creation myth of Dark Souls.

Taking the swamp as a liminal space, a threshold of unconsciousness, with the potential to infect. We know it is a threshold from its many doors, and its proximity to the Abyss. We know it is infectious from its adhesiveness and toxin. We’ve also seen that as Ghrus are more “removed” from the swamp, the higher up they go, the more technology and civility they seem to possess. So what’s the highest point available? A tall tower -- in actuality a support column of a former bridge to Lothric Castle. The tower’s only room contains the Old Wolf of Farron, who rules the Watch Dogs of Farron covenant. To reiterate, this covenant represents a truer retention of the same foundational principles from which the Abyss Watchers have diverged. So the covenant here represents the “heart” of the environment’s teaching. And indeed, getting to this point is plainly helpful for dealing with the initiation ordeal: if one gets some distance from the matter, “removing” oneself from the swamp of sorrow, and taking on an unattached, bird’s eye perspective, one can easily see where the three flames of initiation flicker from. This detachment from the senses, engendering their easier discernment and extinguishment, is probably reflective of the wolf’s inner state, seeing as it has given itself over to stillness.

The wolf has become like petrified wood. She has given so much of her blood to all her Artorian devotees. Everything that takes place on the floor above is her dream, which is the key to the rites of initiation.

What does the dream contain? It takes place on a ruinous segment of castle wall overlooking an endless ocean at twilight (more imagery suggesting the edge of consciousness). The first sight hereupon is a huge deteriorating stone monster walking in a circle. It is a Stray Demon in whom the fire has gone out entirely. On either side of the segment, we see lowered and locked gates, signifying a blockage. With a little resourcefulness and surefooting, we can walk a small ledge around one of these blockages. On the other side of the gate there are a number of sleeping soldiers, and at the end of the wall, a similarly incapacitated drake. Near the drake are two items: the lightning bolt and the dragoncrest shield, both invaluable for conquering dragons. At the blocked gate there is a pilgrim. If the bridge were not mostly demolished, he would reach Lothric, the seat of destiny. This is an important bit of context. The game informs us elsewhere that the entire world is folding toward Lothric; it is there that they are preparing a host capable of linking the fire. The full meaning and function of Lothric is another subject, and a very dense one, but for the purposes of this essay it’s necessary to establish the fundamental symbolism: that Lothric is the setting of some soon-arriving moment of revelation; it is an event which can be variously termed but is most succinctly described as the emergence of the Self.

So, as in any dream, first we are presented with the problem. We see the transcendent moment in the distance, and that it is unreachable. There is also a gate, which once led to that epochal seat, and is still guarded by a great monster. But the fire has gone out in this demon, who walks mindlessly in circles, and when provoked is only capable of vomiting boulders of rock. Critically, this Stray Demon has some unique animation when you attack its leg repeatedly: the leg crumbles, and then the other leg crumbles from the weight, and then the rocky demon is dragging itself around with its arms, carrying on the fight. Why is the demon in a degraded state? Is it because it is cut off from its purpose, and from the generative power of the Lothric moment? Or it might just be a matter of old age, because elsewhere we find the Old Demon King, last of his kind, also losing the final spark from his ancient embers.

Then, moving down the bridge away from Lothric, we find that shuttered gate against which a pilgrim has collapsed on the far side. This seems to restate the problem: that there is blockage of the channel which leads to the Self, but the fact that it is a pilgrim who is stopped here shows us that there is a striving. Curiously, through a purported texture fluke, this unique and functionless pilgrim is golden in color. This is a helpful image for our inventory, and will come up again a little later. The pilgrim is stuck on the side of the bridge with a typical, classically Dark Souls squad of hollow soldiers, who are dormant until roused by the lantern-carrier (the consciousness principle).

The Story of Lightning A few paces beyond the soldiers, at the bottom edge, there are the crucial bits of information: the dead drake, the dragon crest shield, and the lightning spell.

Now, to fully appreciate this scene we are going to have to get straight the symbolism of The Everlasting Dragons. They are not creatures, not like the Drakes we encounter in the game; their “stone scales” are but a metaphor. The Age of Dragons “preceded” the Age of Fire, because it was not in time at all; only with the advent of the flame and its flickering did the universe know discrepancy and time. Dragons are something like patterns within a pre-differentiated milieu of consciousness; prefigurations of form; informational structures not fully realizable within space and time. In countless world mythologies “the dragon is the animating principle of every place,” because it is from their generative matrix that our world derives. And the same likely applies to Dark Souls; one only needs to look at Ash Lake to see that the many world trees are all nourished by the dragon realm. Elsewhere, Drakes and Wyverns are the “distant kin” of dragons, as the game tells us; mere shadows; catachrestic images downloaded from a subtler order of being.

Back to the scene: the drake, the descendant reduction of a dragon, is apparently dead, it is still and stonelike. Next to it are two more images of the dragon, the shield adorned with a dragon crest, and the spell “Lightning Spear.” The spell is associated both with drakes (who have lightning as a breath weapon) and with the fall of everlasting dragons (Gwyn used lightning to rend apart their stone scales). But lightning is also a very elegant metaphor for dragons as a morphogenetic principle:

In those cases where electrical energy is transmitted without benefit of wires it inevitably follows the line of least resistance, creating its own pathways in much the same way that cracks do in a solid medium. Although we tend to think of the sudden and massive dissipation of energy in lightning as an “event” rather than a “thing,” it is revealed by photography to have a quite complex form, one that bears a marked resemblance to the branching systems of a great river. These energy patterns, if we may call them that, are the very converse of those formed in fractures in a solid medium; lightning is intensely active but of limited duration, whereas dislocation patterns, such as crackle-glaze, are persistent but a mere vestige of the activity that caused them. In other cases, however, where there is a constant supply of energy to a receptive medium the “paths of least resistance” can be converted into dissipative structures. (Wade p.175)

In the world of Dark Souls, spells are stories. So this Lightning Spear spell is the story of lightning. The reading of the story then is an event that produces a thing. But the “current” runs through all these variations. A converse relationship has been noted between the diffusion of the lightning and the dislocation patterns of cracking solids. Remember that at the opposite end of this tiny scene, there is a great rocky demon who can be made to shatter in a special way. Solid matter cannot forever bear the force of lightning; the animating impulse (the “Word” of lightning; the first-flame event) eventually results in degradation, and it is this entropy that permeates Dark Souls as an omnipresent adversary.

