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unproductive-software-blog · 3 years

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Demons’ Souls’ Final Question: What About The Future?

I’ve been pondering how to end my first playthrough of Demon’s Souls. My quest had been so clear at the start: as a temple knight, it was my duty to serve God in banishing the demons and their soul arts by sealing the Old One.

However, I began to question my purpose upon discovering the Talisman of Beasts on Scirvir the Wanderer’s (Black Phantom) body. It revealed the church’s God and the Old one to be one and the same. Magic and Miracles but two applications of the same power, both with the potential to harm and help others.

Later, I had made the decision to kill Yuria the witch, simply for being a witch. This seemed a good idea to me at the time, but upon rescuing Yurt the assassin, enabling him to kill two people in the Nexus, I had to reflect (after killing him, of course). Why would I kill an enemy of the church whom I knew nothing about, yet tolerate the presence of a murderer who claims “Human lives are not so precious as you might think” for so long?

Last night I fought Maiden Astraea, a former saint who became a demon in order to use her power to cure the sick. Astraea cursing God for dooming people to suffer resonated with me deeply, and her suicide once she realized my victory was inevitable pained me greatly.

Returning to the Nexus, the Old One can be heard crying out, the path between our worlds re-opened. Saint Urbain seemed to show his ignorance of the Old One’s true nature in claiming it sounded like the cry of a hungry child, but Sage Freke, the magician and enemy of the church, came with a plan ready: take the old one’s power for our own, and presumably, use it to do good. (This is of course, how i frame the decision given my character. Sage Freke seems pretty solely dedicated to the pursuit of science, not necessarily concerning himself with its application.)

For a moment, my choice seemed clear: become an all powerful version of Maiden Astraea. An Archdemon that performs miracles. A force of nature which serves to mend the world. The game however, provides King Allant (the main villain, a king who awakened the old one in the first place) as an example of what happens when one tries to take on such responsibility. Though Allant’s influence on the world is unquestionably an evil one (you basically spend the whole game trying to undo his influence) his son, Ostrava, speaks nothing but praise, faith, and love for his father as a human. At first I thought he may be biased or delusional, but this can be disregarded, given his later acknowledgment of the necessity of his father’s demise (going so far as to kill himself to keep from stopping you). How, then, does a good king turn evil, if not for some inherently evil soul magic? The answer is the Fat Official. The demonic bureaucrat. He embodies all 7 deadly sins, and is the last person you’d want in a position of power. He is not an inevitable part of society, but he is inevitably hidden within governments as large as the United States, and likely even Japan. Hell, most businesses employ these guys as managers, ever been to Stonefang Mines? The point is, no one man can exert the level of influence as King Allant without a massive hierarchy of power between himself and the people, it’s just unmanageable otherwise. The dream of doing the work of Maiden Astrea on the scale of something like a God or even a King is not possible without some of these goons getting involved somewhere, and as the game tells us (I think in the fat official’s hat description) the appearance of these middle-managers is what seemed to herald the age of demons.

What, then, am I to do? The Shrine of Storms and Storm Ruler provide evidence that hundreds of years ago, a whole other nation rose and fell with the use of Soul Arts. If I simply seal the Old One, am I dooming mankind to repeat the cycle once again? Am I forsaking future generations of people that could use the power of Demon’s Souls to advance science to some sort of utopian future? Leaving our world stuck forever in the dark ages? Lost, I return to the words of Saint Urbain: the Old One’s cries sound like a hungry child. I believe Sage Freke says when you rescue him, that the Old One is like a gaping maw, perpetually consuming additional souls. Hunger, scarcity, or perhaps, the hope of a future with less of these struggles for our children, the Old One embodies them all. It is need itself. So how do we choose to see that need? As something to be overcome, or something to gently lull back into peace? I choose the latter. It strikes me as somehow less cynical to choose to soothe people’s suffering in the present, and be the best person I can be, in the hope that the next time the Old One rages, another hero will have the strength of heart and peace of mind to do the same. We can never conquer this reality, but we can slay the demons where we see them cropping up. We can work toward a society which produces less illness, less brutality, less hopelessness, and less abuse, by working to limit the ability of any one False King or Fat Official or Fool’s Idol or Adjudicator to exert dominance.

Break the cycle of violence, and trust that this will make the future one of increased peace. Never perfect, constantly struggling, and embracing every minute of it. If a game this hard can be fun, so can a life of slow, dedicated work for a better future.

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