• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

God of War creator (David Scott Jaffe) criticizes the high difficulty of games like Metroid Dread, Kena and Returnal

jm89

Member
So what is exactly difficult about kena? I'm thinking of picking it up soon, but not gonna lie the older i get the less i'm willing to spend money on hard games. Returnal would probably give me a stroke.
 

Hugare

Member
But again the content of the show was not changed. So it's not the same thing.

Yes some people play games some way and some people other ways. Also some people don't play some game. I am allergic to platforming so I don't play it despite hearing everybody saying it's a masterpiece. Should I ask that they remove the platforming from it that I can enjoy it too ? Or just don't play it because I don't like this kind of game ?

I haven't play Returnal and I am not sure about the "saving system" but it's a roguelike... which is a type of game where you lose kind of everything when you die so altering that mechanics would change the genre of the game so will turn into a different game.
I'm not understanding your point

What content would have been changed by giving an Easy difficulty option?

Same areas, same enemies, same bosses

About your second paragraph: again, I'm not asking to change content. The best example within this context would be: giving you more life when you fail a platform if you suck at platformers.

Other players would still have the same fucking experience. Just giving a bigger healthbar would make the game playable for some.

About Returnal: Hades saves during your runs. You know, that game that is considered one of the best rogue likes ever and won GOTY.
And again, you could make it optional. And people would still have the "original" Returnal experience.
 
Last edited:

JimmyRustler

Gold Member
And now I’ve seen that you need to beat it on hardest difficulty for platinum. Cool! My interest in this game just went up. They even patched the exploit. Insomniac should take note.
I wouldn't be too happy about that. The boss mechanics are extremely unfair and the evade function super fickle. This is not a Souls game where you can git gud. The bosses will often change direction mid air (from juming forward to backward) and hit you. It's super annoying.
 

stranno

Member
Metroid design is just very repetitive and generic, I don't think it is a path design fault but lack of variety in assets and room design.

I can agree with him to some extend.
 
Last edited:

DelireMan7

Member
What content would have been changed by giving an Easy difficulty option?
Because the developpers decided to put no difficulty option for a reason, a vision, a philosophy... The whole game is balanced around this idea. Asking to add some, is a change of content.

For me it's exactly the same as my Mario example.

To sum up, I don't see why every videogames should be made for every gamers while other art form not. It's normal to not like everything.

I mean I don't play platform, racing, sport, online shooter games because I don't like or enjoy them (and so frustrating/hard to play for me). I do not say they are too frustrating or too hard and should be made more appealing for everybody.
You find a game too hard or frustrating ? Well it's a game you don't enjoy so xou should maybe stop playing it and go for another game you might like.

And again "hard/challenging/frustrating" is very subjective. I am an huge fan of the Soulsborne (that many would consider "frustrating/challenging") but not once it came to my mind. I just enjoy them so for me they are not frustrating or hard.
 
Last edited:

Kabelly

Member
Jaffe is only wrong in that there's some kind of "march towards super difficult games."

Kena, Returnal, and Metroid aren't big sellers.

If there's a march towards anything it's towards lowering the skill floor of games to grab a wider audience.

Animal Crossing New Horizons is on it's way to 50 million copies sold. Kena, Returnal, and Metroid combined won't crack 10 million.
Can't really say Animal Crossing is lowering the floor for gaming difficulty when that game has always been like that. Game was already huge. Switch install base just brought it to new heights. This was my first Animal Crossing and I still play it to this day. I also platinumed Sekiro. It really just depends on the mood.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Can't really say Animal Crossing is lowering the floor for gaming difficulty when that game has always been like that. Game was already huge. Switch install base just brought it to new heights. This was my first Animal Crossing and I still play it to this day. I also platinumed Sekiro. It really just depends on the mood.

The market is always shifting though. Skill floor is vitally important today (look at Fall Guys). It wasn't nearly as important 10, 20 years ago. As games get more social, connecting friends at varying skill levels, is becoming more and more important. Jim Ryan even said gamers are younger (low skill floor) and older (low skill floor) than ever before. A trend that's not ending anytime soon.
 