Born into the Drama

So what we are seeing here, in this Wolf’s dream, is a reference to the cosmogenetic moment. In microcosm we see the generation of the world, and its current condition, and that it is cut off from its full actualization (Lothric). As for the soldiers, who are somehow oblivious to it all, and are perhaps complicit in blocking “the pilgrim’s progress,” well, there are a number of ways to interpret that: an allegory for the tunnel-vision militarism of the Abyss Watchers, standing at a threshold accomplishing nothing; the masses under the thrall of maya, sustaining some social/material status quo despite ruin on every side; the multiplicity of the ashen one, the different facets (roles, character classes) which are brought into unifying purpose by the “call” of the lantern-holder.

What’s beautiful about Dark Souls is that its symbolic content can be appropriately interpreted on a cosmic level, or a personal level. (That is why the linking, or snuffing, of the first flame feels like both “this world has come to an end” and “I have come to an end.”) So we can also take this scene as a birth allegory; after all, the Stray Demon is the very first enemy visible to the player in Dark Souls 1, and the Dragon Crest Shield is the sister shield to the one held by Oscar of Astora, the character who initiated the entire saga by giving the player a key out of their cell (an image of a higher self calling the child forward from the womb). Getting born is a quite a traumatic thing, having suddenly to obey matter’s restrictions, and it is therefore quite tempting to “lower the gate” on the matter/mother issue, symbolized by the Demon of course, and leave it to its own cycles without addressing the problem of embodiment.

In addition to the two items that refer to the beginning of the saga, the scene itself resembles an early moment in the original Dark Souls. Reddit user peperib has discovered a visual correspondence between this bridge and the drake bridge from Dark Souls 1. This compounds the symbolism in a few ways. Foremost, the DS1 drake bridge is the first place the player confronts a dragon(oid), and it is the first major blocked passage. The drake sits above the Sunlight Altar, which is the source of the Lightning Spear miracle, (the same spell we find by this dead drake in DS3). Right before this tableau, the player meets the famous Knight Solaire who, in identifying the sun as “a magnificent father,” supplies another image of aspiration and emancipation, and mirrors the opening scene with Oscar. Altogether this sequence is one of the most iconic in Dark Souls, and its central image is the drake surrounding an inner fire.

Back on the wolf’s dream bridge, there is no fire in the stray demon. This crumbling demon resembles the crumbling tower, and the crumbling kingdom at large. According to the Gnostics, wisdom is held within matter. If it is not engaged with, if we cut ourselves off from it, of course it falls to ruin. The Abyss Watchers are so frightened of the entropic march of matter that they have doubled down on their aggression against it: they have forgotten that Artorias held a shield, and so instead they wield two blades. But of course there is one Watcher who has a shield – the deserter, Hawkwood, the only Watcher with a face and a personality. His retention of his shield is highly loaded, given that it was Artorias’ shield that protected Sif against the violence of the abyss-corrupted primordial man Manus. In preserving his shield, Hawkwood also preserves the Artorias myth as a living reality. A Bridge Between Swamp and Summit

Hawkwood is one of several clues that ties Farron Keep to Archdragon Peak, and I believe it is this peak to which the old wolf of Farron attempts to direct us through dream language. Archdragon Peak is an area predicated on stillness. It is full of quiet and emptiness, and dragon initiates in a meditative posture who have turned to stone. It is something like an image of knowledge of the void. It is the understanding that in the chaotic, undifferentiated Abyss there is the inevitability of renewal:

“In effect, the ascent of a stairway or a mountain in a dream or a waking dream signifies, at the deepest psychic level, an experience of “regeneration” (the solution of a crisis, psychic re-integration). Mahayana metaphysics interprets the ascension of the Buddha as an event at the Centre of the World, and therefore one that signifies transcendence of both Space and Time. Great many traditions trace the creation of the World to a central point from which it is supposed to have spread out in the four cardinal directions. To attain to the center of the world means, therefore, to arrive at the “point of departure” of the Cosmos at the beginning of Time”; in short, to have abolished time. We can now better understand the regenerative effect produced in the deep psyche by the imagery of ascension because we know that [it] is capable, among other things, of abolishing Time and Space and of “projecting” man into the mythical instant of the Creation of the World, whereby he is in some sense “born again”, being rendered contemporary with the birth of the World.” (Eliade p.119)

This is all there in Archdragon Peak. The whole idea of voidness is conceptualized differently here. Rather than the black expanse loathed by the Watchers, or the Deep swallowing the church, or even the “deep sea” feared by Aldritch, here void is contemplated without attachment of affect. This is a very classically Buddhist perspective! The Abyss, the Deep, and the Sea are all “rooted” in some way: in greed, hatred, or delusion. And critically, they are all relational conceptions of nothingness; they are (loudly and profanely) distinguished from the witness.

Now, we don’t have any acolyte NPCs coming up to us and explaining what the Path of the Dragon doctrine is explicitly or anything – but the environment itself does a number of things to suggest emptiness as a present reality: The boss of the Peak is not at the end, it is rather (conditionally) in the center; the highest point of the Peak, the ascent, the end of the level, shows us only a clear sky; there are lots of little shrines and outlooks, bowls and blankets of the temple illuminated by streaks of sun. The area never really feels like you’ve completed it, because it loops back on itself, and there is no point, no requirement to come here.

Note that this is the only environment that shows both the Sun and Moon present. This place, like the twilight bridge, is a tableau which depicts the mingling of opposites in metaphor.

