Dark Souls III Analysis

Another game analysis from earlier in 2016.

1 Overview

Dark Souls III is an action RPG developed by FromSoftware and it was published by Bandai Namco in 2016.

2 Formal Elements

2.1 Players

Dark Souls III is a mostly single-player game, but features unique multiplayer elements. The player is an ”Unkindled,” which is an undead zombie like creature created from the ashes of a fire. This fire represents an age of gods, or knowledge, or power, or something that is not directly told or explained to the player. The player’s character can be male or female, and can start as any of 10 classes, each with slightly different stats and starting level.

	Level	Vigor	Attunement	Endurance	Vitality	Strength	Dexterity	Intelligence	Faith	Luck
Knight	9	12	10	11	15	13	12	9	9	7
Mercenary	8	11	12	11	10	10	16	10	8	9
Warrior	7	14	6	12	11	16	9	8	9	11
Herald	9	12	10	9	12	12	11	8	13	11
Thief	5	10	11	10	9	9	13	10	8	14
Assassin	10	10	14	11	10	10	14	11	9	10
Sorcerer	6	9	16	9	7	7	12	16	7	12
Pyromancer	8	11	12	10	8	12	9	14	14	7
Cleric	7	10	14	9	7	12	8	7	16	13
Deprived	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10

The player can also choose a starting gift, although the significance of the gift is difficult to gauge.

The player moves a 3D avatar around a 3D world, interacting with NPCs, killing monsters, and finding items and equipment. The motivation is to defeat 4 Lords of Cinder and return their embers to theirs thrones. Once this is accomplished, the player will face a final enemy boss and may choose to link the First Flame, let it die, or (if the player has completed certain side quests) to usurp the flame and start an age of fire controlled by the Undead.

While the player explores and fights, the player may be invaded by other players if the player is in their ”ember form.” In ember form, the player may also summon other players or NPCs into their world for duels, or for assistance in certain areas, or against certain bosses. The player may also leave messages to assist or to trick other players. When other players die, they leave blood stains that are sometimes visible in your game. If you touch them, they will show the last ten seconds of their life, thus giving a clue as to how they died and how the player may avoid it. The player can even invade other players while they are playing. Invading is rewarded with XP and special items, as is assisting others and defeating invaders.

The player can even join in-game covenants that specialize in invading, assisting, or defeating invaders.

2.2 Objectives

The main objective in Dark Souls III is to defeat the final boss and link the First Flame. This is accomplished by defeating a series of lesser bosses which unlock new areas of the game and allow the player to finally unlock the final Lord of Cinder’s arena.

There are covenants to discover and join, as well as optional ”quests” for NPCs to complete. These quests, however, are structured and presented similarly to the rest of Dark Souls III: the player must repeatedly talk to NPCs, listening carefully to dialogue, search every environment carefully for any possible link to that or another NPC, and figure out what to do next. This could mean purchasing armor and dropping it off at an appropriate location, finding a hidden location, or performing rituals. There is no quest journal with notes or quests, and there is no in-game map to guide the player around in these ”quests.”

There are also optional bosses and areas to defeat and explore.

2.3 Rules

2.3.1 Bars, Form and Souls

In Dark Souls III, there are three bars that must be managed at all times: health, stamina, and focus. Health partly determines the amount of damage the player can take and if it reaches zero, the player will die. In the Souls series, dying means losing all the souls the player was carrying at the time of death. Souls are the Souls series’ form of XP and money, so this is a huge loss. Luckily, dying does not mean a permanent loss of these souls. After dying, the player will also lose their ember form and respawn at the nearest bonfire. If the player can fight their way back to the place they died, they can retrieve their lost souls by touching a green glowing blood stain. If, however, the player dies before retrieving their lost souls, they will lose those souls forever. The amount of health is determined by the player’s form, Vigor stat, and any items that affect health. Unlike in Dark Souls II, there are only two basic health states: undead form and ember form, and does not get progressively lower the more the player dies. Health can be regained by resting at a bonfire, dying and respawning at a bonfire, drinking an estus flask, or using special items, like certain weapons or rings that drain health from enemies, regenerate health based on killing enemies, or regenerate health based on (consecutive) attacks.

Stamina must also be managed during combat. All physical attacks drain stamina, as does running and roll-dodging. If stamina drops to zero, the player cannot attack or dodge until it recharges high enough to meet the stamina requirements for that move. The player’s amount of stamina is controlled by the Endurance stat. Stamina regenerates naturally by itself over time, although holding the block button slows its regeneration rate.

