Music of an Invincible Summer: Motive and Theme in the Soundtrack of DARK SOULS III
Prelude: There Is Scarcely Any Passion Without Gaming
Dark Souls III is a 2016 action roleplaying game developed by From Software (FromSoft), the last in a trilogy comprising itself, Dark Souls, and Dark Souls II, and a game which is very close to my heart. I got a copy of the game for Playstation 4 on Christmas of 2016, the year after I graduated high school and began my undergraduate degree. I played Dark Souls III consistently on throughout that degree and during my gender transition, I played it in the summer of 2020 when the world was locked down, and I watched speedruns of it as I recovered from bottom surgery in a lonely hospital room in Montreal. This game was present with me throughout my tumultuous young adulthood as I moved to a different city to start a graduate degree during what was probably the worst time in recent history to do so. Point is, Dark Souls III and I have a history (and several hundred hours of playtime). While I’m no epic gamer or speedrunner by any means, it contains a world which occupies a significant portion of my psyche. Because of this (and my own lack of marketable skills or gainful employment), I’m going to explain how composer Yuka Kitamura weaves a single three-note motif into the fabric of a 150-minute game soundtrack, and you are welcome to read my infodumping if you feel so inclined.
Hey, what’s this guy doing here?
Before I get too far into the weeds of analyzing compositional technique, I should probably talk about the role of music in Dark Souls. Nondiegetic music is, with few exceptions, only heard in the games’ title menus and during boss encounters. The proverbial bread and butter of FromSoft’s oeuvre, bosses in Souls games are mechanically challenging and designed to make the player feel small and disempowered: they are monstrous, often physically gigantic enemies that, for most players, require many attempts to defeat. The music that plays during these bosses thus constitutes the sonic fabric of Dark Souls games; it becomes inextricably associated with the spaces to which it is assigned and the actions which occur in those spaces. It defines those game encounters in which the player invests most of their time, and thus its specifics give certain cues to the player: whether any given boss is meant to be an epic encounter, a frightening one, or a sombre one, and so on. Given the amount of trial and error required to defeat certain bosses, music can draw one’s mind back to those especially difficult encounters or enhance the emotional reward of completing them – an example in the original Dark Souls might be that after beating Ornstein and Smough, a particularly tough fight against two strong opponents, the player discovers Princess Gwynevere, a busty giantess who grants the ability to quickly access different areas of the game world. The music in Gwynevere’s Chamber, one of the few instances of ambient music outside boss rooms, is appropriately august, with cascading pipe-organ lines underpinning a majestic, hymn-like choral melody.
Dragonslayer Ornstein (right) and Executioner Smough (left), fearsome measures of a player’s skill.
Music can also aid in the expression of narrative and themes. Dark Souls is unique among games of its genre for its minimal and restrained approach to storytelling; besides a narrated cutscene at the beginning, one only finds narrative information in cryptic non-player character (NPC) dialogue and in the description text of items and equipment. Owing to a narrative conceit wherein the state of the game’s world is purportedly out of time with itself, there is little sense of a traditionally told story outside of the player’s own sense of progression. Deciphering the games’ themes and metaphors can therefore be difficult without the proper context afforded through careful study and analysis of their text. Music can assist players in comprehending these elements by injecting certain emotional sensibilities into any given encounter, the most obvious example of which is the final boss fight of the first Dark Souls game. Gwyn, the godlike ruler of the game’s world and one who, the game tells us initially, built his domain after violently seizing it from dragons, has returned to the site of his original rebellion to reignite his flame; the player must defeat him and “link the fire,” or reset the world into its previous state of ostensible glory. The music accompanying this battle is a morose piece for two pianos, a yearning, aching work that begins with a distinctive descending figure. All the pathos of the player’s journey is channeled into these moments, fighting the god of a dying world – a victory over whom yields only the hollow repetition of a seemingly endless cycle of violence and power. It lays the game’s themes bare in a way which is simultaneously gentle and merciless, and the continued popularity of the “plink plink plonk” of Gwyn’s music serves as a testament to how moving these games can be when things go right.
Gwyn, Lord of Cinder is looking mighty haggard these days.
