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Knight Artorias, also known as the 'Abysswalker', was one of the four knights of Gwyn.
Dark Souls bosses are a beautiful marriage of fiction and encounter design. By the time you find Knight Artorias in Dark Souls’ expansion his background has already been well established in item descriptions and scraps of conversation. You know he’s one of Lord Gwyn’s four most trusted knights. He’s an unparalleled master of the greatsword. He is known as the “Abysswalker”. Gradually you piece together the story of a loyal warrior doomed by his own unwavering determination and sense of duty. It’s also a sad story about a man and his dog.
When you eventually find him in Dark Souls’ expansion, set before the main game, he is weakened, dripping with corruption, and still fighting ferociously after years spent lost in darkness.
He makes a powerful entrance, dropping down to spear a corrupted human—proof that on some level he’s still trying to complete his mission. Then the dark ooze of the Abyss starts dripping from his hood, he roars, and you realise that he’s gone. In a cheery fantasy novel, Artorias might be the hero of the story. In Dark Souls you have to put him out of his misery.
Even weakened, with only one working arm, Artorias is a deadly fighter. He lunges and swipes with sudden movements, leaving trails of black ooze behind him. Occasionally he stops and, for a moment, seems deeply, existentially exhausted. Then a bubbling surge of Abyssal energy consumes him and, with a scream, he throws himself back into the fight.
Somehow FromSoftware’s animators are able to express Artorias’ torment, even as he’s destroying you with brutal overhead sword strikes. Even his broken arm has story significance. By piecing together discrete scraps of lore you know one of his last acts before being consumed by the abyss. He sacrificed his greatshield to protect his loyal companion the Great Wolf Sif. You suspect that, without it, a blow could have ruined Artorias’ arm.
The Sif fight is one of the saddest encounters in Dark Souls. Rumours suggested that if you took Sif down to a sliver of health it would limp away and survive. It’s not true. Sif defends its friend’s grave to the end. When you loot the tombstone you find Artorias’ ring, which grants access to the Abyss. You can speculate that Sif wasn’t just guarding the memory of Artorias, but trying to prevent future heroes from sharing his fate.
If you play the expansion before you meet the huge Great Wolf version of Sif, you can find it as a pup in the Abyss, and free it from Artorias’ shield. If you do this the introductory cutscene for Sif changes. The wolf sniffs, recognises you, bows in sorrow, and then howls at the moon when it realises it has to fight the warrior that once saved them.
In most games boss fights are a matter of pacing and challenge. In Dark Souls they are vital story beats that evoke powerful, layered emotions. Beneath the anger, frustration, fear and satisfaction of navigating combat, the fights with Artorias and Sif are deeply sad. The Sif fight is tragic because you are forced to punish the wolf’s eternal loyalty to their dead companion. The Artorias fight is tragic because you’re witnessing the corruption of a legend. But, while the game can feel relentlessly grim at times, there is a glimmer of light in the darkness.
When you defeat Artorias, you collect his soul. “The Legend that Artorias repelled the Abyss only told half of the story,” says the description. “It seems that he was defeated, and his honor preserved, by some unsung hero, who is the true victor over the Abyss.”
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