The Mastery Loop and Time Loop

Starting in the 1980’s, the young medium of video games and the aging medium of film began to cross pollinate, contributing to each other’s form in bigger and bigger ways. It is no stretch of the imagination to say that without the films of John Carpenter (The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, They Live), James Cameron (The Terminator, Aliens), and Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead) the entire landscape of gaming in the 90’s would be unrecognizable (the creators of Mortal Kombat, Metroid, Duke Nukem, and Metal Gear have all admitted to borrowing ideas hand over fist from these filmmakers).

With that being said, it doesn’t seem too strange to think that Groundhog Dayand other movies from that era of filmmaking may have had some influence on the most important game of the 2010’s: From Software’s Dark Souls. The connection between Groundhog Day, Dark Souls, and the veritable pool of fantasy films that spawned from the 80’s might seem tenuous or even flat-out nonexistent—but spiritually these things are kindred souls.

They are about characters who, through sheer force of will, are able to overcome incredible challenges. In Alien, Ellen Ripley had to defeat a vicious Xenomorph, so a decade later Samus Aran had to fight unrelenting space pirates, and when They Live’s John Nada had to expose an Alien conspiracy, so too did Duke Nukem who in turn stole Nada’s looks and catchphrase… so what did Groundhog Day add to the formula, and how did that same formula by means of emulation and osmosis end up in Dark Souls?

From a certain viewpoint, Groundhog Day contains the quintessence of life in its plot. It centers on a vain, arrogant and downright devious weatherman named Phil (played pitch perfectly by a sly and sardonic Bill Murray) who must begin his pilgrimage to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to report on the annual ground hog day celebration. With Phil is a sweet woman named Rita, and his long-suffering cameraman; Larry. Murray doesn’t resort to shouting or theatrics to show us what a perfect bastard Phil is; he instead shows his true face in smaller subtle ways. One way or another, jabs and putdowns always slither out of mouth. “Come on, all the long-distance lines are down? What about the satellite? Is it snowing in space?

Don’t you have some kind of a line that you keep open for emergencies or for celebrities? I’m both. I’m a celebrity in an emergency” Ironically for Phil, a dark cloud hangs over him and he’s really not even aware of how miserable he is—Until he enters Punxsutawney and begins his transformation. Upon performing his duties, Phil attempts to escape back into his cozy old life before a deus ex machina keeps him in town—a violent snow storm. It is at this point that the story takes a Souls-esque turn; as Phil awakens the next day and realizes that despite the events of yesterday he is still back on Feb 2; Groundhog Day.

No matter his actions, he is forced to repeat February 2^ndindefinitely while the rest of the town lives in blissful ignorance of what’s going on—like a vinyl record they’re always stuck on their set grooves while Phil moves as the only free agent. This is not only where Groundhog Day begins to move towards Dark Souls but also where it diverges from films of the past. John Carpenter’s Jack Burton could always outmaneuver the challenges he faced; James Cameron’s Sarah Connor always stopped Judgement Day, and across three films Ash Williams always defeated the Deadites (even if he lost a limb or two)—but all of that changes for Phil Connors—he is for all intents and proposes, trapped in his world. For a man that always seems to have a witty comeback, Phil cannot trump Groundhog Day but instead must submit to his invisible captor. He doesn’t outsmart anyone or anything other than himself.

It is with this flourish that director Harold Ramis plucked Phil Connors out of the realm of the genres of the past and put him into a timeless parable for our material age. Even Phil’s love interest Rita, isn’t a prize at the end of the journey—he himself is the only obstacle in the way of their relationship. That is the challenge he faces. “I think you’re the kindest, sweetest, prettiest person I’ve ever met in my life. I’ve never seen anyone that’s nicer to people than you are. The first time I saw you… something happened to me. I never told you but… I knew that I wanted to hold you as hard as I could. I don’t deserve someone like you. 

But if I ever could, I swear I would love you for the rest of my life” The film spoke, but its deeper philosophical nature went unnoticed until years later, with Roger Ebert going so far as to say, “Groundhog Day is a film that finds its note and purpose so precisely that its genius may not be immediately noticeable… you have to stand back and slap yourself before you see how good it really is” But did Hollywood really embrace the Groundhog Daystructure? Its progenitors are with us in the form of movies like Edge of Tomorrow, Source Code, Run Lola Run, but perhaps video games may be the better vessel for parables about repeating mistakes over and over again until we reach a sort of xen state. It is impossible to measure the impact of Dark Souls or what exactly influenced it.

