Elden Ring seems to already be Game of the Year...but do I want to play it?

The Game Room
461

The game’s designer has also stated that he wants everyone to be able to enjoy these games. Clearly he cannot have both of these things.

As was stated upthread, if an artist produces an interactive object meant for mass consumption, the entire market is allowed to comment on it. When the artist’s intent hinges entirely on how the market interacts with it, we are allowed to comment on the successful implementation of that intent. When the intent is purely philosophical in nature, we are allowed to comment on the meaning of that philosophy and how it interacts with the game space.

“He’s an artist so he can’t be wrong” or “you’re not the target audience” does nothing but attempt to shut down legitimate and interesting conversations. I respect Hidetaka Miyazaki for being willing to discuss his design philosophy. But I also think that he’s wrong and that his attitude is ultimately regressive.

462

This is all legitimate. By the time you’re in the back half, you’re seeing a lot of the same models either reskinned or outright the same things. That’s not counting recycled bosses (oh hi again, Godskin fellers). Many of the mini-dungeons feel like the same concept repeated over and over. The Haligtree area near the end feels like a significant jump in difficulty which you can either read as “Hard content for best players only” or “No one bothered to balance this” depending on how charitable you’re feeling. PvP is a mess of meme builds and AFK farming from the sound of it but I don’t play PvP so can’t speak directly. Trying to co-op with a friend was unreasonably clunky (and forces you into accepting PvP from other players, which is just stupid) and the UI in general is pretty awful.

So on and so forth. It’s a well built game with a lot of content but there’s plenty of valid reasons to see it as a “very good” game versus the breathless “Excellent 10/10 best game of our generation” launch review hype.

463

This is akin to saying if a chef put too much salt in a recipe they can’t be wrong. You do not have to like it but the chef is not wrong. It also seems you are implying anyone who makes that recipe needs to abide by the chef’s intention and should not modify it. The recipe is the chef’s vision and that should be the end of it.

464

I went back and re-played the first bit of Dark Souls and I realised something: the boss fights in that game are my least favourite part. For me, the payoff for winning a boss fight is much less than the annoyance I feel in having to try it over and over and over again.

I’ve been watching a play-through of Elden Ring and it looks like there are a lot of quality-of-life improvements compared to Dark Souls (fast travel!), but it looks like there’s still the same boss fight slogs that I’m not a fan of. So I think I’ll let someone else experience the frustration and just watch the results.

465

Well if a chef puts a certain amount of salt in a recipe and it tastes the way they want then they are not wrong. However if you make that recipe yourself, that is akin to another developer making another game using the Souls “recipe”. Of course you can change the salt content and another game developer can put a difficulty slider in if they want.

466

He wants everyone to be able to enjoy the games he wants to create. Those games don’t have a difficulty setting, that’s part of the core game philosophy. Saying that he is wrong to not have a difficulty slider is like the chef wanting everyone to enjoy his steak and you saying if he wants everyone to enjoy it, he should be making spaghetti bolognese. Yes Souls games would be more accessible if they had an easy difficulty, yes he would have different people wanting to play the game, but no, that would not be more people enjoying the game he wants to make, because that would not be the game he wants to make. For better or worse, the game he wants people to enjoy is a game without a difficulty slider. His games aren’t defined by being linear. He can keep his core game philosophy and attract new people by adding open world elements and also keep the legacy dungeons. He can not keep his core game philosophy by having a difficulty slider.

If a player will only play a game if a core part of the game is not in the game anymore, then I have absolutely no problem saying the game is not for them. It’s not a game they want to play and the developer should absolutely not be trying to entice that person to play the game. If developers try to get everyone to play their games you end up with bland bla bla games, forgettable dreck that is acceptable to everyone and exciting to no one (hi Ubisoft).

467

I suppose we’re in ‘agree to disagree’ territory. You’re not going to convince me that art should not be critiqued on the terms described by the artist.

468

Look at it from another angle.

There are players who want to play a game that does not have an easy mode. If the Souls games morph into something with an easy mode, what games are those players supposed to play now?

It doesn’t matter what their motivations might be and whether or not you agree with them, they exist*, what games are they supposed to play? They’ve been playing Dark Souls and enjoying it.

  • For me personally, I don’t want to be tempted to lower the difficulty when I hit a brick wall. I don’t want to wonder if something was easy because it was meant to be easy or because I’ve got the difficulty set too low or vice versa. I like having a game that is what it is. The game mechanics are what they are and the challenge is to get through the game using only those mechanics. I liked old school arcade games that you “beat” and that you only progressed if you got better at them. This is something I appreciate in a game. Do I want all of my games to be like that? No. But I like that this style of game exists and I can play them.
469

So don’t play the easy mode? If I’m supposed to feel bad for people who demand a game with fewer options because they’re only happy when other people are being excluded, I guess that’s not going to happen.

