After 4 days, no progress has been made. Wonderful.

The thing with Pokemon is that that game could have been beaten given enough time even if the inputs were entirely random. That amount of time may be well over ten or twenty years, depending on, well, chance, but it's something that is theoretically possible due to the way that you don't really lose progress in that game. In Dark Souls, the slightest misstep sends you back hours of progress with literally nothing to show for what you've done. The only permanent damage to progress TPP ever did was the utter destruction of a few Pokemon into nothingness. (and the existence of that as an option might be what kills the possibility of my theoretical randomized Pokemon run.)

I always believed in twitch Plays Pokemon. This is impossible. And if it's not, if somehow thousands of people can get together and make the extremely fine movements required by that game just to not fall off a cliff (which we know from experience is hard enough even with simple controls) and beat the bosses that require impeccable timing while on a 30-second delay, then I don't really think I'd even be able to credit the Twitch chat for it. It would be caused by nothing but a miraculous series of incredible coincidences so close to impossible that it might make me rethink my atheism. And if God was like, that into Dark Souls, I guess I'd be cool with not being an atheist, too.

But yeah, the delay and the precision required by this game makes me almost feel like the inputs the Twitch chat are putting in are entirely irrelevant.

But, good luck, I guess.

The random generator attempt moves a lot quicker and at least gives off the impression of momentum. Sadly, being an RNG, it has its favourites. Namely darksigning. Also, lobos is practicing for another blindfold run on his channel at the moment.

I come back after about 24 hours and they're in the character creator again? I think I am almost through watching TPDS...

Hey, Randominputsouls just killed a hollow! Annnnnd Dark Sign....

And the boss! Pity it can't exit the tutorial.

This is probably some political commentary on the efficacy of direct democracy.

Well, they've added text to speech now so every donation is being accompanied by a robot voice reciting vicious porn.

We're done here. Meanwhile, random input souls can't escape the Asylum either. Lobos's run yesterday was using the twitch delay to play the game. Much more entertaining.

Awesome, good to know the host is trying to squeeze every last dollar out of the sinking playthrough. It's a shame random input souls isn't doing better.

Random input's arguably worse because there's a weird sense of robotic intent there to proceed but it's hampered by trying to darksign when it runs out of ideas. And it cannot block hits.

@shindig: I would argue that TPD's recently implemented "turn-based" approach is harder to watch when all I'm looking at is a slideshow.

Another quick check in; they are stuck on a staircase and the game keeps freezing every 30 seconds.

I actually quite like the delay that's been added, it makes the game way more playable although more boring to watch.

Already at the boss door after killing two guys and getting a clutch heal before an arrow hit.

...buuut he just died horribly at Asylum Demon, the death message now says "Thanks Chat" though which is funny.

Oh man, watching the Lobos twitch delay run: he basically played by sound.

Man this real time with pause feature they added is unbearable.

They are going to beat the demon tonight. Have him at half health right now

I have to admit, this turn based democracy Dark Souls is working. It's kind of agonizing to watch. They are SOOO close to killing the Asylum Demon right now. It's got a few pixels of health, they've got about a quarter and they're out of Estus. One fireball remains.... They threw it! He's too far away!!! NOOOOO!!! Still alive... switched back to hand axe, one hit will do it... They got smoked! Pixels of health vs pixels of health, they're in close DEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They did it!! Asylum Deamon down!!!

I am so glad I caught that.

They have less than a scrap of health left.

It only took 150 hours to beat the tutorial boss....

Fuck yeah. Just beat him with 0 estus left, 0 fireballs left and the tiniest sliver of health remaining. Suck it demon. Onward to Lordran

They actually fuckin beat him... I'll eat my damn hat.

That was one of the most epic things in gaming history. So many clutches. My heart was pounding for too long.

POOL PARTY

If anyone cares to watch (it's kinda hard to watch,) the archive of them beating the Asylum Demon is here. (boss fight starts at about 20:50)

EDIT:

Oh no, they aggroed the Crestfallen jerk at Firelink... It's all over.

Yeah, he stays agro. I just watched them die miserably a fourth time, after which they respawn right in front of him again. This does not bode well for the future.

Edit: fifth time

No coming back from this.

What exactly did they change in the chat control input?

Why is it pausing all the time? Giving a chance for twitch chat to react to stuff maybe?

Well, it was nice while it lasted. Perhaps it was meant to be this way.

The Internet creates, the Internet amazes, and the Internet ruins. It's the cycle that Dark Souls symbolizes with death and rebirth. The velocity in which the crestfallen warrior dispatches our hero is symbolic of the speed at which the Internet ruins great works of culture.

It's beautiful, if you think about it hard enough.

@cirdain: @hypnotoadbrwowrowrow: The streamer has made it such that whenever democracy is enabled, it pauses the game for the duration of the stream delay so the chat can act on what's on the screen instead of having to deal with the delay. It's a bit of a cheat, but it did result in an incredibly tense Asylum Demon fight which they won.