We can say with certainty however that as the movies of the 1990’s began to remix the characters and ideas of the 1980’s so too did Souls take what we expected from Video Games and morphed it into something completely different. It is ironic that at one-point Phil calls himself the god of Punxsutawney, because Dark Souls is essentially about becoming god—by killing the old one. Mechanics: You are an Undead; a cursed being that is sent to dwell in the Undead Asylum until the end of days.

But like Bill Murray, your set route in life is diverted down a strange path. A dying knight calls you chosen and tells you that you should begin your pilgrimage to Lordran—a once great land that is now rotten with age. Using what is perhaps the best fighting system in games, you use your joysticks to lock on to targets, dodge roll away, and every other button is just a means to dispose of your opponents.

With nothing to your name but the clothes on your back and a terrible starting weapon, you must best your way to Lord Gwyn and decide if you will continue his age of fire, or kick start an age of dark—where men forget their gods and move on. This task would prove impossible for any human, but luckily as an undead you have been gifted immortality. Despite your frailty and the fact that your skin is rotting off, every time you die you awaken at the nearest bonfire, what is essentially a checkpoint in between all the madness of Lordran where you can rest. As your morose but honest fellow traveler tells you:

“Oh, your face! You’re practically Hollow. But who knows, going Hollow could solve quite a bit! Hah hah hah hah…”

Being undead also grants you the ability to collect souls, level up, and revert back to your human state allowing you to summon friendly NPC phantoms—all of which is put in place to help you complete your pilgrimage. You are essentially free to besiege every castle, enemy, and boss encounter an infinite amount of times until you get it right—much like a certain weatherman.

Dynamics: It felt almost like destiny when I bought Dark Souls from my local thrift store. It seemed almost barely used, as if the person before me maybe had given up a long time ago. I awoke in the Undead Asylum as a pale skinned, red headed, thin little creature. It was as I started playing that I knew that for some reason—I had to keep going. Like Phil, there was no going back. This was the hardest game I had played since Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, but unlike that NES rainbow drenched fever dream… this was a battle I had to finish. But why persevere? There was one point where a certain boss stabbed me to death over thirty times in a row, each time my willpower did not fade but grew. As Jack Burton had said: I can take it.

Aesthetics: As my long-suffering companion: Solaire and I plunged our swords deep into Lord Gwyn’s gut; sending him back to the mud, I could feel something I hadn’t felt since I was a kid playing videogames—satisfaction. Why don’t all games carry with them that innate feeling of elation over a victory? It is notable that in most video games you are fighting against the agent of change, the cancerous thing that pervades an otherwise peaceful world—the ape that steals the girlfriend, the wizard who conquers the kingdom, the pigs who steal the eggs, but in Dark Souls you are the change. It makes you feel the wonder of Discovery and the satisfaction of Challenge, but from a completely different vantage point. Dark Souls defies the limits of the MDA framework, all eight aesthetics make appearances but in unconventional ways. You experience Fellowship but are forced to not only be alone most of the game but also watch as most of your fellow adventures die or lose their minds. There is a strong Narrative here, but it is hidden and transitory, for most of the game all you have to go on is hearsay, as your first friend tells you:

“There are actually two Bells of Awakening. One’s up above, in the Undead Church. The other is far, far below in the ruins at the base of Blighttown. Ring them both, and something happens… Brilliant, right? Not much to go on, but I have a feeling that won’t stop you.”

All of which supports the idea that Dark Souls took what its forerunners did and inverted it—by making it more of a repeated cycle. After fighting against the environment for a long enough time, the chosen undead becomes his environment—and I think Phil Conner’s last words are key here “Let’s live here together”—in other words let’s not treat our world as a prison but rather as a paradise.

The thing that separates works like Groundhog Day and Dark Soulsapart from their predecessors, is that they don’t expect perfection from their protagonists (and players)—just perseverance. As a beloved teacher once told me “Just be the best you that you can be”. In the end Phil didn’t save Punxsutawney, and the Chosen Undead didn’t really save Lordran—what they did was finish a very long cycle, that spins upward towards some sort of redemption. It is the moment Phil’s day ends, the moment Truman Burbank steps through that stage, when Humphrey Bogart sends Ingrid Bergman off on that plane, and honestly, none of us knows what lies beyond that point.

Some of my references if anyone is especially curious: 3:29 is where the designer of Meroid admits the Alien influence https://youtu.be/EnXPLhf91rM And here is where you can see Mortal Kombat designers talk about how much they took from Big Trouble in Little China. http://mentalfloss.com/article/62727/15-things-you-might-not-know-about-mortal-kombat  Here is where you can read about how Solid Snake is a direct homage to Snake Plissken from John Carpenter’s Escape From New York https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Plissken  And for the biggest and most blatant influence

https://youtu.be/Wp_K8prLfso   featured image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Time-Travel.jpg