Disabled quadriplegic shows why Sekiro doesn't need an easy mode - Videos for the 97.4%

Man, this is my pet peeve when it comes to FromSoft games, there's always someone who'll casually says this about X boss, just as there's always someone who has trouble with Y boss that most others didn't. You can't call any of the bosses objectively easy (maybe with the exception of a certain noble individual), and especially not one that so many people have trouble with like Chained Ogre. The grab attacks are very punishing and absolutely not easy to consistently avoid, and the boss has a lot of health which means it gets a lot of chances to use those grab attacks. And the Blazing Bull is incredibly difficult until you find out how you can beat it - personally I just sprint after it and hit it in the side, but when I first encountered it I tried deflecting and jumping over it, which resulted in death within like 10 seconds. If I hadn't thought to sprint after it, I would have probably been stuck for a while. I'm pretty sure you can at least turn an attack into a deflect, but I'm not sure of the exact timing of it or how wide of a frame you have to cancel an attack. In any case, that mod also allows you to speed up the player movement, so you could play at 50% game speed but 100% player speed to mitigate this.

I feel like you're kind of generalizing game experiences a bit, there are plenty of games that you can experience the content regardless of difficulty, but there's a lot of games where they aren't so separate. Prey might be a grind on normal mode but what about games where the mechanics are the draw of the game? Quake 3 Arena (and Quake Champions as well) are extremely hard to play in the competitive modes because the movement mechanics and map control, and the moment to moment decisions you have to make in and out of combat, but that's what makes Quake so interesting to play in the first place. If you strip out the mechanics that take time to learn you end up with an early shooter template with solid weapons which is fun, but interchangeable with pretty much half the games in existence. STALKER is another game series that the unpredictability and difficulty of the gameplay combined with the atmosphere is a massive part of what makes the game so compelling - the tension you get from being low on resources and pretty much having no idea what you're going to encounter and if you'll be able to survive where you're going is a big portion of the experience, and while mods tend to rebalance the guns to be more powerful they usually compensate by making encounters much more difficult. The difficulty modes are often joked about because the difficulty options were mostly an afterthought and don't even work like you'd expect them to. Even the new Doom, which is pretty palatable for most audiences, isn't as nearly as compelling to play on easier difficulties because the draw is the combat mechanics. The ramping difficulty of the encounters in conjunction you utilizing your weaponry properly is what's satisfying in the long run and keeps the game's momentum, when you play on easy difficulties these ramping encounters don't change anything and it makes the actual game way less engaging to actually sit through. I don't think all games should strip away difficulty options, no. A game like the Witcher 3 certainly benefits from them because the writing and quests can be experienced regardless of the mechanics. But I don't think if a game developer has a vision that requires a certain level of mechanical understanding and they can execute it properly that that game needs to be able to appeal to every single person, I think it should entirely be dependent on the game itself. It's why games like the original Thief exist, because they don't appeal to everyone but they fill a niche that not a lot of other games can.

Sorry, I mean that it's not complex. It hits hard and punishes mistakes, but it's slow (relative to Sekiro enemies) and has a very limited moveset. It's 'not hard' because there isn't a lot to learn in order to defeat it. Not compared to Guardian Ape or Genichiro. Or Owl. You can cancel an attack into a deflect but it's only the first few frames.

dark souls would not have been the landmark game it is had it had adjustable difficulty settings.

https://youtu.be/OOjXaAZHEQE Friendly reminder that game journalists are literally dumber than pigeons. The bird had to deal with 3 axises and everything.

This has probably been brought up but in Dark Souls and Bloodborne you can literally summon in another player to do all the heavy lifting for you. I love hard games but having more options is never a bad thing, and From games frequently have options to make the game easier for you. There should be a menu for 'Assist options' with things like slowing down enemy attacks, widening the deflect windows, etc. Especially since the game has no co-op mode. Nobody loses anything having this feature. Your average players are free to totally ignore those menu options and play it the 'normal' way.

