With the arrival of Final Fantasy 15's mod tools last month, the Steam Workshop is already rife with reskins of the game's four nice car boys and their weapons. While you've got the obvious transfers of popular characters from other media and game series, you've also got a few that tap into different elements of the characters (hence Ignis's chef costume above).

Here are just ten highlights we've picked out, but it's worth scanning the Workshop page to see the full range of weapons and reskins that the community has created. Special shout out to creators Jazneo and Kyriya, whose creations pop up more than once in this list. 

Gladio as a lifeguard

For all those Final Fantasy fans who have dreamed of Gladio rescuing them from drowning off of the Dorset coast after a failed scuba expedition (like no one I know), user Kyriya has created this lifeguard outfit. "Look ready to run down a beach in slow motion...and look good while doing it," goes the description. Indeed. 

Kratos from God of War

This creation by Jazneo is based on the classic God of War 3 Kratos design, rather than the recent PS4 game that's generated so many insufferable dad memes. Since you do basically go to war with gods at the end of Final Fantasy 15 (well, one), this seems appropriate. 

Spider-Man

There are a few versions of the Spidey suit on Steam Workshop, all by user Snacks: a mask-on version, mask-off variant and a black suit version, the latter of which probably fits Noctis's aesthetic the best. Much like that scene in Spider-Man: Homecoming where Peter finds himself in the middle of a field unable to use his web shooters, I'm not sure how useful Spidey's powers would even be outside the city of Insomnia in FF15, but the costumes do look the part here. 

Chef Ignis

Ignis's cooking is one of the best parts of FF15, and this skin by Kyriya allows you to take that to its natural conclusion. It's a nice-looking outfit, and the best part is you can combo it with Hot Sauce and rolling pin weapons, also made by Kyriya.  

Solid Snake 

User AaronTheSnob has created this fully rigged Solid Snake costume mod, based on an original model rip by MrGameboy20XX. He looks far too happy on that Chocobo for my liking, but hey, maybe Snake's more into human companionship these days. Snake can be combined with his memorable SOCOM pistol and a CQC knife as part of this mod pack.

Squall from Final Fantasy 8

Squall and Noctis are both unmistakeably Tetsuya Nomura creations, and this mod by Jazneo lets you swap one for the other. Mods also exist for Final Fantasy characters like Lightning and Cloud, as well as their numerous weapons.

Dante from Devil May Cry

It's been over five years since the last Devil May Cry game, and next year we'll finally get to play a new one. In the meantime, this mod by Jazneo captures the Son of Sparta as he looked in DMC4, complete with working physics on his coat when he moves. You can swap him in for Noctis or Gladio. For a really deep cut, you can get Dante as he looked in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne when he appeared as a guest character. 

Bahamut

I could never work out if FF15's Bahamut was actually a dragon or just a large man dressed as a dragon. In the case of Kou153's mod, there's no ambiguity: Noctis is cosplaying as probably the most famous summon from the entire series. I think it's a bit garish to wear on a road trip, but what do I know.

Freddy Krueger 

There's something about swapping FF15's affable chef for Freddy Krueger that I find mildly disturbing, especially when he's following you around at night. A Michael Myers mod is also available for Gladio, if you want more horror icons (who have mostly been robbed of their scary powers after years of dreadful sequels) in your crew.

Ignis cosplays as Ifrit

HAL's Ifrit outfit gives the mild-mannered chef a fiery makeover. You never really get to see enough of Final Fantasy 15's gorgeous summon creatures throughout the game, which seems like a waste, so dressing them up as such seems like the next best thing.

The sun is shining (allegedly, depending on where you are), the birds are singing, so what better time to hole yourself up in front of your PC and beat another ten thousand of Warhammer: Vermintide 2's ratmen over the head with a bloody great hammer?

Clearly developers Fatshark agree, as they're celebrating the Summer Solstice with the Warhammer fantasy equivalent; Sonnstill. Taal's Horn Keep has been redecorated for the season, with colourful banners flying, flowers blooming and no shortage of virtual sunshine to bask in, all without the pollen allergy risks. The new look will hold until July 12th, but after that it's back to the usual grim gothic vibes.

