Dark Souls: Almost finished and New Thoughts

Hey everyone, sorry for such a long delay on dark souls. But well, now that I am more than 100 hours in the game and I understand the world, the lore and the mechanics much better, it has been fun, really. Infact, I feel that for me to pick up another game which is not so hard and interesting is actually very difficult, it gave me a new perspective about gaming in general and myself as a person. I am still to clear Tomb of the Giants and Lost Izalith but I am waiting for my Microsoft points to arrive, so that I can go and clear Artorias of the Abyss before beating the game..

So, what do I think?
Well to be honest, I do not think now that Dark Souls is as difficult as people are crying out (some of them). It is difficult because there are many things you do not know about the world... In this case not knowing is the scary part. Once you figure out what is the deal with some particular boss or you change your equipment based on the understanding you have developed while dying and equip yourself with the right weapons, learn the kicking, parrying, back-stab and other stats like equip load, etc. you can clear the areas. So it all comes down to learning... This is also the first game, in which I realized dying is NOT FAILURE. Dying is education, accepting that you did something wrong, you got impatient, you got greedy (for getting more shots at the boss when you should have rolled back) and then building up the courage to go in for the battle one more time to claim the honor of defeating that boss. So, dying is the core mechanic. Really Smough and Orenstein, I struggled  with them over two weeks. It was so chaotic, but when I killed them, I felt so good. I understood so many things in between and when I killed them I screamed that yes I did that...:D. When I moved to Lost Izalith and killed centipede demon and demon firesage in a row, I realised that now I understand the game, I know how this thing works.. and it was the proudest moment during the whole game, trust me when you kill two bosses in a row you will feel the same :). Also, in no other game I felt two handing a weapon, and upgrading a weapon matters so much, really when you see the increased hit points after you upgraded your weapons, it is a satisfying feeling. The thought that after you kill the boss or beat the area, there is a story or an amazing lore you will have access to and you will be DENIED that privilege if you cannot clear this now kept me pushing. CURIOSITY is a good motivator. 

Balancing the Life
This part of my post, many might disagree and I am ok with that, but playing dark souls had effect on my time schedule too. For example, I played other rpgs before like Fallout 3, or even the action games but you know when you start playing, you loose track of time and may be sometime playing for 7-8 hours in a row may be the whole weekend and feel like shit the next day, may be guilty too that you didnt do other stuff or studied as much as you should have. It happened with me too.. But then I looked back on this, I realized that this is happening because I kept telling myself "ok ! I will play for half an hour and then get back to work." and this statement was completely wrong, because Dark Souls is not a game which you play for half an hour, because nothing will happen in a rush, you will die and get frustrated and it is just a waste of time. Instead, I told myself "OK! from 8 to 10 in the night I am going to play, or I will stop playing after I reach this bonfire or kill the boss in this area." Accepting this routine, for playing had a huge impact on my game play, I realized, I do not have to feel guilty I do not need to rush and when I put down my controller after reaching my objective for the day, I was very happy and proud and more focused later on. Also, after 2 hours you get tired and start dying so that is bad too...

Skyrim Vs Dark Souls

Source: http://wheresmysammich.com

Well this I am just putting because , I saw so many people comparing Skyrim and Dark Souls, and I do not see why? Just because there are dragons in both games ? I do not get it, why they have to compare? Initially I was motivated to play Skyrim too and so far I have not and I do not think I am going to play it now, because DS has raised the standards too high. Tell you what, the dragons in DS, will chew and spit out the ones in skyrim like cute kittens. As far as I know, apparantly you can win the dragons just by shouting and stuff like that (correct me if I am wrong.) But in DS you actually fight the dragon YAY ! Well really guys the two games are different. Skyrim is more for casual players, don't bring down DS to compare with it. I will be disrespectful to the souls series. There is a youtube video where people are comparing. I am sorry to say this guy who is favoring Skyrim got on my nerves and I stopped watching.

