Summary
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The first NPC you meet in Dark Souls is Oscar, a brave knight who dies saving us, giving us an Estus Flask in his final moments.
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His original search was much longer. He would have escaped with us and essentially become our Pokemon rival.
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He would choose the primordial snake opposite us and we will have to fight him at the very end of the game to become the true Chosen Undead (ie Pokemon champion).
The entire Dark Souls series started with us in a filthy cell, waiting to be rescued by a knight in shining armor, AKA Oscar of Astoria. He drops off a corpse with a key in its pocket for us to loot, allowing us to escape our shackles and finally escape the Undead Asylum. But as we navigate the dank, ruined hallways to the exit, he's slammed into the ceiling.
When we meet Oscar again, slumped over a pile of rubble, he is too weak to continue. So we alone are plucked by a giant crow and taken to Lordran, leaving it behind to empty. But Oscar's story was once much longer – and eerily reminiscent of a Pokemon rival.
Choose your Starter! The primordial serpent, or the primordial serpent?
Oscar would have somehow escaped the Undead Asylum with us, as he initially had unique dialogue when we rang both the Awakening Bells and summoning signs in Darkroot Garden and Anor Londo.
You can find the Elite Knight armor in the Darkroot Garden in the release version, which even references Oscar as the wearer.
Unlike Solaire and Siegmeyer, who have their own stories that we happen to help along with, Oscar would always be in direct opposition to ours.
After acquiring the Vessel Lord, you can either side with Frampt, who wants to continue the Age of Fire, or Kaathe, who wants to see you rise as a Dark Lord. These mysterious Primordial Serpents would essentially function as Pokemon Starters, albeit much later in the game than usual. Whoever we chose, our rival would choose the opposite.
The Elite Four (Lord Souls)
“I've been waiting for you…mad slave of the gods and pawn of Frampt, I will kill you…and become the true Lord of Darkness,” Oscar says as you enter the Furnace of the First Flame, ready to finally challenge him on Gwyn and throw yourself into the ashes as kindling.
It reminds me of Pokemon's first rival, which we challenge after facing the Elite Four to become Champion. Similarly, in Dark Souls, we face four lords – Bed of Chaos, Seath, the Four Kings, and Nito – before we can open the ancient and ornate door beneath the Firelink Shrine.
In FromSoftware's original plan for Oscar, he would have served as the penultimate battle, and his defeat would cement us as the true Undead Chosen, meaning Champion. Oscar was our Blue, only his story was much more tragic.
FromSoftware should revisit the idea
The idea of a rival knight following a different path than us is a fascinating one. Soul games, even Elden Ring, are about cycles and give us a chance to continue the reign of the gods or chart a new path. But it's often a quiet and lonely journey, and no one, other than the fleeting ghosts of the real players, has as much influence as we do.
Except for Oscar. He helped us escape from the Undead Asylum, where he had first ventured on the trail of a false and deceptive prophecy. He want to be the chosen undead just as we did, ringing the bells, following in the footsteps of Artorias, braving Sen's Citadel, venturing to Anor Londo, and even meeting the Primordial Serpents. But only one of us can fill that role.
Unless you subscribe to the theory that Solas linked the fire.
Watching the one he saved in the Undead Asylum grow in power by the day, rising to such mythic status, gnaws at him inside. It crushed his will until he was unable to avoid the undead curse, hollowing out right before our eyes, until he desperately attacked us on the last leg of our journey. It's a hauntingly beautiful ending that makes that final moment, when we decide what the future of this world should be, that much more impactful. To get here, we had to step over the corpse of a dear friend, the one who saved us so long ago.
It's brilliantly based on Ostrava's own quest from Demon's Souls, but strangely FromSoftware hasn't revisited the idea since. For a studio that likes to tell such cryptic stories, where you often find yourself standing at the final fog gate, unsure of why you're there, having that more intimate rivalry as your motivation would have brought it all together perfectly. I just hope Oscar's spirit lives on in whatever FromSoftware does next.
