As part of the Let’s Play program, art historian Boris Klyushnikov and game studies expert Lena Klabukova will play Dark Souls Remastered and offer a theoretical and philosophical analysis of its bleak world set in a cursed kingdom.
A moment of relief. You had thought the goreflick effectively over, the monster finished amongst anatomically precise ketchup-calamity scenes, when— suddenly—it reanimates; still locked on to your death. If you are going to scream, now is the time.
Nick Land
Playing Dark Souls Remastered and looking into life and death, vitalism and anti-vitalism, which in contemporary theory often coincide, we will try to make your summer darker. "Virtual capital-extinction is immanent to production," which means life is but a switch between different gears of death. In Dark Souls we die and resurrect to collect souls and die again: even death is not an obstacle in accumulating capital and making good investments. Dark Souls fans believe that no other game will satisfy you after you have tried this one, because it captures the essence of contemporary life better than life itself. With race through life and death, Dark Souls becomes a "consensual hallucination" of late (or the latest ever) capitalism, revealing the nightmarish core of every player.
When we play Dark Souls, we change, as if it were a test or a training system. Remember The Sims [a life simulation game series where the payer controlled characters and created for them a detailed environment]—a simulator of naïve neoliberal, airbrushed consumption? Today, the illusion once offered by The Sims—work, magic, hobbies, and death because of a missing ladder in the swimming pool—would not convince anyone. Dark Souls simulates something far more threatening. Can one break free from this nightmare? Can we outplay the game and overcome the paralyzing fatalism?