Anyway, in related news, Dead Cells’ developer just announced that they’re adding a bunch of accessibility options (including difficulty sliders) because having more people play and enjoy their games is a good thing.

Well, Dead Cells is intended to be tough but fair - sure, you die a lot, but you grow your skill while gaining new weapons & powers until you can beat the final boss, then add a Boss Cell to up the challenge and die to a rat on the next run. And so it begins again…

This is our vision of Dead Cells and we encourage players to try to beat the game as it is, however, we’ve received quite a lot of feedback that this experience is just inaccessible for a decent chunk of players with the game in its current state, for various reasons.

These new options are designed to allow specific adjustments of the game, to make this tough but fair gameplay accessible, while leaving other parts of the game the same.

We hope that these changes can let more players enjoy Dead Cells as we intended, and if the unaltered version of Dead Cells already hits the right balance of challenge and progression for you, then these changes are all optional - just leave the game as it is and continue having fun :slight_smile:

Now THAT’s a dev who is doing it right. It’s also nice to see that the large majority of the comments are supportive of this (naturally, you also have a minority of people saying all the predictable tripe). And a developer who can say “Having this game be hard is its vision” while realizing that “hard” is a fluid concept and people can play a “hard” game on an easier setting depending on their skills and abilities. And if some people use it to play an easier game in opposition to some “vision” then oh well, no big deal.

470

You’re not supposed to feel bad for them. What you should do is recognise that they exist, that they want a certain type of game that also exists, and that it is unreasonable to suggest that the developer of those games should change it to something they don’t want.

That’s great news about Dead Cells, there should definitely be games with difficulty sliders, no complaint from me. I have no issue with a developer deciding to put difficulty sliders in their games if that is the direction they want to go in. I definitely think there should be Souls-like games with difficulty sliders so that people who want to play those games in easy mode can play them. I do NOT think that the Souls games themselves should have difficulty sliders if the developers don’t want to implement them.

See how it works? Just like I don’t think WOW should be offline single player and I don’t think that Roguelikes should have saves, unless the developer wants to implement saves. I think that deliberate design decisions should be respected.

471

It mystifies me how some people feel the game would be worse if it had a difficulty slider. For those who want to play it on the normal “difficult” mode they could still do that. How has their experience been diminished if someone else plays it on an easier mode?

472

Well, I’ve explained why I appreciate a lack of choice in some games. I can guess at other reasons. You know how Wordle is very popular and one of the reasons is that everyone is playing exactly the same game and having the same experience? Well that applies to other games too. Should there be Wordle type games that give people the option of choosing hard and easy words? Yes there should, and there are. Should Wordle itself have a difficulty setting? No it shouldn’t. Is Wordle “wrong” not to have a difficulty setting? No, that’s their choice of how the game should be. That aside, it actually doesn’t matter why people want it. The fact is that some people do want it and there are some games that provide that. Souls games provide that experience for them.

I come back to the fact that this is the game they want to make, it’s not an oversight, it’s not a technical limitation, it is how the designer wants the game to be. Who are we to suggest that is “wrong”?

The chef analogy is a great one. A chef makes salty food, some people love it, other people want the experience of the restaurant because they’ve heard it’s great but they don’t like their food that salty. The chef tastes their steak and they say it tastes exactly how they want it. They would like other people to experience their salty food so they have a child friendly part of the restaurant to entice a broader range of people to try the chefs salty food. Some people try it and say it’s ok but they’d really prefer it if it was less salty. Can’t the chef make it less salty and then the customers can add their own salt if they want? The chef says, “no, I want people to experience my salty food, that’s the experience I want them to have.”

Is the chef wrong? No. Would the chef get more customers if he made different food? Maybe, but it doesn’t matter, he has a particular vision, and that vision is for people to eat his salty food. If customers want food that is less salty, they should go and eat at a different restaurant, there are plenty out there.

Maybe now that Elden Ring has been relatively successful, Ubisoft will make a Souls-lite open world game with STORY, EASY, HARD, VETERAN, LEGEND, and GIT GUD! difficulty settings. A UI that spells out exactly where to go, how, when, why. Gives you a list of all the things that need to be discovered. A voice over for the protagonist to give you hints, “hmmm, maybe I should hit that empty wall over there, it could hide a secret passage way!” Then everyone who wanted that could go and have it. Meanwhile the people who appreciate the Souls games for what they are could carry on appreciating them

473

I suppose you should have a conversation with the dude who created it then, because it’s always had a difficulty setting.

