For hardcore FromSoftware, there is only one sequel to Dark Souls, and that is Dark Souls 3. Dark Souls 2 is Black Sheep and has received more than its fair share of criticism over the years. Even among those who do not actually despise it, it is largely forgotten.
But I’ve always had a weak spot for Dark Souls 2. He got it wrong a lot, but I’ve always insisted she did a lot right. There is creativity and diversity that I feel has been almost completely ignored. For the longest time, I rode into the first part of Dark Souls for being a one-off, failed experiment, dead end. That being the case, Elden Ring felt like a huge vindication of my love for Dark Souls 2. Sometimes, it feels like his spiritual successor.
Drangleic and The Lands between are both relentlessly unpredictable game worlds. By moving away from the traditional Soulsborne architecture, FromSoftware itself has given itself a much greater scope for weird and wonderful things. Drangleic may not be quite as aesthetically coherent as Lordran or Lothric, but he has his own personality that a more traditional Souls game would struggle to emulate.
Elden Ring and Dark Souls 2 eschew intricately bound, almost design Metroidvania in favor of more expansive and diverse worlds. One of the reasons I find it hard to go back to Dark Souls 3 is how uninspiring the visuals are. There are certainly notable moments, but for the most part, it feels like more than the original game actually did. Cathedral after cathedral, a couple of castles, and a strange sewer. There were very few moments that gave me a reason to stop and enjoy my surroundings.
In Dark Souls 2, you have Earthen Peak, where there’s a windmill over valleys of poisonous gases, No Man’s Wharf, a deserted pier where twisted aliens avoid light, and The Dragon Aerie, high above the ground. They may have had their flaws from a design perspective, unfair enemy mode, and awkward points of no return in particular, but there’s a variety of worlds in Dark Souls 2 that wasn’t captured until Elden Ring. Dark Souls 2 captures the sense of adventure you got from Elden Ring better than any other Souls game I’ve played.
Remember getting out of the cave and seeing Hyde’s Torch Tower for the first time? The sunlight on the sea and the crumbling ruins inspired a real sense of amazement. The rest of the game was no different. The epic, mist-soaked ascent of Drangleic Castle, the hauntingly beautiful Shrine of Amana, and the massive decline of Lost Bastille all made me stop and stare.
The connection between Dark Souls 2 and Elden Ring runs deeper than that. The way the player navigates the world is also an important point of convergence. Generally speaking, in FromSoftware there is only one obvious way to go, and you may branch out later. Undead burg, streets of Yharnham in Bloodborne etc. The opposite is true for both Elden Ring and Dark Souls 2. There are several paths to follow at the beginning, and they all converge later. A typical Soulsborne game is tree-like. You begin by climbing the trunk and you are given options on how to proceed near the summit. Dark Souls 2 looks like the same tree but it’s upside down.
The best way to think about this is in terms of your goals. In the original Dark Souls, you’re tasked with ringing the bells of awakening, and unless you’re a veteran, you’ll almost certainly ring one over the Diocese of the Undead, and then the one in the Kulag Domain. Then go to the Sen’s Fortress and Anor Londo, and only after that the game opens up to the hunt of the four spirits required to fill the Lordvessel and open the first flame furnace.
In Dark Souls 2, you’re almost immediately on the hunt for the four “Great Souls,” belonging to The Lost Sinner, The Rotten, The Duke’s Dear Freja, and The Old Iron King. The order in which you fight them is up to you. Once you’ve got all the lives, you can proceed through Shrine of Winter where the game then becomes a linear challenge through the areas in and around Drangleic Castle.
It might not be an entirely open world in the same way as Elden Ring, but Dark Souls 2 gives players a sense of agency that evokes a similar sense of freedom. The areas in Dark Souls 2 don’t overlap the way they do in Dark Souls, which for many was a point against the game, but I actually liked the greater breadth at first. The world felt expansive and expanding, even though it’s not technically an open world. Elden Ring takes a similar approach, going into a comprehensive, sprawling world atop the labyrinthine structure of most other FromSoftware games. It can be a little daunting, but there is a certain charm to embarking in whatever direction you see fit in search of adventure.
Neither approach is better than the other (although you wouldn’t think that given the way people talk about Dark Souls 2), but as Elden Ring explains, the second method definitely has its strengths. There’s an immediate focus on exploration, and the world feels really big. It’s actually very similar to the way The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is organized, and we all know how that was received. Dark Souls 2 was not an all-encompassing game open to everyone so far She has the same degree of freedom of exploration, but in her own way foresaw what was to come with Elden Ring.
Where Dark Souls 1 and 3 didn’t offer many incentives to try new weapons or magic, Dark Souls 2 encouraged you to try more new things. Power Situations (which made a victorious comeback in the Elden Ring) are a great example of this, where dual-use weapons of the same class will put you into ‘Force Mode’, unlocking a whole new transmission set.
This opened up a whole host of tactical options, and allowed players to run crazy with their builds, as the awesome video below by SunlightBlade demonstrates. There is nothing quite like powerful double swords. There are also a pair of cool matching shields that can be used as weapons when you’re in power. Elden Ring brought it all back and it was better for him. It’s so easy to find one thing that works and stick with it that it becomes boring, but these games have given the player a reason to try something new. Fun and unique mechanics are a great way to do that, and Dark Souls 2 is packed with them.
Clearly allowing the player experience was one of the key design principles. There are significant changes in NG+ runs, which means you have to keep adapting even in the post-game phase, and through the use of a fire ascetic, skilled players can get their hands on rare boss weapons much earlier than they would otherwise. The spirit of Elden Ring’s open-world approach can be felt in the way Dark Souls 2 allows players to bend the world according to their will. Don’t feel the urge to bring the four great souls together? Just kill the Corrupt four times instead and ignore the others. The stalker is causing you trouble? Line him up and shoot him with a close-up ballista view. There’s even a casket you can jump into for a quick gender swap if you like.
DNA Dark Souls 2 runs through the Elden Ring, and we shouldn’t overlook that. Yes, the bosses are a little weak if we take them as a whole (but there are some great ones), yes, the connection to the world does not exist, and yes, the memory of the soul should never exist, but there was way more than game to game who-that. Dark Souls was less prescriptive and more experimental, and in this way set the stage for FromSoftware’s victory in the open world eight years later.
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