Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: ableism

From games and accessibility issues–again

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I have written three posts about accessibility issues in FromSoft games. That mean s this is post four, and who knows when I’ll stop? Here is post three that I wrote yesterday. In it, I mentioned Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon, which I quit about an hour after the tutorial boss. And it took me twenty to twenty-five tries to kil the tutorial boss. Yes, it’s supposed to be challenging (all From tutorial bosses are hard. As Andy from OutsideXbox said, Iudex Gundyr from Dark Souls III is a literal gatekeeper), but not die two dozen times difficult. I have included that video below with the appropriate time stamp. He’s not talking about it in terms of accessibility, but the points he makes could apply to that as well.

My nibling told me they spent hours on this boss without beating him. Several hours. You cannot summon for this boss, so you have to beat him solo. This was the second From game Rory played, and he died several times to this boss, too. Now, I bet he would beat Iudex in three tries max, but at the time, he was flailing wildly at Iudex and dying repeatedly. Funnily, I don’t have much trouble with Iudex–at least not as a Pyro. He is very weak to fire, especially after his transformation (which usually makes him harder for most players).

In AC VI, the tutorial mech is definitely a gatekeeper. If you can’t beat it (and it’s pretty hard), then you might as well walk away. It has a Sekiro deflect mechanic that while not as punishing as the one in Sekriro, it still wasn’t something I could do with any consistency.

My biggest problem with the game, though, is the platforming. I have written several timess about how much I hate the platforming in From games. It’s not the purpose of any of the games, well, except maybe Sekiro to a certain extent. From certainly wanted you to traverse vertically in that game.

I knew before I even tried the game that it was going to be a problem for me. From watching the trailer, I had my doubts about the game. First of all, I’m not into mechs. Literally or figuratively. They don’t do anything for me, so that was one ding. Secondly, I could tell that the traversal was going to be a  big problem for me. A BIG problem. Sadly, I was right about that. Thirdly, the platforming. Oh, the platforming.

Here’s the thing. There are two ways to boost in tthe game. They are slightly different kinds of boosts, but they are boosts. And you have to gauge when you’re going to boost so you don’t fall to your death. Well, not your death exactly, because you respawn, but with less health. Which is like most games, I guess. But It’s very demoralizing because I have issues with my spatial recognition. I cannot tell how far something is from me, especially in pixels. So after I scraped by the tutorial boss, I went on a mission. And I  kept failing to land on a platform.


Continue Reading

More about ableism in FromSoft games

Posted on by • 0 Comments

I’m going to talk more about ableism in gaming–especially in From games. I have done two posts on it, and here’s the second post. I am currently rewatching Nath from Playstation Access playing Sekiro, and I have to shake my head at how easy he makes it. I mean, he’s still dying, but he is so much better than me at the game. His reflexes are almost automatic whereas it took me forever to realize someone was attacking me and maybe I needed to attack back.

I try not to bang on about it in the RKG Discord because I don’t want to harsh anyone’s high, but I really want people to realize that not everyone can play the game. It’s not a matter of ‘gitting gud’, at least not in the way that it’s normally said. By the way, the mini-boss that Nath fights, Snake Eyes Shirafuji, is a woman. Here’s a little-known fact that many streamers don’t know/overlook–all the enemies/bosses of this type are women. Which is pretty cool. There are groups in all the games that are made up of women. Well, most of them. I think?

In Elden Ring, it’s the Black Knife Assassins. In Bloodborne, apparently, it’s the hooded Beast Patients in old Yharnam (I just learned this). The above enemies in Sekiro I menctioned are in the Sunken Valley. Huh. There aren’t really groups of female enemies in the Souls games, execpt for the trees in the first DLC of Dark Souls III.

It’s interesting to me how many gamers just assume enemies or bosses are male, even when there’s evidence to the contrary. Rory from RKG did it all the time in the early seasons of Prepare to Try. He kept calling the Dancer of the Boreal Valley and Sister Friede from Dark Souls III ‘he’, which was like–I mean, with the second one, it’s right in the name.

He would not make that same mistake now, which is great, but a lot of people do. The default, sadly, is still male. It’s frustrating and just a small part of the problem in the industry.

Sekiro is a beautiful game. I think it’s a very well-made game, but it’s not accessible or disabled-friendly at all. AT ALL. It’s the worst of the games in that respect, and it’s one of the reasons it’s my least-favorite game. When you cannot do the main conceit of the game (again, cannot, not will not), it’s not fun. At all. I could not even explore in relative peace because there were assholes all over the place. And because it was assumed that you would be able to deflect them, FromSoft thought nothing of putting five or six really hard enemies in the same cluster.


Continue Reading

Ableism and FromSoft games, part deux

Posted on by • 0 Comments

In yesterday’s post, I talkeda bout ableism and FromSoft games. They have never cared about accessibility, and I used to defend it. This was a decade ago. I still had issues with aspects of their games, but I just put it down to me and that it was my problem because I could not see a way to get around it when the whole premise of their games is to have insanely difficult bosses. Oh, sure. They don’t say that’s the point of the games, and hardcore fans are now retconning the fanfic to be that the games eran’t that hard.

They are.  They may or may not be ‘that hard’ for From fans, but for someone just picking one up for the first time? Yes, they are ‘that hard’. As with anything, you forget how hard it was when you played your first From game for the first time. I have not. I was terrible at it, and I hated it by the end. I vowed never to touch it again–or any other game by the same company. Obviously, that turned out to be a lie, but it was how I felt in my heart at the time.

