Sekiro and Difficult Games

I was gonna make a twitter comment about this when I saw a Kotaku article about how an easy mode have never ruined a game but after noticing that a twitter post wouldn't be enough to properly express my take I decided to put down my thoughts in a blog post. To be clear I've never been a fan of super difficult games like the Dark Souls series and I have no intention to buy Sekiro due to the difficulty, but I still wanna defend games that don't include an easy mode. 

I suppose that the heart of the debate whether or not games should have an easy mode boils down to if you consider yourself a casual or hardcore gamer. It's really kind of a childish argument at face value but after giving it some thought I don't think you can really boil it down to just saying that the game is meant to be challenging or that an easy mode wouldn't be hard to implement and would just help casuals to play the game. That a game is hard doesn't say much, you really need to look at what makes a game hard to really start thinking about if different difficulty modes make sense.

As an example I see a lot of people talking about how gaming was so much better back in the days because they were so challenging and getting through them was a real accomplishment. To that I say, yes and no. Nostalgia is big these days and since I don't find a lot of modern gaming in the form of "games as a service" all that attractive I've spent some time going back to older games and you know what I've noticed? They sure are hard, not because they offer some brilliant challenge that only the best can handle, no, most of the time they're hard because they're just poorly designed. That might be the wrong way to put it, like they were hard because movement didn't feel good, aiming wasn't as smooth, AI wasn't as complex and so on. Like of course games are going to feel easier today when you're not struggling with movement and the camera/aiming and AI are allowed to vary in behavior. I played one of the old Medal of Honor games and it was difficult because movement was sluggish, aiming was even worse and the enemies came at me in hordes and were always aware of where I was and had pinpoint accuracy from the other side of the map to name an example. That's not difficult because of a well balanced and thought out challenge. Take a more modern example, The Last of Us which I'm currently playing you have enemies that don't operate like a hive mind, movement is smooth enough and aiming is actually made difficult on purpose because you're not meant to have that but that also reflects in the enemies. I mean to me it still feels good and it is satisfying to hit a headshot but they've made it sluggish so you don't run and gun like in Uncharted. See, the difficulty these days are much easier to base on deliberate choices, not just technological shortcomings.

I'm ranting a bit here but like if we mention Uncharted a bit more, there the difficulty scaling comes from the amount of enemies, how much damage they take and how much you can take before you go down. It's a pretty simple game and scaling that difficulty isn't hard, or I imagine it's not. Here's the point that I'm trying to make here, games aren't all like Uncharted, games like Dark Souls don't rely on just turning enemies into bullet sponges or giving you less health to make it hard. Games like that rely on very specific gameplay mechanics about precise movement and attacks and the whole point of those games are to be tough but fair. It's hard to put that type of challenge into words, especially for someone who don't have any real experience with those games, but like to balance that challenge out in a way you have to do way more than just up the damage and health stats. It's not impossible, of course not, but really if a developer have a very specific vision in mind and want to spend their time on balancing out that experience as well as possible who have the right to tell them they need to split up their time to also make sure there are easier and harder modes that offer the same type of balance that the game is based on? Like again, games today are able to have more depth in terms of moment to moment gameplay that if a game comes along that tries to take advantage of that no one should stand there and say you also need to make this accessible for people from other walks of life. Just consider the vast amount of factors that go into this, frame rate, visual clues, precise input, a plethora of moves, so much that a simple difficulty scaling system is just not viable. I mean in the same way hardcore gamers shouldn't go around demanding tough combat out of something designed to be a walking simulator.

I know this blog post was pretty much an incoherent rant that I'm not really qualified to give any real takes on and was most about my distaste for people with nostalgia goggles on praising the difficulty of older games because they were fighting the mechanics as much as the games. If someone did read this I hope my point came across on some level. I'm not interested in Sekiro, and I'm ok with that, I'm not exactly a casual player but I'm not really a hardcore player either. I'm just a gamer who knows not every game is made for me personally.

Post E3 2018 Thoughts and Highlights

So E3 2018 is done, games have been shown, interviews have been done, articles have been written, so much info out there for coming games many look forward to and so little time to pay attention to everything. As I'm not paid to do just that I will just share my thoughts on the stuff that stood out to me and that which I care about. I will cover as much as I can but don't expect this to be a full review for everything. 