Thoughts on Dark Souls 2
As like many others, I am also worried and really excited for the new DS game. And sad because the man himself Hidetaka Miyazaki is no more the director. There are many speculations on how the souls series will be in the hands of a new director, what is the plot going to be etc, specially by EpicNameBro and HunterStarcraft, specially after the EDGE article being published. So yes, you can check that out. They tell things in a much better manner and there has been plenty of discussions so I wont re-iterate them here again.

But, I share the concerns, when the publishers try to make a game "more available" to the everyone, about the things they do, make it easier, story driven, mystery of the world is lost and so many bad things happen just for the sake of money :( .

Also, I will like to mention EPICNameBro and HunterStarcraft, who have uploaded amazing walkthrough videos with very interesting commentary, which helped me a lot during difficult times :)

So, ya as soon as I get my microsoft points, I will beat Artorias of the Abyss and then go to the Kiln of the First Flame. I am not sure how I feel about the NG+, or starting a new character may be a sorcerer, we will see. Also I killed Andre of Astorias by mistake, felt pretty bad about it. :( well what can I do I am only human. mistakes happen... :)

Probabilistic Brain: Are we really thinking?

So, we hear this phrase all the time.. "I am thinking"or "I am thinking, if I should go to this place/ buy this coat/ eat at that restaurant and so on and so forth. We are thinking, even when we think that we are not thinking.. Wow that was good. We cannot switch off our brains for a moment, it is always doing something.

So, the question naturally arises, what is THINKING? What are we thinking about and most importantly why are we thinking ? Now, if one defines thinking as a a process which effect our decisions? Probably to an inquisitive mind the question might come, What kind of decisions we tend to make. If our thinking can influence our decisions and our actions, our lives are always deterministic. And if it is deterministic, can we make a model of our decision making process ?

As it turns out, our decisions are influenced by external factors, factors which we cannot control and thus the expression "Oh! I didn't think, it will turn out like this! ", "Oh! I thought this will work, but damn it doesn't." Thus, making all the UNCERTAINTY around us come to life, and for all intent and purposes makes the world around us interesting. If you THINK about it, how it will be if everything and everyone's actions are deterministic. Well it will kind of suck!

Ok I feel I am going round and round the topic rather than coming to the actual point. What I am trying to ask/ say is that if it is somehow possible to model our thinking our thought patters, which influence a certain decision and use the outcome of the decision as a feedback loop to model our next decision.

Feedback Systems (Source: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be)

Talking about feedback loops, the upper schematic shows a system (a world), in which everyone is just doing stuff, without thinking (also known as an open-loop system). That is not very good I guess :), everyone doing stuff without thinking, the world will go to chaos. Now the second system is important, which I was talking about before FEEDBACK, that I think is everything, you can call it the thought process (well I will say it post-action thoughts), reflection upon your actions or whatever may suit your fancy.

Limbic System (Source: Wikipedia)

Now, it is well known in neuroscience (I would like to quote, as much as I know or based on the information gathered), this feedback mechanisms are generally channeled through our limbic system which also is the reward system of the brain. It is the pleasure center of the brain, which rewards us, when we solve a complicated problem, also the pleasure center, which plays a role in sexual arousal or eating choclates :). (excerpt form wikipedia).

That is all to put the context about the feedback system of the brain, how we make decisions. I feel at this point it is pretty obvious, that we like to do things, which rewards us greatly, in either ways direct or indirect.

Now coming back to the title of the blog, are we really thinking ? Well, I discussed this point with few people and it seemed I kind of convinced them on my view point. But, now I am looking for more. Is it so possible that we can model all the thought processes of the brain, everything it think, every POSSIBLE decision, it is going to take. Some research, is going on in EPFL, Switzerland regrading modelling all the neurons and synapses in the brain, with one huge computer, commonly known as the BLUE BRAIN Project.

What I think, is that our brain is always COMPUTING probabilities, down to the smallest thing as talking to a stranger on the street or taking a shower or eating an ice-cream. It is all the outcome of a complex  probabilistic computation, which happens in seconds and we do not even know it.