Considering how stressful it can be to play games and write a lengthy article about it in a short notice, it makes sense that they're advocating for easier difficulty options. While I agree that they should stop being babies and just get good, they're only playing these games because it's their job. If your job was to review games 24/7, wouldn't you wish that it was a ton easier to beat the game so you could move on to the next game faster with minimal effort? The fact that they're forced to go through all these games due to their job will just make playing games less fun for them, and they will become less motivated to actually continue playing if the game is seen as too difficult. That's just my 2 cents about why gaming journalists think this way. I take it that not all journalists are working under stressful conditions, but I imagine that many people do.

bloodborne and dark souls wouldn't be the same games if they had an easy mode. its a unique experience where your character doesn't necessarily get stronger but you're more capable with passing through areas because of the experience you've had with them. there was sections of each game that took me more than 10 tries to get passed but it was rewarding when i got through. without that difficulty and every steepening learning curve the game would have just felt like a generic hack and slash i would have lost all interest in the game. there are games that are hard for the sake of it and don't feel rewarding because they feel unfair and then there is well designed games that make the challenge feel good.

I can't believe this is such an insanely divisive opinion. Games, like all art, need not be accessible to literally everyone. To do so would restrict the mediums potential. There should obviously be a push to get everyone involved, especially when you're offering games as a service, or trying to make the most money. But the idea that you need to make your game 'inclusive of everybody' is utterly unreasonable.

I'd also suggest people read this page from a disabled charity working on getting accessibility in the industry, and then realize just how fucking insulting it is to ask for an easy mode: Accessible Player Experiences (APX) | Accessible.Games

Then don't play them on easy mode, problem solved. People who want that experience are losing literally nothing.

I'm trying way too hard? What are you on about? The general artistry of games and the requirement of skill and reflexes aren't exclusive. There are many games where the entire point of the experience is to engage with it's mechanics at a core level, and those games have just as much artistic integrity as the walking simulators. Asking a game to change what it's fundamentally trying to do, deconstructing it's purpose, is unreasonable, I'm sorry.

Celeste, a hardcore platformer about refining your skills against a set of mechanics, did it and was fine though.

all of the elements you mentioned are interlinked. dark souls put you into a hostile world, one where death is not only inevitable, but common. this is evident in the environment around you, in the level design, in the story, and in the gameplay mechanics. the graveyard being right next to where you first really start the game is a great example of this. i would say that most people's first experience in the main world is wandering in there and getting decimated, i know it was mine. this was intended, it was put right where it was to show that this is a dangerous world full of dangerous things. when you're first starting out even the standard hollow undead can be tricky, but it isn't impossible. by learning how the gameplay mechanics work, you learn how to survive this hostile world. even with that, getting to a bonfire can be an absolute relief, a small bit of respite when everything around you wants you dead, at the cost of bringing back everything you slayed to get there. if you killed it once, though, you can kill it again. you might have gotten to the bonfire by the skin of your teeth and dread having to fight that which you've already killed, but perseverance will prevail. that is what dark souls culminates to, a story of perseverance. you may find yourself struggling hard but all obstacles can be overcome if you just keep trying. you're an undead, destined for hollowing, but if you have something to fight for, something to hold onto your sanity for, you can stave it off. if the game proves too difficult, to where you leave and never come back, to where you've given up, you've gone hollow. this is supposed to be a possibility, not everyone is supposed to be able to get through the game if they can't stick it out. i died nearly 50 times to the bell-tower gargoyles on my first playthrough, nearly gave up and accepted that i couldn't do it after many of those deaths. i hated the game at times then, thinking it was bullshit. i kept pushing, though, and eventually, i beat them. it was probably the biggest rush i've gotten from a game, i leapt out of my chair and shouted with joy. if the game allowed me to play it on an easier difficulty, to make it so that the struggle wasn't as much of a struggle, i probably would have done that. i'd have cruised through the game, facing some challenge but not enough to feel the despair i had felt through my first playthrough, and my victories wouldn't be quite the same rush. it would still have been a good game, but it wouldn't have been as memorable of an experience. it would have been just that, though, a good game, maybe even great. it wouldn't have been the struggle that i conquered, it wouldn't have been the lowest lows, the highest highs, the experience of getting better and knowing it. it would have been a well-made action RPG, and not dark souls.

