Revisiting 24 November 2020, 17:47

author: Hed

Demon’s Souls is Hard, But Players are Worse

You thought the game was frustrating? Well, it is, but not nearly as actual players. Demon’s Souls showed it years ago, and reminds us about it today, with the remake.

The review is based on the PS5 version.

I'm roaming the halls of an old castle looking for an enemy. The enemy is another player, who just invaded my world, about which I was informed by a message. Before that, I killed a bunch of dangerous opponents and collected plenty of souls. I'll lose them if I die, but I'm rather confident – my gear is good, I've got plenty of health items, I know the area. In an instant, the phantom jumps me from behind the corner and puts me to the ground with a single hit of the giant club. That's the real Demon's Souls.

Demon's Souls is a game by From Software, recently modernized and upgraded by Bluepoint studio in a wonderful remake that's zealously true to the original. Although the game proper is hard as hell, some player's bend over backwards to make it even more arduous. Here are some examples of how players trolled each other 11 years ago and how they continue to troll each other today, enriching the game with tons of black humor and emotions.

Trolling with hints

One of my first memories from Demon's Souls is a huge breach in the floor of the first location, the Boletarian Palace. Right next to the hole there was a hint written by another player: "Jump down to get the treasure." After careful examination of this alleged passage, I decided that there was no way I could survive the fall; someone is trying to take me for a ride (to be clear: there really is something down there, but we can get there by a different route). Such situations, when someone tries to fool us with a false hint, were surprisingly common in the game, and with the grimace of a troll's smile, I hurry to report that they returned with double the power in the remake. The remake may look beautiful, but under the guise of modern graphics, lurks a twisted sense of humor of the souls community.

These hints are, of course, part of the famous and quite innovative Demon's Souls multiplayer system. While playing in online mode, we can leave hints on the ground using a few templates prepared by the creators – usually, the consist of a short sentence and an additional remark. These may be warnings such as "Beware, enemies," or tips hinting valuable items. In the vast majority of cases, such hints are actually helpful or lead to interesting places, e.g. by pointing out hidden passages, which can otherwise only be discovered by blindly hitting walls with the sword. But sometimes players use them to make innocent jokes or even "pranks" to make someone's life miserable. Some of them almost entered pop culture and became a symbol of the game.

I counted tens of such examples in Demon's Souls remake and they usually resembled those from the original. The mentioned breach in the wall is now described by the enigmatic sentence "If you jump..." Players mock these fake walls that when we hit them with a sword. There are customarily inscriptions at such walls saying "There’s a passage" or "Attack." We hit the wall a dozens times, but there of course is no hidden passage there. Inscriptions at wall cracks suggesting there is something valuable behind them are another common trick. It's quite sneaky, because with such a complex level design, it often seems true. In the nasty swamp called Valley of Defilement, someone put a hint that can waste a few good minutes of your time. It convinces you to explore the side bay of this cursed place with the promise of finding a valuable object. After sweeping through a completely empty space, you will read another one, saying "Thought there would be a hint here?" We go back, cursing our naivety.

When the boss is another player

Funny messages that waste a few seconds of your life are just innocent fun. But how about a situation where instead of a mandatory boss required to complete the game, we have to beat another player? But first things first. Demon's Souls includes a completely optional ability to play with other people. If you opt out, the game doesn't become less compelling. However, the online module, apart from the mentioned hints, offers something else: the possibility of summoning other players for help, which can really save your skin more than once. This is related to a dualism of form: physical, and soul. In human form, we can find signs of other players, which can be used to bring them into our own world. However, this mode also opens the game up to foreign invaders. If our game becomes invaded, we're unable to leave the location, and it's imperative to get rid of the invader. Of course there are many material motivations behind all this, but let's face it: players love to fight and troll less experienced users.

According to unwritten PvP rules, every duel should take place on bare ground without any unnecessary fuss. Fighters should bow and then face each other in a fierce duel without any healing to make the fight more concise. In reality, there are no rules what so ever, and both sides are trying to win by all means necessary. There are many ways of dealing with the invaders, or the invaded. After all, we have spells, dodges, backstabs, parries, and elements of the environment that can be used to our advantage.