JLB

Banned
100% agree. The fact that masterpieces like Ori are inaccessible for a vast majority of players due to difficulty its sad.
 

Nezzeroth

Member
God of War was not easy either. The final boss especially took me several tries. The irony of its creator complaining about a game like Metroid Dread (which isn't even that hard) is too much.

Not every game needs to be uniquely designed for you.
 
Last edited:

p_xavier

Authorized Fister
Didn't god of war have some really difficult sections in it?
Yup, didn't play much of it for the same reason. I never had any issues with difficult 2D games. 3D on the other hand, my brain doesn't compute well and I play on easy or not at all.
 

Hari Seldon

Member
I don't understand the entitlement of thinking that all games should be for everyone. After buying a few souls games and noping out of all of them, I am done with these type of games. I'm not mad at the devs, I just will no longer purchase them as they are not for me.

However if he was misquoted and his real position is that games would sell more if they were targeted at more people, then that is true.
 

Hugare

Member
Because the developpers decided to put no difficulty option for a reason, a vision, a philosophy... The whole game is balanced around this idea. Asking to add some, is a change of content.

For me it's exactly the same as my Mario example.

To sum up, I don't see why every videogames should be made for every gamers while other art form not. It's normal to not like everything.

I mean I don't play platform, racing, sport, online shooter games because I don't like or enjoy them (and so frustrating/hard to play for me). I do not say they are too frustrating or too hard and should be made more appealing for everybody.
You find a game too hard or frustrating ? Well it's a game you don't enjoy so xou should maybe stop playing it and go for another game you might like.

And again "hard/challenging/frustrating" is very subjective. I am an huge fan of the Soulsborne (that many would consider "frustrating/challenging") but not once it came to my mind. I just enjoy them so for me they are not frustrating or hard.
"The whole game is balanced around this idea" is some A grade bullshit, imo

God of War (2018) can give you a lot of challenge on Hard or whatever its called, while being fair. Normal is balanced enough to be called normal. And easy is easy.

You can have a well balanced game within all dificulties. You just have to put enough effort to implement them.

"You find a game too hard or frustrating ? Well it's a game you don't enjoy so xou should maybe stop playing it and go for another game you might like."

I'll also call this bullshit. To me this argument doesnt manke any fucking sense.

Again, I love Returnal. LOVE it, gameplay is bliss. Probably my Goty. But I'll probably never finish it due to the lack of saves during the run. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one, hence many people being vocal about it on the internet.

Have finished Bloodborne, loved its gameplay and art, but wont replay it anytime soon due to its difficulty.
Loved Sekiro's gameplay, but will never finish it.
Love Street Fighter 5, but I sure as hell will never play it online because I suck at it.

"If you suck at it, you dont enjoy the game" is some idiotic reasoning imo
 
Last edited:
Really, dude?

Every fucking time a new From game is released we have this discussion
You know what? I think your particular usage of "hard mode" is tripping me up.

If you want to posit that Souls games are hard by default, I can kind of agree but ultimately that's still their normal mode. Hard mode implies increased difficulty over the default, which Dark Souls II provided with its Company of Champions Covenant.

Now if you claimed there are fans of games saying "You should only experience xx game in hard mode!", then sure, we've seen plenty of those. Devs and PR though? I'm afraid not.
 

mckmas8808

Banned
I had no idea that Kena was that hard. I just started playing it (I'm about 20 minutes in). It makes me want to put it on Easy mode now lol
 

BbMajor7th

Member
I agree

Not offering options due to budget restrictions is understandable.

But saying your game "should only be experienced on Hard mode" makes my eyes roll.

Thats like Christopher Nolan saying that Tenet should only be seen on IMAX, or someone saying that some music can only be listened to on FLAC format.

Art is subjective so let people experience it how they want it.

