This video contains spoilers from Dark Souls I
You have no friends in college
Henry is sick
It's not enough money
You have no future
You failed your test again
Martha doesn't like you
Your father doesn't speak to you
You have no future
Mark has asthma
They mocked you in class
They fired Ann, and they will fire you too
You have no future
Your leg hurts again
You don't talk to your brother
You have no future
You can't get out of bed
You can't get out of bed (You can't get out of bed (You can't get out of bed))
Ten spearheads surround your lungs at every moment
Day after day you face tens of problems
You fight to overcome them, or at least to not be killed
to be ruined, or be broken by them.
There is a basal frustration, an impotence
Ten spearheads surround your lungs at every moment
But there is also something...
A TV show
A Youtuber
A book
An album
you hide in your room and you consume it
*Deep breathing*
And you feel calm
A shelter...
...to which you return after overcoming a great obstacle
or after failing 20 times trying, but you return,
and everything is fine
You come back, and you can hear this music
*Firelink Shrine plays*
It is a place you know is not hostile
or, at least, what is hostile feels familiar
The voices in your head telling you "there is no hope" are there.
That impulse that can destroy your life is there
Your achievements, your progress, accumulates there
in the form of merchants
Even the final boss is there, under your feet
The place you come from, your origin, your childhood
are there, and you are there,
because someone believed in you.
That bonfire is your room
or that special place that is the only one where you can feel actually safe: you close the door, and everything remains outside.
In the rest of the world, there is no music.
*Armor parts clacking together*
*Estrident background sound*
*Armor parts clacking together*
Once upon a time, there were people through these halls, living in these houses, trading in these squares.
But they aren't here anymore.
Neither is the music that went alongside.
How did that time... sound? Let's imagine.
How did it sound, when the berenike soldiers visited Lordran
What could be heard, when Gwyn's three children were still kids?
But now, silence is what remains
And the scarce music that does play, is not meant for you
but against you
It's like the display of strength from the Gaping Dragon when you face it
or Ornstein and Smoug's charade, the music in this world is another show of strength
an element whose function is to intimidate you and make you feel nervous
Even the Moonlight Butterfly's music is a reflection of the dark beauty of this creature that wants to kill you.
The only piece of music made for you, your only comfort in this world between hostility and death is...
Your shrine
It's not a lot, it's a 2'15" loop that is repeated while you are in the game's central bonfire
And it's a piece of music that breaths... literally.
In fact, the piece is composed of only 12 "breaths"
This would be one of them
and this would be another one
The first 8 are the shortest ones, they last 2 compasses each
and the last 4 are longer
You can hear strings, a harp, and a vibraphone in the background
The work begins with Em
It's just these 5 notes during 10 seconds, but I can't do anything with them
The piano can't do the "waving" the strings can
The strings can augment or diminish the note's intensisty after it started playing
but in piano, once I hit it, it's done, it only fades away
That's the strings' versatility
Imagine this game was made 20 years ago
The music would have had to be 8-bit, and it would have sounded like this:
Holding chords like this is not pleasant, you can't "breathe" the same way
One solution would have been making "arpeggio", changing the notes constantly to not hold the horrible
notes of the synthesizer of the NES or GameBoy consoles.
The same happens with Final Fantasy's Prelude, that started sounding like this:
And now the "arpeggio" take a back seat, since there are more musical options outside of 8-bit
Case on point, Firelink Shrine starts with an Em chord
It's a sad chord, but not a tense one; the second one is more tense, it's an E7(sus4) chord
The next chord is a dominant 7th chord in first inversion
Strong, very tense
And then it releases tension with another Em chord
4 chords, 4 "breaths"
And then come the next 4, they start with Am
a 4th grade, with E in the bass (in 2nd inversion)
Now a dominant chord in first inversion, with a minor ninth
And it circles back to Em
When you are listening to the piece in-game, although you are not paying 100% attention to it
The fact that each chord lasts so long makes it difficult to hear the whole composition,
you get lost in the vastness, each chord lasts 10 seconds
It takes over one minute to hear 8 chords
Do you know how long it takes Green Day to play 8 chords?
Less than a whole chord in Dark Souls
If I stretched Green Day so every chord lasted 10 seconds, it would sound like this:
You lose all notion of where you are, and the music becomes background
But if I play Firelink Shrine at 4x speed, you can hear the path that the melody and harmony take in every 4-chord block
That's it, a very simple question and answer
This is the question:
and this is the answer:
In writing it seems trivial, but making it last so long and with the string "waving"
it feels immense
and as I said, the piece has another 4 "breaths" or chords
It modulates to F#m and does this:
but way slower
That harmony is the typical "Andalusian cadence"
It's very similar to the harmony used in Zelda's theme
But it doesn't sound like Zelda
because every chord lasts 10x times longer than Zelda's
and you stop noticing the relations between the pieces' chords
it's like spreading a tiny piece of butter on a 2km-long toast until the butter loses its essence,
until you extend every molecule to the point it can't be called butter anymore
It is possible that the world of Dark Souls was like Zelda's, full of light and color, and life, and characters, and music.
Maybe its music was like that, in another age, but now only traces remain, between the ashes
Firelink Shrine is a piece designed for you, in a place where you come back again and again, is your sanctuary
it is a reminder to take it easy, to breath, and to try it again, maybe changing strategies, with more reflexes
maybe going another way; but try again, and again, and again
Because when someone stops trying, when someone loses hope and gives in, they turn hollow
And when you are hollow, you become hostile to others
Your character, the avatar you create in the beginning, never goes hollow as you play,
you can always take your controller and finish the game
But we can imagine that what happens "inside the game" when you give in, if you get frustrated and don't go through,
if one day you leave the controller and don't pick it up again, then your character does become hollow
and hostile, and starts to destroy everything you once hoped to save.