Havel as Anomaly

There is only one “person” on the peak, a true individual, Havel the Rock, about whom myths, stories, anecdotes, and homages have been circulating since Dark Souls 1. Or at least, it is the image of Havel. But it is a very distinct image: there is no mistaking that absurdly heavy armor, or the giant dragon’s tooth he wields as a club. In DS1, Havel was known primarily for two more things: his punishing, blindsiding combat, and how he abhorred dragons. It is thought that he deplored dragons so much, that he was playing to betray his company of Gods because he could not tolerate their association with the dragon Seath. Despite his heavenly allegiances, he was very much by himself …

There are ‘anomic’ phenomena pervading societies that are not degradations of the mythic order but irreducible dynamisms drawing lines of flight and implying other forms of expression than those of myth, even if myth recapitulates them in its own terms in order to curb them. (D+G p.237)

D+G go on to cite Moby Dick as a quintessential example of the anomic/anomalous, an image which nicely parallels Havel’s own fixation on Seath, another white anomaly, a scaleless dragon, who sits away. This obsession has caused Havel to become sort of a fringe character (locked in a basement in DS1, and now marooned on a peak); he has himself become anomalous. That’s how the becoming functions: those lines-of-flight are drawn between gates of identification, and there is this contamination. But of course Havel is an exemplar of stubbornness, he does all he can to resist contamination! Even on this Peak, this threshold of release, he is lost in contemplation on the corpse of a wyvern. He is just like the Stray Demon locked into the grooves of its obsession (guarding the gate in that case) despite the Melvillian futility of the outdated task. In fact, the Stray Demon’s soul produces the ring of Havel, confirming their identification. We can see the ring, which relieves equipment burden, as a recapitulation into mythic terms. The name of Havel is inscribed into this object, which shows us what his myth is about: the bearing of weight. It is important to endure, to cohere your identity to get to where you have to be, but to endure, like a rock, and clog up a line-of-flight (a channel of transformation), to hold too tightly to a particular identification, you will just become a colorless and cracking version of yourself. Perhaps the pilgrim in the doorway on the bridge is another caricature of Havel.

Havel the Lapis

But there is also the lapis. The stone that is conditioned and refined through all the trials of the alchemical process. Or in Buddhism, the Cintamani; the jewel or pearl of perfection. Regardless of the tradition, it is essentially a symbol of the incorruptibility of prima materia, the substance from which all things derive. In many ways, Havel the Rock is also the “stone” that the builders rejected; kicked out of heaven only to become a capstone on the peak: Havel is the ultimate NPC duel in terms of difficulty. He completes a quaternion of anomalies: the Wolf of Farron Swamp, the Stray Demon at one end of the bridge, the dead wyvern at the other end, and the Havel image on the roof. Together, these four figures compose much of the Dark Souls universe: wolf, demon, dragon, knight.

There is also something like a falling action among these four points. Once defeated at the peak, Havel’s armor will appear by the drake on the bridge. At the other end, as we know, killing the stray demon yields its soul, which becomes Havel’s ring. This can only happen, of course, back in Lothric, at the transposition kiln. So at one end of the bridge, there is the essential quality of Havel, and at the other end there is his armor, his visual likeness. Above is Havel himself, and below is the place where the player can become Havel (through transposition and PvP).

Well, that was a fun exercise. The point being that there are two pairs of tensions of spirit and matter: the lightning and demon; the knight and the wolf. This cross is rooted in Farron Keep, a swamp at the bottom of “Crucifixion Woods.” The stone can be understood as a synthesis of these 4 elemental extremes. None of these images or their associated attributes is sufficient on its own to define the prima materia, and yet all are said to derive from it. Pointless Ahead Therefore Try Giving Up

We’ve seen that by digging into this simple scene on the bridge, this wolf’s dream, we open the door to the all the mysteries of Archdragon Peak. There are images of spirit, of matter, of cosmogenesis, of prima materia, of emptiness and the ultimate nature of reality. We cycle through the game and expose ourselves to this stuff again and again. Of course it’s not a conscious process; it’s just a backdrop. It’s the circle-and-cross into which the mind of the player enters as they play Dark Souls. What’s the point of mapping out this territory?

Well, for that matter, what’s the point of playing Dark Souls? That’s a question with a thousand answers. Then, what’s the point of going to Archdragon Peak? It’s an optional area with absurdly arcane entry point (you’d have to be up on the metatext to even surmise this place existed). But it’s a popular area, rife with online activity. Some people return here because they want a challenge, or they like the dreamy environment. Practical folks see this place as required: there’s a ton of loot here that’s crucial for upgrading weapons. If you don’t nab the Dragonchaser’s Ashes, you won’t be able to access unlimited titanite chunks, scales, and the twinkling stuff. In keeping with the fantasy tradition, these dragons are sitting on a great bounty of treasure.

In addition to the infinite treasure, there’s also infinite exp: easily defeated and endlessly respawning knights, 4000 souls a pop. There’s also a unique treasure, the calamity ring, which makes all enemies stronger, extending the game in another capacity: difficulty. So whatever you consider treasure: perfected weapons, piles of money and exp, or the enrichment of elevated challenge, Archdragon Peak has what you’re looking for. It even has the singular thrill of leaping off a tower and onto the fuming head of a dragon, driving your sword into its skull, felling it at one blow, into a graceful landing – spectacular heroics! And reminiscent again of the first portion of Dark Souls 1, when you realized “how badass this game is.” This area offers a lot to keep players on the hook.

