I’m watching Ellen from Outsidextra stream Dark Souls III (FromSoft, of course). She played the first game for the first time about a year ago with the tutelage of her colleague, Luke, and absolutely smashed the game. She took out Ornstein and Smough in two or three tries. I will admit I didn’t watch all of the streams because it was frustrating. Not because she was great at it, but because she was like, “The game isn’t really hard if you’re thoughtful and meticulous about it.”
That made me extremely frustrated because it’s not true. She, like many people in the biz, suffer from the other half of the Dunning-Kruger effect in that she underestimates how much better than others she is. In addition, she had a Luke to guide her every step of the way. He told her which weapon to get and she knew to upgrade everything. So she was able to use the Zwei by the time she fought the Bell Gargs. And she knew there were going to be two of them. That’s huge! Having someone guide you through the game makes it MUCH easier.
Ian is doing his own run (which I’m shadowing) and he’s played up to Ornstein and Smough before. Never beat them–until now. He’s been going apace through the first half and still has had a few deaths per boss–and a few dozen against O&S. He’s doing much better than I did the first time I played the game, but now that he’s into the part that he hasn’t played before, it’s a bit slower going.
It’s been wonderful seeing the game through his eyes because I’m so jaded at this point. I’ve seen it all and it’s hard to find anything surprising on my own. So seeing Ian’s reactions to things I’ve seen before has been so great! Like falling off the invisible ledge in the Hydra lake (not invisible, but you have to look down) or his amazement at the big roly-poly cats in the Darkroot Basin. Speaking of roly-poly, there’s his reaction to the bone-wheel skellies in the Painted World of Ariamis as well. He is so chill playing the game, it’s amazing.
Anyway, someone brought up the question of the FromSofct dev saying the game would take 30 hours and everyone in chat was like, “Pshaw! That’s loads considering you can beat Dark Souls in five minutes!” One person said, “Isn’t DS III beatable in 30 hours including DLCs?” Which, I mean, yes, if you’ve played it before, but on a first playthrough? I’m sure there are people who did, but to see everything including all the optional content? I doubt it.
But then again, I’m a terrible at these games, even though I love them. I’m firmly mediocre at Dark Souls games by now and terrible at Sekiro. It’s funny because I’ve been rereading my posts about Sekiro and I really loved the game while playing it, apparently. At least up until Owl (Father) where the seams started to unravel. I noted in that post that I had fought him five times and was done with it. The fight, I mean. I just didn’t want to do it and I was right to be sulky.
Anyway, I was so annoyed by all the posturing in the chat (which, to be fair, probably isn’t posturing. They really can do Dark Souls in less than ten hours, good on them) and did a quick series of tweets, repping the bad Souls players. With all the hype around Elden Ring, I want as many people to play it as possible. And, more to the point, to continue with it past the tutorial. Telling them the games are easy or whatever isn’t going to do any good. I know many people bounced off the first game because they went the wrong way.
There are three ways you can go. Graveyard, under Firelink Shrine, or up. Graveyard and under are both later areas. You’re supposed to go up. Fanbois will say that the other two ways are so hard, it’s obvious you’re not supposed to go that way. But, as someone in a video I watched said and as I myself felt when I went both of the wrong ways, what’s the one thing that is known about the games? That they are hard. Famously so. The PC edition I first bought was subtitled Prepare to Die. They’re not trying to be coy about what they considered was their best feature. Deaths. Many deaths. So skellies who hit you hard enough to kill you/bleed you out in two hits or ghosts you can’t hit? Yeah, sounds about right.
There’s no frame of reference is my point. When you first start the game, knowing it’s supposed to be hard, you don’t know how hard is too hard. So, yeah, I’ll go down to the Valley of Drakes and try to kill the Undead Dragon and the drakes, thinking that’s something I’m supposed to do (it’s not). It’s easy to forget how daunting the game can be when you know nothing about it. I had a Twitter friend try it out on my recommendation. She made it to Firelink Shrine and then saw a message in front of the Crestfallen Warrior to attack him. So she did. Big mistake. Once an NPC is aggroed, they’re aggroed forever unless you get pardoned by Oswald of Carim. And if he’s permanently aggroed, you can’t use Firelink Shrine. She quit the game, for which I could not blame her. That’s the thing. As much as I love the games, I understand why people might be put off by them. They’re not for everyone, which is fine. No game is.
This leads me back to the time thing. Everyone is hard on the internet and can do all the games in five minutes, which I completely believe. But I also believe that most people have forgotten how hard the game was the first time they played it. Or it’s a self-selecting thing that most of the people who are into the games now liked them from the start. Either way, it’s a disservice to downplay the difficulty. The games are hard. Not for everyone ,but for most people. They are worth playing, but you should know what you’re getting into before you start the games.
I forget that most chats about these games just suck. They really do. It’s not even all the git gud assholes (which has become less of a thing, thankfully). It’s the well-meaning, but short-sighted ‘these games aren’t that hard’ that currently annoys me. I know better than to read most anything about FromSoft games. I just have to remind myself every so often.