I'm sure most of
the people reading this are already sick to death of “The
Discourse”(tm) surrounding Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Many people
have already weighed in, with voices smarter and more well-researched
than mine, yet I can't bring myself to let this one go. We don't talk
enough about accessibility in gaming, and Sekiro is one of the
greatest jumping off points to start delving into the topic: How
important it is and what game designers can do to reduce the barriers
of entry for the games they make.
With regards to
this game specifically, the more I think about the conversation about
Sekiro, the more I begin to realize that it's... overly reductive. I
don't necessarily know if I'm in favor of a straight up "Easy
Mode", but not for the reason you'd think. While it's true that
an increase to the player's damage output and a reduction in enemy
damage could solve some of the problems people are facing with
Sekiro, I also believe that's a brute force method that dodges the
conversation about the actual problem. Rarely do I actually hear many
complaints specifically about the numbers in discussions I have had.
Sure, there are specific attacks by individual enemies and bosses
that people complain about, for example I dislike the Chained Ogre's
grab moves because it deals over 75% of the protagonist's max health
in damage, but these are instances, and not critiques of the game as
a whole.
When I talk to
the people who are having trouble with Sekiro even after unlearning
their Souls-ian instincts (as I struggled to for a significant
portion of the early game), I see a few underlying problems that I'm
not necessarily sure a numbers adjustment would fix. Chief among them
is the reliance on deflect as a mechanic, for multiple reasons. Not
everyone will have the reflexes necessary to react to enemy attacks
fast enough, which is a complaint I see often. Beyond just physical
reflexes: People with neuroatypical brains might not have the
capability to process that visual information fast enough to have a
realistic chance to respond. While the window for deflecting attacks
is more lax than one may think, it can still be tight, and that makes
the difference.
This led to a
discovery of a strategy, coined “Blockdancing” by content creator
VaatiVidya, but this has its own problems. To define the term,
“blockdancing” involves rapidly tapping the block/defect button.
Doing so creates a loop where protagonist Wolf raises his sword to
block, and begins to lower it before raising it again. During this
cycle, the player will block, and occasionally deflect, all incoming
attacks, making it useful against enemies with long attack chains or
hard to predict attack patterns. The problem lies in the input
itself. This motion is painful for people who suffer from repetitive
strain injuries or other ailments of the hands and wrists. Many games
released in the prior two console generations, that relied on QTEs
where players had to mash a specific over and over to simulate the
“strain” that a character was going through learned that lesson
the hard way.
Ideally,
circumstances like these would be considered in the middle of the
design process, so the need to address accessibility concerns
wouldn't come in the form of “quick fix” suggestions (that, mind
you, would still take time and resources to implement), but such is
the hand we're dealt in this case. To address the issue of deflect
timing, one possible solution comes from Celeste by Matt Makes Games.
In order to allow for players of various skill levels and
physical/mental impairments to still enjoy the game, Celeste's
developer Matt “Makes Games” Thorson created an “Assist Mode”,
a series of options that can used to tweak the experience. One of
these options was to reduce the overall speed of the game, so that
people with slower reflexes and reaction times can still receive the
same level of challenge as more able-bodied players without their
impairments getting in the way. I believe a similar option in Sekiro
would have greatly alleviated the burden for players with similar
conditions.
And as to the
issue of how to reduce the strain of “blockdancing”, there is
another solution I propose. Games like Marvel's Spider-man have
options to switch QTEs from mashing the button to simply holding it
own, to avoid unnecessary strain. Sekiro could do something similar
with its block, allowing users to simply hold the button down to
perform a “blockdance”. The game already makes a few
(appreciated) concessions in this area by allowing for fullyrebindable controls, and this would be a logical extension of that.
While it would come at the cost of not being able to hold block to
recover posture, making it an imperfect answer, it would reduce the
burden on players with certain ailments to more capably play the
game.
And these above
problems and solutions are only examples, barely scratching the
surface of a large issue. Developers have been making great strides
in the field of accessibility over the last few years alone, and I
hope that trend continues. Even games as notoriously hard as Darkest
Dungeon include options to help players of various skill levels and
abilities to have the same experience. That's the end goal: Parity of
experience. Danny O'Dywer at NoClip had a similar example in the
other direction with racing games, where he doesn't play them without
a race wheel and pedals, disabling a lot of the accessibility that
are enabled by default, so that he can get an immersive experience in
the way some just need a controller and the default settings for.
Those options exist so that he, a racing enthusiast, can still get
the same experience of being a badass race car driver that others
want.
As the
conversations about how we can embed the idea of accessibility into
the core design of the games we build and play, keep cases like these
in mind. One of the greatest joys I experience is sharing a game I
love with other people. Although I love Sekiro, the lack of these
options combined with the game's very punishing nature, make
recommending it a very tricky prospect. If I knew that options like
these existed, I would be a lot less hesitant to ask other people to
try it and see what they think of it. If From Software has taken some
of these considerations, more people would be able to appreciate the
gem they crafted so beautifully.
No comments:
Post a Comment