Walters-Beach 1

Erin Walters-Beach
1 May 2019
PHIL 1250
Wood
Signature Assignment

The issue: The author believes that FromSoftware’s video games are too difficult for most
gamers and that their newest release – Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – needs an easier difficulty
setting.
1. FromSoftware needs to add an easy mode to Sekiro.
2. FromSoftware is known primarily for developing punishingly difficult games that push
the limits of modern players.
3. Niche groups of gamers use FromSoftware’s games as a kind of litmus test to distinguish
serious gamers from casual gamers.
4. Not having any difficulty settings creates a problem where only certain players with time,
inclination, reaction speed, and lack of physical issues will get to see the final boss for
themselves.
5. The difficulty is only part of what defines FromSoftware’s games.
6. From Software has some of the best world building and character design in the gaming
industry.
7. There are people that will never get to see the depth of FromSoftware’s design
8. Players might have limited time to play games.
9. There are people that don’t want to spend time fighting a boss 100 times.
10. There are people that aren’t good at timing their parries.
11. There are people that don’t like to be frustrated while playing games.
12. There are people that have physical limitations that make precision more difficult.
13. An easy mode would allow more people to experience From Software’s efforts.
14. Other FromSoftware games allow co-op play to ease the difficulty while Sekiro does not.
15. When you hit a particularly difficult part of the game, you either keep playing that part
over and over until you get past it or you give up.
16. “Lack of respect” for the player comes from thinking that the players that really want a
challenge will be tempted to ruin that experience by playing on a lower difficulty if it is
offered to them.
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Fallacious Response:

Only people that don’t have any videogame skills think that Sekiro is too difficult and
therefore needs an easier difficulty setting. If they were any good, then they wouldn’t need an
easier mode to beat the game. So, Sekiro doesn’t need an easy mode at all.

When Vicarious Visions released their remake of the Crash Bandicoot games and they
turned out to be more difficult than the originals, there wasn’t a mass outcry for them to add an
easy mode to the game. A lot of people wrote positive reviews and spoke of the nostalgia that the
N. Sane Trilogy invoked. They didn’t whine and complain that the developers made it too hard
for them to play.

Besides, you’re just a writer looking to get attention for saying something you know will
be controversial in the gaming community. Have you beaten a FromSoftware game before? Are
you one of the people that has a hard time with videogames because of a physical limitation?

Fair Response:

From what I understand, you believe that Sekiro needs an easier difficulty because it will
expand the player base that can say that they actually beat the game. And that the FromSoftware
developers are disrespecting gamers by not allowing them the option to choose the experience
that they want to have. Additionally, you believe that those individuals that aren’t able to
progress in the game are missing out on what the game has to offer for no reason other than the
developers merely made it too hard.

I can sympathize with gamers that want to be able to play and enjoy Sekiro but have
physical limitations that impact their experience. And I think that's the strongest point in your
argument; however, I would like to express that it's not likely the developers intention to
purposefully exclude anyone from enjoying Sekiro – or any of their games for that matter. In
other words, the difficulty of FromSoftware's games comes from the developers wanting players
to feel a sense of accomplishment each time they overcome something they previously struggled
with, whether that is a boss or getting past a certain area of the game. Hidetaka Miyazaki, the
game's director, has stated this point himself about his vision for Sekiro.

A counterpoint that I would like to make, including some of your own words, is that
FromSoftware's games do fall into the “masocore” genre – derived from the words masochist
and hardcore. Thus, they have a reputation for releasing titles of extreme difficulty. And if that's
not the kind of game that someone wants to play, then they have every right not to. It's not as if
they are being fooled in any way. Personally, I'm not very good at first-person shooter (FPS)
games, and I don't enjoy them. So I don't play them.

Not every game is made for every single individual – we all have our own likes and
dislikes. And it may not, per se, ruin Sekiro if the developers were to release an update that
included and easy mode, but it would fundamentally change its genre – making it more like a
role-playing or action-adventure game. And Sekiro, right now, is exactly what the developers
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intended it to be, and it has nothing to do with respect or disrespect for the players. Hidetaka
Miyazaki made the game that he wanted to make, and there are players out there that are
enjoying and experiencing his vision in exactly they way he intended it to be.

Article Transcript:

It’s time, once again, to revisit an old saw. It was true of Dark Souls 3, it was true of
Bloodborne, it was true of all the other From Software games and will keep being true until the
only acceptable conclusion: one of these games finally puts in an easy mode. That hasn’t
happened yet, and so here we are. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice needs an easy mode. Hello, old
saw. I’ll be honest, it’s not that nice to see you again.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is the latest offering From Software, a developer known for,
among other things, punishingly difficult games that set a new standard for how much abuse the
modern player was able to take. It debuted this new style with Demon’s Souls and cemented it
with Dark Souls before swaggering across the gaming industry with Bloodborne, my drug of
choice and one of the most engaging gaming experiences I’ve ever had. These games have
achieved a kind of cult status in certain corners of the gaming community, where people use
them as a kind of litmus test for whether someone is a true gamer or a filthy casual. The fact that
these games don’t have any difficulty settings means that only a certain sort of player with time,
inclination, reaction speed and lack of physical issues will ever see the final boss fight anywhere
but on Twitch. This is a problem.

