"The Lords have left their thrones, and must be deliver’d to them. To this end, I am at thy side."
The Souls series, which usually includes Bloodborne and Demon’s Souls in the slightly clunky-to-say term “Soulsborne”, includes very well-known character action games from Japanese developer FromSoftware. It’s incredibly likely that you’ve heard of the series… and equally as likely that you’ve heard of the fanbase.
Dark Souls 3 is the end of the Dark Souls trilogy (unless From makes another entry at a later date, but they’ve stated enough times that this is it for the “Dark Souls” moniker), and it’s a pretty good wrap-up of the series, though it does have its share of problems.
Having advanced knowledge of the previous games is not a necessity for Souls games, since the plots are fairly well-contained. There are definite themes and plotlines that extend over the course of every game, but it’s nothing too complicated. Dark Souls 3 also takes heavily from earlier entries in the series, and whether or not that’s considered a bad thing really depends on who you talk to.
The big selling points of the series are its difficulty and its boss fights, of which I believe that Dark Souls 3 has the best collection of bosses of any of the previous games (save for the first Dark Souls, maybe). The game borrows a lot from the mechanics of From’s previous game, Bloodborne, but there is plenty to be referenced from each of their last 4 games (DeS, DaS, DaS2, BB).
This LP is somewhat of a “casual” playthrough where I’ll try to show off everything I can, but it won’t necessarily be a 100% playthrough. I’ve played each of the Souls games for hundreds of hours, so I’m very familiar with what to do, but don’t take everything I say or do as definitive fact, as the Souls games can be incredibly vague and cryptic about what’s going on.
This will mostly be a fun playthrough, where I jokingly talk myself up and then do something very stupid almost immediately afterward, so don’t worry about taking any of this too seriously.
This particular LP is different from anything I or my regular co-commentator Lobo have done before in that we’ll be bringing on other commentators throughout the LP to experience that which is Dark Souls the Third™. As the LP goes on, we’ll have people joining us with varying degrees of knowledge of and experience with the series, hoping to get a good sampling of what this game is like to different people.
Q: Will you be fighting every boss in the game?
A: Yes, we’ll be tackling all of the base game bosses as well as every boss in both of the DLCs.
Q: Can I join in on the commentary at some point?
A: Sure! See above to make sure that there’s still room, but I’ll be posting videos (sort of) as they’re being commentated on, so we’re never much farther ahead than what’s already been posted.
Q: What will be the thread’s policy on spoilers?
A: All of the games in the Dark Souls series have more-or-less similar plots, but I’m more concerned about moments in Dark Souls 3 being spoiled. Don’t post something about a boss or an enemy encounter before we get to it.
Q: What if I want to discuss the lore?
A: You are more than welcome to, just keep in mind the above Q/A. We probably won’t go into the lore in each video that much, but because of From’s commitment to leaving out as many details as they can, these games invite tons of speculations into what’s really going on. So, don’t worry about posting fan theories here and whatnot.