There is another piece that also deserves mentioning, you probably know which one.
In an audiovisual work, music works as a lens
Music lets you know on what part of the experience your feelings should focus
It is a dye, it tells you what is blue or red
For example, it is not clear what you have to feel when you are killing giant cochroaches in a post-apocalyptic world
Maybe you should laugh it out
Maybe you should feel tense because your life is on the line
Or maybe you should feel deeply melancholic, for the world you knew will never come back.
Every emotion is valid, you can even feel them all at the same time, but music can help you focus on one of them
like in the case of Fallout, where depending on what radio station you choose, you also choose the "lens" through which you see the reality
The same happens in Dark Souls, there is an emotionally ambiguous scene, and music is the one who
tells you how to understand it, only here you don't control a radio, the game chooses the music for you
When you get to the last boss, when you face Gwyn, the music could tell you:
Welcome, you will face a brutal enemy that will test everything you have learned so far, it's the moment you were waiting for,
all your upgrades, all those hours training you parrying skills, all souls spent leveling up, everything comes down to this. Welcome to DkS' final boss
But as you all know, it is not like this. The music that plays is quite different:
The final boss' piece is a composition for two pianos
or two pianists playing side to side
You and Gwyn
It doesn't talk about how strong you are, or how epic this final battle is
It talks about Gwyn, the great king you expected to see ruling over Anor Londo, sitting on a throne of light in a reign of light
But he's down here, deepest of all places, alone and hollow; and what remains of his kingdom is a deceit,
that with a single arrow will fade away, showing the dark night and the fading flame, the ashes...
But hey, both narratives are true: this battle is epic and the big finale you were waiting for,
but also Gwyn's reality. The music just focuses on one of them, as well as it could have focused on the other.
The main theme is very simple, it's on Am and goes like this:
Gwyn's theme - right hand
But the harmony is what's brilliant.
On piano 1, as the right hand plays the melody, the left hand only holds an Am chord
But piano 2 doesn't agree. In fact, it plays another chord, F Major:
And when they play together, there will be a big dissonance, F will clash with Am
Also piano 2 doesnt stay on F, but it goes higher up with the same hand position
Whereas piano 1 will stay in Am even with all those ch anges, unmovable, for 40 beats repeating the same figure.
For me , piano 1 represents Gwyn, with one hand playing the theme of what he once was
and with the other one, hollowness, caught in the simplest three notes repeated mechanically, lifeless, for all eternity
And the other piano represents yourself, the constant ascension, perseverance, defying Gwyn's Am with more notes every time until Gwin gives in
This next bit will contain spoilers for Dark Souls 3, if you want to skip it jump to time stamp 17:06
Gwyn's theme, will appear again in the end of Dark Souls 3, against the final boss, when Soul of Cinder becomes Gwyn.
Let's go back to Dark Souls 1
The piece continues, changing harmony; finally in beat nº 41 it stops playing Am and goes like this:
Gwyn's theme modified
It's just a B part, to put between part A and A' and not sound too repetitive.
The B part ends with this tense and beautiful moment
If you haven't played it, you have to imagine what it feels like, after dozens or hundreds of hours,
to get to the final boss, to one of the game's most epic and exciting battles
And that at one point during the fight these are the only notes that are being played
It's a ludonarrative dissonance
"Ludonarrative dissonance is that clash between gameplay and story, in which each one goes different ways.
But in this case it's well played as a tool to provoke an emotion on you
There are lots of people that get to the end and they don't know what Dark Souls is about.
You have to look for the story, looking at the environment, reading item descriptions, and look for the details.
The 1st time I played, I was more focused on the gameplay-RPG aspect, weapons, crafting, stats, with the technical aspect, also fair and fun.
But when I got there, I thought: what the heck is this music?
And I'm not the only one:
But what the heck is wrong with this piano music?
It's as if, after investing 40 hours and getting to the end of the game, it told you: "I don't know what game you are playing, but we're not on the same page".
Back to the piece
After part B, there's another part A, but slightly modified, A'.
The main theme comes back:
But the harmonies change, do you remember the "Andalusian cadence" from Firelink Shrine?
Now it appears here, during the battle inside the Firelink Shrine itself
If we heard Am constantly in part A,
Now it goes: Am, G, F, E (sus4)
Suddenly it sounds varied and prettier
Now if it only did this, and gave closure... but it doesn't.
It plays longer and starts all over again. Because it' a loop.
The game can't know if you need 2 minutes or 25 to kill the final boss, so the end of the piece must fit the start
The use of music in Dark Souls 1 is beautiful and perfect, in my opinion. The other entries in the franchise don't keep up the same.
There are very good pieces like Majula in DkS2, which also plays in your main refuge.
Similar to Firelink Shrine, which we saw in the beginning of the video
It also evokes calmness and akwardness at the same time, and maybe a bit of melancholy
And Bloodborne's soundtrack is also good, it's excellent, but it doesn't have the same level of wonder as the 2 pieces we analyzed today.
I will leave you with a youtube comment I found, about Firelink Shrine, that encapsulates perfectly what it feels like playing Dark Souls.
I guess if you haven't played dark souls you might be thinking: WTF? What the hell is this? Why is everything so dark?
But if you have spiritually connected with this game I guess you can understand me.
I hope you liked the video. I will leave some related links in the description
Like Outconsumer an Lou's videos playng it;
Dayoscrip's videos analizing it;
Muzska's videos commenting it
And Vaativydia's videos, whose lore narrations and dramatizations are amazing
They helped me understand the game and all its underlying narrative
Links to all that in the description
I hope you liked this video, and I'll see you next week. See you soon!
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