I apologize if this is a dumb question, but:
Do I need to know about Dark Souls to play this? Is it helpful to get the full picture, mandatory reading, or just a touchstone to sell the concept (Visual Novel meets Dark Souls!)
You can tell how much I haven't learned about it by the fact that I don't know if "The Commander" is a character, a Captain Ersatz of a specific one or something entirely original. I do, however, like visual novels, find the concept of a silent VN protagonist intriguing, and looking for an horror-light one ('tis the season, after all)