Week 2 - Gaming History after 2000 - Dark Souls

How the Dark Souls Franchise has changed the Gaming Industry

The game series created by FromSoftware, that was released in 2011 with the first game "Dark Souls". This game took the gaming community by storm with its challenging mechanics and the intense fights that occur throughout the game. The series is seen by the gaming community as one of the hardest, mechanically challenging games there are out there. All the different features this game has, allowed it to impact the gaming community and give game designers a new look on the possibilities with game creation.

The main goal of this game is to accomplish defeating multiple bosses that can be found littered throughout the vast landscape in the Souls series games. This may sound like a simple game with a standard story mechanic of progression being through defeating a tough enemy, but Dark Souls takes this to a whole other level that no other game had show before. This is due to all areas in the game out to get you and take you down, from the simplest enemy in a new area ranging to a almost impossible boss to defeat. The challenge in this game, had not been seen by the gaming industry before, as most games like to be able to keep the player base by making the game easy and normally have difficulty levels for people whom wish to play a harder game. Dark Souls differs from this difficulty slider as they want to make their game as hard as possible and have only the most determined players finish their game.

Another interesting aspect of this game is that there is no one guiding you throughout the areas, new players might accidentally stumble upon one of the harder bosses in the game if they take the road less travelled without realising and can really turn the pressure up on their skills. This series teaches patience to players, otherwise it is highly unlikely that they will succeed through this game. This requirement of patience can often put of aggressive players from the series as they find this game to be impossible, but it can also teach players and give them new skills. This game is different to most mainstream games as the game will try its best to make players no want to player their game. Due to this fact, it has created a massive gaming community of people who wish to take on the challenge of this game with highs and lots of lows everywhere you go. There was no game like a Souls game before the release of the first Dark Souls and a main reason is that one of the lead designers of the game, Hidetaka Miyazaki, believes that "genre is shackles" which from this game is true, as it may have created its own genre of Souls-like games. 

Essentially, the three games that make up this series, are like no other and has taken the gaming industry by storm with it creating its own genre of game play and now we are starting to see more games being created by other developers trying to recreate what makes Dark Souls so great and challenging. 

Reference

Miyazaki H, 2016, Hidetaka Miyazaki on Twitter, viewed 26 Feburary 2017, <https://twitter.com/HidetakaMiyazak/status/809856842272768000>.