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A little while ago, video games critic Jim Sterling put out another video on the subject of difficulty modes in games, and though the discussion has been raised numerous times over the years, this time it gave me serious pause. The video is in the description and I encourage you to watch it in its entirety. However, the argument he makes boils down to this: “the inclusion of additional difficulty settings in games, specifically a super easy mode, doesn’t affect those of us who only want to play on higher difficulties because we don’t have to play them. They only improve the games’ accessibility and can’t hurt anyone’s experience with it.” The logic of his argument is clear and easy to understand, yet a part of me still winced at the mere idea of Dark Souls having an easy mode.
It’s undeniable that games have progressively gotten easier over the past few decades, and while some elitists may like to claim that this has “dumbed down the medium,” most others, myself included, don’t have a problem with this. Many, many of the games that inspired the phrase “Nintendo Hard” were not hard because they were mechanically or intellectually demanding, but because they were cheap – they offered little to no warning for what its challenges entailed forcing players to learn through repetitious trial and error, and were extremely stingy with their saves making each failure all the more punishing. But nowadays, we have more freedom with our savestates, numerous UI conveniences, ample warning if not outright control over each encounter, and if all else fails, the Internet to help us through anything we’re unclear about. Players are given as much information as they need and are not as severely punished for their failures. Ostensibly, games have gotten easier by becoming more fair. Consequently, for Dark Souls, a game which is already fair – almost to a fault – and not particularly demanding on any technical level, there is no observable reason why an easier difficulty is either necessary or beneficial to that game. Including an easy mode would only marginalize the importance of careful observation and caution, that are integral to the experience of playing that game.
Aspects such as these which define a game are what I like to call its constitutive elements. Fans of a specific game tend to know it well enough to acquire a sense for what they are, but if you’re examining a new or unfamiliar one, you can identify them by the features that remain constant across all difficulty settings. If the core game is the main dish, then the difficulty settings are the spices you throw on top of it before chowing down. [e.g. Persona 4: Golden difficulty sliders].
For example, in Bayonetta the player can use an ability called Witch Time to slow down time and inflict heavy damage. On most of the game’s difficulties this can activated by simply dodging an attack. But on the highest difficulty, the only way to activate it is by equipping certain accessories. In this way, Witch Time itself is still a constitutive element of Bayonetta, just not the way in which it is activated. As you might imagine, broader inflexible aspects of a game, like its story are also constitutive elements, as well as its structure. To use Bayonetta again, every chapter in that game is divided into combat encounters called phases. The total number of phases as well as their locations remain constant across every difficulty, but the variety and strength of the enemies you fight changes across every difficulty. As such, the combat phases are a constitutive element of Bayonetta while specific enemy arrangements are not.
The combination of these mechanical, narrative, and structural elements are what collectively constitutes a specific game and are usually what ends up determining whether or not a game will appeal to us. But with that being said, the constitutive elements of a game will not necessarily remain constant or even additive across a franchise. Combat in Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3, for instance, is a constitutive element of each of those games. However, because the combat changes so dramatically between Mass Effects 1 & 2, and includes what is essentially a god mode in Mass Effect 3, it is not a constitutive element of that franchise. This is why Jennifer Hepler can ask for an option to skip the combat entirely in Mass Effect and still be in the right. Such an option would not affect the franchise’s constitutive elements, and would actually improve the games for people interested in replaying them with different dialogue choices. And yet, back in 2012 when news of this statement became more widespread, people grew angry – livid even – at the mere suggestion. How could these fans take offense at a suggestion that would not change the constitutive elements of the franchise? Well, even though I am sure that most of those cried foul probably do not deserve the benefit of the doubt, I choose to believe that these people were fans of specific games in the franchise and not the franchise itself- they enjoyed the constitutive elements of Mass Effect 1 and or 2, but did not care for those of the franchise as a whole. The response to Mass Effect 3 is further proof of this hypothesis, but I’d rather not open that can of worms. I only emphasize this incident because even though it might appear similar to this one at a glance, the outrage expressed then differs greatly from the disdain felt here.
In contrast to everything we’ve gone over, the new “difficulty modes” Nintendo have included in Mario, Fire Emblem, and now Star Fox have nothing to do with fairness or their franchises’ constitutive elements, and everything to do with drawing in more players at any expense. Each of the games Nintendo has meddled with are defined by their gameplay – They don’t have series-spanning comprehensive stories or morals to espouse. Gameplay is the only thing sacred to these franchises. By introducing modes and features that negate the need to engage with it, Nintendo are essentially saying that the gameplay is not an integral part of those games and, more importantly, not an integral part of those franchises.
I don’t have any significant personal attachment to Mario or Starfox, so I won’t attempt to express what their fans are feeling. But, I do have one to Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem is the last franchise from my childhood that I continue to play, and seeing as how it too became a victim of Nintendo’s appeals to “accessibility,” I can at least empathize with the fans of those other games.