My problem with these is that I don’t think I’d write any of these articles if I didn’t like
them so much. There are other difficult games I won’t play, and whatever. But the difficulty is
only one part of what defines these games for me, and honestly, it’s not the most important part.
From Software has some of the best world building in the business and, I would argue, the best
character design. Early on in Sekiro I had to sneak under a bridge, where I found this bizarre,
misshapen hermit man that lunged at me with a wicked knife from underneath a broad straw hat.
It was gross and strange, the sort of thing you can almost smell, the first glimpse I had had of the
malformed underbelly of this world I had only taken my first steps into. That’s what I remember
from Bloodborne more than anything: something about the lonely horrible way these characters
move is so endlessly fascinating that I could watch them all day, and every time I see one I just
need to see the rest. Lots of developers have attempted to imitate From’s style of aggressively
spare storytelling that relies on opaque item descriptions and occasional short dialogue to build
out worlds that seem so much larger than our own character’s comprehension, but only Hollow
Knight ever came close to what makes these games special.

But most people, even most people that might like to see that sort of thing, will never see
any of that. Maybe they have limited gaming time and don’t want to spend that time fighting
Lady Butterfly 100 times in a row. Maybe they’re just not that good at timing their parries,
maybe they get frustrated and don’t feel like being frustrated, just now. Maybe they have a
physical ailment makes this sort of precision just a little too difficult to pull off. An easy mode
would allow an order of magnitude more players to see what From has built, and yet these
experiences remained walled off for those millions of people for reasons that I just can’t parse.
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What’s particularly galling about Sekiro is that all other From Software games at least
had a sort of safety valve to allow you to move past the game’s most difficult boss encounters
with a little help by summoning other players into your game. Sekiro removes even that, and so
if you run up against a brick wall, that’s it. Either beat your head against that wall or stop
playing. It’s the lack of a summon mode that prevented me from sinking too much of my psyche
in the game. I was able to beat the chained ogre without too much trouble–even without the fire
thing–and so, I don’t know, maybe I could keep doing well in this game. But I do not like the
idea of coming up against a boss that I can’t beat without a week of frustration, and so I can’t let
myself get obsessed with this one.

There’s a lot of talk about “respecting the player” when it comes to not including an easy
mode, an idea that all players can and should play this game in this particular, punishing way.
And yet I think the lack of an easy mode showcases the exact opposite. It shows an almost
stunning lack of respect for players with the idea that they cannot be trusted with their own
gameplay experience, that even those who want a challenging game would somehow be lured by
the siren song of lower difficulties and destroy their own experience because they’re too
impatient or immature to know what they actually want. The summoning system is a perfect
example of this: I never used it once while playing Bloodborne, because I knew what experience
I wanted. I didn’t get as into Dark Souls 3, and so I used it liberally.

Celeste was one of the most critically acclaimed games of last year, and quickly earned
its place in what’s called the “masocore” genre: games that, a platformer with the same brutal
ethos of a From Software game. And yet that game shipped with extensive accessibility options,
allowing each player to evaluate exactly what would make this an appropriate experience for
them and then tuning their own settings to their own abilities. The game didn’t split hairs about
what you were doing: it was very clear that the standard mode was the way that this game was
meant to be experienced, and clear that you should try on regular difficulty before you turned on
assist mode. The core experience remains intact, and more people can play. Nothing is lost but
plenty is gained.

And this is what I’ll never understand about From’s fanboys and their continual,
aggressive insistence that the mere presence of an easy mode would somehow compromise a
special experience. It’s worth saying, time and time again: an easy mode does not have to change
the core experience in any way, at all, period. Playing a version of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
that had an easy mode would, theoretically, be completely identical to playing Sekiro: Shadows
Die Twice now. The continued insistence that an easy mode would somehow affect the normal
mode seems to represent a players lack of respect for themselves, an idea that they would not be
able to play the game that they want without ruining it for themselves.

And so I’d say to From fans: believe in yourself. Know that you can play the game you
want to play, even if others are playing the game they want to play. An easy mode does not have
to be complicated: ideally, I’d like to see the sort of deeper customization that Celeste has, but all
you need to do is turn up the damage the player does and turn down the damage the enemies do.
That’s it! I do not, at this point, expect to ever see my wish granted. But it is my wish just the
same.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2019/03/28/sekiro-shadows-dies-twice-needs-to-
respect-its-players-and-add-an-easy-mode/#645487841639

Fallacies:
1. Circular Reasoning/Begging the Question
2. Red Herring
3. Ad Hominem
4. Hasty Generalization
5. Complex Question