December is always a wonderful month filled with holidays, my birthday, and time with friends and family. For me and my wife, this part of the year represents a chance to spend more quality time together. She’s a teacher, so she’s off nearly half the month, and I always save some PTO to take a week or two off with her. Some years we take a Christmas vacation, and others we just hang out around the house streaming TV series and playing videogames. This year I talked her into playing a game outside of her usual comfort zone. It’s a game that’s been on my list to replay for a few years now, and I’m finally able to mark Dark Souls 2 Scholar of the First Sin off my replay list.
Video games have a unique way of bringing people together, and Dark Souls even more than others, through trauma bonding. If you’re not familiar with Dark Souls games, they're known for their punishing difficulty and intricate level design. I’ve played all of them and a good deal of souls-like games; however, this was a new experience for my wife.
You have to get to a certain point in the game before you can play coop, so the first bit of the game has to be completed solo. During the first hour of our play, one of us was continually getting pummeled to death by the enemies at the beginning of the game in The Forest of Giants, a good bit before coop is possible. I suspected we’d be calling it quits soon, but I was wrong. My wife got good real quick and persevered into a well-balanced strength build.
Over the last couple of weeks, we celebrated in hard-fought victories and mourned in crushing defeats. According to my steam account, we probably spent about 70 hours beating the game, and yes, we beat it, DLC areas and all. Honestly, my wife ended up doing most of the work. I decided to try out a hex build, and it turns out her overly sized sword was much stronger than my spells. Go figure.
As a writer, one of the most interesting parts of the Dark Souls universe is how the story is told. The plot is delivered indirectly, through communication with other characters and item descriptions. There are minimal cut scenes, and engaging in dialogue is mostly optional. So you could play through the game and completely miss the intricacies of the story. To learn more about individual characters, it’s necessary to collect items and read their descriptions. It fills in a lot of the blanks. There’s something satisfying about not being spoon fed a story. I, for one, enjoy putting puzzles together.
Playing through Dark Souls 2 with my wife has easily been the highlight of my December. I’ve been so proud of how she excelled at what is considered one of the most challenging games ever made. I think this puts a new spin on the term soulmate, or should it be soulsmate?
CURRENTLY LISTENING:
An ancient, obscure videogame soundtrack. Have you ever heard of The Faery Tale Adventure? I didn’t think so. I didn’t even know what RPG meant when I first played it ages ago. Unless you enjoy outdated retro games, you probably don’t want to check this game out. Regardless, it’s still an amazing 16-Bit OST. You can find the OST here.
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