Fire Emblem as a franchise was known for its high difficulty and harsh perma-death. But, similar to the reputation of Dark Souls, these features are barely accurate or indicative of what the games actually entailed. Fire Emblem games used to be Tactical RPGs whose game structures and stories were directly intertwined – you could not grind outside of the story for more experience, funds, or weapons. Though that may seem like an insignificant detail, it alone imposes a strategic component on the majority of games in the franchise, and is directly indicative of what the games were actually about: resource management.
Every chapter had a limited number of deployable units. Every unit had a limited number of actions. Every weapon had limited uses. Every map had limited shop access. Enemy reinforcements appeared when you took too long to finish the chapter. And you were ranked at the end of every chapter based on how quickly and effectively you finished it. These mechanical and structural constraints incentivized you to not only determine what you needed to do, but how you would do it. Do you let your strong reliable units clear out the enemies, or do you let your weaker units do it even though it will be more difficult, because it will get them the experience they need to be useful later down the line? Do you use the strongest and most fragile weapon in your arsenal to kill the enemy before they can retaliate, or do you risk taking damage with a weaker weapon to conserve the strong ones for future battles? Every tiny decision you made, right down to which tile a unit moved to had game spanning ramifications. So, combine THAT with challenging gameplay, permanent death for all characters, and various forms of chance that constantly force you to stretch your mind and adapt to the circumstances of combat, and you get a franchise in which short-term tactical decisions are influenced by long term strategic planning. That dynamic was what separated Fire Emblem from Advanced Wars; from Shining Force; from Final Fantasy Tactics. THAT was the heart of this franchise.
But with these recent Fire Emblem games, Nintendo has stabbed at that heart with a rusty knife. Awakening let you grind for whatever you felt like, turn off perma-death, contained the most brain dead map design of any game in the franchise, and let you skip playing the game with an auto-battle button. The strategic element of the game was fundamentally absent and the tactical thinking that was once inherent became just an option. Granted, the idea of letting players level up outside of the story maps is not new to this franchise, so it was not a complete deal breaker. But, both of the times it was implemented in the past were met with fan disdain for trivializing too much of the game. That outcry used to be enough to stave the cancer off for 6 games, yet this time that didn’t happen.
Instead we got not one, not two, but three different versions of Fire Emblem Fates all of which contain the same trivializing settings of Awakening, in addition to an even more egregious one called Phoenix Mode that literally prevents your characters from dying altogether. Even though one of the versions of the game limits the ability to grind for experience reasserting the importance of strategy, that new setting marginalizes the importance of tactics. Which is kind of a big deal for what is supposed a tactical role-playing game. And yes, it is an option and you don’t have to use it, but it’s the fact that you can use it at all, that is the problem. Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest has some of the best gameplay in the entire series, and yet no one has to see or understand any of it; it is no longer a constitutive element of that game. Removing features of the game on specific difficulties, makes those features arbitrary on all difficulties. Options like these undermine the challenges of the game, its artistic integrity, and in the case of Nintendo, the history of these franchises.
And yes, I know that all of this sounds like a long-winded version of the complaint “this game isn’t just for me anymore, therefore I hate it.” But, there’s more to it than that. Whenever a developer changes constitutive elements of a game to draw in more players, they are NOT making an existing game more accessible or attracting new fans. Rather, they are creating a new game, and building a fanbase for that new product. They can include their “hard” difficulty settings – their “classic” modes or what have you – but fans of the preceding games will always be left to wrestle with the disquieting realities that what once was the product is now just a feature; that any challenges they overcome are arbitrary, not mandatory; and perhaps most uncomfortable of all, that there are unlikely to be any more of the games that they fell in love with.
Now, as much as I personally despise these changes, I understand Nintendo’s intentions in making them. Nintendo is a very large company and companies have exactly one modus operandi: generate profits. Accessibility generates players and players generate profits. So, unless Nintendo’s approach stops attracting new players, it is highly likely that they will continue to do this to more of their games in other franchises. However, that doesn’t make this any less frustrating not only because they’re degrading every franchise they touch, but because Nintendo is better than this.
Provided that the challenges are fair and surmountable through mechanical mastery, the accessibility of games is not determined by the intensity or number of difficulty modes they contain, but their ability to teach players how to play them. If Nintendo is having a hard time attracting fans to their franchises, then their top priority is to improve their damn tutorials. Earlier Fire Emblem and Mario games both had them interwoven with the gameplay. And they were great; effective enough that even me at 9 years old could learn how to play these supposedly difficult games. But, these new ones don’t have anything even resembling them. Nintendo are taking shortcuts that ignore their problems rather than outright addressing them. And that laziness alienates preexisting fans of their franchises.
It is only when teaching players no longer proves sufficient that a developer should explore other options such as changing the games’ aesthetics, increasing their advertising budgets, or…just giving up & creating new franchises. What they canNOT do is make something completely different and continue to call it by a familiar name. Because at that point…they are just lying.
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