Introduction Dark Souls is an action RPG where one plays as an undead or “hollow” individual that has been chosen by fate to rekindle the so called “first flame”, and in doing so stop the world from succumbing to darkness. The gameplay is based on an easy to learn, but hard to master combat system in which learning the strengths and weaknesses of each enemy is essential. It was released in 2011 by FromSoftware as the sequel to Demon’s Souls and was published by Bandai Namco Games. FromSoftware is a fairly small development studio in Japan. This paper will be covering the topics of symbolism and materiality as well as gender and sexuality as they relate to Dark Souls. TOPIC TWO: Symbolism and materiality: A) Discuss the symbols and indirect messages that can be …show more content…
These races to not seem to play a very large role in the game, however, and will not be covered any more here. What plays a far more significant role in the game is the distinction between the everlasting dragons, the gods, the humans, and their now sub-race of hollows. It is shown in the game that a long time ago, the everlasting dragons ruled the world. The gods then teamed up to defeat them and take control, in doing so nearly driving the dragons to extinction. Soon after, the humans came along, immediately scorned by the race of gods for their inferiority. Humans were determined to be useful, however, as they could be used to spread and tend to flame, which gave the gods their power. Humans served this way as slaves to the gods for quite a long time. This all ended when the undead plague emerged among the humans, however. The plague brought darkness and made humans lose their ability to spread flame effectively, so the power of the gods began to suffer. The gods, and Gwyn in particular, began to commit terrible atrocities against the humans to stop the spread of the plague, as described