Books or movies like Dark Souls?

July 25, 2013 11:53 AM

Along with a friend, I have been immersed in Dark Souls for over 100 hours the past couple weeks. Although we still have much ground to cover, we're obsessed with the beautiful world, tone and feel created by this game. Are there any movies or books that capture this? Don't know what Dark Souls is like? Explanation has lots of detail!

Dark Souls has a minimalist tone as far as RPGs go. There is very little dialogue, and when it's there, it's usually functional. It is set in a dark fantasy world that appears to be undead or dying - there are monsters and evil beings lurking at every corner, and very few NPCs willing to talk (and even then, not very much). Much of the game is spent in loneliness, fighting enemies over and over trying to clear an area (infamously difficult), and get it right. But the environments are beautifully designed, with a sense of gothic melancholy and terrific attention to detail.

You visit the ruins of an undead town, with wretched undead soldiers carrying on their duties long after death. You find a forest where the foliage attacks you and you trip over stone giants resting in the shade. A gigantic butterfly challenges you on a rampart, shooting magic missiles that penetrate any shield. Touching a painting takes you into its world, trapped until you confront its master. Breaking open an illusory wall on a tree takes you down its hollow and down to a gigantic underground lake guarded by a hydra. A crystal cave where crystals are so fine, they from invisible walkways revealed only by falling drops. A gigantic wolf clutching a sword in his hand to protect the grave of a noble knight. It goes on and on.

So key factors would be:
- A fairytale sense of wonder (as opposed to Tolkien/D&D's over-explained lore-building)
- Gothic melancholy
- Loneliness
- Incredible one-on-one battles on an almost mythological scale

Bonus: Some tracks to set the mood. And some more of that.

And finally, the intro video, which does a fantastic job of setting the tone.

posted by Senza Volto to Media & Arts (17 answers total)

Best answer: William Hope Hodgeson's The Night Land, perhaps? Wikipedia has a nice article on the Dying Earth sugenre of fiction.
posted by jsturgill at 12:12 PM on July 25, 2013

I don't know Dark Souls, so its hard to say if this is truly a good match, but I am strongly urged to recommend Anne Bishop's Dark Jewels Trilogy.
posted by supermedusa at 12:26 PM on July 25, 2013

Best answer: Many of the early Elric stories have those qualities: a doomed, often miserable and lonely hero; weird, powerful creatures encountered nearly at random; several instances of god-slaying or titanic, impossible fights; bleak landscapes; etc. Some caveats though: they're written in a pulpy, older style, though very well if that's your kind of thing; and the stuff you're looking for is more characteristic of the stories that take place after the first book, which establishes a bunch of essential points.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 12:36 PM on July 25, 2013 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Your description reminds me of George MacDonald's Phantastes.
posted by zeri at 12:44 PM on July 25, 2013

H. P. Lovecraft, of course! Albeit there aren't really many confrontations, but there's a lot of atmosphere, melancholy, lurking horror, and lyrical description of dead cities. Also seconding Michael Moorcock's Elric books.
posted by pont at 12:52 PM on July 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: William Hope Hodgson's House on the Borderland fits too. Lovecraft was mentioned above, and in particular I think At the Mountains of Madness and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath match the tone and style of Dark Souls. Maybe Rendez-vous with Rama?
posted by aparrish at 1:05 PM on July 25, 2013

Best answer: Based on your description, maybe Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun.
posted by snorkmaiden at 1:22 PM on July 25, 2013

Best answer: Did you know that Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are both loosely based on the manga Berserk? Here is an article about it, some images with comparisons, and a couple of forum threads.

Also: if you haven't played Demon's Souls, you may as well play that once you're done with DaS.
posted by smcg at 1:26 PM on July 25, 2013 [2 favorites]

Movie-wise, Pan's Labyrinth seems like it fits the bill.
posted by afx237vi at 1:29 PM on July 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: In terms of movies...Andrzej Żuławski's 'The Devil' is very bleak, dark, full of madness as well as gross locations .... and I feel like Bergman's 'The Seventh Seal' did a good job of giving me that 'kinda-Medieval dread' feeling.

