[PolarStarQuote]

The Souls-like Genre was Cultivated and began by Fromsoft, And has spawned a multitude of games. From Demons's Souls, Dark Souls 1, 2 and 3, Blood Borne, Sekiro, and, most recently, The Elden Ring. Rich with lore, Mysterious characters, and a history of unique events that our main characters face.

We mention this today, Due to a discovery within research of the series, that these series's are actually intertwined! Some Examples as to how this occurs is as follows;

-A Character within each of the games, Named Patches (in Sekiro, named 'Akayama'), A Untrustworthy, Backstabbing Bald Man who shares a Voice Actor, Design, and Tendencies, Down to the same strategy of 'Kicking you down a cliff at the promise of treasure' across every universe he arrives in, and becoming a merchant.

-The Existence of a 'Moonlight Greatsword', Which is Obtainable, Creatable, Discussed and mentioned in the lore of all games, which shares a similar design and ability (Launching energy waves on slashes)  between all games.

-A System of Endless Ressurection, In which the player is constantly ressurected over and over (Dark Sign, Unkindled, Dragon Heritage).


-Similar Armor types have been appearing in all of the games, such as the Victorian Hunters attire from BB, or the Executioners armor in Dark Souls 1 and Elden Ring.


With connections such as these-- We have deemed that the Souls Series, Demons's souls, Elden ring, Blood Borne, and Sekiro are all connected in the similar vein that the Final fantasy series have been connected.  This is a discussion wether or not the Four series's deserve to be made Ligal, due to there equal connections to the Ligal series-- Dark souls!

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Now, in these whitelist tests, we the staff need to see reasoning as to why or why not these characters should be added onto Li. We primarily look for aesthetic reasons: 'Would these characters stand out/look out of place on Li?'; 'Can these characters add to Li and give interesting materials for Li?'; and of course 'Is this material suitable for Li?'


We are not looking for, and will ignore arguments against the Whitelist System in general, as well as use of previous Whitelist tests as defenses or arguments against this one: I.E "Well if you allowed [X Series], Why not allow this/Everything?" Precedence has never and will never be considered relevant when evaluating a whitelist's viability. All whitelists should be measured by the merit of the series and its benefit to Li in a vacuum, regardless of prior test outcomes. Just arguments for or against the series!

[KashKey]

I'm gonna start out by throwing my opinion in on Demons Souls and Elden Ring first. They practically just ARE Dark Souls games. They have the same combat systems, very similar worlds, all wear their inspiration from Berserk so far on their sleeve Elden Ring literally stole the description for the Ultra Greatsword from it, etc. These games are VERY easy yesses from me. We always need more magic and spellcasting and horrible nightmare creatures for valiant knights to fight against around here.

The trickier ones are Sekiro, and Bloodborne. And personally? I still give them both very hard Yesses. On the front of Sekiro, there are many series that are Ligal by default that dive HARD into Japanese mythos, and I think Sekiro would slide rather neatly into place with them. And it helps that it's easily the most character driven of the Soulsborne games before Elden Ring comes along. It has an actual comprehensible story from start to finish for god's sake.

Then there's Bloodborne. I'm gonna wear my bias on my sleeve here: I adore Bloodborne. For a start, I believe the Trick weapons would be an absolute blast to toy around with on Li. Some of them are so wacky and out there, and some have such strange status effects, that I think they would make for a very, VERY fun concept to start throwing around. And from a lore perspective...

Dharkon and Galeem make for VERY interesting takes on Old Ones, when I stop and think about it. The same goes for the canonically deceased Taboo. Mysterious greater forces that the people on this world can barely comprehend, with their own unknowable agendas. And yet despite that, they can still be perceived. They still bleed.

And they can still die.

Make no mistake, Bloodborne is certainly the GRIMIEST of the Soulsborne games Fromsoft has made. But I think that's to its benefit. It very much has a very horror approach to things, and I believe having the occasional dotting of that here and there on Li is to its benefit. Nothing too distasteful, nothing over the top. Just something to give other characters perspective and think to themselves... "Yeah, my world definitely could have had it far worse." I'll confess, I haven't played all of these games for myself all the way through. Sekiro and DS3 are the only Fromsoft games I've come even close to beating after all. (With Sekiro being the only one I actually beat.) But, I'm still definitely on the side of allowing all of its associated entries through.

PLUS BLOODBORNE HAS SPIDER PATCHES, THAT'S HILARIOUS

[Lucciola]

Well for me, I honestly only think that Sekiro could really skate by in regards to fitting into Li. Because out of the lot of them it's the one that's got more flavour connection to other titles that exist on Nintendo and the like, as it fits in well with titles such as showdown and warriors series that populate the Nintendo spectrum. The thing with the rest of the Souls series is that it's used to massive and flashy boss battles that are excruciating to play, watch and or win and their methods of fighting are also oddly unique to them.

I believe most of them including Elden require a certain thing like souls, runes or what have you just to have some of their stuff to function. And appearance-wise, most characters both playable and unplayable really stand out compared to a lot of others that live within this world. Not saying we don't have undead types and they do have humans as well but a lot of the others are massively oversized and very Edgar Allen Poe or Lovecraft inspired, which I think deviates from Nintendo's and the other connected platform's more cartoony or anime-inspired style.

