For those of you who don't know, the "Dark Souls" Franchise is regarded as one of the most difficult game trilogies to exist in the gaming community. The people who have played and beat the game are anything but casual gamers.
In this game, the player is thrown into the most hostile environment imaginable. The game throws everything it has to keep you from achieving your goal as a gamer and when the player fails, it makes you feel that failure when you die. Dying in the game becomes part of the process. You will rage quit this game on multiple occasions, and that's where the comparison starts.
When you start the game, there is no clear linear path on where to go, you have to talk to the PC characters to try and get some understanding. Much like an undeclared major at college, you find yourself looking to others for what you're supposed to do, forcing you to explore and discover.
Every twist and turn in "Dark Souls" has traps and multiple creative ways to attack you that you won't see coming without a trained eye. You will fail and die multiple times, but come back with experience that you gain each time.
To quote Rocky from the Rocky series," The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows, it's a very mean, and nasty place and I don't care how tough you think you are, it will beat you to a pulp and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody, is going to hit as hard as life, but it ain't about how hard you hit, its about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That's how wining is done." In most games, they are all about empowerment, to allow the player to have a role in which they are the most important dazzling hero of all time, but "Dark Souls" takes you and throws you into a hostile environment where you have to learn quick, have patience and persevere through all the emotional trauma, as it leaves you to seep in your failed attempts to beat the game. But where most would quit, and never bother again, those who use all of their failures to build themselves and make themselves better, are the few who can say, " The game didn't beat me, I beat the game."
When you master a game that demands that of you, you can be more willing to fail. So you can learn how you can do better. And once you master and memorize the game, you can help other players. You can be a patriarch and teach others where to go, and build the next generation of "Dark Souls" victims.
"Dark Souls" teaches by its very mechanics, at risk of not being played, that in the journey of life, you won't be given a clear path, the world will try and stop you, but you can get help from others who have come before you, and even when you fail time and time again, you can still get up and do better. That's how you achieve your goals, and when you do finally achieve that goal, you can go back and help others achieve their goals. "Dark Souls" makes the whole world against you. It wouldn't be fair otherwise.
