[WaPo] ‘Demon’s Souls’ devs considered, and ultimately left out, an easy mode. Here’s why.

[Deleted member 18944]

"This project remakes the work of another development team," wrote Moore. "While we've made some changes, our core driving mantra has always been to preserve the spirit and intent of the original creators. While we considered and discussed an easy mode, we ultimately decided it wasn't our place — merely being custodians for this amazing game — to add something that would fundamentally alter its balance."

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/11/18/demons-souls-easy-mode/

Reminder: Accessibility and difficulty aren't the same thing, and you can have a game's spirit of difficulty preserved while also including accessibility options.

"Accessibility" and "difficulty" aren't the same thing | Opinion

Watching the discussion about difficulty modes and accessibility in games unfold over the past couple of weeks, it has …

www.gamesindustry.biz

 

[Ruisu]

I have to agree with this. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with a hypothetical easy mode for a From Souls game, but I really don't want some other developer doing it. It has to be done by From themselves, it's the same reason I have no interest in bluepoint making a new area for demon's souls, you'll just have a remade masterpiece with an awkward new area that won't play the same.

 

[Deleted member 16908]

What's interesting is that the original Demon's Souls could actually be considered easier than the remake since you can carry unlimited healing grass and thus can make as many mistakes as you want provided you can find a moment to heal.

 

[Timu]

Ah, at least they considered an easy mode at one point at least, but I guess they wanted to stick to how it originally was which they felt it was the best for them.

 

[ClickyCal']

I'll never be able to understand how adding in easy mode hurts the "reputation" a game has.

 

[Dozer]

Why are we calling this game a remake? It's a remaster. A very complete one, but it's a remaster.

 

[Trey]

But then you completely reimagine the entire look, tone, and feel of the original artistic vision? That's a fair amount of editorialization for custodial work. I guess this sounded good in his head - I'd rather they just keep it a rack and say "we didn't want to."

 

[aspiegamer]

Yeah, it needs to be From making large decisions that change the definition of their games that much, or at least done with their permission.

I'll never be able to understand how adding in easy mode hurts the "reputation" a game has.

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The in-your-face difficulty of the entire series has always been a defining trait. It just is what it is.

 

[Manmademan]

What's interesting is that the original Demon's Souls could actually be considered easier than the remake since you can carry unlimited healing grass and thus can make as many mistakes as you want provided you can find a moment to heal.

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The remake (and the original) allows you to regenerate mana endlessly via rings and weapons and heal via spells, it's not significantly different.

 

[Ruisu]

Why are we calling this game a remake? It's a remaster. A very complete one, but it's a remaster.

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There isn't a rule book with regulations for what is called a remaster or a remake.

 

[zombiejames]

While we considered and discussed an easy mode, we ultimately decided it wasn't our place — merely being custodians for this amazing game — to add something that would fundamentally alter its balance."

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Bluepoint gets it.

 

[Farrac]

I've always felt that Bluepoint approach to remaking games suffers from being too faithful to the original source material. Demon's Souls would have benefited from an easy mode, and I can't believe we never got any of the originally cut colossi in the Shadow of the Colossus remake. It was such a gorgeous remake too and I wish they tried more with it.

 

[ClickyCal']

Yeah, it needs to be From making large decisions that change the definition of their games that much, or at least done with their permission.

The in-your-face difficulty of the entire series has always been a defining trait. It just is what it is.

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Okay? Then everyone can just play on the hardest mode. Am I missing something?

 

[zerocalories]

i am team #easymode all the way, but i agree with the devs on this. this is one of those things where its not your choice to make

 

[Doskoi Panda]

Why are we calling this game a remake? It's a remaster. A very complete one, but it's a remaster.

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More than enough has been changed to consider it a remake. It's not like SotC or Crash where everything under the hood is essentially identical

 

[Richter1887]

Why are we calling this game a remake? It's a remaster. A very complete one, but it's a remaster.

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It's a remake.

A remaster is a retouched port that is upgraded graphically.

This game meanwhile is built from grounds up. It has plenty of new additions and almost everything is brand new.

 

[Lord Fanny]

See we're back to this checkpoint

 

[taco543]

Glad they decided against it. Leave it to the OGs to make that decision. If they had blessing from FS to do it then I'd be ok with it though.

 

[Deleted member 18944]

Why are we calling this game a remake? It's a remaster. A very complete one, but it's a remaster.

