More humorously, has the Dark Souls community drunk Kaathe's Kool-Aid?
I was going to comment on the pages for the Age of Fire and the Age of Dark, but since I lost my comments before I could post anyway, I figure I'd rather have a fuller conversation in the discussion forum. :)
Hopefully this is interesting!
I was listening to a lot of YouTube videos about the Dark Souls series recently, and it made me realise that a lot of the community seems much more monolithically anti-Gwyn and pro- Age of Dark than it used to be. This is somewhat understandable, given that the whole premise of Dark Souls III is that the world is dying, possibly beyond repair, but I think there are a number of assumptions being made by the community that people may not be aware they are making about the world of 'Dark Souls' and how it works, so I thought I'd talk about it and invite a discussion about this in a new thread.
Many people are reading the world of 'Dark Souls' through a sociological, modern lens: that the gods, in some sense by virtue of being gods and thus an elite class, ought to be overthrown, especially given our modern and democratic sensibilities, and that the Age of Dark is a coming age of humanity. But there are a number of problems with this reading.
1) We hardly know the gods. We know that they are imperfect, but so are most people, and imperfection isn't the same as immorality or proof of it; they are probably as diverse in their behaviors and attitudes as humans are. (Seath the Scaleless is an exception since we have more direct evidence of his experiments, although it is possible that even he is more mad than evil.) In any case, we are hardly in a position to judge them since we know little about them because they are not present in the stories of the games except for a few key figures; even then we are mostly only given context clues about their motivations, and their opponents, beings like Kaathe, Nashandra, and Aldrich, come across as at least as off-putting despite us knowing much more about them, and this obviously makes their view of the gods suspect.
2) Viewing the series purely as a sociological analogy falls flat in a few key aspects. For one thing, nature as we know it, full of diversity, animals, plants, etc., is in the world of 'Dark Souls' intimately tied to the Age of Fire; once only Dark remains, the species and ecosystems that need Fire to survive and can't adapt shall have died out. In our world, many people value ecological mindedness: why wouldn't we apply this logic in the world of 'Dark Souls'? Is the life based upon the existence of the sun and Fire not as precious in that world as in ours, despite the precariousness of the First Flame? For all we know, Gwyn may have thought so. In this sense, aren't incursions by the Abyss similar to things like environmental destruction, contamination, pollution, and similar ecological horrors in our world? Isn't an at least equally applicable analogy that the Dark represents the destruction of the natural world, represented by Fire, in which the god are stand-ins for natural phenomena, in favor of creating a world built solely for the progress and prosperity of humans (or what they think shall be prosperity even if it's just hubris)? Shouldn't we endeavour to preserve nature and co-exist with biological diversity for as long as possible, rather than throw it away in an attempt to garner risky and self-serving power and progress for humanity?
3) Things like Light, Life, and Death, not to mention heat and cold, basic aspects of existence in our world as in the world of 'Dark Souls', depend upon the existence of Fire. Rejecting Fire by extension rejects some of the basic foundations of existence. Taken to the extreme, this shall eventually lead to a world in which disparity ceases to exist entirely, as in the 'Age of Ancients', and such an age is inimical to life that isn't dragons and archtrees. In fact, Dark Souls III intimates that time itself is tied to Light in 'Dark Souls' cosmology, meaning a world devoid of Light is also one without linear time.
3) There is no evidence that the Age of Dark is an age in which humans prosper. In fact, there is much more evidence to the contrary. Whenever we see the effects of the Abyss and the Deep in the games, the effects are almost always horrific. Even if Dark is an aspect of nature, a world of only Dark seems very out-of-balance and, more importantly to humans, at least as alien and hostile to human interests as the Age of Fire supposedly is, if not more so. Just because humans are born from the Dark and carry the Dark Soul, it does not follow that humans prosper in a world of only Dark. Vendrick's and Aldia's dialogue in Dark Souls II exists to point out that humans seem to do best when there is a balance between Fire and Dark rather than when there is an overabundance of one or the other. Vendrick and Aldia sought the third way, even if they weren't sure one was possible, and this is presented as a noble path to the player. The possibility of achieving this third way is conveniently left out of discussions of the third game of the series, but it's a valid possibility, if an idealistic one. Conversely, there is a lot of evidence that Kaathe's prophecy is a self-serving lie to players to suit his agenda, yet it seems that the majority of the lore community accepts his description of the Age of Dark as an "age of humanity" (and that the Age of Fire is one good for gods exclusively) without acknowledging the mountains of evidence that the Dark does not favor humans. (It also seems like Kaathe is appealing to human selfishness and hunger for power.) Here's a basic point: How can humans even see in a world without light? I trust my eyes more than I trust Kaathe.
4) It should be noted too that Gwyn's action, though described as "the First Sin" by Aldia, is viewed far more favorably by Vendrick. I believe it was intentional on the part of the writers of Dark Souls II to have Aldia be slightly more Dark-aligned and Vendrick slightly more Fire-aligned, despite both being middle-of-the-road characters. I think we are remiss to take Aldia's view that Gwyn's self-sacrifice to Link the Fire is a "sin" as gospel without taking into account Vendrick's more charitable view of Linking the Fire given Vendrick's skepticism towards a pre-determined Dark destiny for humans (and identification with Gwyn as Vendrick found himself in a similar position), and even Aldia views Gwyn's "sinful" actions as unfortunate but sympathetic.
Given all of the above, I think a fuller picture of Gwyn is not that he was selfishly seeking to preserve the power of the gods. (In fact, the only one who says that he explicitly told the gods "to shepherd the humans" is Kaathe, and despite Kaathe presenting this in a sinister light this can be interpreted in many ways.) Gwyn may have bound and distrusted the Dark, specifically the Abyss, but the series makes it clear that he had very good reasons for his distrust, and he sacrificed himself to preserve the Age of Fire. Gwyn even went as far as to incorporate humans into his world order, indicating fair-mindedness and foresight about the future of humans. It is most likely Gwyn realised that nature and the world as they exist in the Age of Fire were special and worth preserving, something that most people in real life seem to agree with. Preserving the things we care about in life takes effort: they do not maintain themselves without conscientiousness, and the same is true in the world of 'Dark Souls'. Even if everything eventually has an end, does that not make the fight to preserve the good all the more important, despite its apparent eventual futility? Is not even a life of struggle better than collective suicide? Even though change is inevitable, what that change entails is in large part determined by our own actions, and all beings are entitled to live own lives and to determine their own destinies, for good or ill, evil or well.
Therefore, when it comes to the endings of Dark Souls III, I think people are remiss to view the 'To Link the Fire' ending as a bad ending. Despite how horrible the world has become in Dark Souls III, is it really the right of the main character to either end the world in favor of a future one as in 'The End of Fire' ending, or to take power as in the 'Ash Seeketh Embers' and 'The Usurpation of Fire' endings? Or is it better to give life the opportunity to find its own salvation or oblivion on its own terms, especially in light of the possibility of a third way? If the First Flame is extinguished completely, perhaps Vendrick's and Aldia's third way is never found. So change comes regardless of whether the First Flame is linked or not, but maybe linking it is still not a futile action, despite the First Flame no longer being all-powerful. Maybe Linking the Fire is the ultimate affirmation of hope in the face of despair, however unlikely hope may be. And Gwyn's choice to sacrifice himself for the sake of hope does not make him the villain some see him as.
What do you all think? Rebuttals and responses are encouraged and welcome! :)
