Here’s some news I didn’t expect to be reporting today: After countless hours of running in circles, stumbling off of ledges and dying over and over again, the community taking part in “Twitch Plays Dark Souls” has managed to actually beat one of the most notoriously difficult games of all time.
You may recall about a month back when we reported that the ever-popular “Twitch Plays” series made the less-than-brilliant decision to tackle what is arguably one of the most punishing video games of all time, Dark Souls. The wonderfully sadistic Dark Souls is a grueling struggle even when you’re playing by yourself and have gotten into the rhythm of the game. It makes little sense, then, that literally thousands of people hammering random commands on their keyboards could manage to accomplish such a feat.
In case you’re unfamiliar with how Twitch Plays works, people are able to watch a stream of the game where they can collectively input simple commands in the chat window to make the on-screen character perform various acts. It turns out that when that kind of anarchy is allowed to run rampant, the hive-mind controlling Dark Souls was not able to even make it out of the game’s starting area.
To combat this craziness, a new voting system was implemented that allowed folks to vote on what they thought should happen next and, every 30 seconds, that act was carried out. It was far less entertaining to watch but, slowly [so, so slowly], folks started to get some things accomplished.
Another helpful feature in Dark Souls can also be blamed for this unexpected success: The ability to summon other players into the game. There’s no way in hell a community voting system would have been able to topple Dark Souls’s bosses so, to combat that, the community started calling upon the support of other players. Some players even caught wind of what was happening and, exercising the patience of a saint, helped shepherd the community through large sections of the game.
So, there you have it, folks. Apparently Twitch can play Dark Souls, even if it still can’t play Fallout 3. Next up, they are of course moving on to Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin. Many say that Dark Souls 2 is a bit more friendly than the original, but I doubt that fact will help out the Twitch community all that much.
In case you’d like to relive some of the run’s best moments, you can find plenty of highlights posted on Youtube. Below, you’ll find the final encounters, including a showdown with Gwyn, Lord of Cinder. Spoilers, obviously, if you have not yet finished the game.
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