We can try to hide from the invader with certain items and play hide and seek. The phantom, in turn, can lure us into a trap of NPC enemies, who pay no attention to its presence. Particularly malicious individuals sometimes resolve to beat a player with bare fists. Even though From Software expanded the repertoire of trolling tools in subsequent games (there's a spell in Dark Souls that turns a player into a barrel or chest), Demon's Souls laid the foundation for exciting and unpredictable clashes, often based on an attempt to find the other person in a maze of complicated locations.

But that's not all: there is one of the most memorable and terrifying boss fights in this game as well. The Old Monk from the Latria Tower summons a second player to aid him. Instead of a predictable enemy, whose behavior patterns we can learn, we get a different opponent each time, with a different weapon and, above all, a different attitude. Sometimes, we can also encounter a benevolent player who will just let us win without a fight. Most of the times, though, we walk into a certain death, since players are usually well prepared and ready to turn us into a puddle of blood and bones. On the one hand, it's quite annoying, forcing us to repeat the same stage ad nauseam. On the other, it's easy to cheat your way out and fight against AI instead, so it's not an insurmountable obstacle.

Besides, the Old Monk fight is one of those moments, when players go absolutely crazy with inventing ways to make others' lives miserable. The stupidest idea I came up with in the remake was to run without armor in the arena for a few good minutes, simply avoiding the enemy. When the player frantically chasing me finally stopped and vented his frustration with one of the gestures, I let him or her win. He earned it with patience and endured the ordinance I prepared for him.

Trolling as part of the storyline

In fact, being sneaky and two-faced is an inherent part of Demon's Souls and other From Software games. Practically each of them contains some kind of NPC that's waiting to get the better of us. Generally speaking, the narrative is always full of understatements and half-truths, especially since it often comes down to a conflict of several factions or worldviews. In Demon's Souls, for example, there's a distinction between using magic from demons, relying on faith in a deity, or simply on your own skills.

The remake reminded me of about one of the funniest side stories, which made me quite stunned years ago. In the game, we regularly save NPCs from oppression and later on, they're transferred to our base, i.e. Nexus. By definition, we help every NPC, because it's often profitable. In the Tower of Latria, however, we come across the mysterious Yurt, who assures us that he hunts demons. After being rescued, he returns to the player's quarters and... starts murdering others. If we're not careful, we may lose all characters involved in magic and thus lose access to new spells or even the possibility to modify our selection of active ones.

The chief troll of Demon's Souls, as well as many other games by From Software, is, of course, Patches. It's an independent character and a merchant, whom we meet in various circumstances, but we almost always get cheated. In this game, the owner of the most sincere smile in history is waiting for us in the Shrine of Storms, guarding the landing that leads to the cave allegedly filled with treasures. Patches convinces us to look down there and see for ourselves. If we do this, he will kicks us in the back. Patches remains an ambiguous figure, because although he packs us into problems, he does it using our own greed and naivety.

Why do people do this to themselves?

Why are there so many fake hints in the game? Because they were appreciated by the community. Any hints we come across can be "thumbed up or down," sort of like on social media. Those with negative ratings are displayed less frequently. So the conclusion is that the Demon's Souls community knows a good joke from a bad one, and is able to take one or two to the chin as well. Why do players keep attacking each other? Because PvP gameplay is extremely exciting in Demon's Souls, being a mixture of combat proper with psychological and tactical elements. Why does Patches keep stabbing us in the back? Maybe he's more than a regular troll; maybe he's trying to teach us something? Besides, it is hard to be mad at him, because he always has a great excuse for his offenses.

One thing is certain: Demon's Souls is one of those games in which black humor conveyed by making other's adventures more difficult is an original part of the experience, passed on as tradition to others. It was expanded by the much more popular Dark Souls, which generated dozens of funny compilations of trolling other players. This form of fun – based on being clever and sneaky, rather than exclusively fast and skillful – is the backbone of online play today. I don't want to say here that there would be no Dead by Daylight, Amoung Us or Fall Guys without Demon's Souls because that's an exaggeration. The remake reminds us, however, that 11 years ago trolling other people was great fun.