Half the reason I gravitate to souls games is for the near total absence of modern storytelling. No one is constantly talking to themselves. There’s no girl boss imperative warping every piece of the narrative. There’s no quippy, Whedon-tier dialogue making me want to swallow a gun barrel. Just thick atmosphere and environmental storytelling punctuated by rare and succinct cutscenes. Everything errs on the side of too little explanation, which feels like a breath of fresh air in the era of over-explained garbage. Playing a souls game in today’s video game climate is like turning off the tinnitus you didn’t know you had.