It’s true: you do keep coming back to this.

Media can be critiqued. Even if it is art. We are free to critique Miyazaki’s implementation of his intent. We are free to critique how his audience interacts with it.

The only thing which is unassailable is his intent itself. He wanted to create a game where player death has meaning. Everything after that was fair game the moment it went on the market.

474

The consumers and active participants in a mass media entertainment product.

You say not to buy it or play something else, etc but those are also just reactions to thinking it’s wrong. Verbally giving criticism is an equally valid reaction. Especially when dealing with an item on the shelf saying “pay money then spend time on me, please”.

475

Have you played this game?
Offering a critique without seeing the piece of art, or playing the computer game, sounds quite unusual. It would be hard to do that and have people interested in what you have to say.

476

Am I critiquing the gameplay, or am I critiquing the design philosophy and implementation? I’ve posted an awful lot of very detailed posts in this thread about accessibility and design, so “have you played the game” makes me feel like you maybe haven’t read them. :slight_smile:

If any of those posts make incorrect assumptions, feel free to correct me. I’m not too proud to admit when I’m wrong.

FWIW, no, I haven’t played Elden Ring. I have played other Souls Games, and I’ve paid close enough attention to this one understand where it is similar and where it is different. Thankfully, the points I’m making don’t apply only to Elden Ring - they are applicable in a much broader sense.

477

Please understand that critique is not necessarily an attack on the creator, nor on the people who enjoy the work. It is an analysis of intent, composition, and implementation.

I mentioned above that I respect Miyazaki for his willingness to discuss his intent and approach to game design, and I would absolutely argue that this is a core component of elevating gaming to art. But an absolutely essential component of interactive art is the interactive part. Miyazaki tells us some facts which have been consistent through his games:

Intent: to create a game where death has meaning for the player
Philosophy: extreme difficulty is an essential component to creating that meaning
Implementation: a game which has a set difficulty level and no accessibility features

We cannot argue with his intent, and I don’t see why we’d want to. We can absolutely critique his philosophy and implementation.

If we want to consider video games as art - and I very much do - then we must also accept that “are people having fun?” isn’t the only question up for discussion. It’s an important one, but not the only one.

To go back to that chef analogy, let’s tweak it a bit. A chef opens a restaurant that serves excellent tacos, but he won’t let anybody order until they’ve eaten a very hot pepper. He declares that the endorphin rush from the capsaicin pain is an essential component to elevating the dining experience.

That’s his intent. Suffer through a pepper, get that endorphin rush from the pain, go enjoy a taco.

If the chef says that every single person must eat a ghost pepper (one of the hottest in the world), is he serving his intent in the best possible way? Or would it be fair to point out that heat tolerance varies wildly, and some people will experience that pain and endorphin rush from a lesser pepper?

In other words, we can criticize his implementation without criticizing his intent. “He’s the chef and his creation is unassailable” simply isn’t true, unless your opinion is that no creative work can ever be criticized.

478

I’d say we’re off topic, but to be fair, the game’s difficulty was the main topic of the thread. We seem to be resolved to think:

  1. It needs a difficulty slider.
  2. It might need one or could sell more copies if it had one.
  3. Nope, the designers were right to have no slider.

I come down on the “gosh I wish it had one” since the game is not already bought by me and my main reason for not getting it is that I have never played a punishingly difficult “souls” game.

479

Just feels like anti-canonical silliness to be arguing about Miyazaki’s vision in 2022.

We can criticise it, of course, but it is tedious to do so because the conversation doesn’t go anywhere interesting. It’s all settled case law at this point - lol at a difficulty slider when Dark Souls revolutionised gaming.

The realisation of Miyazaki’s design philosophy in a new, open world genre is the interesting thing to discuss imho - I think he has succeeded, and absolutely leathered it out of the park in the areas that matter, but there are still some very clear, significant weaknesses to the game. But that is a different conversation as how can you speak to that if you’ve never played the game?

480

Well, YOU don’t need to talk about it. I still find the conversation interesting as do others.

The original vision of this thread was to discuss Elden Rings’ (and by extension, Souls games) difficulty and accessibility for novice players with poor reflexes/skills. Maybe this just isn’t a thread for you. There’s lots of other threads you can read instead :wink: