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Comments
I'm also downloading League of Legends, because it's F2P so why the hell not.
This article is a few months old, but it pretty effectively summarises what makes Dark Souls (and Demon's Souls) work on a narrative level that Skyrim only flirts with on occasion. The essence of the article concerns the way information is expressed within games and how that alters a narrative experience in a gaming context. In this case, the "duelling games" of Skyrim and Dark Souls provide an opportunity for the dichotomy of their narrative styles to be discussed in reference to experiences a lot of "hardcore" gamers will have had.
And God, it seems like I'm being harsh on Bethesda lately, but I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that The Elder Scrolls comes together like 80s high fantasy literature. It seems to me that medieval-style fantasy gaming right now is going through exactly that kind of narrative phase, where everything is dragons and lightning bolts with no underlying expression or meaning to it -- although the success of Paolini's Inheritance Cycle might indicate that even that style of literature isn't quite done and dusted yet. We need more games like Dark Souls or The Witcher, with narrative elements that use more restraint and sophistication to express their experiences.
Much like, say, Star Wars, The Elder Scrolls has become bogged down in the volume of its own lore to such an extent that most players won't appreciate or truly experience it. This isn't helped by the fact that most of it is expressed verbally or through text rather than immediate experience, and this is where Dark Souls shines. You might hear about a few things, and some item descriptions fill in blanks or beg further query, but everything that is truly important or relevant in the lore is directly experienced at some point in the game. Even just looking at the introduction of Skyrim, the game throws a lot of TES-specific terminology at the player -- I was pretty lost, even as someone who has played some Morrowind and one hell of a lot of Oblivion. There's no way someone new to the setting will understand any of those references, and they're not broad enough to help contextualise the game.
The Dark Souls intro is a short cinematic that establishes the basic mythology of the setting, and it's literally all the information the player needs to understand the basic premise and workings of the setting. It boils down to expressing how the player is standing in the aftermath of a medieval revenant post-apocalypse. This isn't particularly cerebral, but it's simple, interesting and allows you to jump right into the game in such a way that everything that's supposed to make immediate sense does.
If I'm right, don't worry. You'll hear it.
A lot.
They have literally nothing in common apart from being fantasy RPGs. They don't even seem to go after the same audience.
and you expect me to take this seriously
It's true that they don't have much in common, but I think that's the point in this case.
Well, yeah. Apart from CHIM, TES pulls out almost every standard fantasy trope out there and plays it dead straight, from the exotic-but-forgettable names to prophecies to whatever. Not that Dark Souls (and other fantasy games) don't do these things, but TES leans on them so heavily I'm almost sure the table's going to give out at any moment. TES has quite a lot of lore that never really translates into a gameplay experience, so it's a complete abstraction that really holds no meaning unless one chooses for it to have meaning. But a game is about being there and doing those actions, so it's an opportunity to interact directly with the lore.
Essentially, if the lore is more interesting than the gameplay and the events therein, then I think there's a significant problem. And if the lore isn't interesting enough to justify learning it rather than playing, then you've got the opposite problem. At its strongest, lore is a part of the experience. What good would Aragorn's explanation of the Ringwraiths been if said revenant entities never showed up? Books and dialogue aren't really good enough in context of a game -- information has to be transferred first-hand by direct observation and participation in most cases, otherwise the lore becomes an external experience rather than an internal one.
But...but... THAT INCLUDES THE STORYLINE OF THE NON SKYRIM GAMES.
You say this, but then you proceed to say-
Which is the exact opposite of what the portion of the article I quoted stated. It stated that the lore of the game is utterly forgettable, to which all I can do is laugh.
Your point, as far as I can tell, is that an abstraction of the elements within a game, such as the books that contain the lore of the game, is undesirable.
Before I reply to this, then, tell me how you would incorporate the following elements of the lore into an experience that is non-abstracted (i.e. how would you have the player play through this) in a way that is relatively accessible for new players;
- The overnight disappearance of the Dwemer, related to the Heart of Lorkhan and the Numidium (without spoiling the mystery).
