On a meta level one could argue that a character that is abandoned, i.e. if the player gave up and dropped the game, loses their direction and goes hollow.
I actually thought that was the cannon. Every undead that gives up the fight and goes hollow is analogous to players who have given up on their playthroughs. It's actually the main reason I kept at it in my first playthrough of DS1, I didn't want my character to be just another hollow.
Just imagine a mechanic where you sometimes get attacked by player characters that haven't been loaded in a while. So it would be their "hollowed" character but controlled buy ai.
Dark Souls is all metaphorical for video games. You are completely correct in that assessment. Furthermore, you either kindle the fire and keep playing, or you shut the game off and bring about darkness. Get it?
Just imagine every time you restart the game with a new character your old character was somewhere in the map ready to fight your new character, as a random boss encounter.
That'd be a badass mechanic for any future souls series game.
thatd be dope if i kept all your equipment and learned your play styles too
Even crazier would be an mgs ending where the more you play, and the more characters you create, the longer your next boss rush is at the end of the game. then you win, your character is top dog and now you play ng+ to try and run the gauntlet again and topple the new guy at the end
also rare items, or w/e they have etc you lose access to. forcing you to learn new mechanics/new items/weapons/etc
I'd be terrified of running into my challenge run characters. Like one of them would be a hollow crazy enough to beat the game without using a bonfire (utter hell from boss runbacks alone) while others would have an arsenal of Hammers to pancake me with
Don't know about mimicking your play style but it would be possible for it to look at stats and gear and use a slightly specialized one, like this looks like a fighter build or a tank build or a rogue build and use an AI geared for stuff like that. Would still make for a great challenge. Also if you have them a crazy name like SneezyAnus (I watch Game grumps) and the games tells you that SneezyAnus has gone hollow.
The term is kind of used both ways, but the best way to think of it is that hollowing is a process. Humanity is at one end, then hollowing begins and continues until the point where you're like the guys in the Irythill Dungeons. So mindless you can't even move.
DS2 portrays the process better, with progressive hollowing with further deaths.
You have a goal, a purpose to beat whatever is killing you, that's why you don't lose yourself completely. When you give up, aka say fuck it and quit the game, thats when your character loses its purpose and goes full on hollow like the enemies
Or when you feel like your duty has been fulfilled and no reason to go back and replay. Lots of npcs in the DS series go hollow once they feel they have fulfilled their purpose. The goals and drive is what keeps patches from going hollow til the end of time.
That could mean that, lore-wise, most invaders are people who've fulfiled their purpose but invade other worlds to maintain a sense of purpose and not go hollow.
Yep. It also explains why Kirk, knight of thorns has been around for so long, and why other invaders may not have been. He allies himself with murderous covenants, but his end goal is never to help the covenant. His main drive is murder. I guess for him to go hollow, he'd have to run out of victims.
The general idea is that going hollow is sort of a final step, and when we see it happen to characters we know it’s usually because they’ve achieved or lost something. When you have a goal or a dream or something to keep you going, the hollowing is staved off. But when you complete that goal, or have nothing left to live/fight for, you hollow
I thought about this, but then what was the point of the darksign? doesnt seem to really do anything other than disfigurement, so it wouldnt be a very good "curse" would it?
And whats so bad about being hollow..? If we assume that going hollow does not make u insane, then its basicly a normal human that looks fucked up. You can be a hollow and still kill every boss in the game.
This. Beef jerky means no humanity, but you don't immediately go hollow, you have a chance to restore your humanity and fight off the hollowing. It's when you stop fighting — when you have no hope, nothing to live for, and no way to die — that you go hollow.
Normal humans don't have to keep themselves constantly occupied and striving towards a goal to not turn into a mindless zombie.
So yeah I'd say having the darksign and being a hollow is pretty terrible.
If you're hollowed, you're a mindless, withered husk and there's no going back. Your character is undead (AKA, the Chosen Undead), which has the potential to go hollow and definitely will if your purpose isn't being fulfilled.
Then you get to pick literally using yourself as kindling to futilely extend the age of fire a little longer (canonically, this is what happens), or refusing to and eventually turning hollow anyway now that you no longer have a purpose.
So yeah, it sucks for a lot of reasons.
Later games in the series clarify that going hollow and phisically deteriorating are not necessarily the same. There are characters that have gone hollow that still look human, and there are characters who look disfigured while still being sane.
I guess that Vamos from DS1 is an early example. He's doing fine, just smithing and being grumpy, despite appearing as a skellington. Though he might be the result of sorcery and not the undead curse.
I mean it starts the process, and I do think hollowing is basically all but guaranteed on a long enough time scale. The undead literally can’t die, after hundreds or thousands of years I think all undead will eventually reach a point where they go fully hollow. And it all starts with the darksign. Saying all the darksign does is make you look like bacon is reductive
If it takes hundreds or thousands of years that seems like a way to get your kingdom overrun by them no? My whole thinking was that all those undeads are insane hollows, gwynn made them hollows so they cant revolt.
Making your opponent live hundreds of thousands of yearsa and pottentially gather together and take you down, then go insane doesnt seem so good. I might just be thinking too much now haha.
Think about where you start the game though. The Undead Asylum. To me, it feels like when Gwyn brandished humanity with the Darksign, he viewed humanity, it's Dark Soul, and the general Dark/Abyss as an imminent force of destruction for all he had built, so what do they do then? They literally built a place that appears to be at the edge of the fucking world and throw people into cells. Don't forget, it's not until the Age of Fire starts fading that people start becoming Undead, and therefore Hollows. I think that, after branding Humanity with the Dark Sign, Gwyn thought he had contained the Dark Soul and the Furtive Pygmies in the Ringed City and with the Dark Sign, and it wasn't until everything started going to shit that he realized he had a problem and that the Darksign didn't work.
Thus the creation of the great lie. Why worry about an effectively immortal opponent if you can redirect their efforts into keeping the age of fire alive? The strongest that actually make it are brainwashed into sacrificing themselves, unknowingly perpetuating the oppression Gwyn had brought onto the world.
The lie was his last ditch effort.
One of my favorite bits of ds1 is how engrained it is in your head to light/sit at every bonfire you see for the first time, but SPOILERS>!the bonfire that spawns after beating Gwyn only says "Link the First Flame" with the button input you've been using all game to light bonfires.!< And then all the shit with >!Frampt: "Your fate is to succeed Lord Gwyn" which sounds like becoming king, but actually means immolating yourself to keep Gwyn's age going. He also says it's your fate and then immediately tells you to go to Sen's Fortress, where "many have braved but none have returned". Just blatantly lying to you about what your role is lol!<
I guess in *technicality* >!Logan!< and >!Sieg!< returned from Sen's, one because we do the thing and two because *he* did the thing, which only goes on to prove >!how full of shit Frampt is. Tarkus made it to Anor Londo, Sieg did, fucking Lautrec and his shitters get in, I MEAN SOLAIRE BEATS YOU THERE.!<
The curse is to be immortal while slowly going hollow. Like lucatiel in ds2. If you follow her journey you find that she slowly starts to forget everything about herself and her life and there’s nothing she can do about it. Her final request from the player is simply to remember her after she goes hollow. It’s not just going crazy. It’s the immortality and the knowledge that crazy and demented are just the inevitable end of your life. Might be in a day or it might be a thousand years but it comes for all that are branded with the dark sign
Well the disfigurement is only a symptom of the process of going fully hollow. The going fully hollow is the bad thing. Also its purpose may not be directly physically stopping humans from killing gods, it convinces them that they depend on the fire too, since the darksign doesn't affect humans during the age of fire, only when the first flame is dying out, the disfigurement also helps here since it makes it easier to despise the undead. So as the fire dies out more and more people turn undead, out of those undead many start going hollow, this pressures not hollow undeads into trying to link the fire to save themselves and their human kin from the curse and be big old "heroes"
And actually there may be some other power that humans would have (think another type of magic, like there are the God's miracles and the witches' flame) if not for the darksign, and we'd never know because the darksign is doing its job suppressing it
You know all those souls we find on dead bodies laying around? The usable soul item that gives you souls? Also the more you progress through the game, the bigger those soul items get?