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This has literally nothing to do with the article.

 

[Asriel]

Holy shit is that Gameindustry.biz article awful. And arguments against an Easy mode continue to be so weak.

 

[Rats]

I agree that it's not their place to add one, but I think it would be fine to add one.

 

[Deleted member 34714]

Why are we calling this game a remake? It's a remaster. A very complete one, but it's a remaster.

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A remaster would be RPCS? emulator running this game at higher res on PS5 and nothing more. Remakes involve the devs to insert new textures and models at a minimum.

 

[Cyber Jim Davis]

I am a big fan of the original version, including the difficulty, and I don't think an optional easy difficulty would take anything away from the game. Honestly, an easy mode would have been preferable to whatever the hell Bluepoint was thinking with some of these updated character and enemy designs. Now that's something that hurts From's vision.

 

[touchfuzzy]

I think it's a huge miss, especially for a launch game. You're going to have a ton of people checking this out who have never even heard of Souls or From Software and being immediately turned off. Sony could've turned this into a pillar series for them if they made it more accessible, now it will remain a game for hardcore only.

 

[PeskyToaster]

I think the main issue with this debate is that people don't really agree on a definition of accessibility. if you don't think an easy mode is part of accessibility then there won't be any sort of agreement.

 

[Manmademan]

A remaster would be RPCS? emulator running this game at higher res on PS5 and nothing more. Remakes involve the devs to insert new textures and models.

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Yup. clearly not a remaster. Bluepoint rebuilt everything from the ground up, keeping only the enemy AI in place for consistency purposes.

I think it's a huge miss, especially for a launch game. You're going to have a ton of people checking this out who have never even heard of Souls or From Software and being immediately turned off. Sony could've turned this into a pillar series for them if they made it more accessible, now it will remain a game for hardcore only.

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Didn't DS3 sell somewhere around 10 million copies?

 

[Dolce]

Just add an easy mode. If games like Ninja Gaiden can have easy modes, I'm pretty sure Souls, which is monumentally easier, will be alright.

Why are we calling this game a remake? It's a remaster. A very complete one, but it's a remaster.

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They completely changed the models, every environment seems to be different from what I've seen in terms of assets.

A remaster needs to at least be based on the same assets but this completely changed them all. It's like how the Psycho remake isn't a remaster but a remake, even though it's the same scene for scene.

 

[FooF]

All you have to do is look up Hidetaka Miyazakis design philosophy to understand why his games don't have easy modes. Obviously you're free to disagree with his philosophy for designing games but it's the reason these games have the rep they do. I'm glad Bluepoint didn't go against that.

 

[Deleted member 22750]

why cant games like this exist without people making a big deal

some people love a challenge and like the fact that the other participants in the game do too

games that don't have an easy mode are extremely outnumbered by games that do

 

[Loud Wrong]

We did this thread when the lead guy from Sony said the very same thing a couple weeks ago. Their goal was to remaster it, not reinvent it. They succeeded too. The game also feels so much easier than the other Souls games, so if you're scared of the difficulty, don't be. It's never been about being a hard game, it's always been about patience, and if you're asking them to make a game that removes its core tenet of being patient, you're being unreasonable. Props to them for adding more accessibility options though. That's a good change.

 

[packy17]

I'll never be able to understand how adding in easy mode hurts the "reputation" a game has.

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My opinion on this isn't about "reputation". I simply dont believe that every game needs to target every audience. It's okay that there are things out there that just aren't for me. The discussion gets muddy when trying to account for people with disabilities and I don't think there's currently a great solution for that, but it can't be "just make the game easier". That feels a little too reductionist/like a quick band-aid fix.

 

[Lord Fanny]

Didn't DS3 sell somewhere around 10 million copies?

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Yeah, it sold over 10 I believe, and the series has a whole (of Dark, not including BB and Demon's) was like 30 million or something?

 

[Dozer]

It's a remake.

A remaster is a retouched port that is upgraded graphically.

This game meanwhile is built from grounds up. It has plenty of new additions and almost everything is brand new.

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This simply isn't true. They have admitted in every interview they've done this started with the PS3 codebase.

 

[ClickyCal']

My opinion on this isn't about "reputation". I simply dont believe that every game needs to target every audience. It's okay that there are things out there that just aren't for me. The discussion gets muddy when trying to account for people with disabilities and I don't think there's currently a great solution for that, but it can't be "just make the game easier". That feels a little too reductionist/like a quick band-aid fix.

