Accessibility in game design

I’ve recently been playing a lot of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and boy does the internet have some opinions on it. It’s the latest game made by From Software, a studio infamous for creating brutally punishing games typically set in an intricately detailed world with deep lore and interconnected level design. Let’s make one thing crystal clear: people who bought Sekiro (myself included) knew exactly what they were signing up for: an agonizing thrill ride that tosses you into an endless series of seemingly impossible boss fights that all seem unbeatable on your first attempt but result in an extremely satisfying catharsis when you finally overcome the challenge on your thirtieth attempt. There is hands down no feeling in video games that even comes close to beating a boss in a From Software game, period.

And this is exactly what the hot topic on the interwebs is at the moment. Many gamers are finding Sekiro harder than From Software’s previous titles, and are longing for a way to tweak the settings so that they can ease their frustration just a little bit. There’s many who simply don’t have the time or the patience to slog through it and would much rather tweak a setting to let them complete the challenge faster. I myself am in this camp. I don’t exactly want to spend the already limited time I have for playing video games beating my head against the wall re-attempting a boss fight for three hours only to get cheaply killed in one hit by a random grab attack after nine minutes of perfectly dodging, parrying, and using valuable items that are difficult to re-acquire once used up.

I completely and fully understand that this is part of the process. I absolutely loved it in Bloodborne. The struggle was part of the reason the victory felt so good. I totally know that if I keep trying, I can overcome the boss eventually and win out. But I’m playing Sekiro for more than just the boss fights. From Software is great at creating strange narratives with obscure NPC quests, lots of hidden secrets in their masterfully laid out levels, and an oppressive atmosphere that blends perfectly with the tone of their games. On top of all this, they added a stealth aspect with Sekiro, which just so happens to be my favorite genre of games. You can grapple and speedily fling yourself across the levels to get a vantage point from a high rooftop onto the action below, plan your approach, and explore the entire area in whatever way you please. It’s the Dishonored fantasy fulfillment in a From Software game. So of course I’m in love with it.

But I absolutely despise getting totally walled by a difficult boss fight and being unable to progress. I want to enjoy the world they’ve created and the stories they’re telling. I don’t want to spend six hours mastering a strange combat style that I’m sure feels extremely rewarding to pull off, but really just isn’t worth the time invested into it, especially for someone who doesn’t have a lot for gaming to begin with and isn’t even that good at video games in the first place. Yeah, I said it. It took me around four hours and forty-seven attempts to defeat Genichiro Ashina at the top of Ashina Castle, and I’m currently being walled hard by the Guardian Ape in the Sunken Valley.

The diehard From Software fans will defend the game by saying that this is the artist’s vision. It’s the creative intent, and an easy mode would ruin the game. It would lessen the experience for “all” players even if a select few were able to turn on the easier setting. This might be the silliest argument I’ve heard. How on Earth does someone tweaking their own experience in a single-player game affect someone else’s enjoyment of the game? People have been using cheat codes in single-player games for decades. Why is it now that allowing easier access to the game somehow dilutes the experience for everyone? Are these people really so entitled to their experience at being good at these types of games that they’d rather not have other players enjoy the same thing in their own way?

More importantly, these fans are conflating two very different things: difficulty modes and accessibility options. These are not the same thing. Difficulty modes are made for people who intentionally want to tailor their experience to different intensities of playstyles. Accessibility modes are options that opens up the game to a much broader audience, allowing those with disabilities and those that wouldn’t traditionally be into these types of games in the first place to jump in and enjoy them.

Celeste is the perfect example of incorporating a perfect accessibility mode. They flawlessly integrated an “Assist Mode” that would allow the player to tweak options like the game’s speed, give you infinite dashes, and allow you to turn invincible. These could all be controlled independently to allow players to only turn on what they needed. Even with all these turned on, the game doesn’t magically become easy. The player still needs to make all the jumps on all the platforms and actually play the game. It just makes the experience far more forgiving and easier to put up with in some frustrating sections. Best of all, the game even explains that the “intended” mode to play is the way it was designed without Assist Mode. It reads “…if Celeste is inaccessible to you due to its difficulty, we hope that Assist Mode will allow you to still enjoy it.” This right here is exactly what accessibility is.

I never turned on Assist Mode in my playthrough of Celeste, but I always took comfort in knowing it was there. There were a few particularly daunting sections where I was tempted to turn on infinite stamina just to get through it but ended up mastering the challenge after a few failed attempts. Celeste never punishes you for turning Assist Mode on either. It just recognizes that there are people who will find the game inaccessible due to its difficulty and gives them a way to enjoy it. Millions of people have partaken in Madeline’s struggle through depression and have enjoyed the wildly inventive platforming puzzles of the game thanks to its Assist Mode.

Let’s be real. Hidetaka Miyazaki would never add something like this to his games. He has never hinted that he cared about making From Software’s games more accessible. He’s got a very specific vision of putting the player in ridiculous David vs. Goliath situations and allowing the player to get better by learning their enemy’s moves, reading their attack animations, and finally overcoming them by mastering their reaction times. This formula is what made the studio famous in the first place, and they’d never add accessibility options to compromise on this vision.

But again, the studio is offering a lot more than just insane boss fights. Sekiro has a very beautiful surrealist atmosphere set in a historical Japanese setting. It’s got some very captivating political intrigue between warring factions at the end of the Sengoku era. It’s got some deep spiritual takes on Shinto-Buddhism and humanity’s obsession with immortality. It’s got strong character development with regards to loyalty and duty. It’s got some brilliant art direction and level design. It’s got creative location variety, dramatic setpieces, unique gameplay mechanics, a large diversity of playstyles, strong worldbuilding, memorable NPC encounters, and a ton of spectacular moments. But more than half of the gamers interested by it won’t ever get to experience it because they’re put off by its intimidating difficulty, and an even larger potion of the audience will straight up not be able to even consider experiencing it because it’s straight up inaccessible to them. It’s a pity, really.

Gamers need to realize that their own high horse of elitism in beating a difficult game means absolutely nothing when it means they’re walling off a massive portion of the playerbase just so that they can claim to have completed the game. No one complained about Celeste’s Assist Mode. No one. Everyone loves the fact that it exists and can rely on it if necessary. The game even encourages you to overcome the game’s trials without turning on Assist Mode through its narrative beats. Sekiro would benefit greatly from some sort of accessibility options like that of Celeste’s, where it still requires you to play through and be somewhat decent at the game, but where it makes the mechanics of the game less frustrating, ex: perfect deflects restore small chunks of resurrective power, or your total number of resurrects is uncapped, or you get infinite healing gourds. Just like Celeste, Sekiro could allow players to turn any combination of these options on or off. Note that none of the options allow you to skip bosses or let you bypass sections of the game. You’d still have to do those things, you’d just have a less frustrating time with it if boss fights aren’t your thing. That’s really all we’re asking for, and it’s not too much to ask in 2019.