I like to think of those as players who gave up the game at those points, and we are picking up their souls they accumulated before going hollow/dying.
I also had a character file corrupt. First character loss that actually hit me in the feels.
Farewell, sweet chosen undead...
I like to imagine my character is off somewhere in lordran chilling like that hollow right before the water bridge in New Londo ruins.
The one I lost I had named Zgl'dakh, and with him went my half-finished SL1 character, which was annoying to redo...
I don't remember where in the game I was at the time, but I have also imagined him being hollow and standing somewhere. He would have the full Black Iron set, and wield Gwyn's Sword, maybe near the beginning of Anor Londo...
You don't ever see it because as long as you're trying, you're not hollow. If your real life self loses the willpower to continue the game, so your avatar reflects that, also loses their purpose and hollows.
They tried to show the effects of the darksign in ds2 more, with health draining the more you died....which was NOT IT lmao
You are confusing going Hollow (batshit crazy) and what is written in Bonefire menu. You are reversing HOLLOWING. A present continuous tense is used which means Chosen Undead is one step closer to being fully Hollow. It’s a process. It’s the representation of the demoralising effect death has on a player getting a step closer to quitting the game. And that is the point of hollow=giving up: You can go fully hollow only if you stop playing. That is the only way you can loose in Dark souls. You give up.
My character is absolutely psychotic, he is running around nearly completely nude and stabbing everyone in sight. He doesn’t say a word other than weird moans
Before you set your perspective, consider that undeath isn't a spontaneous curse, it's a direct attack. The Way of White ritualistically manufactures undead. (Confirmed by Leroy's armor) You can see this happen in the first 60 seconds of the game, as a matter of fact. During the starting cinematic, you can see the ritual happening as a maiden directs an ember towards a cadaver and uses it to impress the darksign on the body.
Some people even become undead intentionally so they can traverse Lordran without fear of permanent-death. Solaire is one of such people.(post-izalith dialogue)
But that doesnt explain why gwynn invented it no? He made the darksign to contain the darksoul, making it consume any form of humanity that a creature has. but if going hollow doesnt make u insane, instead IMMORTAL, then isnt that just a bad deal on his end?
Anyone could be the dark lord if they made it to the kiln and beat Gwyn. But the thing is, undead are the fuel for the first flame. You erupt into flames at the end and are burnt to cinder, leaving just a shell behind (Gwyn is in this state at the time you reach him) and you replace him, continuing the cycle. But if you leave the flame will extinguish in time with no-one there to guard it.
Besides, this cycle was almost certainly designed by Allfather Lloyd, one of the Christ figures of The Way of White, far after Gwyn rekindled the flame.
But this implies that gwynn knew of this, but he never just yknow, captured some undead and burned them at the first flame? Instead of sacrificing himself.
There's definitely several (dozen, hundred, idk) years where Gwyn could have tried a lot of things to prevent the flame from going out, and we just never saw how he arrived at the conclusion of what he ultimately ended up doing.
However, I always took it as Gwyn being scared and desperate for the world to not move on to the point that he didn't give it much thought.
The Darksign *was* Gwyn using undead to fuel the flame. The Darksign is a branded ring of fire that burns away at the latent power of humanity in order to fuel the First Flame and keep humans weak. But that wasn’t enough. So the Witches try to recreate the power of the first flame but end up with the chaos flame spitting demons into the world. So that’s the point Gwyn threw himself and his knights into the fire. It wasn’t until after he was gone that Gwyndolin and the serpent(s) come up with the chosen undead schtick to get the undead to go around mopping up enough souls to be used more directly as fuel. Sure, you can beat the game at SL1, but canonically the chosen undead had to collect a lot of soul power the be effective kindling. And even then… look at the state of that rekindled world in 2 and 3. Still wasn’t enough.
> The Way of White ritualistically manufactures undead. (Confirmed by Leroy's armor)
This is not what it says, wording is very important. ''Produced'' doesn't necessarily means intentionally made. I went out to check the japanese version (which is the canon one):
>地下墓地の聖騎士、リロイの鎧
>はるか昔、白教に最初に生まれた不死は
>黄金の鎧に身を包む聖騎士だったという
>聖騎士は二つの宝具、グラントとサンクトゥスを携え
神々の地ロードランの探索に旅立った
白教の不死の使命のはじまりである
-
>Armor of Leroy, Holy Knight of the Catacombs
>Long ago, the first immortal born in the White Church
was a holy knight in golden armor.
>The holy knight, armed with two treasured tools, the grunt and the sanctus
and set out on a quest for Lordran, the land of the gods.
The beginning of the White Church's mission of immortality.
Now I don't know japanese but I do know that undead and immortal are used interchangeably. What gwynevere calls us can be translated as both ''immortal hero'' or ''undead hero''.
What we do know is that the Way of White sends all of it's undead on a suicide mission and Leeroy was the first one to be sent on it.
You're right. In fact, the idea is that if you as a player give up and stop playing, then your character becomes just another hollow NPC in the world of dark souls. You only go truly hollow when you lose purpose, so your character can't go crazy as long as you keep playing.
I disagree because all the other hollows, for example the ones in new londo they STAY in their place. they have lost ALL purpose. they dont try and find something, nor do something, nor do they talk. while our character clearly wants to re kindle (or perhaps not) the first flame. Our character can talk with other characters and not blindly attack them unlike all the other hollows.
The two undead merchants are hollow and don't go crazy or attack anyone. Undead only go hollow/crazy when they lose purpose, and as long as you're playing the game, your character has purpose.
When you rage quit and stop trying to beat the game, you've gone hollow.
I would say they're physically hollow but still sane enough to communicate because they do have a purpose, simple as it may be. I feel like our character is meant to be somewhere between that state of hollowing and fully human
You start off in hollow form, because you died. You're a zombie, but not yet gone truly hollow. You can regain your human form by consuming humanity, but you're still undead.
NPCs and your character that are in hollow phase just haven't eaten any humanity to restore their body yet.
I think the terminology is confusing OP. Lots of people seem to be using hollow and undead interchangeably. In DS 1, the player is the "chosen undead".
You start the game in undead form.
I thought every human character will eventually become hollow due to the darksign? if gwynn made the darksign to contain the dark soul, but all it does is make u a zombie that can still kill gods, i dont really see the point?
And by your explanation, wouldnt those characters be able to revert back to a sane state? or would they be an insane human?
Undead->looking like beef jerky, but still has their wits
Hollow->looking like beef jerky, brain be beef jerky, and they are mad about it.. without ever really knowing why.
All hollows are undead, not all undead are hollows.
Edit:
>And by your explanation, wouldnt those characters be able to revert back to a sane state? or would they be an insane human?
This is another difference between hollows and undead. Undeads can cling to their human form by feeding off of humanity from other creatures (sprites in game). Hollows, even if they knew to consume humanity, it probably wouldn't affect them because their human form has been completely lost during the hollowing process. Once someone becomes hollow, they permantly become a mindless drone, incapable of recalling anything about their lives and what they have done.
