My Thoughts

Dark Souls III is, although frequently lauded, a very opaque narrative. Little of the narrative is told to the player at any point during the thirty to forty hours of grindingly difficult roleplaying game action and adventure.

As games have continued to blend their narratives in with their mechanics and the ‘playing’ of the game, the lines that once delineated the story from the game more clearly have become blurred well past distinction. This requires a reevaluation of how games communicate narrative to their players simultaneously with play.

There is no real comparison between the streets of Night City and Midtown Detroit’s 2nd street at night. There is no real comparison because the latter was built up over time by renters and students and the former was designed by a team in Poland. There is no real comparison, in my mind, between the aesthetic experience of walking through either of the places either.

FromSoftware’s single-player roleplaying game Elden Ring (2022) takes place in a medieval fantasy world called The Lands Between developed in conjunction with George R.R. Martin, drawing on aesthetics of the period as has become tradition in the fantasy genre. Among the myriad of borrowing that Elden Ring did from the period come depictions of divinity through the royal characters who make up many of the bosses faced within the game, Queen Marika and her bloodline. In partic

I’ve been playing Elden Ring: Nightreign (FromSoftware, 2025) basically any moment I have between moving to a new apartment and preparing for my next teaching assignment. I found myself playing even in some moments I didn’t have—if I’m being honest. had preordered the game shortly after it was announced back in December of 2024 at The Game Awards.