Twitch Beats 'Dark Souls,' Moves on to 'Dark Souls II'

It took them 43 days, but Twitch finally beat Dark Souls. And because the internet can never be too self-inflicting, the disaster committee has moved on to Dark Souls II.

The victory has come with a caveat that asks you be lenient with your definition of beating a game. There’s a decent argument to be made that they cheated.

In the original, traditional method (if there ever was one), Twitch’s avatar spent the majority of its time running into walls, falling into wells, and dying. A lot. As participants and viewers dropped off, TwitchPlaysDark, the maniacs running the show, decided to mod the game — aka, alter the very way it’s played — to pause and allow voting from players to decide the next course of action. While this minimizes actual gameplay, it has proved useful, like when Twitch faced down the game’s hardest bosses Orstein and Smough.

But is that cheating? I’m willing to give it to them. Though it’s outside the game’s boundaries, it’s a special case. Dark Souls isn’t meant to be played by some hundreds at the same time. It’s like giving a hundred people drumsticks and have them try to play Foo Fighters coherently. You can try for 43 days, but it’s just not meant to happen like that.

Twitch’s journey of Dark Souls was completed this past Saturday when they vanquished Gwyn, Dark Souls’ final boss. Taking basically a whole day to bask in the euphoric afterglow, Twitch moved on to Dark Souls II and are currently a little over a day and a half in. Did they miss the Blood Moon? I feel like that would have been their thing.