Good Game, Bad Game: What’s The Difference?
Part 4 — Dark Souls vs Lords of the Fallen
Four parts to rule them all, four parts to find them. Four parts to bring them all, and on the Internet, analyse them
Yes my friends, the time has come once again. We gather here for part 4 in this quintessential work of online videogame critique and scrutiny.
This entry shall mark the conclusion for our current scrutinees: Dark Souls and L̶o̶r̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶R̶i̶n̶g̶s̶̶ Lords of the Fallen.
(Yes scrutinees is a word. No really, it is. Look it up. I’ll wait.
………..
Fine, it isn’t a word, but I’m keeping it anyway)
Last time, we took a look at how Lords of the Fallen’s promising combat tripped and fell over itself like yer’ shakey Nan coming down the stairs.
This time we’re investigating the story.
Lords of the Fallen’s story could have been quite good. Perhaps a little trope-y, but there was a lot there to make for a very entertaining experience.
Now let’s take a look at why that didn’t really happen.
(Note: As in part 3, Lords of the Fallen is hereby shortened to LotF for ease/laziness)
A Promising Story Idea
Let’s start off with the setup. Here’s the general overview for Lords of the Fallen’s background lore, expressed in bulletpoint form.
Some creative licence may be involved
- 8,000 years ago, a malicious god called Adyr (aka Big Daddy Mean) rules humanity with a titanium-alloy fist. Humanity doesn’t like this.
- Big Daddy Mean calls them all scrubs and to git gud. “Fyt me IRL, plebs” he announces
- Drawing inspiration from their basic bitch DnD campaigns, the “plebs” form a team comprising a rogue, warrior and magician
- The plebs roll a natural 20 and K.O. Big Daddy Mean
- Unused to being in charge, they go mad with power. Heavily critical Yelp reviews rise in number
- Skip to present day: Big Daddy Mean is back for round two, and this time it’s personal (and he also has an army of demons)
- Unable to cope with the demons, the plebs figure that tattooed badasses are their only hope. Enter the protagonist: Harkyn, the most tattooed of badasses
And that’s where you come in.
The Journey Begins
You play Harkyn: a character shunned by society who ends up being it’s only hope for survival.
(Hmmm. I’m sure I’ve heard of something similar to that before…….)
Accompanied by your mentor and guide, Generic Wise Old Man, you travel the land to fulfil your quest.
(Okay, really tickling my memory box now……..)
Along the way you’ll meet such characters as Independent Female Adventurer, Overly Needy NPC and Secretly Maniacal Religious Leader.
RIGHT. That’s it. Enough of that.
There’s more tropes here than on a Mexican soap opera.
What the hell is going on?
Lords of the Uninspired Ideas
Despite an initially promising idea, LotF falls hard into the trap of a very formulaic story progression and setup.
Unlike Dark Souls, you’re given a pretty clear idea of what’s going on. It can very easily be broken down into 4 distinct parts:
- The world needs to be saved from bad guys
- You fight the bad guys
- Predictable twist
- You overcome the challenge of said twist and save the day
There’s never really any surprise or intrigue involved, and what little there is can be seen a mile off.
As you make your way through the game, fighting and maiming demonic entities as you go, some options for variable choice do present themselves.
For example, there is a sidequest involving Yetka (aka Independent Female Adventurer) where you choose whether or not to slay her demonic mother.
Let her live, and Yetka and her mother disappear, which nets you a trophy/achievement notification. Slay her, and Yetka gets pissed.
Then she disappears.
…….and that’s it.
Alongside this, there are also multiple endings on offer. After finding Adyr (aka Big Daddy Mean), he informs you that Secretly Maniacal Religious Leader is, in fact, secretly maniacal.
Adyr presents to you his rune, which you can use in one of 3 ways:
- Attach it to your weapon, side with Adyr, defeat the Leader and claim the world for the demons
- Attach the rune to your armour, side with humanity, defeat the Leader and claim the world for yourself
- Give the rune to your trusty extra-dimensional blacksmith buddy, side with no-one, defeat the Leader and let the world do whatever
Barring a slightly different ending scene, each of these choices all roughly produce the same outcome.
It kind of feels like they discussed in a meeting about going for a Deus Ex: Human Revolution idea, but they only got to the part about multiple endings and then had a lunch break.
And so we get the following problem…..
Nothing Really Matters
The story found in LotF had a lot of potential, but falls flat due to a distinct lack of consequences and emotional investment.
Where Dark Souls worked well was presenting a world in which you, a nameless adventurer, met other adventurers journeying along their own path.
You had the opportunity to travel alongside them, and directly affect the outcome of their journeys through your actions (or inaction).
The key point?
It felt like it mattered.
LotF, on the other hand, offers generic side quests and bland recurring characters.: You find someone, you help them by collecting or killing something, you get experience and items.
It’s a rinse-repeat structure that invites little in the way of caring about any character in particular.
Even our main guy Harkyn doesn’t get much development. He’s supposed to be one of the most dangerous criminals to walk the face of the Earth, with a background more chequered than a Scotsman’s kilt.
There’s a lot of room there to offer something deeper. Character redemption, a testing of morals, insights into his history.
None of this, however, really happens.
There is an attempt at invoking some sort of emotional response from Harkyn. This occurs when his mentor is killed trying to prevent Secretly Maniacal Religious Leader from taking over the world.
I suppose the aim here was to provide a moment charged with anguish and anger. Something to make you feel for Harkyn and to provide him with a righteous fury to be taken out upon the Religious Leader’s face.
But you just kinda end up like…
There’s no investment or personal stake for you as a player. Whether you choose to do something, or don’t, it doesn’t matter all that much.
In the end, everyone’s outcome is the same.
As we all know, if it doesn’t matter, then it’s pretty hard to care about it.
The End?
And there you have it: a deeper look into the why’s and wherefore’s of what makes these two titles tick. We’ve seen many ways in which Dark Souls did things right, and many lessons the LotF developers could look to learn from.
I’ll be the first to admit, there was a lot of stuff I skipped over. Things like world and enemy design, and……. other things that I have not considered but are important.
(…….probably)
However, this was never intended to be an all-inclusive treatise on the matter.
No, this was merely a way to get you thinking a little bit more about what it is that you enjoy about these games, and why.
Perhaps in future, when espousing the philosophical ideals of Pokemon and drawing comparisons between it and indentured slavery, you’ll look fondly upon these articles that started you off down this path.
Perhaps you’ll even smile.
For now, we shall draw this chapter to a close. Do not fret, however. This isn’t the end forever. Much like with your friends who are better off than you…
There’s always more to compare and judge.
Until next time!
Click here to start the adventure all over again!
