The Moonlight Greatsword is the only weapon players can consistently acquire across all the Dark Souls titles and is a staple in FromSoftware history. In December 1994, FromSoftware released their first title, King's Field. Among the weapons players could choose from in the game, the Moonlight Greatsword was the one to get. Due to its significance in FromSoftware's history and its importance in the King's Field series, the weapon has continued to make an appearance in almost every FromSoftware title since.
King's Field is the first of four games in the franchise. Originally launched for the PlayStation in the mid-1990s, this first-person action role-playing game plunges players into a world of labyrinthine dungeons where they must uncover the source of a great evil which has laid siege over the land of Verdite. Through traversing the underground dungeons, players are able to collect different weapons and items which are used to combat the hordes of enemies the protagonist encounters. Among these items is the holy Moonlight Sword, a recurring plot element across all the King's Field games.
FromSoftware is well-known nowadays for their creation of the Soulsborne genre, a category of games notorious for their high degree of difficulty and exploration-based gameplay. King's Field acted as the catalyst which ultimately led to the creation of its spiritual successor Demon's Souls and later led to the creation of the Dark Souls series. It would be an understatement to say that without King's Field, the highly accredited Dark Souls games would have likely not come about.
The Significance of Dark Souls' Recurring Moonlight Greatsword
King's Field established a lot of what is currently synonymous with the Dark Souls games. From it's real-time combat encounters to exploration driven gameplay, King's Field set the precedent of what to expect in a Soulsborne game. The game is primarily populated with hostile areas, providing players with very few moments of rest. Players can also use a combination of physical and magical attacks against enemies, both of which drain stamina at varying degrees. Many of these mechanics rolled over in future titles in the series and stayed consistent in Dark Souls.
The Moonlight Sword is a critical weapon to King's Field's storyline. Across all the games, the player must find the sword in order to defeat the series' core antagonist and restore peace to the lands. The sword holds the same level of significance as the Master Sword does in the Legend of Zelda series. FromSoftware has since taken this iconic weapon from their first game and integrated it into almost all of their titles. The sword can be found consistently in all of the Dark Souls titles under some iteration of the name "Moonlight Greatsword." The sword's description even references Seath the White Dragon, who was originally introduced in the first King's Field games (and is also found in Dark Souls as a boss). Due to its legendary in-game status, this fan favorite sword is often considered to be one of the best weapons in every game it appears in.
The presence of this reoccurring weapon is a nod to the success that King's Field brought to FromSoftware. While present in most games by the studio, the Moonlight Greatsword was unfortunately omitted from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, due to the strict aesthetic requirements the studio had set in place. It nevertheless stands as one of the hallmarks of FromSoftware history and will likely continue to be seen in many more Soulsborne games to come.