Hell Swarm
Educated
- Joined
- Jun 16, 2023
- Messages
- 908
Demon souls doing it doesn't bother me because there is mystical stuff going on that could explain having knowledge you shouldn't but Dark souls is immersion breaking if you think about it. You're an amnesiac losing their memories and identity, having it chipped away with every death and you know all this super obscure lore about lost kingdoms and shit? I don't like information logs you access in a menu but it would have been a better way to present the lore snippets. You can contextualize it outside the game's world when you do it that way.From's style of presenting lore through item descriptions and minimalist NPC dialogues is not bad per se. It was pretty effective in Dark Souls 1 to enhance the vibe of solitude of it's world / Lordran, besides being refreshing given the hobby state as I said before. The problem is when you replicate those features to settings with different themes, as is the case with Elden Ring. Then yes, it feels lazy.
I also found the style fitted Bloodborne cosmicism like a glove, and Sekiro broke away from it to have expositive dialogues, so these games never bothered me. I never played Demons Souls or Armored Core so I don't know how the style fares in those. Probably good in DeS for same reasons as DS1 and BB, but doesn't sound a good fit in AC.
Bloodborne has issues when your character knows stuff they shouldn't as well. Depends what you consider insight to be and how it would reveal things to you. If it's the power to see the arcane world then it makes no sense your character knows who owned the hat they're wearing less. If it's insight into the world in general then maybe they can read the hat's soul and see who owned it last.
I wonder when From became aware of the Dark souls lore industry and started to intentionally play into it? Dark souls 2 was well under production and a messy development but 3 seems like where the series becomes meta. Solaire pandering in 2 sucked and it's a shame they went further down that path.