There's a little more to the event than nice weather. You'll find a trio of special event quests available. They're nothing too fancy—just beat ten missions on each difficulty setting —but they do have a few unique rewards.

Those completing all three will be able to bring a little bit of summer with them in a new character portrait frame. There's also a double weekend event running, but that'll be wrapping up tomorrow on the 9th, so if you want to level up fast, hop in now.

If you've not played Vermintide 2 since release, you might find the experience a little smoother than it was at launch, thanks to some tweaks to the difficulty settings (the easier modes are now far more newbie-friendly), plus the addition of  a daily quest and challenge system, which the Sonnstill event uses and you can see in the video below.

After six years in Early Access and a split into three games, Carbon Games's transforming robot action-RTS AirMech now boasts a (mostly) complete solo and co-op campaign, now known as AirMech Wastelands. While technically still considered a beta, it officially left Early Access this week.

Inspired by 1989 Mega Drive/Genesis game Herzog Zwei (arguably one of the first ever real-time strategy games), AirMech has you piloting a Macross/Robotech-esque transforming aircraft/robot hybrid and juggling direct combat with foes and constructing autonomous combat units, to assist you in assaulting enemy strongholds.

Originally hitting Early Access in 2012, indie developer Carbon Games's ambitions for AirMech necessitated a recent split, with the more balanced and competitive PvP side of the game becoming the free-to-play AirMech Strike, and the more free-wheeling and stat-driven story campaign mode becoming the more traditionally sold AirMech Wastelands. There's even a VR spinoff called AirMech Command, if you've got yourself one of those fancy sets of future-goggles.

While some of Wastelands' missions are designed for co-op play, the more solitary among us aren't left out. You can assign a (remarkably capable) AI bot to fly as your wingman, and while their behaviour is a little mechanical, they're very attentive and good at rushing defences to struggling outposts you hadn't even noticed were being attacked.

Although Wastelands' story is complete for the time being, development on AirMech continues. Carbon Games have asked their community what their next focus should be for Wastelands—more missions, more mech parts, or a knockabout PvP arena—in this recent development blog post.

AirMech Wastelands is out now on Steam for £14.99/$19.99, minus a ten percent launch discount. Those who made any kind of purchase in Airmech Strike before November 1st, 2017 can claim Wastelands for free, as detailed here.

Warframe has some of the most fluid and fun movement out of any shooter I've ever played. I said as much in my review, but Digital Extremes is taking things in a decidedly more radical direction with the addition of 'Bondi K-Drive' hoverboards. Revealed during a special presentation live from Tennocon, Warframe's annual fan convention, these new hoverboards are going to be a key mode of travel in the new Venus open world zone that is five times larger than the Plains of Eidolon.

But who am I kidding, the real draw is that you can do tricks on these bad boys. While the live demo only showed off a 360 spin, I was told there will be plenty more stunts, like backflips, that players can perform as they jet through the gorgeous frozen mountains of Venus. Sadly, you won't be able to grind on anything because, uh, it's a hoverboard. You can jump on enemies' heads and bounce off of them, however.

Now, Warframe veterans will know that the Archwing jetpack is the defacto method for travelling Warframe's open worlds. Digital Extremes did confirm that those will be available in Venus too, but obviously the K-Drive has its own appeal. While I haven't had a chance to pilot one personally, they appeared to glide through the mountainous environment with relative ease and the sense of speed is great.

Unlike the Archwing, K-Drives don't have any real offensive weapons so they're purely used for zipping around. But creative director Steve Sinclair did say that it's something the team is still figuring out and there's a "heated debate" over whether players should be able to fire their guns while riding them. They will, like everything in Warframe, feature extensive customization options. Sinclair confirmed that there would be different models along with cosmetic upgrades that you can earn in various ways including cool graphics for the underside to show off how gnarly you are. We'll update this post with more details as they emerge.

I'm here at Tennocon in person and will continue to cover all of the exciting news and reveals as they happen. For now, check out our breakdown of Warframe's ambitious as hell expansion, Fortuna. You can also watch the full presentation from Tennocon live on Twitch.