Focus is used when the player makes magic-,pyromancy-,or miracle-based attacks. Like stamina, if focus drops to zero or is less than the required amount to cast a spell, the player will not be able to cast it. The amount of focus is determined by the Attunement stat and certain special items. Attunement also determines the number of spells, pyromancies, or miracles the player may have active at a time. Focus regeneration works like health regeneration: it does not regenerate naturally by itself, but can be regenerated by resting at a bonfire, using special items, or drinking an ashen estus flask.

There are only two basic forms: ember form and undead form. Ember form is similar to the human form from Dark Souls and Dark Souls II. Being in ember form gives the player increased health, stamina, and focus, and allows the player to access the multiplayer components of the game. The player can also gain levels from an NPC in exchange for accepting a Dark Sigil, which will cause the player to become hollowed. This has no real effect outside of making the player look like a zombie. If the player wants to return to their normal form, they may use a special item or be cured by talking to certain NPCs, but this will lock off certain endings.

As mentioned before, souls are both the money and the XP. They are used to buy items from vendors, and are used to increase the player’s level by talking to the Firekeeper NPC at Firelink Shrine. The number of souls required to increase from one level to the next roughly follows the formula y = 1062.76^0.0459x, where y is the number of souls required to increase to the next level and x is one’s current level.

2.3.2 Stats and Leveling

There are nine stats that the player may invest in when they level up:

• Vigor, increases health and frost resistance
• Attunement, increases focus and spell slots
• Endurance, increases stamina, lightning defense, and bleed resistance
• Vitality, increases equipment load, physical defense, and poison resistance
• Strength, increases damage with weapons, fire defense, physical defense, and other defenses
• Dexterity, increases damage with weapons, and all defenses
• Intelligence, increases spell damage and magic defense
• Faith, increases miracle damage, and damage resistances
• Luck, increases item discovery

How the player invests in these stats and what weapons and armor they decide to use basically determines how they will play the game.

2.3.3 Combat and Magic

In the Souls series, weapons, shields, and the different kinds of magic usually scale according to the player’s stats. So, for example, if the player is using a Greatsword in one hand, and has 28 Strength and 9 Dexterity, it will do 159 base damage plus 42 damage based on attribute scaling. Adding one point to Dexterity increases the bonus to 43, while adding one point to strength instead increases it to 44. While this is admittedly a small difference, if the player reinforces the Greatsword to +3, while keeping Strength at 28 and Dexterity at 9, the base damage increases to 206 plus 63 damage based on attribute scaling. If the player continues to reinforce the Greatsword to its maximum of +10, the scaling due to attributes is 119 damage.

What all that boils down to is that if you find a weapon that you like to use, it makes sense to pay attention to which attributes the weapon scales with, and then level up a character to best match that scaling. Infusing the weapon with fire damage, or other kinds of damage will also change how the weapon scales, which could make it a better or worse match for certain builds. The same holds true for the different kinds of magic: they are cast using different magic weapons, which scale according to different attributes, and the player must find items that match how they want to play the game.

In general, the combat in the Souls series has been described as weighty, precise, and tactical because the movements are slow compared to other action RPGs and practically glacial compared to hack-and-slash games. Success in combat revolves around learning the enemy’s moveset and attack patterns, and responding to openings and opportunities to attack by punishing the enemy. Thoughtlessly smashing away at the attack buttons will almost always result in player death, as will brash and greedy attacking. Caution is almost always rewarded.

Compounding this is the fact that actions cannot be interrupted by the player: once you press the attack, use item, or dodge button, you are fully committed to the action and must wait for the animation to finish before initiating your next move.

The player can run, dodge, jump, attack, block, and parry during combat. When dodging, there are a certain number of framing during the animation during which the player is invincible. Running, dodging, jumping, attacking, parrying, and receiving a hit during blocking all cost stamina.

The player may also use a ”weapon art” during combat. This is a special move that is determined by the weapon equipped in the player’s right hand. These moves cost focus and have a wide range of effects: some greatswords have a stance weapon art that allows two new moves when used in combination with the regular light an heavy attacks. Others have status boosters, like increased poised or damage, while others trigger special attacks.

