How One Piece of Music is the Soul of Dark Souls

How One Piece of Music is the Soul of Dark Souls

I am something of a fan of Dark Souls. Not necessarily just one of those people who thinks it’s the most enjoyable game in the traditional sense, but one of those people who has, for some reason or another, been completely consumed by the atmosphere of the Souls games. The lore, the despondent sense of your surroundings… and the music. This is an article about Dark Souls Music.

I could talk for a long time about why I love the obtuse narrative that makes you work and think for scraps of information hidden in item descriptions and lines of throwaway dialogue; about how the intense, often-frustrating gameplay lends it a unique place among the games or today; of how the sheer depth of the game as a work of art as opposed to just a video game dwarfs that of many others. Oh, shit. I already did. That’s not what we’re here for, though. (If you are here for that, VaatiVidya on YouTube has an amazing series called Prepare To Cry where he runs through the lore of individual characters from the Souls games.)

We’re here to talk music. Sort of. More specifically, how a song can be so much more than just… a song. To do that, I’m going to ramble about a song from Dark Souls – specifically, the theme of the final boss: Gwyn, Lord of Cinder. Click play on the below, and listen as you read for optimum pseudo-intellectual bollockery.

Is it the best song from a game ever? No, most probably not. That’s a largely subjective topic. What it is, though, is an incredible example of how a game can, as a sum of parts, become an incredibly intricate work of creativity with remarkable effects on the player, and I’m going to try and run through that.

Mandatory warning alert – this post features spoilers of the nth degree, what with it being a rundown of the story behind the final boss of the game and all.

So. How does Dark Souls use music as more than just music?

It Enhances The Story

Okay, bear with me.

If you’re not familiar with the plot of Dark Souls, well… this post alone won’t do much to change that. It’s long, complicated, and requires some personal interpretation. But I’ll go through the relevant part in a second.

The soundtrack for Dark Souls is incredibly fitting. Most areas typically don’t have music, instead letting you freak out over ambient sounds and the scrapings and growls of monsters prowling in the black. When the music does kick in, it normally means one thing – boss time.

Every boss in the game has a unique theme (if I’m not mistaken) and every theme fits the boss to a tee. The battle with the Moonlight Butterfly is set to light, graceful female vocals, emphasising the beauty of this elegant and mysterious creature in a crumbling world; the Taurus Demon is announced by the frantic and bombastic crash of an orchestra – apropos, considering he’s the first real boss you face and the fight starts as terrifying ambush; and as Gravelord Nito shambles unnervingly towards you, someone, somewhere, smacks a harpsichord every now and then just to really mess with you.

So, if every theme for every boss fits them in the sense of their role in the world of the game… why is Gwyn’s song so melancholy?

It’s because Gwyn’s story and his place in the world is a tragic one. His theme is a solo piano piece, the only one like it on the whole soundtrack, and to me it just sounds sad. Once I’d learned more about the story of Gwyn, ‘sad’ became ‘heartbreaking.’

The Concept Art fits the Theme
The Concept Art fits the Theme

I won’t get too into the details, but essentially, Gwyn was responsible for establishing the world as you see it in Dark Souls, thanks to something known as the First Flame, which let Gwyn and a handful of other ‘gods,’ as well as the race of humans, conquer the land of Lordran. The following era was known as the Age of Fire. Unfortunately for Gwyn, no fire burns forever. The First Flame began to sputter out, and as it did, the Age of Dark approached. It’s never explained fully what the Age of Dark would entail, exactly, but, y’know. It’s probably something bad.

To prolong the Age of Fire, the lifeline of the world he helped to create, Gwyn sacrificed his very soul. One effect of this breach of the natural order of things was that humanity was cursed to undeath. Those who received the curse were doomed to slowly decay, eventually becoming insane beyond repair.

The player character is the ‘chosen undead,’ and you are destined to slay Gwyn and rekindle the fire to extend the Age of Fire further. To burn your own soul as kindling, to continue the curse, and to await another great soul to stop the fire from guttering out

That’s the short of it. I know that wasn’t particularly short, but, that’s Dark Souls for you. I skipped a lot there, trust me.

So, Gwyn knows he has to die. Not only that, he knows his cause is hopeless. His title starts to make sense. Gwyn is Lord of Cinders, of something almost burned away entirely, lord of the ashes of his kingdom and his people, slowly smouldering away into oblivion – just like Lordran and its inhabitants.

One of the recurring themes of Dark Souls is inevitability. Seath the Scaleless strives in vain to find the secret to mortality and eventually dies at your hands while the undead of the world constantly fight against a curse that has no cure.

The battle with Gwyn is the crescendo for this concept. Gwyn is slain, and the Age of Fire is renewed, but for how long? You become another turn of the wheel. Nothing has changed, and the inevitable is still inevitable. His song and indeed the recurring concept of fire in the Dark Souls world fits this perfectly – when you realise the pointlessness of it all, how unstoppable decay is, how nothing lasts forever, the song’s sadness makes sense. It’s the sound of Gwyn struggling in vain to stop something that no one can stop.

It Enhances The Gameplay

By enhancing the story, Gwyn’s theme even had a tangible effect on the gameplay for me personally. As a final boss, Gwyn makes little sense when compared to other games. Most titles have some huge scary monster threatening to consume the world as their last hurdle. You beat it, are heralded for saving the day, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Gwyn, however, is one of the smallest bosses you face. He’s not even hard. After fighting Manus or Kalameet or the Ceaseless Discharge (pleasant name) he even seems… easy.

Whether or not FROM Software designed Gwyn to be easy is up for debate, but the fact that he is makes the final showdown all the more poignant. This literal god had burned away, and what remained were the cinders of a once incomprehensibly-powerful man.

Gwyn,_Lord_of_Cinder

I didn’t want to kill Gwyn. I wanted to let this man who had sacrificed everything due to, ultimately, his fear of change and his need to keep his world going at any cost, die with dignity. I let him swing at me, dodging and rolling as, with sword aflame, he seared the air around me. But, like everything in Dark Souls, it was inevitable. Gwyn had to die.

So I put him down. That’s honestly what it felt like. Like a mercy killing. Not only was the game over, an exhausting and slightly emotional experience in itself, but something that felt genuinely significant and tragic had happened.

Would I have recalled the piecemeal story of Gwyn and feltthat experience had that song not been playing in the background? That bleak-beautiful piano track echoing the hopeless hope that Gwyn held, his genuine fear of what was to come should the fire die out?

That’s how events happened for me, at least. Perhaps I was just in the right frame of mind for it at the time. As with any creative work that demands the user submit their own interpretation, your mileage may vary.

I Just Really Like The Song, Man

At any rate, Gwyn’s Theme is at the very least a beautiful song. As a song, though, it’s no better than any of the great songs in gaming, like the main theme of Halo or any number of tracks from the Final Fantasy series. As a piece of a whole, though, no other song has achieved what Gwyn’s theme did for me. It wove together pieces of a story to change the whole, to completely change my view on the narrative, to bring to mind concepts and interpretations that I hadn’t previously considered, and even to affect how I played the game.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is why people love Dark Souls. If you liked this, check out this guide for some of the early weapons.

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