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.