However, things do not always go right, particularly in Dark Souls. In many respects a technical, mechanical, and narrative improvement over its spiritual successor Demon’s Souls, the game nevertheless possesses a certain roughness; its ideas are executed well, but there is certainly room for improvement. Some elements aren’t as fleshed out as they could be, and it is my opinion that Motoi Sakuraba’s soundtrack, while expertly constructed and deeply expressive, is held back by the game’s somewhat-pedestrian narrative about killing the bad king and his friends. There’s more nuance to it than that, of course, but what I’m trying to get at here is that the soundtrack to Dark Souls doesn’t go as far in expressing certain themes as I would have liked. It’s not bad, especially considering its place among the pantheon of good video game stories, but I am certain that there are approaches to storytelling in video games which are more consistent, clearer, and which maintain the air of mystery and ambiguity that defines narrative in the Dark Souls franchise. Sakuraba’s soundtrack is very diverse, with each track very distinct from the next, but I always felt that a game about time and space mashing together should feel a bit less like disparate orchestral pieces and more like a single composition that spins out an entire sonic world from a few signature musical elements. Fortunately for me, I don’t have to imagine or yearn for that kind of music because it already exists in the game files of Dark Souls III. Kitamura’s soundtrack maintains one’s interest across its breadth, but throughout there is an unsettling sense of familiarity, of retreading old ground: every piece begins to feel like you’ve heard it before, somewhere, until you reach the end and it hits you in the face with a sword made of lightning: What you’ve been hearing and playing through all this time can be traced back to one god and his family’s desperate efforts to maintain power.
Part I: Man Cannot Do Without Proper Damage Scaling
All right, let’s get into it: what is this three-note motif and why is it important? Nearly every musical culture on Earth employs compositional techniques that reiterate, vary, quote, and/or recontextualize musical material. An example from Western European classical music might be Elgar’s Enigma Variations, wherein the composer explores the possibilities of a single short musical motive by writing “variations,” usually-short pieces that are drawn in some way from this central theme and thus relate to one another. Kitamura uses techniques of variation in spades here, to the point that each piece on this soundtrack is in some way related to or generated from a single five-note melodic cell to which I will thus refer as “the Gwyn theme” due to its derivation from a phrase in the B section of Dark Souls’ “Gwyn, Lord of Cinder” (see Appendix A, fig. 1). As shown in the score, this theme consists of a rising melodic cell, ascending twice stepwise then returning to its origin. There exist instances of direct quotation of other works from Dark Souls, but the soundtrack to Dark Souls III is largely dominated by iterations of this theme. These sometimes occur as isolated quotations within an otherwise unrelated melody or accompanying line, but are more commonly heard woven into the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic fabric of their respective pieces; even when the theme is not being explicitly stated, the musical language of this soundtrack often evokes its intervallic motion, rhythm, and harmonic implications.
Fig. 1: Gwyn, Lord of Cinder, 00:00:25. Gwyn theme played by right hand in Piano 1, mm. 1-4. Many iterations of this theme in DSIII soundtrack omit the first two notes. For a full comparative analysis of this theme and its cousins in DSIII, see Appendix A.
Recording here
There are too many instances of this effect for me to include all of them, so I’ll instead focus on three examples. “Yhorm the Giant” begins with the Gwyn theme declaimed by a full chorus in its opening measures (fig. 2). This iteration is one of the more straightforward, and, in the context of the full piece, functions as an opening “battle cry” and is not latent through the remainder of the piece. In “Crystal Sages,” we hear this theme in the bass and viola during the boss’ second phase (fig. 3); here, the iteration is somewhat disguised, appearing unaltered only in the bass and couched within a group of dynamically soft transitional phrases. Finally, the theme occurs in “Iudex Gundyr,” the game’s first boss, in two separate variations (fig. 4): like in “Crystal Sages,” these variations occur simultaneously, although they are more structurally significant in the former than in the latter: This excerpt occurs in the first section of its piece. Moreover the background variation in the second violin occurs later in the piece as a foreground element, and can even be heard in the music for the late-game companion boss “Champion Gundyr.”
Fig. 2: Yhorm the Giant, opening, chorus. Gwyn theme present in first four notes of soprano melody. This transcription omits the horn part, which is absolutely baller.