EA started off E3 with their conference, and what can I really say about it. Not much to be honest, it's one of the few conferences I didn't watch live, in fact I didn't watch much of it at all. I skipped over the boring parts so I think I ended up watching maybe 5-10 minutes of it. I saw some Battlefield V, not a lot of footage but the Nordic looking map that was shown off was thrilling as I like seeing environments that remind me of where I actually live. Same reason I liked Alan Wake as the forests reminded me of the forests back home when I didn't live in an urban environment. It's oddly satisfying to me. As far as Anthem goes, the gameplay that was shown didn't do much for me, looks like another sci-fi shooter revolving around multiplayer and I just can't be bothered with that.

After EA Microsoft was up, and oh boy, I'm no MS fan, in fact I've never owned an Xbox and likely never will, but this was the best conference of E3 to me. It was entertaining, had a good flow, and most importantly, they showed off both Dying Light 2 and Cyberpunk 2077. Now I didn't get too excited for Cyberpunk 2077 since it was once again just a trailer showing off the world, sure it was nice looking but that's about it. Still want to see actual gameplay but everyone who has seen it has had their mind blown so it does sound interesting. Dying Light 2 was the real highlight for me as it has Chris Avellone behind it and that's all I need to know. I loved the gameplay in the first game, if that gets improved and gets a high quality story with impactful decisions then you can count me in.

Bethesda was next with their showing, now they probably had the cringiest conference during E3 and to be honest, I wasn't particularly wowed. Rage 2 looks fine if not a bit stale, not sure about it yet but I liked the first game (believe it or not) so I'm keeping an eye on it. There were a bunch of announcements I don't really care much about, I mean there were vague teasers for Doom Eternal and I think a Wolfenstein expansion but I don't have any particular opinions on them except "okay". The big thing was Fallout 76, an always online game with no NPC's centered around.. Something. I don't get what that game is about, is it about combat and crafting? I mean who asked for this game? Who have ever said that their favorite part of the Bethesda Fallout games were shooting and crafting? Sure, I get that many people wanted to play Fallout with a friend, but do they even want this? Is it really a Fallout game without a well told story, heavy decisions and a world populated with interesting intrigue? I don't know, because Bethesda have been frustratingly vague when describing it. Todd Howard and Pete Hines are annoyingly good at giving non-answers. Though enough of that, they also announced Starfield as a next gen game and Elder Scrolls VI, interesting they would do that when they're so far off but I agree with the people who have been saying they did it to soothe over the worries that they're going online focused with Fallout 76.

Then I watched Devolver Digital and Square Enix back to back. Now to be honest I didn't watch the Devolver conference for the games but for the crazy show they put on. I just loved how they made fun of casual gamers who spend crazy money on silly microtransactions. Just a lovely show with a few games that honestly do look kinda fun. Don't remember any of their names though. As far as Square Enix goes I liked the Shadow of the Tomb Raider gameplay, looks really interesting but after that my attention went elsewhere and I missed most of it. I didn't even look away for long it was just that their showing was really short. Oh well.

Moving on to Ubisoft next, their conference was decent but out of all the things they showed what stood out most to me was the games they didn't show. I was hoping to see a new Splinter Cell game and Watch Dogs 3 but they were nowhere to be seen. Suppose Assassin's Creed: Odyssey looked fine and all but I am yet to play Origins so I have some catching up to do on that front. Still miss Aisha Tyler, she was a real highlight of Ubisoft's past  conferences but it seems like she's not returning. Which makes me sad.

What about the PC Gaming show then? Well, I didn't watch it. Don't care.

Now the final conference I watched was Sony, no I didn't watch Nintendo, their style of games just don't appeal to me so I'll only be talking about Sony from here on. Their conference or show, whatever they wanna call it, was poorly structured and boring, but man were the games they showed off impressive. We finally saw gameplay for several of their titles for the first time, The Last of Us: Part II being the first on the line. Truly impressive stuff, the animation was top notch, so much so that a Tomb Raider lead called it fake, but the gameplay was improved upon as well. I really look forward to playing this bad boy in whatever distant year they please to release it. Of course, there was some controversy about the kiss between Ellie and Dina. As far as silly controversies go this is a silly one, not only should people have expected it as Ellie and Riley kissed in the Left Behind DLC but ND, and Druckmann specifically, have openly said that Ellie is indeed gay. The only thing I could think about when watching it, seeing Ellie so warm and happy, is that Dina is super dead. Like she has to die, and I can't wait to see the Youtube reactions when they play that part. It's gonna be spicy stuff, my dudes and dudettes.

