Imperfect Strangers: Dark Souls 3’s NPC Problem

This article contains spoilers for Dark Souls 3.

I’d like to preface this by saying I think Dark Souls 3 is an excellent game and does some things best in the series. Even its weakest points (one of which I’m about to discuss) still contain pleasures. I don’t think this disclaimer should be necessary but emotions run high with Souls fandom. I’d rather be cautious than not, though I’m confident in my assessment. I’d also like to define terms. I’m specifically speaking of NPCs, not bosses or other characters in the world. I mean characters you run into in the world, then fulfill certain requirements to unlock their stories. Think Siegmeyer, Solaire, Lucatiel, etc.

The Souls games have a reputation for strong NPC character arcs. At first, this seems strange when you consider how little direct dialogue is in each game and how difficult it can be to hear it. To the first time player, much of the genius of how the series handles character stories will be lost. I know it was for me. But once I was tuned into it, I grew to consider it one of the most genius parts of what I consider to be the best video game series of all time.

My breakthrough, along with many others, I imagine, came with Vaatividya’s Prepare to Cry video series. Michael’s videos not only revealed each character storyline in detail, but also presented them in a palatable way. I used these videos as sort of a rubric for how the game presented these stories. I translated obtuse, archeological, fragmentary narratives using the cinematic traditional storytelling of the Prepare to Cry videos.

One of the things these stories had in common, the reason why Prepare to Cry was such a revelation, was that the stories are universally tragic. It’s right there in the title. In addition, the first Dark Souls’ characters weren’t only tragic, they were profoundly tragic. Their tragedy was complicated, noble, misguided, sympathetic. They spoke to me because the roots of their tragedy weren’t in dragons and arch trees but in the human condition.

As I went on to play Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls 2, Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3, I expected this tradition to continue. This was not to be the case. Each other entry fails to live up to the standard set by Dark Souls with regards to NPCs. Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne feature failures of volume, containing few NPCs. The characters that are there range from decent to pretty great with Dark Souls 2 fairing the worst (Lucatiel, Aldia and Vendrick are compelling enough, though nothing outstanding). Demon’s Souls features a few decent characters but your interaction with them is limited, other than Ostrava. Bloodborne has the utterly excellent Alfred/Annalise questline but, again, it’s almost the only one in the game.

Dark Souls 3 does not have this specific problem. There are many, many, complex character questlines but I’d still argue that they are, if not the weakest in the series, the most disappointing. I’m going to spend most of this time comparing Dark Souls 3 NPCs to Dark Souls NPCs but up front, I’ll say there’s not one NPC in Dark Souls 3 as tragic, nuanced, or compelling as Alfred from Bloodborne or Astrea in Demon’s Souls. Dark Souls 3 comes up wanting against the series as a whole.

A Tale of Two Siegs.

For my jumping off point, though I plan to briefly look at all of the NPCs, I’m going to use what I’d hazard is most people’s favorite: Siegward. Not only do I find him particularly egregious, he also openly invites comparison to Dark Souls by quoting not only the visual and auditory signifiers of a much stronger NPC, but also his quest resembles it at several points. You’re meant to compare Siegward to Siegmeyer. Let’s start by looking at what happens with Siegward.

You find Siegward in the Undead Settlement, confounded by an elevator and in need of your help. After the player gets over their initial warm fuzzies from seeing a beloved armor set and voice, they notice a familiar situation: our onion buddy needs our assistance. So we figure out the elementary elevator puzzle and let him move forward. Rather than doing so, he perches on the side of a building, looking down on a demon. He advises caution and planning, suggesting that the demon is too strong. Of course, time only moves when the player does things in the Souls series, so he will never come up with a plan himself. You have to go down and fight the demon, causing him to admonish you and join the fray.

