What is dark souls about?

I've spent over 200 hours on the game. yet. I don't know why we're basically killing everyone in the game. Can't seem to tell who are the bad guys lol. can anyone explain.

Is there some sort of a book I can get?

@sgt_ham: Dark Souls is about the human struggle to overcome depression and hopelessness in the face of life's unending challenges.

@truthtellah:

isn't that the story of life. I was expecting a more informative answer.

I suppose it's more of an overview than an in-depth statement on it, but there's no reason to be rude. You asked a simple question, what's Dark Souls about? And I gave you the simple answer.

Though, thousands of people have thought long and hard about every nuance. So, there are plenty of answers out there. I'd be more curious to hear you try to decide for yourself what it's about.

The official book Dark Souls: Design Works is a good source, as well.

It's basically a post-apocalypse wherein you fight the mindless undead hordes of the former civilization, the monsters allowed to roam free in the absence of man, and the demons and Demi-gods who serve masters trying to keep another apocalypse from happening. The game is basically a metaphor for the Big Bang, the rise and eventual fall of man, and the mindless toilings of the creatures that will follow us before the universe collapses on itself again at long last.

The immediate plot, as it pertains to the player, is that you are an Undead hoping to break your curse by undertaking a pilgrimage to Lodran. How you do that depends on which Primordial Serpent you choose to follow, but for the most part, that's all there is. That's why you ring the Bells, go to Anor Londo, gather the Lords Souls, and everything in between.

When people start pointing to videos on YouTube, they are mostly explaining the lore of Dark Souls, the history of the world and the backgrounds of the characters, not the plot itself.

People in the world are dying, then coming back to life. They are the undead. This, understandably, is freaking people out, so they are corralling the undead and sending them to prisons in the north. There you start as a fresh undead, when another undead drops a corpse with a key into your cell. You later run into this other undead, who explains that his family claims the fate of the undead is to go the land of the gods and ring two bells.

Not some time later a giant crow just so happens to fly you to the land of the gods, and you proceed to run around trying to ring the bells. Why? Well, your character motivation is up to you. It's an RPG of sorts, after all.

Things are attacking you for various reasons, but at some point the undead will turn 'hollow' without enough humanity, or those little black sprites that you can collect. 'Hollow' undead are basically mindless zombies, a.k.a. jerks who attack things because they dumb. That includes you. Somewhat spoilers, but other things are attacking you because they are collecting bodies for Seath the Scaleless, and others are just jerk demons who were created when the Witch Izalith tried to create a new flame. But that's starting to get heavily into lore stuff.

TL;DR: Zombie apocalypse with Greek gods

Its basically your A typical romantic coming of age tale.

the first fire, the kindle, and how light dies out and we huddle to a warm fire.

Oh yeah, and Tails, what's up with that?

Now that was Dark Souls.

Love and brotherhood.

Everybody recommends Vaatividya's videos for lore, and he's great at story telling, but he takes a lot of liberties with speculation, and he doesn't really "cite his sources". I like Davecontrollive way more, he goes deep into where everything he is saying comes from, and lets you know when its just speculation.

I'll agree with this.

Dark Souls leaves a lot of room for interpretation and uses a lot of imagery to tell the player what they need to know. Note that I didn't use the words "story" or "narrative". Dark Souls has those things but they're not really the point.

I really need to play more Dark Souls one of these days.

It's about Praising the Sun!

dark souls is about nope gifs

This is my interpretation of the ending but im not sure there is really a "point" to dark souls besides your own interpretation of it.

I was under the impression that you were trying to save the world. Something about preventing an age of darkness or whatever.

As for why you kill the bosses, I have no idea. I guess you do need their souls, but that's kind of a dick move.

My frustration was I do not believe I ever ran into knaethe (spelling I am sure). But I met only one primordial serpent.

The book, and probably the videos are good sources. I checked out the one guy's, the one w/that dude running around in the drake helm. He was a little too emotionally involved with his narration. To the point I was going, really? But he seemed like he was into the game, for sure.

I did pick up there was 2 obscure but different rationales to why, and that either could be questioned. The theme of the world progressing from a magic one to a more human themed existence is common in some fantasy. And maybe it isn't always the best, instead of just sad...

@random45 said:

Pretty much all of 'em (beyond only two I think) are openly hostile towards you at least, so... you could look at it as self-defence. Plus the majority of the bosses are all crazy people/monsters/demons.

The timeless tale of a young hero who travels the land in a lifelong search for the perfect ham sandwich.

But the stuff that everyone else said is good too.

Dark Souls is about embracing your hatred, and using it to transform you into an unstoppable killing machine.

Oh, you meant story. Anybody who tries to tell you definitively what that games story is about is lying to themselves. The point is, who cares what the story is about when you're laying waste to things twenty times your size.