I agree, but it is also by design and part of the same concept. Whatever there is of the story is purposefully buried in small, hard to decypher fragments, hidden behind rude and often lethal NPC's and in other ways designed to be difficult to gather and figure out. It all serves to reinforce the 'hero nobody wants' paradigm. You're basically late to the party in the world of Souls games. Your efforts to restore, rebuild and revitalise the world are little more than hubris and those you meet treat you accordingly - either using you for their own ends or with thinly veiled contempt. Only outlier is Sekiro, where the story is a bit more manageable - probably as From took pity on players because the gameplay loop is brutal.
So the underlying narrative is that what you’re doing is pointless? Is there any wonder people are put off continuing, given that ultimately the game wants you to learn that your effort is wasted?
To me, it seems like they designed the world to look cool and edgy, then tried to work backwards from there. Instead of a plot, they opted for grind and lore, with the argument being those who put the effort in will get the reward. The issue with this being that lore is something people want to dig into after finding the characters and plot interesting, not the other way round, and the grind only rewards you with the achievement of completing the game, rather than a coherent plot and even this is diminished as completing the game is not the end result of skill or strategy but time, since the main method for completing the game that it incentivises you to use is levelling up. If you find you are stuck somewhere go and kill some of the endless spawns of NPCs until you can come back and give it a better go. In doing so, you may stumble across new areas, new lore and new enemies, all of which would be somewhat interesting, except the areas are just various different wildernesses with no discernible culture or civilisation, the lore is an addition to a plot that as mentioned barely exists so has hardly captured the imagination enough for you to care about the lore, which serves to emphasis how futile your actions are and the enemies are mainly faceless monsters who you are only killing to level up, all of which you are only doing to progress the non-existent plot. It’s about seven levels deep of pointlessness.
In the end, you are left struggling and suffering through to rule over a world that’s not worth ruling, because you were a chosen one, not the chosen one as who you are doesn’t matter, as is shown by the fact you are one in a long line of people who have done the quest and you could have been anyone from the start of the game. It all leaves you asking why am I doing this, which it turns out is what the game what’s you to take away from it all come the end, which although some may be able to brush off, sounds like the narrative version of a kick in the teeth to me, and it could therefore be argued whenever you figure out the quest is pointless and stop, you’ve completed the game, as you can just imagine your character gives up their hubris and crawls back into their grave.
I’m glad some people like it, but I don’t think it’s right to say the game would be worse for a half decent plot as I don’t think the argument that the point is the plot is next to non-existent is particularly strong. Few video games have a particularly top notch narrative, so I’m not asking for the world, but what they’ve delivered in that department is either the result of their own hubris, laziness or pretentiousness.
Anyway, I’m probably repeating myself now and bogging down a thread with too much negativity. As I said, some parts of the game are enjoyable but for me they let themselves down in certain aspects which could have made it great and ended up putting me, and others, off bothering with finishing it, due to the overarching sense of futility. Again I’ll state, if that’s their modus operandi then the failing is on me, mostly. However, whilst people defend it for what it is as they love the series, I do think people would love it more if the plot was improved, as although it makes it more accessible, which is bad for some reason, it does not take away from the rest of what’s there but would add to it. The plot can still be centred around hubris, arrogance and pointlessness, but like good war films with these themes, it can still be moving and powerful in a way that’s more thought provoking than what currently exists, which doesn’t provoke anything so much as a hmm.
That ability to impart knowledge and intrigue is what I want from all art. A demand that the viewer, player or listener asks questions because they need to know the answers. For me, nothing in this does that, even though they’ve created a world capable of doing that and more.