Challenge is an inherent part of art: in film, music, literature, food - anything really - there'll be highly accessible examples with broad, mainstream appeal that ask very little indulgence from their audience and examples that are uncompromising and deliberately designed to challenge and unsettle their audience. The latter won't have anything like the kind of appeal that others do, but no one would demand that - say - Salman Rushdie re-write Midnight's Children so that it's less of a slog for more general readers, or tell John Carpenter that he should create less violent versions of his classic films so that people sensitive to violence can also enjoy them, or that we should have a more accessible version of Alban Berg's Wozzeck so that it has the same sort of appeal as something by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The challenging and disruptive nature of art is absolutely intrinsic to what makes it meaningful. The argument about a Dark Souls easy mode is the most common, but those arguing for an easy mode always ignore the fact that if Dark Souls had have shipped with the same kind of player comforts as its contemporaries it wouldn't have been the hugely disruptive and influential release it was. It stood out because it was uncompromising and challenging and broke rank with the emergent standards that people had come to expect. If it had an easy mode, mini-maps and quick saves it's unlikely it would have had the kind of impact on the industry it did.
 
Last edited:

Interfectum

Member
"march towards difficult games"

Fucking please Jaffe.

Most AAA games now are braindead rollercoaster rides that literally pull you along to the point it's nearly a passive experience. Ratchet and Clank you could play while in a coma and get a platinum trophy. But yeah, lets pick on actual good games like Returnal and Metroid. :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
Last edited:
Metroid has always been a hard game, never got round to finishing any of them, but clearly there is a appetite for them, we need a wide variety of games, which is why, im a nintendo and playstation gamer. Xbox just has too many shooters and western RPGs.
 

DapperSloth

Member
Justin Timberlake What GIF


I understand not every game is everyones cup of tea of course but come on, this has the same difficulty as Super Metroid, you have to really use your brain to figure out what to do next and that is the fun stuff! I don't want to be handheld through a game, if I want an easy game I play Telltale games.
 

N30RYU

Member
I agree with Returnal... with Metroid and Kena is about become better and overcome the challenge... Returnal too but it needs also being lucky with the drops and not rely solely on the player skill.


Beated Kena and Metroid... and died several times on Returnal last boss and gived up on having a good drop run.
 
Last edited:

kingpotato

Ask me about my Stream Deck
Seems like people are stretching the definition of what hard means. People are lumping challenging in with hard. Returnal isn't that difficult, it's just that you can't pick up the game and make it really far without first leaning the mechanics and gameplay patterns. The game doesn't explicitly feed it to you so this means you will likely die until you start to learn how to play. This is true of demons souls, dark souls and Bloodborne as well. But dying isn't as punishing as it seems, (except maybe in dark souls 2), in the soulsbourne titles you keep items you find, shortcuts remain unlocked, the toughest baddies remain defeated and can recover your xp/currency. In Returnal, you retain key items, item unlocks, shortcuts, and weapon perk experience. Why do people get so up in arms about having to play the game more to be successful at it? I personally don't think floating through a game to be played once is very enjoyable and usually try to steer clear of those types of games, not because they are "easy", but because they offer "junk food" gameplay.

Just because you can't master a game playing sparingly doesn't mean it is "too hard".
 

CeeJay

Member
100% agree. The fact that masterpieces like Ori are inaccessible for a vast majority of players due to difficulty its sad.
Olympic Triathlon is difficult for the vast majority too, which is why you can always watch someone else doing it to appreciate the art of it.
 

cireza

Banned
Every single game under the sun needs to cater to my tastes ! My tastes are :
- be easy
- do not require any skill
- be either linear with a ton of cut-scenes and a pretentious story
or a bland open-world filled with tedious things to do
- give me the feeling that I am smart with skill-trees and crafting


Fuck this. Go play something else.
 
