Or rather, it didn’t symbolise any one single thing in a fixed and coherent way.

This was a brilliant thing to learn, and I still think about it often.

But it’s not a single thing.

The player-character looks out over a valley with soft gold fields and skies filled with blackened veils in this screen from Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree.

It contains multitudes, to borrow a handy phrase from a contemporary of Melville.

This frees it and sets it loose in the wild oceans of the mind.

It is forever a thing of inference and speculation, of contradiction and dark wonder.

Cover image for YouTube video

I may have written about this before.

Inference and speculation, contradiction and dark wonder.

I have my own relationship with Elden Ring, as I do with almost all FromSoftware games.

Close up on Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree character with blonde hair, white cloak, holding golden sword in front of face

I have played them a bit, some of them really quite a bit, and always enthusiastically.

I love FromSoftware stuff and I think I love it passionately.

I just love to talk about it, think about it, and most of all hear about it.

Bloodborne protagonist squares up against huge beast emerging from smoke

And so more Elden Ring means more of that.

(I’ve definitely written aboutthatbefore.)

And it all comes down to the way they’re designed to tell their stories.

Title artwork for Bloodborne: The Old Hunters. The player character sits before us on a chair, head bowed, sword held in scabbard across their lap. They wear typical Victorian travelling gear: long coat, long boots, tricornered hat. They sit alone in the middle of a large room lined by shelves and candles.

When I play Dark Souls, to put it politely, I am not taking notes.

I was thinking about the next two minutes and whether I could make it through.

I was thinking about whether I should be farming souls, grinding to get a little more powerful.

A Bloodborne player character stands inside a large room inside an ornate gothic castle. The place is littered with candles that aren’t giving off much light.

I was thinking about how to deal with a ranged skeleton while I was already confronting two melee skeletons.

But some people really are taking notes.

FromSoftware games are, to a group of brilliant people, the ultimate cold cases.

A sunset scene within Dark Souls 2, as the player character in a suit of armour looks out to the horizon behind a scene of towering rocks.

Why is everything ruined?

What was it like when it wasn’t ruined?

What happened to Godfrey?

Here’s an interesting distinction that has just occurred, in fact.

Lots of games are built on ruins.

Lots of games, as Gears of War had it, are in thrall to ruined beauty.

Or maybe, in Bloodborne, it hopes you’ll notice that so many of the statues are blindfolded.

Friends who can’t make it that far in a game but love this kind of narrative archaeology.

The second part of the storytelling approach clips together with it.

Or rather, it should clip together with it, if only it were there.

This part could be summarised as the judicious deployment of gaps.

It doesn’t just invite speculation, it requires it.

And the prod towards one of these gaps or threads could be anything, large or small.

What kind of thing would have left the injuries on these dead enemies scattered around?

What would someone as powerful as this boss be so afraid of that they shut themselves up here?

This is the kind of stuff FromSoftware wants players to ponder upon.

Sometimes it feels like the real game.

The people who untangle this stuff feel like magicians.

The urge to connect distant things, to look for shared themes, to bring elements into alignment.

But have I seen it?

I am left to speculation.

And that’s the point.

Symbolism can lead to solution, can lead to the end of the whole process.

Shut the book, nod to yourself and move on.

But what if you’re able to never be entirely sure?

Then the process can continue forever, and grow richer and more human as it goes.