**The Problem With "Soulslike" — Transcript & Summary | SozAI** Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/problem-with-soulslike/ Explores the naming crisis and genre definition issues around 'Soulslike' games, advocating for clearer, more creative categorization. ## Key Takeaways - The 'Soulslike' label is overused and often misapplied, reducing meaningful genre distinctions. - Genres should be defined by core gameplay elements, not just surface-level similarities or mechanics. - Innovation comes from blending influences, not strict adherence to a single game's formula. - The fundamental appeal of Dark Souls games lies in their challenging gameplay loop, not just combat style. - Game genre terminology must evolve to keep pace with how games innovate and differentiate. ## What the video covers - Dark Souls is widely praised for its design, combat, and difficulty, influencing many subsequent games. - The term 'Soulslike' has become overused and vague, often applied to any game with superficial similarities to Dark Souls. - The video critiques the trend of labeling games by how closely they mimic a single influential title, which can stifle creativity. - It compares the 'Soulslike' naming issue to the roguelike/roguelite genre debate, highlighting how derivative labels lose meaning. - The video emphasizes that all games borrow elements from predecessors, and innovation arises from mixing influences. - Examples like Metroidvania and the game Grease illustrate how genres evolve beyond strict templates to tell unique stories. - The core of Dark Souls games is identified as the gameplay loop of facing challenges, dying, and retrying with gained knowledge. - The video argues for redefining the genre away from combat mechanics and the 'like' suffix to better reflect game evolution. - It calls for language around game genres to evolve as games themselves innovate beyond their inspirations. - Overall, the video encourages focusing on what truly unifies games in a genre rather than superficial checklist features. ## Chapters 1. 00:00 Introduction to Dark Souls and its influence 2. 01:35 The naming crisis of 'Soulslike' games 3. 02:32 Problems with defining genres by one game 4. 03:22 Roguelike vs Roguelite genre discussion 5. 04:12 All games borrow from predecessors 6. 04:57 Metroidvania and genre evolution 7. 05:41 Creating games beyond strict genre blueprints 8. 06:31 Grease: a unique take on Metroidvania elements 9. 07:29 What truly defines the Souls genre? 10. 09:02 Conclusion and call for evolved genre language Answers ## Questions about this video What is the main criticism of the term 'Soulslike' in the video? The video criticizes 'Soulslike' as an overused and vague label that reduces meaningful distinctions by lumping together any game with superficial similarities to Dark Souls, which stifles creativity. How does the video suggest genres should be defined? Genres should be defined by core gameplay elements and the essence that unifies games, rather than by surface-level mechanics or how closely they imitate a single influential title. What core gameplay loop is identified as central to Dark Souls and related games? The central gameplay loop is encountering challenging obstacles, dying, and retrying repeatedly armed with knowledge from previous attempts, which creates engagement beyond specific combat mechanics. ## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown 00:00 Speaker A [Music] FromSoftware's Dark Souls needs no introduction. Recently crowned the ultimate game of all time, the series is praised for its intricate level design, satisfying combat, and captivating world. But you're probably most familiar with Dark Souls for its notorious difficulty. 00:31 Speaker A [Music] Look, look. In fact, these games are so hard that every single challenging game that came after is actually paying homage to Dark Souls, the first hard game. See, we all know that the very concept of difficulty didn't exist before Hidetaka Miyazaki invented it in 2009 with the release of Demon’s Souls. Before that, video games were all just brain-dead easy. I mean, look at this—the games that basically play themselves. But then in comes Demon’s Souls. [Music] 01:06 Speaker A Then two years later, Miyazaki ships out another hood classic, and game developers went wild. Bonfires, stamina bars, bloodstains, Estus flasks—if it was featured in Dark Souls, then it would also be featured in the next 100 games that you played. But 01:35 Speaker A we needed a name, a name for these games, these copycats that were like souls, souls-likes, medieval fantasy settings, souls-like invincibility frames, souls-like difficulty, like constipation, souls-like wife cheated on you, souls-like wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what's that? 01:53 Speaker A You live in an abusive household, souls-like parenting. Now, of course, I'm being facetious, but there really seems to be a bit of a naming crisis surrounding games that share even the slightest bit in common with Dark Souls. 02:16 Speaker A There's just this obsession with labeling everything that's even remotely similar as being derivative. Even among FromSoftware's other IPs, they just can't escape those same shackles. I mean, first it was just Demon’s Souls, and then it was the Souls games. After that, it was Soulsborne, and after that, it's Soulsborne-like. So, you wrote this, this is a thing that you wrote. Look, it's undeniable that Dark Souls is one of the most influential games of our time. The current gaming landscape would look 02:32 Speaker A incredibly different without it, and several games genuinely are just carbon copies. But a handful of problems arise when taking one major title and turning it into an entire genre. Take roguelike, a genre named after the 1980 dungeon crawler Rogue. Unlike Dark Souls, 02:48 Speaker A however, Rogue didn't spawn an entire series and was released over 40 years ago. So today, it's not surprising when Rogue isn't the first game that comes to mind when you hear the word roguelike. That game could be Faster Than Light, 03:05 Speaker A Slay the Spire, or for some people even Hades. For me, the game that I think of when I hear roguelike is Binding of Isaac. So, I've just been kindly informed that Binding of Isaac is in fact not a roguelike, 03:22 Speaker A but a roguelite, initially called roguelike-likes. Roguelites are roguelikes that are like Rogue but not as like Rogue as roguelikes. When you're categorizing a game based on what it derives from or is derived from, the label starts to lose all meaning. 