I believe Ghost of Tsushima was up next, now this game looked absolutely stunning. The visuals are to die for. Not only that, the gameplay looked really nice, I'm not a fan of over the top hack and slash games so seeing a more slower paced and grounded combat system was pure joy for me. One thing that kinda put me off was the very American sounding female ally that shows up during the demo so I'm glad to see there will be the option for Japanese voice overs. Overall, I liked everything I saw from it. There were other games shown off as well, but I wasn't really impressed, not really into Spider Man and as far as Kingdom Hearts go both the more realistic graphics for the Pirates of the Caribbean characters go and the weird choice to mute all sound but the voices in the trailers to highlight the music was jarring to me. Death Stranding looked neat though, gave off some walking simulator vibes but I don't care, I want this game and I want it ASAP. It looks delightfully weird and I'm very much into it.

Final words, I wasn't blown away by E3 this year but one or two games did make me squeal from delight which is really all you can hope for. I think this year's event was really... Safe in some regards. It upheld the status quo of EA being disappointing, Bethesda getting all sorts of attention, Ubisoft being Ubisoft with all the cringe that goes with it, Devolver being memes incarnate, Sony making weird decisions but ultimately leaving people satisfied, Microsoft flexing their wallet, PC Gaming and Square making little noise. Not the best E3 but certainly not the worst.

Murder and Killing in Video Games

Neil Druckmann of Naughty Dog recently interviewed Hermen Hulst of Guerrilla Games about Horizon Zero Dawn and a comment from Druckmann made me think about a certain aspect of video games. That aspect being murder, now that might sound dark but I would like to remind you that I will be discussing the killing of pixels only.

Big, evil and terrifying pixels.

The comment that got me thinking was when Druckmann and Hulst was discussing how people claim to be unable to relate to characters that isn't their gender and Druckmann retorted with "...But you're okay with playing a murderer?", interesting comment. Now I understand that it was a simplification and not a 100% accurate depiction of protagonists in violent games but it still got me thinking, do we as gamers relate to murderers when we play games about killing people?

In some regards we do, but I would say it's more often than not highly justifiable. Gaming is by all means a very childish medium and often paints conflict in a very black and white manner. You, the player, often play as an underdog oppressed by some pure evil force and is often forced into the conflict through self defense or to protect loved ones. Some would say it's murder regardless of the reason but our medium goes to extreme lengths to make it seem like the right thing to do, because if a game made you feel like an actual murderer I'd argue that not many would actually enjoy playing that game.

That said, there are games that more or less intentionally play around with this. Games like Spec Ops: The Line with more on the nose commentary on killing heaps of people and others more subtly. The example I'd like to bring up is Fallout 4 for a very specific area with very specific enemies. I'm referring to the raiders at the FMS Northern Star wreck who unlike other raiders speak Norwegian. Now the other raiders you meet in the game have few redeeming qualities and often speak about horrible stuff they've done or are going to do, but the Norwegians don't. They will say things like "Leave us Alone!" and "Get off our ship!" when attacked, simply put, they're not bloodthirsty raiders but a stranded crew who simply didn't speak the language and couldn't communicate with the locals and ended up having to fight for what was theirs in a cruel world.

What got to me was how this detail would likely be lost on a vast majority of people who played Fallout 4 as most don't understand Norwegian. However as someone who do understand the basics I was rather mortified about learning that they just want to be left alone and that I am in fact the villain who attack them. This wasn't me defending myself from an evil, faceless entity but me going into someone's makeshift home and actually murdering the inhabitants. Naturally I felt horrible and avoid going there unless I have to, and I think that's an important thing to highlight.

Gamers as a whole will try to do good, and that is why it's dishonest to say we identify with murderers. There's a lot of data that will back this up, games that offer gamers the choice of good versus bad a majority will choose to do good. Not only that, but study from University of Buffalo suggests that doing anything immoral in games will lead to guilt and in a sense make us more morally sensitive. Such a study would hardly suggest that gamers get into a killer mindset even after killing thousands if not millions of pixelated enemies. I've personally been killing virtual bad guys for over a decade and I still felt horrible after killing the previously mentioned Norwegian raiders, as a personal experience to back it up.

Not that it can't be interesting when games do turn the tables, anyone who has played Spec Ops: The Line will know that a morally gray game will also be very entertaining. It was advertised as a standard military shooter so when it turned out to be a "Heart of Darkness"-inspired adventure that really tested the moral fibers of gamers. It's quite welcome to actually question if we should feel so indifferent to killing so many and I'd like to see more games where we strike down our fellow man to not be so careless about it. If we want our medium to mature we should ask for games that aren't just mindless shooting galleries, games that encourage other approaches that perhaps doesn't involve shooting the enemy in the face.