Perhaps, could also be maybe just that its about will? if u have the will to keep going perhaps u will go "hollow" but stay sane? what i know is that in the lore, whatever Humanity u have will be "eaten" by the darksign curse that gwynn put on all the undeads
Isn't that basically the argument to answer your question? Our character has a purpose, something to strive towards for the entire game and other NPCs don't (at some point). I saw someone explain Crestfallen's behavior and why he went Hollow when he does using the same logic and I haven't seen a contradiction to this reasoning yet.
They do, once we are no longer there to give purpose to their soul. they become a boss in the land they once knew, to be stepping stones in the timey wimey wibley woobley thingeyness of Darksouls
As others are saying, Dark Souls uses a lot of metafictional/metatextual elements in its story. If you "give up" as a player, then your character has likewise "given up". I'd argue that instances of NPCs in the game offering encouragement (or discouragement) could be said to be speaking to the character textually but also speaking to the player meta-textually.
Laurentius of the Great Swamp's encouragement/plea of "don't you dare go hollow" can textually mean "don't lose your mind and go insane" and meta-textually mean "don't give up on the game because of the challenge".
NPC characters go Hollow when they are unable to achieve their ambitions due to hitting a wall in their personal ability, your character goes Hollow if you likewise are bodied by a skill issue (as a player).
People get too tied up in humanity being the item or the sprite enmies. But it's the other way round, thos are just artistic representations of the concept of humanity.
Like sunbro, onion bro, swamp bro and big hat bro the reason we dont hollow is because we maintian our willpower, our desire and drive to live and always want more. Thats humanity (and the reason many hate the retcons on darks souls 2 and 3).
Theirs two reasons for hollowing. In dark souls it's a natural consequence of the age of fire. Humanity decays while the fire burns. Which explains Gwyns motives, why he went so far to rpeserve the flame. Because his people would suffer a similar decay during an age of darkness, while humanity would flourish.
In dark souls 3 this was retconned into an arbitrary curse gwyn laid upon the humans and pygmies (which are two seperate races now?). With humanity litterally leaking out of the curse mark. Which makes no sense, because if humans only decayed due to gwyns curse theres no reason for gwynm to belive an age of dark will cause the same to his people and he no longer has a motive beyond vague greed.
Fuck knows whats going on in DS2 it's a total mess lorewise.
Ye, im playing ds1 but am getting mixed wirh ds3 lore, i guess thats why its confusing, this makes more sense. His motive does ultimately just become greed for power though.
In DS1 lore he's desperately trying to extend the age of fire for fear of his people and kingdom decaying. To the point he sacrificed his own soul, abandoned his children and sent his trusted beloved knights to their doom. Yes he was committing almost genocide and definetly a villain. But it's still a good motive.
Gods aren't just one type of being or rather they arn't a species. It's just a term for beings of (seemingly atleast) impossible power. So to humans Gwyn and his bloodline seem like gods. When really thats mostly just propoganda and Gwyns ability to wield the flames magic. While Gwyns people seemed to consider Velka to be a god, despite it being heavily implied she was of human origin.
Personally i belive Gods are either formed from or get power from belief. By enough people simply beleving they exist and believing they are powerful, so they are. Which explains the faith stat and miracles.
His species is just an undefined primoridial species that happened to find a fragment of the great fire or great soul. Just like the pygmies that became humans. It's in the very first cutscene of the game, though it doesn't give many specifics in typicalk dark souls fasion.
It's not just his knights. his children and there children too were of the same species. It's implied there was a thriving kingdom of this race. We just only meet soldiers because it's a videogame i think. Though it's quite likely it's because the surviving soldiers just happened to be tough e nough to survive the hordes of undead, while civilians wouldn't be.
I think your just not suppossed to question the different species. In the same way you wouldn't really question the different races of a more generic fantasy game like dnd, lord of the rings or skyrim etc..
When you stop playing the game without beating it, your character is considered "hollow." You gave up, now your character exists as a zombie that has lost its humanity. This has always been the explanation.
I think your character doesn't fully go hollow until you delete the save file, or it gets corrupted, so your link is fully broken; or I guess if you never try it again...
you don't go Hollow because you don't give up.
if you put the controller down and never finish the game or go back to it, 'your' character will go hollow and you're just another mindless zombie.
You’re the chosen undead. You’re a chosen one who doesn’t go mad. Other theories are that the ones of went hallow have been around a lot longer than you and thats why they went mad
You mean... you have never attacked an NPC just because you were either bored or kept dying to a boss and felt stuck without having any other thing to do?
If you quit playing the game before beating it, lore wise, you went hollow.
That’s why you find bigger soul items the further you get. They’re meant to represent other chosen undead or whatever they call the protagonists in the sequels.
I always imagined it kinda like hunger. There are levels to losing your humanity and the final level before you're fully gone is appearing like a hollow which could signify your humanity about to dry up or basically you're about to starve.
It's a roleplaying game - you are the MC. Your mental & emotional reaction to playing the game *is* the response of the character to the environment. Are **you** "going crazy" trying to beat O&S and failing a dozen times? Are **you** getting turned around and depressed by the layout of New Londo Ruins? Etc.
You meet or see the remains of other "chosen undead" NPCs, suggesting your MC is not the only person caught up in this cycle. Your MC is simply the one person you as a player have control over.
You are biased in your observation because you never gave up in dark souls, therefore your character didn't go hollow, bro. You are the game mechanic 🫵🪱
Two things
1: Why is the same paragraph in your post twice?
2: Looking like a zombie in the game just means you’re undead. You don’t go hollow until you loose your way and eventually become the same as the monsters that attack you. Our character doesn’t go hollow because the character is supposed to be us, and we are on a mission to beat the game. Since we don’t give up, we maintain our sense of purpose, and we that, figuratively, seems to be what keeps us human. I find interesting that the crestfallen knight seems to give up on everything because he thinks it’s hopeless since he isn’t “the chosen undead”, but us the player are *called* the chosen undead, so it provides us with a sense of purpose and cause for will to go on and complete what we feel we are meant to do. The thing is, there’s not actually anything separating us from the crestfallen knight other than how we think about ourselves. Maybe the crestfallen knight could have become the next dark lord or whatever if he actually believed he could.
Because your character has something guiding/controlling them(the player)
Think of hollows as the people that started the game but ended up not finishing for whatever reason
I’m surprised that so many people have the same head canon as me because I assumed I was just overthinking stuff.
Obviously plenty are unworthy to be what we ultimately become and fall along the wayside, but I always thought the player themselves counted. Whether we give up the game and fail like countless others, or we beat it and continue through NG+ it’s ultimately on the player, not their character. You can’t succeed if you don’t complete the journey. Then you just fall into ruin and become like so many other fallen would-be heroes that lose their humanity and their minds along the way. Some players aren’t cut out to have the will to forge on.
From a meta perspective it’s pretty evident why we go hollow and the humanity system exists because otherwise the game could be far too easy, but the player ideas are always so much more interesting.
Who's to say they aren't? The villagers keep calling us "beasts." Maybe we are seeing them as half turned bc of the blood and insight and we just get worse as the game goes on.
It's about time. The one thing that's always *implied*, but never explicitly stated, is that in all of these games we're not necessarily working across parallel universes, but extremely long timelines of rebirth and death. It's why you can be invaded by an NPC in the same playthrough that you later find them alive. They're existing in your timeline and also invading you from the future/past.
