In most games players take control of a weakling and attempt to grow strong so they can beat the boss at the end of the game. What if there was a mode that allowed you to take control of the bosses and fight other monsters? Well, that's what one modder has attempted to do with Dark Souls.
Kotaku spotted a mod from DaTeHaCKs that allows the player-character in Dark Souls to transform into the bosses in the game. See it in action below.
As you can see, the fight is glitchy as all get out. The bosses were put into an arena fight to stay contained, but some of the animations glitch, some of the moves don't connect well at all and true to the nature of some mods making things possible that were never meant to be, we get to see some massive clipping issues where both giant, evil-looking beasts clip through each other whenever they perform an attack. On the upside, it gives Dark Souls a kind of kaiju feel to it and makes it look like a Godzilla flick come to life.
In the description, DaTeHaCKs comments about the idea of bosses fighting each other, writing...
[…] it's not hard putting the Gaping Dragon on the place of Artorias but there are some limitations...his attacks work but some moves have missing projectiles. Anyway in this video I play as Manus and Fight this creature. I set Handicap so It has a lot of HP and I do not kill it so quickly. It's interesting to see bosses fighting each other.
Some users complained about not being able to get their hands on the mod and that the mod wasn't that special. However, DaTeHaCKs explains that the mod comes courtesy of the tools provided by Dark Souls' debug mode and that simply sharing it right now isn't viable due to the work required to make it proper. He had to modify the controls and some of the other game settings in order to get the game to respond proeprly to playing as the bosses.
One of the big issues in Dark Souls that he mentions is that the bosses are massive... really massive. Due to their size he's had to modify the debug camera to zoom out enough so players can actually see what's going on in the screen. Even then, as the video above shows, it's tough to see exactly what's going on at times. There are various videos of other bosses that are playable in the mod as well, you can check out another boss-on-boss fight below.
For the people who have complained about the mod and the requirement for the debug tools, DaTeHaCKs make it clear that complaining and whining won't make him change from his current course and direction with the mod. He states...
No one did what I am doing so please if you are to come and rant and whining about the requirements don't . I won't change anything. I do not modify files which I do not create - These properties belong to From Software and Namco. I am not even obligated to share my work with anyone. Yet I do it risking much so please to all haters and disappointed "souls" show some respect toward people working hard to bring new features.
It's pretty cool to be able to play as the bosses in Dark Souls and it would be nice to see this mod grow and flourish into something usable. It could make for some very fascinating machinima.
In the meantime you can keep track of the progress of this Dark Souls mod by paying a visit to the DaTeHaCKs forum.