Siegward can wreck the demon with or without your help. Afterwards, he gives you a hilarious toast, and you move on. This is a near inversion of the most pivotal part of Siegmeyer’s quest in Dark Souls (which I’ll talk about in a minute). The game seems to be setting up a simple inversion: Siegmeyer is incompetent and you help him out. Siegward is competent (if we ignore the elevator thing, which we won’t), and he helps you out. Fair enough. It’s not particularly brave or strong storytelling to just flip something upside down, but it’s something.

The game doesn’t go in that direction. Two of the next three articulation points are straight out of the Siegmeyer playbook. Siegward gets trapped in a well and has his armor stolen by Patches and later gets trapped in a cell. Neither of these are the actions of a competent knight. Falling down a well is something little kids do. At this point, the game has thrown away any hope of inverting Siegmeyer’s storyline with Siegward.

During this time, Siegward starts making vague mentions of traveling to the profaned capital and having a promise to keep. If we go through all of the byzantine steps of completing his quest (more on that later), he joins us to fight an otherwise underwhelming boss, Yhorm. It turns out that Siegward and Yhorm are old friends and Siegward promised to slay Yhorm. The two of you, with two unique magical swords (!), make short work of Yhorm. Siegward toasts you again, says he is going to take a nap, and as you walk towards the bonfire, he kneels down dead, his duty fulfilled.

So, ignoring the brief spell of ultra competence, what we are left with is the profoundly simple story of a good man who values honor and friendship, is a bit of a dullard, and fulfills his promise. Yay? I mean, it’s fine. He’s a likeable character, he’s well voiced acted, and someone who is actually a good person, which is rare in Souls. But what is the message? What’s the theme? What’s the human truth you’re to take away from the complicated to-do list you followed to complete this? “Honor is good, friendship is nice, Siegward is still bad at being an adventurer.” One could argue that the message is, “don’t give up” or some such, because despite being a bumbling moron, Siegward accomplished his goal. But honestly, he didn’t. You did. He’d be dead at the bottom of a well without you.

It’s empty. It feels good but it’s dessert. It’s a blockbuster movie story, a children’s story. It’s not up to the standards of the series.

Compare it with Siegmeyer. Without going into all of the steps of his quest (which are also a bit too byzantine, but, again, more on that later), Siegmeyer’s quest consists of him constantly getting into trouble only to have the player bail him out of it. He’s just as incompetent as Siegward and requires just as much help. However, and this is the brilliance of Dark Souls NPCs, it’s not as simple as that. By helping Siegward time and time again, you shatter his confidence and remove his sense of identity and purpose. This whole time, he refers to himself as a great adventurer but he’s a buffoon. He just doesn’t know it. And by showing him up time and time again, you remind him of this fact despite good intentions.

This culminates in one of the most brilliant things I’ve seen in a game. During this time, Siegmeyer starts to have an inkling about this. The disappointment is in his voice. So he hatches a plan. He says he’ll go dispatch some Chaos Eaters and give you time to slip away. He desperately wants purpose and you’ve been robbing it from him this whole time. If you fail to pick up on this hint, or value his life more than his wishes, you can head down with him and dispatch the Chaos Eaters yourself. Doing so heavily implies the end of Siegmeyer. He says, ruefully, that he is always thanking you. He curses his own inability. By helping him, you’ve done a profound act of emotional violence.

Adding more shade to this, if you allow him to help defeat the monsters, he ends up dead regardless. He goes hollow in either situation, either as the result of the player, or due to the passage of time. It may seem like this drains emotional weight from the storyline but both outcomes are not the same. First, by allowing him to hold on a little longer, you allow him to reunite with his daughter before he’s euthanized. Second, one version of the doomed fool got to feel like a proper knight one last time and the other was shown up by the player.

The theme and message of Siegmeyer’s questline is complicated. It’s about how lacking a sense of purpose is a real struggle that actual humans feel. It actually drives you mad, makes you depressed, leads to a lower quality of life. It’s about how when you think you’re helping someone, it may not be what they actually want or need, and you should examine your intentions and actions. It can be read as a daughter dealing with her father’s dementia, which plays into the larger theming of the game where hollowing can be seen as a metaphor for dementia. It’s complicated and tragic in a real way. A human way.