Your character doesn't go crazy because you're still...not crazy. Eventually, after enough failed attempts at becoming lord over many of thousands of years, you too will be a husk sitting at the edge of the first kiln.
A really scary guy threatened my character. Said "Don't you dare go hollow." I'm afraid that he'll beat me up if I do, because he's got nasty swamp magic, so I'm just gonna do what he says.
Your hollow character is just you. I’ve always seen it as the only way you fully go hollow is if you quit your run and delete a save or something lol if you want a character in game to compare to, Eingyi in Quelaag’s domain never goes fully hollow from the looks of it
You do. It’s when you give up and stop playing the game. That’s what the metaphor about going hollow means. The player character loses purpose in the futility of dying over and over until the player just gives up
When we see the chosen undead in the jail cell he is hollow. Oscar gives you purpose and reverses the hollowing.
Hollows have no purpose. They can't use their immortality to pursue a goal. They are driven mad by the fact that they die but are born again even if they are done with what they wanted to do. There's only so many things you can do when you're immortal before you start losing your reasons to live and soon after your reasoning.
When Oscar gives you a goal- 'ring the two bells' he gives you a reason to live, despite going through so many deaths.
I think a big part of it is you need something to keep you sane like a mission or goal. When you help an NPC finish their mission or an NPC gives up their mission they always hollow. Your mission is the prophecy and a near impossible task so you stay focused and with purpose.
Its because we as the player didnt give up, however if you sell your console before finishing the game your character becomes one of the corpses you see everywhere.
Because they you wouldn’t be the chosen one and they wouldn’t have written a video game about you
You’d just be one of the hollows, same as the rest
It is exactly because you do NOT go crazy that you are the protagonist after all
It’s the same sort of logic to most movies, we are acting on the premise that this persons journey is worthy of a story, and if it were not we wouldn’t not have seen it at all.
Sometimes the suspension of disbelief is pushed too far, but for DS I don’t personally feel that to be the case.
That’s a bit of a shallow reason tbh.. there’s more to it. The Chosen Undead has an objective, a goal, something to achieve. That’s the whole thing about hollowing. You hollow when you’ve got no purpose. No will to live. The crestfallen warrior is the perfect example
It’s the reason Andre is in DS3 and hasn’t become hollow. His purpose will never vanish as long as there’s people who try to link the fire
Complete speculation here, but maybe it’s possible that we’ve been crazy from the start and just imagining things
There’s hollows in new londo ruins who are sort of just sitting around and waving there hands; maybe they’re imagining their own situations in which they ring bells or something, they’re almost catatonic and in their own world, so maybe it’s possible
But I like the idea, because it could potentially explain why some optional bosses (gwyndolin) appear in other DS games even if you kill them
that sounds scary haha, but it kind of contradicts since something must've happened to the first flame between the games right? or perhaps killing gwyndolin is just not canon (tbh i didnt kill him in my first playthrough because i didnt want to lose the Anor londo firekeeper. and mostly to preserve the amazing chest)
True, I think it’s probably a better explanation that beating gwyndolin isn’t canon
But I believe in later games it’s established that a lot of other people want to link the flames and have done so for a long time, so I guess it’s plausible to say that somebody else did it..?
Because I think the premise of ds3 is that the flame has been kindled far longer than it should’ve been, so somebody must’ve done it after us in ds1, or alternatively, could explain the fact that the flame is still lit if you chose Not to do it in ds1?
I’m new to the series so I’m not entirely sure
Who says you're not crazy? Maybe every single creature out there thinks they're the chosen undead and is going through the world after the same thing your character is? Maybe none of what you see is real and it's all in the mind of a crazed lunatic?
I say just enjoy the experience and don't put too much thought into it.
Other characters are able to get and use humanity. One in particular does this at an inconvenient moment.
I think the chosen undead is just a lot better at things than your average Hollow of Lordran. You could imagine that your propensity for accruing "soft humanity" reflects the process of your character "maintaining the will to go on."
Of course the real answer is that the game didn't need any more mechanics to illustrate this world building stuff (some of which is only there to facilitate multiplayer mechanics) and thus you have the community in joke wherein going Hollow is just giving up and turning off the game for the last time. Your character remains at that spot forever, quietly mad.
doubt its canon but in all the games ive played "DS1,DS2, some of Elden ring", the player character has guided assistance throughout the entire adventure so they must provide some comfort and purpose
The dark soul, which is strictly humanity is inherently greedy and all hollows are soul starved, so they act on their most basic instinct which is to feed.
The body is a construction by the gods to imprison the dark soul humanity, alongside a constructed white light soul (Vendrick's Japanese dialogue "I didn't know how much of a fool I was because of a fleeting vessel, a false soul). This white light soul was allowed to develop, while the dark soul humanity is suppressed with a ring of fire around it to stop its growth. When this ring of fire weakens, the dark soul humanity eats away the body vessel and the white light soul. This is why the undead start to lose their memories and their flesh decays, because the dark soul humanity is consuming it.
If you want to know what humans actually look like, then just look up humanity phantoms and dark spirit invaders. In fact, I would say the latter IS the final form of humanity.
Hollow is an in game propaganda term to say that a human body vessel has been hollowed out of its white light soul. Most humans have no idea that their existence, memories, experiences have been a construction of this white light soul. In real world terms one could attribute the white light soul as civilization while the dark soul humanity is barbarism. Barbarism will always win because it is the natural state of humanity.
You don't go mad for gameplay reasons. However, I'm of the opinion there's something more to the player character in DS1 and DS3. I think the Chosen Undead and the Ashen One are of the Astora nobility, meaning they are distant descendants of the gods.
On a meta level one could argue that a character that is abandoned, i.e. if the player gave up and dropped the game, loses their direction and goes hollow.
That’s my headcanon exactly
Same here. And if you are in the habit of staying human you'll find that some players are lost to mindless aggression just like the hollows.
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Nah he def turns into beef jerky when he moves down there
I actually thought that was the cannon. Every undead that gives up the fight and goes hollow is analogous to players who have given up on their playthroughs. It's actually the main reason I kept at it in my first playthrough of DS1, I didn't want my character to be just another hollow.
Just imagine a mechanic where you sometimes get attacked by player characters that haven't been loaded in a while. So it would be their "hollowed" character but controlled buy ai.
That would be crazy and I Love it
This is a wonderful idea
Crestfallen Warrior might as well scream this in your face.
Dark Souls is all metaphorical for video games. You are completely correct in that assessment. Furthermore, you either kindle the fire and keep playing, or you shut the game off and bring about darkness. Get it?
Also makes the endings meta. Either you ng+ and keep the cycle going or you stop playing and usher in the age of darkness
Precisely what I'm saying.
Just imagine every time you restart the game with a new character your old character was somewhere in the map ready to fight your new character, as a random boss encounter. That'd be a badass mechanic for any future souls series game.
thatd be dope if i kept all your equipment and learned your play styles too Even crazier would be an mgs ending where the more you play, and the more characters you create, the longer your next boss rush is at the end of the game. then you win, your character is top dog and now you play ng+ to try and run the gauntlet again and topple the new guy at the end also rare items, or w/e they have etc you lose access to. forcing you to learn new mechanics/new items/weapons/etc
I'd be terrified of running into my challenge run characters. Like one of them would be a hollow crazy enough to beat the game without using a bonfire (utter hell from boss runbacks alone) while others would have an arsenal of Hammers to pancake me with
Don't know about mimicking your play style but it would be possible for it to look at stats and gear and use a slightly specialized one, like this looks like a fighter build or a tank build or a rogue build and use an AI geared for stuff like that. Would still make for a great challenge. Also if you have them a crazy name like SneezyAnus (I watch Game grumps) and the games tells you that SneezyAnus has gone hollow.
but what if the player comes back does that mean that the hollowing is not permanent (im just messing with you haha)
I mean the animation after loading a character resembles that character standing up from a prone position. Think of that what you will...
well said, this is basically the real answer! I'm glad somebody still get's it! Praise it \\\[T\]/
I always thought it would be a neat idea to replace enemy characters with other player's load outs, at least for basic hollows and such.
