Among the many statements by Hidetaka Miyazaki, the boss of FromSoftware, before the launch of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, one in particular intrigued me (and not just me, considering the numerous comments from readers under the news in question) that is the one regarding the fact that Lowering Elden Ring’s difficulty would “destroy the game itself”, as it would eliminate the sense of joy that the player feels in overcoming an obstacle, be it a boss or a particularly complicated situation for the player. But is it really like that? Possible that Elden Ring’s challenge rate can’t coexist with one “easy mode”? And if that were the case, I launch a provocation well aware of attracting a lot of dislikes, in itself Elden Ring would not automatically be ruined by the balance itself and the multiple ways in which it is possible to “break” the game with crazy builds and in several cases even easily accessible?
I’ll be precise straight away: as far as I’m concerned, Miyazaki’s speech is flawless, or at least when he talks about joy and sense of accomplishment that comes from completing a challenge. A challenge that can clearly only be achieved by calibrating the game in a certain way and without constantly holding the player’s hand. I think we can all agree so far.
However, what I don’t agree with is how this automatically excludes the possibility of inserting a lower difficulty level to simply accommodate those who want to enjoy the wonders and horrors of the Interregnum, the sense of discovery, the magnificent artistic sector and that ‘fascinating emergent and at times very cryptic narrative that can only be found at this level in FromSoftware’s works without getting gastritis or because you simply don’t have the time and patience needed to “gitgud”. The two things could very well coexist without affecting the vision of the developers and the joys of the most experienced players.
Isn’t Elden Ring for everyone?
And no, we’re not even talking about a particularly demanding job that would take up time and resources for development, considering that one is enough mods like “Easy Mode for Elden Ring” on Nexusmod, which limits itself to simply modifying some values relating to damage suffered and inflicted to lower the difficulty with a minimum of rationality.
Which is practically what happens in the vast majority of action RPGs with selectable difficulty levels: there is the normal mode, which is the one intended by the developers as standard and on which the experience is calibrated; there is the easy one (or story) designed for those who want to enjoy everything but without insurmountable walls for their skills; and finally there is almost always one or more higher difficulty levels, for those who want to test themselves, they love being dismembered by the boss on duty until they learn the moveset by heart and so on.
“Eh, but if the difficulty scares you then Elden Ring is not the game for you, simple as that”, is, generalising, one of the most common answers you read when a similar topic is discussed. A very elitist argument and easily debunked by the number of people who have downloaded the aforementioned mod for easy mode or even just by seeing the hundreds of thousands of clicks that the videos with builds with weapons or war ashes that allow you to eliminate bosses in seconds.
We want to say that all these players who lower the challenge level artificially or by exploiting the game’s balance flaws (inevitable, but which are perhaps more accentuated in Elden Ring compared to FromSoftware’s previous works), do not enjoy playing Elden Ring, don’t they enjoy it or in any case aren’t fascinated by it? In fact, I’ll ask you the question from another perspective: if Elden Ring were moderately easy, would it be a bad game? Does it really have nothing to offer other than super bad bosses? Let’s talk about.
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