They then promptly attacked Crestfallen Warrior in Firelink Shrine and have now spent the past 3 hours dying repeatedly. Their only hope is to trick him into falling off a cliff because a level 4 Pyromancer with a hand axe needs to do something like 10-12 parries or backstabs to kill him, and that's not going to happen.

@sinusoidal: Thanks for the clarification! :)

As others have said, it's weirdly fitting to Dark Souls thematically to see the reactions people have had to this Stream. The whole "No light without darkness/No hope without despair" thing comes through pretty strong when the conversation is largely "Oh, well there's no way they're going to get past this", "Fun while it lasted, not coming back from that", followed by the chat actually managing to pull through. I mean sure, it's probably going to take like a year for them to beat the game, but it'll be fun regardless.

Looks like they managed to trick Crestfallen Warrior off a cliff. I wish I'd seen that. I thought it was going to take a week to beat him.

Unfortunately, it seems the constant death was motivation to do something. Now they're just farting around Firelink throwing themselves off the cliff over and over.

They need to edit the gameplay archives so that the democracy delay is off during boss fights/important moments. It'd be much more pleasant to watch.

@drgreatjob said:

It turns out that @danryckert knows a thing or two about completely fucking yourself by aggroing him (hilarious)

http://www.gameinformer.com/themes/blogs/generic/post.aspx?WeblogApp=features&y=2011&m=10&d=14&WeblogPostName=intro-to-dark-souls&GroupKeys=

Here's the "action edit" on YouTube with the delay taken out.

I think Democracy Delay Souls is kind of against the original spirit of the run. Seems like it'll just be like watching a normal person play Dark Souls very, very slowly. Heck, with sufficiently large delay, the chat would basically have superhuman reaction time, making the game very easy.

But they don't. You commit to a button press in Souls, it's happening, regardless of how much you might want to take that button press back.

Considering the inevitable stream delay, the democracy delay is really necessary in a game as reaction focused as a Souls' game. I doubt even one person with a controller could do very well playing Dark Souls with a 20 second delay time between what button they press and what happens on screen. Right now, I'm seeing some actual progress. They were alllllmost to the first bonfire in Undead Burg. Without the democracy delay, I've no doubt they'd still be floundering around in the pool in the Asylum.

I don't mind all of the systems they have in place to make it less insane. It would have been a sight to behold if they managed to finish the game with how it was originally set up, but it would have taken sooooooooooooo god damn long it would almost not be worth it. I don't mind progress being made even if it's not 100% pure or what have you. It's still interesting, it's still Dark Souls by committee so it's not like it's easy now.

I expect them to agro every NPC they see from now on though. NO MERCHANTS.

Random Input Souls is over. Shame.

It's not like it was exactly "pure" before. I mean, with a 25 second delay, it'd be hard to play the game even if you were sitting there with a controller and you were alone.

They've managed to kindle the first bonfire in the Undead Burg, gained a few levels and are rocking a club and fire. Caveman build! Seems like most of the progress happens in the early afternoon here (which corresponds to evening in the US unsurprisingly.

Lobos' twitch-delayed run entered its second day and it's become clear he's not confident in his inner-Jedi. Last I checked he was trying to farm for a Black Knight something so he's clearly trying to max out his damage. Turns out parrying on audio cues and timing alone is canny hard to achieve.

Hey they actually made it somewhere! Sort of. I guess the pause thing makes it possible, might be unwatchable though. You know what was watchable? A guy rolling into a wall halfway up to his waist in water for 100 hours. That shit was riveting.

Hey, want to be part of gaming history? They're fighting the Taurus Demon right now, and it looks like they might just succeed.

Edit: Holy smokes that was close. Taurus was (maybe, it was very close) one fireball away from death and the fireball clipped the wall we were next to (!!!) and he jump attacked and killed us. So close. I don't doubt Taurus will be dead in a matter of hours.

Oh my god, there was literally one hit left on the taurus demon but the fireball randomly shot to the right and we died. That was not even fair.

@49th: It clipped the wall, we were throwing with our left hand and our left side was up against the wall. Hit boxes are weird in DS.

Edit: Ahh yeah, the second last fireball that went to the right did so because the auto-lock on that streamer has implemented hits the lock on button after every delay. So, if you see a lock on now, it won't be there once you move, if it's not there now, it'll be there the next time. It's kind of a shitty system, but giving control of it to chat would be a recipe for disaster, and not having it at all would make things almost impossible, so...

Taurus Demon just went down. It's happening!!!

As a veteran Dark Souls player I'm ashamed to say this is clearly too much for me. I can't take the pausing.

I think the delay's lessened now. I saw the beginning of the Taurus fight just before I set off for work this morning. You can never really tell whether you're watching a successful run.

Well, TPDS has successfully made themselves human and summoned BOTH Lautrec and Solaire and have just now traversed the fog to the Gargoyles. Let 'er rip!

Grags both down on first try! Was pretty epic to see!