Games With Grey

Video game difficulty is an understandably divisive matter, heightened difficulty repelling some players, engaging others; it is difficult to regard the subject with ambivalence. Those who do embrace heightened difficulty settings often do so in search of exhilaration, catharsis. Exhilaration and catharsis both are discoverable in tamer, more tranquil experiences to be sure, but they necessarily exist at greater levels in a particularly grueling and demanding game – in this regard, an imbalance is in place. Still other players, though, regard catharsis and exhilaration with indifference – clashing perspectives exist. This precise subset of the playerbase might gravitate towards robust narratives, investing time primarily in pursuit of poignancy, or emotional and cerebral engagement. Animated in this fashion, enhanced difficulty is to be dreaded, for increased difficulty disrupts overall pacing; protracted time in gameplay is a negative, wholly detrimental to the narrative. These narrative-driven titles, these players invested in narrative above all else, suitably benefit from and delight in an easier, brisker experience, for periods of gameplay emphasis, again, oftentimes serve a fragmenting or derailing function. In another failing – asset? – heightened difficulty modes also place superfluous restrictions upon the player, curtailing freedom, instilling rigidity and limiting player freedoms, experimental opportunities. The existence of these restrictions is universally a negative, especially in the present moment; developers today – most especially developers of the burgeoning open world genre – now detect the values of player freedom, and accordingly champion it. When freedom is displaced by restriction, the overall experience is corrupted. Exaggerated difficulty levels, while having their own distinct advantages, are predisposed indeed towards corruption’s evocation.

Player difficulty preferences are necessarily intertwined with genre, genre familiarity. A veteran of the FPS genre, one who plays the yearly Call of Duty installment or invests considerable time into battle-royales of that series or others, likely has a firm grasp on the controls and mechanics underpinning that particular genre. (This familiarity is won with great haste, too, for FPS controls have become almost standardized in recent memory, various titles employing identical button sequences – the left trigger aims, the right fires, and so on.) With this added intimacy comes the potential craving for added challenge. The divided playerbase must be further considered here. A novice to the FPS genre who embraces heightened difficulty in other genres could absolutely be alienated if plunging into hard modes from the first; familiarity becomes a necessity, a prerequisite, until genre conventions can be mattered, harder difficulty levels attempted. Some fulfill this prerequisite easily – others struggle to achieve it. And just as players collectively are diverse in interests and talents, the industry is diverse too – all players should be encouraged to partake of that diversity, no matter their stubbornness or adherence to and reverence of any one genre. Call of Duty players should be nudged towards profounder experiences, those of greater and lasting resonance, or those boasting more strategic and plodding gameplay systems – strategy games, indie darlings and the like. A narrow and restrictive perception is a negative perception. In this regard, easy difficulty modes absolutely have their place – a vital place, serving a useful introductory function. Normal difficulty modes are typically well-balanced, though subject to some failure, especially in that the developers expect too much of their playerbase, wherein frustration potentially settles in. To utter the same thought: an RPG player totally or exclusively engrossed in that precise genre would be subject to intimidation when faced with a conventional shooter or bombastic action game. In branching out and experimenting with genre, these curious players are acting as curious players ought; they are acting wonderfully. But this curiosity can indeed be punished if the player is not provided opportunity enough to gradually immerse themselves in the experience: slowness is a positive. Crucially, this same principle is observable within the rather diverse strategy genre. The FPS veteran, the FPS lover, might seek to broaden horizons, this impulse for diversity perhaps directing them towards that selfsame strategy genre, whether speaking of RTS games or more plodding turn-based titles. As genre, strategy games are typically very complex, could accordingly overwhelm the unversed player. But these titles often feature robust tutorial systems and highly flexible difficulty settings. These objects’ existence greatly increases accessibility – and thus player enjoyment. These titles, with their added depth, oftentimes feature profound difficulty curves – it is unlikely that a Civilization player, for instance, will play on the lowest difficulty level perpetually; having a grasp of the systems, this player necessarily gravitates towards more complex scenarios, with more involved AI behaviors; the player gradually climbs from the bottom up – or they do not. Some players – myself included – still cling to easiness here in that this easiness preserves the more tranquil attributes typically characterizing these titles, source of their allure. Firaxis – or whatever the developer – respect the player and with their variable difficulty modes they create more inclusive experiences; one need not be a strategic grandmaster to derive enjoyment here.  

