Why is Dark Souls so difficult?
Not cruelty: a design that prices accomplishment honestly, in the director’s own words.
Miyazaki has answered this question so often that the answer is a matter of record. The difficulty, he says, was never the intention in itself; it is part of a process that gives players a sense of accomplishment by overcoming tremendous odds, and it pushes players to experiment with builds and weapons instead of settling. Death is a trial-and-error learning tool, an idea the public only accepted after Demon’s Souls proved it in the market.
The same record shows the care taken at the edges: permanent death was considered for Demon’s Souls and dropped as too far; the difficulty was kept quiet in pitches to Sony precisely because it was load-bearing. Hard was the instrument. Accomplishment was the product.
THE RECEIPTS
Difficulty, documentedThe Prepare to Die bargain
Bandai Namco named the 2012 PC edition Prepare to Die, marketing leaning all the way into the reputation. The games’ own text never boasts about it; the box did.
Bonfires price the mercy
The checkpoint restores you and resurrects the world. Every mercy in the design is metered the same way: help exists, and it costs.
Dark Souls II’s harder edge
The sequel taxed death further, maximum health shrinking toward 50 percent with each death until a rare effigy is spent, and reviewers who praised almost everything else flagged exactly that as the step too far. The line is findable, and the series found it by crossing it once.