- The rise of Tiber Septim, from his origins as a Dragonborn, through to his rise as the Emperor of Tamriel through his use of CHIM, through to his ascension to divinity.
- The myths of creation, including Anu and Padomay, the concept of the Godhead, and the schism between the Aedra and the Daedra.
There has to be some kind of Dwemer area, such as a dungeon to play through, and it would work on the same narrative merits as Moria did in LotR -- that you're always expecting something horrible to happen, but for the longest time, it doesn't. This is a period of observation, perhaps with puzzle-solving. Perhaps that are skeletal Dwemer remains with arrows or weapons sticking out, perhaps not. But the core point here is that the player experiences this technology that's unusual for the early medieval level of progression that TES generally represents and draws their own conclusion, thus the ancient bones.
All they need to know is that there were people here who built these things and are here no more. That's the core of the Dwemer story, and it's all that needs to be said. Perhaps secondary characters can offer hypothetical information, but only in passive monologue -- no standing stationary when you're being fed information.
I know Skyrim kind of did this, but it also filled the experience with lots of monsters and a good helping of static, stand-in-place dialogue. With the proper map design and game assets, though, moving within Dwemer ruins could be an experience unto itself.
Given that this informs the most important faction, an introductory cinematic would do it.
Not sure, but then again, this kind of thing really makes no difference to the gameplay experience. The Dwemer example can be used as a horror-mystery experience and the Tiber Septim thing informs the politics of the setting and factional allegiances, so it can be useful to know where NPCs stand on that. But this is religion, and I think religion, divinity and most related matters are more interesting when they don't have objective merit in a setting.
In Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, for instance, there are references to "God", but God doesn't actually interact with the setting whether He exists or not -- there is no external divine force that influences the setting, at least not in an obvious sense. It's a mystery and allows the religion in the game to be a religion rather than a cult of personality. After all, when a deity is objective reality, there's no more room for faith -- it's just fact, and that damages the narrative potential of having one or more religions.
I agree with it, but obviously there are players who spend time they could be spending within the game environment reading the in-game books and the like. Ergo, if some sect of players is so enthralled by the lore that it cuts into the time they might otherwise spend playing the interactive portions of the game, then there's an issue with the core gameplay and the way the lore is expressed within that. And on the other side, if players are ignoring the books, then they don't find the lore intriguing. No matter how you slice it, it's a lose/lose situation from a design perspective.
This is another article that really sums up while I find objectionable about Skyrim and TES at large, although it's rightfully more positive in tone.
aha I had an entire paragraph here that I deleted because I realized that it relied upon a theory to be true.
But no, I disagree with this. The story of the Dwemer involves much more than just 'the Dwemer went poof'; it involves the Heart of a Dead God, an artificial God, and it's the story of what happens when SCIENCE! invades a world made of magic.
I did specifically ask how you would do it in a way that isn't abstracted. An introductory cinematic is abstracted in the same way a book is; it takes you outside of the gameplay.
And this is, I think, the crucial divide. This is where you and I differ. You think that a game should tell its' narrative entirely through the gameplay, and that gameplay is paramount for a game; which is fair enough, and I can see where you're coming from.
On the other hand, I firmly believe that a tale should be told however the hell it wants to be told. A game is a game, yes, but insisting that it should be purely a game is a bit like insisting that a book should only contain words. (That may sound like a silly comparison, because a book has, you know, words, but... try reading the Monster Blood Tattoo series. It's a pretty good series, and it's not too cliched. It also contains art, which is how this relates back to my point. Nearly all of the important NPC's and monsters, whether they play a major or a minor role in the story, have a picture drawn of them. The author does not spend much time at all describing the characters, and allows the pictures to stand in for the descriptions in a way that doesn't really interrupt the flow of the story.)