Actually altering difficulty levels has manifold different consequences, most common being expanded enemy health values, or the player character’s health diminishment. This approach dominates the FPS genre, almost corrupts it. Playing on the easy difficulty, the foe might drop in a bullet or two. On a harder difficulty level that selfsame opponent might endure four or five bullets before collapsing and expiring, with no logical explanation ever provided as to this added resiliency’s emergence and existence. This approach is adopted principally because it evokes and intensifies tension. But simultaneously this approach inspires frustration; the approach facilitates cheapness, and actually damages the experience. But the playerbases’ characteristic divisiveness again thrives: for some, cheapness only inspires greater connection. This subset’s existence again pushes the developers’ hand – or ought to push it. If these superficially cheap modes of added difficulty are excluded, some subsets of the playerbase are only left wanting – they must be considered. These matters are actually circumvented in many different, clever fashions; heightened difficulty modes do sometimes alter other gameplay parameters besides enemy and player health values, often to spectacular effect. Modern stealth games – or hybrid stealth games – engage in considerable experimentation here. Dishonored is the perfect illustration of such genre hybridity, and perhaps expectantly it features many different difficulty settings. Being action-oriented in some places, it follows health manipulation has its place. And so it does. But being stealth-centric and plodding at other moments, the developers also manipulated enemy AI, tweaking and enhancing enemy perceptiveness. It is a subtle yet immensely consequential alteration, enhancing tension in a greater fashion than that accompanying increased enemy health values. Cleverly, too, this prompts elevated tension to be sure, though this tension does not instantly correlate to frustration. Enhanced perceptiveness’s existence does not place added direct demands upon the player base. Instead, it merely encourages them to adopt a slower and more cautious approach. In this regard, with the Dishonored series and everything it represents specifically, all players could be encouraged to player on higher difficulty levels, for they flesh out and improve the experience. True, some might play for the narrative or seek to role-play as assassin of unmatched vigor and strength, which would lead them to play on reduced difficulties. Casual or no, they must not be dismissed for these preferences. Tension in stealth may be lacking, though the power fantasies evoked on these levels results in a profound and singularly different experience – here is depth, flexibility.

Other titles and genres similarly experiment with difficulty levels, such experimentation observable within some puzzle games or highly demanding puzzle-platformers. Crystal Dynamics’s recent Tomb Raider reboot trilogy is a profound collection indeed, offering considerable enjoyment and engagement, such enjoyment and engagement attributable largely to gameplay diversity in addition to consistent narrative heft. Most crucially, though, as the trilogy progressed the developers provided the player more and more flexibility in difficulty level. Given the series’ title, it follows that tomb raiding as action has a prominent situation within the overall experience. And so it does. These optional regions are oftentimes sprawling, forcing demanding platforming, more involved puzzle-solving sequences, or a combination of both. It is ultimately within the realm of puzzle-solving that the games are most innovative. A focus feature is present in these titles, and when activated it highlights certain distinct, interactive objects within the environment – its usage essentially results in the puzzle’s solution, or at least goes a long way towards its solving, greatly expanding efficiency, thus quickening the pacing. On higher difficulty levels, though, the focus ability serves little practical function, and cannot be overrelied upon, meaning the player must depend on their wits and their wits alone to solve the puzzle sequence. This ability’s exclusion only heightens the tombs’ more cerebral attributes, only increases enjoyment. As was the case with Dishonored, here harder difficulties are encouraged. True, some of these tombs are obtuse indeed, and without the focus ability they might derail and slacken the overall pacing. But these are minor faults, and the experimentations undertaken in Tomb Raider and its two distinct successors are profound and fruitful indeed.  

Other puzzle-solving titles engage in similar experimentation, the justly lauded Super Meat Boy instantly springing to mind. Foundationally, Super Meat Boy is a brutal experience, an experience which sometimes inspires frustration. The gameplay intuitiveness and essentially instantaneous respawn system, though, greatly diminishes potential frustration, simultaneously increasing accessibility. But here, experimentations in difficulty necessarily revolve around Super Meat Boy’s wealth of secondar content. Each individual level might be home to a collectable band-aid, for instance, while entire secondary worlds, reverse worlds, of greatly increased difficulty also have their own presence. All of this content can theoretically be rejected – the player can advance through the requisite worlds, complete the title and then place the controller or keyboard aside. Other players, though, can delight in this side content’s masochistic attributes, and the developers of Super Meat Boy must be praised for this added excitement. In this regard, Super Meat Boy (and a considerable portion of exploration-focused indie games relying upon a 2D presentation) can engage players who thrive on challenge and those desirous of a brisker pace – or at least as brisk as possible; the game pleases both facets of audience. Many games in the platforming genre show ample difficulty even within the base environments’ designs – obstacles exist here within the central narrative. But with secondary content’s insertion and occasional prominence, this difficulty is seized upon and exploited to maximum potential. But not all 2D platformers are constructed around player engagement, expectations of deft movement and agile capabilities. Consider only a title like Limbo or its spiritual successor Inside. Neither of these titles feature manipulatable difficulty levels – only one exists. But any given player will react differently to these titles, their presented difficulty. Some will become bogged down in puzzle crypticness; pacing stalls. Others, more intuited to or familiar with the genre, will likely breezes by these puzzles, even with their obtuseness; pacing quickens. So while developers must design their games with player interests and inclinations in mind, it is essentially impossible to predict how players will respond to any completed title; the developers only have so much power. Variable difficulty modes are but one way of preserving and extending that power, though their inclusion only prompts added complexity, hurdles – balancing issues necessarily become commonplace with flexible difficulty.

