The director of Helldivers 2 defends Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree and helps you understand what’s great about it
Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree is a difficult game and that’s okay: the director of Helldivers 2 defended the difficulty of the DLC and helps us understand what’s great about it all.
Shadow of the Erdtree was published and what everyone expected happened: the issue of difficulty in video games came back to center stage. The Elden Ring expansion is certainly not kind to fans and for many it’s a bit much. The director of Helldivers 2 – Johan Pilestedt – also entered the discussion and proposed a different point of view.
According to him, the design choices of Shadow of the Erdtree are right because “a game for everyone is a game that interests no one”.
Pilestedt’s words on Shadow of the Erdtree
The comment from the director of Helldivers 2 came in response to a tweet from a content creator, Rurikhan , who in turn responded to a video (which we are not inserting to avoid spoilers) from a content creator – Stormfall – who rejoices after having Defeated a boss from the Elden Ring DLC.
“Some people think that FromSoftware creates complex bosses just to make them difficult. They are wrong. The game is challenging because they want you to feel this kind of emotion [ed., the joy of having won, shown in the video]. But you can’t feel certain emotions if you are not tested. This moment represents the ultimate goal of the soulsborne game design philosophy.”
The director of Helldivers 2 defends Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree and helps you understand what’s great about it
The problem with this design philosophy is it only caters to a select audience.
I tried DS1, after defeating the first couple bosses, I realised it wasn't fun or rewarding. I only felt relief, not accomplished.I stopped playing DS because of this.
— Matt D 🇬🇧 (@Indoor_Carrot) June 24, 2024
Pilestedt says he agrees 1000% and believes that good game design is meant to evoke emotion . However, one user replied that he tried to play Dark Souls 1 and after defeating a couple of bosses he realized he wasn’t having fun. The only emotion he felt was relief at having finished.
The director then concluded by stating that a game for everyone is a game that interests no one and that it is always good to create a product for a specific group of players . In short, just because someone doesn’t care about a specific experience (which in this case is also related to difficulty) doesn’t mean that the video game should change completely.
Miyazaki himself said that lowering the difficulty a lot would destroy the game , although this obviously doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be fixes: some power-ups have been improved, for example .