I certainly won't disagree with you that Skyrim's gameplay is really lacking and its' story is boring. However, it seems to me that you are looking for something that Skyrim just isn't interested in offering. Skyrim isn't about giving you a game world and making you piece together what has happened in it; Skyrim is about you forging your own story, and it (optionally) allows you to piece together the lore of the world, allowing you to discover the setting but also not forcing it upon you.
Also, look up Blackreach. It's an interesting place; a Dwemer ruin, without any real explanation as to what any of it is. A lot of it is just there, and it's for you to decide why it's there or what its' purpose is.
Tribes Ascend? I also just downloaded it. It's probably the most fun I ever had with a competitive FPS.
During the Mage's Guild quests, which deal reasonably substantially with Dwemer-related things, I never came across these terms in dialogue or promptly forgot them. They really play no part in the important factors of the experience. Moria in LotR didn't really need special explanations that weren't experienced first hand and was much more interesting for it -- the Fellowship show up, the Dwarves that are supposed to be there are dead and then the scenario is explored in media res.
I don't think the Dwemer thing is done particularly badly in Skyrim, but that's mainly because you could actually go to Dwemer ruins and stuff. Oblivion was worse in that regard because, if my memory is correct, it only contains text references to the Dwemer rather than a first-hand experience of them.
Then I wouldn't worry about it too much. It's ancient lore by the standards of the setting, so if it doesn't have anything to do with a quest or another direct experience, then it's not really worth the time to set it up. It could be there in some form, but I wouldn't be thinking long and hard about it; I say just go with the flow and see if there's anywhere appropriate for it. If not, snip snip and it can wait for a different outlet.
This doesn't so much concern what Skyrim is about, but how well it does it. And the thing is that this medium allows its audience to participate, so why have things written down that are only written down? I don't even disagree with having books in the game that provide bits of lore, but why have that lore there if it has no bearing on anything you do in the game?
It's kind of like if a Zelda game had an in-game book about Gannondorf in a game where he doesn't appear and has no relevance to the plot. Why bring that character up? I mean, no-one would mind if Gannondorf was the central villain again anyway, so if one is going to use the character at all, why not go full tilt and allow us to experience that first hand? Metroid Prime sure as hell had a lot of pirate logs, but they tended to foreshadow some of the challenges you were going to face or the items you were going to acquire, so they related themselves to the core experience.
But say you want to express some of the mythology of the TES setting in TES6 and you have a choice between a few books or a quest relating to religious politics. The latter can express everything the books can, or even make such books useful and relevant to gameplay. Perhaps there are specific NPC conversations that can only be heard by sneaking about, or perhaps NPCs leave notes in their rooms that explain some concepts by proxy while also achieving some other function -- all better alternatives than writing it all in a book and leaving it at that.
I'm fairly sure that a lot of Dwemer lore, such as all the stuff about the Numidium and the Heart of Lorkhan, is from Morrowind, sorry. The point still stands, in that it would be the next thing to impossible to have the player experience the Dwemer story in such a way as to both provide all the elements of the Dwemer story and still keep the central mystery behind it a mystery. This is just the nature of a sequential series, and Bethesda choosing not to add in mentions of previous lore when it does not relate to the current game at all.
This is not to say that gameplay does not provide its' hints. However, the hints provided by the game are not about the Dwemer disappearance at all, but rather about the Dwemer themselves. For example, when you kill a Dwarven automaton, there's a good chance that the Automaton will drop a Soul Gem. It isn't explicitly stated, but it provides a view into Dwarven culture; what kind of culture would willingly create these Automatons and power them with souls, when souls are an actual metaphysical object in this game?
I would say that is pretty silly. It may not have any direct bearing to the story, but it's fucking interesting.
And more than that, actually, there's some pretty direct parallels one can draw between the PC and Tiber Septim. Enough so that it's teased that the PC may actually be Talos reincarnated, wich works quite well together with the Akatosh <-> Alduin dynamic.
I can provide several reasons.