[Nostalgia]

I have not played any of the games aside from Elden Ring, but that one at least I have a good amount of familiarity with. The sheer variety of items, locations, and characters that this game alone would open up for people to play with is incredible. While pulling some of these characters out of their contexts may be difficult, there are also many that can function fully independently of the setting and work wonderfully. Many of them are absurd and have hilarious interactions that I think people could have a lot of fun messing with them. Such as giant pot man who requests a smack on the rump. For health reasons. While there is a large number of generic items, there are probably even more items with special effects and abilities that could be converted into moves with ease, both for combat uses and more universal every day uses.

For the themes of the game and appropriateness for the site, it is much of the same as dark souls itself. While there are some elements of body horror, and general scary themes, the worst it gets visually is torn up corpses with some insides exposed and some admittedly undetailed arm-chopping. There is one character that comes to mind named dung eater who do has some gross themes, but none of it is really shown or explained in detail, left mostly for theories to connect dots and make it as bad as it is. They are the only real outlier that comes to mind for themes or events that could really stand out as too explicit.

The overall themes of the game are around adventure and exploration and growth, well suited for LI. I think they fit into the site in a similar way as devil may cry does. They aren't as cartoony as most of the characters on site, but they have some humor to them and have enough interesting things to bring to the table that they can probably jump that hurdle.

[KashKey]

Okay, so, Lucciola brought a couple statements to the table that I feel need a couple follow up statements. On the topic of characters: It can't be understated how both the humanoid NPCs, and boss fights are easily the most interesting parts of the Soulsborne games. Dark Souls has a few exceptions here and there of humanoids that are absolutely massive, and definitely would stand out even next to Bowser, for the most part I believe characters from those games people would have the most interest in apping... Are the humans. Be it an OC version of The undead from Demon's Souls or the Chosen Hunter, or...


Okay I'm not familiar with Elden Ring Lore, because I've been avoiding spoilers so bare with me here, whatever the name for the protagonist of Elden Ring is. It would definitely be best to go to Nost on Elden Ring stuff, he's the one who's actually played through it. Not me. Speaking of Nost, I certainly agree there are plenty of items that could easily be turned into fun moves. Say for example, Fire Paper from the Souls games. Literally all they do is LIGHT YOUR WEAPON ON FIRE, IT'S SO COOL.

Anyway, going back to follow up statements on Lucciola's post, I'd like to point out the topic of Souls/Runes/Blood Echoes. They really aren't needed to make things from the Soulsborne series work. They essentially just function as currencies/exp in one, with the exception of Sekiro which uses typical Skill Points/exp, and Sen which is literally just money. All Souls/Runes/Blood Echoes are used for is leveling up your character one stat point at a time, or buying things from NPC vendors. Speaking of NPCs, the Soulsborne games actually have a lot of interesting ones! One of my personal favorites from Bloodborne is Eileen the Crow. She's a Hunter of Hunters, and will personally hunt down and kill the player if they fail her questline. She's a very entertaining assassin type, and is only one example of the great NPCs in these games. The characters in this series may not fight with Smokin' Sexy Style like DMC characters, but the artstyle of this series of games certainly fits in rather nicely with it. A point I'm very glad Nost made, as I actually hadn't considered it myself. For the more oversized and silly boss fights... Boss fights they can easily stay. I doubt anyone is gonna be looking to app The Loathsome Dungeater as a player character after all.


... This got very rambly. Apologies.

[alchefire]

Normally I'd be waxing poetic about the intricacies of lore and legacy and a whole bunch of probably boring, but useful information. However this time I'm not the best prepared for this and I feel like those bases have been better covered, so instead I'm just gonna say why I want these games too be Whitelisted

Demon's Souls: Dark Souls would not exist if it weren't for Demon's Souls. It is the foundation of Dark Souls and From Software's modern library. I think ignoring it's existence just because Sony owns the technical rights too it is a disservice in general, not too mention it is the most stylistically similar too Dark Souls out of all of these.

Bloodborne: Out of all of these listed games, Bloodborne is the one I have the most experience with. Bloodborne is the game that makes you realize "Oh yeah these games are fucking terrifying.". Dark Souls in general has always had a bit of a horror vibe too it, but Bloodborne cranks that up too 11. And that's a fact that I think makes this game 100% worth whitelisting. The myriad of Eldritch horrors, twisted mutations, and rampant of madness are all a perfect fit for Li's setting.

Sekiro: Sekiro's just rad... it's arguable the game with the least in common with Souls, but it still holds a lot of the same thematic spirit. I don't really have much too add here since my experience with it has been minimal. I just think it would be a neat addition.

Elden Ring: If Demon's Souls is the foundation, then Elden Ring is the newest layer of bricks for the building. The game in general acts as a collective lesson learned from each of the prior games. Similair too Demon's Souls, I feel like leaving Elden ring behind would feel... wrong. It's the next evolution of this series as a whole, too me it would be like separating Breath of the Wild from the Zelda series just because it changes the formula around..

[Mari]

Hey guys! Thank you for offering your thoughts on the white list test. The staff have reached their conclusion. The Dark Souls extended universe will be ligalized. All current Dark Souls under another name games from Fromsoft are being ligalized: Demon Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring and Sekiro

So long as circumstances are deemed comparable with future releases, we will continue to add new successor games without further white list tests. However in the event that anything changes to the point we have qualms with the new games or the idea that they're part of the series becomes strained, we may have to revisit that.

For now though, enjoy!