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Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
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Join Date:Posts: 50145
Anyone sick of the no sense debate on game difficulty that this game has been labelled with?
I'm all for game accessibility options but sometimes lowering the difficulty really will change how a game plays. Plenty of developers getting on board as well. Lots of Devs from games that are more like movies getting on board about adding accessibility options which is fine when your game isn't more focused on actual gameplay and systems
Then youve got games like Celeste which I feel accessibility options suit. However I do feel some games can be negatively affected when difficulty is removed. Sekiro would be an awful boring game if you could just button mash your way through and would be no different than the older god of war games.
Seems most of the complaints aren't from people with disabilities but more from people with either not enough time or patience to invest in a tough game.
And while its great to open gaming up to a wide audience as possible I also think it's very unfair to dismiss any argument for the fact that some games need difficulty to preserve their identity as someone wanting to keep some games to an elite club. It also ignores a very important fundamental about game development and human psychology. If a player finds an easy way to overcome a challenge they will use it.
I think a bigger concern for disabled gamers is control interface but there's some fantastic work by companies making custom control interfaces for these people
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Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,207 CMod ✭✭✭✭
Join Date:Posts: 27919
My own opinion on the difficulty debate has shifted a bit in the last while, helped by the conversations that have popped up about Sekiro (also because of the prevalence of moronic 'git gud' comments one sees online when people are genuinely struggling to get to grips with a game).
Once upon a time I'd have been firmly on the 'artistic integrity' bandwagon, but feel that's rather naive now. I still think a game's vision is important, even if that involves intense difficulty. But equally I'm keen to see more people experience what any given game has to offer.
As some developer pointed out: did the presence of a 'auto style' option in Bayonetta 2 undermine that game? Not in the slightest - didn't impact my playthrough whatsoever. Ditto with Nintendo's many difficulty shortcuts. And same with Celeste's difficulty options - never once whacked on one of the assist mode options. But it wouldn't bother me at all if someone did get to the end using any of these options: I'm glad they got to see more of what the game has to offer.
Sekiro has more to offer than just being monstrously hard. It has stunning art design, and a story that hides more depth than might be immediately apparent. It has rich, rewarding level design full of secrets and mysteries to uncover. Even the combat has more going for it than just persevering until you learn a boss's attack patterns - the joyous clank of a successful deflect or the satisfaction of a death blow is as much down to the visual and sound artistry than it is the player's perfect timing.
If there were options in a menu for players - whether those with a disability or simply others who've hit a brick wall and can't progress - to shift the rules a bit to experience more of all that, it's no biggie to me. I think Matt Thorson's (Celeste designer) suggestions here are perfectly fair. I mean, even taking into account the narrative 'justifications' the resurrection limits are fairly arbitrary - someone tweaking that to give them a better chance against some of the more nightmarish bosses would be no skin off my back.
https://twitter.com/MattThorson/status/1113534763564826624
These rules don't need to be all up in your face: the game starts as a default, and for players who want to play as normal they may never even know the options are there. But they're there and available for anyone who wants to see more of what the game has to offer but can't make it through by the usual means.
I found Terry Cavanugh's thread on the subject particularly insightful: if a designer puts effort into allowing more people experience a game's particular thrills while sticking to their original vision for the game, then to me that's an unambiguously good thing.
https://twitter.com/terrycavanagh/status/1115222336389701634
And hey, difficulty is ultimately a subjective thing in many ways - some will be delighted to see Sekiro through to the end credits (raises hand) while others will feel like they aren't done until they've completed all endings with the demon bell rung and Kuro's charm handed back. So hey, each to their own within a game's own particular identity
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johnny_ultimate wrote: »Nonsense tbh. Lots of hard and very hard games have had difficulty / accessibility options and it hasn't diluted the conversation around them, or dimmed their reputation. The Souls game have options to make them more manageable for less capable players - e.g. online play* - and it hasn't hurt them one bit in the eyes of their fans.
If you play a game with multiple difficulties and you decide to play it on hard mode and say then you come here when you get stuck for help, the majority wont know why you're stuck, when you reveal the difficulty you're playing it, their advice will be to lower the difficulty.
You come here with the same issue on a hard game with one difficulty, like soulsborne/sekiro etc and you will have everybody sharing their tactics and giving helpful advice.
The co-op aspect of the soulsborne game was meh in terms of making it easier, the boss got a lot more hp, which didnt really matter on some bosses, but with some bosses it made the fights much much harder. And then if one of the players died? heh good luck!johnny_ultimate wrote: »And who said anything about button bashing? From Software are terribly talented folk - they sure as hell could come up with ways to widen the audience without fundamentally destroying the experience. I mean, someone having a moment of invincibility while healing during the Genichiro fight without having to worry about the arrow attack could be the difference between them giving up and prevailing. It wouldn't fundamentally change the player needing to get to grips with the mechanics - it'd just give them a few seconds more breathing space.
If you bring in settings to help like the ones in the tweet you shared, the players will not need to learn how to use the fight mechanics, with infinite revives or slowing down the enemies speed, you just need to mash the attack (button mash) until the enemy has no hp left.johnny_ultimate wrote: »There's plenty of reasons why any given player might not be able to push through Sekiro. There's also plenty likely interested in aspects of the game outside the combat alone - the popularity of lore analyses of the From games is testament to that. I don't see any harm in allowing them options to customise the experience to get the most out of it, just like Celeste did so brilliantly and elegantly.