What does it mean to be hooked on a game? What is it about a game that calls to you in the middle of work, begging, “Come home and keep playing this”? What’s happening in the mind of a player who stays up to 4 AM saying to themselves, “Okay one more level,” “Okay one more invasion,” “Okay let me just do this,” time and time again? Often it is even past the point of pleasure; it may be slightly painful to keep playing, and it begins to feel like a dirty high, but you keep going because of these tiny rewards, or maybe you want to put a bow on it somehow. I remember hearing about how the creator of Katamari Damacy was dismayed to find out that people were “addicted” to his game, about endlessly rolling a ball around. Very Sisyphean premise. The whole idea of being fixated on rolling a virtual ball around would’ve sounded like a sci-fi short story a couple decades ago. But it works! The haptic hook of Katamari was what drew people in, but the chewing-gum effect of this haptic would not have sustained itself for most players if it did not have an incredibly vital world. Brimming with personality and lots of little moving parts, playing Katamari is like putting your face up to a bustling forest floor.

Dark Souls too is so incredibly vital in its world; every scene, object, enemy points to a larger story, filled in by the imagination. Players easily log hundreds of hours into playing this game, and just as much into discovering its lore. If you’re paying close attention, you’ll do well in combat. If you’re paying close attention, you’ll do well in lorebuilding. But if you’re constantly locked in combat, addicted to the rush of victory, it’s easy to miss out on the world’s richness. The manserpent summoners wish to tempt you with infinite challengers, victims to your blade. If you’re going to stand around all day acting as an execution machine, you might as well sign up for the Legion of Abyss Watchers! Let the rich land of Lothric become a one-room mausoleum. Well, we get where they’re coming from. This game is famous for the gratification that comes with the repetition of death and triumph. And actually it is often by that repetition that we come to appreciate the setting – as long as we take the time to smell the phlox. The subtlety of Dark Souls storytelling benefits from a lot of marinating. Periods of not playing.

So we nobly set the controller down and sit in dragon posture, maybe stacking stones into a cairn as we contemplate. Lol. Those dragon statues have the right idea though, don’t they? We assume they’re inert, but maybe they’re simply unconcerned with whatever’s transpiring on the peak. They’ve untangled themselves from worldly illusion; they are no longer invested in the affairs of the Souls world. I can see why the Wolf, in similar stillness, pointed to this place: it’s a great antidote to the edgelords behind the door of Farron Keep. Something like a waiting room before jumping back into the fray. If that’s what we want. A chance to pace around a bit as the lore settles.

The First Stirrings of the Mind

The Chinese dragon rolls about in the heavens a pearl of perfect wisdom, a jewel ball which emits darting flames along with thunder. A flash of lightning issues forth from the rolling sound and gives birth to the fertilizing rain. This flash is symbolic of the first stirrings of mind, of the wish-fulfilling jewel that the dragon swallows and spits forth as it rolls across the universe. With those stirrings there is a fall from subjectivity into objectivity. (Valborg)

The lore and cosmology of Dark Souls is famous for the degree to which it is withheld. This isn’t only to keep players hooked on its mystery, it is necessary to retain the vitality of the world. There must always be elements of life that cannot be pinned down, explained, or solved. There must be space. Some absence at the center, and in the enigmatic places in between. This space is generative: it gives meaning to the parts that are defined and explicated. By this method, we’ve seen how far the imagination can take players as they explore the lore, and how the practice of interpretation similarly benefits from gaps and silences. If you attempt to wage war against that space between, to take arms against voidness and cut it down with swords of discernment, it suddenly becomes the Abyss and you open yourself up to corruption. On the other hand, an embrace of emptiness and contemplation of its nature is quite liberating:

“Who sees the inexorable causality of things,

Of both cyclic life and liberation,

And destroys any objectivity-conviction,

Thus finds the path that pleases Buddhas.

Appearance inevitably relative

And voidness free from all assertions

—

As long as these are understood apart,

The Buddha’s intent is not yet known.

But when they coincide not alternating,

Mere sight of inevitable relativity

Secures knowledge beyond objectivisms,

And investigation of the view is perfect.

More, as experience dispels absolutism

And voidness clears away nihilism,

You know voidness dawn as (illusory) cause and effect

—

Then you will never be deprived by extremist views.” (Tsong Khapa)

This kind of attainment would probably be of great aid to the anxious and desperate people of Lothric. But very few of them seem to be in a place to hear it. As the linking of the fire is immanent, the contrast between the lights and shadows of the kingdom becomes extreme, and most beings we meet are clinging very tightly to their delusions and desires.

We know that the Age of Ancients had a quality of grayness; of little contrast, of little differentiation. The description is reminiscent of the clear light of the void, the ego’s oblivion during chikhai bardo, the experience of ultimate reality. The fight with the nameless king channels the imagery of the Age of Ancients myth. A sea of fog creeps in rendering the open air solid and treadable. Then the lightning-slinging lord and the drake fly in, as a pair, emitting darts of thunder and bringing the fertilizing rain. It is another glimpse of cosmogenesis; the eruption of the mind into a state of objective consciousness. This revelation comes first as one being, one Lord, the lightning termed here as a knight riding a dragon:

All the Kabalists and Occultists, Eastern and Western, recognize (a) the identity of “Father-Mother” with primordial AEther or Akasa, (Astral Light)*; and (b) its homogeneity before the evolution of the “Son,” cosmically Fohat, for it is Cosmic Electricity. “Fohat hardens and scatters the seven brothers” (Book III. Dzyan); which means that the primordial Electric Entity — for the Eastern Occultists insist that Electricity is an Entity — electrifies into life, and separates primordial stuff or pregenetic matter into atoms, themselves the source of all life and consciousness. “There exists an universal agent unique of all forms and of life, that is called Od, Ob, and Aour, active and passive, positive and negative, like day and night: it is the first light in Creation” (Eliphas Levi’s Kabala): — the first Light of the primordial Elohim — the Adam, “male and female” — or (scientifically) electricity and life.