2.3.4 Areas

Unlike the first two games in the Souls series, Demons Souls and Dark Souls, the areas are mostly linearly connected. This means that the player can more easily gauge their progress through the game, but also reduces the amount of discovery and connections between areas. Dark Souls, in particular, featured many weird and interesting shortcuts between areas that could only be unlocked by first progressing quite far in an area, before unlocking an elevator or door that would return the player to the starting area or another previously discovered location.

In Dark Souls III, progress is made by killing a boss, which will either have an item that unlocks a later area, or that automatically allows access to the next area.

There are several extremely hidden areas that most players would normally never discover, for example, an area unlocked by attacking a bridge which can then be climbed down like a ladder, or by performing a gesture in a certain location.

Also in contrast to previous games, the number of bonfires is quite large and many are extremely close together.

2.4 Procedures

2.4.1 Leveling and Upgrading

After finding items and slaying enough enemies, it is time to return to the main hub of the game, Firelink Shrine. By talking to the Fire Keeper, the player can level up, and by talking to different NPCs there, the player can increase the number of healing items carried and their power, upgrade weapons, and buy and sell weapons, armor, and items.

2.4.2 Exploring

A large part of game play is exploring the environments the player finds themselves in. Often, the next area can only be found by going over each section of the current environment, panning the camera around, and looking for ledges, hidden doors, obscure paths, and banging one’s weapon against walls to find illusory walls. Another incentive to exploring is item discovery. Often really amazing items are hidden around each level, and finding the next one is always a thrill.

2.4.3 Boss-Slaying

Like the lesser enemies, the bosses are each designed to be challenging to the player in different ways. Some are extremely aggressive, some are fast, some attack slowly but do massive damage, others use mostly magic attacks. Many of the bosses have stages to their battle, and several actually come back to life after the player has ”killed” them.

Their attack patterns must be learned, and there are often clues as to what they are weak to somewhere in the environment or in dialogue with an NPC.

Thematically, each is linked to previous games in different ways.

2.5 Resources

2.5.1 Abstract

• Health: Losing all your health means dying and respawning back at the nearest bonfire. As mentioned before, the player will lose all currently possessed souls as well.
• Stamina: Stamina determines the player’s ability to attack, dodge, and block during combat, and managing it is critical in every encounter.
• Focus: Focus, like health and stamina, must be managed carefully to ensure that you can use magic and special abilities when you need to.
• Damage Meters: There are many kinds of special damage that the player can receive: frost damage, curse damage, bleeding damage, and poison damage, for example. These damages fill a special meter that only becomes visible when the player receives them. If the meter fills up completely, a special status effect will take effect on the player. Poison damage, for example, will cause the player to slowly lose health until the poison meter is empty, while frost damage will slow player movement and prevent rolling until it is empty.
• Souls: Souls are both the currency and XP in Souls games, and are vital for upgrading weapons, purchasing weapons, armor and items, and of course for leveling up. Losing souls because of dying before being able to retrieve lost souls is a wake up call to be more cautious.
• Form: In many areas, special hostile NPCs will only spawn in if the player is in ember form. These NPCs give the player a large number of souls if defeated, and often drop special items as well. The player’s form also determines whether multiplayer aspects of the game will be available.

2.5.2 Physical

• Weapon and Armor Condition: Shields and weapons degrade through taking damage, and can break if their condition drops to zero. Resting at a bonfire will restore the damaged item to perfect, although if it breaks the player must return to Firelink Shrine to get it fixed.
• Estus and Ashen Estus: These are the only healing items for health and focus in the game. They are limited in number and can only be refilled in two ways: randomly killed enemies sometimes replenish one flask of Estus, and resting at a bonfire fully replenishes all Estus and Ashen Estus flasks.
• Weapons and Other Equipment: Different enemies and areas have different themes, and their strengths and weaknesses are reflected in those themes. Dragons are weak to lightning damage, but immune to fire, so a dragon-themed area will best be handled by switching to lightning weapons and fire-resistant armor and rings.
• Items: Items like arrows, throwing knives, weapon buffers, and status removers are limited in number and must be farmed from the environment or bought from vendors. Using them wisely will help ensure success.

2.6 Conflicts

2.6.1 Stat Point Investment

As the player invests points, it becomes apparent that around 40, the benefit of each additional point invested starts to decrease. This effect of diminishing returns forces the player to consider whether investing in a different stat might better benefit them.

The cost for increase one’s level increases dramatically at higher levels, further forcing the player to carefully consider each investment.