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I mean the thing is that it can be both. TLOU part 2 has a million different combination of ways to play, to the extent that they basically made a whole category at the game awards because of that. Playing with the hardest modes and everything on makes the game arguably as hard some souls games. It doesn't take away that there is a huge range.

 

[Absolute]

Did they include any accessibility options not in the original?

 

[Zombegoast]

Here's easy mode. This is as easy the game can get without literally holding your hand. People have to understand is difficulty comes down how you play and not some BS way developers can think of limiting you

 

[Richter1887]

This simply isn't true. They have admitted in every interview they've done this started with the PS3 codebase.

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That's why I said almost.

Obviously the game plays the same as the original but everything else is new.

 

[Garlador]

In before 100 pages of people going back and forth on this.

Let me again say that I modded my original copy of Demon's Souls to be easier and more accessible for myself and a friend.

It did not ruin the experience and allowed us to enjoy the game on a level other people would consider "normally" challenging.

 

[Okii]

That's lame, I have friends who just aren't good at games and/or have disabilities and couldn't possibly make progress in any of the Souls game. The normal mode is there for you, they have zero intent in removing that, your game will not change, at all, so adding an easy mode for people that would like it has zero effect on you other than some made up "gamer cred" bullshit like anyone actually cares if you can finish a Souls game. How anyone can possibly defend not having an easy mode is crazy to me, like how can you trust another studio to remaster the entire game yet don't trust them to make an easy mode? What harm will an easy mode have on your experience if you never intent to use it?

 

[Manmademan]

This simply isn't true. They have admitted in every interview they've done this started with the PS3 codebase.

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nope.

"Our approach to this is we try and keep the core of the game untouched. With Demon's Souls, that's the gameplay, the logic, and the AI, and then everything else is stripped away. And then utilizing the incredible power of the PlayStation 5 and how much we could really go wild on this title, we started to build everything back."

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Demon’s Souls on PS5: Here’s what’s changing

New details on photo mode, multiplayer, World Tendency, and more

www.polygon.com

They kept the enemy AI and logic and rebuilt everything else. It's not a remaster.

 

[Doskoi Panda]

A remaster would be RPCS? emulator running this game at higher res on PS5 and nothing more.

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Nah far as I'm concerned that's a port

Kinda like how Dishonored Remastered is actually just a port because it's literally just the PC version running at 1080p medium/high settings slapped onto PS4 and Xbox

They called it a remaster for marketing purposes, but like many other last gen 'remasters', it's a port

 

[Mr. RPG]

There's already an easy mode: just use Magic.

 

[ekim]

I would imagine a souls game with an easy mode would end up being plain boring. I would still love to see accessibility options for disabled people.

 

[RedSwirl]

The question I keep coming back to is, how would they square a different difficulty mode with it being an online game?

Have other online RPGs had different difficulty modes?

 

[kambaybolongo]

Why are we calling this game a remake? It's a remaster. A very complete one, but it's a remaster.

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it's the definition of a remake, in no way is it simply a remaster

 

[BoobooGanger]

Here's easy mode. This is as easy the game can get without literally holding your hand. People have to understand is difficulty comes down how you play and not some BS way developers can think of limiting you

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This.

 

[Jakisthe]

Makes sense, and moreover, if From themselves continues to feel that the best way to design their games is without a specifically dedicated easy mode, that's fine too.

 

[sappyday]

This simply isn't true. They have admitted in every interview they've done this started with the PS3 codebase.

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Nope. They "remade" everything but the technical code. Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 is a remake, but they also built it on top of the original code. Remaster is an upgrade of the already existing game. So it's a remake and not a remaster. FFVII is an extreme type of remake where folks would say it's actually a reimagining. If this Demon's Souls had a different style of combat I would still consider it a remake, but underneath I would say it's a reimagining. But for now it's a remake.

 

[MatildaMuggins]

This series isn't even that hard god damn. Easy mode is there, it's called co-op.

Sekiro is a different story though.

 

[sappyday]

Here's easy mode. This is as easy the game can get without literally holding your hand. People have to understand is difficulty comes down how you play and not some BS way developers can think of limiting you

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Yup this. If you want an easy mode the game allows to give it to you. Just cause the labels aren't there doesn't mean it isn't there. Many people are just too lazy to search it up or want everything catered to them