I like Dark Souls. Here are pictures.

I was going to write about what I've been up to recently, and I probably will eventually do so, but it's going to be difficult to compose something about it that's interesting or at least readable, so I've decided instead to talk about Dark Souls, which recently came out on PC, and post screenshots.

Warning: spoilers and spiders ahead.

This is my main character, the ultra-stylish Varine, looking all shiny in her silver knight armour. She started off as a backstab-happy thief, but on acquiring a pair of rings that lessen the weight of her armour and thus allow her to sprint and roll as if she was in civvies, she began to grow into a medium-armour curved-sword fighter - dagger and curved swords both scale in damage with the dexterity stat. It is important to note for those who haven't played the game that you play as an undead character. Beneath all her armour, Varine is essentially a zombie.

Here we see a rare glimpse of her “human” form. In this form, other players can invade your world, where they'll try to hunt you down. After a few incidents in which invaders did toilet in her hair while she was fighting other, larger enemies, I've made a point of keeping Varine corpsified for most of the time.

Here she is offering humanity to the Fair Lady. In Dark Souls, one may make covenants with gods or other powerful entities, and offer them items in exchange for unique rewards. Varine's covenant is with the pale, blind half-spider known as the Fair Lady, who has been left crippled after having saved her servants from disease by drinking the “blightpus” that caused the affliction. You can give her humanity, a sort of secondary currency and also a temporary character stat, and her health will gradually improve. She'll also teach you some extremely destructive fire spells.

Here's Varine posing next to some bump mapping...

...and here we see her about to find out what a “lawsuit” is.

Firing an inexplicably luminous (or brightly-painted) arrow. lol if only I could be so grossly incandescent etc

This is one of the few remaining screenshots where Varine is well lit and not covered in motion blur effects. The pose makes her look like a Games Workshop figurine. In this one, you can see that she is barefoot. In Dark Souls, boots and greaves and the like are included in the leg armour, but this skirt doesn't come with any. It looks a bit inconsistent, but that's what I get for combining plate armour with mage attire.

So, as you might have noticed, I like Dark Souls a lot. I do think, though, that the music could have been better, especially as it was composed by Motoi Sakuraba, who did music for the Golden Sun games as well as many other JRPGs. I associate him with tracks that have actual melodies, rather than the film score-like music of Dark Souls, which sounds impressive but ultimately forgettable (with a few exceptions). I'd have been happy if the tracks were like this, which sounds all grand and royal and suitably hectic, but has a memorable tune.

That's all for now.