Dark Souls II Unplugged: The Invisible Effects of Good Sound Design

VG247 has published an editorial/personal journal kind of article on Dark Souls II’s sound design and its psychological effects on the player. It’s interesting, but I feel the narrow focus on the writer’s personal experience ultimately hurts this read:

The sound in Dark Souls 2 (and its precursors) is pretty good, recycled sound effects aside. Like most good sound design, you don’t really notice it until it’s gone. I’m not just talking about the orchestral soundtrack, which is great (although maybe not as good as Demon’s Souls, which I regularly cue up on iTunes), or about the way a good pair of stereo headphones can help enormously when you go in cold in a new environment and rely on every possible clue to warn you of threats. I’m talking about the feel of it; the sound and music in Dark Souls 2 uses common cinematic tactics to ratchet up the tension and get your pulse racing, so every encounter feels meaningful and consequential which, when you’ve got all your souls, your humanity and a section of your life bar riding on survival, it is.

Playing in silence makes the game genuinely easier for me, because I stay calm and detached. Instead of getting more and more tense in boss fights, flinching and jumping with every near miss, I may as well be smoking a bubble pipe. I’m not very far into the game and I’m sure I’ve not met many really tough foes yet, but I did beat the Pursuer on my first try, just calmly controlling the fight. That surprised me, because I don’t think of myself as terribly good at games.

…

Do I really want to tap that vein? That’s a tricky question. Of course I want to be good at games. I take a lot of pride in overcoming challenges, and derive a lot of self worth from displaying skill. Plus, I really like exploring games, seeing new environments and finding out what happens in the story and if you’re stuck on a boss fight, you never get to see any of that content.

On the other hand, it feels a little like cheating, and I’ve never seen the point in cheating. What’s the point of playing games if I’m sure to win? If I’m not risking something (my precious time, maybe)? And most importantly, if I’m not engaging with them emotionally? There’s an attitude of cynicism in gaming that I’ve never really understood, where you have to be all cool and disdainful of whatever you’re doing. It’s as if not feeling a thrill, not getting excited is somehow cooler than authentically enjoying an experience.