The prolific Dark Souls modder known as Datehacks gained a lot of attention as of late mainly thanks to his ambitious Age of Fire mod which turns well-known bosses from the original Dark Souls into playable avatars. More recently, Datehacks has been working on a similar mod for Dark Souls 3 called Forces of Annihilation, but his initial attempt to draw attention to the mod kicked up a bit of a controversy that led him to angrily proclaim he was done with modding for good. However, it would seem that Datehacks had a change of heart since not only has development on Forces of Annihilation resumed, but fans can actually try out a playable version of the mod right now.
Datehacks confirmed the release of the Forces of Annihilation mod via this Reddit post along with a video showing a playable version of Dark Souls 3’s Yhorm the Giant boss. According to Datehacks’ Reddit outline, his longterm goal with the mod is to make every standard enemy and boss playable, though he admit that since he alone is working on the project, that final dream may take some time to realize.
A Nexus Mods download link for Forces of Annihilation can be found here, though Datehacks warns that users shouldn’t try to use the mod when connected to Dark Souls 3’s online servers since the game’s anti-cheat system will flag and auto-ban their account. As for the Age of Fire mod, Datehacks’ Reddit post also sadly confirmed it has been indefinitely suspended while he works on tweaking and expanding the scope of the Forces of Annihilation mod.
In the wake of the recent controversies that were sparked up shortly after the Forces of Annihilation debut, Datehacks also posted a long-winded update on his website. It’s honestly a little hard to tell what specific points Datehacks is trying to make given his poor grasp of the English language, but the overall tone of the post is one of victory and gratitude to those who supported him. At the very least, fans of his work seem to be happy that his proclamation of quitting the modding scene wasn’t permanent and that Forces of Annihilation is now playable.