Environmental Storytelling is the story of the game that players deduct through exploration. In most games, this is done by talking to NPCs, reading random documents, or looking at the setting/environment of the game. However, in a game where the main character cannot/will not talk, where there is little to no spoken dialogue, or the dialogue is in a language that a player can't understand, the environment truly becomes the only source of information for players - especially in a game like Titan Souls where the main objective in the game is simply to defeat all "bosses". No muss, no fuss, no extra stuff– at least, not on the surface. Tiny details in the environment that seem inconsequential come together to create a bigger, incomplete picture. In a game like Titans Souls, observation is key, from beginning to end.

Right out of the gate (heh) players are hit with some lore with a cut scene when they start the game. We are shown our character with their weapon and a ball of light that splits between the arrow, the bow, and the player. (First time players won't know what that means - I certainly didn't - until later). After that, we're plopped down into the game and we can begin.

Now players get a first look at their character's abilities. We can shoot an arrow and call it back. So either that is something that is just the norm in this universe, or this is our character's unique power. Great.

Now where the hell are we? Well, we're in some kind of temple or isolated structure. And what's the first thing we notice?

This place is old. Old as balls.

Everything is in a state of ruin. Tiles on the floor are cracked, moss/vegetation is overtaking the ground, walls are crumbling, and vines are growing everywhere. So this place was either abandoned by the society that made it or it's a place that we shouldn't be in. Well isn't that wonderful.

Then we fight our first Titan, and we're hit with another piece of important lore. When you engage in a Titan fight, their names/titles are given to us in a language we can't decipher. So whoever/whatever these Titans are, they're either not connected to the current society/culture our character is from or they were part of our character's ancient culture that they no longer have the knowledge of. This becomes important later.

Fast forward. We draw first blood and land a hit on a Titan, where it appears we stun them before calling back our arrow. When we remove the arrow, familiar balls of light stream out from their wound before they circle our character and it is absorbed into their body, and the Titan has been slain. So now we know that our character has the ability to "consume" whatever it is that keeps a Titan alive. How delightful.

Now, most players aren't gluttons for punishment, and don't want to go through that kind of hell again. But, if they try to leave the area without slaying the other Titans, they are blocked by a gate that won't open until the other Titans are slain. And so we have another piece of lore. Whoever/whatever built this place made it in such a way that the people who came here would have to kill the Titans.

Fast forward again. We've defeated a heart, a brain, and an eye. We're at the final boss for this area and enter the arena. If players are keen enough, they'll notice that our opponent has a crack on their chest, is missing an eye, and has hole in their skull. This becomes important when players enter New Game+. Like the temple, they're also in a state of ruin. They're covered in vines and their hands have cracks or are missing pieces. So whatever these Titans are, they're as old as the temple we landed in.

After we defeat that Titan and open the door, we go up the stairs to an elevator. On the wall is a mosaic with a familiar scene. A person that looks like our character (seemingly being pulled apart), surround by a bow, an arrow, and the eye that was depicted on the gate, with balls of energy flowing into the arrow and bow.

The only thing left do is take the elevator up to the next level.

The second level looks much like the first. Vegetation has overrun the area, archways are falling apart, etc. But if players are patient enough and explore, they will find a few interesting things.

To the south of the elevator are four pillars placed in cardinal directions in what looks like a mini temple surrounded by three buildings. Each pillar is carved with the body of a Titan. The pillar to the south shows players the Titan they just defeated. To the north, a Titan that looks very similar to the one we just fought, with a few minor differences. To the west, a skeleton looking Titan. To the east, one that looks like their wearing a mask.

Two of the buildings in the mini temple hold Titans, but the one on the right holds a hint on how to get to a Titan that looks like a flower.

If players go east of these pillars, they'll find an unmaintained graveyard, as well as a "cave" that houses the Titan depicted on the east pillar. Once players go inside the cave they'll see that it is actually a crypt, and instead of full bodied Titan we can only fight the massive stone mask that is the their face. After players defeat the Titan, they can go to the back of the cave and see full corpse of the Titan. This becomes important later.

