
A man awakes inside some kind of marble gazebo, wearing nothing but tattered clothes and clutching his rusty sword. All around the structure he sees darkness save for one ray of light illuminating the path in front of him. He steps forward out of the gazebo only to be greeted by small black creatures scampering around him on their four spindly legs. He draws his sword and begins to fight, not because he is forced to, but because it is all he knows how to do. The man is killed instantly, but yet awakes a moment later back on the marble platform, he has entered the cursed kingdom of Drangleic. He will die a thousand times before his journey’s end, and a thousand times he will wake back up and begin again but stronger, smarter, and more determined. He will not finish this journey the same man he began it as. This is the story of Dark Souls II, a game infamous for it’s difficulty but loved dearly by it’s fans. Many would not describe it as a coming of age story, but by comparing it to the story of Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars trilogy, one can see the parallels that prove this so.

Firstly, despite the massive difference in tone Dark Souls II and Star Wars a new hope begin in very similar ways. In Star Wars Luke meets Obi Wan Kenobi, a wise and powerful jedi who explains to him the power of the force and reveals to Luke that he too is gifted in it. In Dark Souls the player meets a group of old women who were previously known as Keepers of the Flame, women who kept the forces of darkness at bay. These women explain to the player that he has become cursed as an undead and in order to cure themselves they must defeat enemies and capture their souls to become powerful enough to defeat the king. In both of these scenarios Luke and the player are simply regular people before learning of their powers. Luke a simple moisture farmer who had no plans on leading a galactic rebellion while the cursed one was similarly anything but undead. Both start from seemingly nothing.

At the end of A New Hope, Luke Skywalker proves his power in the force by destroying the death star without his targeting computer. This shows the progression of his skills and how he has gained an understanding of the world around him. A similar point in Dark Souls is defeating the first boss named The Last Giant, a giant beast trapped deep under the castle in the Forest of Fallen Giants. For many players this is where they stop playing the game because they simply cannot defeat this boss, but those who do show to the game that they have mastered the basics of its combat mechanics. They have both gained enough souls to do damage to the giant as well as refined their skills in the game’s movement and tactics to know how to strike it. They have essentially killed their first death star demonstrating their progress just as Luke had.

The beginning of the next Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back, shows Luke dealing with the loss of the rebel base on Hoth. Despite his better efforts Hoth is lost to the Empire and there is nothing he can do to change this. As opposed to getting irrational and giving up he remains calm and travels to Dagobah to train with master Yoda. Loss is a concept that the cursed one in Dark Souls is all too familiar with. By the time they have defeated their first boss the cursed one has probably died many times, losing their captured souls and being forced to start again from their nearest checkpoint. However, just like Luke, determined players who do not give up continue with their journey and head off to gather more souls. If Luke or player did not posses this determination by this point in their stories they would have quit and lost their respective fights.

For Luke The Empire Strikes Back ends with Luke at his lowest point. He has battled and been defeated by Darth Vader only to discover that Vader is Luke’s own father. On top of all of this Luke has lost his hand and is still not finished with his training on Dagobah. This again shows Luke’s determination, but there is also a parallel in Dark Souls’ story structure here as well. At this point in the game the player has begun their journey into the depths of caves below Drangleic. Down here there is no light, no allies, nothing but grime and the stench of death. This segment lasts for a long time and serves to take hope away from the player. The boss of this area is called The Rotten, and is an amalgamated mass of human bodies that somehow have been reanimated as one giant creature. This boss contains the very bodies of those who have embraced despair in order to give up and is quite literally everything the player must keep out of their mind. It is easy for the player to simply give up hope here and become one with The Rotten, but they push on. This is exactly like the dynamic between Luke and Darth Vader at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, Vader has walked the same path as Luke is but instead he has given up hope and calls for Luke to join him. Luke, like the player, clings to his hope and escapes Vader’s allure to the dark side.

Finally, Return of the Jedi takes place after Luke has finished his training with Yoda. The beginning of the film has Luke showing his power by rescuing his friends from Jabba the Hutt. In Dark Souls this is the point of the game where everything feels a bit easier. The player now holds enough souls to really put the hurt on enemies and is quite adept in the game’s combat mechanics. Things are going well for both characters, however this quickly changes as their respective stories’ ends grow near. Luke travels to Endor to face off against Vader, and the cursed one travels to Drangleic Castle to defeat the king. Luke is captured by Vader and taken to see the Emperor while the cursed one fights his way into the castle only to find the king’s wife still alive inside, she instructs the cursed one to go find her husband as, “there is only room for one monarch”. When the player finally does find the king it is not in any kind of throne room, but rather in his tomb wandering around as an undead who has lost his mind, a condition known as going hollow. He does not attack the player, but simply wanders back and forth awaiting the player to either kill him or leave him be. Returning to the queen the player finds that she is truly who is in power here and must be defeated. This is similar to how Luke finds that Vader is simply a victimized hollow shell of the man he once was and Emperor Palpatine is really the one pulling the strings. This is where Luke and the player are given a choice, Luke can kill Vader and assume his position or he can fight back. The player can also choose to kill the queen and assume her position, or simply leave. While Luke chooses to stay in the light, Dark Souls is not so simple with it’s ending. Each player may choose a different ending, but for the sake of this argument it really does not matter, what matters in the journey. The same goes for Luke. Luke could just as well have chosen to join the dark side, but he still would be the product of his journey just as the player is the product of theirs. Both have grown as individuals and have now “come of age” so to speak. There is no going back for either of them, that young farm boy from Tatooine is no longer here and neither is the weak man in robes who died to the four legged creatures at the start of the game. They are both somebody stronger and more knowledgeable. 

When somebody says the words Dark Souls most people think of words like; difficult, hard, or impossible, but very few think of growing up. It may not be a traditional coming of age story where the cursed one happily ends the tale and gets the girl, but it cannot be denied that he is a new man. As shown via its comparison with Star Wars, Dark Souls is about the progress made by players and how they, like Luke, grow into something new. 