RPGs especially grapple with difficulty; many challenges arise as progression systems are present and prioritized. One clever way of managing difficulty levels is by implementing level scaling; if an assaulted enemy is identical or nearly identical in level to the player, relative predictability and consistency emerge. In RPGs without level scaling, it is possible – easy – to become overlevelled, wherein the entire experience suffers. Some players might delight in protracted grinding sessions, desirous of observing those sessions’ repercussions – added player character strength, a generally easier time in combat. Grinding offers these players catharsis, a powerful emotion indeed. But for the average player, grinding ought to be discouraged, for it can particularly destroy the difficulty curve – and by extension destroy the pacing and the narrative broadly. Level scaling matters, as is observable within the entire Borderlands series. Borderlands 3 wonderfully and totally implements level scaling, meaning the player is never excessively overpowered (though some opportunities for overempowerment are present, surely, the player likely having located some very rare and accordingly very devastating weaponry). This consistency preserves player engagement. This cannot be said of Borderlands or Borderlands 2. If the player dedicates themselves towards side quest completion for a protracted span of time – if they complete those quests and obtain the objects and EXP awarded them: if this is done, in time the player vastly outgrows the conventional enemy NPC. Now, they can fall at great haste, the player character greatly overpowering them in might. Worse still, these defeated enemies rewarded essentially no EXP, simply because they are lower level. Divisiveness again emerges: is it better to devastate the opposition with relatively little exertion, or is it better to engage in more determined fighting, to be presented with more determined resistance? A difficult question indeed, one many RPGs face. More linear RPGs expectantly fare better here; if opportunities for grinding are absent, and if side content is also lesser numerically, the developers can greatly determine any given player’s level at any given narrative moment – they have greater control.  

But other RPGs are defined by their more inviting nature, the Pokémon series instantly springing to mind. The narrative is directed, certainly, and while exploration has its place it is never incentivized for a protracted span of time (though this is changing with Gen 9). Together, these suggest hyperfocusedness, which does indeed exist. With this hyperfocusedness comes gameplay trivialization. While certain Pokémon – and they now encompass over one thousand distinct species – belong to a meta of sorts, featuring better BST and accordingly better combat viability, the gamer in single-player can succeed with essentially any team composition: difficulty is lacking, even when attacking gym leaders or the Elite Four and subsequently the region’s Champion, which collectively represent greatest difficulty. Easiness dominates in these titles, and while some may be rebuffed by this easiness, others likely find it endearing. With its mixture of depth and invitingness, Pokémon generally is a brilliant specimen, and serves an excellent bridging function: it is the perfect gateway through towards more involved role-playing games for those unfamiliar with the genre. Narrative may be lacking in these titles, but Pokémon’s interactions with difficulty are profound indeed, profound successes. This precise series is not alone in its intuitiveness – many RPGs like The Elder Scrolls series temper complex game design with easily graspable design. Were this admixture diluted – were complexity removed – the experience would suffer; depth in some capacity is a prerequisite to greatness.   