At Tennocon 2018, Digital Extreme's annual Warframe convention, the developer had a huge surprise in store for fans—one that promises a radical change to what Warframe, as a videogame, actually is. A live presentation showcasing the new open world zone of Venus ended with a major twist that I'm still trying to wrap my head around. During the demo, villain Nef Anyo bombarded the player repeatedly from space, but just when everyone thought the preview was over, Digital Extremes showed how players will get their revenge.

A ship descends that the group of four boards and then pilots seamlessly into orbit where they engage Nef Anyo's capital ship directly. Called Codename: Railjack, it's an entirely new game mode where players explore and fight in space from the comfort of their own battlecruiser. It's basically Warframe's take on beloved indie game FTL. Each member of a group will man a station on the ship, like piloting or manning turrets, while simultaneously fighting off enemy fighters, capital ships, and even direct invasions inside the ship. Similar to FTL, players can also divert energy to different systems like powering up thrusters to increase speed and maneuverability. There was even a moment when a hull breach depleted life support systems that had to be repaired.

You won't just be on the defensive, either. At any time, players can depart their own ship and fly around space in their personal Archwing flightsuit to engage enemies more directly. More impressive, however, is the ability to infiltrate enemy capital ships and sabotage them from the inside to weaken them for a killing blow. During one intense sequence, one developer was running through the halls of the enemy capital ship while another was in what creative director Steve Sinclair called "commander mode" which let them hack the enemy ship to open airlocks and assist her teammate.

It's a stunningly ambitious new mode, but it's unclear how this experience will fit into the greater Warframe campaign. During an interview, Sinclair did confirm that these ships would feature a progression system similar to most everything else in Warframe. Players will be able to level them up, upgrade, and modify their various abilities. They aren't just giant boats either, but have special abilities similar to Warframes. Sinclair described one as a "death blossom" of missiles that "destroy everything in sight."

In my review, I said "Warframe is the most Frankenstein-esque game I've ever played." It's a mish-mash of different ideas and systems that don't always work well together, but Sinclair said Codename: Railjack is intended to be the glue that binds Warframe's open-world levels, procedurally generated corridors, and Archwing space combat together. These ships will also be instrumental in exploring space beyond the solar system that Warframe has been confined to for its entire lifespan. Last month, Warframe released a new "cinematic quest" called The Sacrifice that turned the page on another chapter in Warframe's esoteric and wonderful story. The next chapter, called The New War, was also teased at Tennolive and sets up an inter-solar system conflict with the arch-villain Sentients that exist beyond the borders of our star system.

This update "takes Warframe down a totally uncharted path," reads a press release I was provided with ahead of time. It's described as being the next part of a "grander vision." When I asked Sinclair to explain what that meant, he spoke of Dark Sector, the unreleased game that Digital Extremes tried to make before Warframe. In that game, Sinclair says, groups of players would explore and invade ships in procedurally generated sectors of space. It was an ambitious project that Digital Extremes was never able to realize, as detailed in the No Clip documentary. Codename: Railjack is their attempt to finally bring that vision to life. I already have a difficult time explaining Warframe to my friends. I have a feeling it's going to get worse.

Codename: Railjack has no release date, but considering the new Venus open world zone isn't expected until late 2018, I'm willing to bet it's going to be a long wait. Check out our coverage of the new Venus open world zone and the awesome hoverboards you'll use to explore it.

Stepping onto the Plains of Eidolon the first time was a surreal experience. For years, Warframe players had been dashing and bullet-time sliding through the claustrophobic corridors of alien-looking spaceships. Last year Plains of Eidolon ditched all of that, taking Warframe's kinetic sword and shotgun combat into wide open spaces. Now, developer Digital Extremes is taking it a step further. During a presentation at TennoCon in Ontario, Canada this weekend, Warframe fans were shown an extended 20 minute demo of the new Venus open world zone called Orb Vallis, and it already looks like a massive improvement over the Plains of Eidolon.