Recording here
Fig. 3: Crystal Sages, 00:03:29, string foreground. Gwyn theme present in bass line (mm. 81-88) and viola melody (mm. 82-84, 86-88.) Sinuous lines in viola and cello beginning at m. 89 evoke Gwyn theme without directly stating it. This piece also happens to be a total banger; a sleeper hit IMO.
Recording here
Fig. 4: Iudex Gundyr, 00:00:10, strings. Gwyn theme present both in viola melody (first five notes of each phrase) and slightly altered in violin II accompanying line.
Recording here
This theme is thus omnipresent throughout Dark Souls III in ways which become obvious upon focused listening. There are other ways, however, in which Kitamura employs the theme which are far subtler and which distinguish Dark Souls III’s soundtrack from those of the other games, especially the original. The pieces which comprise the music of Dark Souls are orchestrationally and texturally varied despite their shared Late Romantic-inspired style. One hears the brash fanfares and winding, chromatic strings of “Taurus Demon,” then a solo voice accompanied by harp in “Dark Sun Gwyndolin,” then radiant chorus with organ in “Gwynevere, Princess of Sunlight,” then moody four-hands piano in “Gwyn, Lord of Cinder.” The original game’s environments are similarly distinct, each possessing its own colour scheme. Narratively, one might associate these elements with the conceit of time itself being distorted in Lordran due to successive linkings of the First Flame, and with the notion that many locations from different eras of history have been smashed into an unholy amalgam of kingdoms. Dark Souls III brings this conceit to its logical conclusion and presents an environment so entangled and folded on top of itself that even distinct elements begin to blend together. Levels in Dark Souls III, particularly the opening areas High Wall of Lothric, Undead Settlement, and Road of Sacrifices are visually similar due to their dull green colour scheme and the game’s drab grey colour grade. One finds enemies from various different locales in places where they don’t belong: Vordt, an early-game boss, is found in the High Wall despite hailing from snowy Irithyll. Aldrich, free of his giant coffin, has moved far away and back in time to what remains of Anor Londo from the Cathedral of the Deep. Time and place in Dark Souls III are not familiar or consistent, and the score accents this effect by retaining a consistent musical language. A few examples include the first phase of “Pontiff Sulyvahn” (fig. 5), wherein a soprano melody wavers around C#, D, and E; “Dancer of the Boreal Valley” (fig. 6), whose wispy violin and vocal melody lilts stepwise around the seventh, tonic, and lowered second scale degrees; “Abyss Watchers” (fig. 7) at the opening of which a plaintive solo soprano sings an inversion of the theme; and “Lorian, Elder Prince – Lothric, Younger Prince” (fig. 8), wherein a bass line of an emphatic climax outlines the theme in inversion, and whose melody in this section remains within a minor third.
Fig. 5: Pontiff Sulyvahn, 00:00:44. Gwyn theme expressed in soprano melody as well as cello and viola accompaniment.
Recording here
Fig. 6: Dancer of the Boreal Valley, opening. Violin and voice lines oscillate around a central pitch, evoking 3-note structure of Gwyn theme.
Recording here
Fig. 7: Abyss Watchers, 00:00:16. The first 4 measures of the vocal line are an inversion of the Gwyn theme, which is further represented in the murmuring violin line.
Recording here
Fig. 8: Lorian, Elder Prince and Lothric, Younger Prince, 00:01:37, chorus and bass. The overall shape of the soprano melody is highly suggestive of the Gwyn theme. At m. , we see an example of the PAC that dominates this soundtrack. I sure hope the tenor section was paid well for this – I am not 100 percent certain that they are singing in the final two measures, but a couple of those high C’s are absolutely meant to be sung by humans.
