Many Soulsborne games developed by FromSoftware have featured a great number of sidequests, and sadly, some of those would be better off left incomplete. A sidequest could seem to be going well, but a cruel twist at the end can leave things worse than they began. It’s especially bad when it involves an NPC that the player has taken a liking to, making the bad ending even worse.
In Soulsborne titles, the world is typically a rather miserable place to live. It’s only natural that upon finding a friendly NPC, players would want to help them. Even though some, such as Elden Ring‘s Loathsome Dung Eater don’t deserve the player’s help, most seem nice enough that the player likely wouldn’t mind lending a hand. However, Soulsborne worlds are often cruel, and several NPCs can end up worse off than they started if the player sees their storyline to completion. As a result, some of their stories are best left abandoned after a certain point.
A few very prominent examples of these types of sidequests can easily be chosen from these games, and held up as an example of this trend. While there are a few Soulsborne characters who do manage to reach a happy ending, others do not have such luck if the player follows their full questline Players would be wise to know which characters to stop helping for their own good.
Players Should Not Buy All Of Reah’s Miracles In Dark Souls
At first glance, Reah from Dark Souls doesn’t seem like anything special, and one wouldn’t mistake her for Dark Souls‘ most tragic character. She’s one of a group of Way of White followers that the player meets fairly early in the game, and the player would likely not expect much from her since she wasn’t even the first member of that group that they were introduced to. However, after she is betrayed and loses all of her fellow followers, the player can rescue her and convince her to move to the Undead Parish, where she will sell miracles.
Reah is a pleasant person to be around, and she is always happy when the player pays her a visit after her rescue. She’s certainly much more pleasant than recurring Souls game backstabber Patches, at any rate. However, if the player buys all of her miracles, then Reah will be kidnapped, and the player will not see her again until reaching the Duke’s Archives, where she has been imprisoned and has tragically become a Hollow, forcing the player to kill her.
Reah is one of the most pleasant people that the Chosen Undead will encounter in Dark Souls, and it is sad for her story to end in such a way. However, this fate is thankfully easy to avoid. After saving her from Petrus, the player can simply never buy Reah’s entire stock of miracles, and she will be able to live peacefully.
Don’t Let Solaire Of Astora Complete His Mission In Dark Souls
Solaire of Astora is easily the most iconic Dark Souls character. He has become a mascot for the series, and many players have adopted “Praise the sun!” as a catchphrase in his honor. There is even a Dark Souls watch in Solaire’s honor as proof of his status. It’s well-known that at a certain point, the player has to take a certain path to save Solaire from Sunlight Maggots. However, there is a second painful fate that the player must take action to rescue him from as well.
Solaire is a good-hearted knight who has a desire to find his own personal sun, whatever that may mean. He can also assist the player in several boss fights during the game, including the final boss. However, although the player would probably want to bring a loyal ally like Solaire into the final battle, that will conclude his story in a most unfortunate way. Upon defeating Gwyn, Solaire will link the flame in his own world. However, this will cause him to perpetually burn until someone takes his place. Although linking the flame is Dark Souls‘ good ending, it sounds like a terrible fate. Not to mention, it will only prolong the land’s current age of suffering. In reaching this goal, Solaire only harms himself as well as the world.
Players will naturally cheer for Solaire in his quest, but it’s better if he never achieves his goal. Solaire may be disappointed, but he can continue to be the lovable, helpful knight wandering across Lordran that players quickly came to love. As one of the Dark Souls world’s bigger heroes, he deserves better than a burning fate.
Never Speak To The Young Girl In Central Yharnam In Bloodborne
Bloodborne is a bleak game, even by Soulsborne standards. The player will spend their time in Yharnam fighting nightmarish creatures as they navigate the cursed town. With Yharnam being such an awful place to live, and with Bloodborne featuring FromSoftware’s most nightmarish bosses, a child requesting the player’s help feels like a natural request to accept. However, the player will come to regret this decision if they accept it.