First and foremost is that there are some things that cannot be experienced, and yet are still interesting. This mainly relates to abstract concepts, such as Adu and Padomay being the two forces behind creation (order and stasis, against chaos and change), which is important when these aspects are simplified within the context of the game. That is to say, the Dark Brotherhood quest chain involves Sithis, also known as Padomay; but in such a way that anyone who is aware of what Sithis is knows that it is false.
There are actually some major differences here. Zelda does not concern itself with building its' world around you. It simply presents itself as it does, then just sets you on your way. Skyrim, on the other hand, sets out to provide you with a different experience; it builds the world around you, letting you immerse yourself within it, rather than providing everything straight up for you to experience.
Actually, let me provide you with an instance of where the gameplay and the lore meet up to provide you with an interesting experience.
Blackreach is a large, large abandoned Dwemer ruin. It doesn't have much to do in it; the entire area feels kind of unfinished, but that has no relation to this.
Within the city, you can find a group of prisoners. However, when you approach the prisoners, even if you have killed all of the Falmer around, the prisoners will simply attack you. There is no dialogue options, no way to pacify them permanently; your only options are to either stay away from them, or slaughter them.
This relates back to the lore, because this is pretty much exactly what the Dwemer did to the Falmer; they force-fed the Falmer toxic mushrooms, and exiled them underground.
Is this particularly important to the story at large, apart from being a convenient explanation as to why you only find Falmer underground? No. However, does it make the setting that much tighter? Yes. Does it provide the game with more options to offer up small details like the one above? Yes. Is there any way that they can reasonably explain the origin of the Falmer in game without going to silly extents like time travel or else making it so understated that very few players will find it? Not really.
Again, though, there's a difference here; not everything can be explained through gameplay. blah blah abstract concepts blah blah narrative mysteries blah blah some things are just a pain in the ass and aren't worth playing through because they're fucking annoying (Looking at you, lockpicking minigames. Fuck you.)
There are certainly many elements of the game that can be shown through gameplay- and, indeed, there are actually a lot of elements that are, such as the bandit den you go into and find mammoth noses and tusks scattered around everywhere, along with the ground being soaked red. However, writing some things in a book is certainly valid, depending on the situation, and can lead to some nice little surprises, too. (Try reading Olaf and the Dragon, and then visiting the throne room in Dragonsreach again. Not that Olaf and the Dragon is particularly well-written, but that's beside the point.)
Anyway, I'm not going to argue that Skyrim is the greatest game and it can do no wrong. Its' gameplay sucks pretty hard, and it does rely far too much on telling you what's going on than in leading you to figure it out through showing you what's happening. Its' books are badly written, and a lot of people skip over the lore just because the books themselves fucking suck. Limitations of the very concept leads to people spilling their guts out to you five seconds after meeting you because the game designers didn't want to pad out their content making you earn their trust first. NPC's give wooden performances because they suck. Etcetera etcetera.
My point isn't that Skyrim is a great game. My point is just that to say that a game has to lead you to experience a story through its' gameplay just because it is interactive is silly, because it misses out on a lot of things that gameplay alone can't convey.
And lastly, because it's two AM and fuck arguing this at 2AM, I'll leave you with one of the comments on the article that sparked this that I actually kind of agree with.
@Alex: here are a couple of occasions where Skyrim has storytelling of the kind you're talking about:
But not every bit of story in it is like that, because saying that games should only have that sort of storytelling is like saying that novels should only use words beginning with letters in the first half of the alphabet. There are a lot of excellent words there, and if someone actually did that it would be impressive, but it's really just an arbitrary limitation to the creative toolbox.
To this, I say the guy who wrote that wasn't paying enough attention. If a player finds the whole narrative about Quelaag's sister and doesn't feel bad about their actions earlier, that player is an asshole.
And then there's the narrative with Solaire, Gwyn's son. He felt the need to go out and make his own way, rather than having everything given to him from birth. To do this, he became an undead, stripping himself of his godhood. If you manage to save him in his darkest hour, when he's about to give in to despair (which, interestingly, can't be done unless you also help Quelaag's sister recover from her illness), he'll be there for you when you need him the most, summonable for the battle with his own father. On my file, he dealt the final blow, and that meant a lot to me.