Recording here
Beyond these specifics, melodies in Kitamura’s oeuvre generally “noodle” around a central pitch and remain within a relatively small ambitus. I also can’t overstate how many perfect authentic cadences are present in this soundtrack: nearly every piece includes such a cadence at its climactic points, and nearly every such cadence is approached melodically with a do-re-do-si motive that strongly evokes the Gwyn theme. While the oeuvre’s prevailing harmony does not strictly follow common practice tonal harmony, a family resemblance to that style is certainly present, among many of its pieces. In addition to all this, the audio production and mastering of each track is such that layers of foreground, middleground, and background begin to blend together to the point that it is often difficult to ascertain the motion of each independent line besides the melody and the bass. This overarching similarity ultimately evokes a blending of spaces and associations. Many video games employ music as an indicator of environment: one associates the music of, for instance, the Taurus Demon in Dark Souls with their first experience of a truly challenging boss and the area of Undead Burg through which they journeyed to reach it. Distinctiveness is often assumed to be a positive attribute here, as designers of large RPGs generally strive for diversity in their games’ levels, and the original Dark Souls achieves this musically through an impressive array of textures and instrumentations. In Dark Souls III the environments and music are diverse enough to maintain interest, but there is an uncanny sameness throughout: one often feels as if they are experiencing deja-vu (or, in this case, deja-entendu) as each piece sounds intangibly similar to the last in ways which are often not obvious in-game – recognition of Kitamura’s processes of transformation is made all the more difficult by the fact that a player’s first experience of them involves frantically pressing buttons and desperately attempting to avoid death by scary monster. This sonic element, ineffable and ambiguous, is essential to the game’s worldbuilding.
There are other neat tricks employe by Kitamura in Dark Souls III which fall outside the above categories. Instrumentation is often used to associate certain bosses or locations with one another: for example, the harpsichord appears only in certain pieces (Iudex Gundyr, Crystal Sages, Nameless King, and Lothric/Lorian), associating those bosses and their place of origin – Lothric Castle – with a Baroque sensibility matching the Gothic architecture of the area. Still other pieces contain direct quotations from other Dark Souls boss themes or other sources: “Deacons of the Deep” appropriately begins with a twisting melody whose opening rhythm matches that of Schubert’s Ave Maria, “Aldrich, Devourer of Gods” quotes “Dark Sun Gwyndolin” from the first game (appropriate given the fact that the former has, according to the game’s lore, eaten and absorbed the power of the latter), and the music for the base game’s final boss, “Soul of Cinder,” coalesces into a reprise of Gwyn’s original piece. “Epilogue,” which plays at the game’s end, begins with a direct quote from the first game’s “Firelink Shrine.” It is thus only at the very end that Kitamura makes her gambit utterly apparent. To many players, the direct quotation of “Gwyn, Soul of Cinder” during the last boss encounter may be the only time they recognize that piece over the course of a playthrough. A musically savvy player who manages to focus on the music while dodging sword strikes and magical projectiles might glean an abstract similarity or familiarity between each piece but will likely not pick up on exact details without listening to the soundtrack in isolation. What most impresses me about this game’s soundtrack is its ability to be at once familiar, unsettling, and expressive. There is an intimacy formed between sound and narrative, an ineffable connection that no item description or cryptic NPC dialogue can capture. Kitamura’s soundtrack communicates the themes of Dark Souls better than a hundred fandom wiki posts, and I think that’s something of an achievement in and of itself.
Part II: In This Desert We Shall Dodge Roll
However praiseworthy Kitamura’s work here may be, there is one major issue posed by her economy of material: if done improperly, a piece written in this manner begins to repeat itself in a way that is more grating and annoying than it is thematically appropriate. One of the strengths of Sakuraba’s music for Dark Souls is its diversity: each track is instrumentally and motivically different from the next. Kitamura often employs similar orchestration, textures, rhythms, and harmonic progressions throughout Dark Souls III in service of her thematic goals, a similarity which must carefully toe a razor-thin line between boring repetition and subtle reiteration. In addition (and perhaps more significant to Dark Souls III’s narrative and themes), heavy reliance on a single motive borrowed from the soundtrack to the original game must balance itself with original content. Too many references to its older siblings and III begins to feel like a rehash; too few, and the game fails to instill in the player a sense of unsettling deja-vu. In this respect, Dark Souls III feels like a middle ground between Dark Souls and Dark Souls II, the latter of which was almost totally disconnected from its predecessor in terms of concrete references and relied on clever world design for its deja-vu effect, setting up and delivering upon or contradicting expectations set by a player’s previous experience with the original. III offers a compromise wherein its world design is (barring outliers i.e. bringing parts of Anor Londo from the first game) disparate from the previous two games, but it contains far more concrete references to them in item text and NPC dialogue (for instance, the Crystal Sages wearing Logan’s big hat from Dark Souls).