(c) The ancients represented it by a serpent, for “Fohat hisses as he glides hither and thither” (in zigzags). (Blavatsky p76)

But then the King of the Storm is knocked from his mount, his title lost, and he becomes “the Nameless King” as he plunges his spear into the skull of the beast with which he was once identified. The dragon is obliterated. This is the moment that the material world is born:

“Fohat hardens the atoms”; i.e., by infusing energy into them: he scatters the atoms or primordial matter. “He scatters himself while scattering matter into atoms” (MSS. Commentaries.) It is through Fohat that the ideas of the Universal Mind are impressed upon matter. (Blavatsky p85)

The encounter with this Logos-like lord is surrounded by numerous stone dragon gargoyles, like pillars at the ends of the universe. Of course, this is only theater. It is a stage production of cosmogenesis, but by its image the individual may be rendered new, reborn along with the world. But to appreciate what that world is, it is helpful to climb back into it.

Return to the Swamp

At the bottom of the wolf’s tower, there are Ghru. They stand around a warm swamp, teeming with life. There are those bodies strung up everywhere. For all we know, these crucified carcasses lining the swamp are the Ghrus themselves, and have been hung there as objects of contemplation. Their method of reckoning impermanence. This swamp seems to be a pivotal place in the renewal: we see something like the reconstitution of dragons in the Elder Ghru, growing roots like the everlasting dragon from Dark Souls 1, who sits at a central place outside of time. Dragons and Archtrees are interdependent in the lore, echoing the timeless symbolism of the serpent and the tree; the kundalini and the pillar. The Ghru-dragons in the swamp wield trees as weapons, and a few of them guard a white birch tree, which stands apparently pristine in the toxic sludge. These trees are associated with Dusk and their branches grant the ability to change into an aspect of the environment. This was one of Dusk’s earliest tricks, and perhaps her defining feature. Dusk is thus another personification of prima materia: Mercurius, the clear-casting aqua permanens which takes any shape and composes all objects. The aqua permanens is also known as the universal solvent, for its capacity to dissolve any substance.

This is quite profound! The entire world is deteriorating, and Farron Keep is one of the most dramatic examples. A formerly vibrant forest with clear flowing water is now an expanse of putrid and sticky morass. And yet despite the apparent hostility to life, this place is incubating dragons and archtrees. In ancient times Oolacile cradled humanity, and it appears that a new world is destined to sprout from here again. In that regard, the wolf’s tower is also like Izanagi’s staff, the world extending from the point of impact. It also mirrors the King of the Storm driving his halberd into the crown of the dragon, an act borne of profound discernment and mercy. Is the tower a cosmic lightning rod, its connection to the heavens allowing it to transmit spirit into the fertile soil of the swamp, giving rise to the kingdoms of life?

Lightning Strike and Serpent’s Path

Another motif related to the kundalini serpent, described in Kabbalah, found in cultures the world over, and which transpires along the tree of life, is the lightning strike and serpent’s path. In which an emanation spirit imparts from the highest point, reaches lowest and densest matter, and then climbs up again in an undulating serpentine path. I have just described the “falling action” of the lightning first, but there is no authoritative point of beginning in the cycle. Yet the journey of the Ashen One is, of course, aspirational, suggesting a climbing action, and reflected in all the strivings of the other characters, all the pilgrims, all the hollows in trees reaching desperately upward. So we can suppose that the Dark Souls world represent the lowest point, the physical world of matter. This pattern imposes quite nicely onto our quaternary tableau:

It is from a place of not playing that we come into Dark Souls. We go through the game, conditioned by its challenges, subjected to its symbolism, and come out again with a new understanding of ourselves. Serpents, like drakes, are imperfect dragons. To rise in the world of Dark Souls is to become better and better at it, and all the treasures of Archdragon Peak, guarded by the Snakemen adepts, allow us to become “dragons” – to become so good at the game that we can go naked and wear the calamity ring and forge any weapon to be viable. But if all the still and stone dragons sitting around are any indication: many have come before, reached this level of mastery, and given it up. Once the subject has been refined to perfection: only then can it be sacrificed.

Initiation

This concludes our tour of the tower of the wolf’s dream, which bridges the very lofty and the very coarse. It is quite remarkable that so much of Dark Souls’ central mythology and symbolism can be found in microcosm between the two areas of Farron Keep and Archdragon Peak. As ever, in between periods of theorizing and contemplating, the game begs to be played again. So climbing down the tower, the ritual of the swamp awaits completion: the snuffing of the three flames. The three flames represent three fears which corrupt our images of the void: Nito refers to suffering, illness, pain, and death; all the anxiety of the body when confronted with the idea of its abolishment. Four Kings represent the Abyss, the idea of emptiness put into relational terms, thus incomplete; a trap which ensnares the mind into a false conception of the absolute. The Witch of Izalith is the matron of chaos; the incomprehensibility of the void; the inconceivable scope of an unstructured and totally diffuse awareness.

But all these burdens of ignorance are really treasures when properly framed: the coarse physical embodiment lamented by Nito is what allows us to participate sensibly in time. The transfixion which has trapped the Four Kings is the same function that allows us to hook into an experience and be affected by it. And we know that it is the chaotic matrix of life, that poisonous, homogenous soup, that incubates new forms. All of these potentially positive phenomena are prohibited, blocked by the clinging to an identity, which feels threatened by dissolution. The pilgrim on the bridge at the closed gate. A stone in the artery. The stubbornness of Havel, retaining his form even in heaven. The “dreamchaser” lodged in the window of the wolf’s tower. The passages of life cannot flow freely! So the illusion of the self must be discarded if the door is to open. One must allow oneself favorable contaminations.

“The self is only a threshold, a door, a becoming between two multiplicities.” (D+G p249)

This essay is the second of two parts. The first part can be found here. Thanks for reading!

Blavatsky, H.P. The Secret Doctrine. Theosophical University Press, 1888. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Eliade, Mircea. Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities. Harper & Row, 1960. Tsongkhapa Lobzang Drakpa. Three Principles of the Path. Lotsawa House, 2012. Valborg, Helen. The Dragon. Theosophy Trust, 2013. Wade, David. Crystal & Dragon: The Cosmic Dance of Symmetry & Chaos in Nature, Art & Consciousness. Destiny Books, 1991.

