Games Don't Need Difficulty Anymore (On Mirror's Edge & PoP)

This post was written back when Mirror's Edge and Prince of Persia were new, but its ideas still apply as how I think games should be evolving. You can find Part 1 of this argument here.

One minor spoiler for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is contained in the last paragraph of this post.

Do games even need to be difficult anymore? I should say that when I mention difficulty I'm referring to it the way most people understand it, based on the way they misjudge Prince of Persia; when I say difficulty I mean frustration. I don't think games should be devoid of any sort of challenge, whether it be mental or physical, as that would be like a film having no conflict in the story. That's not to say that parts of a game with little to no challenge can't be fun as well, but at the risk of contradicting myself I'll touch on that subject later. Difficulty still exists in Prince of Persia, and probably more so than in other games. The difference between it and other games is the fact that it doesn't bring you to a menu screen and make you watch it load every time you die. Tell me, how many times did you actually fall off the edge or get into the 'kill move' by an enemy and need Elika to come save you? Probably a lot of times. Probably about the same amount of times as, if not more than in Mirror's Edge. But Mirror's Edge is considered by many to be difficult, partly because of the way it treats death. It's very 1990's and they failed to come up with a good reason to allow you not to break the immersion. The trial-and-error gameplay, as many people like to call it isn't actually trial-and-error, it just seems that way because you usually can't think fast enough to get out of a certain situation or jump to a certain building while doing the right move. That's the exact same way Prince of Persia is, you don't die because of unfair camera angles or anything like real trial-and-error gameplay would be, you just misjudge a jump or press the wrong button when doing acrobatics. The difference is Prince of Persia has adapted for a more modern age of gameplay and realizes it's entertainment for your home where it doesn't matter how many times you die, while Mirror's Edge just feels like an arcade port.

This brings me to the what I think the problem is with Mirror's Edge as a singleplayer game. Most people who talk about how hard it is for making you constantly die are basing this off of opinions of their first playthrough. Part of the problem is the fact that since you get a feeling of really doing parkour by being in the first person, having such a visceral sensation constantly ripped from your eager hands by dying makes you mad inside. You're mad not only for having to do the part over again, but because now it's no longer on a whim, dodging and weaving through things for the first time. It has become routine, pieces of the level constantly layering on top of each other until the next checkpoint is reached, just so you can repeat the process. From what I've played it feels like the game was made for the time trials first, and then for the story. This would explain the death screen, as in a time trial you expect to be dying a lot, learning a level's ins and outs, but in a single player narrative, we all die a little inside every time we do learn the ins and outs of a level, having tainted the first impression of everything it contains that we can never get back.

The question some might ask would be, "Why don't you just play it on easy mode first if you want everything to go perfectly?" My response would be, why do games need difficulty levels in the first place? Sure for something more like an arcade experience you would want something to be really challenging once you've learned how to play it, but I think most games serious about their narrative should tailor to you. By this I don't mean tailoring to how good you are at the game, as there should just be certain games where "You must be at least this good to play" and those should have tutorials outside of the canon of the game (bonus points for if they fit them into the canon). For example though, if in MGS4 when you're crawling on hands and knees through the microwave tunnel, would you have enjoyed it more if you had to keep doing it over, only because at the start you weren't pressing Triangle fast enough so by the end you hadn't pressed it enough times to continue? No, because now it's ruined. Everything that entire sequence stands for would be completely ruined. Kojima was smart enough to be able to tailor that part enough to make you feel like you're juuust about to fail, and then you get through it. That's real gamemaking. Games are all about what you feel while playing them, just like any other form of art. If all you feel is frustration at a level's difficulty, having to mute the TV's sound every time characters say "What's going on? What are they saying?" "They've started a bloody countdown! Zakhaev's going to launch the remaining missiles" because you've heard it 500 times already doesn't make it fun at all. If you are playing a game like Mirror's Edge where the intended feeling is to make you a freerunner, then it should have been trying its damndest to make you feel that way. I have no idea how they would have done that, but perhaps that means they should have gone back to the drawing board for how the narrative plays out in the first place.

(2)

Andrew Wilson

May 16, 2009

I still stand by my contention: Games need challenge. Without it, you might as forget about the game parts and just make movies instead.

I hate the handholding and constant checkpoints seen in games like Halo 3 or Gears of War. It's cheesy, and it makes multiplayer co-op, especially in Halo 3, a nightmare, because of the jacked-up way that game handles respawns.

I do agree that hearing watching the same cut-scene, and particularly hearing the same voice clips over and over at a tough segment of the game is annoying, but that's nothing some minor design changes won't fix. Those voice clips and cut-scenes could occur BEFORE a save/respawn point instead of AFTER.

But dumbing down the challenge kind of makes me think, "What's the point?" For me, the story is only part of the experience. The gameplay is the other part, and if I think I'm being handheld and walked through a game going through the motions of danger, epic fail. Resident Evil 4 is near the top of my all-time favorites list... as much for its thrilling gameplay as for its story and cut-scenes. With a boss fight, I want to feel the adrenaline rush. I want to have that feeling that if I'm not at the top of my game, I'm dead. It makes it all the sweeter when I'm at the top of my game and defeat a tough boss at the end of a thrilling battle. But even the "mundane" battles can be made to be fun and exciting. And the odd life-or-death quick-time event added to the sense of paranoia in the game.

To me, challenge is the one thing that separates games from movies. Take away the challenge, and might as well watch a movie, or better still, a good TV series, which is better storytelling than a movie too.

Video games do _NOT_ need to be dumbed down. A person playing a game should be prepared to lose as well as win.

Nick Hawryluk

May 17, 2009

You make a very good point but I think that games haven't yet turned the corner yet of creating interactivity and challenge without making you die or get frustrated. For examples of games that have at least some element of what I mean by this, look to Prince of Persia, Grim Fandango or Fable 2. You can't die in any of them, but they're still very much video games and definitely challenging and interactive enough not to be considered giving you a handicap like other games of our era.

I feel like if you do have a game where the player will die a lot then you should figure out a way for dying to be within canon, like the way PoP did. Every outcome of the game should be part of the experience in my opinion, not just the ones where your character is lucky enough not to fall down a bottomless pit.

Other games don't need to deal with death at all, like Grim Fandango (I haven't beaten it so I'm just referring to the beginning parts). This game is definitely challenging, putting together devious puzzles for the user to figure out, but nothing comes in and breaks the experience and erases a whole piece of your history like dying. The fact that everyone is already dead doesn't count :P

Fable 2 deals with themes that would have dying as a consequence in any other game, but allows your story to persist by giving you permanent scars for falling in battle. This is a real consequence for 'dying' in games instead of the temporary death screen followed by a complete reset of your bad decisions.

Other games like Crackdown and Bioshock let you die but then you are respawned and if you were taking on a boss there is still a dent in their defenses.

Overall, there are a lot of clever ways to get around traditional death in games without merely being Dragon's Lair (which probably involves death the most, but I know what you meant) and the sooner developers think about how to work with that effectively, the better.