Last edited:

MastaKiiLA

Member
I wonder if Jaffe is like me, and has reached the age where gaming is more for relaxation than challenge. So missing out on the full story in a game because you're just not committed enough to getting good is somewhat disappointing.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Wait, so Kena is actually a hard game? I didn't see any big complaints on the Internet about its difficulty.
The internet buzz was "look how pretty" but the internet didn't actually care about the game. Once it was past the "click on my video" viability phase the internet stopped caring enough to actually fight any bosses.
 
Fair enough, but those challenging titles are a tiny minority in a sea of ultra-accessible games. They do not represent a trend, far from it.
 
Last edited:

hipten

Neo Member
Not every game is gonna be for everybody. It’s as simple as that. If the game is to hard for you then practice at it like you would anything else in life. I find it wild that some people want their hand held in every game.
 

decisions

Member
Returnal is too easy once you get it. Their previous were all much more difficult and had a much higher skill ceiling.

Difficulty is a very important aspect of games and when done right can create a powerful emotional and educational experience for the player.

Not all games need to be hard, but I disagree with Jaffe completely.
 
I like Jaffe, he's entitled to his opinion but I think there's room for both types of games. I think the soul series sparked a fire in a lot of gamers and developers in the sense that they realized that overcoming an insane challenge actually feels fkn good. It really comes down to ones character and ability to overcome obstacles... some people relish in that and some shy away. There's no right or wrong, good or bad with either... it's just how people are wired.
 

Fbh

Member
Nah, please keep making games targeted at specific audiences instead of trying to make everything appeal to everyone.
There's so many games today that whining about the ones that don't appeal to you seems silly. There's currently over 600 titles on the "deals" tab alone on PSN. Surely you can find something that fits your taste.

I'd get it if these games were selling badly, but Dread has apparently broken franchise sales records already, Kena seems to have had a strong launch (for a new indie IP) based the recent sales charts, and Dark Souls 1-3 outsold God of War 1-3 + the PSP games.
 
Last edited:

DelireMan7

Member
"You find a game too hard or frustrating ? Well it's a game you don't enjoy so xou should maybe stop playing it and go for another game you might like."

I'll also call this bullshit. To me this argument doesnt manke any fucking sense.
Why ? If someone only complains about a game it shouldn't be better to stop playing ?
Playing a game that makes you frustrated and complaining non stop is the real masochism.

Maybe it's just me but if I enjoy a game, I will not find it frustrating and will not complain about it.
If I complain non stop about it, it's that I didn't enjoy it and so don't play it anymore.
"The whole game is balanced around this idea" is some A grade bullshit, imo
Ok. Let's take Sekiro. A game which has combat and challenge as the main core idea of the whole game (which I didn't really like precisely because of that despite being a lover of the Soulsborne).
The dev decided to made a game with really challenging encounters which requires focus, timing, pattern reading, precise execution... Each encounter is design with the idea of imminent death, one mistake and it's most likely the end.
This wouldn't have been possible with different difficulty option because it would remove the sense of danger each combat has and everything that is ask to the player to have (focus, patience, pattern reading....).
Adding different difficulty option in Sekiro would result in a completely different game. An easy option would not be "Sekiro".
I don't say it shouldn't have but that it would drastically change the game (not for thus playing on "hard" but for those playing in "easy", they would just beat another game).
Love Street Fighter 5, but I sure as hell will never play it online because I suck at it.
Why not play online ? Too hard ? So the dev should provide an option to make it more accessible ? No you choose not to play it because too frustrating (or whatever reason) for you and it's fine.


We will never agree but I have the feeling I don't get what you try to say. Games should be made to be liked by everyone ?
 
So what is exactly difficult about kena? I'm thinking of picking it up soon, but not gonna lie the older i get the less i'm willing to spend money on hard games. Returnal would probably give me a stroke.
The bossfights are pretty fkn difficult. I started out on the hardest difficulty and had to bump it down to the second hardest. The bosses are no slouch. There's not a large margin for error and you're dead within a few hits. Great game and definitely recommend that you play it if you're into third person action adventure games.
 
Top Bottom