Forget the auburn—and slightly monotonous—rolling hills of the Plains. Orb Vallis is a stunning alien landscape covered in a light sprinkling of snow, giant mushrooms, sea-like flora, and towering robot bugs that clamber over its mountains (yes, they will attack you). It's five times as big as Plains of Eidolon (which was about 5 square kilometers) and already feels much livelier. It's a vast space where groups of up to four players will explore, complete bounties, fish, mine, and fight.

Orb Vallis is the central addition to Warframe's Fortuna expansion, which will be arriving later this year. Living in this terraformed version of Venus are the Solaris United, a bizarre race of half-human half-robot slaves that are fighting for freedom against their Corpus overlords. It's a cliché-sounding premise that Warframe is adding its own weird twist to as evidenced by the opening cutscene featuring a chain gang humming a solemn tune as they work. They're a people so in debt that they've had to mortgage their own partly mechanical bodies to the Corpus.

The new hub is the underground city simply called Debt-Internment Colony where players will pick up quests, buy Fortuna's new tools, and put together more pieces of Warframe's esoteric lore. Similar to Plains of Eidolon, there is a new weapon crafting system but instead of melee Zaws players will be forging Kit Guns that fill your secondary weapon slot.

At its core, though, Orb Vallis will function the same way as Plains of Eidolon. For the most part that means completing a rotating list of bounties or farming materials for various uses. The bounty system has been greatly improved: now, Solaris United agents will appear at bases that you liberate on the map so you can more easily hop from one bounty to the next.

Mining and spear fishing are two activities that will directly carry over between the Plains and Venus. But one really cool new addition is a unique animal preservation system where players seek out and capture endangered animals for relocation to safer environs. It's keeping in tune with Warframe's often weird features (this is a game where you have a gun that shoots music you create in a synthesizer).

What I love most is how involved it is. While exploring Orb Vallis you might come across tracks in the wilderness that you can follow. If you have the appropriate lure, you can make animal calls to try and lure the beast out. It's a weird call and response mini-game where the animal will make a specific noise that players have to mimic. It's hard to explain, but creative director Steve Sinclair said it was heavily inspired by hunters using moose calls. The animal will make a certain sequence of noises that players then recreate using a user interface element that simulates different pitches. It's weird, so just watch the Twitch livestream to see it in action.

Once the animal is lured out, you'll then have to find a place to hide until it's exposed and then you'll shoot it with a tranquilizer. Animals have different rarities that is partially dependent on how successful you are with recreating their call, with rarer animals offering more Solaris reputation. Once the beast is knocked out, you can extract it with a drone in a way that feels very reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid 5.

Not everything living on Venus is friendly, though. Corpus bases are scattered all across the zone, but an even bigger threat is the 'Orb Layers'—giant spider bots that stomp around. Similar to the massive, titular Eidolons, these are essentially endgame bosses that players will have to initially avoid at first. What's cool, however, is these giant spider tanks aren't confined to anyone space and can be constantly seen scaling mountains in the distance. 

In that sense, Fortuna feels like it shares a similar structure to Plains of Eidolon. Players will farm materials, complete bounties, and eventually form groups to hunt and kill powerful endgame bosses for powerful loot. I just hope that, unlike Plains of Eidolon, Fortuna won't be so compartmentalized from the rest of the game. Still, Orb Vallis looks like a promising and ambitious update coming on the back of Plains of Eidolon, which was in itself an ambitious update.

Speaking with Sinclair, he was also able to confirm that many of the innovations of Fortuna will be retroactively applied to Plains of Eidolon. The new bounty system, the K-drive hoverboards, and potentially even the animal conservation minigame will all be added into Plains of Eidolon at a later date.

I'll continue our coverage as more details emerge from TennoCon, which I'm attending all weekend.

The Witcher 4 should move its focus away from Geralt and concentrate on Ciri, says Geralt's voice actor.

Talking to Gamereactor (via Videogamer), voice actor Doug Cockle discussed his work on Victor Vran: Overkill Edition. He was then asked if he thought Geralt's cameo in SoulCalibur VI would be the last time the actor would reprise Geralt, particularly as CD Projekt RED has been clear that Geralt's arc was unlikely to stretch beyond the trilogy.

