Dark Souls feels like such a philosophically relevant game

I tagged this as NSFW just in case, idk.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently, and fromsoft has constructed a world of people who deal with real issues in a genuinely relatable way. The fact that hollowing is kind of a stand in for losing one's mind by losing purpose in their own life-what goes on in their head and the state we see them in as they are hollow. It feels like everyone who's still hanging on has a brutally honest character, like understanding that accepting that the world is just crap aligns them better with the world around them. We even see it with Solaire, one of the only people who is genuinely nice to us, and Siegmeyer, they all hollowed because they believed there was something greater and got tired of the disappointment. The best advice dark souls has given me is that there is genuine toxic optimism, and it hurts you, that sometimes things won't just be better because you're happy about it, and that accepting yourself and the world will truly set yourself up for an existence in it. I've been thinking about the quote "Seek strength, the rest will follow", and it is what really opened my eyes to all of this. When they talk about "strength", they're not talking about your capability to beat your head against a wall, but rather about the willingness to find something to look towards, a reason not to go hollow. Solaires reason was hope, but hope isn't a good reason, it's not something that's grounded in reality. Hope doesn't actually exist in the way Solaire is using it. From a more lore-based perspective, Solaire is praying for a dying era and deliberately pretending it isn't dying, which I guess could serve as advice to someone who thinks "I wish things were like the good ol' days". This game could also serve as advice to a younger person, the Chosen Undead is literally an irrelivent dude (I say "irrelivent" because I'm of the belief that the legend of the Chosen Undead is a lie and the person is chosen once they link the fire, and not before; I might wrong, but I just enjoy it more that way) who is thrown into a world that is already set in its ways and needs to find out how to become a literal god in order to fulfill a prophecy they believe is their destiny to achieve (sound familiar anybody? overbearing parents?). Just from my experience, Dark Souls has some of the most philosophically deep lore I've ever experienced, and I love it. This game has genuinely changed my outlook on things because it presents a world that is a mirror of our own. Idk, sorry for the rant.