Summary
- Dark Souls games feature tragic locations; Undead Settlement is exploited, Anor Londo is an illusion, Lost Bastille is tortuous.
- In Dark Souls, Gutter is hopeless, Eleum Loyce is icy, Smouldering Lake shows demon downfall.
- New Londo Ruins, Kiln of the First Flame, Filianore's Rest depict despair, cycle end, desolation in the trilogy.
It's no secret that the Dark Souls games are exceptionally dark in tone and atmosphere. The games depict an endless and pitiless cycle of mighty kingdoms rising and falling, their citizens reduced to immortal undead wretches. Most of the bosses players fight were once noble rulers and gods, paragons of civilization who've been laid low by eternal despair.
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FromSoftware's esoteric approach to storytelling has sparked a lot of discussion from fans and critics alike, but the developer's mastery of environmental storytelling really shines through in key areas. Here are ten of the bleakest and most tragic areas in the Dark Souls trilogy.
10 Undead Settlement (Dark Souls 3)
A Pitiless Faith
- Boss: Curse-Rotted Greatwood
The Undead Settlement is a relatively early location in Dark Souls 3, and it's a pretty stark difference from the imposing edifice of the previous location, the High Wall of Lothric. This small settlement is infested with undead who are constantly exploited, tormented, and sacrificed by the imposing Cathedral Evangelists that patrol the area.
The plentiful sacrificial bonfires and torture implements scattered around this ruined town paint a truly grim picture of live in the Undead Settlement. The area's optional boss exemplifies this too; the Curse-Rotted Greatwood is a mighty tree that has become so burden with the curses and despair of the citizens around it that it has grown into a hostile titan, crushing everyone in its path.
9 Anor Londo (Dark Souls 1)
Night and Day
- Bosses: Ornstein and Smough, Dark Sun Gwyndolin
Upon the player's first arrival at Anor Londo, they'll likely find the royal capital anything but bleak. The shining, sun-drenched castles and towers of Anor Londo are easily the most architecturally impressive things players will have encountered in Dark Souls, and many fans likely left the city with the impression that it was truly a glorious metropolis, possibly the last unspoiled corner of the map.
Of course, as many now know, there's much more to Anor Londo than meets the eye. Players who kill the benevolent goddess Gwynevere reveal that the glorious light of Anor Londo is a sham, an illusion conjured by the secret deity Gwyndolin. The true Anor Londo has long since fallen to despair, darkness, and desolation. This is reinforced by the location's reappearance in Dark Souls 3 where it has fully decayed, and is now home to a grotesque, god-eating monstrosity known as Aldritch.
8 The Lost Bastille (Dark Souls 2)
Endless Torment
- Bosses: The Ruin Sentinels
The Lost Bastille is a massive, imposing fortress that players must visit on their quest to claim the soul of the Lost Sinner. Like many other undead, the Lost Sinner has been entombed eternally in this vast prison, and as players fight their way through it, they'll see just how the prisoners of the Lost Bastille are treated.
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In many spots throughout the fortress, they'll find mummified undead who've been trapped inside large jars, giving them barely enough room to move. When the creatures break out of this confinement, they're so full of rage that they detonate upon contact with the player. The Lost Bastille presents a truly grim portrait of how Drangleic dealt with the ever-present Undead Curse.
7 The Gutter (Dark Souls 2)
The Forgotten Dark
- Boss: N/A
The Gutter is a grim and desolate subterranean shantytown which should be worryingly familiar to anyone who played the first game. This miserable little city huddles just underneath the game's main hub of Majula, allowing it to subsist off the refuse and garbage thrown down by the inhabitants of that small settlement.
The filthy, desperate nature of the Gutter is exemplified by its main line of defense; legions of small statues that shoot poison darts at anyone who crosses their line of sight. These insidious defenses make crossing the Gutter a true test of endurance, and instill in players just a small amount of the hopelessness that its inhabitants likely feel at all times.
6 Frozen Eleum Loyce (Dark Souls 2: Crown of the Ivory King)
An Icy Waste
- Bosses: Ava, the King's Pet, Burnt Ivory King
Dark Souls 2: Crown of the Ivory King brings players to the inhospitable frozen city of Eleum Loyce, which is encased in ice and wracked by constant heavy winds. The city is devoid of nonhostile inhabitants, and many of the enemies prowling its frostbitten streets have become encased in ice.
