As part of my "self-isolation", I've been doing three things: gaming, reading and writing; in that order. The ratio would probably be 80:15:5.
And over the course of four days last week, I've played a certain section of a game over and over and over.
The game is Dark Souls III. If you're into games at all, you know what I'm talking about. If you aren't, well, it's a fiendishly hard game. But, it's also fair. It requires, atleast in the initial playthroughs, a lot of caution, and a lot of dying.
Souls games begin with you waking up undead, and navigating a short tutorial section, before you face a boss enemy - to whom you will die a few times, before making your way to the game's hub area.
From there, you go on, looking for the MacGuffins - bells to ring, items to collect, and at the end of each area is a boss - usually a punishingly hard boss. And you die, and you run the "gauntlet of misery" back to the boss, until you manage to survive the encounter.
I spent four days - around twenty hours - just fighting one of them.
In the game's mythos, he is the exiled son of the thunderbolt wielding prime deity. This world survives because of the first flame, which provides heat and light, and keeps darkness at bay. And in the beginning, Gwynn, the God of Thunder defeated the primordial dragons, but his eldest son, and the Gods' greatest warrior, betrayed them, and joined the dragons instead. He was banished, and all records of his existence were destroyed.
He is the guy I spent all those hours fighting.
The run-up to the fight is epic in itself. The area is called Archdragon Peak, and you battle your way through vicious serpent-men who can destroy you in a couple of hits. You run past one dragon that lands in your path, weaving through ruins filled with enemies, dodging gusts of fire when you get out in the open, until you get to a point where you can strike at the dragon's weak spot. Then you toil up a mountain side face off against another dragon and another horde on enemies, until you find a safe spot next to a giant bell.
You walk up to the bell, and pull a lever. The bell tolls, and thunderclouds gather. Gather may be too mild a word - they boil around you. One moment, its a clear sunny day, the next, your standing on a vast cloud, and in the distance, a speck gets bigger and bigger - until you see that its a massive dragon, with a man perched on it.
Then the music starts, as the dragon swoops towards you. And its rider lifts up a massive spear, crackling with lightning.
Progress in most games - be they racing or sports or FPSs - is all about pattern recognition, and how quickly you respond. It all comes down to seeing cues, and pressing the right buttons.
The build up to the boss fight - or level - is designed to teach you what you need - which cues to look for: which moves are one shots; which cues presage the beginning of a combination of obstacles/threats; which moves require instinctive responses; which cues need just that bit of delay before you respond, and so on.
But what makes the King so hard is that he has a huge variety of cues - in this case attacks. Most of them are telegraphed, but figuring out what each cue means, and how to respond to it - decisions on whether to dive away or sidestep, to dive once or multiple times, whether to move towards him or away, linearly or diagonally - have to be made instinctively. And add to this the fact that you lose sight of him when some of his rushing attacks move him behind you, and you're frantically turning around to figure out where he is, while he's lining up a devastating strike.
Dark Souls is known for its punishing bosses - a tradition that goes back to its first edition, where players encountered the formidable duo of Dragon Slayer Ornstein and Executioner Smough. And the Nameless King is probably the hardest boss in the series - which includes the three Souls Games, Bloodborne and Sekiro. One of the most popular comments in the video of the Ornstein and Smough fight goes something like this: "So this is how it sounds beyond 10 seconds".
Fighting the Nameless King, I felt that comment.
The first time I went in the dragon wrecked me. The the king pounded me to a pulp with his great spear. Then the dragon burnt me to a crisp.
I tried again.
I died in 10 seconds.
Again.
15 seconds.
Again.
45 seconds, and almost killed the dragon.
Again.
Dead in 5 seconds.
This went on for an hour, before I killed the dragon.
Then this happened.
The first time wasn't too bad. I was able to keep myself alive, and waiting for openings, would risk the odd attack. I kept chipping away at his health bar, and got it halfway down.
And then I got greedy.
And he curb-stomped me.
It took me another day for me to beat the first portion - the dragon part consistently. Even then, one wrong move, one bad reposition, and I would die.
I started getting to the second phase more consistently, but I never did as well as I did the first time around.
I think the first time, I was more open-minded - more willing to play it safe because I didn't know his patterns, more alert because I didn't know what to expect.
Later, it was all "Oh shit, he's going to do this deadly attack and I should be really far away", panicked moves, and then he would switch up his attack and eviscerate me.
Over and over again.
For three days.
I looked at videos of the battle on the internet. I tried ranged attacks. I tried tanking. The end result was the same.
"YOU DIED"
Finally, I posted a plea on reddit. One of the suggestions was that I rebuild my character for this fight.
I did that - it was a completely new playstyle, one that I wasn't accustomed to, but I felt a lot sturdier. I had been, to use TVTropes jargon, a fragile speedster/glass cannon. Now I was the mighty glacier.
It was over in 3 minutes.
When the king finally collapsed, I didn't feel much. I thought to myself, "That's done".
It was only later, when I thought back about the boss battle, that a feeling of relief seeped through me.
Now I could get on with my life.
And maybe next time, I would defeat the king as a fragile speedster. That would be the real test.
