Demon's Souls, the recently remade action-RPG from Bluepoint Games, is set in the Kingdom of Boletaria. Once a wealthy and powerful nation, Boletaria was consumed by the Deep Fog after angering the mysterious Old One. However, Boletaria isn't a static game-world, and the actions of Demon's Souls' players can have a dramatic effect on it.
While many games these days have a morality system, Demon's Souls' World Tendency approaches things very differently. The world begins neutral at the beginning of the game, but can shift toward White or Black depending on the players' actions.
Understanding World Tendency
The Demon's Souls' campaign is divided into Archstone regions, each of which has a separate World Tendency. These can be checked at any time from the Tendency tab in the Main Menu. There are seven different World Tendency stages:
- Pure White
- White
- Neutral White
- Neutral
- Neutral Black
- Black
- Pure Black
The different Tendencies have unique effects depending on which region the player is in, but there are some general trends between them. For example, White World Tendencies always have weaker enemies, and buffs for the player. On the other hand, Black World Tendencies strengthen enemies and debuff the player. To give players a reason to want to be in Black, drop-rates of items and Souls are also greatly increased. Players will also need to use World Tendency to collect all of Demon's Souls' Ceramic Coins.
Altering World Tendency
Once players know which World Tendency they'd like to shift a region towards, they'll need to know how to do it. Fortunately, getting started in altering the Tendency of a region is fairly straightforward. When entering a new region, players really only have two options that alter World Tendency: Defeating one of Demon's Souls' powerful bosses will shift the region toward White, while dying in Human Form will shift it toward black.
Once the Tendency has been shifted enough in either direction, a special NPC will spawn. This NPC will not only have special items and interactions, but will also massively shift the Tendency back in the other direction if defeated. While most of these NPCs are unique for each region, the Primeval Demon special boss will always appear before Black Tendency. This gives players a chance to move back toward White Tendency by defeating it. The unique NPCs that appear at the highest stage of White Tendency also appear at the highest stage of Black Tendency, but in a Black Phantom form. Black Phantoms are always hostile, and are some of the toughest enemies in the game.
Demon's Souls is out now, exclusively for the PlayStation 5.