Summary
Soulsbornegames are known as one of the hardest video games you can put yourself through, with difficult bosses, enemies and incredibly frustrating game mechanics. But, after you come out the other side, victorious in a particular boss fight or reach the end of a particular dungeon, the feeling of accomplishment is unreal.
Through your difficult journey you might be able to piece together a story, with small tidbits of information here and there. This lore is part of the driving factor that makes FromSoftware games so rich beyond just their enjoyable gameplay. Sometimes the lore is so rich that it can take months for people to interpret it correctly, which is part of the fun of dissecting a Soulsborne game, and some of their games just do it really well.
Dark Souls 2 has always been the black sheep of the Dark Souls lineup, but not because it’s bad, but because it just couldn’t reach the standards of the first Dark Souls entry. Most fans of Dark Souls 2 either love it or hate it, but that doesn’t mean that its lore is of lesser quality than any other Soulsborne game.
Dark Souls 2 just went in a different direction than fans initially expected and is still packed with as much lore andenvironmental storytellingthan its predecessor. The DLC for Dark Souls 2 expands on the already very detailed and meticulous story, making Dark Souls 2 even better.
With every game that FromSoftware has made, the expected quality of the game has increased.Demon’s Souls, being the first entry, is already such a great game, but it’s beaten out by its peers simply by fixing its mistakes. However, that doesn’t mean that its lore was any less good.
The story has a lot of depth, but it mainly follows the Old One, Old King Allant and the background on the first scourge. Given the fact that the game is more than a decade old at this point, having launched all the way back in 2009, the lore for this game stood out in the competition, and beats Dark Souls 2 by a small margin in terms of story.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is the most distinct game in FromSoftware’s catalog. For starters,the combat mechanics are really different, and some familiarand repeated formulas from Souls games have been ditched in favor of more realism. The story is also a bit more linear by FromSoftware standards, following Wolf, and how he came to be in Prince Kuro’s service.
The story has a lot of moving parts and there are also multiple side quests you can complete before finishing the main story. The best part about Sekiro is that it can be really emotional sometimes; whenever you land the killing blow on bosses, they utter a final line that perfectly represents their character and has the potential to give you goosebumps.
There’s a reason that people love the nearly perfect Dark Souls so much, even if we ignore the nostalgia factor. Dark Souls had a lot of new concepts in video games, and it’s safe to say that it changed the gaming landscape moving forward.
The level design, boss fights and game mechanics were all brilliant, and the lore was something else. By focusing onenvironmental storytelling and little tidbits of information here and there, you could interpret the story of Dark Souls your own way. Every hidden interaction or NPC quest led to more clues and was truly something new in the gaming world at the time.
Dark Souls 3 was the epic end to the Souls trilogy, taking everything great about previous games, and turning the dial up to eleven, especially in terms of the story. It continues the formula of environmental storytelling but adds more context to it. The game has the world literally rotting and about to be destroyed any moment now, all hope lying with the Ashen One.
Things like the lore of the bosses, even optional ones,and the betrayal of the Lothric Princes just make the game so much fun. The fight with the Lord of Cinder and the endings are amazing story-wise, and there’s even more lore to be explored in the DLC. Overall, Dark Souls 3 really took it to the next level and deserves the praise it gets.
Elden Ring has every game beat before it in the lore category except one.There’s a reason everything in Elden Ring is so interesting. Miyazaki put his heart and soul into his magnum opus and even took help from George R.R Martin for help with the lore and backstory of the demigods and The Lands Between.
Once you go down the rabbit hole of trying to learn as much as you can about everything in Elden Ring, you’ll start to notice tiny details like enemy placement that also have a story behind it. The lore is so deep that most people haven’t even figured out the story completely yet.
Bloodborne has Elden Ring beaten by how much lore it packs into themuch smaller game, without it being shoved in your face. There’s a lot to consider here, but people who have played the game agree, there’s so much to the story that most players miss.
The cosmic terror you get from playing Bloodborne and the Eldritch elements that inspired them all play a role in elevating this FromSoftware game to the top in terms of lore and story, which you must play at least once in your life.
