A YouTuber named TheParryGod has created a short film called “Fate” that cinematically tells the story of Dark Souls. It is disturbingly beautiful.
If you watch “Fate,” the entire plot of Dark Souls will be spoiled for you. The entire thing. You have been warned.
TheParryGod’s video is what people from the deep time of the internet might recognize under the name of “machinima.” TheParryGod is capturing video of the game, but they are doing it in a way that leverages graphics modifications and camera tools to capture the best angle on any given situation. This allows TheParryGod to great these great moments of solitude, such as this short scene of the Gaping Dragon just standing around. I think it’s amazing.
What I enjoy so much about this film is that it really leans into Dark Souls’s ambivalence about fate and chance. The Chosen Undead is fated to link the fire, but it also seems to be the case that the Chosen Undead stumbles into a lot of things. Problems arise, and the Chosen Undead solves them. What seems to matter is how you want to contextualize those events, not what those events actually are, and I appreciate that a film made from Dark Souls doesn’t try to editorialize how one should “read” these moments in the game.
Unlike a “lore explainer” video, “Fate” simply shows you what happened to the Chosen Undead, and you’re free to take that in as a viewer as opposed to being a Sherlock Holmes of a fictional universe. As much as I like to talk Dark Souls lore, I can appreciate letting off the interpretive gas a little and just experiencing this oblique story for what it is.
If you enjoy this video, you should check out “Humanity,” a film that TheParryGod made about Dark Souls III.