I always hated the cycles thing. It was just a way to explain more sequels and it cheapens the endings of dark souls 1. As much as I like the dark souls sequels it would have made much more sense to leave it at 1 tbh.

Life on earth isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but I happen to like a lot of the animals we’re killing. Even if it’s not the end, mass extinction still sucks.

I know I’m really late to this, but I actually prefer ds2 and des way of doing it over ds3. Because they present embering as a buff, it makes it feel like your base health is pitiful compared to the other games. Having it presented as a reduction gives you more incentive to be human, and interact with the multiplayer and stuff. Plus in those games you can get items to mitigate it, while you cant in 3 iirc.