Also, one of my favorite movies ever is 'Stalker' (the 1979 one by Tarkovsky) - the setting is obviously quite different, but it's mostly about one man (well, a few men, sometimes) travelling through a bleak, unsafe (but kind of beautiful) place...and their personal philosophies and faiths become expressed, though there's very little dialogue in much of the movie. On that note, reading 'Roadside Picnic' is not a bad idea.
posted by destructive cactus at 2:15 PM on July 25, 2013

Best answer: I was playing Dark Souls a couple months ago and last week started Book of the New Sun, as mentioned above - it DEFINITELY has a grim, almost resigned, feeling to it, much like Dark Souls.
posted by Tevin at 2:43 PM on July 25, 2013

Oh, dangit - I forgot.

Also The Magicians and (especially) its sequel. It takes a little while to get to the part where it feels like Dark Souls but when you get there, hoo boy, does it ever.
posted by Tevin at 2:50 PM on July 25, 2013

Dark Souls reminds me strongly of elements of Stephen King's The Gunslinger, though the rest of the Dark Tower series varies wildly in tone. Lonely desolation with characters that seem both archetypal and unsettling, minimalist but effective world building, and without getting to spoilery a lot of shared elements of the "quest".
posted by Benjy at 3:37 PM on July 25, 2013 [2 favorites]

Best answer:
Dark Souls reminds me strongly of elements of Stephen King's The Gunslinger, though the rest of the Dark Tower series varies wildly in tone. Lonely desolation with characters that seem both archetypal and unsettling, minimalist but effective world building, and without getting to spoilery a lot of shared elements of the "quest".

There's also the permeable boundries of the universe.

I love, love, love, love love Dark Souls. It reminds me of the elagic fantasy of Lord Dunsany, who inspired Lovecraft's Dream Quest of Unknown Kadeth. Read Dunsany's 'Time and the Gods'. I'm seconding Michael Moorcock, too.


Did you know that Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are both loosely based on the manga Berserk? Here is an article about it, some images with comparisons, and a couple of forum threads.

I thought that was Dragon's Dogma, which lets you get armor from Berserk.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 5:21 PM on July 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you for the replies! To address stuff I've already seen: Stalker (the movie) definitely is a good example - it may not be fantasy or have gigantic boss fights, but it fits the rest of the tone perfectly. H.P. Lovecraft is a good example, although I figure his works would be more 'horror' and dreadful than the game itself actually is. I haven't read the recommended works though, Dream-Quest or At the Mountains of Madness, so I'll have to read those. Roadside Picnic would be a bit too far in that regard, but The Seventh Seal is definitely very close.

Now then, for stuff I discovered: Berserk blows my mind. That's number one now - the similarities are astounding (and almost make me peer at the Dark Souls design team). Number two will be Book of the New Sun. Phantastes, The House on the Borderland and The Night Land interest me because I have a thing for turn-of-the-century speculative fiction. (I've read some George MacDonald before in Lilith; while I love his sense of fantasy, his writing bored me to tears and I had to abort it)

Andrej Zulawski's Diabel looks interesting as well. Michael Moorcock's Elric series does interest me, but I doubt I'll ever get around to it, considering its length, but thanks for the recommendation!

Thanks everyone!
posted by Senza Volto at 8:44 PM on July 25, 2013

Elric isn't like Game of Thrones - you can read a few books at random, and they're all pretty short. Some of the other Moorcock heroes like Corum would fit in pretty well in the Dark Souls world.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 8:48 PM on July 25, 2013

Best answer: The back-story of Dark Souls is basically a creative retelling of Norse myth (although it's done subtly enough that it's easy to miss when you're playing - Ash Lake is one of the most obvious hints), so you could read up on that.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 1:07 AM on July 26, 2013 [2 favorites]