Dark Souls 3 helps explain the papal conclave to Spanish TV viewers, who may be wondering where the cardinals got all those fireballs

As the 2025 papal conclave goes on in the Sistine Chapel following the death of Pope Francis on April 21, a news channel in Spain has used Dark Souls 3 footage to illustrate what could be going on.

So from my understanding, when all of the cardinals from around the world descend on the Sistine Chapel, they put it to a vote to decide who the next Pope will be, with a large majority of the vote needed to successfully elect a new person to the role. Although my knowledge is only from the film The Two Popes, as I have yet to see Conclave (although apparently a number of cardinals are watching it for advice), so perhaps I could have the wrong idea.

Spanish TV channel Cuatro aired a segment about the ongoing conclave, which was spotted by PC Gamer. While we can't get cameras into the chapel for the proceedings, they used footage from Dark Souls 3's Pontiff Sulyvahn boss fight with the player donning the Pope-like Archdeacon armor. While we can't confirm that papal candidates are in there throwing fireballs at each other, we can't deconfirm it either, can we? (Think about it, all the smoke…) Plus Pope Benedict's 'Pope Emeritus' title totally sounds like an RPG boss fight.

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

The news report said (via machine translation) "The prediction markets are going viral these days in Italy. If we were to imagine a conclave with a video game aesthetic, it could be this battle for the throne of St. Peter," before cutting to a fantasy football pope app. We don't know when the cardinals are due to emerge from the chapel with a new pope, but we could be days away from Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa linking the first flame.

In Oblivion Remastered I returned to a village that has haunted me for years to relive one of the best side quests in the RPG.