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Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree expansion has stirred controversy far and wide. Its difficulty led to a few critical reviews from journalists, reviving the ‘games journalists are bad at video games’ discourse, and then after it’s release – lo-and-behold, players were also critical in light of its difficulty. We’ve heard audiences enough already, so it’s refreshing we have a new voice entering the discussion.
Helldivers 2’s CCO, Johan Pilestedt, is the games master behind Arrowhead’s gargantuan title. Gaming discourse spreads fast, and it wasn’t long before he had his say on Elden Ring’s difficulty. For context, there are two tweets that inform this particular thread – one from a streamer finally beating an extremely difficult boss, and stating that From Software don’t intentionally design difficulty bosses for difficulty’s sake, but instead “the game is challenging because they want you to feel [victorious].
But you can’t feel this without being challenged.” Pilestedt finally has his say, that “good game design is evoking emotion more than anything.” Despite this, he also continues to say that “the games industry is big enough for there to be so many exciting experiences for all audiences.
” It’s hard to disagree with Pilestedt here, whether it’s a driving sim roguelike, a Commodore 64-style hor.
