The Stoic Design of Demon's Souls | Classic Principles Reinterpreted

The Stoic Design of Demon's Souls | Classic Principles Reinterpreted. It is not a coincidence that whenever game journalists talk about challenging games, or games with punishing design, they always refer back to the Souls series (it's a full on meme at this point). The reason why Dark Souls (though it should be Demon's Souls) is such a constant point of reference is because Demon's Souls accomplished something that is extremely valuable in the modern gaming landscape, it took many of the core principals of classic game design and translated them into the lexicon of the modern progression-based player. This may sound very lofty and something you would learn in game design class, but it isn't. In order to make these classical elements of the game design be appreciated, Demon's Souls had to employ BRUTE FORCE in a way a purely academic style of game design would never dare to do. Demon's Souls had to take on the ultimate burden of game design, somehow convince players to accept that failure is a necessary part of compelling art.

One way Demon's Souls accomplishes this goal is of course it's extremely solid fundamental design, the game has clearly benefited form all the years of experience FromSoft had as a studio up to that point (including making their own Ninja Gaiden clone, Ninja Blade). No first time developer would be capable to making a game this polished. In addition though, I think the secret ingredient to Demon's Souls success, that allowed it to connect with a western audience more than its peers like the Ninja Gaiden series, is its stoic neutral presentation. Demon's Souls doesn't have any anxiety or insecurity about what hell it is unleashing on the player, nor does the game really care that much if the player survives or not. Everything about the way the game communicates with the player is matter of fact and natural. Even the Game Over screen has been shifted to merely saying "You Died." It's not even clear if death in this game is necessarily an undesirable state at times (since you can use it to manipulate world tendency a bit).

Because of this stoic presentation and open-ended game design, Demon's Souls has managed to reduce the ever increasing Loss Aversion that plagues modern players and has also managed to re-introduce classic game design principals to them in the process. Demon's Souls is compelling, its beautiful in a bleak sort of way, and its success is one of the rare examples of a massive mainstream breakthroughs in gaming achieved through sheer grit and visionary design.

Today's video is the first in a journey of vids I will be doing going through all the Souls series, and I have to say Demon's Souls is setting expectations for the following games extremely high ha. As it stands right now, the poor game is trapped on the PS3 and Sony seems perfectly happy to leave it there and instead push their non-Fromsoft developed Remake. This remake doesn't even have it's own subtitle, by the way, it's just Demon Souls (PS5). I hate when publishers do this and is this remake a suitable replacement for the original game? that's doubtful, but I will be checking on the Remake itself in a review next month :-)

Amazing thumbnail by the master ‪@boghogSTG‬

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00:00:00 Chapter 1 – Reinterpreting Classic Game Design
00:07:18 Chapter 2 – BRUTE FORCE STRUCTURE
00:14:11 Chapter 3 – Emotions are The Enemy
00:23:18 Chapter 4a – Classic Levels
00:29:39 Chapter 4b – Combat
00:37:09 Chapter 4c – Boss Fights
00:46:49 Chapter 5 – The Virtues of Formal Design
00:54:25 Please Release Demon’s Souls From Its PS3 Prison

#demonssouls, #darksouls, #eldenringnightreign