‘Dark Souls,’ Depression, and Difficulty Settings

In the summer of 2013, I found myself on the wrong end of what had been a long battle with depression. The kind where getting out of bed seems like an arduous task, and the whole world is grey and smothering. Worst of all, it made the simplicity of living feel like an undertaking that simply wasn’t conquerable. It was around this time that I started writing about video games for work. Not because I particularly liked them, but because it was the job opportunity that presented itself at the time. I have long believed that if you’re going to write about something, you damn well better understand the thing you’re writing about. So I jumped in head first, and as all respectable people do, started looking for video games to buy based on their cover art at a local Best Buy. I ended up with two games: Borderlands and Dark Souls. I played the latter first, and it wasn’t long before I knew that, not only was succeeding in the face of suffocating darkness possible, it was something I thrived at.

I’m not sure what kind of divine intervention needed to happen for Dark Souls to be my first video game experience coming off of years away from playing them in any real capacity, but it wasn’t long before I had created Benji, a “Jubilant Catarina” and sword-wielding knight. Soon after, I was on my own in Lordran and dying a lot. I am an inherently competitive person, mostly with myself, and it bothered me that I couldn’t even dismantle the game’s first real area: Undead Burg. I unabashedly opened up my laptop, Google searched the phrase, “Is it possible to beat Dark Souls,” and was horrified to find out that, not only is it possible, but people were doing it in all different kinds of ways. Some with only a bow and arrow, others in less time than it takes me to eat a large sandwich. If other people can do it, I could too. I spent more time out of bed that weekend, all of it playing Dark Souls, then I did any other day that summer.

Slowly, at the pace of a hair’s growth, I started to make progress. My first real point of triumph came after my defeat of the “Bell Gargoyles.” I remember it like it was yesterday: my health was low, I was all out of estus (the game’s version of a health potion), and I just needed a few more swings to finish the job. I may have been on my 20th try at that point, not including the dozens of times I died on my way to the boss, and my heart was pounding like it wanted to tear right through my chest and jump into the screen. It had been a long time since I felt that alive – a fact that served as a wet blanket after my success. Still, I went to bed that night thinking of Dark Souls and Lordran. I was enveloped in it. The thick gloominess of its world felt much like the world I was living in – only, in Lordran, I was starting to overcome.

Then I met Smough and Ornstein. What. the. fuck. Queue me Googling “Is it possible to beat Smough and Ornstein?” As with everything in Dark Souls, it absolutely was and is possible. About five hours later and maybe a couple of dozen or so tries in, I killed the hefty, Thanksgiving-day-parade-looking Smough. Pre-Dark Souls Ben would have quit when Ornstein basically digested Smough’s gigantic body and became some super version of the two of them for a second phase of the boss fight. But this version of Ben? He kicked its ass (about three hours later, of course).

The rest of the game felt like I was a superhero with a vendetta. I knew at that point that nothing was going to stop me from beating the game. Jesus of Nazareth could have showed up and I would have asked him to scoot over so I could see what kind of damage my Zweihander was doing with its latest upgrades. Everything about my Dark Souls experience captivated me. The absent plot that relied entirely on scattered bits of lore and ludonarrative to tell its story, the drab world with distinct moments of color and solace, and the grotesque boss fights that felt a little bit like my childhood “under the bed checks” and their worst-case scenarios. Dark Souls ripped me out of a world where things felt impossible and unmanageable only to put me in one just like it to show me that, not only could I survive it, I could fall in love with the beauty of small successes and triumphs.

Before long, I had my last dance with Gwyn, Lord of Cinder and Dark Souls’ final boss. I beat the game and didn’t know what to do with myself. So, predictably, I started another playthrough. I wasn’t done with Lordran and I got the feeling it wasn’t quite done with me, either.

Almost 1,000 hours later, Dark Souls is still my favorite game to play. I don’t visit it often anymore, but I think about it all the time. A handful of years later, in large part to the support of my friends and family, I am entirely healthy and happy. It was during that summer that I figured out there isn’t a whole lot in this world I can’t do if I’m willing to try hard enough at it. For all of the talk about Dark Souls and death, I don’t really think that is what the game is about. Instead, it’s a game that teaches us how to overcome, survive, and celebrate that survival. Dark Souls didn’t just teach me how to overcome death, it taught me how to live.

It should be noted that beating Dark Souls did not – in any tangible way – serve as the fix for my mental health issues. Instead, it helped shape my behavior that did result in those tangible differences. This included getting myself to seek professional help, open up to my wonderfully supportive friends and family, and getting back to things I loved: being in better shape, reading books, going to the movies, eating healthier, and learning about the world.

Difficulty Settings

There has been a lot of meaningful discussion about video game difficulty and whether easy and hard modes should be included in games like Dark Souls or Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Our own Flora Eloise wrote a magnificent piece on Hollow Knight and why the redundancy of the boss runs left her without a desire to continue streaming it. Some versions of difficulty just don’t appeal to people, and understandably so. We have finite time in our lives, and spending it banging our head against the same wall isn’t most people’s idea of fun.

My own opinion on this matter has shifted a lot since the conversations sparked about a week ago. I believe in the autonomy of an artist’s creation, so when Hidetaka Miyazaki (President of From Software and Director behind the Dark Souls franchise) said in an interview with Gamespot that, “We don’t want to include a difficulty selection because we want to bring everyone to the same level of discussion and the same level of enjoyment. So we want everyone … to first face that challenge and to overcome it in some way that suits them as a player. We want everyone to feel that sense of accomplishment. We want everyone to feel elated and to join that discussion on the same level. We feel if there’s different difficulties, that’s going to segment and fragment the user base. People will have different experiences based on that [differing difficulty level]. This is something we take to heart when we design games.” I am inclined to believe him. If we believe in video games as art, then we must also respect the artist and their intent.

That being said, I have met many wonderful gamers with disabilities in my now five-plus years covering video games. I can’t get myself to earnestly believe that Dark Souls, in the same way that it helped me, shouldn’t be accessible to those who have physical limitations that would prevent them from enjoying the game as it currently exists. There are plenty of experiences, even in competitive multiplayer games like Mario Kart 8, where accessibility options are given to the player if they need or want them. These do not need to drastically alter the main experience (and can even be actively suggested against, in the case that the developers don’t believe it to be the best way to play their game), but something should be present in as many games as possible so that gamers with disabilities can take on Smough and Ornstein just like I did.

While it’s my firm belief that playing on an easier difficulty would have prevented me from one of the few instances of an art form changing my life and my perception of life, there are thousands of people who will never have the opportunity to enjoy Dark Souls like I did. I wish that were not the case. Video games can be an inclusive environment while still adhering to the autonomy of creators and designers of the games. Everyone deserves a chance to play.

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