Cause you were doing it wrong. I really, really hate saying that. In the Soulsborne games, that concept didn't exist. You didn't have a "wrong" way to fight an enemy. In Sekiro, you do. you can 100% jump out of everyone of his grabs. You can 100% deflect everyone of his attacks that isn't a grab. And the game is, at this early stage in it's progression, trying to teach you about stealth, about boss encounters with multiple adds, and about aggro ranges. If you take those lessons to heart, the Ogre can be a challenge, but far from "hard as all fuck". Much of the difficulty in Sekiro comes from trying to do things how you want versus how the game wants. And the game is going to win on that front. Every time.

If this is the expected way to avoid his grabs then why does the tutorial message about how to avoid grabs mention dodging but not jumping?

I'll be honest, when I read the prompt for avoiding any of the "grabs" in the game, I just assumed it meant both. Both have invincibility frames, and both have a good distance that they cover in any direction. I personally have found dodging to be considerably less useful than just jumping in most situations. You can't block mid dodge, but you can block and deflect mid jump.

Because you are intended to dodge grab attacks. You're not meant to Dark Souls dodge though, dodging in Sekiro is "move your body out of the way before the attack happens", much like in Nioh, while dodging in the Souls games is "dodge a the last second to nullify the enemy's attack".

Except you seem to forget that in the new Thief game those options were added after the fact. Those options to make your game harder do nothing to make the game harder in a way that's fair and rewarding because the game is not designed around it. Turning those markers or glows off doesn't suddenly signpost the levels or change their gamey layouts, and fix guard patrols. It's the same reason turning off quest markers in Skyrim completely screws up the quests because none of the quests are made to be played with them off. People didn't dislike the new Thief game because it wasn't the old ones, people dislike them because the old ones do a style of gameplay very well and the new one tried to cater to everyone, and it completely lost what separates Thief from other games in the process. Thief had difficulty levels, but playing on easy does not fundamentally change the way you play or your need to understand how to play it, because they designed the difficulty around their game's design instead of trying to shoehorn it in. Do you really think STALKER would've set itself apart from other games if was a breeze? The hostile atmosphere is because of the danger of the world, not because of the lore, or the music, or the visuals. I'm not saying you can't make a few changes here or there but STALKER would not be what it is without it's mutant designs and AI intelligence. Many of them are designed to panic the player, bloodsuckers literally go invisible and you have to identify them by sound and the encounters that are universally praised and talked about the games would not be so if these encounters didn't have challenge because outside of the first jumpscare they would never elicit any other emotion. Why do you think the difficulties other than master in STALKER feel so tacked on? Do you think it was laziness, elitism? or maybe it had something to do with the numerous delays, management problems and reworking they had to do. Do you really think they had the time or money to consider actually properly implementing difficulties outside of some quick value modifiers? You're arguments here are also being really reductive. For some reason you seem to think anyone who enjoys difficulty provided by game mechanics is just some sort of elitism and somehow don't consider that gameplay itself has plenty of artistic merit, and is in fact a primary way in which games are different from all other forms of art. So when it's multiplayer any sort of difficulty and mastery required is okay but single player you can throw that out the window? I'm not sitting here saying EVERY GAME SHOULD BE HARD, but every game example I've given are ones driven by mechanics. Most games are fine having multiple ways to experience them but there are some games that yes, trying to cater to everyone can potentially compromise the game experience. I don't get why this is such an issue considering most AAA games have been trying to cater to everyone for years now, and the few exceptions that exist are somehow a massive problem?