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lunarmoonflowyr · 7 years

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Dark Souls 3 Areas

So after doing my first playthrough of Dark Souls III, and having recently beaten NG+, I wanted to talk about the areas of the game because Dark Souls III has some of my favorite level design ever in gaming. I just wanted to write out all my thoughts on each area, and rank them from my least favorite to most.

This is just for my personal enjoyment, and it’s all just my opinion. Feel free to tack your own opinions onto it though!

18. Archdragon Peak

Fuck this area. I hate this area with a burning, fiery passion. I dreaded having to go through it again on NG+ and it was every bit as bad as I expected it to be.

The only compliments I can give this area is that it houses one of if not the best boss in the game, and that it looks pretty the first time you see it. Once that initial impression fades though, the area is painfully boring to go through at best, and it hates you at worst. I died to gravity as much as I died to the Nameless King.

The enemies are assholes, most notably the stone roly-poly motherfuckers that seem to have made it their lifes mission to headbutt me off the map as much as fucking possible, and the snake-men can all go suck a bag of dicks.

They stunlock you and then hop away, so if your dodges aren’t on point fighting just one can be a chore. But it’s never just one. Ever. There’s always two, or three, or four, and because of how the area is laid out you’re never going to be able to aggro just one. So they gangbang you.

And they parry you. And they spit fire at you. And don’t even get me started on the big motherfuckers with greataxes, or the completely FUCKASSES that have an axe+chain and happily one-shot me with impunity.

I, hate this area. So much. It is one of the only two areas in the game that I just “nope”d through at full speed in NG+.

17. Farron Keep

The second area that I just nope’d my way through in NG+, it saddens me that the area associated with one of the contenders for my favorite boss is one of my least favorite areas. And I think the cardinal sin of this area is that it’s boring as fuck.

There are many inhospitable areas in Dark Souls, Blighttown being the most famous, but many of the areas that people hate for their hostility are ones I actually enjoy, a lot. And I’m not the only one! Plenty of people like areas like Blighttown and Sen’s Fortress despite their outright hostility towards the player, and I personally think it’s because those areas are interesting.

Farron Keep is...in a word, boring. It’s very flat with lots of trees, it has poison sludge, some of it is deep sludge so you have to either roll or Quickstep through if you happen to have a dagger. The enemies are either boring (slugs) or infuriating (Elder/Mad Ghru), or just downright bullshit (those motherfucking goddamn curse frogs).

It’s inhospitable, it’s boring, and there’s no reason to be there any longer than you have to.

16. Smouldering Lake

The Lake isn’t so much a bad area as it is just unremarkable. It’s small, there’s a flat area, you get shot at by massive arrows, and there’s a worm thing. The only reason to go here is to fight Old Demon King, and he’s a pushover. Boring area. Moving on.

15. Catacombs of Carthus

This area is one I’m torn on. On the one hand I really like the aesthetic and the lore. On the other hand, it’s painfully linear, has a lot of irritating traps, the enemies are mostly just skeletons, and it has those fucking wheels. Fuck the wheel skeletons.

The boss fight isn’t that interesting either, High Lord Wolnir is a pretty big pushover if you know what you’re doing.

This area could have been a lot better if it felt more like an actual catacomb, with more twisting winding paths, giving the player a maze with more than one way to get out. But instead it’s one of the most painfully linear parts of the game once you leave Firelink Shrine, and the enemy and boss design don’t do it any favors.

14. Consumed King’s Garden

It’s a smaller Farron Keep except with toxic sludge instead of poison, Pus of Man and Lothric Knights instead of Ghru, and a mildly interesting boss fight. The area is slightly more visually interesting than Farron Keep, and you don’t have to spend as much time in it, which earns it some props.

And you’re also not obligated to move through the sludge 90% of the time, which I appreciate. But aside from that, the area is fairly unremarkable, only serving as a house for one of the more...interesting boss fights, if not one of the more challenging ones.

13. Cemetery of Ash/Untended Graves

These areas are essentially the same, with Untended Graves just having higher skillcap enemies and the whole area is much darker, so I’m putting them in the same slot.

Now, DS3 is my first proper Souls experience. I’ve watched Let’s Plays of DS1, I never cared for DS2 or Demon’s Souls, and while I would cry tears of joy if I got the opportunity to play Bloodborne, I don’t own a PS4 nor can I justify buying it for the sake of one game.

So DS3 was my first proper introduction to Soulsborne, and I personally love the Cemetery as a tutorial area. It organically introduces the player to the base concepts of the game, even throwing a side path with an extremely difficult enemy (for new players anyway) to familiarize players with the concept of “I should come back here later”.

In my first playthrough, I died to Iudex Gundyr the 3rd most out of any boss. Abyss Watchers takes top spot with ~20 deaths, and Dancer is the second spot with around ~17, but I died to Gundyr around 12 times before besting him. And it felt great.

So, this area very much did it’s job in teaching me how to play Dark Souls, and I remember it fondly for that.

12. Firelink Shrine

Firelink Shrine was, for me, surprisingly in-depth for what’s essentially a hub center. Walking through all the nooks and crannies in my first playthrough wondering what the hell they were for was interesting, and I loved finding NPCs and seeing them again in Firelink.

It does a very good job of creating the feeling of safety for the player, which is almost the antithesis of what Dark Souls does normally. There’s a feeling of attachment to the Shrine, to the Firekeeper and the Maiden and Andre, and all the NPCs you meet there.

It’s visually interesting as well, and there’s always a little sense of “going home” whenever I warp back to level up or buy stuff.

11. Profaned Capital

My only complaint about this area is that it’s too fucking small. I love the visual aesthetic of the Capital, it feels almost alien and disconnected to the rest of the world. Your first glimpse of it gives you a crawl up your spine, you know something awful happened here and that feeling only increases when you enter the halls and see the hundreds of charred bodies littering the place.

It’s hostile in a different sense from the rest of the game, the atmosphere of the Capital says that something went very, very wrong, and it’s only by reading item descriptions and piecing things together from context that you figure out what.