Do you see what I mean? Though both of these stories might feel good and you might like both characters, one of these stories is far more artful and resonant. It’s about humanity rather than simply being about a largely untested virtue (keeping in mind, again, that Siegward is barely responsible for success in his mission). Hrrrmmm indeed.

The Usual Suspects

Though not every other Dark Souls 3 NPC invites a direct comparison to a Dark Souls counterpart, there is a shocking lack of new ideas with their stories. Most of their stories are merely remixed aspects of stronger NPCs from the rest of the series. Here, I’ll give a brief critique of each NPC as defined in the introduction to this essay.

Greirat of the Undead Settlement. This thief’s story has two parts. First, he has an emotional connection to a woman in the settlement and asks that the player give her a ring. Instead, we find that she has died. This, understandably bums Greirat out. The second part is that he asks to go pillage in increasingly dangerous places. One can argue that the first leads to the second (having lost Loretta, he now has a death wish) but there’s little in the dialogue to support this. We simply don’t get to know this character well enough to become invested. There isn’t enough there.

Hawkwood. This initially crestfallen fellow at least has a new tale. We find that he’s been kicked out of the Abyss Watchers for a silly reason (using a shield) and is inspired by our character to become a great warrior. To this end, he pursues an ancient order of monk-like dragon worshippers, culminating in challenging the player for an artifact. This all works and is signaled fairly well. There’s a sense of subversion because we’re clearly meant to associate him with crestfallen NPCs from previous games. I’d still argue that his story doesn’t add up to much. What is it about? What is the theme? Self improvement? Restoring honor? It’s a simple story that fails to carry the psychological weight of Dark Souls NPCs.

Cornyx of the Great Swamp. More or less worthless. There are minor points of articulation, some dialogue about a teacher being useless without a student, and a very, very obscure secret that allows you to get his armor set.

Orbeck. Similar to the above, with a little more complexity but not more depth. Orbeck is hinted to be interested in usurping the Lord of Hollows position from the player but other than one line of dialogue, there’s nothing else to support this, or more importantly expand upon it. His other major gimmick is that if you’d like him to stick around, you need to feed him sorcery scrolls. If you want him around, you’ll be doing that anyway, making this a non choice.

Sirris of the Sunless Realms/Hodrick are a total mess, poorly signaled and confusing. Sirris is opposed to the Rosaria’s Fingers Covenant, is probably a current or former Darkmoon, and comes from somewhere known as the Sunless Realms (on which there is very little). To advance her questline, you must not align with Rosaria’s Fingers. There’s nothing to indicate this until it is too late or you’ve already decided not to become a finger.

Then, you must be summoned into her world at two locations. The first location is arbitrary and requires you to non intuitively return to a previously cleared area (in a game with warping between bonfires). The next location is even more non intuitive and has some of the worst signaling in the game. A unique item spawns in a shopkeeper’s inventory. There’s nothing to let the player know this. If you read the description on the item, it lets you know that Sirris is seeking her grandfather, Hodrick, and where. The message mentions a grandmother, perhaps implying that the shopkeep is related, but again, these characters have no previous connection. There’s a missing link in the chain.

You then go to another area you’ve already cleared in order to kill her mad grandfather Hodrick. There’s very little to Hodrick other than that he’s insane. Killing him, in Sirris’s world, ends her questline and at some point in the future, she disappears. Yay?

Again, what is the idea, message or theme behind this? There simply isn’t enough information or context to draw any universal truth from these encounters. You’re helping with a family squabble, mercy killing, which not only isn’t particularly unique to the series as a whole, but has already been explored in this game (and will be again).

Karla. There’s almost nothing here. She’s associated with the dark, possibly a Daughter of Manus, and was once imprisoned in Irythill. Her story is either incomplete or so short as to be meaningless. It’s also a total remix/reference character to Yuria from Demon’s Souls.

