On a particularly depressing day in mid-February, after being thoroughly thrashed by a disruptive therapy appointment, I resumed grinding for Proofs of a Concord Kepts in pursuit of fully completing Dark Souls III. This grind is notorious among those in the know for it cannot be easily gamed by arranging repeat summons with a cooperative friend and can only be reliably executed through the repeat slaying of silver knights guarding the steps up to the frozen Anor Londo cathedral. One of the Souls series signature features is its approach to online functions which persist even without direct interactions with other players so long as you are connected to the online servers. As you wander the desolate landscape of Lothric (or Drangleic or Lordran) you encounter cryptic messages left behind by fellow Ashen Ones (or Bearers of the Curse or Chosen Undeads) in their journeys. You also see bloodstains depicting some of their final tragic moments. Most touchingly, you will see on occasion their phantoms traversing the dying worlds or most frequently huddling up at bonfires. You will see them enjoying rare moments of peace and illustory solitude in a hostile world. It is as I run up and down the rimed steps of a once grand city of the gods repeatedly killing knights with the same three spells in hopes of glimpsing a shriveled blue ear in their remains that I see phantoms repeating the exact same motions. They don the same basic item discovery increasing gear that I do: the unwieldy grotesque mimic helmet slowly gnawing away at my health bar and the otherwise useless crystal-slathered rapier at our hips. Their other gear differs. Some wield massive slabs of greatswords and the heaviest armor the game has to offer while others arm themselves with more svelte dexterity-focused weapons. I see them and wonder at their efficiencies and struggles compared to my comfortable spell-slinging. But mostly I smile for the first time in the hours I’ve spent alone. Smile that someone else is out there repeating the same motions as I and no matter how much time ticks by without a single one of those shrunken ears, they might still persist. I yearn to have some sort of miniscule contact with them. Numeric updates we could send one another to see how many proofs each of us have collected so far and how many more we have left to go. More than that, I wished I could know what else they were doing while they were confronting this seemingly endless grind. What videos or audiobooks or podcasts they were listening to. What did they choose to provide them company during this tedious trial? This needless grind outside the intended experience of the game for nothing more than a ring and a spell or only the satisfaction of a digital checkmark. At the time I saw these kindred spirits and these thoughts flooded my mind, easing my own hollowing soul, I had only 16 of the 30 proofs I needed after 5 hours.

 The mainline Souls games have been discussed at length with plenty of people in the context of mental health. As tired of a subject it is, dare I say even hollow, I still feel compelled to share my own experiences. I would be a radically different person without these games both mentally and physically as I wouldn’t have gotten my prominent vileblood corruption rune tattoo without first falling in love with the Souls games enough that I bought a PS4 for Bloodborne. These games have connected me with past partners and family alike as I managed to infect my father with the Souls game bug who went as far as, much to my annoyance, 100% all the games before I did.

 While arduous, bleak games are not conventional games to act as balms for the depressed, these experiences are in unfortunate abundance. I am, tragically, one of those personalities where I cannot force my body to relax and I only find facsimiles of comfort in the experience of manageable fictional stress and despair. My other comfort games include Pathologic, Darkest Dungeon, and an endless list of grueling roguelikes with nearly universally bleak aesthetics. Dark Souls, for all of its terrors that have even once had lasting personal consequences for me when I decided to cut off more of my hair in response to how frustrated I got with the game, is a source of tremendous comfort for me. There are no real happy endings in Dark Souls. In a sense, there are hardly any endings at all due to the cyclical nature of all things throughout the series. Yet I find this eternal lifelike struggle without resolution rather soothing. A truthful taming of suffering that does not try to dazzle you with artificial positivity in fears that any bleakness may send you off the edge.

 In Dark Souls I, you are the Chosen Undead. An undead human prophesied to embark upon a pilgrimage at the end of the Age of Fire. As an undead, you are subject to the threat of hollowing, a fate afflicting many hostile enemies you will encounter throughout the game. Hollowing is essentially the loss of humanity, of all willpower and emotions. Undead who lack a set goal, purpose, or craft they are acting in pursuit of are more vulnerable to hollowing than other undead. Once an undead has gone hollow, they have lost all shreds of their humanity and become a husk of their former self, prone to attacking indiscriminately even those they once recognized. It is implied that, even when you as the player have not consumed humanity to enter a “human” state, you are not hollow because you are in pursuit of the goal of progressing through the game. If you, the player, were to abandon the game and consequently your character, your character would then succumb to hollowing, having lost sight of any purpose.