03:35 Speaker A Roguelite is a genre born from games being too different from the original title to be called roguelikes. So why even keep Rogue in the name? This kind of naming convention stifles creativity by suggesting the game should stick as 03:54 Speaker A close to the original as possible, and for every box on the checklist that a game doesn't tick, we'll just add another "like" at the end of the category. All games are derivative to some extent. There's no modern game 04:12 Speaker A that doesn't borrow anything from its predecessors. Even Dark Souls, FromSoftware didn't invent the stamina bar or parrying, and corpse running has been a staple of MMOs long before Dark Souls was even a concept. Swimming around in Miyazaki's nut sack, art inspires and 04:27 Speaker A genres overlap. It's the same with any medium of entertainment. While there are definitely landmark films, none of them have had their titles baked into their respective genres. That's not to say that they've never been copied, but after the 04:39 Speaker A wave of clones came innovation. Imagine if every movie with a ton of gore and a crash zoom was called a Tarantino-like, or look at hip-hop. I mean, half of all rappers would be called Tupac-likes. It's exactly this phenomenon of derivative 04:57 Speaker A content mixing and borrowing from previous media that leads to imaginative ideas. Metroidvania is a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania and is used to describe games that borrow from both series, or so the Wikipedia definition says. In actuality, it's used to refer to any game 05:09 Speaker A with a sprawling world that has certain areas gated behind abilities, upgrades, and items like Super Metroid. The term came into use after the release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, which featured a lot of these Metroid-like elements. Similarly, the game 05:23 Speaker A devs behind the quote-unquote Souls-like Metroidvania Hollow Knight had little to no experience with Dark Souls before making the game, and although they were inspired by Metroid, creating a Metroidvania wasn't something that they set out to do. 05:41 Speaker A Their inspiration came from various different games, but instead of trying to emulate anyone in particular, they focused on trying to make a good-ass game, and spoiler alert, they made a good-ass game. When developers stick firmly to a blueprint, 06:00 Speaker A they're designing backwards, creating a game that conforms to established game mechanics rather than designing elements that'll best complement their game. Grease is a game that was originally intended to be a Metroidvania, but the creators wanted it to be accessible to 06:16 Speaker A people even if they've never played a video game, so they opted for a more linear approach. Linear is the antithesis of a Metroidvania. The devs would have to reimagine the formula in order to realize the vision they had for their 06:31 Speaker A game, and they did a damn good job. [Music] Greece has five levels representing each stage of grief. You progress linearly through them, acquiring a new ability in each one. The game features no combat and little exploration. The abilities are 06:45 Speaker A largely used for platforming and puzzle challenges. Each level is designed around just the abilities that you have at the time, so there's no backtracking. With progression to each new level, you restore color to a beautiful watercolor-painted world until you're at the last 06:58 Speaker A stage and finally overcome your grief. Grease borrows Metroidvania elements and uses them to tell a powerful story through little more than its gameplay. Rather than force unnecessary mechanics to fill a checklist, Grease takes only what it needs from the genre and still 07:29 Speaker A manages to capture the essence of having a protagonist that evolves over time and grows to interact with the world in different ways. And that is what's at the core of any genre—just a few unchangeable factors that really capture 07:43 Speaker A the heart of what unifies those groups of games. So what's the soul of Dark Souls? Mark Brown of Game Maker's Toolkit made an excellent video in 2017 on the topic. He suggests that the genre should be based around the elements that give Dark 08:00 Speaker A Souls its slow, deliberate combat. But even FromSoftware's other IPs don't entirely adhere to those elements. Bloodborne has faster, more aggressive combat, and this is even more true after Sekiro's release in 2019, which got rid of the stamina bar entirely. I would 08:13 Speaker A argue that the element that ties these games together is not their combat but their core gameplay loop: the cycle of encountering a challenging obstacle, dying, and throwing yourself at it again and again, armed with nothing more than your knowledge of previous attempts. No 08:29 Speaker A Estus flask, stamina bar, or dodge roll necessary. That core gameplay is what makes these games so engaging and really makes you feel like you have the exaggerated swagger of a medieval fantasy protagonist. Of course, we'd also have to rename the genre and ditch the 08:46 Speaker A whole trend of just adding "like" at the end of a title. Games have already evolved past just being Souls-likes, and it's time that the language we use to refer to them does the same. [Music] If you made it to the end of the video, 09:02 Speaker A uh, thank you for listening to me talk. This is just a topic that really, really grinds my gears, really rustles my jimmies. If you... 09:17 Speaker A whole trend of just adding like at the end of a title games have already evolved past just being soul's likes and it's time that the language we use to refer to them does the same [Music] if you made it to the end of the video 09:31 Speaker A uh thank you for listening to me talk my this is just a topic that really really grinds my gears really rustles my jimmies if you will so i just figured make a video about it but uh yeah tell me what you guys think 09:43 Speaker A if you like the video like the video uh it helps the video get seen if you dislike the video then leave a comment because that also helps to get seen uh send this to that one friend who shut 09:54 Speaker A the hell up about dark souls and subscribe to see more videos like this i'm just starting out but i have a ton of ideas lined up for future videos not just on games but like movies animation like that and that uh the new souls born 10:08 Speaker A eki roden ring game is dropping next week so i might do a video on that so i definitely stick around and i'll see you in the next one [Music] you Topics: Dark Souls Soulslike game design game genres roguelike roguelite Metroidvania gameplay loop Hidetaka Miyazaki game criticism --- This is the markdown twin of https://sozai.app/transcript/problem-with-soulslike/ — the same content, without the markup. 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