Since we don't have the full story anyway, Dwemer-related stuff certainly can and should be experienced first-hand. You can still express the mystery, but it's important that said mystery comes out during gameplay. After all, why waste a perfectly good mystery scenario on in-game books? You don't need them if there are locations within the game where you interact with Dwemer environments and find clues first hand, like the aforementioned soul gems. Bethesda didn't do the whole interacting-with-the-Dwemer-mystery thing as well as they could have, but I'm glad at least that there were such locations in the game.
Well, to take example from the comment you quoted:
In Dark Souls and Demon's Souls, every bit of lore you come across completes a piece of the puzzle associated with entities and environments you actively experience first hand. It's interesting because it gives partial answers to questions that might have been raised, but it seldom ever gives a complete, concrete answer. That's great because it's immediately relevant to things you've experienced or things you've yet to experience, like the pirate logs in Metroid Prime.
But why do I care about the lore of how a mortal ascended to godhood in Skyrim when I'm in, well, Skyrim? My job description pretty much boils down to "dragonslayer", or perhaps things like "war hero", "master assassin", "mercenary captain" and "expert wizard". None of these things have anything to do with Tiber Septim, and his story is from a far away land thousands of years ago and only exists in complete abstract. In fact, this is the reason why I skipped much of the lore from Metroid Prime 2 when I read most of it in the original Prime -- the first game had stuff relating to what was happening around me, whereas the second was largely about the extinction of an absent race and provided me with no information that was relevant to my actions. Metroid Prime 2 would have been just as strong without that stuff.
But why are gods of order and chaos interesting in the first place? It's a fantasy trope that's been revisited time and time again. This is the kind of thing I tend to skip through exactly because of that and because it holds no relation to what I'm doing or trying to achieve. Unless one of those gods is going to descend from the heavens and shove my ass down my throat, they're just fantasy trope non-entities to me.
This isn't true; it simply constructs its world(s) using more subtle methods. For instance, the condition of the Temple of Time can tell you a lot about that iteration of the story. In A Link To The Past, the Master Sword is hidden in a forgotten grove with only ruins left; in Ocarina of Time, it's a place of worship in strong condition; in Twilight Princess, it's a large ruin that is "restored" it its original state.
It never quite tells you what's going on, but it creates a different context for one's experience in that location. And in a game where the emphasis is on doing rather than being shown or told things, that makes a huge difference.
Not everything can be expressed through gameplay in literal terms, but it can all be expressed during gameplay without necessitating in-game books and boring dialogue. Most truly relevant information could be given by allied NPCs while you're on a quest together. If the environment is interesting enough to have you look around, and if the dialogue isn't too obviously expository, then you'd probably get a lot of players to actually listen as they have that experience.
There are others, too. For instance, I found a book about lunar steel. Thing is, I found it within a lunar forge with an actual lunar weapon next to it, which actually made reading the book compelling because the context had begged some questions.
And for the record, I'm not so much saying this is the only good type of storytelling in games, but I definitely think it's by far and large a better approach than what we usually get in TES. Most of the time, we get infodumps via dialogue or books. Games are about doing and experiencing, so dialogue and books that relate to expository should also relate to things that are relevant within the context of the game itself. Not every game has to be as potentially bare as Dark Souls, but I think a lot of games could learn a lot from taking some notes on how that stuff was delivered.
Just reading that was kind of heartwarming and also a little sad. Kind of sounds like Solaire was to you what Astraea was to me -- one of those bittersweet tales that you come to your own conclusion on. Helped by the game, of course, but without the details completely spelled out.
