Is Dark Souls low-key parodying our society?

Best parody for our society in video games is Pac-Man. I mentioned this before. It basically deals with consumerism, running the maze, running away from those everyday life ghosts that chase you, once in a while getting something really nice that momentaneously helps you deal with your ghosts, but they always come back, and the cycle of consumerism repeats.

Hey mates, I think we found the communist!

About Dark Souls, it's not parodying anything, but it certainly deals with very human themes, especially death and decadence. I mean, the entire journey of the first game is to either keep a decaying world or outright kill it - "saving" the world or its characters is never presented as an option.

By the way, that's why I think DS is pretty much the best adaptation of Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno. In Inferno, the most terrible thing aren't the physical punishments, but the eternal state of decadence, and DS definitely nails that feeling. Hell isn't about fire and brimstone, but about apathy and darkness. I would even argue that there are a few subtle nods to Dante - like when you find the Ice Dragon boss (Seath the Scaleless); it's very similar to how the devil is depicted in Inferno - a dragon only seen from the waist up that freezes everything with his wings. Other thing is that the time in Divine Comedy is all messed up, with people from different ages all locked up in the same timeless place; Dark Souls also has a conceptually similar idea of time.

I don't know if there was a direct inspiration, but they approach the ideas of death and decadence in similar ways.

Edit: There's also the verticality of both worlds. This article confirms at least the influence of Gustave Doré's illustrations for Inferno, if not Dante's work itself, so there's that.

But what does that even mean? It actually struck me because only when putting humanity under such a ludicrous premise did I get how confusing this concept can be. Even in real life, we can't actually tell what humanity is, not when a house dog or cat wears clothes, watches TV and often has a specific place to take dump.

And what about sins? How can I be indicted for doing something the game has been encouraging me to do? I'm getting punished just for following my nature? Why are real world laws tinkered enough to allow for regular people to be hurt inside their own nature, only punishing the "sinners" as an afterthought?

And does the cycle created from human-hunting laws nourish the influx of hollows? What else contributes to populating the world with creatures with no humanity in them? No, I'm not talking about the game right now.

That would be ActRaiser 2 on the Super Nintendo.

The problem is that people can't be happy on their own so they escape using external stimulus to cope with reality, and they do it over and over again because they see that as their only escape.

Think of cocaine. People in Colombia are for the most part, happy when they are in their normal self. When you see them on a cruise or on a plane or pretty much anywhere they cause so much noise laughing and yelling of joy.

We look at them and think that behavior is weird because the only time people in the States act that happy is when they are super high in a rave. In the States it is rare for people to be that happy without drugs, alcohol, or buying a brand new car.

This is why in Colombia, and other "less developed" countries, cocaine is produced, and in the States it is consumed. And don't get me started with prescription drugs in the States, the epidemic of desperation is out of control.



Don't forget about a thing called love. We are here to learn to love. Without suffering, pain, and death it would be impossible. No empathy or even sympathy can exist in a perfect world, no one would experience compassion or forgiveness, no one would experience love.

The setting of reality is ideal for this kind of development to occur.

That said, many babies die very young before they can develop an identity and a personality. Others are born with Down syndrome, and they live with that for the rest of their lives. Other people grow old and develops Alzheimer.

From the distance, once that happens, it seems their whole purpose to exist is for those around them, but they are humans too. The only solution I see to that problem is reincarnation, and that goes even for healthy people because for many, one life is definitely not enough.

All we know is that the more we know the more we realize how little we know. Reality is often stranger than fiction, and deep inside all that matters is to do right to you and to those around you.

Spirirual sin laws are signposts that guide you towards the right frequency. But human laws are different, we are in no condition as humans to punish what life itself does on its own. We are a race in development and the only reason why that happens is because people don't know better.

Hahaha. That is an awesome gif.