I’m not here to conclusively determine whether Dark Souls III is an original work that cleverly references its older siblings or a fan-pandering rehash that walks back on good ideas posed in II: To me, III is too complex and multilayered a product to place in such simple terms, although there is evidence to support both arguments. I can, however, provide a discussion of the ways in which Kitamura prevents her music from sounding repetitive by granting each track its own personality despite widespread use of the Gwyn theme. One clever decision made by Kitamura here is to use the theme in one of its transformations as often as possible, further melding it with the soundtrack’s overall musical language. I would go so far as to posit that any instance of stepwise motion in an outer voice is an evocation of the Gwyn theme. In addition, there are many instances wherein Kitamura forms her own web of associations independent of any material from other games: it is through these primarily that Dark Souls III’s soundtrack maintains its own identity. Examples include the use of the harpsichord in tracks such as “Iudex Gundyr,” “Crystal Sages,” “Nameless King,” and “Lorian, Elder Prince and Lothric, Younger Prince,” aurally unifying these bosses and perhaps linking them to their common origin of Lothric Castle; and the ubiquity of high voice choirs in “Pontiff Sulyvahn” and “Dancer of the Boreal Valley” denoting a link to their home of Irithyll. Examples of original musical devices in individual tracks include a cheeky reference to Schubert’s “Ave Maria” in “Deacons of the Deep,” cementing the obviously Catholic-adjacent personality of this boss; a moaning chorus in “Curse-Rotted Greatwood” evoking the waves of additional monsters that assault the player during this boss’ first phase; scratchy, Black Angels-esque col legno strings in “High Lord Wolnir,” telling us that this is indeed the scary skeleton boss; and an honest-to-goodness circle of fifths sequence in “Dragonslayer Armour,” because an epic fight with an animated suit of armour in a Gothic castle didn’t scream Baroque Inspiration quite loudly enough. Jest as I might, this soundtrack is filled to the brim with personality and little flourishes which grant an astonishing diversity and originality to the game’s boss encounters despite the prevalence of borrowed material.
The thornier question of Dark Souls III’s relationship to previous games can perhaps be illustrated through a comparison of the two final bosses, one for the base game and one for The Ringed City, the game’s second and final expansion. The last boss of the base game, the Soul of Cinder, is presented as an amalgam of all previous entities who linked the First Flame. In its first phase, the Soul of Cinder uses a moveset copied from the player’s own attack animations, cycling through four different “builds.” In its second phase, the Soul, ostensibly aware that its current methods are ineffective against the player, reverts to a Gwyn-esque moveset replete with lightning bolts and a big sword. To ensure the reference doesn’t go unnoticed, the boss music shifts to directly quote Gwyn’s original music, ensuring that the B section from which the entire soundtrack is derived gets highlighted with a cantabile violin solo. This is, of course, a thematically appropriate ending: after untold millennia of risen and fallen kingdoms, when reality is nearly ground to dust under the First Flame’s vicious cycle, it is Gwyn to whom we return. The ending of Dark Souls III places the player once again on Gwyn’s throne, bound to repeat the cycle once more.
It's an ending which unnervingly highlights the futility of your struggle: what is the point of fighting and winning if your prize is a hollow and dead land? Dark Souls III at first appears to confirm this nihilism: the player is tasked with defeating heroes of past ages, those who were forced to link the fire and must do so once again but have abandoned their duty to the established order. Prince Lothric, a descendant of Gwyn, has decided to similarly reject linking the fire and embrace an Age of Dark by riding out the collapse in his castle. The player appears to be an arm of the status quo, rounding up and destroying deserters. Throughout the game, other paths become open: the player can embrace the age of dark much like in Dark Souls by giving the firekeeper her eyes, or they can steal the First Flame for themselves and become the new god of a dying world. The imagery associated with these endings is ambiguous, communicating theme and emotion rather than concrete plot details, and the ultimate ludic result for each ending is identical: the player can either begin the cycle again by starting another, more difficult playthrough, or they can start from scratch with a new character, or they can exit the game. Neither of these truly breaks any cycle, and I feel this is appropriate: after all, notions of hollow struggle and the empty rewards of power are central themes to the franchise.