It could be even more beneficial for us if games reminded us that it isn't always so black and white, perhaps have the enemies chat about how they're doing bad things for a justifiable reason themselves. Then give us the option to avoid conflict either through dialogue options or stealth. Life imitates art, as they say, and today more empathy couldn't hurt. Considering that such a large part of the modern population play games it could be a very effective way to inspire more care to tell encouraging stories instead of the same old ones where you are the absolute hero and the enemy is an absolute evil.

To mention another game that kind of dabbles in moral gray areas but not really, The Last of Us is a game that put the player in control of a very brutal man, named Joel. Joel is a man who has survived in a cruel world for many years and as a result has become a very cold killer. If it wasn't for his companion, Ellie, someone who hasn't seen as much violence and in turn give Joel a reason to care again, he would probably be the villain in someone else's story. Would overall be hard to relate to considering how cold he is if it wasn't for even more horrifying bad guys in the game. Would've been nice to hear them talk about anything but how they basically enjoy kicking puppies in their free time. It can be fun playing a anti-hero but as a result the enemies often become so absurdly evil to make it justifiable to kill them without feeling too guilty. Breaks the immersion to some extent.

I understand that devs don't want us to feel too uncomfortable playing their games but I do believe that gamers are more mature than they give us credit for. If they want to depict a very morally gray world then don't be afraid to depict it properly, the previously mentioned The Last of Us would be a good opportunity to show us that the enemies aren't necessarily outright evil and that you might prefer to avoid conflict instead of depicting them as monsters that the world wouldn't miss. You could say it's weird how they instead encourage killing your fellow man because he's an irredeemable monster.

Not that I want mindless shooting galleries to disappear, but like I said our medium is still in a very infantile place as a whole when it comes to how it handles killing. Some games that depict a more realistic take on conflict could be good, games where killing does make you feel uncomfortable. Solving conflicts more creatively could be interesting and could be the next step for gaming to take if we want it to mature as a medium.

As a conclusion, it's a false oversimplification to claim that gamers are put into the role of murderers when playing violent games and call them murder simulators. However, it could be interesting to push boundaries by putting the player in a position where killing could be considered "murder" while giving the choice to simply avoid conflict through more creative means.

Naughty Dog and Gender Diversity

I've discussed this subject before, more or less, can't remember if it was in both blog and vlog form or just a vlog. Regardless, the subject I intend to talk about is gender diversity in games and how it can be handled better by even those who see themselves as shining beacons of hope for those wanting to see more lead women, as an example. 

A recent video interview where Neil Druckmann of Naughty Dog interviewed Hermen Hulst of Guerrilla Games is what sparked this topic. They were discussing female protagonists in a segment of the interview where Druckmann took a jab at people unable to relate to a female protagonist but can relate to murderers. Now there's a lot to discuss in this so lets get started.

First off, I wanted to address the fact that anyone who thinks you can't relate to a character simply because of different gender or race is ignorant. Not completely wrong but still ignorant if that's a deal breaker for them. A character is made up of many different things, among those things is gender and race, those being different than your own can set up a barrier for sure but it's something you quickly get over once you give them a chance. It's just how we're wired in the end, we get along better and quicker with others like us while getting along with different people takes more of an effort. That said, as a straight man I get how it can be weird to play as a woman and in the game have male characters hit on you, the player.

Aloy, relatable despite being a woman.

Moving on, I wanted to touch upon the subject of relating to a murderer. I want to touch more upon that another time but I did wanna point out that it's not really a thing that games do these days. Most often the enemy is a purely evil entity, either zombies, aliens or mercenaries with one goal and that goal is to be as evil as possible. They're faceless, and they go out of their way to show that whatever emotions they have it's about how they enjoy torturing puppies. Putting those kinds of enemies in your path, most often putting you in the seat that you have no choice but to kill them in self defense, isn't putting the player in the boots of a murderer. As an example, Aloy from Horizon is a killer, but no murderer. She doesn't kill innocent people and the enemies are overly barbaric with no redeemable qualities. You're not going to feel bad about killing monsters in self defense, but you might feel uncomfortable when every single character in the game seem to have the hots for you. Understandably so.

I'll have to get around to the murder-mindset and games later on as it's an interesting topic to me, but alas it's time to get to my main point. The reason I put Naughty Dog in the title. As a disclaimer, I have no problems with female protagonists, in fact they often turn out really badass because devs seem to make more of an effort when writing them and badass women are great. For that matter I'm not going to sit here and say we need less women in games, no I'm here to say, we need more.