"If you're leading into The Witcher 4, I can only say I have no idea, although I think it will be," Cockle said. "This is my own opinion, and CD Projekt Red knows what they are doing, and I have no idea what the plan is, but... If I was CD Projekt Red, I would make The Witcher 4, but I would be focusing on Ciri." 

"In The Witcher 3 she hints at visiting other worlds, and I think a game around her visiting those different worlds would be a cool Witcher 4."

Of course, CD Projekt RED is currently tied up with Cyberpunk 2077, a FPS, open-world RPG that promises diverse romance options. Here's a rundown of everything we learned about it at E3. 

Don't forget, The Witcher is coming to Netflix as an eight-episode TV series. Like the RPG series, it will be upon the Polish novel series by Andrzej Sapkowski. 

When you're doing your millionth daily quest, grinding for a particular item or just playing on autopilot, a game can suddenly go from being enjoyable to a weird obligation. It can feel a little bit like having a job, even when it's a game you otherwise love playing.

Here, we share our experiences of that. Has a game ever felt like it's become a job to you? Let us know your answers in the comments. 

Joe Donnelly: every instalment of Football Manager

Me, every October: "I'm going to give Football Manager a miss this year. It takes up too much of my time."

Me, every November: "THAT WAS NEVER A PENALTY REF, YOU @#!$"

I've been playing Football Manager since its mid-'90s Championship Manager days. I play it all year round, but I'm most invested at launch—which is when it takes over my life. I rarely stray from my beloved Celtic, and I cannot stand to see them lose. I sing You'll Never Walk Alone with my scarf raised above my head before important matches, and scream bloody murder when the referee invariably gets every fucking decision wrong in games against city rivals Rangers. I dream about winning the treble. I talk tactics at the dinner table. My girlfriend hates me for several weeks. I can hardly blame her. I am this man. 

Andy Kelly: The Old Republic

I was deep into Star Wars: The Old Republic for a few months, until I decided that I was going to get into crafting. This is something I always avoid in MMOs because, without exception, it's a deeply tedious pursuit. But for some reason I felt like my Sith Inquisitor needed to take time out from battling Jedi to get into synthweaving. And, unsurprisingly, crafting in The Old Republic is tedious too, despite the gimmick that you send your companion to do it, because you still have to tell them what to go craft—and the process is achingly slow. So, after catching myself spending a whole evening crafting low-level items to get my synthweaving skill up, I realised I was basically doing a job. In space. So I packed the whole game in and never returned out of respect for my free time.

Samuel Roberts: GTA Online

I've had some extremely good times playing GTA Online—particularly the heists, and any time I let the PC Gamer team share my Vigilante. But because most activities in the game are driven by moneymaking, rather that just doing a mission because it's fun or gives you a bit of story like in GTA 5 proper, it means you can find yourself in a bit of a grind trying to get a car you like. I've definitely been in that position a few times, where a double XP weekend has me working far too hard to add some new vehicles to my garage. I can think of two times where I took a break from the game because I realised I was doing this, and decided to be a bit more sensible about my time in Los Santos. 

Jarred Walton: All games do when you're benchmarking (and Fallout Shelter)

Not to be too cheeky, but games actually are my job—and the job of everyone else here! Almost every time I do a marathon performance analysis article, I feel like I ruin the game in question. Running the same test a couple hundred times can do that do you.

But to the point, I've had many casual games that eventually hit the point where I pull the plug and quit cold turkey. I've avoided this on PC games because I essentially refuse to get involved with the MMO scene, because I know my tendencies and I'd likely end up divorced and living in a van down by the river. But on smartphones, and later PC, I played Fallout Shelter far too much.First it was maxing out my vault with level 50 characters, then I maxed out the stats on every character, and then I started maxing out weapons and armor. I put hundreds of hours into the game, but unlike many PC games it was done in 15-30 minute chunks of time over a year rather than sitting in front of my monitor for several hours. When Bethesda added the daily quests, for a few weeks I thought it was great, and then it reached the tipping point and I uninstalled the game from all my devices and never looked back.I'd sit down to watch a show on TV and think, "Oh, I need to quick check on my vault and get the daily bonus...." An hour later and the show would be over and I'd have little idea what had actually happened. One night my wife asked, "Are you actually enjoying the game?" I considered this for a while and realized that, no, I was not—I was just killing time and distracting myself, and the story and game had become incredibly repetitive and tedious.I've since imposed a self-enforced ban of all games from my smartphone, because it's just too damn accessible and I have other things I need to get done. Like running more benchmarks.