I don't think you're understanding the goals of the TES series. The idea is that you can do what you want to do in the context of the setting. If that means heading into the dungeons, fine. If that means bluffing your way into being the head of the mage's guild while only knowing one spell, that's fine too. If that means becoming the best blacksmith in all the land and never killing anything, you can do that. If that means settling down with a wife, you can do that. If that means hitting the books and looking up lore stuff that doesn't really relate to the main plot at all, you can do that. The fact that there are books on the bookshelves and you can read every one of them adds to the fullness of setting that the series is all about, even given that most players will just check if they're skill books.
The dialogue I'd call a fair criticism, since it's mandatory. There's definitely way too much of a reliance on talking to a guy who says "this is happening, so go do that, because you're the PC." The books are really just there for the lore addicts, so them being infodumpy is okay since you only read them if that's what you're looking for.
It's not just about TES, though, but fantasy RPGs as a whole.
For instance, say you make a new fantasy RPG with a new IP. You liked TES a lot, so you fill the game with lore books alongside whatever mechanics and stuff you chose to put in, and the whole game takes the shape of a define-your-own-adventure sandbox experience. So what incentive are you giving players to actually read that in-game book material? Does it fill gaps in the player's understanding of the setting? If so, why aren't those gaps filled early in the game by the general gameplay experience anyway?
Wouldn't the better thing to do be to give quests and objectives that funnel the player into learning bits of the lore anyway? You could create a puzzle that requires knowledge of the lore available in the immediate area, for instance, or perhaps a lore book could reveal a weakness of a tough enemy alongside other bits and bobs of story.
As much as the TES games are a series, each game is also a self-contained experience and each new game is played by people who have never played a TES game before. Someone new to Skyrim is playing the game because it's a high fantasy adventure RPG with lots of dragon slaying, and I expect they're going to skip right over lots of the lore because it doesn't pertain to the advertised strengths of the product.
Skyrim in particular has the most concrete definition of any TES game thus far -- it's about hunting dragons in a Viking Age Scandinavia expy. That's a pretty significant focus compared to previous titles, which were advertised and made with less focus towards a visceral theme. Good games have strong focus, and diversion from a focus almost always weakens a game. So Joe the casual gamer has a younger brother who just got Skyrim and decides to try it out; it's got dragons and Vikings, which are A-okay with Joe and his brother seems to have a lot of fun playing it. So Joe starts up the game and is having a pretty good time between going through the main quest and faffing about. He comes across a book about the history of Morrowind, picks it up, begins reading it and promptly puts it down. "What does this have to do with dragons or Vikings?", he wonders, "It seems really out of place."
Obviously, the TES setting is more diverse than dragons or Vikings, but I hope you can see what I'm getting at. When designing a game, especially with today's large production costs, you can only afford to include material that's likely to establish or strengthen audience investment in the experience. Some people like lore, and that's totally fine. I don't want to alienate that part of the audience, nor do I want any studios to do that. But at the same time, inclusion of that kind of lore will leave new players scratching their heads unless they're the kind that naturally finds themselves immersed in that kind of stuff. So why not go for the best possible compromise and focus that kind of lore enhancement tool towards in-game experiences? If nothing else, this means that almost the entire audience will be invested in the lore rather than just lorehounds -- they experienced its implications first-hand and solved problems relating to it, making it an experience that can be discussed and mutually appreciated with everyone else who played that section of the game.
And that's perfectly fine. But that doesn't mean that the books shouldn't be there because not everyone will want to read them.
Or, alternatively, goes "That place is quite different from Skyrim despite being in the same series. I wonder if this Morrowind place has its own game. Hey, it does. Maybe I should buy that sometime." :P
Books are probably the single least expensive thing to add in the TES games. Far more money goes toward graphical assets and level design.
While Skyrim is about going monster hunting in notScandinavia, the series as a whole isn't, and I think it's fairly important to convey that too.
A lot of the books, incidentally, are about the different types of monsters in Skyrim, so there are at least a fair number of books that people other than lore-junkies might want to read. And some of the books tell you where to go to find awesome treasure and stuff.
That I would like to see more of.