Go north of the crypt, and if players are keen enough, can spot a smaller cave entrance that leads them to another ledge on the mountain. In this cave there is another mosaic of a Titan, this one showing an absolute gigantic, almost holy being surrounded by balls of light. If we continue on we can meet them. This Titan is so old that their body is fused into the ground, and this is where players get the only piece of spoken dialogue in the game.

Now depending on when you meet this Titan, he will say different things to you, and each speech gives you a different piece of lore.

If you find them before you kill the Titan past the Third Gate, they tells you this:
Ah.../Another broken Soul seeking Truth/Less encumbered than the last.../You have paid a high toll indeed/For the abomination in your quiver/And for what... Knowledge? Power?/I hope it was worth it.../Do what you must.

Here's the key points:

• They call us a broken "Soul", with a capital S
  
• We are seeking "Truth", with a capital T
  
• We are not the first one's here (hence the graveyard)
  
• What we did to get the ability with our arrow is considered taboo
  
• This Titan is very tired and doesn't even want to put in the effort to fight us

(I'll be honest, I felt really bad the first time I killed this Titan.)
Players that are paying attention will now realize what their character has done. The balls of light we see after we kill Titans are their souls, and the character has split their own soul into their arrow and quiver to get their ability.

If you don't find this Titan the first time and kill the Titan past the Third Gate, then come back, they say this:
You found what you sought.../You killed the Second God./The one who took my place/and created The Four Guardians./The rest of the Titans here/grew from Lost Souls/Some were like you... human./They lacked your conviction for killing.../

Key Points:

• The "Titan" past the Third Gate is actually a god
  
• The "Titan" we are talking with now is actually a Fallen god
  
• The Titans on the four pillars have the title of "Guardian" and are what we could call "True Titans"
  
• Some of the other Titans were from human Lost Souls that came here to kill the Guardians, couldn't do it, and lived.
  
• The rest of the Titans were made by the other Lost Souls merging with other things

The last rendition of this Titan's speech is only available in New Game+ (Hard Mode and Truth Mode), and they say this:
I was the first Life/The first Soul born from Truth/and from I, came the first of you/and now we come full circle/The maker is un-made/And one day you shall fall to the same fate/Do what you must./

Key Points:

• "Truth" is some form of ultimate god.
  
• The "Titan" we are talking with is "our" god, as in they are the one to make humans
  
• This is why we can talk with and understand this Titan and not any other Titans

Sweetness.

Lets go back to those pillars. If you go directly north from the pillars, you go inside a room with a kneeling knight. Once you activate this fight, something very interesting happens.

We can read the Titan's name. Knight Elhanan, the Legendary Titan Killer.

This is an incredible piece of storytelling by the developers, because it means Elhanan comes from our character's own society/culture. We don't know any other Titan's name or title except for Elhanan's and by their own title, they were on a quest like us to destroy the Titans. And not only do we know Elhanan's name, they also have the same, if not stronger ability that we do. They can shoot and control their arrows, and are smart enough to wear armor so they aren't killed in one hit. So either Elhanan was a great hero in our society, important enough that their figure is easily recognizable, or they were a great villain that was infamous enough to be told like a cautionary bed time tale. Considering it's taboo to split your own soul to get power, players can guess the latter.

If Elhanan was fighting the Titans like us, they could have been the one that injured the first Guardian Titan we faced back on level one.

It's also important to note, that while Elhanan was a Titan killer, they are also a Titan themselves. So people can become Titans without losing their souls.

Rock on.

Let's head back to those pillars again. If players go west and cross a bridge, the find a cave that brings them down into the mountain. On one of the walls in the cave is another mosaic, this one shows us the skeleton Guardian and two other Titans coming out of his body. This will be important later. One looks a slime with a crystal and another looks like a boulder.

If we continue, players find themselves in what might be the center of a volcano. The only piece of lore here is that if you go all the way south, you will find a headless skeleton chained down on a slab. If you go east, you will encounter what is left of the skeleton Guardian. So that's two Guardians that have been "killed" some time in the past. This will be important later.

Lets head back to the main elevator and head north east. Here you will encounter a looping forest. If you are patient, you can trial and error your way through to find all locations. If players are observant, they can find the paths easily.