Andy Chalk: Destiny 2

Destiny 2 is probably as close as I've ever come. Grinding the same little areas over and over and over (and over and over) for incremental gear upgrades, repeatedly searching multiple websites to determine if the slightly-better ROF on this SMG makes it more or less useful in PvP than the slightly better reload time on that SMG, feeling obligated to show up at a certain time of day or night and put in a certain number of hours, all while knowing deep down that this isn't really fun but just something I do because... that's what I do. I punch in, I put in my time. 

That's not to suggest that Destiny 2 isn't a good game. It is! By the rancid dollars-per-hour equation, it's probably one of the best I've ever played. But there's an element of obligation to it that, quite frankly, the more I think about, the less I like.

This may end up being the first weekend question that's actually talked me out of playing a game.

Bo Moore: WoW

Let me tell you about farming raid mats. Here's the thing about high-end raiding. I haven't raided in years, but back in my WoW days (Vanilla through Lich King, if you're wondering) raiding was a full-time job—or more specifically, it was like working two or more part-time jobs. Raid time itself was a job—my guild raided three or four nights a week for three or four hours each—but after clocking out from that one, I'd go to my second job: farming raid mats. This particular story comes from a time when my guild was working our way through Black Temple. That meant in addition to the standard farming—either gathering materials for Potions and Elixirs, or selling some other service to buy them on the Auction House—we needed to prep for the upcoming fight against Mother Shahraz. The fight required nearly every raid member to have maxed-out Shadow Resistance, so we were all spending our off hours plowing the Netherfields of Shadowmoon Valley, slaughtering Voidwalkers to harvest Primal Shadows—the core component needed to craft our shadow resist gear. We did eventually down Mother Shahraz, and oh how the victory was sweet. I'll never get those hours of my life back though.

Tim Clark: Destiny 2, Don't Starve and Hearthstone 

I already have over 1,000 hours in Destiny 2 on PC. I once took a Don’t Starve Dave past 400 days. I have 6800 ranked wins in Hearthstone. I basically consider it a joke when people say they’ve sunk a whole 100 hours into an RPG. So you tell me?

Galaxy in Turmoil was originally intended as a revival of the canceled Free Radical shooter Star Wars: Battlefront 3. That plan went astray in 2016 when, to everyone's complete lack of surprise, LucasFilm laid it out with a cease-and-desist order. But it bounced back a few months later by ditching all the Star Wars trappings and proceeding as a Battlefront-like, but not Battlefront-actual, game. 

The demo promised for the fall of 2017 by developer Frontwire Studios did not materialize, but work has continued and today the developers shared a very short clip of pre-alpha gameplay on Reddit. Conversation followed, the response was generally positive, and so the studio decided to put out a longer clip on YouTube. 

The controls and physics are still pretty rough in spots, particularly the atmospheric flight maneuvering, which really doesn't convey any feeling of mass or momentum. But the in-space flight and the third-person shooting look very promising, at least as far as you can tell from a gameplay video. And as the intro says, this is all pre-alpha, and thus "may not represent the final product." 

Frontwire is not currently looking for Galaxy in Turmoil testers, but when they do they'll put out the word on Steam. 

The city of Lordran is not a very nice place. The decayed, moss-stained ramparts are populated exclusively by mindless undead, ornery dragons, forsaken soldiers, and obsidian-skinned demons. The capital of Anor Londo is home to a worthless, greedy class of gods who intend to hold onto their waning power until the flame goes out. Dark Souls is about subsisting under that threat forever; to thrive while being crushed by the impossible magnitude of mystery and razor-tight attack animations. So, naturally, I was surprised to find a three hour video of a man whispering strategies for each of the boss encounters in Dark Souls 3.