The player can interact with one of the windows in Central Yharnam in order to speak to a little girl whose parents are missing. Her father is Father Gascoigne, a Hunter who lost his sanity as well as one of the game’s mandatory boss fights, and her mother went searching for him after he went missing. If the player speaks to her, she will ask them to find their mother, at which point there are no good endings. The player can kill Father Gascoigne and take the mother’s brooch from him, and the young girl will even give you a music box that makes Bloodborne‘s Father Gascoigne boss fight easier. Giving it to the girl will cause her to cry and run away, eventually leading to her death in the sewers. Telling her to seek shelter in the chapel only leads to the same fate. The only other option is to send her to Iosefka’s clinic, which at that point has been taken over by an impostor and will lead to the girl being experimented on and turned into a monster to be killed by the player.
To make matters worse, after the nameless girl disappears, her older sister will question the player about her whereabouts. If she discovers the truth, then she is crushed by what has happened, and later turns up dead as well. Tragically, the only way to prevent this family’s sad end is for the player to never talk to them at all. With no Bloodborne projects seemingly in development, it seems that players do not yet have to worry about facing a similar painful chain of events in the near future.
Sekiro’s Jinzaemon Kumano Will Follow A Song To His Doom
Unlike many of the warriors that Wolf encounters over the course of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Jinzaemon Kumano is a good man with a sense of honor. Although he has an odd obsession with a song that he hears, he still comes off as quite affable. Unfortunately, following this song will lead to his doom.
The song that Kumano hears is the one played by O’Rin of the Water, an optional Sekiro boss. After Kumano has been spoken to, he will begin seeking her out, ultimately finding her. However, O’Rin will still be hostile to the player, forcing her to fight them. After the player defeats O’Rin, Kumano will die as well. Considering that some believe Sekiro needs an easy mode due to the game’s difficulty, it’s painful when the end of a boss fight feels like a punishment. There is another route to his sidequest, but it involves betraying the Kumano and tricking him into becoming trapped in the Abandoned Dungeon, where he will be imprisoned and turned into an enemy.
Kumano’s quest is even harsher than most, because there are multiple triggers in the game that can cause him to become aggressive and force him to fight the player if they are activated. As a result, even players trying to keep Kumano alive can get him killed by accident. The only silver lining is that if he does meet O’Rin, she will personally play him a song before he dies, so that may be his happiest end.
Elden Ring’s Sellen Meets An Awful End After Her Final Battle
When the player first meets Sellen, she is imprisoned in Elden Ring‘s Witchbane Ruins, although the player has the chance to free her. Although Sellen has crimes in her past that led to her imprisonment, she treats the protagonist rather well and is grateful for their help. At the end of her questline, the player can either side with her, or fight against her. Unfortunately, both choices hold a bad ending for Sellen.
If the player sides against Sellen, then they have to fight her, leading her to be betrayed and killed by her own apprentice. However, this may actually be kinder than the alternative. If Sellen succeeds, she will gladly bid the player farewell and tell them that they can return to learn from her whenever they wish. However, when they return to Raya Lucaria Academy, they will discover that Selen has been turned into a School of Graven Mages, a sentient ball of stone masks. It is a cruel twist to Sellen’s previously happy ending in Elden Ring. In her new form she can barely speak a sentence, and seems to be suffering. However, as she is in an area where the player is incapable of attacking, they tragically cannot even offer her a mercy kill.
The best hope for Sellen is for the player to either never finish her quest, or end it prematurely. That way Sellen can retain her current state, and perhaps she may even continue to mentor the Tarnished in magic in some way after the game’s end. It is a fairly anticlimactic method, but it also keeps Sellen alive and not in a horribly transformed state. Rather than siding with Jerran or Sellen in Elden Ring, the only way to save the witch’s life is to make sure the fight doesn’t happen. It may not be a confirmed good ending for her, but it’s better that what she gets otherwise.
The worlds of Soulsborne games are not great places to be, and most characters can only manage to survive at best. It’s especially sad when characters meet bad endings when the player is only trying to help them. Players of FromSoftware games should be careful when they meet any of these particular NPCs. Remember that it’s okay to help them a little, but fulfilling their goals will only make things worse for them.
