Souls-like games have a well-earned reputation for the memorable gaming experience they provide. Players dive in expecting punishing difficulty, haunting visuals, and immersive storytelling that unfolds slowly, sometimes painfully, through cryptic item descriptions and scattered dialogue. Genre titles like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring don’t just require players to survive. They ask players to interpret as they progress. Bringing such games to life in other languages, therefore, means navigating ambiguity, preserving lore, and delivering just enough clarity to guide players without ruining the mystery. Here’s how expert localization teams meet that challenge.
Ambiguity as a Feature, Not a Flaw
The tone of a souls-like game is as important as its gameplay mechanics. These titles are often dark, ominous, and atmospheric, with sparse dialogue that carries significant weight.
Players expect the environment to tell much of the story, and localization teams need to furnish that environment for a target language and culture(s) in a way that avoids either over-explaining or simplifying it. Again, souls-like games thrive on a slow burn. Because players are expected to piece things together, feel lost, and gradually make sense of what’s happening, game translations must protect that ambiguity—including those elements that are meant to be mysterious so that players can draw their own conclusions.
In Dark Souls, for instance, a single item description might reveal the tragic backstory of a fallen kingdom, or hint at the motivations of a powerful adversary. Misrepresenting the subtlety of these descriptions can lead to unintended changes in tone, misinterpretations by players, and an overall detraction from the players’ immersive experience.
Lore-Rich Storytelling, Fragmented and Sacred
In souls-like games, lore lives in fragments. It hides in worn blades, cryptic messages, and half-finished conversations. From cryptic lore delivered through item descriptions to NPC dialogues and environmental cues, nothing is handed to the player. They must uncover lore one clue at a time.
This storytelling style makes a souls-like game’s localization process uniquely complex. A mistranslation can shift the meaning of an entire storyline. Translators must pay close attention to every piece of in-game text to ensure it aligns with the game’s broader narrative structure, all while keeping the mystery intact. This massive responsibility is why localization teams build extensive glossaries and lore databases, so they can track terms across characters, kingdoms, and legendary items.
A name like “Ashen One” (Dark Souls III), for example, or “Great Rune” (Elden Ring) isn’t just flavor text—it anchors a whole universe. So, it must be accurate and resonate emotionally across languages.
The Role of Subtle Hints for Player Guidance
Souls-like games are famous for their lack of direction. Tutorials are vague. Instructions are sparse. Players are left to explore, fail, and figure things out on their own.
That minimalism applies to language, too. Gameplay hints often come disguised as poetic phrases or item descriptions. Again, translators must preserve the mystery of these subtle hints while ensuring that vital information doesn’t get lost in translation.
In Bloodborne, for example, a chalice might contain a hidden gameplay tip inside a piece of lore. If the translation is too subtle, it risks players missing essential guidance. If it’s too blunt, the entire sense of mystery is gone. A localization team’s goal, therefore, must be balance: staying true to the voice, while still helping the player move forward.
Lore Consistency Builds Trust
Souls-like fans are phenomenal observers. They notice everything. They care about details. Therefore, they expect continuity in lore, terminology, and even stylistic choices, particularly for recurring symbols or names. As the genre’s franchises grow, maintaining consistency across their games becomes increasingly important.
With a fanbase this devoted, even minor inconsistencies across game versions can spark intensely critical discussions among community members, which reinforces the need for terminology and continuity among localization team members. These expert translators, therefore, are keen to revisit old translations and align their own work with internal glossaries to keep new versions of the world coherent and consistent. Accuracy is important—and so is honoring the connection players have established with a franchise across dozens and, eventually, hundreds of hours of play.
The Takeaway
Localizing souls-like titles means maintaining the mystery and mood of the games, while also protecting the trust that is established between creators and players. Souls-like game developers did not design their creations to hold players’ hands, so neither should their games’ translations.
An effectively localized game lets players explore, wonder, and struggle—just as the developers intended. In these worlds, meaning is something you earn. Good translators help bring these enigmatic worlds to life through a careful balance of clarity and ambiguity, thus allowing players to lose themselves in the game, one cryptic message at a time.