Sure enough, I had found the nexus of the Dark Souls ASMR scene. If you're somehow unfamiliar with the term, ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, which is a diagnosis of the tingling sense of satisfaction you might get when someone crinkles a plastic bag, or raps their fingernails against a piece of aluminum. YouTubers around the world have developed robust careers out of stoking those uncanny tingles in the minds of their viewers, and the videos can be pretty creative. (Here for instance, is an ASMR cyberpunk roleplay.) So I suppose it's not shocking that the culture found a home in Dark Souls, but it certainly makes you consider the degree of difficulty. I mean, black metal ASMR doesn't exist for a reason, right? (OK, PC Gamer associate editor James Davenport tells me it actually does exist. But my point still stands!)

That boss guide was recorded by a man who publishes work on a channel called The ASMR Review Show, and he's done similarly hushed walkthroughs for both Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne (alongside his more traditional tranquilizing reviews for Marvel movies.) The man behind the curtain didn't respond to my request for comment, but that wasn't a problem because I quickly discovered that he was far from the only person working this gimmick. ASMR figurehead Ephemeral Rift did an extremely zen Let's Play for the first game in the series back in 2013, a YouTuber named Morpheus spent 20 minutes reading Dark Souls 2 item descriptions last year, and a Twitch streamer who goes by Nyanners recently completed a two hour broadcast where she listlessly recited the franchise's verbose Wiki for a captive audience. 

However, by far the most famous, and most successful Dark Souls ASMR artist is AlternateAurora. Unlike the other people in her business, Aurora goes the extra mile by roleplaying characters from the series, thus recontextualizing them into doting, peaceful caretakers who have absolutely no interest in forcing you to do a lengthy corpse run. In one of her dispatches, she speaks on behalf of Crossbreed Priscilla, who you may remember as that outrageously annoying boss in the Painted World who has a bad habit of turning invisible in high-pressure moments. Of course, Aurora interprets Priscilla as a warm matriarch urging you back to sleep—someone with absolutely no interest in tearing you in two with her scythe.

Aurora writes all of her scripts herself by scrutinizing every scrap of dialogue and fan theory she can find of the character she's roleplaying. (She'll also occasionally pantomime her own homebrewed denizens within the Souls universe, which she says are the hardest to get right because, "When you don't have a template, it can be easy to stray too far.") In the past, Aurora taken the guise of the doll liaison in Bloodborne's Hunter's Dream, and the croaking undead merchant lying dormant and behind bars in the annals of the Undead Burg (the latter being one of the more radical risks she's taken as an ASMR creator). 

I ask her where she's found so much inspiration for pacifying ambiance in this series—the calm moments that helped her shape the sedate, new-age meditation material amidst the 10-foot skeletons and wriggling mountains of flesh. Her answer made more sense to me than I expected. There's a euphoric reprise, she says, after you've fallen one of those titanic boss encounters, and your character finally discovers refuge at a hidden bonfire. You indulge a glint of happiness and hopefulness that's gone extinct in this dying realm, and you live to fight another day.

"The contrast between how difficult and oppressive some areas are compared to the more serene and quiet places you can find yourself in is amazing," says Aurora. "I'll never forget stumbling into Ash Lake for the first time, or how safe I felt at Firelink when I first found myself stumbling through the Burg. For me, the game really nailed its atmosphere and that's part of what makes it such a strong experience. You have all this suffering set up against the backdrop of a beautiful world and it just makes it that much more poignant."

I'm currently about three quarters of the way through my first playthrough of Dark Souls. Most recently, my lonely knight fell to his death through a trapdoor full of carnivorous beasties in the hateful caverns of Lost Izalith. Everything I was taught about this game remains true; it's frustrating, the difficulty spikes are palpable and stringent, and you shouldn't expect to pick up on everything your first time through. That being said, I also kinda get where Aurora and other ASMR artists like her are coming from. 

Breaking bread with Solaire, or taking a pregnant moment to admire the sun-bathed vista from Anor Londo—those are the moments that stand out in my head so far, and they're also the moments I yearn for the most. It is often said that Dark Souls was the game that forced this industry to reckon with what was lost as singleplayer campaigns became easier and obsequious. I suppose the same can be for ASMR, too. Sometimes you need a little pain to recognize the pleasure.