To get to the flower Titan, players can follow the directions from the hint in the mini temple. If you go left, you can follow some distinct pink mushrooms to find a mushroom Titan. If you go up, you find a nice relaxing pond that you can swim in. Keen players will find a shallow ledge on the right side of the pond that will lead you to a small hidden alcove with a stone carved slab. The slab shows a ball of light (what players now know is a soul) falling on a flower bud. The bud then blooms and grows vines. This is how the flower Titan was born.

Go back to the elevator and head north west to a cave that leads them up the mountain. Once players are out of the cave and head north, they find beacons they can set on fire and use to open a cave to another Titan. If players keep going north west, they find another cave in an empty field with another mosaic. This one depicts a small human at the base of a mountain, and at the top of the mountain is an upright eye surrounded by what we can assume is some type of energy.

Fast forward. You've beaten all the Titans on level two, and now it's on to the Third Gate.

After you enter the Third Gate, players walk up a staircase to walk through some more decrepit archways and overgrown courtyard to get to another elevator. Players will note that it is raining, meaning they're either at the top or going higher up the mountain. If you take the elevator, you float up into another temple. While this temple is still falling apart, it's not as bad as the rest, and is in almost pristine condition.

Continue up, and here players fight the last Guardian Titan, which is a much harder fight compared to the other Guardian Titans.

Afterwards, players will cross a bridge onto a platform with the final Titan, the "Second God" the Titan on the east of the mountain told us about. If you don't engage them first, you can see a Fourth Gate covered in the strange writing we've been seeing. (Players who have glanced over the possible achievements in the game will know that this is the Gate of Truth, and can start to decipher the alphabet in the game.)

Like the Fallen God, the Second God is a pacifist kill and won't attack you. The problem doesn't start until the character tries to collect their soul and they are struck by lightning. An entity pops out of us and we enter another Titan battle. It is important to note that the Titan we are now fighting looks like a white silhouette of our character, the same thing we see after we finish absorbing a Titan's Soul.

This is my personal hypothesis, but it's hinted that this was supposed to happen. Before killing the Second God, lightning will strike just behind you or near where you are multiple times, as if a higher power (like Truth) is warning you away. Also note, that in this point of the game, player's know that it is possible to become a Titan. This will be important later.

Fast forward after defeating the last Titan.

After players defeat the last Titan and open the gate, they are faced with the thing our character was seeking. Truth.

Truth is depicted as the Eye players have been seeing on the gates and in some of the mosaics. After a three phase battle, player's strike a "finishing" blow and pull out their arrow. However, instead of absorbing souls, Truth is behind us in the background, seemingly feeding us strings of glyphs or "Knowledge" until our silhouette is black and the screen goes dark.

So that's the end right?
Remember all that stuff that I said would be important later? Well, it's now "later".

When players start a new game, they can now choose harder difficulties. But something is different now when you enter a Titan battle. After defeating Truth, you can now read their names.
These are the names of the Titans roughly in the order players fight them by level.

Gate One

• Sludgeheart, the Heart of the Guardian
  
• Brainfreeze, the Brain of the Guardian
  
• Eyecube, the Eye of the Guardian
  
• Gol-Iath, the Guardian of the First Gate

Gate Two

• The Elder, the First Soul (This is the Titan on the mountain)
  
• Obello, the Malformed Hallucinogenic Fungus
  
• Vinethesis, the Poisonous Flower
  
• Knight Elhanan, the Legendary Titan Slayer
  
• Gol-Hevel, the Murdered Guardian of the Second Gate (This is the Titan who's face looks like a mask)
  
• Avarice, the Manifestation of Greed
  
• Mol-Qayin, the Molten Creation of Gol-Qayin (This is the magma slime Titan)
  
• Rol-Qayin, the Forged Creation of Gol-Qayin (This is the boulder Titan)
  
• Gol-Qayin, the Disgraced Guardian of the Second Gate (This is the skeleton Titan)
  
• Onyxia, the Serpent of the Cold Depths
  
• Stratus, the Child of the Mountain and Sky
  
• Yeti, the Old Snow Beast

Gate Three

• Gol-Set, the Guardian of the Eternal Gate
  
• The Soul, image of the Titan Soul (This is our character's doppleganger)

Gate Four

• Truth, the Secret Final Titan

Now we're really getting into the lore. Let's dive in.

