Dark Souls Is About Capitalism, So What The Hell Is Going On In Elden Ring?
In a series packed with an obscure, puzzle-piece approach to lore, working out what’s actually happening in Dark Souls is a task as difficult as the series’ bosses. But despite their seeming refusal to tell the player anything, the Dark Souls series presents a story that might hit a little too close to home for everyone living under late capitalism.
The latest game in developer FromSoftware’s arsenal, Elden Ring, is in many ways a spiritual successor to Dark Souls - but has a very different feel and message to its predecessors. But to work out what’s going on with Elden Ring, we’ll first need to dig into Dark Souls - and explore where the themes of FromSoftware’s latest masterpiece started.
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Without a clear guide or purpose, you’re invited to meander through the kingdoms of Lordran, Drangleic, and Lothric in which the Dark Souls trilogy takes place. Much of the story has already happened - wars were waged, kingdoms fell, and now you’ve arrived to stop the world from crumbling even further. As you wander through these fallen kingdoms and failed empires, the game invites you to ask: is this all worth saving?
Probably not.
In the first Dark Souls, the iconic, immaculate city of Anor Londo is a lie. The golden land of the gods has gone dark, and the sun itself is there to fool you into thinking the world is worth saving. The age of fire is meant to end - but instead, countless undead are fooled into throwing themselves into the fire to keep the embers smouldering and a crumbling order in power - a process called linking the fire.
The age persists, fuelled literally by theburning corpses of the undead, all the way through to Dark Souls 3. The final
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