Beyond Death: Dark Souls and the art of suffering

Not long ago, I shared a review of a novel deeply inspired by Dark Souls. While writing it, I realized the game itself deserved a long, dedicated post. So here we are. Grab a cup of tea, we're about to embark on a journey through Miyazaki’s haunting, obscure world.

"You Died."

Few games have etched two words so deeply into the memory of an entire generation. But Dark Souls didn’t become iconic because it punished players. It became iconic because it respected them. It dared to be something different, something harder, quieter, and far more meaningful than the trends of its time.

In the era of over-explained tutorials and constant hand-holding, Dark Souls was a rebellion. A slow, cryptic, maddening rebellion. And through it, Hidetaka Miyazaki, the mind behind it all, reshaped what we expect from video games, and from ourselves.

The unexpected origin: Demon’s Souls and a door half-open

To understand Dark Souls, we must first return to Demon’s Souls, released in 2009. It wasn’t supposed to succeed. FromSoftware gave Miyazaki a faltering project, one that no one believed in. He saw that as a blessing. “If I could make any game I wanted,” he once said, “this was the chance.” So he did.

The result was strange and brutal. Servers were clunky, the learning curve vertical, the lore buried in fragments. But something was there, something raw and honest. Demon’s Souls became a cult hit, spreading through forums and word of mouth like a whispered secret. It didn't hold your hand. It watched you fall. And then, if you had the resolve, it let you rise.

With Dark Souls, Miyazaki took everything Demon’s Souls hinted at and carved it in stone.

A world lost in time, and you with it

The beauty of Dark Souls lies not just in its mechanics, but in its atmosphere, a world crumbling beneath the weight of forgotten gods, cursed knights, and long-dead fire. It is fantasy stripped of glamour. Despair is not the exception, it is the setting.

Yet within that despair is beauty: dying embers, towering ruins, rusted swords, haunted silence. It’s a game that teaches you to appreciate detail. To observe. To wonder. Even to fear.

But Miyazaki didn’t just create an immersive world, he made it communal. Not in the usual multiplayer sense of chatrooms and co-op lobbies, but something far stranger and more poetic. Dark Souls introduced a novel asynchronous multiplayer system where players, while alone in their world, could sense echoes of others. Ghostly silhouettes appeared in fleeting moments. Bloodstains revealed how other adventurers had died, often in places that made you instinctively slow down.

And then came the messages, scattered across the floor in glowing script, left by fellow players. Some offered honest guidance. Others lured you to your death. “Try jumping.” “Illusory wall ahead.” “Praise the sun.” These were fragments of a collective consciousness, blending practical tips with inside jokes, warnings, and deceptions. It was the internet, transmuted into an eerie, in-game mechanic, one that made the loneliness feel shared.

But the most brilliant twist was the invasion mechanic. At any moment, if you were in human form, a message would appear: “You have been invaded by Dark Spirit...”, followed by a username. And then the dread began. Somewhere in your world, another real player was hunting you. They could be brutal, efficient, honorable, or completely unhinged. This created a unique form of tension: not only was the game world dangerous, it was unpredictably alive.

This blurred the lines between single-player and multiplayer, turning every corner into a potential trap not just from the game’s design, but from another human being. It was genius. Psychological warfare layered atop environmental storytelling. Combat encounters became folklore. Strangers became legends.

In Dark Souls, even the other players became part of the lore, or perhaps, part of your story.

Die. Learn. Rinse. Repeat. Evolve.

Most games teach you how to win. Dark Souls teaches you how to fail, and why that matters.

In Miyazaki’s universe, death is not a punishment. It’s part of the curriculum. You will die, again and again, not because the game is cruel, but because it respects you enough not to hold your hand. Every fall, every ambush, every misstep is a lesson. There are no glowing arrows pointing to safety, no tutorials that pause the action to explain how to survive. You survive by doing. By dying. And most importantly, by learning.

This isn’t just difficulty for the sake of masochism, it’s about trust. The game trusts you to observe, adapt, and grow. And when you finally overcome what once seemed impossible, that boss, that bridge, that trap you fell for five times, the feeling of triumph is authentic. Not because the game rewarded you with XP or flashy animations, but because you earned it. You evolved.

This design philosophy encourages introspection. If you die, it wasn’t unfair, you were careless, greedy, or impatient. You didn’t roll at the right moment. You ignored a sound cue. You rushed. So you go back, and you try again, with more caution, more precision, more humility. Dark Souls doesn’t change. You do.

This is why the game resonates beyond mechanics. It mirrors life itself. Failures are inevitable. Growth is optional. It’s a game where grit matters more than gear, and resilience more than reflexes. It rewards persistence over talent. And in a world increasingly engineered for convenience and instant gratification, Dark Souls offers something truly radical: friction.

Friction that transforms frustration into discipline. That turns the act of repetition into a meditative process. That replaces entitlement with respect, for the challenge, for the unknown, and for yourself. It doesn’t matter how many YouTube guides you watch or how optimized your build is, you still need to face the fear and get back up.

This ethos, humble, patient, and player-focused, flows directly from its creator. A man who, unlike his louder peers in the industry, doesn’t chase cinematic stardom or franchise fatigue. Someone who quietly redefined what games could mean, not just how they play.

And that brings us to the overlooked brilliance behind it all: Hidetaka Miyazaki. A soft-spoken visionary who, while others chased Hollywood dreams, built entire mythologies from ash and ruin.

Miyazaki vs. Kojima: the quiet genius in the shadow

In the pantheon of Japanese game designers, two names are often mentioned, but rarely on equal footing. Hideo Kojima is a household name, plastered across every title he touches like a cinematic director: Kojima Productions, created by Hideo Kojima, presented by Hideo Kojima, based on an idea by Hideo Kojima. And then there's Hidetaka Miyazaki, whose name you have to dig for, not because he’s irrelevant, but because he doesn’t need to stand in front of his work. His games speak for themselves.

Kojima builds stories around spectacle. He casts A-list actors, fills his games with extended cutscenes, and markets each release like the launch of a blockbuster movie. His work is often brilliant in concept but bloated in execution, ambitious narratives weighed down by self-indulgence. Death Stranding, for instance, was marketed as a profound experience about connection, but often felt like a tech demo masquerading as philosophy. You couldn’t take a step without being reminded that this is a Hideo Kojima game. The artistry was buried beneath the brand.

Miyazaki, by contrast, hides behind the fog. His worlds unfold slowly, cryptically. He doesn’t tell you what to feel, he lets you stumble into it. There are no cutscenes lasting half an hour, no big-budget celebrity cameos, no narcissistic credits looping before the end of the prologue. Just a world, broken and beautiful, that challenges you to survive and understand it. It’s anti-Hollywood in every sense, and in that way, more honest. His humility is part of his design philosophy. The world is the protagonist. You are the interloper. He is the architect, not the billboard.

And yet, who truly changed gaming? Kojima, for all his theatrical flair, hasn't reinvented the medium since Metal Gear Solid. Miyazaki, through Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, and later Elden Ring, created an entire genre, one so influential that games are now casually labeled "soulslike" in the way Metroidvania once defined a style. He gave us worlds that trust the player to learn, suffer, explore, and grow, without ever holding their hand. That's not just game design. That’s faith in human intuition.

While Kojima builds digital movies, Miyazaki builds myths. One wraps himself in fame, the other in fog. And in that fog, a new kind of legend was born, one that doesn’t shout, but echoes.

Brothers in blood: from Dark Souls to Elden Ring

Dark Souls was never meant to be alone.

As much as it feels like a singular phenomenon, an anomaly in an industry obsessed with accessibility and mass appeal, the truth is that it was only the beginning. The philosophy behind it, of worldbuilding through fragments, of emotional storytelling through mechanics, of pain as a pedagogical tool, was fertile soil. It resonated not just with players, but with its own creator. And Hidetaka Miyazaki, rather than dilute the formula for broader consumption, chose to refine it, mutate it, and explore it through new expressions.

Each successive game in what fans now call the “Soulsborne” lineage became a reinterpretation of the same core essence: weighty combat, obtuse lore, oppressive atmospheres, and the sense that you are not the chosen one, just another soul crawling through the dirt. Yet each title stood apart, wearing a new skin, delivering its lessons through different textures, from gothic madness to feudal brutality, from shattered kingdoms to boundless ruins.

These are not sequels in the traditional sense. They are blood relatives. Siblings born of the same pain and poetry. And while Dark Souls may be the beating heart, the body of work that surrounds it is what makes Miyazaki’s vision feel whole.

• Demon’s Souls (2009) was the primordial clay, the alpha build of a philosophy that hadn’t yet found its perfect expression. It was raw, weird, sometimes clunky, but brilliant. Its fragmented structure and oppressive melancholy set the tone for what would follow. It laid the foundations, and though it was initially overlooked, history has vindicated it as the sacred prototype.

• Dark Souls (2011) was the sharpening of that blade. Larger, richer, crueler, and more mysterious, it dropped players into a decaying world without hope, and let them find purpose anyway. It didn't need to explain itself, it dared you to understand. A true cult classic that slowly became a cultural monolith.

• Bloodborne (2015) departed from swords and shields to embrace frenzy and corruption. Set in a nightmarish gothic city haunted by beasts and gods, it traded patience for aggression, introducing faster, more visceral combat while leaning heavily into Lovecraftian horror. It is perhaps the most stylish and tightly designed of Miyazaki’s creations.

• Dark Souls III (2016) served as both a culmination and a farewell. It brought modern refinements to the original formula and gave long-time fans a sense of closure, without ever breaking the series’ cryptic soul. It was the most cinematic of the trilogy, but still held tightly to its ethos: you will die, and you will try again.

• Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (2019) broke away more radically. No character builds, no multiplayer, no RPG stats. Just raw, punishing swordplay and a focused narrative about revenge, duty, and transcendence. It rewarded perfection and punished sloppiness, carving out its own identity in the process.