Think about it, though. Skyrim, apparently, has thousands of different books in it. That's money spent paying writers for however many pages per a book. If there are, say, one thousand books in Skyrim and each one averages at ten pages, then that means Bethesda has paid for ten thousand pages of writing -- roughly equivalent to LotR written out seven times. By all account, though, it seems Skyrim contains even more material than that.
Whether writers are paid by the hour or by the page or whatever, those are some substantial resources going into a facet of the game that only sometimes relates to the gameplay at hand, and often relates to lore outsie the setting of Skyrim. Given that the writing isn't very good to begin with and that TES games have some major areas where the gameplay could be better, it seems to me as though those resources could have been spent more effectively. If nothing else, they could have been used ensuring that the books within the game pertain to advancement in player (not player character) understanding and skill of the obstacles they'll face or something similar.
I think it's more likely that he won't really care -- and if he does care and picks up Morrowind, well, it's a significantly less accessible experience compared to Skyrim. I mean, your average gamer isn't a lorehound, your average casual gamer much less so. And this is what I appreciate about casual gamers -- without any additional baggage of expectation, they experience games with a sort of "purity" we can't, exactly for the experience the game is at the time.
So I forgot to mention this earlier, but the other day I was at Best Buy, and at the counter they had a bunch of copies of Duke Nukem Forever for $3 each. So Duke Nukem Forever was so bad that Best Buy had to cut its price by 95% and put it at the counter to get people to buy it? (answer: yes)
Pretty much.
Duke Nukem Forever is freaking terrible.
On a related note...
He was talking about Demon's Souls, as he hadn't played Dark Souls yet. He even says so.
(Fuck responding to ten pages of back-and-forth, I'll reply to like, two things.)
But as we've already pointed out, many games already do this. Skyrim has dozens of instances where small clues lead you to figure out what's going on.
Three hundred and thirty-eight, quite a few of which are carried over from previous games, and few of which go over five pages.
I don't think it's really a good idea to try and predict people's reactions. Otherwise, I could ask you how many people will even notice what little lore is actually put into Dark Souls, simply because no attention is drawn to it.
(Also, I find it amusing that so much of the game's lore in Dark Souls is delivered to you through conversations with NPC's.)
Ah. Well in that case, world 5-5.
The fight with Maiden Astrea is pretty sad, but at the same time, it's made very frustrating due to not being given any choice in the matter. Once you enter the room she is in, you can't go back, you can't sheathe your weapon and try and find another way, and even on later playthroughs, there is nothing you can do to stop the sequence from unfolding like that. It's sad, but it's also incredibly frustrating due to how linear it is.
Compare that to Solaire. Most players, on their first playthrough, will end up confronting Solaire and killing him after he has turned evil or whatever. On your second playthrough, however, it is entirely possible to save him; and that's where the strength lies- not in being forced into a scripted encounter wherein you have to kill a woman who is begging you to leave so she can continue her work to save a poisoned kingdom and free thousands of souls from their misery, but in encountering a single person, seeing his fall into despair and madness, and then being able to go save him if you wanted.
Or, tl;dr Fuck Maiden Astrea because the game doesn't give you anything remotely resembling choice like it does with Solaire.
Well, that's because the alternative is letting the Archdemon do its thing, which is bad.
Though it is better when there's a choice.
Dark souls does the Astrea thing with Quelaag anyway.
Despite our differences in opinions and interests, it seems that Alex is taking up the Croquet Mallet of Gigantposting that I once wielded.
Isn't Skyrim's counterpart Skyward Sword?
My experience with F2P games these days is that, while they might be free, they're frequently designed to be annoying if you plan on playing without paying, and they're also fuckhuge. Like, at least 1 GB, typically several GB, and sometimes over 10 GB.
And from what I've heard, LoL isn't bad about needing to pay. none of these games have like anything in common
only in that they both have 'sky' in their name and were released in the same year.
But that is only so because the developer designed the game to be like that.
The scene is sad the first time you do it, but the second time, it's just frustrating, and it just gets more and more annoying afterwards.
The first time around, though, it's a huge gutpunch.