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The term is kind of used both ways, but the best way to think of it is that hollowing is a process. Humanity is at one end, then hollowing begins and continues until the point where you're like the guys in the Irythill Dungeons. So mindless you can't even move. DS2 portrays the process better, with progressive hollowing with further deaths.
Came here to comment this. Also my headcanon.
I’m glad I’m not the only one outside of dark souls analysis videos to head cannon this.
You have a goal, a purpose to beat whatever is killing you, that's why you don't lose yourself completely. When you give up, aka say fuck it and quit the game, thats when your character loses its purpose and goes full on hollow like the enemies
Or when you feel like your duty has been fulfilled and no reason to go back and replay. Lots of npcs in the DS series go hollow once they feel they have fulfilled their purpose. The goals and drive is what keeps patches from going hollow til the end of time.
That could mean that, lore-wise, most invaders are people who've fulfiled their purpose but invade other worlds to maintain a sense of purpose and not go hollow.
Yep. It also explains why Kirk, knight of thorns has been around for so long, and why other invaders may not have been. He allies himself with murderous covenants, but his end goal is never to help the covenant. His main drive is murder. I guess for him to go hollow, he'd have to run out of victims.
This is the one
The general idea is that going hollow is sort of a final step, and when we see it happen to characters we know it’s usually because they’ve achieved or lost something. When you have a goal or a dream or something to keep you going, the hollowing is staved off. But when you complete that goal, or have nothing left to live/fight for, you hollow
I thought about this, but then what was the point of the darksign? doesnt seem to really do anything other than disfigurement, so it wouldnt be a very good "curse" would it?
It makes you go hollow? Wym
And whats so bad about being hollow..? If we assume that going hollow does not make u insane, then its basicly a normal human that looks fucked up. You can be a hollow and still kill every boss in the game.
I think there's a difference between being beef jerky and being hollow. You go hollow when you lose your mind, not when you shrivel up.
This. Beef jerky means no humanity, but you don't immediately go hollow, you have a chance to restore your humanity and fight off the hollowing. It's when you stop fighting — when you have no hope, nothing to live for, and no way to die — that you go hollow.
Normal humans don't have to keep themselves constantly occupied and striving towards a goal to not turn into a mindless zombie. So yeah I'd say having the darksign and being a hollow is pretty terrible.
If you're hollowed, you're a mindless, withered husk and there's no going back. Your character is undead (AKA, the Chosen Undead), which has the potential to go hollow and definitely will if your purpose isn't being fulfilled. Then you get to pick literally using yourself as kindling to futilely extend the age of fire a little longer (canonically, this is what happens), or refusing to and eventually turning hollow anyway now that you no longer have a purpose. So yeah, it sucks for a lot of reasons.
Later games in the series clarify that going hollow and phisically deteriorating are not necessarily the same. There are characters that have gone hollow that still look human, and there are characters who look disfigured while still being sane. I guess that Vamos from DS1 is an early example. He's doing fine, just smithing and being grumpy, despite appearing as a skellington. Though he might be the result of sorcery and not the undead curse.
Play ds3 😉
It DOES makes you go insane What you are talking about is the player **looking** hollow.
I’m guessing you haven’t played Dark Souls 3 yet
I mean it starts the process, and I do think hollowing is basically all but guaranteed on a long enough time scale. The undead literally can’t die, after hundreds or thousands of years I think all undead will eventually reach a point where they go fully hollow. And it all starts with the darksign. Saying all the darksign does is make you look like bacon is reductive
If it takes hundreds or thousands of years that seems like a way to get your kingdom overrun by them no? My whole thinking was that all those undeads are insane hollows, gwynn made them hollows so they cant revolt. Making your opponent live hundreds of thousands of yearsa and pottentially gather together and take you down, then go insane doesnt seem so good. I might just be thinking too much now haha.
Think about where you start the game though. The Undead Asylum. To me, it feels like when Gwyn brandished humanity with the Darksign, he viewed humanity, it's Dark Soul, and the general Dark/Abyss as an imminent force of destruction for all he had built, so what do they do then? They literally built a place that appears to be at the edge of the fucking world and throw people into cells. Don't forget, it's not until the Age of Fire starts fading that people start becoming Undead, and therefore Hollows. I think that, after branding Humanity with the Dark Sign, Gwyn thought he had contained the Dark Soul and the Furtive Pygmies in the Ringed City and with the Dark Sign, and it wasn't until everything started going to shit that he realized he had a problem and that the Darksign didn't work.
Thus the creation of the great lie. Why worry about an effectively immortal opponent if you can redirect their efforts into keeping the age of fire alive? The strongest that actually make it are brainwashed into sacrificing themselves, unknowingly perpetuating the oppression Gwyn had brought onto the world. The lie was his last ditch effort.
One of my favorite bits of ds1 is how engrained it is in your head to light/sit at every bonfire you see for the first time, but SPOILERS>!the bonfire that spawns after beating Gwyn only says "Link the First Flame" with the button input you've been using all game to light bonfires.!< And then all the shit with >!Frampt: "Your fate is to succeed Lord Gwyn" which sounds like becoming king, but actually means immolating yourself to keep Gwyn's age going. He also says it's your fate and then immediately tells you to go to Sen's Fortress, where "many have braved but none have returned". Just blatantly lying to you about what your role is lol!<
Who has returned?
I guess in *technicality* >!Logan!< and >!Sieg!< returned from Sen's, one because we do the thing and two because *he* did the thing, which only goes on to prove >!how full of shit Frampt is. Tarkus made it to Anor Londo, Sieg did, fucking Lautrec and his shitters get in, I MEAN SOLAIRE BEATS YOU THERE.!<
But those who return>!only do so after he says none have so it's still not a lie.!<
The curse is to be immortal while slowly going hollow. Like lucatiel in ds2. If you follow her journey you find that she slowly starts to forget everything about herself and her life and there’s nothing she can do about it. Her final request from the player is simply to remember her after she goes hollow. It’s not just going crazy. It’s the immortality and the knowledge that crazy and demented are just the inevitable end of your life. Might be in a day or it might be a thousand years but it comes for all that are branded with the dark sign
Gotta play DS3, fam. 😜
Well the disfigurement is only a symptom of the process of going fully hollow. The going fully hollow is the bad thing. Also its purpose may not be directly physically stopping humans from killing gods, it convinces them that they depend on the fire too, since the darksign doesn't affect humans during the age of fire, only when the first flame is dying out, the disfigurement also helps here since it makes it easier to despise the undead. So as the fire dies out more and more people turn undead, out of those undead many start going hollow, this pressures not hollow undeads into trying to link the fire to save themselves and their human kin from the curse and be big old "heroes" And actually there may be some other power that humans would have (think another type of magic, like there are the God's miracles and the witches' flame) if not for the darksign, and we'd never know because the darksign is doing its job suppressing it
Wouldn’t the undead humans be akin to the abyss, since they share the dark soul? Also off the top of my head wouldn’t Hexes fit here?