The first and foremost are the Titans at the first gate. From their names and titles, we can confirm that Sludgeheart, Brainfreeze and Eyecube we're once part of Gol-Iath like we predicted from his injuries. We know that Titans can be born from pieces of Lost Souls, as explained to us by the Elder and from the stone slab in the looping forest. It's possible that when Elhanan slayed Gol-Iath the first time, they didn't/couldn't collect all of the pieces of Gol-Iath's soul. As such, pieces of Gol-Iath's soul returned to parts of their body to become their own Titans. This would explain why compared to Gol-Set, Gol-Iath was easier to defeat.

This would also explain why Elhanan couldn't defeat Gol-Set. If Elhanan wasn't collecting all the pieces of the Titans Souls, it didn't make them strong enough to defeat the Titans to get past the Second Gate. And it is also why the main character, even though they are smaller, (possibly younger), and weaker, could defeat Elhanan.

The second is Gol-Hevel and Gol-Qayin, the two Guardians of the Second Gate. Gol-Hevel's title is the Murdered Guardian of the Second Gate while Gol-Qayin's title is the Disgraced Guardian of the Second Gate. From their titles and because we found Gol-Hevel's body in a crypt, and Gol-Qayin's body underneath the mountain and chained to a floor, at some point in time Gol-Qayin murdered Gol-Hevel.

This could also explain why Gol-Qayin and Gol-Hevel aren't as strong as Gol-Set, because their souls were split when they died, and their powers were halved.

After Gol-Qayin was sent under the mountain, and probably beheaded for his crime, his shattered Soul splint into three. One to his severed head, and the other two to Mol-Qayin and Rol-Qayin. Now, the following is my personal hypothesis, but the wordage in Mol-Qayin's and Rol-Qayin's titles give us some knowledge into their creation.

The mosaic depicting all three of these Titans has Gol-Qayin in the center, with Rol-Qayin and Mol-Qayin at his sides, both connected to his body. It looks similar to Gol-Qayin's current Titan form, a skull with two morning stars. The words used in their titles is, again, the key here. Molten and forged, words you would use to describe the states of metal when they are being made into weapons.

So it's possible that Mol-Qayin and Rol-Qayin were part of Gol-Qayin's body before he was beheaded, like they were his morning stars. And when he died, parts of his broken Soul went into his discarded weapons. OR it's possible that after Gol-Qauin was beheaded, he tried to make weapons for himself, and in the process made Mol-Qayin and Rol-Qayin by mistake, and decided to let them live as Titans.

Finally, the last Titan we face before Truth is simply called The Soul, but their title is very interesting. From what the Elder has told us, The Soul is actually the "Second God that created the four Guardians," and the Elder is actually the first "Soul" that was born from Truth, and was was defeated by The Soul. Now what's interesting about The Soul's title is that it is an "image of The Titan Soul". Not "The Image," with a capital i, or "The Titan Soul." No, it is very specifically an "image of The Titan Soul."

And who is that an image of? It's a copy of our character.

This is the "Power" the Elder is talking about, the power to become a Titan, and this is what I meant when I said that the lightning strike after you absorb The Soul was deliberate. I truly believe that The Soul, just like the Elder, was a pacifist kill, and it isn't until after the lightning strike that the battle starts because the lightning strike split the player's soul for the fourth time. Player's aren't just battling the image of The Titan Soul, they're battling Their Titan Soul.

Gol-Iath, Guardian of the First Gate, with his wounds visible


Mosaic in the first elevator, past the first gate depicting the ritual that split the character's soul


West, North, and East pillars depicting Gol-Qayin, Gol-Set, and Gol-Hevel (respectively) in their full forms


West, South, and East pillars. The South pillar depicts Gol-Iath in their full form


The graveyard where players can find Gol-Hevel


Gol-Hevel's crypt


The Elder's mosaic


Gol-Qayin's mural, and the creation of Rol-Qayin and Mol-Qayin


Gol-Qayin's beheaded corpse under the mountain


The creation of Vinethesis


The Soul Titan at the top of the mountain


The Gate of Truth with lightning striking the player