Dark Souls II (2014): Counting Or Not Counting Gank Violence? (Patreon)

The year is 2014. You spend long hours toiling in your service job, getting sexually harassed by woimen in “Spiritual Gangster” beanies. Whenever you try to go online and defend the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic, you are screamed down by accounts named SpockObama and PluralisticThug1959. One year ago, you spent 3 weeks salary on Grand Theft Auto 5. It was so bad that you tried killing yourself by packing an entire Copehagen tin into your lip. You woke up, angrier than ever at the world, and deciding that next time one of those Spiritual Gangster women harassed you, you would just submit yourself. Then, Dark Souls 2 appeared. 

Little did you know that the careful enemy placements, interconnected levels, and near-ideal pacing of the first half of the first game would be gone. While still a great game, it’s safe to say that Dark Souls 2 is the most controversial of its trilogy. Most fans known that this was the only Souls game not to be directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, who passed off duties to Tomohiro Shibuya (later fired) and Yui Tanamura (Miyazaki’s longtime underboss). But what many do not know is that Shibuya’s original designs for the game were much closer to Elden Ring than what we got. The forgotten director intended for the sophomore entry to feature an open world complete with field bosses, player-dictated progression, and open ended endings determined by player choices. Of course, one of the systems this game was slated for was the PlayStation 3, meaning that it was impossible to implement any of this without causing the troubled console to implode on itself. What we got was a mix of some truly brilliant and daring innovations and some utterly baffling choices. Gone was the sense of fair challenge, replaced by capriciously bloated mobs, mind-numbing “puzzles,” and traps that no one could logically avoid without reading a guide. 

DS2 features perhaps the most bloated roster of bosses the series has ever seen, but to be fair, some of the best. Many of the game’s worst aspects were ameliorated with the release of Scholar of the First Sin, a reworking of the base game that altered certain mechanics, enemy density, and included the game’s much lauded three DLCs. 

Andrew Hudson of the Episode 1 podcast makes his first appearance on the program this week, and in a move that will surprise few, both of us found ourselves defending this strange, dream-like game that, while not without its shortcomings, presents some of the most interesting thematic leaps forward and tweaks to gameplay that would find themselves rearing their heads nearly a decade later in Elden Ring.