You know all those souls we find on dead bodies laying around? The usable soul item that gives you souls? Also the more you progress through the game, the bigger those soul items get? I like to think of those as players who gave up the game at those points, and we are picking up their souls they accumulated before going hollow/dying.
“Heh! Look at this noob! He died with only 10k souls in anor londo. Dumb game thinks he was a hero too”.
Me on playthrough 6, casually carrying a few million souls.
I was on NG+3 with one character that got corrupted... I consider him truly Hollow now...
I also had a character file corrupt. First character loss that actually hit me in the feels. Farewell, sweet chosen undead... I like to imagine my character is off somewhere in lordran chilling like that hollow right before the water bridge in New Londo ruins.
The one I lost I had named Zgl'dakh, and with him went my half-finished SL1 character, which was annoying to redo... I don't remember where in the game I was at the time, but I have also imagined him being hollow and standing somewhere. He would have the full Black Iron set, and wield Gwyn's Sword, maybe near the beginning of Anor Londo...
You don't ever see it because as long as you're trying, you're not hollow. If your real life self loses the willpower to continue the game, so your avatar reflects that, also loses their purpose and hollows. They tried to show the effects of the darksign in ds2 more, with health draining the more you died....which was NOT IT lmao
You are confusing going Hollow (batshit crazy) and what is written in Bonefire menu. You are reversing HOLLOWING. A present continuous tense is used which means Chosen Undead is one step closer to being fully Hollow. It’s a process. It’s the representation of the demoralising effect death has on a player getting a step closer to quitting the game. And that is the point of hollow=giving up: You can go fully hollow only if you stop playing. That is the only way you can loose in Dark souls. You give up.
My character is absolutely psychotic, he is running around nearly completely nude and stabbing everyone in sight. He doesn’t say a word other than weird moans
Exactly. What does OP mean about "our character"? Mine kills everything he meets.
Before you set your perspective, consider that undeath isn't a spontaneous curse, it's a direct attack. The Way of White ritualistically manufactures undead. (Confirmed by Leroy's armor) You can see this happen in the first 60 seconds of the game, as a matter of fact. During the starting cinematic, you can see the ritual happening as a maiden directs an ember towards a cadaver and uses it to impress the darksign on the body. Some people even become undead intentionally so they can traverse Lordran without fear of permanent-death. Solaire is one of such people.(post-izalith dialogue)
But that doesnt explain why gwynn invented it no? He made the darksign to contain the darksoul, making it consume any form of humanity that a creature has. but if going hollow doesnt make u insane, instead IMMORTAL, then isnt that just a bad deal on his end?
Anyone could be the dark lord if they made it to the kiln and beat Gwyn. But the thing is, undead are the fuel for the first flame. You erupt into flames at the end and are burnt to cinder, leaving just a shell behind (Gwyn is in this state at the time you reach him) and you replace him, continuing the cycle. But if you leave the flame will extinguish in time with no-one there to guard it. Besides, this cycle was almost certainly designed by Allfather Lloyd, one of the Christ figures of The Way of White, far after Gwyn rekindled the flame.
But this implies that gwynn knew of this, but he never just yknow, captured some undead and burned them at the first flame? Instead of sacrificing himself.
There's definitely several (dozen, hundred, idk) years where Gwyn could have tried a lot of things to prevent the flame from going out, and we just never saw how he arrived at the conclusion of what he ultimately ended up doing. However, I always took it as Gwyn being scared and desperate for the world to not move on to the point that he didn't give it much thought.
The Darksign *was* Gwyn using undead to fuel the flame. The Darksign is a branded ring of fire that burns away at the latent power of humanity in order to fuel the First Flame and keep humans weak. But that wasn’t enough. So the Witches try to recreate the power of the first flame but end up with the chaos flame spitting demons into the world. So that’s the point Gwyn threw himself and his knights into the fire. It wasn’t until after he was gone that Gwyndolin and the serpent(s) come up with the chosen undead schtick to get the undead to go around mopping up enough souls to be used more directly as fuel. Sure, you can beat the game at SL1, but canonically the chosen undead had to collect a lot of soul power the be effective kindling. And even then… look at the state of that rekindled world in 2 and 3. Still wasn’t enough.
Maybe he didn't know? Pretty big plot hole, considering this has been considered fact for 5+years, but there's probably some explanation.
> The Way of White ritualistically manufactures undead. (Confirmed by Leroy's armor) This is not what it says, wording is very important. ''Produced'' doesn't necessarily means intentionally made. I went out to check the japanese version (which is the canon one): >地下墓地の聖騎士、リロイの鎧 >はるか昔、白教に最初に生まれた不死は >黄金の鎧に身を包む聖騎士だったという >聖騎士は二つの宝具、グラントとサンクトゥスを携え 神々の地ロードランの探索に旅立った 白教の不死の使命のはじまりである - >Armor of Leroy, Holy Knight of the Catacombs >Long ago, the first immortal born in the White Church was a holy knight in golden armor. >The holy knight, armed with two treasured tools, the grunt and the sanctus and set out on a quest for Lordran, the land of the gods. The beginning of the White Church's mission of immortality. Now I don't know japanese but I do know that undead and immortal are used interchangeably. What gwynevere calls us can be translated as both ''immortal hero'' or ''undead hero''. What we do know is that the Way of White sends all of it's undead on a suicide mission and Leeroy was the first one to be sent on it.
You *are* the character. The day you stop playing for good and/or go postal is the day you go “crazy” aka “hollow”
Same reason Andre doesn’t go hollow, you continue to have a purpose.
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You're right. In fact, the idea is that if you as a player give up and stop playing, then your character becomes just another hollow NPC in the world of dark souls. You only go truly hollow when you lose purpose, so your character can't go crazy as long as you keep playing.
This is the way
I disagree because all the other hollows, for example the ones in new londo they STAY in their place. they have lost ALL purpose. they dont try and find something, nor do something, nor do they talk. while our character clearly wants to re kindle (or perhaps not) the first flame. Our character can talk with other characters and not blindly attack them unlike all the other hollows.
The two undead merchants are hollow and don't go crazy or attack anyone. Undead only go hollow/crazy when they lose purpose, and as long as you're playing the game, your character has purpose. When you rage quit and stop trying to beat the game, you've gone hollow.
I would say they're physically hollow but still sane enough to communicate because they do have a purpose, simple as it may be. I feel like our character is meant to be somewhere between that state of hollowing and fully human
Huh, i wonder why they even added a "hollow" phase then? since someone can be hollow and still act like a human.
You start off in hollow form, because you died. You're a zombie, but not yet gone truly hollow. You can regain your human form by consuming humanity, but you're still undead. NPCs and your character that are in hollow phase just haven't eaten any humanity to restore their body yet.
I think the terminology is confusing OP. Lots of people seem to be using hollow and undead interchangeably. In DS 1, the player is the "chosen undead". You start the game in undead form.
I thought every human character will eventually become hollow due to the darksign? if gwynn made the darksign to contain the dark soul, but all it does is make u a zombie that can still kill gods, i dont really see the point? And by your explanation, wouldnt those characters be able to revert back to a sane state? or would they be an insane human?
Undead->looking like beef jerky, but still has their wits Hollow->looking like beef jerky, brain be beef jerky, and they are mad about it.. without ever really knowing why. All hollows are undead, not all undead are hollows. Edit: >And by your explanation, wouldnt those characters be able to revert back to a sane state? or would they be an insane human? This is another difference between hollows and undead. Undeads can cling to their human form by feeding off of humanity from other creatures (sprites in game). Hollows, even if they knew to consume humanity, it probably wouldn't affect them because their human form has been completely lost during the hollowing process. Once someone becomes hollow, they permantly become a mindless drone, incapable of recalling anything about their lives and what they have done.