Other games, other series, also engage in fierce struggle with difficulty. A unique illustration here is Atlus’s Catherine, released in 2011. As object it is singularly narrative driven, cutscenes present in fair abundance and extended in duration. Complimenting this length is considerable poignancy – Catherine touches mature themes, features generally excellent writing; its narrative is a profound achievement. Here, though, cutscenes and narratives do not exist alone, but stand alongside another central pillar: gameplay. When not exploring the Stray Sheep bar or watching cinematics, the player is thrust into these scenarios, all of which revolve around perpetual ascension, as the player character Vincent Brooks climbs upon various stairways forever expanding, climbable blocks falling from the sky always. While succinctly describable, these gameplay systems do in practice reject anything approaching simplicity – they can be brutally difficult. Any given player is thus placed into a perilous situation – is it worthwhile to endure this gameplay brutality, if such endurance brings with it ample narrative and emotional reward? That question would exist and predominate, had Atlus not included variable difficulty levels. In efforts to temper frustration and ensure quicker pacing, the developers implemented an easy mode which exists directly alongside normal and hard (that latter difficulty level, defined by brutality, is expectantly narrow, though still its inclusion is welcome). As is so often the case, this implementation greatly expands Catherine’s reach, its accessibility, its inviting nature. The normal difficulty level is challenging indeed, though the obstacles presented are far from insurmountable – a bit of patience and dedication, a bit of careful scrutiny, are all that is required for victory in the nightmare sequences. This game’s normal difficulty, then, is fairly balanced, though perfection is avoided; easy difficulty levels in Catherine are central to the experience, in that their inclusion prompts flexibility, enables pleasure and emotional and cerebral engagement. Here, Atlus clearly display their respect for the playerbase. Those players who instinctively cling to narrative-driven titles like Catherine, meanwhile, are guided by certain expectations, namely the perception that such cinematic games are incompatible with or nearly incompatible with increased difficulty, for added challenge again sometimes deprives the narrative of greater heft, a great offense if narrative is cherished above all things. Consider only The Walking Dead series, or Telltale Games’s entire oeuvre. Here, lazy QTEs abound, the gameplay rarely engaging – and accordingly never challenging. But the absence of challenge bolsters narrative resonance. Given so many of these players thirst for such resonance, this passive design philosophy has its value.   

Over time, my own perceptions on difficulty have seen dramatic alterations. From the first I have always championed narratives, delighting in a profound experience, whether that profoundness springs from a bleak source or a hopeful one. This fascination with narrative has never dissipated, and I am fortunately situated as to remain receptive to titles of weaker narratives. Gameplay was a barrier to narrative. Now, I regard gameplay and expanded challenge with far greater fondness: challenge is not an essential component for all distinct experiences – some thrive even with or because of their tranquil and unchallenging nature – but challenge’s inclusion is welcome indeed, welcome in the sense that it extends the player base’s reach, drawing in a class of player who engages with the medium simply owing to their persistent fascination with gameplay and challenge; with added difficulty, these payers’ indifference to narrative are easily destroyed – enjoyment abounds. This precise perspective, this fascination with gameplay, is logical indeed, in the sense that above all things gameplay is the defining characteristic of video games, serving as is its greatest distinguishment, triumph. As I have grown more and more immersed in the FPS genre – as the mentioned familiarity settled in – naturally I have craved a more challenging experience; hard modes were appreciated rather than disdained. But limitations inevitably exist; patience has its limits. The Souls collection of titles, renowned for their difficulty, are personally intimidating constructions, this intimidation largely springing from word of mouth. When one speaks of these titles, they do not lead with, “the world-building is a profound achievement. The gameplay is intoxicating as are the presentation and progression systems.” Instead, they lead with, “the experience was brutally difficult.” This statement is always followed up with one asserting how rewarding the experience does in time become, but my scant knowledge of the series is defined by indifference, almost puzzled fear.

But other titles are foundationally altered – bettered – by increased difficulty levels. Having recently completed Amnesia: The Bunker, I can say with absolute certainty that had I played that game on easy difficulty as opposed to hard, the entire experience would be altered, worsened. The perpetually-patrolling monster would only see his menace reduced, while resource conservation would go from a constant concern to an afterthought; playing on the hard mode, then, was richly rewarding. As additional illustration, I have been dabbling in The Legend of Tianding, a 2D title with a heavy emphasis upon combat and platforming – puzzle solving is essentially absent. While I have played many artsy indie games, the 2D platformer genre is rather uncharted territory for me, at least relative to conventional action games – shooters and the like. Despite this unfamiliarity, I elected to tear through the game on the highest difficulty level. While this decision was sometimes punished – especially in the boss fights, those enemies having massive health bars with devastating damage outputs – this decision was also richly rewarding – success in combat was cathartic indeed. It is natural to strive for these cathartic sensations, for they are intoxicating indeed. But many ways regard intoxication as manifest here with ample and understandable weariness, their interests lying elsewhere. This player base might, for instance, grow satisfiably drunk upon compelling narratives, indifferent to challenge. Whichever stance a player algins with – and my own evolution indicates all players can switch allegiance or can embrace both stances, suggests also interests are constantly shifting – developers must absolutely consider these stances when they develop their titles. This is an obvious statement, of course – flexibility and player empowerment matter both; no developers would question that. It is instead to suggest that all players have their own distinct identities and preferences, and difficulty settings play a distinct role in those preferences’ formation. Lower difficulty settings are more accessible, can please the masses. Elevated difficulty levels have reduced reach and appeal, though their primary audience often derives incalculable joy from such challenge. Both playerbases must exist in harmony, and developers collectively are endowed with the powers to sustain harmony.