Inbred princes Lothric and Lorian are happy to ride out the collapse in their tower filled with zombies.
These endings are not new to the series: both Dark Souls and Dark Souls II contain endings which similarly highlight futility and repeated cycles of violence. Another option, however, is presented at the end of its second expansion. I may as well take this opportunity to digress into a discussion the game’s two expansions, Ashes of Ariandel and The Ringed City. Both are brief additions to close out the trilogy and their music is some of the best in the series. Narratively, the expansions place the player on the trail of Gael, a formerly enslaved knight who quests for the Dark Soul of Man, an object feared by the gods for its ability to end their Age of Fire and begin the Age of Dark. Much of the music one hears along this journey is related to the base game primarily in the continuation of a shared musical language, but there is one notable outlier. The final boss of The Ringed City is Gael himself, who, for a variety of reasons, ate the protectors of the Dark Soul of Man (a MacGuffin capable of dethroning Gwyn and his progeny and thus imprisoned in a lavishly built but heavily guarded city) in order to absorb its essence through their blood. The ensuing boss fight is a thrilling and gruelling three phases, but it is the music which takes center stage. “Slave Knight Gael” is, to me, the piece in which Dark Souls III becomes itself, supersedes the previous games to the point that even the Gwyn theme begins to feel like an original construction: this piece is the trilogy’s pinnacle, an encapsulation of all that came before it.
“Slave Knight Gael” isn’t sombre or brooding or gentle, though, but roaring and gnashing, a furious call to action. Beginning with the second phase, strident brass and chorus sings the Gwyn theme not sadly but heroically, an indomitable spirit thrown into battle against encroaching darkness (see fig. 9.) One interesting quirk of this second phase is so subtle as to be easily missed: shortly after the transition, buried in the middle of the texture, three reiterations of a descending three-note piano figure. It’s the only point in the piece at which one even hears piano, and, to me, it represents the player character’s metaphorical subsuming of Gwyn and the cycle he founded. Ultimately, we can deny the powers that be the satisfaction of total dominance over us: we may choose to scorn a universe that births evil and destructive things. This is further supported by the music of Gael’s third phase: after a direct modulation from F minor to F-sharp minor, one hears a re-orchestration of a track found only on the physical release of the entire trilogy’s soundtracks entitled “For the Dark Soul.” While still as raging as in the boss’ second phase, this music is decidedly more pointed in its emotional trajectory. Instead of oscillating around a stable F, the melody wilts downward only to rise in a flurry of chromatically encircled tones, its moment of triumph ended and the pathos of struggle in an indifferent and absurd universe breaking through once again. The Gwyn theme appears one last time, descending harmonically and slowing rhythmically toward its inevitable demise. After one last burst of energy into a predominant augmented sixth, we hear the game’s final cadence, the music’s whimpering end.
Fig. 9: Slave Knight Gael, 00:02:00, SA and violin. Gwyn theme in soprano line.
Recording here
My allusions to Camus’ notion of the absurd here are not only to make myself feel smart, but also to highlight what I feel is the primary literary theme suggested by this boss’ story and music. Within Dark Souls III’s fiction, Gael is working on the order of his Lady, a woman who resides in the painted world of Ariandel (Dark Souls and Mario 64 exist in the same universe, change my mind), which is currently rotting away as old paintings tend to do. During the Ashes of Ariendel DLC, the player can speak to Gael’s Lady, who relates that Gael is seeking the Dark Soul of Man in order for her to use the MacGuffin as pigment for her next world-painting. She describes her project as “a cold, dark, and very gentle place,” seemingly in contrast with the fire and furor which characterized Lothric, Irithyll, Anor Londo, and innumerable other dead kingdoms. It’s a fully Camusian rebuttal of nihilism: in the desert can be found the pigment (we literally fight Gael in a desert), and with the pigment we shall create anew.