I love the Profaned Capital, and if it was bigger with more to explore and a longer path to get to the boss fight, it would most definitely be in my top ten, maybe even top five. But alas, it’s very small and sadly linear, the path to the boss fight doesn’t give almost any branching options and it’s very easy to miss the entire other half of this area. And when the area is already small, that’s not really a good thing.

10. Kiln of the First Flame

Odd that the first entry into my top ten is the smallest one in the game, and it feels slightly hypocritical to put it here after criticizing the Profaned Capital for it’s size, but the Kiln is special to me. This was where I conquered my first Dark Souls game, where I overcame a huge challenge.

The area is aesthetically pleasing as well, very much giving off the sense that this is the end of the world. There isn’t anything past the Kiln, there is just the Kiln and then the emptiness beyond. Looking back you can see the twisted amalgamation of Lothric collapsing in on itself, giving the immediate sense that reality is collapsing in on itself as the First Flame fades.

It’s a very fitting place for the end of the game, and the final boss, while maybe not the most difficult, is certainly one of the most interesting and most well-designed bosses I’ve seen in gaming. And even though I didn’t play the previous Souls games myself, I knew enough about them to recognize the weight of this fight, especially the second stage.

And that’s why the Kiln is number 10 for me.

9. The High Wall of Lothric

The Cemetery of Ash was a fantastic tutorial level, and after beating Gundyr I felt ready for the whole rest of the game.

And then Lothric.

The High Wall of Lothric is a very, very good test. It does away with the simple Undead of the cemetery and gives the player actual enemies to fight against, ones that pose a real threat to your life if you misstep. I didn’t die too much in this area, as I had seen a lot of the beginning of the game from a Let’s Play, but the sudden step up in challenge surprised me quite a bit.

The area is also very nicely laid out, and it doesn’t feel very linear even though it very much is. The game as a whole is very linear compared to it’s predecessors, but in my first playthrough it did a good job at making it feel like it wasn’t. And that’s good enough for me, to be honest.

Aesthetically pleasing area that holds two very different, but honestly very good boss fights, with suitably challenging enemies, and enough moments to let you know that this game isn’t going to go easy on you. I can’t tell you how many times I died to those god damn archers in the area above the Winged Knight.

8. Anor Londo

Similarly to the Profaned Capital, I wish this area was bigger. Because as it stands, it’s just a small little nostalgia trip holding an RNG-heavy boss fight that’s underwhelming if you don’t care about the lore.

In fact, this entire area is extremely underwhelming if you don’t care about the lore.

Luckily, I care about the lore, so when I first walked onto that bridge and the words “Anor Londo” came up on my screen, I was grinning like a fool. This place holds a lot of lore heavy significance, especially if you’re interested in Aldrich’s storyline, which I am very much so.

This area goes into my top ten for lore reasons, and nostalgia reasons. I just really, really wish it was bigger.

7. Undead Settlement

This place is just cool. It’s really, really fucking big, and I actually missed two of the NPCs you can bring back to Firelink Shrine here. The enemies were never too difficult or rage-inducing, with the exception of the guys with the huge pots and the saws. Those guys are dicks.

I like the aesthetic of the Undead Settlement, I like the level design, and my first time going through it sticks with me because it’s another area where you can get lost and miss a lot of stuff.

Unfortunately it houses a pretty underwhelming boss in the Curse-Rotted Greatwood, which gets my vote for one of the most disgusting video game bosses ever. But aside from that little blot, I really like this area.

6. Cathedral of the Deep

Another area I have a love-hate relationship with. The Cathedral has some very, VERY hostile parts to it that got very frustrating, and if I was ranking these based off of just my blind playthrough it would be much further down. But once I got here in NG+ and knew where all the bullshit was and how to deal with it, I found myself enjoying the area a lot more.

Aside from the disappointing boss fight, I found the Cathedral to be a truly interesting area both lore-wise and design-wise. It’s intuitive with a lot of shortcuts and it feels like it winds in on itself a lot, it looks very cool and the atmosphere of the area feels very wrong and cursed.

Which is fitting, seeing as it was the home of Aldrich, one of the most unsettling Dark Souls characters ever, in my opinion.

There are multiple little side paths to go find neat stuff, and although the boss fight is sadly disappointing at best and irritating at worst, I found myself having a lot of fun going through the Cathedral my second time round.

5. Grand Archives

Oh boy. Top five. I love all these areas, so it’s actually a little difficult to really rank them, and this is where opinions come into play as well.

I should clarify that this is one of my favorite areas only after you’ve dealt with that fucking Crystal Sage. Because going through the Archives with magic being shot at you constantly is stressful, irritating, and not my idea of fun.

Once the Sage is dealt with though and you can actually pace yourself, the area is beautifully laid out with some really weird enemies, and hazards that are actually 100% avoidable if you take the proper measures to do so.

One theme that seems to be present across all of Dark Souls, III especially, is the feeling that the entire world is falling apart, being held together by bits of string and glue. The areas are all almost universally decrepit and unkept, the wildlands areas are all swampy and gross and the habitated areas are either ramshackle and falling apart like the Undead Settlement, gross and unwelcoming like the Irithyll Dungeon, or just abandoned and lost to time like Archdragon Peak.

The Archives is an excellent example of this, with the books disorganized and scattered everywhere, I’d say only 60% of the books are actually on the shelves, and the only inhabitants are the wax scholars and the thralls, with the occasional Lothric Knight to fuck you up.

It has an almost forlorn feeling about it, and it really does a good job at drawing me in.

4. Road of Sacrifices

I hate this area, and I love this area.

This is, in my opinion, one of the only areas in the game that truly echoes Dark Souls in that it’s very much not intuitively laid out, it’s very easy to have to sit down and take a deep breath and say “fucking christ where the fuck am I supposed to go” as you hug the wall and try and find the goddamn exit to the area. I like that part. The second half of the area is a friendlier Farron Keep in a sense, it’s kinda flat with a lot of trees, but it’s not so inhospitable that it makes you want to pull your hair out.

