Hello! With Elden Rings almost upon us, we’re making this week Souls Week on Eurogamer. Over the next few days we’ll be picking over From Software’s astonishing games – and the astonishing games they have inspired.
To kick things off we’re lucky to have this lovely piece from Jason Killingsworth, who is the founder and creative director of publisher Tune & Fairweather. He co-authored (with Keza MacDonald) the book You Died, which examines the masterful design of Dark Souls and explores the vibrant community of players surrounding it.
“The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.” – Cyril Connolly
It’s hard to conceive of an artistic medium more ephemeral than video games.
In the opening pages of his book Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, Tom Bissell writes with undisguised melancholy, “One game designer told me that, due to the impermanent and tech-dependent nature of his medium, he sometimes felt as though he were writing his legacy in water.”
Yet here we are, on the eve of Elden Ring’s release, marvelling at the staying power of the games that Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team at From Software have developed over the past decade. To build a robust and enduring piece of artwork is to stage a revolt against the existential truism in the first chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes that “There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.”