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If the headline reads like a lame joke, that's because it began life as one. "Imagine if they were hunting for Black Knights," I remarked to a friend, watching tourists and students coast merrily up and down the South Bank in search of Squirtles and Goldeens. "Imagine if Dark Souls were an alternate reality game." What a reality that would be, eh? Instead of the pristine, corporate greys and levelled architecture of the Pokémon Go map screen, a baleful thicket of spires and graveyards, with bonfires the only place to store or cash in your progress. Instead of rustling grass and the confetti of Pokémon lures, a mess of bloodstains and Summon signs. Or better yet, no map screen at all, just a rapidly depleting Estus flask and somewhere nearby - behind the bus shelter you're sitting in, or under the table - a rattle of bones and the hiss of breath through a visor. You wouldn't open the Dark Souls Go app to scour the vicinity for untamed beasts. You'd fire it up to see how many times You Have Died on the way to the chemists.
As with a regrettable majority of my jokes, however, this one became more convincing the more I thought about it. For one thing, practically every video game creator or publisher on Earth right now is racking its brains over how to reapply the absurdly successful Pokémon Go formula, and if all it takes is a gigantic menagerie layered atop a more-or-less proven ARG framework, the Souls series is well ahead of the pack.
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