What reasons are there? Besides lazy/disabled.
If people aren't arsed to "play" the game for the lore, they dont need to, plenty of lore analysis on youtube. Heck you would get more understanding of the lore through those vids, than looking for items, or replaying the game for quests you missed or dont know what order to trigger NPC events.johnny_ultimate wrote: »Oh, and let's play videos are nowhere near the same level as playing a game. Even if you are just on board for the exploration or story, having a controller in your hand and making the discoveries yourself is a fundamentally different and more rewarding experience than watching somebody else do it.
And overcoming challenges on top of those is an even more rewarding experience, a lot of players don't get to know that as they quit first, which is their own fault, not the developers. And those that do stick it through, never come back at the end and wished it was any easierjohnny_ultimate wrote: »*I should stress that I absolutely feel From made the right decision in cutting online play here, as I think it allowed them to create more focused boss fights that are superior than most in the Soulsborne games. But equally I don't think a few alternative difficulty / accessibility options would have in any way damaged my experience with the game.
When you play a game with multiple difficulties, what do you pick yourself? Most go with "Normal", i do myself as playing on hard always just feels cheap, dying in one hit type **** as the game isnt "balanced" around this difficulty, they just ramp up the damage and enemy hp (now thats a slog). And easy is just a complete faceroll.
Gameplay wise, these games are nowhere near the level of Dark sekiroborne. And the reason for that is because it becomes near impossible to balance a game around multiple difficulties.
I can't discuss what way Celeste handled their difficulty curve, I've yet to play it, but i can imagine such a balancing feat on 2d jumping platformer is a lot easier than the likes of Sekiro.0 -
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Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 29,207 CMod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 27919
YouSavedMyLife wrote: »Let us have Sekiro with it's intended design. It's not often we get it. The casuals can play their Ghost of Tsushima later this year
Nobody is advocating for Sekiro's intended design to be changed. Most people I've seen arguing for assist / easier options are those who are big fans of the game, many of whom have finished it.
If Sekiro was otherwise exactly the same as it is now, except quietly sitting in a menu somewhere there were a few toggles to make certain aspects of the game less severe (hell, you could even implement like the Demon Bell, as an in-game task)... again that to me is how ideally something like is managed, as demonstrated by Celeste's superb implementation of such an idea. There's no 'easy', 'normal' or 'hard' mode prompt when you boot it up or press 'new game' - the game by default is the same, there's just some options for those who need it. Given Sekiro already has features for dramatically altering some options and tweaking the difficulty, it's surely easy to implement something similar in the opposite direction.
The 'casuals' comment is representative of one of the reasons my opinion on this has changed a bit. I want more people to be able to enjoy and appreciate the games I do - like Sekiro, which I absolutely adore. I'm not going to look down on them if they hit a difficulty wall or are seriously struggling - I want them to overcome that. If they can do it through practice or mastery, great! If they need a helping hand, I'd much rather that then them dropping out altogether.I can't discuss what way Celeste handled their difficulty curve, I've yet to play it, but i can imagine such a balancing feat on 2d jumping platformer is a lot easier than the likes of Sekiro.
Celeste is one of the most precise, tightly-honed video games I've ever played - every challenge expertly tweaked to ensure you really need to know what you're doing. It's a super-hard game, and you keep unlocking tougher and tougher stuff - later and post-game levels are among the most demanding platforming the medium has seen. It's a masterful game, and one of the most satisfying to reach the end of - especially because its story so beautifully makes the challenge and overcoming adversity the central theme of the whole thing.
And yet the game has the most generous, flexible assist mode imaginable. You're allowed tweak it in ways that fundamentally alter the experience. Struggling to make a jump that has been perfectly designed to be handled with the maximum amount of dashes? Well, you can add an extra dash! That turns an immense challenge into something fairly trivial. Did knowing that option was available to a player make any difference to me, pushing through some immensely challenging platforming to make it to the peak? Not a jot. If anything I'm delighted more people will make it to the peak and get a feel for the masterly design on display throughout.
I mean, here's a quote from Thorson:I was originally against the idea, but I think it was Noel, Amora, and Gabby from the team who work shopped the idea and it started making sense late in development. We allocated a few days to implementing it in the last month, and I'm super glad we did. We've gotten a lot of messages from people who are thankful they were able to experience the game because of assist mode, and I think it's consistent with the message of the game.
To me that's the ultimate proof of why developers should consider (no demands here - just something for developers to keep in mind) these sort of options. People who otherwise wouldn't have experienced the game getting to do so because of some options subtly tucked away in a menu. I couldn't give a **** if they had an easier time of than I did by pushing through without any of the assists enabled. Very much recommend Mark Brown's video on the topic:
I'm well beyond the point of thinking games should be for the talented few, or those who persevere through countless 'you died' screens. I love From Software games - and if it takes a few extra options to get people on board with them, that gets an enthusiastic thumbs up from me.0 -
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