But for the whole day and the next, I really felt like this.
And over the course of four days last week, I've played a certain section of a game over and over and over.
The game is Dark Souls III. If you're into games at all, you know what I'm talking about. If you aren't, well, it's a fiendishly hard game. But, it's also fair. It requires, atleast in the initial playthroughs, a lot of caution, and a lot of dying.
This is a Filk song for the game. And it captures it quite well
Souls games begin with you waking up undead, and navigating a short tutorial section, before you face a boss enemy - to whom you will die a few times, before making your way to the game's hub area.
From there, you go on, looking for the MacGuffins - bells to ring, items to collect, and at the end of each area is a boss - usually a punishingly hard boss. And you die, and you run the "gauntlet of misery" back to the boss, until you manage to survive the encounter.
I spent four days - around twenty hours - just fighting one of them.
In the game's mythos, he is the exiled son of the thunderbolt wielding prime deity. This world survives because of the first flame, which provides heat and light, and keeps darkness at bay. And in the beginning, Gwynn, the God of Thunder defeated the primordial dragons, but his eldest son, and the Gods' greatest warrior, betrayed them, and joined the dragons instead. He was banished, and all records of his existence were destroyed.
He is the guy I spent all those hours fighting.
The run-up to the fight is epic in itself. The area is called Archdragon Peak, and you battle your way through vicious serpent-men who can destroy you in a couple of hits. You run past one dragon that lands in your path, weaving through ruins filled with enemies, dodging gusts of fire when you get out in the open, until you get to a point where you can strike at the dragon's weak spot. Then you toil up a mountain side face off against another dragon and another horde on enemies, until you find a safe spot next to a giant bell.
You walk up to the bell, and pull a lever. The bell tolls, and thunderclouds gather. Gather may be too mild a word - they boil around you. One moment, its a clear sunny day, the next, your standing on a vast cloud, and in the distance, a speck gets bigger and bigger - until you see that its a massive dragon, with a man perched on it.
Then the music starts, as the dragon swoops towards you. And its rider lifts up a massive spear, crackling with lightning.
Progress in most games - be they racing or sports or FPSs - is all about pattern recognition, and how quickly you respond. It all comes down to seeing cues, and pressing the right buttons.
The build up to the boss fight - or level - is designed to teach you what you need - which cues to look for: which moves are one shots; which cues presage the beginning of a combination of obstacles/threats; which moves require instinctive responses; which cues need just that bit of delay before you respond, and so on.
But what makes the King so hard is that he has a huge variety of cues - in this case attacks. Most of them are telegraphed, but figuring out what each cue means, and how to respond to it - decisions on whether to dive away or sidestep, to dive once or multiple times, whether to move towards him or away, linearly or diagonally - have to be made instinctively. And add to this the fact that you lose sight of him when some of his rushing attacks move him behind you, and you're frantically turning around to figure out where he is, while he's lining up a devastating strike.
Dark Souls is known for its punishing bosses - a tradition that goes back to its first edition, where players encountered the formidable duo of Dragon Slayer Ornstein and Executioner Smough. And the Nameless King is probably the hardest boss in the series - which includes the three Souls Games, Bloodborne and Sekiro. One of the most popular comments in the video of the Ornstein and Smough fight goes something like this: "So this is how it sounds beyond 10 seconds".
Fighting the Nameless King, I felt that comment.
The first time I went in the dragon wrecked me. The the king pounded me to a pulp with his great spear. Then the dragon burnt me to a crisp.
I tried again.
I died in 10 seconds.
Again.
15 seconds.
Again.
45 seconds, and almost killed the dragon.
Again.
Dead in 5 seconds.
This went on for an hour, before I killed the dragon.
Then this happened.
The first time wasn't too bad. I was able to keep myself alive, and waiting for openings, would risk the odd attack. I kept chipping away at his health bar, and got it halfway down.
And then I got greedy.
And he curb-stomped me.
It took me another day for me to beat the first portion - the dragon part consistently. Even then, one wrong move, one bad reposition, and I would die.
I started getting to the second phase more consistently, but I never did as well as I did the first time around.
I think the first time, I was more open-minded - more willing to play it safe because I didn't know his patterns, more alert because I didn't know what to expect.
Later, it was all "Oh shit, he's going to do this deadly attack and I should be really far away", panicked moves, and then he would switch up his attack and eviscerate me.
Over and over again.
For three days.
I looked at videos of the battle on the internet. I tried ranged attacks. I tried tanking. The end result was the same.
"YOU DIED"
Finally, I posted a plea on reddit. One of the suggestions was that I rebuild my character for this fight.
I did that - it was a completely new playstyle, one that I wasn't accustomed to, but I felt a lot sturdier. I had been, to use TVTropes jargon, a fragile speedster/glass cannon. Now I was the mighty glacier.
It was over in 3 minutes.
When the king finally collapsed, I didn't feel much. I thought to myself, "That's done".
It was only later, when I thought back about the boss battle, that a feeling of relief seeped through me.
Now I could get on with my life.
And maybe next time, I would defeat the king as a fragile speedster. That would be the real test.
But for the whole day and the next, I really felt like this.
