Dark Souls taught me to celebrate small victories

Learn to pair Dark souls requires an intimate knowledge of your opponent.

Learning when you have to press the parry button for each different enemy type will inevitably kill you, each time because you press the button too early or too late. And so, learn to pair Dark souls is an agreement with yourself that you are going to experience a series of specific failures in the hope that you have finally learned something.

The whole of Dark souls works like this, which you probably knew, even if you never played it, because it’s almost a decade old and has since been analyzed by many critics. I played from Dark souls and Dark Souls 2 several years ago – enough to understand that the cruel world of armored skeletons was repetitive and exhausting. I could also say that if I had stuck to it, it would have found me rewarding, but that it would have required some patience that I did not believe.

In other words, I did not think I was the kind of person who could play a game Dark souls. It turns out I am, but I did not discover it until this year when I tried Dark souls again amid the pandemic and a deep depression.

I did not hit Dark souls still, but I’m further than I’ve ever been before (I just reached the Gap Dragon), and like so many people before me who’s depressed and all in Dark souls, all I can think about now is what Dark souls taught me about failure and resilience. Which brings me back to dating.

Most of my journey in Dark souls, I did not bother to learn to pair. I play as a knight and I used an ax two-handed for much of the game; pairing cannot be done with a two-handed playing style. Eventually, however, I reach a unique enemy called Havel the Rock. You do not have to defeat Havel to progress in the game, but I found that he was so annoying that one night I decided that I would defeat him rather than run past him. I also decided that I was going to do it through parry.

It took me three hours to learn how to successfully inflict Havel’s attacks. For most of the three hours, I did not press the button at the right time, and Havel was able to take down almost my entire health bar at once. After I was hit, I rolled wildly and struggled to take an Estus bottle before Havel could hit me again – which he would always do and then I would die. I would wake up at my campfire in Darkroot Basin, dust me off and run back to Havel, where I would square, touch, scurry, hit again and then die … again.

In these moments, I often think to myself, ‘I’m never going to learn this’ and ‘Why am I doing this?’ I will wake up by the fireplace and sometimes I will just let my avatar sit there. On the other side of the screen I sit there too. The two of us would reflect on what we had chosen to endure. Was it worth trying to learn how to do it? Was it even possible? Was i capable to learn to pair? Should I use a different strategy to beat Havel because there are many? Should I stop trying to hit him?

Eventually I would find it in myself to try again.

Occasionally, during the three hours, I managed to stage a successful pairing against Havel. But these moments feel fleeting, inaccurate, unrecognizable. What else did I do? I was dead before I had time to think.

Eventually, after more attempts than I made the effort to count, I began to realize that I actually had to stand close to him to unite Havel effectively. I had to position myself directly in front of his swing, in view of his wind-up, my shoulders across his. Only then could I manage to determine the parry correctly, with full observation of the oncoming battle. I had to stand in this dangerous place and force myself to be calm, ready for a hit that I knew would come – a hit that I would convince myself that I had the ability to stop. And in those moments when I done parried effectively and hit him back, bringing Havel to his knees and shaving off part of his life beam, I then had to do something more difficult: square my shoulders and prepare to parry him from the beginning.

Eventually I defeated Havel by completely using parries and counter-attacks. It took a total of seven perfect parries to take him down, each followed by an attack from my side. In my winning battle, Havel could not hit me once. However, my most important memory of the fight is not my parries or my attacks, or even the moment when Havel finally disintegrated into dust. My strongest memory is when I had to walk back to Havel between each successful pair and square my shoulders once again in the hope that I would succeed in parrying him successfully during his next windfall.

I’ve done this before. But could I do it again? Okay, I did this four times. Can I do it a fifth? And so on. These moments were the most frightening and yet also the most gratifying. I knew that an unsuccessful pairing on my part would turn down my entire game. So I had to stay calm, even though I was face-to-face with death.

If you do not succeed Dark souls, there is nothing to do but try again. Or you can give up and succumb to the futility of it all. That existential fear is part of the scaffolding of Dark souls‘world. His characters live in fear of “going hollow” – it will deteriorate into one of the hordes of scaly skeletons. Your character is already at the beginning of the game on a dark descent in this state. Based on the way other characters describe it, the experience of Hollow-up coincides with giving up, lacking motivation and losing humanity in a metaphorical and literal sense.

The form of depression I have in real life is similar. I describe it to most people as ‘sometimes I’m sad for no reason’, but there is actually a reason, which is the greatest existential meaninglessness of absolutely everything I do and what everyone else does. Sometimes the enormous size of the universe and the futility of each individual action leaves me in a state of emotional paralysis that is so extreme that it prevents me from accomplishing anything. Many years of therapy, meditation classes, prescription medicine, exercise, and any number of other instruments in my arsenal prevent me from becoming hollow in my day-to-day life, even though the threat always arises.

Sometimes it’s worse than usual. During a catastrophic event, such as a global pandemic, my individual actions increasingly feel meaningless in the face of oppressive negligence of systems that are far greater than I am. However, I assure myself that my own actions have some value if I donate to food banks, participate in community relief efforts, and choose the increasingly optimized face masks for myself and my friends. I take care of myself so I can take care of other people. I’m engaged in art that matters to me, and I write and edit stories about art, and I try to tell myself that these actions matter.

I will admit that I have experienced many days this year in which those actions felt useless. And yet I got up and did everything again and again. Sometimes I could experience a fleeting victory, a sense of commitment – the one successful pairing before I went down and woke up again in the light of a new attempt.

I can see no greater meaning in the actions in which I work Dark souls. Sure, I’m trying to ring a bell, beat some bosses and learn more about the strange world my character lives in. But the bigger picture of what I do in the game is unknowable to me and ultimately unimportant. The point is not the seven perfect parishes in a row, or even the defeated mini-boss at my feet. The point is that I keep walking to Havel between everyone.

When I remember these victories being so hard and so small, it feels bad. The real version is to remember to eat lunch, or to go for a walk, and then remember to do it again the next day, and try not to think too hard about how to do it, again and again , as many days in a row as you can, to feel OK. Not even great – just OK.

The big picture is struggling. I’d rather not look at it. Dark souls let me not do it, and therefore it has become my greatest comfort – an exercise in forcing myself to evaluate only a problem that is right in front of me. Every enemy must be approached with the same sense of care and patience. A long series of failures is also a long series of attempts, the evidence that I stubbornly chose to continue to care, despite no great reason for it. I choose not to go hollow.