Screenshot provided by Glenn BattishillĬaught between the gods and the undead are the Fire Keepers. In that fabled opening cutscene, the narrator even says, “With Fire came disparity.” The process of Dark Souls is exploring and reinstituting that disparity. The land of lords hovers over the destitute towns of the undead like the sword over Jerusalem. The broken, wooden houses of Blighttown are built on the walls of the cities of the gods. Every Dark Souls game is a three-dimensional model of class.

It, by nature, creates a desperate and fractured world.

However, the subtext of that hostility is that this is what fire does. The hostility of Dark Souls requires a world that does not want the player to live. Fighting one’s way through layers of enemies in old dungeons and crypts is inherently apocalyptic. Part of this, of course, is that the game of Dark Souls cannot accommodate a living society. Though Dark Souls 3 expands the cycle, from the first game you are surrounded by the death brought by flame, the haunted structures of ancient lords long since dead and gone. The gods you kill are Lords of Cinder, others who linked the flame and became kings in the sunlight. By Dark Souls 3, the cycle has occurred over and over again. The game then tasks the player, its chosen undead, to travel across the land in pilgrimage, to vanish the old gods, and to relink the flame. The cursed undead are corralled to await the coming dark. When the game starts, though, Fire has faded. All sought the power of Fire and used it to put an end to the sterile world and create an empire.

The opening cutscene of the original Dark Souls trots out a pantheon of deities. Of all the titles I have written about here, Dark Souls is likely the one that most explicitly evokes the column’s title. Killing Our Gods is a monthly column from Grace Benfell about Christianity, religion, and role-playing through a queer, Marxist, and lapsed Mormon lens.

Dark souls 3 fire keeper