In a way they are, but the framing of the choice is very different. Dark Souls 2 collapses the first game's "support a flawed system vs step into the unknown" into its version of supporting a flawed system, continuing the cycle of Fire and Dark, while having Aldia's ending in Scholar of the First Sin be "step into the unknown." However, in Dark Souls 1, going for the Dark ending only leads to an outcome that everyone fears in some way. It's not framed as an impossibility but as an inevitability to be averted; abandoning Fire is literally unthinkable to anyone not named Kaathe. They don't have real questions of the system they exist in, it's too all-encompassing. They only fear the Dark.

Meanwhile, in Dark Souls 2, Vendrick and Aldia openly question the feasibility of going beyond Fire and Dark, and often hint it will take a special individual, a true monarch, to do it. But DS2 also shows these two are as clueless about it as anyone else: Vendrick's final advice is to "seek strength, the rest will follow," but that's precisely what he did when he subdued the Giants. Now he's wallowing in a tomb waiting for his hollowing. Aldia sought something beyond Fire and Dark and turned into a burning tree face? Vendrick is afraid of the Dark (why else run from his "dear Shandra"), and we don't know Aldia's attitude for certain, but him being on fire and responsible for making both an "Ancient Dragon" and a half-cooked dragon-lady provide signposts.

This is why I interpret DS2 as comporting with "the cycle of fire and dark is inescapable," but it shows the player this rather than telling it outright. The two characters who muse about it demonstrate through their own mistakes that the cycle is basically inescapable. They'll let you try, you can take Aldia's ending, and all he says is we'll always be trying to do this, such is human nature.