Accessibility Options

As gaming grows larger by the day, the question of Accessibility comes up more frequently. Gone are the days when video games were solely a niche hobby that a few dedicated individuals could sustain. Now, games have reached the point in their life where they have begun creeping into popular culture as a mainstay next to music, film, and television. With that, designers have to start considering this new aspect of their market, as many of them need to hit both the long-term and new-term fans to break even on most projects. Hence the recent conversation surrounding Accessibility. Translating the decades of moon logic games have developed into one universal understanding, a translation that has split the topic of gaming in several ways, heightened in my eyes with Fromsoftwere’s rising popularity. Having made their namesake off of challenging and obtuse games that reward exploration, repetition, and mystery, now being assailed for centering a game around challenge and player independence. Rather than centering the experience around ease of access and player guidance.

However, interesting enough, Fromsoft has quite intelligently threaded the needle on this topic after it was raised to a froth in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. See, rather than doubling down on the difficulty and holding to their own devoted market, Fromsoft added dozens of new features and accessibility options in Elden Ring; while also twisting the nob off the difficulty gauge. The most sizable of which is its shift to full open-world design. As now, unlike previous Souls Likes, if you run up against a wall, you’re not stuck there until you break through. Now, the player can explore, get stronger, and practice while still feeling that all-important sense of accomplishment these games pride themselves on. The game is also designed in a way that once you found or explored everything in one area, you are most likely also on par with the area’s boss, eliminating grind unless the player wants to over-level their character.

See, Fromsoft understands that challenge is what makes their games compelling. To remove that entirely, the game would lose not only its identity but also the reason anyone would play it to begin with. So when it came time to expand their target market, their focus was not on walking players through their game but on teaching them how to play it. Ultimately, every Souls game is about learning patterns, getting stronger, and managing aggro. In the past, these elements were rooted in a “One way of play” mentality, not dissimilar to the old NES school of thought where if a player can not master basic jumping in Mega Man, they’re not going to get to see any bosses. While those elements have not left Elden Ring, they have been added upon: Stakes of Merika make walks back to bosses shorter and less punishing, Larval Tears allow players to reset and respec their builds if they made a mistake, and Spirit Ash helps relive aggro by adding allies to fight by your side in more demanding fights. All on top of the aforementioned ability to say “fuck this” and walk in the opposite direction.

All of these changes center around one idea, “How can more people experience our game?” An important concept to remember as Elden Ring builds upon this sense of wonder, exploration, and challenge. Themes that ring a little hollow if the player is shown everything the game has to offer from the start and then is handheld through the whole game. Now, you might be asking, “Well, why not just add a Difficulty Setting to the game? That way, everyone can play the game to their skill level.” While yes, that could help, many other games do it as well; it would most likely just give ammo to the shithead gatekeepers that have blocked entry to new players since Demon Souls. With the changes Fromsoft made, every time a player beats a boss, they beat the same boss as everyone else. They might have used a different build, strategy, or item, but all of those tools were given by the devs to help the player overcome the challenges laid before them.

That’s the rub of the matter, really, player choice. Yes, the short and easy solution is to ask what level of difficulty players want to play with from the start, but that means the devs can’t focus on making one setting any more fun than the others. However, if they set one difficulty but give the player a number of potential viable options, everyone can have their own fun discovering how they want to play the game—again, tying into the core pillars of the Souls games as a whole. Keyword being viable, though, something that Fromsoft had struggled with in the past, as before Elden Ring magic builds were about as effective as tissue body armor. So, while STG and DEX builds still dominate PVP and PVE, you will not get laughed out of the room if you say, “my pump stat is Faith.”