I missed a lot of content on my first blind playthrough of Dark Souls. Is this normal?

Question

I just finished Dark Souls 1 for the first time. In the end, I have understood little to no aspects of the story, so I went and watched YouTube videos about it.The video was going through all the interactions and communications that were possible throughout the game, and I found out that I didn't have most of them!

I was actually very patient throughout my playthrough, I talked with all the characters and NPCs that I could find, the only problem is, I couldn't find most of them. Either I was unfocused, or they just weren't thereI didn't meet Shiva, Quelana, and even one of the most important NPCs throughout the game, Kaathe. He just wasn't there. I rested at the bonfire in The Abyss, then I warped out, so I never met him. I didn't meet Siegmeyer's daughter after the Duke's Archive.

Even most of the important places I haven't gone to, such as The Painted World, or Ash Lake, for example.

It's worth noting that I was hollow for the most of the playthrough, and I played completely blind, without watching any videos until I finished my playthrough.

The question simply is: is missing content on your first Dark Souls playthrough normal, or did I do something wrong?

Answer 1

did I do something wrong?

Did you have fun? If yes, the playthrough was fine. Despite their very interesting lore and worldbuilding, Soulsbornes aren't really known for their outstanding storytelling, and most of what you learn about the world is through item descriptions.

Is this normal?

I wouldn't say it's typical, especially considering the difficulty the game offers incentivizes you to look at a wiki. My first soulsborne was Elden Ring, and I would have missed pretty much all NPC dialogue due to the conditions for them being incredibly obtuse with the absence of a quest log, were it not for my coop partner helping me with it.

Answer 2

Missing content on your first playthrough of any of the FromSoftware "Souls" games is so normal it's essentially a meme. Across all of the FromSoftware "Souls" games, which includes Sekiro, Elden Ring, and Bloodborne, there is always a lot of content hidden behind obscure requirements.

The questline for Solaire of Astora from Dark Souls 1 is a good example of this. To fully complete his questline, you need to open a shortcut to Lost Izalith. Opening this shortcut requires you to join a specific covenant, Chaos Servant. To join this covenant, you need to talk to an NPC hidden behind an illusionary wall found after beating Chaos Witch Quelaag. Additionally, you can't even understand what this NPC is saying (but can still join by blindly saying "Yes" to her '...?' prompt), without first finding the Old Witch's Ring, but you can only get the ring by either choosing it as a starting gift or by trading a specific item (which you can only find after joining the Chaos Covenant) with Snuggly the Crow (and performing a trade with the Crow requires you to drop an item, then reload the area, which is something I don't think is ever explained in-game). Oh, and did I mention that ring has no indication in its description it'll actually let you talk to the aforementioned NPC, and the in-game description describes the ring as useless? Also, you need to be level 2 of the Chaos Servant covenant, which requires feeding the aforementioned NPC 30 humanities, which isn't exactly a small amount.

Confused at all? Did I mention that's just what you need to do for one part of his quest, near the end, and that even then I left some things out?

The point being, there's no shame at all in missing content in Souls games. It's clear at this point that FromSoftware has no issues with players missing content, and is intentionally hiding content behind obscure requirements. So no, you didn't do anything wrong, and most players who went through the game blind as you did missed content.