• Elden Ring (2022) was the explosion. The grand synthesis. A vast open world with the DNA of Dark Souls coursing through every vein, yet offering a freedom and scale previously unimaginable in Miyazaki’s design. Co-written with George R. R. Martin, it brought lore to the forefront while keeping the series’ signature ambiguity. It became a mainstream hit without losing its soul, a rare feat in gaming today.

Together, these titles don’t just represent a franchise. They are a movement, a bloodline of interactive narrative that prioritizes emotion over exposition, mechanics over marketing. They’ve reshaped what it means to make and play games. Each of these games feels unique, yet undeniably Miyazaki. The DNA is there: the cryptic storytelling, the unforgiving design, the triumph earned through defeat.

A genre is born: Soulslike, and the echoes it left behind

Few games spawn a genre named after themselves. Soulslike is now a category, encompassing everything from indie experiments (Hollow Knight, Blasphemous) to AAA titles (Lies of P, Lords of the Fallen). And while some "mimic" (wink here) only the surface, the dodge rolls and stamina bars, others understand the soul: the willingness to challenge players, not just entertain them.

Just as Castlevania and Metroid gave us metroidvania, Dark Souls has gifted the industry a new design philosophy, one rooted in respect for the player, not pandering.

Perhaps the greatest legacy of Dark Souls isn’t its combat or world design, but what it reflects in us. It doesn’t reward impatience. It doesn’t tolerate arrogance. It demands thoughtfulness, humility, resilience. It makes you ask: How badly do you want to overcome? How far are you willing to go?

In a culture addicted to instant gratification, Dark Souls is an anomaly. A slow burn. A cruel teacher. A patient rewarder. It has changed people. Made them better gamers. In some ways, better thinkers.

The genre that shouldn’t exist, yet defined a generation

There was no reason to think Dark Souls would succeed. By every conventional industry metric, it broke the rules. It was cryptic when it should’ve been clear, punishing when it should’ve been forgiving, and minimalist when it should’ve offered endless handholding and markers. And yet, it struck a nerve. A deep, primal one.

As it grew into a cultural force, the term soulslike emerged almost reluctantly, a label for games that dared to deviate from mass-market comfort and embrace the same brutal honesty. Like metroidvania before it, the label began as a shorthand, but quickly evolved into a genre. One defined not by aesthetics or story, but by philosophy: every step is earned, every failure teaches, and the world itself is a riddle you unravel through pain and perseverance.

Yet very few “soulslikes” truly capture what makes the original so haunting. Most imitate its surface, the bonfires, the stamina bars, the evasive lore, but miss its soul. Because the truth is: Dark Souls was not just difficult. It was deliberate. Its pain had purpose. Its silences were louder than any exposition. Its world design told stories without a single word, and its bosses weren’t just challenges, they were expressions of decay, guilt, hubris, and broken glory.

The genre has grown, yes, but often through superficial mimicry. Miyazaki’s genius wasn’t just in mechanics, but in the aesthetic of despair he managed to translate into code. A world not merely fallen, but forgotten. And through that decay, the player finds something few modern games offer: dignity through struggle.

This is the genre that shouldn’t exist. And yet, it’s now impossible to imagine modern gaming without it.

A legacy not written, but etched in fire

What Hidetaka Miyazaki has built is more than a portfolio, it’s a philosophy. His games are temples to a forgotten kind of artistry, where silence speaks louder than cinematics, and failure is not a design flaw, but a rite of passage. His legacy is not measured in cutscene length or celebrity cameos, but in the quiet, personal epiphanies of those who endure his worlds.

The Dark Souls lineage is now studied, streamed, speedrun, memed, and debated. It has bled into game design across genres, subtly shaping how difficulty, storytelling, and atmosphere are approached even in titles that claim no kinship. From the rugged cliffs of Limgrave to the misty alleys of Yharnam, Miyazaki has defined what modern myth in gaming looks like, layered, elusive, and profoundly human.

And it’s not over. With every new title, FromSoftware raises the bar, not by chasing trends, but by ignoring them. Miyazaki continues to sculpt experiences that resist simplification, that demand emotional participation. He builds worlds, not products. In doing so, he has quietly redefined how we measure creative success in gaming, not by revenue alone, but by reverence. The kind of reverence usually reserved for books, paintings, or long-lost poems. His works linger.

It is ironic that the quietest of game designers, often absent from the spotlight, has cast the longest shadow. While others chase mass attention, Miyazaki designs for those who listen closely. For those who welcome the sting of failure. For those who find beauty in ruins.

Because some stories aren’t told, they’re survived. And Miyazaki gave us the strength to survive them. He’s given us modern myth. A chance to rediscover what challenge means, what perseverance rewards, and what it feels like to truly earn a victory. 

The fire in Dark Souls is always fading. That’s the point. But the legacy it leaves behind is immortal. As the industry chases trends, microtransactions, and cinematic fluff, the soulslike stands firm, a torch in the dark. Not for everyone. But for those who seek it.

"Goodbye then. Stay safe friend. Don't you dare go hollow."