Book Review: Abyssal Archive

To say that the world of Dark Souls is huge would be a colossal understatement.  The amount of depth and lore attributed to this franchise feels almost infinite at times.  Like with all FromSoftware titles however, there’s a price to pay to understand the scope of this world and its narrative.  The stories behind these games are never told in conventional manner.  A key portion of the game’s lore is often hidden beneath item descriptions and ambient dialogue and it’s never presented to the player the clearest format. It’s always been the expectation that to understand the world of Dark Souls, you must be prepared to interpret it and form your own conclusions and that does invite different perspectives depending on who you ask.  Lokey is considered one of the Dark Souls community’s most well-regarded lore scholars, with years of self-proclaimed research and examinations published online.  I figured it was time to dive deep into the Dark Souls world once again by reading Lokey’s 450-page dissection of the game titled Abyssal Archive. 

Lokey starts the book out by specifically disclaiming how despite being well-versed in the world, a lot of the content behind the book is theory-based but utilizes a lot of key references and citations to back it up. Lokey then follows by discussing the very origins of the world of Dark Souls with the forming of the First Flame and the finding of the four great Lord Souls.  Lokey then explores the foundation of Lord Gwyn’s empire and the sacking of the ancient dragons. Soon after he dissects the rise of the Undead Curse and its impact over the race of humanity. As he strolls through the key stages preceding the narrative of the main game and during it, Lokey focuses heavily on character and organization analysis as well.  Each key section is also accompanied with beautiful illustrations they help realize key characters throughout the course of the world. 

I don’t doubt Lokey is a smart and intelligent fan of this series if Abyssal Archive is anything to go by.  His structuring and sectioning of the timeline behind Dark Souls is competently set out to allow the reader to learn about the game’s world through its chronological stages.  I also grasp there’s a clear complexity to this world that makes transcribing it difficult even for the most knowledgeable of people. All of that being considered though, I genuinely feel Lokey goes way too far in trying to dissect the lore to a meticulous level.  Every page feels like a slow, agonizing crawl as you try to obtain key information about the story while Lokey injects so much needless padding and wording in what I feel is an attempt to indulge his own ego.  This book reads less like a fair, comprehensive understanding of the lore for the reader and more so an opportunity for Lokey to show the reader how smart he thinks he is.  Don’t get me wrong that’s not to say the book lacks any credible breakdowns and explanations as I did find certain chapters and sections fairly comprehendible for the most part.  For every competent example though, I feel there’s an equal number of pages littered with constant and arguably boring analysis that does very little to help me engage with this world. 

While the engagement behind the book is inconsistent, I can’t take anything away from the general quality of the product.  The mixture of written sections with detailed illustrations helps the reader visualize key elements when and where necessary. I just wish Lokey would have taken into consideration that other people would be reading this book other than him.  His in-depth approach to the lore comes off as incredibly self-indulgent and the pacing of the book is excruciatingly slow for a majority of it’s page count.  I know it seems like I have more negatives to tout on this book than positives but it just frustrates me how the book aspires to accomplish so much but ultimately does so little. It applies the subtextual format from the game that it derives yet it doesn’t make any effort to translate that complexity for the average reader. If you can deal with Lokey’s clear adoration for his own intelligence, you will be able to obtain some key and useful insight from this book, it’s just a shame it’s made so difficult to do so.