4 out of 5

While the price tag on this might generally by a thicker tome, much like Dark Souls itself, the content feels very dense. My rating here is thus definitely based on a sliding scale: due to the price barrier and, as a coffee table art book, arguably lacking content – both in terms of the amount, as well as its lack of context – this is not a book that a non-Souls fan could browse as an entrypoint. It frankly looks like a fairly generic, vaguely medieval fantasy game, with occasional blotches of monsters. It’s only by playing the game that the sketches of Firelink Shrine, or Anor Londo, or the gaping dragon, or Gwyn, automatically conjure a feeling, and just as the bug of lore and ambience tends to be what draws Souls-dedicants in, seeing the ideas for these landmark places / characters, whether fully formed or not, adds to the game’s world-building. That’s the game’s majesty, rather reinforced in some of the themes spoken of in a lengthy interview with game director Miyazaki and several designers in the book’s last several pages: that there’s a sense of Lordran and its denizens existing in the forever cycle of the game’s story, and this peek behind the curtain doesn’t dismiss that feeling: it deepens it even more.

To that end, the briefness of material – with a few pages to concept designs, to areas, to NPCs, to bosses / enemies, to weapons, and to cut idea – is fitting for the puzzle-piece narrative, not giving us everything. Souls can be a game you just play and put down, absolutely; or it’s something you live with (no hyperbole, I swear!), absorbing conflicting thoughts from the dialogue and game text and online theories, and spotting these familiar elements recontextualized without excess explanatory material seems in line with all of that self-construction or your own ‘canon.’

The interview is rewarding, and very much doubles down on the creativity that has fueled the playing passion of so many fans: Miyazaki underlines that areas are linked by theme, and feeling; allowing creatives to work on whole section (as opposed to individual character designs, etc.) seems inspired – key to maintaining the immersion of any given area and then how those areas link to others.

While the book looks slick, and has a nicely balanced design, I take a little issue with the teeny-tiny text, both alongside all of the images (naming the character or weapon and so on), and especially the squinty-sized interview, which my old eyes can still read plenty okay, but it’s really easy to lose your place if you’re stopping and starting reading, with long blocks of small text on the tall pages. The translation has a few small typos, but otherwise seems to suggest a good capture of the original intentions.

All in all – essential for fans; the price tag is surely worth it, and can likely be found for a little cheaper nowadays.

(And if I could find a place from which to copy and paste the name of the Japanese author (in kanji), I would – and will.)