The part that frustrates me about this area is the enemies. The harpies that go apeshit and stunlock your ass if you let them transform, and the fucking undead with tree trunks, oh, and the Exile NPCs. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m so terrible at dealing with lance-wielding enemies, so the undead can give me a hard time if I’m not prepared.

Also dogs. Fuck dogs.

The Crucifixion Woods is an area I get lost in a lot, I even missed a pretty obvious bonfire because I kept getting turned around. I actually had to look up where the fucking shit I was supposed to find the Crystal Sage because I couldn’t find either doorway that led into that part of the area.

But, I always have fun in this area, and as a Watchdog of Farron, I certainly see it often enough to have a solid opinion on it.

3. Lothric Castle

I very much enjoy Lothric Castle for the sole reason that it’s one of the only areas that feels truly challenging without feeling like cheese. 90% of the times I died in Lothric Castle, and trust me I died a lot, it was because I fucked up.

And it felt quite good to remedy that and start tackling the area properly, it was a challenge that relied on tougher enemies rather than cheese. Except for one section with two rather strong melee enemies and one archer where the archer is in a very inconvenient spot, and can just dick all over you while you’re dealing with the melee guys.

But aside from that one area, Lothric Castle felt like a proper challenge, one that felt very satisfying to overcome. It’s also just very, very aesthetically pleasing.

The lore of the Twin Princes and that boss fight itself are also incredible, and it’s probably one of my favorite boss fights ever in gaming, and definitely a contender for my favorite in the game.

2. Irithyll Dungeon

Oh boy. If anyone’s gonna disagree with me, it’s definitely gonna be here before anywhere else.

I love Irithyll Dungeon for one reason, and that reason is enough to outweigh the pure rage I feel towards the Jailers.

Irithyll Dungeon is creepy.

The atmosphere and aesthetic of the dungeon is creepy, in a similar sense to the Profaned Capital except with a dash of survival horror, oddly enough. I always feel unsettled when I go through Irithyll Dungeon for any reason, and the enemies just compound that feeling. Even more undead in cages, the baby-faced monstrosities that are so morbidly intriguing I almost don’t want to kill them just so I can get a proper look at them to try and figure out what the actual fuck.

And the Jailers. The source of so much ire and rage, I think they’re one of the most hate enemies in the series across the community. Now, I hate the Jailers as much as anyone else, but I also love them for their lore and aesthetic.

And I also love how they contribute to the atmosphere of the area. Like I said, Irithyll Dungeon is creepy, and it feels distinctly different from the rest of Dark Souls III. It almost feels like something out of Amnesia or Outlast, and the Jailers are a huge reason for that, because you don’t want to fight the Jailers ever unless you have the upper hand.

The Jailers are scary, and terrifying, because they don’t just damage you, they drain your maximum HP as well as increasing your equip load, causing you to fat roll and making you even more vulnerable to taking damage. By the time you get to Irithyll Dungeon you’ve most likely conquered Pontiff Sulyvahn and maybe even Aldrich, so you’re feeling strong and powerful with only one Lord of Cinder left on your plate.

Even if you decide to go through the Distant Manor and into the Dungeon before taking on Sulyvahn, it still means you’ve beaten the Abyss Watchers, you’ve beaten Wolnir and the Deacons, and you feel like a badass.

The Jailers take that feeling of power away from you in a way that can’t be avoided. Unlike other enemies you can’t learn attack patterns to perfectly time your dodges, you can’t cheese them and exploit them. The Jailers are always scary, and they can always make you feel vulnerable. You feel like a lot less of a badass with just 100 max HP that you can’t make go away except by just waiting for the effect to pass, and trust me, there is nothing in this game that can make me panic as much as suddenly starting to fat roll when I’m trying to get away from something.

Irithyll Dungeon as a whole makes the player feel vulnerable and reminds them that no matter how much of a badass they feel like they are, the game can still fuck them up if it chooses to.

1. Irithyll of the Boreal Valley

It was honestly a very, very difficult choice to pick Irithyll or it’s Dungeon as my favorite area in the game, because I honestly love both areas so much for very different reasons, but eventually the lore aspect of Irithyll won out over the Dungeon’s atmosphere and gameplay.

In an almost stark contrast to my earlier comment about how everything is falling apart in Dark Souls, Irithyll stands out as almost the last bastion against the end of the world. Sure, the inhabitants are all Pontiff’s lackeys and the area isn’t exactly vibrant and thriving with life, but it’s eerily lacking the filth and decrepitude that the rest of the areas have.

I will never forget the first time I set eyes on Irithyll after walking out of the Catacombs of Carthus. I let out an actual, audible gasp and nearly dropped my controller, I just stood there for a good five minutes and just stared.

Irithyll is, in a word, beautiful. It’s almost otherworldly in it’s strange beauty, the way everything is dusted in snow and moonlight. The gothic inspiration to it’s architecture adds a lot to the feeling of Otherness, and you very much feel like an outcast, a stranger.

The lore of Irithyll is also incredible, with Pontiff Sulyvahn the tyrant and how he essentially set the events that led to Aldrich’s storyline in motion. While my personal favorite Lord of Cinder is definitely the Abyss Watchers, I will say without a doubt that Aldrich has the more interesting story.

And Irithyll and Sulyvahn are the centerpiece of it all, the root of that lore. It also has vague tie-ins to the twin princes and even to Yhorm.

The lore and the aesthetic of Irithyll alone would propel it into my top five, but when you add the fact that Pontiff Sulyvahn is a fantastic boss fight, if extremely rage-inducing before you figure out how to play around his sheer aggression, along with very well-done level design and some interesting enemies to fight, like the invisible ones where you can only see their eyes, this is definitely my favorite area in Dark Souls III.

#dark souls 3 #long post #ranking #moonspeak #dark souls

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