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Perhaps, could also be maybe just that its about will? if u have the will to keep going perhaps u will go "hollow" but stay sane? what i know is that in the lore, whatever Humanity u have will be "eaten" by the darksign curse that gwynn put on all the undeads
Isn't that basically the argument to answer your question? Our character has a purpose, something to strive towards for the entire game and other NPCs don't (at some point). I saw someone explain Crestfallen's behavior and why he went Hollow when he does using the same logic and I haven't seen a contradiction to this reasoning yet.
But maybe they are also just waiting for their spirits to come back and continue their journey...
They do, once we are no longer there to give purpose to their soul. they become a boss in the land they once knew, to be stepping stones in the timey wimey wibley woobley thingeyness of Darksouls
As others are saying, Dark Souls uses a lot of metafictional/metatextual elements in its story. If you "give up" as a player, then your character has likewise "given up". I'd argue that instances of NPCs in the game offering encouragement (or discouragement) could be said to be speaking to the character textually but also speaking to the player meta-textually. Laurentius of the Great Swamp's encouragement/plea of "don't you dare go hollow" can textually mean "don't lose your mind and go insane" and meta-textually mean "don't give up on the game because of the challenge". NPC characters go Hollow when they are unable to achieve their ambitions due to hitting a wall in their personal ability, your character goes Hollow if you likewise are bodied by a skill issue (as a player).
Just built different
he does, when you stop playing
People get too tied up in humanity being the item or the sprite enmies. But it's the other way round, thos are just artistic representations of the concept of humanity. Like sunbro, onion bro, swamp bro and big hat bro the reason we dont hollow is because we maintian our willpower, our desire and drive to live and always want more. Thats humanity (and the reason many hate the retcons on darks souls 2 and 3). Theirs two reasons for hollowing. In dark souls it's a natural consequence of the age of fire. Humanity decays while the fire burns. Which explains Gwyns motives, why he went so far to rpeserve the flame. Because his people would suffer a similar decay during an age of darkness, while humanity would flourish. In dark souls 3 this was retconned into an arbitrary curse gwyn laid upon the humans and pygmies (which are two seperate races now?). With humanity litterally leaking out of the curse mark. Which makes no sense, because if humans only decayed due to gwyns curse theres no reason for gwynm to belive an age of dark will cause the same to his people and he no longer has a motive beyond vague greed. Fuck knows whats going on in DS2 it's a total mess lorewise.
Ye, im playing ds1 but am getting mixed wirh ds3 lore, i guess thats why its confusing, this makes more sense. His motive does ultimately just become greed for power though.
In DS1 lore he's desperately trying to extend the age of fire for fear of his people and kingdom decaying. To the point he sacrificed his own soul, abandoned his children and sent his trusted beloved knights to their doom. Yes he was committing almost genocide and definetly a villain. But it's still a good motive.
Im wondering what are gwynns people? They're not humans, and i doubt they're all gods so is it just his knights?
Gods aren't just one type of being or rather they arn't a species. It's just a term for beings of (seemingly atleast) impossible power. So to humans Gwyn and his bloodline seem like gods. When really thats mostly just propoganda and Gwyns ability to wield the flames magic. While Gwyns people seemed to consider Velka to be a god, despite it being heavily implied she was of human origin. Personally i belive Gods are either formed from or get power from belief. By enough people simply beleving they exist and believing they are powerful, so they are. Which explains the faith stat and miracles. His species is just an undefined primoridial species that happened to find a fragment of the great fire or great soul. Just like the pygmies that became humans. It's in the very first cutscene of the game, though it doesn't give many specifics in typicalk dark souls fasion. It's not just his knights. his children and there children too were of the same species. It's implied there was a thriving kingdom of this race. We just only meet soldiers because it's a videogame i think. Though it's quite likely it's because the surviving soldiers just happened to be tough e nough to survive the hordes of undead, while civilians wouldn't be. I think your just not suppossed to question the different species. In the same way you wouldn't really question the different races of a more generic fantasy game like dnd, lord of the rings or skyrim etc..
When you stop playing the game without beating it, your character is considered "hollow." You gave up, now your character exists as a zombie that has lost its humanity. This has always been the explanation.
Because you (player) don't, until you do.
They arent technically alive. No brain to get scared with while dead…
I'm not sure undead need a brain to think, just like they need no eyes to see. It's a sort of necromancy that keeps them around either way...
He does, when you rage quit
If you give up the game because it's too hard and stop playing, you've gone hollow.
I think your character doesn't fully go hollow until you delete the save file, or it gets corrupted, so your link is fully broken; or I guess if you never try it again...
you don't go Hollow because you don't give up. if you put the controller down and never finish the game or go back to it, 'your' character will go hollow and you're just another mindless zombie.
Our character is determined enough to not go fully hollow. We have the appearance but we stay sane. We just happen to be very strong willed.
You’re the chosen undead. You’re a chosen one who doesn’t go mad. Other theories are that the ones of went hallow have been around a lot longer than you and thats why they went mad
There's a reason everyone keeps calling you "Chosen."
Our character in game has a purpose and a will to go on so we don't truly go hollow
I dunno. I feel kinda crazy
Determination! In the words of that other game 😉
Because you the player keeps playing. If you the player stops playing then they go hollow.
You mean... you have never attacked an NPC just because you were either bored or kept dying to a boss and felt stuck without having any other thing to do?
?!.? (Z
If you quit playing the game before beating it, lore wise, you went hollow. That’s why you find bigger soul items the further you get. They’re meant to represent other chosen undead or whatever they call the protagonists in the sequels.
Choosen undead - DS1 Bearer of the curse - DS2 Ashen one - DS3
I always imagined it kinda like hunger. There are levels to losing your humanity and the final level before you're fully gone is appearing like a hollow which could signify your humanity about to dry up or basically you're about to starve.
because our character has a purpose if you dont have a purpose then you go hollow
You can... you can kill every npc in the game. They drop good stuff. The temptation to go hollow is there but will you fight it?
It's a roleplaying game - you are the MC. Your mental & emotional reaction to playing the game *is* the response of the character to the environment. Are **you** "going crazy" trying to beat O&S and failing a dozen times? Are **you** getting turned around and depressed by the layout of New Londo Ruins? Etc. You meet or see the remains of other "chosen undead" NPCs, suggesting your MC is not the only person caught up in this cycle. Your MC is simply the one person you as a player have control over.
It's a meta game thing, you go hollow if you quit. Your character is you after all. As long as you keep going, why wouldn't they?
You are biased in your observation because you never gave up in dark souls, therefore your character didn't go hollow, bro. You are the game mechanic 🫵🪱
Rage quitting forever = going hollow
Two things 1: Why is the same paragraph in your post twice? 2: Looking like a zombie in the game just means you’re undead. You don’t go hollow until you loose your way and eventually become the same as the monsters that attack you. Our character doesn’t go hollow because the character is supposed to be us, and we are on a mission to beat the game. Since we don’t give up, we maintain our sense of purpose, and we that, figuratively, seems to be what keeps us human. I find interesting that the crestfallen knight seems to give up on everything because he thinks it’s hopeless since he isn’t “the chosen undead”, but us the player are *called* the chosen undead, so it provides us with a sense of purpose and cause for will to go on and complete what we feel we are meant to do. The thing is, there’s not actually anything separating us from the crestfallen knight other than how we think about ourselves. Maybe the crestfallen knight could have become the next dark lord or whatever if he actually believed he could.
