Dark Souls: Design Works Book Review
45Dark Souls: Design Works is a below average video game art book. It mostly has finalized art designs for the first Dark Souls game. There are also a few development sketches and an interview transcript with some of the artists.
0:00 - Introduction
0:26 - Quality of the Physical Book
1:04 - Content
3:56 - Aesthetics
6:03 - Nostalgia
6:53 - Backstage
8:45 - Closing Remarks
QUALITY OF PHYSICAL BOOK
-It has 125 pages but only 110 pages have art on them.
-The book itself feels a bit flimsier than average.
-The pages with the interview transcript are very thin, but mine haven’t ripped.
-Many images are just too small. Sinfully too small.
-There are some images that are pretty blurry.
CONTENT/INNARDS
Variety of images and image types
-The first 30 pages have “key art,” which are pretty cool and iconic.
-There are a couple of images that show how some contraptions in the game work.
-There are a few images that show how a boss was designed, but there isn’t much of this.
-In a few places there’s some writing next to images that appear to be from the design phase.
-Though there is a little bit of variety, the vast majority of the images are of the finalized art designs.
Organization
-The book is organized into several different sections. First there is “key art,” then environments, NPCs, Bosses, other enemies, armor, weapons and shields, and unused material. It ends with a lengthy interview with the game director, Miyazaki, and some artists; the interview was from 2011, soon after the game was released.
Quality of writing.
-The quality of the writing is pretty bland. The text says simplistic things like “this is the section with boss monsters.”
Does it have what you want it to have?
-In general there just isn’t enough art content. Dark Souls has tons of armor and weapons, and loads of creative monsters and environments, and this book doesn’t even come close to doing them justice. This book should be a celebration of the art design, but instead it briefly shows one small image of most monsters and entirely neglects other parts of the game. What a missed opportunity.
-There’s nothing on the Crystal Cave, nothing on Izalith, there’s one small image of darkroot basin. There’s nothing on the Great Hollow or Ash Lake. There’s no Sif. It’s missing some major things, in my opinion.
AESTHETICS
Artistic/pleasant layout
-In general I would have liked a lot of the images to be bigger.
-There are some page layouts that are truly perplexing. For example, there’s a page with two shots of Anor Londo, but as near as I can tell, the lower image is literally the same image as above, except it’s more zoomed in on the entrance.
Full pages of art?
-There’s full page “Key Art” for the first 30 pages, which are pretty cool.
Quality of the art
-I actually think the art itself is very pleasing and good, but it’s presented so dang small. For example, there are some really cool images of the Kiln, but it’s about three inches wide. It’s just so small it’s hard to appreciate.
Anything else about the book like the cover, binding, feel, etc.
-The hardcover has a cool design, but it almost looks like the border is a sticker.
NOSTALGIA/AFFINITY EVOKED FOR THE GAME
-For me, the nostalgia was mostly due to how good Dark Souls is as a game and not necessarily due to the artbook itself.
-I think the interview at the end of the book is likely to evoke nostalgia because they discuss the feel of playing and experiencing the game.
BACKSTAGE
-In the interview Miyazaki talks about how he’s vague with his instructions in order to help the designers use their imagination and their own skills. For example, he might tell an artist to design a sword that looks like that something that you’d entrust your life to and feel close to.
-The interview has other interesting insights, such as how Miyazaki instructed each artist to work on an entire area of the game and everything in it, rather than having them work solely on weapons or monsters. I think that’s probably why the game feels so cohesive.
-The interview involves Miyazaki and four other designers, and though Miyazaki is responding to the majority of the questions, you get a sense for the camaraderie between the team and how Miyazaki’s approach and personality really seem to have created a work environment where the designers felt valued and that they could be creative. He’s reassuring and has confidence in them. For example, Miyazaki says he let someone rename Nito because the artist was new and Miyazaki wanted him to know his opinion was valued. This stands in stark contrast to the notion of a bunch of executives in a conference room deciding what should be in a game.
There are 17 book reviews in Season 1 of my series “Mike’s Video Game Art Book Reviews.” I hope you enjoy them!
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