2.6.2 NPCs

The NPCs in Dark Souls III each seem to have different objectives, and the player is free to help them or hinder them as they choose. However, helping some NPCs usually means hindering and earning the hostility of others. Deciding who to help and who to ignore or kill is no trivial task, considering the obscurity of what each one ultimately wants.

2.7 Boundaries

2.7.1 Stat Point Investment

There are hard limits to each stat at 99 points.

The player can only equip 4 rings, and three weapons for each hand at a time.

2.7.2 NPCs

It is impossible to help every NPC in complete their quest line in one play through.

2.8 Outcomes

There are three basic endings for Dark Souls III: the player may link to the first flame, causing the age of fire to continue. Or the player may not link the first flame, causing the age of fire to end, and the age of darkness to begin. A somewhat hidden and difficult to obtain third ending is to usurp the first flame, and begin an age of the undead, with the player as Lord of the Undead.

3 Dramatic Elements

Dark Souls III is strongly connected to the previous two games through recurring themes, characters, and events. However, these are presented in such an obscure and fragmentary manner that it is difficult for the average player (and I count myself as an average player) to piece together what is happening, why, and what has happened in the past.

3.1 Characters

Compared to the characters of previous Souls series games, the NPCs in Dark Souls III offer more helpful advice and guidance about where the player is, where the player should go, and how the player should get there. Several even describe basic game mechanics like the process of upgrading weapons. However, as previously mentioned, the characters related their histories, relationships with other characters and covenants quite indirectly, forcing the player to guess at how to find them, who they should help etc.

3.2 Story

The basic story revolves around the linking of the first flame. The gods created fire ages ago, but their age of fire was supposed to end and an age of dark was supposed to begin. However, a lord called Gwyn linked his soul to the first flame, thus causing an unnatural age of fire to begin. This linking of the first flame may have caused a side effect of the dead rising and the living transforming into the undead.

The player begins as an undead that has arisen from the ashes of one sacrificed at the first flame. At this point in time, the previous Lords that have linked the flame have abandoned their thrones, heralding the end of the age of flame and the beginning of the age of dark. The player is tasked with defeating the previous lords, returning them to their thrones, and linking the first flame themselves, thus becoming a Lord of Cinder. However, the player may decide on a different path over the course of the game, but the final ending is determined by the choice to link the flame or not (except in the case of the third ending, where the player must perform pretty).

4 Dynamic Elements

Compared to other games, the environment of Dark Souls III is quite static. Enemies will always be found in the same spawn areas, there is no day/night cycle or dynamic weather. Enemies do not change their movesets or armor as they react to the player’s moment to moment actions or even the player’s long term play style, although in each particular battle they will change between different stances and attempt to heal themselves if they are injured.

As the player progresses through the game, they will unlock more areas, and through careful exploration, discover secrets, items, and powerful weapons and spells. Further, since the weapons and spells’ damage scale to various player attributes, the amount of damage they deal changes quite a bit during the course of the game.

If the player chooses to join a covenant, as the player offers that covenant special items related to its goal, the player will receive weapons and spells as rewards.

If the player explores previous areas of the game, the player may sometimes find new items that were spawned in after defeating a character in a different part of the game.

5 Conclusion

Dark Souls III is probably the most accessible of the Souls series of games. Its story is fragmented, but intriguing, its gameplay is subtle, visceral and tactical all at the same time, and it offers a large amount of replay value as the player completes new game plus modes, tries different builds, and attempts to complete different endings. Even exploring each area, finding and defeating each boss, and especially finding each hidden item and covenant, offers enough challenging and rewarding play to keep you coming back for a long time.

5.1 Potent Elements

The combat is quicker than in previous Souls games, but still has a precise, tactical feel to it. Exploration, leveling, and combat make up the core of the game, and each is masterfully done.

5.2 Areas for Improvement

Although Dark Souls III is by far the most accessible of the Souls series, that does not make it as accessible as Fruit Ninja, for example. There is no in-game map, no in-game explanation for how to level up, and even after defeating the first boss and reaching Firelink Shrine (the hub area), there is no explanation for how to get to the next area. Although having an in-game map would probably ruin the game, providing more NPC dialogue to explain the other areas to the player would greatly improve its accessibility.

One other area of improvement is the magic system. The Souls series has used basically the same set of spells and miracles and pyromancies since the first game, and these did not allow the player to play as a pure magic user then. Although the focus bar and items that affect its regeneration make it more possible to play as a magic user, the variety of spells needs to be increased to allow crowd management and to give access to an increased number of damage types.