The Political Agenda Of Dark Souls (The Jimquisition)

No it's Snorlax. And he fights with his buddy Pikachu

McBeard

When I initially gave the game a chance, I was living in an abusive household and ended up putting it down as beating my head against the wall while being in that living situation was just not a good combination....and, I'll be honest, as DS3 dropped, I looked at the series and wrote it off as something I'll probably never accomplish. This video genuinely got me interested in giving the series another bash again and going as far as downloading DS1. I mean, it wasn't that the game was bad. Sure, I was bad at it, but I was enjoying it. So, no reason to write it off like that. So, hey. Thank you for your video and sparking my interest in giving it another bash.

Egor A. Palchyk

FFS it's ornstein, not ornsteen

I'm not sure if I agree with your take entirely, but I don't really think that's the point of the video. I've always seen Dark Souls as an exercise in despair and hopelessness. It seems like it was almost invented to help deal with depression and feelings of insecurity. You are thrust into a world where everything is bigger than you and failure is an almost constant companion. But in that you can be convinced that you have strength. It's in that immersion in nightmare, whether visual, moral, or straight painful difficulty curve, that failure now, doesn't mean failure forever. It's like you can look at a world where literally everything can crush you like a bug and think that the worst thing that can happen is you get stepped on, and go back and try again. It like they're hiding hope in hopelessness. But that's probably bollocks too, but again I don't think that's really the point. Really enjoyed the video, keep up the good work. I think I might need to up my contribution...

Mike

Damn, Jim. Gutsy move to approach the sacred cow with personal interpretations. I have slightly different interpretations, but I think there's pretty solid support for yours.

Ben L.

Thank god for Baron von Breadknife!

Aaron Hatton

Never did play this series, but I am well, well, WELL acquainted with the lore and story via various friends. Their various points of view on it have been interesting, but pointing out to them their political views inform their take on the game and it's material is a sure way to get shouted at. My major takeaway from it always tends to be 'it's always some poor bastard at the bottom who has to make the decisions between sucky and sucky, and ultimately pull the trigger on keeping the current suck or moving into a new suck in the hope we can muddle through it and come out the other side better.'

Trevor Bond

The problem is the word "political". With all due respect for Asterion Del Toro's excellent post, these themes aren't inherently political in the way that most people use the word- and certainly not in the way people declaiming politics in games are using the term. That a work contains *moral* themes or *philosophical* themes does not inherently make it, in this sense, *political*, because politics drag something that might be broad and ephemeral and forces it to be of the moment; more contentiously, it makes it someone's possession. There's little to say that a more liberal-minded person couldn't enjoy The Division 2 or a more conservative-minded person couldn't enjoy Watch Dogs: Legion, except that people feel the need to insist that playing one or the other is tantamount to supporting their personal causes. Liberals can also feel patriotic and care about freedom, and conservatives want equality and justice- but you would never believe it to hear the rhetoric. There was recently a news story noting that Shakespeare companies put on versions of "Julius Caesar", one that portrayed Caesar as a stand-in for Barack Obama, the other that played Caesar as Donald Trump. (Only one of those productions raised shockwaves in the administration of the time; no points for guessing which.) Sometimes the resonance of a work allows it to provoke insight and questions far beyond the author's scope, or even their lifetime. It is great that art should do this. It is also true that some works are, in fact, very intentionally addressing particular issues or events that are specific to the time of their creation. But sometimes it feels as though yoking philosophic or moral thought to the scope of politics can narrow it, lessen it, take what might be *more* provocative and insightful and restrict it for the sake of possessing it, rendering it gospel to some and anathema to others. As I said at the time of the "Division 2" vid, for something to be political is for it to be something that people disagree about. Sometimes it would be preferable if two political foes could stand in the same room as a work of art with their reflections and not try to impose them on one another.

Kraken

And just like that, I gained new insight by reading a comment on a videogame commentary video... I love the internet!

Lasse T. Stendan

It was an interesting detour from regular Jimquisition. I really enjoyed hearing Jim's interpretation of Dark Souls' story.

Everyone else here just wants to talk about if its political or not I just want to contest that thd age of dark is also a bad ending

I don’t comment often an anything. But this warranted it. I enjoyed this throughly.

Conor Hughes

I agree. Jim does not do positive videos that much due to getting less views than his industry critiquing ones. That said, I wonder if the general audience will view this as a positive or negative video. It has politics in the title and it is towards a popular game. Internet <i>GAMERS</i> get negative when you talk about politics and video games together and those people tend to flock at Jim's channel to spout their displeasure. If politics is involved, then surely it cannot be positive, according to those people.

noxamillion

It is still politics and videogames just like any Jimquistion, but instead of talking about the politics <i>surrounding</i> the medium of games, he is talking about the politics <i>embedded</i> in the medium of games themselves. It is a nice change of pace I would love for Jim to do occasionally.

noxamillion

I need to get around playing Dark Souls. Have it installed but just have not touched it yet..<br><br> I found this to be a rather positive video that I can look back into. It is like an academic essay on a piece of media except with casual vernacular that does not alienate the common man. Just seeing you break down a game and divulging your interpretation of it is quite nice. It's like the video you made about Yakuza's world design. I love how you were able to find elements of Dark Souls that remind you of conservatism and their ideology of keeping the status quo. Despite your political approach being not too different from previous videos, there was a breath of fresh air to this one that made the viewing experience satisfying to the end rather than depressing. I thank God for you, Jim, for making this wonderful video.<br><br>The ending where you break character just killed me in laughter.

noxamillion

The issue with games being political is that "political" means two different things, depending on who's talking. Classical politics is about the free traffic of ideas; people of the same society but with different viewpoints and worldviews coming together to weight them against each other in a kind of platonic dialog. The goal being not to prove who's wrong and right, but to improve the society so that it better serves all its citizens. In this sense, all art is political, since all art carries ideas, and ideas are what politics are made of. But there's also the darker meaning of politics: to exploit a society's governing systems for the purpose of disenfranchising, oppressing, or even straight-up killing your fellow citizens. In this sense, art is only political when it loses touch with human dignity. Most games aren't that explicitly, but many wind up falling into it by accident or incompetence. As a medium, our love of the boss fight easily drifts into the idea that problems can be solved through killing the right people. A good writer can forestall these implications, but for every good writer there are five thousand bad ones who don't understand or care what their work is actually saying. Jim just gave us a perfect example, actually; he compared Seath to a baby boomer clinging to his old ways. But how is this problem solved in the game? By killing Seath, stealing his power, and using it to advance your own goals. You can see why so many people are so invested in the idea that games are not political; nobody wants to think that they're play-acting a story of improving society through the elimination of Those Other People.

Asterion Del Toro

It seems like you enjoyed making this one! Will definitely share this on the social media!Do you have similar ones planned for DS2 and DS3?

You helped make so much sense of these games. It's great, but obscure

Thank god for this one.

Tammuz

Jim, I wish we could have more episodes like this; Just discussing a single game and its concepts. I realize it's important to keep holding the industry's feet to the fire, but it feels like you've been doing the same story every episode for at least a year now. Again, I realize this isn't by your choice. All these stories need to be brought to our attention. But I like taking a break for micro-transactions and gambling, and watching an episode of the Jimquistion that doesn't leave me weary from being disgusted with cAAApitalism or humanity in general. I also get the feeling you actually enjoyed doing this episode and made it specifically for your own satisfaction. And that makes me very happy. Thank God for Jim and thank god for the political agenda of Dark Souls.

HankMan

Call me crazy, but this video about politics seemed less political than your usual ones.

LonMcGregor