And, honestly, I feel a bit of the same every time I finish one of their games for the first time. A big part of that is my own fault. I tend to get obsessive when I like something so I gorge on it. And, then I’m slightly sick of it by the end, but I can’t stop myself from continuing. Part of it is that From has bought their own hype slightly. They have made the end of their later games (and the DLCs) doubly hard. It’s my least-favorite fan service, honestly. I don’t play the game for the difficulty. I would say I play the games despite the difficulty, actually.

At the end of yesterday’s post, I was talking about how you can use Vyke’s Spear to do the platforming puzzle to get to the Three Fingers. Yes, that all makes sense if you play the game. Here’s a link to the Reddit thread in which it was shown and discussed. In it, Todd_The_Sailor showed off this one neat trick. It makes sense because the Three Fingers about the madness and frenzy, same as Vyke’s Spear. If you watch the video, you’ll see how easily Todd_The_Sailor makes it look. And I’m sure for most people, it is that easy. Not for me. I didn’t always angle my character correctly or took a step or two before using the Ash of War (which is how you do the trick). You can’t jump and do the AoW at the same time, which was what I was trying to do.

I think all platforming is trash in FromSoft games, but this one was notorious enough that other people complained about it, too. It’s not just me is what I’m trying to say.

There’s a debate in the community about what is going too far. This is going too far. All the platforming is going too far, to me. I accept dying to bosses because my reflexes are shit and I can’t parry. I accept dying by falling because I can’t gauge a jump. I do NOT accept dying beacuse the fucking platforming is so fucking fiddly that being a micromillimeter too far to the left or the right will kill you. I died more trying to get that one incantation than I did to any boss, including the hardest boss in the game, with my strength character. That’s not good game development, and it’s so fucking needless. Nobody likes that section–nobody.

And, as I quickly mentioned at the end of the last post, there is a relatively easy solution (other than not having it in the game, which is the best solution)–if a person fails five times, let them automatically make the rest of the jumps. If that’s too much for the fragile hardcore From fans, then at least make it so that all the jumps up to that point are automatic. It should not take me half a fucking hour to do five or six consecutive jumps.


Continue Reading

Ableism and FromSoft games

Posted on by • 0 Comments

Time to talk about the dark side of FromSoft, and I’m not talking about Dark Souls. Let me be clear that I love the games and FromSoft (mostly, that’s another post for another day). I basically play a From game every day and a cozy game (that changes). But they don’t really care that much about accessibility in several of their games, which is hard as a From fan who has several issues that teeter on disability and at the very least drastically affect how well I can(not) play the games. It’s the reason why Sekiro is my least favorite game by From and the one I will least recommend accross the board.

I have no problem with other people thinking it’s the best From game or gushing about it. What I do have a problem is when people express incredulity that someone doesn’t think IT’S THE BEST THING EVER!!! I mean, I feel like that in general when people get way too defensive about what they like. Nothing is for everyone, no matter how objectively good it is. I can’t stop thinking about a content creator who once said in all sincerity that he could not imagine not liking something that was good (talking about games). If it was good, then he would like it! Therefore, if he did not like it, it must not be good!

He was a hot mess in many ways, but that’s what stuck with me the most. How self-centered do you have to be to think you are the sole arbiter of what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’? And that anything you like is good whereas anything you don’t like is bad? It’s not surprising that he is a cishet white male, either. That’s pretty much a given that many of them think they are the default standard.

I know there are a lot of things that I like that aren’t great art. I also know there are many things considered great art that leave me cold. I’ve often said that one positive about being a weirdo is that I can recognize that my tastes aren’t for everyone. Therefore, even things I love with all my heart, I don’t consider it a blow to my ego if someone else doesn’t love it or even hates it. I don’t need to hear them sneer about it and be derisive about it (as my last ex did), but I’m not going to wilt if they don’t like it. I’ve had friends apologize to me for not liking a FromSoft game and I’m quick to reassure them that it’s perfectly fine. They aren’t for everyone and there are many reasons why someone may not like them.


Continue Reading

Not quite disability and frustration because of it

Posted on by • 0 Comments

One of the things that frustrates me in the RKG Discord is how people keep saying that the From games aren’t hard. This has become the new mantra: The games aren’t hard; you just have to be thoughtful when you play them.

I want to say right up front that this may be true for some people. There are people who are naturally good at these games. There is one guy in the Discord who rarely dies to a boss. He’s also nineteen or twenty with lightning-fast reflexes. I think he died to the Guardian Ape 8 times in Sekiro and that may be the most times he died to a From boss. When I was doing the plat for Bloodborne, he decided to do the DLC once and for all. The game came out when he was 12 and he could not get past Ludwig, the first boss in the DLC.

He chose the Hunter Axe in honor of me chasing the plat. He was taking notes of how and when he died as he went. They were really funny because they were like ‘guy with big head knocked me off the staircase’. Accurate and hilarious. He one-shot all the bosses in the DLC except the last one–which he two-shot. All in all, he died something like fourteen times in a brutal DLC. I probably died that many times to the first boss–or would have if I hadn’t summoned Valter (NPC) to help me out.

It was cool that he used the Hunter Axe in honor of my plat run, but it was also a bit deflating that he did it so easily with a weapon he’d never used before. And the fact that he decimated the DLC was mind-blowing to me. It turns out, though, that this was just par the fourse for him. He was a legend in the Discord for how easily he romped through all the previous games.

There are a couple other people in the Discord who are nearly as good as him at these games. Then, there are those who are very good, but not god tier. Then there are those who are decent at the games. Then, several rungs down, there is me.

I am terrible at the games. Ian and I have had this argument many times. He thinks the games are made for people like me–because I have to work to beat them. I disagree. I say that I am not the target demo because most people in my position would have given up long before I did. I don’t know why I kept going when it was so damn hard every step of the way. Probably because I’m a stubborn bitch and contrary to boot.


Continue Reading