Players who endure against the bitter cold will eventually learn what led the kingdom to its icy fate. Eleum Loyce's ruler, the Ivory King, willingly sacrificed himself to the cruel forces of chaos, becoming the monstrous Burnt Ivory King in order to protect his beloved daughter Alsanna, and the fragment of the Abyss that she was formed from.
5 Smouldering Lake (Dark Souls 3)
The Death of Demons
- Boss: Old Demon King
Dark Souls 3 presents a world at the extreme end of the trilogy's decaying cycle, with realms and locales from the previous games completely falling apart and dying slow, agonizing deaths. The Smouldering Lake, which represents the burning remains of the Ash Lake from Dark Souls, exemplifies this particularly well. This inhospitable realm also showcases the fate of the franchise's demons; the Old Demon King is a truly pitiful figure, huddling amongst piles of burnt-out demon corpses and extinguishing his own flame completely in a desperate attempt to slay the protagonist.
The dregs of demonkind can be observed in the crumbling corridors of Lost Izalith, a shadow of its former glory clinging to the side of the Smouldering Lake and infested with comparatively small demonic clerics, still frantically clinging to the old ways. Amidst the incredible danger of the Carthus Sandworm and the massive ballista monitoring the region, players can come to observe the ultimate downfall of the original Dark Souls.
4 New Londo Ruins (Dark Souls 1)
Sinking Into Despair
- Boss: The Four Kings
The implacable, all-consuming force of the Abyss is a terrifying presence throughout the entirety of the Dark Souls trilogy, and there are few locations where its influence is more keenly felt than the New Londo Ruins. This half-submerged underground city is infested with ghosts and hopeless undead, who have fully succumbed to the corrupting influence of the Abyss.
One particular encounter in the New Londo Ruins emphasizes the despair this location engenders. Players who arrive to claim the soul of the Four Kings will first have to contend with the Crestfallen Knight, one of the first friendly NPCs players meet upon arriving in Lordran. His hollowing is a grim and tragic reminder of the ultimate fate of all undead, including the player character.
3 Kiln of the First Flame (Dark Souls 3)
The End Of The Cycle
- Boss: Soul of Cinder
The ending of Dark Souls 3 takes place where it all began: the Kiln of the First Flame, where Gwyn first linked the fire and where the protagonist of the first Dark Souls eventually put him out of his misery. In Dark Souls 3, the Kiln bears the emotional and physical weight of the countless repetitions of the Age of Fire. Castles and cityscapes are collapsing into each other as the cycle continues well past its breaking point.
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This overwhelmingly broken realm is explored further in the Ringed City DLC, which forces players to crawl and struggle through the collapsing ruins of all of reality in their quest to reach the Ringed City and the Dark Soul within. This crumbling heap of civilizations past serves as a very evocative sign of how wretched the world of the Dark Souls trilogy has become.
2 Blighttown (Dark Souls 1)
The Pits
- Boss: Chaos Witch Quelaag
Blighttown is easily the most notorious location in Dark Souls, and with good reason. This rickety settlement of precarious ledges, collapsing platforms, and tricky jumps would be a nightmare to navigate without the constant threat of aggressive mutants and hidden snipers waiting in the shadows to spread toxins. The bottom of the pit offers little relief, since it's a poison swamp, giving players little relief from the treachery of Blighttown.
Dialogue and item descriptions throughout the game depict Blighttown as a region that is inhospitable and dreadful even by the low standards of the game's other denizens. This region is so low, it's buried beneath the sewers, and serves as the true bottom rung of a society that has long since fallen into shadow.
1 Filianore's Rest (Dark Souls 3: The Ringed City)
A Desolate End
- Boss: Slave Knight Gael
The titular Ringed City of Dark Souls 3's final DLC seems, on first arrival, like a glittering utopia, relatively unscathed when compared to the groaning, shuddering wreck of the world just outside its borders. This image is partially belied by the zealous fly-men infesting its lower levels, and by the shambling, monstrous knights patrolling the streets, but players can only truly grasp the scale of the desolation when they reach Filianore's Rest.
Waking the enigmatic maiden Filianore transports the player to what seems to be the far future. In this final realm, everything has been reduced to an endless field of ash that stretches for miles around. The only other living creature, possibly in the entire world, is Slave Knight Gael, who mindlessly slays everyone he meets in his frantic search for the Dark Soul. The ultimate ending of Dark Souls 3, and by extension the entire trilogy, is two warriors, fighting in the ashes of everything that ever was, for the hope of building a better world to come.
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