User blog:Hereticalthoughts/Elitism Within the Souls Community

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, undead and hollows, sunbros and Dark Wraiths, Red Team vs Blu Team, etc. etc. until the end of time as we know it. Your resident heretic here, bringing some more thoughts out onto the blog for your viewing interests, I take no responsibility for whether you enjoy this bit of typing or not, nor if you are offended or agree, though I can certainly hope for responses of any sort as I do love dissent and debate.

As a person who's been playing the Souls games and been in contact with the community since around 2012 give or take a month or so, I've met quite a few people in the community, and like the rest of our shared species of Homo Sapiens Sapiens these people have many different traits that define each one, yet often band together to form a community of people who share the same general interests, namely, the Souls games. Of course, this variety also means that one is bound to run into a few less... charitable souls along the way.

Of course, it would be stupid of me to act as if this is entirely unexpected, every community has it's curmudegons and brutes, but our particular firebrands are of more, shall we say... elitist breed? Many of those who continually place games like Dark Souls & Demon Souls on pedestals will similarly denounce and show disgust towards games like Dark Souls 2 or even the up and coming Bloodborne* game for "not living up to their expectations". I have no other response than this.

Here's a quarter love, call someone who cares.

Honestly dear reader, you should read some of the comments these elitists will make, I have seen people lament that Dark Souls 2 was the herald of FromSoft's collapse as a studio or that the Souls games will become a degenerate nest of foul mouthed children like what happened to the Call of Duty franchise, some even acting as if they own the Souls games and can arbitrarily state that Dark Souls 2 ''isn't a Souls game. ''truly, the butthurt squaling of these man and woman children is a sight to behold!

Possibly the worst matter about these people is that their ire and condescension is not limited solely to FromSoft's products, as an avid gamer and rpg player in particular I own or have owned a variety of games that fit into the same general genre' as the Souls games, including one of the Souls Elitists' favorite targets: Dragon's Dogma.

I can only assume that the reason for this strong focus on Dragon's Dogma is largely due to 2 factors, the first being that Dragon's Dogma was released relatively close to Dark Souls' release (DD having been released in 2012, only about half a year or so ahead of Dark Souls which was released in the fall of 2011, if I remember correctly.) and due to them being in the same genre' of Action/Adventure games with RPG elements. Many elitists will smugly deride Dragon's Dogma for being "too casual" and for being cliche' and noblebright in an industry that has steadily stepped into darker themes.

In the end, it disgusts me as a player of both games and an arpg fan in general to see such behavior, I find it boorish and quite frankly want little to do with these sorts. That's... about it for this ramble really.

Thoughts, comments, gun duels in front of the OK Corral, marriage proposals, etc. are as always, welcome below. Thank you for reading.


 * Though this hatred for a game that a) has not even made a legit appearance yet and b) isn't even part of the Souls "series" to begin with (which is more like a loose collection of games that happen to have similar themes) confuses me to no end.

~Hereticalthoughts