 In my personal experience with depression, goal-formation is a persistent issue at all different levels of dysfunction making it increasingly more difficult to crawl out of the deepest pits. These games on their own are helpful in that they provide a set amount of structured, challenging goals to overcome that provide a great measure of satisfaction upon completion just as the few goals I have in my real life that I cling onto do. It is sometimes the pursuit of these few fledgling goals, no matter how socially acceptable or insignificant they are, that I stay alive for. Even when these goals entail something so simple as to survive until the next package of a potentially thrilling thing I ordered arrives or live to experience an anticipated piece of media. Typically on the way I might uncover other goals as I explore potential paths and diverge from the natural course of living that provides further tasks to see through the completion of. When I am starved for targets, gaming, especially of familiar comfort games like the Souls series, are reliable sources of motivation. There are still things I have not yet accomplished in these games as I have only completely 100%-d two versions of Dark Souls I on PC, Dark Souls II Scholar of the First Sin on PS4, and Bloodborne. Even though I have in essence “completed” these games, they still also hold appeal for replay value as I have yet to fully experience alternate modes of playing such as all the different weapons in Bloodborne or the vast potential of modded experiences. I have yet to even play other Souls experiences like Demon’s Souls (which I plan to correct soon) and the honorary Souls title Sekiro.

 The Souls approach to difficulty is one I find particularly resonant and far from dispiriting in how core failure is to the experience. Beyond my personal affinities towards media with themes of failure, the expectation of failure and trials cultivates a realistic, more sustainable mindset towards skill progression. Sugarcoating the realities of failure or otherwise not highlighting the risk presents such (typically) inevitable failures as massive faults on the part of the player. Whereas in Souls games it’s simply part of the experience. You are just like all those other phantoms out there traversing the world. You will die countless times, but each time you will learn from your mistakes, understand more of the foes you face. You need only persist and keep trying.

 Internalizing this approach was instrumental for other facets of my personal life, namely tackling the daunting journey of creative pursuits. Drawing and writing are some of the hardest things I have ever done and will ever do. Both skills require the production of a veritable deluge of absolute drivel that a non-creative can even recognize the awfulness of. In order to make good art, you have to make an unholy amount of bad art and critically not be demoralized by it. Worst of all, your climb out of the bad art trenches will never be linear and you can still fall victim to the same pitfalls you thought yourself long above. You can, and will, make the same mistakes. Mistakes that will most often be your fault (even if the fault is only inexperience) instead of some greater cosmic force. Without the experiences of brutally challenging games that forced me to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds I may have not honed the muscle that allows me to persist as readily. I may have developed a habit of pursuing paths of least resistance and consequently missed out on the greatest sources of joy I have ever known.

 When I finally picked up the last Proof of a Concord Kept, I had just cracked my final rusted coin. The noise of satisfied relief I made was terribly embarrassing to say the least. My first thought was that I wish I could tell my fellow Ashen Ones on the grind that I made it. That I, in a stroke of marvelous luck, managed to earn my final 9 proofs in a single hour of uninterrupted farming. That they too might experience this glorious luck at a moment's notice and they should persist for they have nothing to lose except time. Time one can later commiserate over with those in the know.

 Following this victory, this piece was left to rot unfinished for a spell. It was faced with the threat of its own hollowing. The depression had not, and still hasn’t, lightened in a truly meaningful way. I am still afflicted with a crushing creative block that is only marginally circumvented by the introduction of strict deadlines by external forces (such as school or threats of violence upon my person). I went on to complete Dark Souls II twice and developed even more intense parasocial fixations with the phantoms I encountered over my trials. When I reached this goal, I designed a silly commemorative certificate to mark the achievement that now hangs on my wall. I did not proceed to play other Souls games afterwards to cope with my depression, but I still carry the message of hollowing with me fondly. I will not go hollow. I will slowly collect other things to occupy myself with and invest my hours in. Slowly, steadily, existence will become easy enough that I will no longer have to think about the strategic setting of goals to pursue so I do not succumb to the dark. I will eventually come into a renewed purpose and the threat of hollowing will fade once more into a distant memory. I will be human once more.