"It's from game so I play it like this" is not a valid forum response nor a valid method of playing particularly in light of developer saying multiple times 'this will not play like a soul's game'. The problem is you. You are free to like or dislike the game, you are not free to impose mechanics that don't exist on an extant system and any dev with an ounce of sanity would simply outright ignore your complaints.

yeah this is easy for all of his dodge attacks except for the aforementioned lunging grab which can situationally be impossible to get out of the way of effectively because of how big the hitbox is and how hard it tracks (unless you jump, and again, that's not an option I thought would be feasible because of my experience with the game).

While I don't have much to offer to the overall discussion as others have done a better job at explaining this situation better than I ever could, I would like to mention that there is a CE table for Sekiro that can adjust the game's difficulty to your liking (easier, or harder). Read through here and even searched for mentions of CE, but if I'm blind and missed it, apologies for a late post.

Exactly. Why is allowing people who have physical issues beyond their control be able to actually enjoy games and experience what everyone else is, suddenly a bad thing? Is it against the ~artistic vision~ of an architect to add handrails, ramps, and elevators? Is it against the integrity of a film or tv show to have captioning? No, it's not. These provide options for people who need them, everyone else is free to ignore them.

the vast majority of games do. for a few that do not, compromising the gameplay would be compromising the artistic vision. in my view, gameplay is just as much an artistic facet, if not moreso in some cases, as the visuals and the story.

So Celeste has suddenly compromised all ~artistic vision~ by including an assist mode?

Then keep them off? Why are so many people complaining about options that can be turned off and using ~artistic vision~ as an excuse to block them.

the devs of celeste implemented them of their own accord, they decided that it was something they wanted to do, and that is perfectly okay. the devs of dark souls decided not to implement difficulty options, instead opting for a different way of player assistance, summoning and soapstone signs, which is also perfectly okay. not all games need to have the same features with regards to gameplay, and difficulty can be very much so an important part of intended gameplay design. A game like Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy couldn't have an easy mode, it would be antithetical to the game itself. You can get mods that make it easy, but that is not, at its core, what the game is about. i don't think all games should not have difficulty settings, most aren't really narratively or thematically dependant on it. some, though, are, and i think that if the decision is made to retain that difficulty, even at the expense of some players' ability to play, it should be respected. not every book or film is going to be accessible by everyone purely due to the nature of the book or film. there are hard reads, ones that may require extensive background knowledge of certain subjects, may be difficult to follow unless you can keep up, or use complex imagery that could go over some people's heads. there are films that may be difficult to understand on the first or even subsequent watches for similar reasons. there are sports and other physical activities which may require a certain level of physical or mental competency in order to participate in. i think wanting all games to have difficulty options would be quite limiting to what games can be.

It's literally as simple as this, guys. We are not trying to 'block' accessibility options behind the guise of artistic intent. We're saying that, at the end of the day, it comes down to what the Devs want. What their intention with the game is. If the Devs decide that they don't want to make their gameplay systems more accessible for whatever reason, that has to be okay. If it isn't okay, the medium is severely restricted.

And said people can freely critique the game if its too hard for them or not inclusive. The wonders and perks of games is being able to develop tools to allow everyone to enjoy your game, and plenty of other games have had 0 issues implementing it as a result without hurting the base image for anyone else seeking a challenge. Good game design does not rely on difficulty purely being the only motivator of the game, even souls knew this by adding phantoms to allow people to scout ahead for you or help beat bosses. Souls already has a difficulty option, its literally the phantom signs that you can pick up as a handicap. And again, people are free to criticize it when there's other devs who can still project an extremely powerful image while having said systems.

Then what's the problem? Feel free to criticize Devs who don't include those systems, but definitely don't expect them to have to make those changes. There's a world of difference between what Celeste and the Souls games are trying to achieve.