Anri/Horace/Yuria/Yoel. These characters form the most complex questline in Souls history, appropriately enough, because they tie into one of the greater narrative. Given that they tie so heavily into the endings and mechanics, they are sort of an edge case as NPCs but I’ll summarize my issues with them here. They form two mutually exclusive questlines, if you want to follow them to their end.

Anri and Horace are refugees from Astora, which was possibly ravaged by Pontiff Sullyvahn (given the Ring of the Evil Eye and Pontiff’s propensity for eyes). She’s on a quest to find Aldritch for revenge as she and Horace were once prisoners of his as children. Her quest moves along until she gets to the Catacombs of Carthus where the duo are separated and Horace goes hollow for no particular reason. Horace will kill Anri if you tell her where he’s at. If she lives, she shows up in Irythill and, if you want to continue her questline, you must notice an additional statue in the room that is actually a disguised assassin. If you kill this assassin, she summons you into her world to kill Aldritch and then goes hollow.

This is a simple revenge story and, again, doesn’t have much heart or depth. Horace goes hollow arbitrarily (he’s more of a comedy character than anything, with his monosyllabic grunts) and we don’t get to know Anri other than her mission.

The other questline, which is almost too involved to summarize here, involves the hollowing mechanic, not killing the assassin, and a grisly wedding that ends with you stabbing Anri in the face. Anri isn’t really a character in this and is more of a prop. No one is really a character in this because we’re given far too little information. Yuria is the mastermind here, an agent of the Sable Church of Londor (likely former New Londo). We know very little about the Sable Church other than that they’re associated with Kaathe and have an interest in the Age of Man. To function as an emotionally truthful NPC, we simply aren’t given enough information about this face stabbing weirdo.

Leonhard is a remixed Kirk/Lautrec. A Finger (Darkwraith stand-ins for this game, with a little Chaos Servant mixed in) who ultimately kills his covenant leader to preserve her purity. There’s really nothing significant to this character other than a tragic one line backstory (told through his armor) and the most interesting element is recycled from Lautrec.

Eygon and Irina. Almost as disappointing as Siegward. This duo borrows bits of Laurentius, Lautrec and Astrea. The quest involves not learning dark miracles from Irina, who wishes to be a firekeeper. If you abstain from doing so, and buy all her stuff, and she will become a firekeeper. This is among the worst character disappointments in the series, or in games. She becomes a method for leveling up that’s mechanically identical to your regular firekeeper. She has almost no additional dialogue. Eygon disappears at this point.

If you instead learn dark miracles from her, Eygon kidnaps her to protect her from your influence. You can then kill him and continue to learn miracles from her until, ultimately, you’ve learned them all. There’s a nice touch where she asks you to touch her (she’s blind) and will think you are Eygon if you’re wearing his gauntlets. This dark path ends with yet another mercy killing.

Though the gauntlet bit is a nice touch, this questline almost entirely consists of ala carte bits from previous characters. The idea of knowledge corrupting has been explored more meaningfully in Dark Souls with both Laurentius and Big Hat Logan. The idea of a knight slavishly dedicated to a maiden is more resonant with Astrea, though there’s a minor twist in how Eygon is much more dismissive and cruel about Irina up until she’s in trouble. Though disappointing, I do think that Irina is genuinely a sad character, even if it’s for redundant reasons.

Unbreakable Patches is great and hilarious in this game. 10/10, wouldn’t change anything.

You can see from the above that Dark Souls 3 doesn’t suffer for lack of NPCs but it does suffer for lack of meaningful NPC stories. Each NPC story is either far too simple at its core (revenge or honor as themes) or they articulate themes better explored in previous entries (knowledge corrupts). In the worst cases, it does both (Leonhard is almost nothing more than Kirk plus Lautrec). And in almost every case, there simply isn’t enough information.

