I'd like anyone that played and enjoyed the original Dark Souls video game to recommend me some of their favorite books...

I'd like anyone that played and enjoyed the original Dark Souls video game to recommend me some of their favorite books (bonus points if it somehow made them think of it). I realize it's a vague thing to ask for. I guess I'm hoping we'll have similar tastes and I'll enjoy your recommendation.

>dune
>crime and punishment
>thus spoke zarathustra
>fear and trembling

here's my list desu.

bump

>The Road
>Heart of Darkness
>Blood Meridian
>Count of Monte Cristo

Though none of the above make me think of any of the souls games.

Are you new to Veeky Forums, OP? I assume you've come from /v/ and you want something tonally similar to Dark Souls.

Dostoevsky is good if you want those existential and misanthropic feelings. The Double is a nice easy one to begin with but this user's suggestion of Crime & Punishment is also good.

It's a bit tough to think of books you might like if you liked Dark Souls - not because there aren't similarities to be made - because the video game medium and literature medium are both worlds apart. What kind of books have you enjoyed before?

As a Dark Souls fan too, I don't think my taste in literature reflects similarly to what I liked about Dark Souls, but I'll give it a shot:

Cormac McCarthy is violent and offers some spiritual and contemplative musings (albeit, mainly in a rustic deep West kind of way). Blood Meridian is the end goal, but maybe try The Road if you want that depressive tone consistent throughout. If it's a bit slow for you, then give a shot at Outer Dark.

Franz Kafka has a lot of that hopelessness that Dark Souls aims for, while also being surreal and surprisingly amusing (some find him hilarious, others just find him depressing, so I guess it depends on your translations/personal taste). The Metamorphosis is an easy one to dive into - only 50 or so pages and highlights Kafka's sense for hopelessness rather well.

Gene Wolfe is pretty good if you want a bit of genre fiction where the more you read into it, the more layers and lore you uncover (similar to Dark Souls imo - the more I replay Dark Souls, the more I pay attention to item placements, descriptions, monologues, etc, the more the world of it seems cohesive and revealing of underlying narratives). Gene's The Book of the New Sun is sort of his magnum opus, but The Fifth Head of Cerberus is probably a better place to start just to give you an idea of what you're getting into with Gene.

Also for books more rewarding on repeated readings, try James Joyce. Not genre fiction or anything, but his prose is truly beautiful and he managed to capture the sense of early 1900s Ireland while doing it. Dubliners, then read A Portrait, then try Ulysses (after reading into the western literary canon) and then the final boss of it all: Finnegans Wake.

Nice post user

so, you want lore heavy atmospheric bullshit encapsulated in faux difficulty? genre wolfe.

I can not fucking remember the name of the book, but I saw a post a while ago which actually named something fairly similar. It has a German name or something as the title. I hope someone knows what I'm vaguely talking about

>faux difficulty
>literally except for a few, slightly buggy mechanics, the anor londo archer's, and the witch of izalith and seaths first encounter, the game is as fair as they come difficulty wise.

Gormenghast?

Read the books self-published by Veeky Forums and become the ultimate Meme. Ulti-meme if you will

/thread

Yeah, that was it! Can't say personally it's much like Dark Souls. But hearing it described, it seems similar.

Thank you.

Les Chants de Maldoror by Lautréamont.

"God grant that the reader, emboldened and having become at present as fierce as what he is reading, find, without loss of bearings, his way, his wild and treacherous passage through the desolate swamps of these sombre, poison-soaked pages; for, unless he should bring to his reading a rigorous logic and a sustained mental effort at least as strong as his distrust, the lethal fumes of this book shall dissolve his soul as water does sugar."

Dark Souls is a new take on Arthurian stories. Look for the parallels. So I'd recommend Wolfram von Eschenbach and Malory. Pelléas et Mélisande by Maeterlinck and The Waste Land by TS Eliot if you're looking for something more modern.

I don't know of anything like Dark Souls which isn't an influnce of Dark Souls. If you don't mind something that's anime as fcuk, Fate/Stay Night and Fate/Zero for the unwavering heroism, the battles and comebacks, the horrible endings and a world with a logic of its own that's now fallen from grace. Do be warned that the first one is unnecessarily long and has porn in it.

>The novel has been described as a "Wagnerian prelude for an unplayed opera" as it doesn't focus on telling a story but is first and foremost concerned with creating a mysterious, out-of-time atmosphere.[2]

Also, it has 10/10 prose.

So I heard you like reading item descriptions, quests driven by existential crises, the enormity of the world, and the thin line between hilarity and insanity...

That sounds promising, I'd been looking for something like that.

I'd argue Dark Souls has more parallels with Zoroastrianism, but it's an inverted take on Zoroastrianism where Ahriman (the Abyss) has priority over Ahura Mazda (the First Flame).

The story about Zahhak from the Shahnameh.

Also, Zoroastrians during Sassanian era would also maintain eternal flames to ward off the encroaching darkness of Ahriman.

A lot of the armor in Dark Souls resembles Sassanian cataphracts.