What I mean with that.. Let me ask you a question, how many badass females can you remember from recent games? Really give it some thought, I can remember Ellie, Tess and Marlene (TLoU), Elena, Chloe and Nadine (Uncharted), Lara Croft (Tomb Raider), Aloy (Horizon) just to name a few. Now try and mention any female villains. Can you mention three without looking anything up, even one? Better yet, how many games have women among the cannon fodder that the player slaughters en masse?

That's the real point, games today seem to have a real hard time painting women as villains, especially as low level grunts. I think this is a very important part of equality, not to hold women to some ideal standard where they're always the good guys but show that they can be just as bad as men. Now I've mentioned Nadine here, she counts, right? Well first off, she was a Mary Sue, she wasn't that interesting and both times you fought her you didn't stand a chance against this terminator. She's also one only villain that hasn't died in Uncharted, even villains who ended up redeeming themselves in the past died as they did. Nadine just buggers off to return as a protagonist in Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. Not to mention she's the only female mercenary in all of the Uncharted games. How odd.

The Last of Us is another example of a game which Naughty Dog, gaming media and Druckmann himself uses to show off how badass women can be. It's true that Ellie and Tess are both really badass and good characters but where are the female villains? Even Marlene who, not to spoil anything important, stands in your way at one point isn't portrayed as a bad character. Also where are all the female Fireflies and survivors? Is Naughty Dog telling me that only men are strong enough to do all the savage things you need to do to survive in a post-apocalyptic world? Or have what it takes to be a mercenary in the Uncharted franchise?

Now, I do of course understand why this is a thing. It is of course because we're still uneasy about harming women. We've played games and seen movies where men have been slaughtered without discretion for decades, centuries, maybe more? It's funny how everyone calls for more women in gaming but as soon as they can be harmed all hell breaks loose. I think the first time I noticed female cannon fodder was in MGS4 were Kojima had made the FROG unit to kinda experiment and see if gamers would be more hesitant to kill female enemies.

FROG:s, all female special forces.

What I ask is simple, add female baddies among the waves of enemies you throw against me in games. I didn't think about it until I played more games with female protagonists, how my character was the only female combatant in sight. Why is it okay to slaughter my own gender exclusively while we hesitate to even add female enemies that end up dying before the end of the game? As a man, I'm fine with female protagonists, but I'd like my own gender to not be the only one portrayed as evil as well. As long as this is a thing we won't have gender equality.

I'd also like to mention the recent Star Wars: Battlefront 2 announcement. Apparently we're going to play as a female protagonist in it. Fine, I say, but a female Imperial soldier? Where has all the female storm troopers been before, I ask? Is it maybe that we don't mind the idea of millions of male baddies being killed throughout the Star Wars franchise so we don't really see female baddies until it's time to play the "bad side"? Seems awfully fishy to me, don't get me wrong Star Wars is full of badass women but I've never heard of women among the Imperial Grunts before Phasma in Star Wars Episode 7 who wasn't even a grunt but a fancy commander. Doesn't seem consistent, and consistency is vital for making a believable and immersive world.

Ellie, doesn't hit women because they're too fragile. 

Naturally I do wanna give a shout-out to developers who do support real gender equality in games like Bethesda and Ubisoft who have both badass female protagonists and female antagonists and cannon fodder. Bethesda in particular has been doing it for a long time, first time I saw female raiders in Fallout 3 (which as my first Bethesda game) was quite refreshing to me. They also do it without proclaiming how progressive they are at every step, really I'd say Bethesda is currently a shining beacon of how it's done as far as identity politics is concerned. I really hope Naughty Dog takes note and adds a few female enemies in their next game. Female protagonists is good and I enjoy playing them but it makes it all the more weird when all enemies are exclusively male.

Introduce some real diversity and equality, please.

Oh and here's the interview that caused this topic to begin with; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzomI_VXFLs

Crazy's 2016 Gaming Predictions [VLOG]

Just naming a few more or less crazy predictions for the coming year in gaming..

Now On Youtube! Hello World!

So I've been doing more Youtube lately, that is I've uploaded more gameplay videos and now I've even decided to put my pretty face there as well. Figured it was time to spread the word for anyone interested. Still fresh meat but could become something more. We'll see.

Welcome video:

Gameplay taste:

Game talk taste:

Etc shenanigans:

And finally, my ex-cat who is with us no more:

I know the camera I'm using to capture "real life" is horrible. Can't say I'll invest in something better before I know it's worth it. Do consider checking out my mediocre stuff!