Bad Maps

I want to have a brief word about the complexity in Dark Souls 3’s NPC questlines versus Dark Souls. It feels to me that it’s a result of misunderstanding what made Dark Souls’s questlines special. Some of them were complicated (Siegmeyer most so) but, on average, the questlines in Dark Souls 3 are much, much more complicated. So much so that they feel hostile to the player. Specifically, the Siegward, Anri, and Sirris questlines feature very bad player signaling. To complete Siegward’s quest, you must have already triggered an appearance by Patches so you can buy his armor and you have to find a very well hidden and nonsensically placed key. To complete Anri’s questline, you must spot a new statue in the morass of current gen visual clutter. To complete Sirris’s questline, you must examine the inventory of a merchant you’ve likely outgrown for new item descriptions, and backtrack to a place you have no reason to revisit.

Even finding NPCs is difficult. Corynx is better hidden than Laurentius, Yuria is behind one of the hardest combat scenarios in the series(and is placed very late in the game). Hodrick requires you to either stumble upon (and not kill) a unique non hostile enemy by chance or somehow intuit his presence from a string of nonsense poetry from another unique non hostile enemy. By endgame, it’s not unusual to end up with a very empty Firelink. Without copious soapstone messages, the average player won’t even have a hint that many of these characters exist.

Compare with Dark Souls where it is relatively easy to be introduced to quests and only the final steps are obfuscated. The average player will easily run into every major NPC other than Big Hat Logan. This creates a question in the mind of the player, giving them the drive to find the quest triggers. Further, there are almost always characters that hint you where to go next. Patches is a font of information. Petrus tells you where Rhea went. Griggs tells you where Logan is headed. This feels fair. It doesn’t feel like something where you have to rely on wikis, soapstones, or silly unintuitive leaps to follow these characters to their ends.

The final steps tend toward the obscure (tracking Siegmeyer, saving Solaire, triggering Big Hat’s breakdown) but by then you’ve seen most of the story. You’ve become invested. How can I grow to care about Siegward with only one encounter under my belt because I didn’t check every well in Lothric?

Pretty Pictures, Soothing Sounds

I get the sense, in talking to other fans, that I’m a minority in this view, and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to puzzle out why. I want to say, first off, that I don’t want to take anyone’s joy away. If you respond to these characters, I don’t think less of you. I do think, however, that your values are different than mine. Part of it is likely that their simplicity of story simply doesn’t bother you. The idea of Dark Souls NPCs as vehicles for profundity isn’t as important to you as it is to me. I also think it has a lot to do with presentation.

The presentation of NPCs in Dark Souls 3 is the best in the series. The characters are exceptionally well voiced, they’ve got really good initial hooks (though they fail to pay off) and they’re well written (which is not the same thing as well plotted). They’re easy to like on a surface level. If a fan values the things the NPCs do well more than the things I think they do poorly, they’re likely to dig them. As explained at the beginning, presentation just isn’t enough for me.

Lessons From Lothric

The further I get from Dark Souls 3, and the end of the series, the more I realize that each of these games have flaws and strengths and that one’s personal hierarchy is largely going to depend on their own values. With Dark Souls 3, the direction it’s taken with NPCs, lore, poise, and callbacks are so misaligned with what I value about these games that I’m in the strange position of putting the best playing entry in the series at about the same level as Dark Souls 2, Demon’s Souls or Bloodborne. Though I could write about the lore, callbacks or poise, and might, the reason that NPCs get their own essay is because it took me the longest to figure out exactly why they were leaving me so cold.

On the plus side, in reflecting on why I find this collection of weirdos so hollow (ha), I’ve come to appreciate the strong characters of previous games much more. There’s a school of thought out there that ranking or comparing things is a waste of time, especially when they’re generally excellent. I disagree. This exercise has enriched my love of Dark Souls while allowing me to elaborate on a feeling I had about Dark Souls 3. So, agree, disagree, however you feel, this exercise has helped reinforce the universal truth that by examining the flaws in one thing, you can make the strengths of another shine brighter. That’s the sort of lesson that could be articulated in a game with the depth of Dark Souls. The first one, I mean.