Shadow of the Erdtree was published and what everyone expected happened: the issue of difficulty in video games came back to center stage. The Elden Ring expansion is certainly not kind to fans and for many it’s a bit much. In the middle of the discussion also entered the director of Helldivers 2 – Johan Pilestedt – who proposed a different point of view.
According to him, Shadow of the Erdtree’s design choices are right because “a game for everyone is a game that interests no one”.
Pilestedt’s words on Shadow of the Erdtree
The comment from the director of Helldivers 2 came in response to a tweet from someone content creator, Rurikhanwho in turn responded to a video (which we are not including to avoid spoilers) of a content creator – Stormfall – who rejoices after defeating a boss of the Elden Ring DLC.
“Some people think that FromSoftware creates complex bosses just to make them difficult. They are wrong. The game is challenging because they want you to feel this kind of emotion [ndr, la gioia di aver vinto, mostrata nel video]. But you can’t feel certain emotions if you aren’t tested. This moment represents the ultimate goal of the Soulsborne game design philosophy.”
Pilestedt says he agrees 1000% and that he believes that good game design aims to evoke emotions. One user responded that he tried playing Dark Souls 1 and after defeating a couple of bosses he realized that he wasn’t having fun. The only emotion he felt was relief at having finished.
The director then concluded by stating that a game for everyone is a game that no one is interested in and that always is It’s good to create a product for a specific group of players. In short, just because someone doesn’t care about a specific experience (which in this case is also related to difficulty) doesn’t mean that the video game should change completely.
Miyazaki himself said that lowering the difficulty a lot would destroy the game, although this obviously doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be fixes: some power-ups have been improved, for example.
