Yo guys. I came back because I wanted to reminisce about Demon’s Souls.
A lot of people around the web are lamenting various aspects of what will be missing when the servers go down. And world tendency is always mentioned.
Something I never see people mention is that world tendency is sorta broken when you are connected online. It actually still works “offline” and actually works in the overall intended way.
World tendency is meant to be controlled. To your intentions/benefit, or to your detriment. Revealing layers to the game, which are not present in the other souls games.
When you are connected online, your world tendency automatically adjusts to whatever the average is, of all online players. Which is usually somewhere close to middle. This can be abused, indeed, if you have died a lot and dropped your world tendency down. But it can also be really frustrating because any degree of control you were wielding, is wiped. If you are trying to hang out in pure black or pure white, too bad. As such, I spent a good deal of late game Demon’s Souls------offline. Because there is a lot of content which requires pure white/black world tendency. Which the online affectation often keeps you from doing.
The idea in this Eurogamer article’s intro text is exactly something I have been thinking about. Because I already played a lot of “offline” Demon’s Souls. Exactly so that I could peel back more intently, the layers of the game.
However, nothing beats Demon’s Souls PVP. Movement and attack speeds are very fast. You can only wear two rings. Build variety is very high and a lot more focused because you can’t wear a bunch of rings to add back missing stats/qualities. Complete with pure spell casters who can spam spell after spell with their endless mana. Life Regen maniacs who then use cursed swords which are likewise, life draining, in a careful dance with life/death, for big damage. A certain shield which scales with stats like a weapon and is great for two hand bashing people off ledges or when stuck in the nastiest swamp in the whole series. etc. and I like the levels because they don’t really have PVP arenas built into them. The later games have a lot of-----here’s the spot where you fight. Demon’s Souls makes you do it in the level proper, usually.
I got a pure bladestone in 4 kills of the Black Phantom Skeleton who is at the end of 4-2. Where its actually quicker to start in 4-3 and then go back to 4-2.
It just hit me: The pantheon at the top of the nexus, is only accessible while connected online. Offline, its a dead end staircase, with an impassable wall. If I remember correctly, there is a stone of ephemeral eyes up there! And it was a cool room which payed neat tribute to multiplayer participants.
welcome back!
thanks felix!
The pantheon is almost entirely blatant cheaters last I looked.
The stone was a nice find, at least.
Yeah it’s a bunch of blue-skinned bug-eyed dinguses with 99999999999 souls at level five billion
That’s only half of it though. The other half shows the profile of the 10 latest players who completed the game which was neat. Especially when you yourself get your little Game Clear profile.
my demon’s souls story is that I like to pretend the maiden in black talks like Chekhov from star trek and pronounce the line “withdrawn from its wessel”
OKAY FINISHED
your resident evil article was really good.
This is good. It gets me thinking about how, while there’s a common way of thinking about games preservation where games are relics to be maintained for exhibition to future generations, writing about the experience of games is just as much an element of the same project. In some cases, including online games like Demon’s Souls, the historical narrative may be an even more important part of the preservation effort than the archaeology.
all things are ephemeral
you can never really go back, only recontextualize
and that’s entirely okay
Nice article man. Reading it with the soundtrack playing in the background almost made me feel quite emotional lol.
I guess all good things must come to an end tho.
hey @ChouieLouie, welcome to the forum!
thanks man 
So I gave 1-2 another try this morning. I still haven’t crossed that last stretch of the bridge. Didn’t try this time out, and instead cashed in some souls to raise my vitality.
Those dogs are a piece of cake but I still hate seeing those things lunging out of the darkness. I always end up losing count.
1-2 in pure black world tendency, is one of the most blatant middle fingers to the player. I love it.
I never really understood or paid attention to world tendency, but one time I found that part off to the side open in 1-1 and was killed by human-form Executioner Miralda. I’m glad I didn’t beat her on my first try, as then I would not have discovered my favorite spoken line in the game.
ok now i have to buy a ps3 and this game. i hope you’re happy wourmu.