In his search for the Dark Soul of Man, Uncle Gael has developed a hankering for yummy, yummy souls.
Coda: One Must Imagine the Undead Happy
I’ve fallen off FromSoft games in the few years after I last played Dark Souls III. I got through half of Bloodborne before quitting, I’m still afraid to play Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and I played close to sixty hours of Elden Ring before getting bored of it. Maybe my belated cognition of the series’ massive success and arguable breakthrough into the mainstream with Elden Ring made me feel like less of a hipster for being a fan of the series, or maybe I simply wanted to play another, more relaxing kind of game. Nevertheless, this soundtrack is truly an achievement, and it speaks to the musical artistry that often goes ignored in games; I didn’t really notice many of the intricacies I’ve described because I was too busy fighting for my digital avatar’s life while the music was playing to focus on any of its details, and that makes me kind of sad. How many people have played Dark Souls III with music turned off, as is the norm in competitive multiplayer games? How many turn the game’s music off as default, since it “distracts” from other game elements? Directing this much of my attention to this game’s soundtrack for several weeks has reminded me how much artistry goes into these things, and how much video games can do to express powerful themes and important ideas. Returning to Camus, games are a big part of how I scorn our absurd universe, none so much as Dark Souls. Rather than denying its existence, the Souls games embrace absurdity and futility, teaching us to recognize that even if the universe is a cold and brutal place and our lives are meaningless and finite, there’s something in that struggle anyway.
In the fiction of the Souls series, the player character is an Undead, a person who has died and been reborn so many times that they scarcely remember who they are. The introductory cinematic of Dark Souls II describes the player as someone who’s doomed to repeat the same actions over and over again, without really knowing why. This fixation on vicious cycles underpins the entire series, and I can’t help but draw similarity between the Undead and their endless linking of the fire and Sisyphus with his boulder. Dark Souls poses the Undead as both problem and solution, recognizing the violent cruelty of the system from whence they came whilst condemning those Undead who would abandon their responsibility to revolt against it. I don’t think the darkness of these games is meant to be facile or grimdark for the sake of being edgy, but a deliberate tonal statement about persistence in the face of absurdity. Why do I play these difficult games, trying over and over again to complete a task that affords me neither wealth nor fame? Could it be the same ineffable reason why all of us wake up, day after day, living until our minds rot away, revelling in triumph and despair and the full range of human experience that lies between?
The Darksign, a visual metaphor for the Sisyphean curse suffered by humanity, hangs in a dreary sky above the First Flame.
Appendix A: Comparative analysis of theme iterations
Ex. 8 should be in bass clef, I’m too lazy to correct this lol
Appendix B: Notes on Transcription
These pieces are a little difficult to analyze closely as no full score is available – as such, all measure numbers are estimations and the transcriptions in this paper are done by ear. If a full score is ever released by Kitamura or an associate of hers, it will become possible to more closely analyze inner parts and timbral approaches rather than the broad strokes of melody and bass. I listened to these tracks enough that their transcriptions are accurate, if incomplete – For the sake of my own sanity, I didn’t attempt to transcribe each instrument for each piece. For some pieces (“Gael” in particular), I had to slow down very-compressed YouTube videos to half speed and work through quicker passages that way, and not every note was audible. With this in mind, I do believe that the transcriptions here achieve the spirit, if not the letter, of what’s going on in Kitamura’s music. I wouldn’t use these for a peer-reviewed academic paper, but I’m confident that they’re more than adequate for this shitty essay I wrote for my personal blog.
Appendix C: A full list of audio examples
Dark Souls comp. Motoi Sakuraba:
Firelink Shrine
Taurus Demon
Gwynevere, Princess of Sunlight
Dark Sun Gwyndolin
Gwyn, Lord of Cinder
Dark Souls III comp. Yuka Kitamura:
Iudex Gundyr
Crystal Sages
Deacons of the Deep
Abyss Watchers
Pontiff Sulyvahn
Yhorm the Giant
Aldritch, Devourer of Gods
Dancer of the Boreal Valley
Dragonslayer Armor
Lorian, Elder Prince – Lothric, Younger Prince
Nameless King
Soul of Cinder
Slave Knight Gael
Epilogue