Dark Souls - Editorial @ Fextralife

A new site by the name of Fextralife has posted a new Editorial for Dark Souls.

"And with Fire, came Disparity… heat and cold… life and death… and of course, light and dark".

This is one of the opening lines to the dark fantasy game Dark Souls, and foreshadows it’s central theme of conflicting elemental forces of the world., that of the dual-nature and clash between Fire and Dark-or, rather, the races inherently tied to each of these elements, the ’Gods’ (Fire) and the Humans (Dark). During my first playthrough of Dark Souls, I was intrigued by the game mechanic and item named ’humanity’, which was, by its very name, obviously linked to humans and what it means to be human. This begs the question, though, as to what exactly is humanity, what is the nature of it, and thus what is the setting saying is the essential nature of humans? And what is the difference between humanity, that which defines us as human, and the soul, that which defines us as alive?