Spanish TV news uses Dark Souls 3 boss fight to illustrate, with 100% accuracy, how the conclave will elect a new Pope

A Spanish news broadcast showing DS3 Pontiff footage when talking about the new Pope candidates LMAO 😭😭 from r/fromsoftware

I consider myself an expert in the process of electing a new Pope. I am not Catholic, but I did happen to watch the 2024 film Conclave all of a month before the death of Pope Francis on April 21, and see no reason to doubt its complete and total accuracy. So you can trust me when I say that a key step for the conclave of cardinals now convened in the Vatican is defeating Pontiff Sulyvahn, the self-declared ruler of Irithyll of the Boreal Valley, who awaits all challengers who enter his cathedral with the Profaned Ultra Greatsword in hand.

Spanish television channel Cuatro can absolutely back me up on these papal facts. On Monday, the station aired a segment on the contest to succeed Pope Francis and illustrated it with a clip from Dark Souls 3. A player decked out in the game's unmistakably Pope-esque Archdeacon armor faces off against Pontiff Sulyvahn while the presenter adds, uh, let's call it "context."

"The prediction markets are going viral these days in Italy. If we were to imagine a conclave with a videogame aesthetic, it could be this battle for the throne of St. Peter," she says (via Google Translate) as the player knocks Pontiff Sulyvahn out of the air with a well-timed fireball.

The broadcast then cuts to what looks like a football team formation of cartoonish clipart versions of cardinals, including viral favorite Pierbattista Pizzaballa in the center, while she riffs on the idea of Papal Fantasy Football. I get the sense Cuatro may not be the most serious news channel in Spain, but clearly everyone's having some fun betting on who's going to be the next Pope.

The only issue I take with Cuatro's conclave reporting here is the reporter's use of the word "imagine." Again, as an authority on this subject based on the two hour film I watched one month ago, I can assure you that defeating a Dark Souls 3 boss is absolutely a real requirement to becoming the next Pope. Francis famously used a perfectly timed parry-into-riposte against Sulyvahn to deliver the coup de grâce. Look it up! These are simply Pope Facts. Francis even used a rapier to exploit Sulyvahn's weakness to thrusting damage; that is how you demonstrate the wisdom required to become Pope.

If Pizzaballa or any other cardinal wishes to claim the top spot, they better be prepared for the foe who awaits them in Irithyll of the Boreal Valley. They wouldn't put it on TV if it weren't real!

Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).

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