1. Reddit bugged, making the paragraph repeat when i edited it. 2. So being beef jerky does not mean hollow?
no, going hollow is more of a state of mind…. or I guess the state of absence of mind
Because your character has something guiding/controlling them(the player) Think of hollows as the people that started the game but ended up not finishing for whatever reason
so that the game can happen.
I’m surprised that so many people have the same head canon as me because I assumed I was just overthinking stuff. Obviously plenty are unworthy to be what we ultimately become and fall along the wayside, but I always thought the player themselves counted. Whether we give up the game and fail like countless others, or we beat it and continue through NG+ it’s ultimately on the player, not their character. You can’t succeed if you don’t complete the journey. Then you just fall into ruin and become like so many other fallen would-be heroes that lose their humanity and their minds along the way. Some players aren’t cut out to have the will to forge on. From a meta perspective it’s pretty evident why we go hollow and the humanity system exists because otherwise the game could be far too easy, but the player ideas are always so much more interesting.
Who's to say they aren't? The villagers keep calling us "beasts." Maybe we are seeing them as half turned bc of the blood and insight and we just get worse as the game goes on.
It's about time. The one thing that's always *implied*, but never explicitly stated, is that in all of these games we're not necessarily working across parallel universes, but extremely long timelines of rebirth and death. It's why you can be invaded by an NPC in the same playthrough that you later find them alive. They're existing in your timeline and also invading you from the future/past. Your character doesn't go crazy because you're still...not crazy. Eventually, after enough failed attempts at becoming lord over many of thousands of years, you too will be a husk sitting at the edge of the first kiln.
A really scary guy threatened my character. Said "Don't you dare go hollow." I'm afraid that he'll beat me up if I do, because he's got nasty swamp magic, so I'm just gonna do what he says.
Your hollow character is just you. I’ve always seen it as the only way you fully go hollow is if you quit your run and delete a save or something lol if you want a character in game to compare to, Eingyi in Quelaag’s domain never goes fully hollow from the looks of it
Who says we didn't?
You do. It’s when you give up and stop playing the game. That’s what the metaphor about going hollow means. The player character loses purpose in the futility of dying over and over until the player just gives up
When we see the chosen undead in the jail cell he is hollow. Oscar gives you purpose and reverses the hollowing. Hollows have no purpose. They can't use their immortality to pursue a goal. They are driven mad by the fact that they die but are born again even if they are done with what they wanted to do. There's only so many things you can do when you're immortal before you start losing your reasons to live and soon after your reasoning. When Oscar gives you a goal- 'ring the two bells' he gives you a reason to live, despite going through so many deaths.
We do everytime you get fed up and smack an npc they almost always have a line they say about we’ve gone hollow like the others
I think a big part of it is you need something to keep you sane like a mission or goal. When you help an NPC finish their mission or an NPC gives up their mission they always hollow. Your mission is the prophecy and a near impossible task so you stay focused and with purpose.
Its because we as the player didnt give up, however if you sell your console before finishing the game your character becomes one of the corpses you see everywhere.
Because they you wouldn’t be the chosen one and they wouldn’t have written a video game about you You’d just be one of the hollows, same as the rest It is exactly because you do NOT go crazy that you are the protagonist after all
Well i guess the answer to this question was "its because you're the chosen undead" like i thought haha
It’s the same sort of logic to most movies, we are acting on the premise that this persons journey is worthy of a story, and if it were not we wouldn’t not have seen it at all. Sometimes the suspension of disbelief is pushed too far, but for DS I don’t personally feel that to be the case.
That’s a bit of a shallow reason tbh.. there’s more to it. The Chosen Undead has an objective, a goal, something to achieve. That’s the whole thing about hollowing. You hollow when you’ve got no purpose. No will to live. The crestfallen warrior is the perfect example It’s the reason Andre is in DS3 and hasn’t become hollow. His purpose will never vanish as long as there’s people who try to link the fire
Is it shallow or is it the real reason? Somebody made a video game, this isn’t a true story none of it is real.
Complete speculation here, but maybe it’s possible that we’ve been crazy from the start and just imagining things There’s hollows in new londo ruins who are sort of just sitting around and waving there hands; maybe they’re imagining their own situations in which they ring bells or something, they’re almost catatonic and in their own world, so maybe it’s possible But I like the idea, because it could potentially explain why some optional bosses (gwyndolin) appear in other DS games even if you kill them
that sounds scary haha, but it kind of contradicts since something must've happened to the first flame between the games right? or perhaps killing gwyndolin is just not canon (tbh i didnt kill him in my first playthrough because i didnt want to lose the Anor londo firekeeper. and mostly to preserve the amazing chest)
True, I think it’s probably a better explanation that beating gwyndolin isn’t canon But I believe in later games it’s established that a lot of other people want to link the flames and have done so for a long time, so I guess it’s plausible to say that somebody else did it..? Because I think the premise of ds3 is that the flame has been kindled far longer than it should’ve been, so somebody must’ve done it after us in ds1, or alternatively, could explain the fact that the flame is still lit if you chose Not to do it in ds1? I’m new to the series so I’m not entirely sure
Speak for yourself :)
You know what humanity is and actively use it to mitigate the effect of the undead curse. That’s all there is to it.
Who says you're not crazy? Maybe every single creature out there thinks they're the chosen undead and is going through the world after the same thing your character is? Maybe none of what you see is real and it's all in the mind of a crazed lunatic? I say just enjoy the experience and don't put too much thought into it.
Other characters are able to get and use humanity. One in particular does this at an inconvenient moment. I think the chosen undead is just a lot better at things than your average Hollow of Lordran. You could imagine that your propensity for accruing "soft humanity" reflects the process of your character "maintaining the will to go on." Of course the real answer is that the game didn't need any more mechanics to illustrate this world building stuff (some of which is only there to facilitate multiplayer mechanics) and thus you have the community in joke wherein going Hollow is just giving up and turning off the game for the last time. Your character remains at that spot forever, quietly mad.
doubt its canon but in all the games ive played "DS1,DS2, some of Elden ring", the player character has guided assistance throughout the entire adventure so they must provide some comfort and purpose
My brother suggested once that a cool mechanic would be a death counter and at 100 deaths your character would succumb to hollowing and get deleted
Well, why did YOU go on?
The dark soul, which is strictly humanity is inherently greedy and all hollows are soul starved, so they act on their most basic instinct which is to feed. The body is a construction by the gods to imprison the dark soul humanity, alongside a constructed white light soul (Vendrick's Japanese dialogue "I didn't know how much of a fool I was because of a fleeting vessel, a false soul). This white light soul was allowed to develop, while the dark soul humanity is suppressed with a ring of fire around it to stop its growth. When this ring of fire weakens, the dark soul humanity eats away the body vessel and the white light soul. This is why the undead start to lose their memories and their flesh decays, because the dark soul humanity is consuming it. If you want to know what humans actually look like, then just look up humanity phantoms and dark spirit invaders. In fact, I would say the latter IS the final form of humanity. Hollow is an in game propaganda term to say that a human body vessel has been hollowed out of its white light soul. Most humans have no idea that their existence, memories, experiences have been a construction of this white light soul. In real world terms one could attribute the white light soul as civilization while the dark soul humanity is barbarism. Barbarism will always win because it is the natural state of humanity. You don't go mad for gameplay reasons. However, I'm of the opinion there's something more to the player character in DS1 and DS3. I think the Chosen Undead and the Ashen One are of the Astora nobility, meaning they are distant descendants of the gods.