ICE-CREAM Shop:
For example, suppose you have not tasted an particular flavor of ice cream and your brain just have the prior information that you love ice-cream. Now, in an ice cream store, how likely it is that you are drawn to your favorite chocolate/ vanilla flavor. You are going to get it, but suddenly another signal in your brain kicks in, saying, "Dude! try something new. There are lots of flavour. You always take the same one." Now, the lady over the counter asks, "Which one? " and what do you say , "Wait! I am THINKING". Aha! what you are doing right now is computing the odds of taking the same ice cream and be satisfied, for which your brain has a high prior knowledge, than to spending 2.50 euros to try something new, which might not suit your taste buds. So, in effect you are doing a quick calculation for a most favorable outcome. In this particular scenario, this decision making gets harder, if you have a limited amount of money. One make choose to avoid risk and take the same flavor of ice cream which he always takes or act otherwise, if someone is a risk taker.

This is a simple case, but I am sure it can be extended to more complicated scenarios. Now, how the more complicated scenarios (say marrying someone) are different from a regular day to day decisions.

Graph Model Source: http://www.delphiforfun.org

 One can look at it as a graph model. Since more often than not, one particular decision will affect directly or indirectly your subsequent actions. The longer the graph, or probably the more interconnected nodes it has the more complicated the decision will be. So, ineffect, we can probably give a numerical value to the complication of a certain matter. For example, in case of marriage or choosing your career, the decision is going to effect so many areas of your life, thus adding more and more nodes, compared to eating an ice-cream which might just be a small graph. Thus, the problems can be separated and probably the brain looks for local information on the other nodes to make this decisions. Thus, we hear the expression, "Oh! it felt right at that moment." and each nodes carry the probabilistic outcome of the decisions made on the previous node. So, in fact it is all a conditional probability problem.

Now, the graphs may be close or open, depending whether the brain can re-evaluate the decisions or re do certain things. Thus, eating an ice cream is an open graph, but if you catch cold, after eating the delicious ice-cream you may re-think your decision next time. I have reasons to believe that more often than not the graphs are closed.

Addictions:
There are some other issues with the above arguments, for example, if doing certain things rewards us then by above logic we should be doing it again and again, then why do we loose interests in certain things, if we do it over a long period of time and start looking for something new, something EXCITING. Well, I don't know, how to fit that in this model, but probably a valid argument may be, if we like doing something we have a SPIKE of excitement, a reward, a tendency to go towards it in search of that spike. but too many spike in too frequent intervals, makes the signal flat and thus nothing more happens and we loose interest. Thus, bringing the increased addiction to drugs like cocaine or marijuana, the users keep looking for that spike. Probably, it is easy to explain with conditional probability models. If we iterate over a loops the same process, if the probability decreases in case of same outcome, and things like that. (I am sorry about the last line, I didn't do the math at this point, it is just a THOUGHT, may be if someone has an idea, you can let me know.)

Surprises:
This can be probably related with the previous paragraph. You may have heard people saying, "Oh! I love surprises!", why one will like surprise. It is not something that they thought is going to happen, neither they planned to do it. And I am sorry to say my friends, "No! you do not like surprises. But you only like surprises which are in favor of you, which give you that spike." Suppose, someone is walking down the street and get hit by a car. That is a surprise too, will he like that... I don't think so. Suppose, he finds a 20 dollar bill, How about that? Ofcourse, it will be fun to get money lying in the ground.

I believe, the graphs for the surprises can not be modeled in the regular decision making graphs, for obvious reason that it is not  your decision.

Also, one quick trivia, that human beings are the only creatures, who are aware of their demise, which I think is the biggest prior in all our decisions. The decision, which makes survival possible is more often than nor the best one. Interested readers, can read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins, which explain the effects of altruism and other similar things on survival.

Well, I can go on and on about it, but I think you get my point. We are all programs and this is a matrix. Everything can be computed and modeled. The question that remains, How can we model them? How can we have a probabilistic model of the workings of a brain. How the decision weights be assigned to certain outcomes based on their probable consequences and most importantly, Are our brains smart enough to compute themselves ?