I don't know enough about Zoroastrianism to argue that, but I know that Miyazaki was influenced by Western fantasy which in turn was massively influenced by Arthurian narratives. Gwyn (The Fisher King) is weakened and the land suffers as a consequence, the chosen undead (Parzival) embarks on the grail (Lordvessel) quest and aims to restore the kingdom. I'll admit the parallels don't work one to one, but the general themes are there, and the old Arthurian stories also differed in the details.

I liked Dark Souls. Disclaimer: I didn't beat it (brother's gameshare stopped working)

Don't really have particular favorite books, but my favorite authors are Kafka, Borges, Shakespeare, Dante, and Chesterton.

Ulysses
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Blood Meridian
Pynchon's work

Siddhartha

Maybe Spengler?

>Book of the New Sun
>House on the Borderland
>Blood Meridian

I've always felt Arthurian stories to have strong parallels with the Shahnameh. I mean, they both have Indo-European origins, and Christianity was heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism.

Read it, meh. The idea is novel, the experience is roughly equivalent of queing up 2 hours of pornography in tabs, and then closing the browser

After thinking about it more, I'd say Dark Souls resembles a Gnosticism with the possibility of no redemption.

Dark Night of the Soul

That's more Berserk's deal, and from what I've seen also Demon's Souls's. DS1 is a lot more individualistic and existential, and even if everything is fucked, you do have a choice of sorts. It all comes down to whether you've become attached to the world enough that you will give yourself to keep it as it is, or if you have had enough and let go of it into the indeterminable. And even then, Dark Souls has the super East Asian element of dragons as transcendental, aeternal and enlightened angel-like creatures, and the whole Chaoskampf the Lords had with them. Oh, and let's not forget Gwyn's kids being the Shinto trinity.

>Gwyn (The Fisher King) is weakened and the land suffers as a consequence
You're getting things wrong. The world didn't suffer from Gwyn's sacrifice, his sacrifice is what kept the world going as it was, rather than it meeting its natural conclusion. If Gwyn has a precedent it's more likely to be Odin.

Starship Troopers
The Road
I liked the Aeneid

i just started it, but how it could be difficult if you could in theory grind forever in same two places in first bigger location??

Holy Bible

Because people online have been playing the game for much, much longer than you; the worlds there tend to waver between timelines on occasion. Not good for -clever- rookies.

Health is a spook in that game. If you don't dodge, you die.

Crushing poise or pin-tight rolls makes sure there's no lock to death.

I prefer Demon's Souls and Bloodborne but I like Dark Souls. Dark Souls 2 was good and better than 3 but no-one admits it
From Dark Souls, I would recommend Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun like others in the thread and fiction like Lovecraft and Howard. The series is inspired by that vague half-remembered fantasy of childhood you might find in those authors, maybe you would enjoy some mythology as well in which case you should start with Bullfinch's.
My personal favourite writers are Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville and Cormac McCarthy of which you should definitely read Heart of Darkness, Moby Dick and Blood Meridian

reading the tread it seems there's a lot of people with the exact same idea as me

>90% aesthetics
>10% (shitty) mechanics
>proudly repetitive
>all combat is reduced to one thing (rolling)
>thine thou thine thou thine thou hast
>cannot swing a sword properly
>"having a bad time is actually good XDDDDDD"

Dark Souls is NEETzsche - The Game.

I recently read Thus Spoke Zarathusa and aesthetically I find the two be similar.

Aside from that you'd pretty like reading Mody Dick, Joyce, some works by Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment and Demons (however, I have not read Demons)), and Paradise Lost.

I actually read BotNS while deciding whether to buy Dark Souls. They are great companions to each other.

>BotNS
What?

he means book of the new sun by gene wolfe you sperg

Dead Souls

Levelling up becomes redundant after a certain point. You could grind and grind but you'll start to realise you're no longer really getting anywhere for it.

The game isn't as hard as people make it out to be though as long as you dodge effectively, repair and upgrade your weaponry, learn which stats you need to level to build your preferred class (tank/knight, magic, pyromancy, whatever), and learn to investigate everywhere as illusory walls, hidden enemies and whole locations are hidden away for much of the game.

those fucking invincibility frames on the roll were a mistake
the games weren't really about difficulty but unique exploration enhanced by the progress curve of leveling and finding gear, from exploration, something that DeS does better

>all combat is reduced to one thing (rolling)

>what is reach
>what is range
>what is dps
>what is dph
>what is poise and staggering
>what is parrying
>what is crowd control
>what are traps
>what are status effects
>what is resource management
It's like you don't know what being risky and calculating is like. Typical DEXfag, thinks skill is everything! I bet you enjoyed Artorias the most out of any boss.

Oh, and how could I forget

>S H I E L D S

But we don't want to be passive do we.

Read the epic of Gilgamesh

I strongly second the Gene Wolfe rec. Book of the New Sun is probably the greatest work of Catholic literature after Dante

>both have a "perfect" feel when you are playing/reading
>both beautiful but dark, brutal, and absurd
>Both feel incredibly dream-like
>Literally all of the scenes could be settings in Dark Souls: the Cathedral, the impossible rooms above the courthouse that feel like an Escher painting
>The Dark Lord ending doesn't match up with the book, but the kindling of the flame does because it is a sort of suicide. Both endings have the same quality of meaninglessness that the Trial's ending does. The world that both works of art inhabit are on the same course that they were on at the beginning of the protagonist's journey and their end.