With a total solar eclipse currently drawing plenty of attention in parts of the world, I can’t help but think about some of the ways video games have used them over the years, and there is one in particular that I still don’t think has been topped. Dark Souls 3 is officially 10 years old now, and while there are plenty of things about FromSoftware’s conclusion to the original trilogy that have stuck with me, that blackened sun hanging over Lothric late in the game is still one of its most unforgettable sights. Plenty of games have done more with solar eclipses mechanically, and some have certainly portrayed them more realistically, but as far as what an eclipse can actually add to a game’s world and story, I’m not sure anything has done it better than Dark Souls 3.
The thing is, Dark Souls 3 doesn’t even make a big deal out of it. There isn’t some huge event that suddenly begins when the eclipse appears, enemies don’t start dropping exclusive loot because the sun has gone dark, and the game doesn’t stop everything to explain exactly what is happening in the sky. It’s simply there, becoming part of the backdrop as the world continues falling apart around the Ashen One, and that alone is enough. By the time the eclipse shows up, Dark Souls 3 has already spent hours establishing what is happening to its world and why the First Flame matters, so when the sun suddenly looks like one of the most recognizable symbols in the entire series, FromSoftware doesn’t really need to say much else.
Dark Souls 3’s Solar Eclipse Is More Than Just a Cool Wallpaper
Dark Souls 3 doesn’t exactly begin on an optimistic note, so it’s not like the eclipse is the first sigh that something has gone horribly wrong with its world. The First Flame is fading, the Lords of Cinder have abandoned their thrones, and the Unkindled have risen to bring them back, with the Ashen One eventually taking on that responsibility as they travel through Lothric and beyond. That’s obviously simplifying a story that has plenty more going on beneath the surface, as just about every Dark Souls game does, but the important part here is that the world is already falling apart long before its sun begins looking like it is, too.
Guess the games from the emojis.
Guess the games from the emojis.
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By the time Dark Souls 3 reaches its later stages, though, that problem is no longer just something players are hearing about from NPCs or piecing together through item descriptions, because even the sky starts looking like it has had enough. What once looked relatively normal is replaced by a much darker red-orange sky, with what appears to be a solar eclipse sitting above Lothric as a black circle surrounded by a bright, fiery ring. To be fair, calling it a “solar eclipse” does come with a bit of an asterisk, because Dark Souls 3 never confirms that the moon has simply moved in front of the sun and caused a normal astronomical eclipse like the one happening in the real world. In fact, analyses of the phenomenon have pointed out that the way it behaves in the game suggests there is probably more going on than that, so treating it as a completely ordinary eclipse would be making a claim the game itself never does.
However, whether it is technically an eclipse or not doesn’t really matter, because the more interesting part is what it looks like. The Darksign has been one of the most recognizable images in Dark Souls from the beginning, appearing as a dark center surrounded by a ring of fire and marking those affected by the Undead curse, and once Dark Souls 3 puts an image that looks almost exactly like it in the sky, it’s pretty hard not to make that connection. Again, the game never comes right out and says the giant eclipse-looking object over Lothric is literally the Darksign, so there is still some interpretation involved here, but I’m also not sure FromSoftware could have made the visual resemblance much more obvious without putting a giant arrow next to it.
Dark Souls 3 Makes It Look Like the Whole World Has Been Branded
The Darksign has always been linked to the Undead, so seeing something that looks almost exactly like it suddenly hanging over Lothric gives the image a much bigger meaning than a normal eclipse ever could. By that point, the First Flame is fading, the Lords of Cinder have abandoned their thrones, and the world has already been pushed through the same cycle of linking the fire over and over again. Now, instead of the Darksign being something carried by one person, there is an enormous version of it sitting in the sky over everything. Dark Souls 3 never confirms whether the world itself has been branded by the Darksign, but I don’t think it needs to, because the resemblance alone is enough to make that idea pretty hard to ignore.
More importantly, the eclipse shows up at exactly the right point in the game. Dark Souls 3 has already spent hours showing how badly this world has deteriorated, so FromSoftware doesn’t need to suddenly turn the eclipse into a special event or start changing the rules just to make it feel important. It becomes another sign that the Age of Fire is reaching its limit, only this time, that sign is impossible to miss if you happen to look up. There is something almost fitting about spending the entire game hearing that the First Flame is dying and then reaching a point where even the sun looks like it is being swallowed up by the same darkness the series has been dealing with from the beginning.
Dark Souls 3’s Solar Eclipse Is Still Hard to Top 10 Years Later
Plenty of games like Terraria and Saros have taken solar eclipses and turned them into something much more involved from a gameplay perspective. Terraria uses its Solar Eclipse as a Hardmode event with its own enemies and drops, while Saros builds its Eclipse into the way parts of its world, enemies, weapons, and artifacts can change. Dark Souls 3 doesn’t really do anything like that, and I think that’s exactly why its version stands out so much to me. By the time that blackened sun appears over Lothric, the game has already spent hours showing how badly this world has deteriorated, so FromSoftware doesn’t need to suddenly turn the eclipse into some massive event to make it feel important. Seeing something that looks almost exactly like the Darksign hanging over everything is enough.
That is ultimately what has kept Dark Souls 3‘s eclipse in my head for the last 10 years. It doesn’t need a list of special mechanics attached to it or some complicated explanation for why it suddenly appears, because everything the game has already shown me gives that image plenty of meaning on its own. I can look at screenshots of it now and immediately remember what it felt like reaching that point in the game for the first time, when Lothric already looked like it was barely holding together and then the sky somehow managed to make things look even worse. For something that mostly just sits there in the background, that is a pretty impressive legacy for a solar eclipse.
- Released
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March 24, 2016
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood Violence
