Can high difficulty and atmosphere fit together?

[AlternatePFG]

The "Souls" series pretty much tries to accomplish this.

This, although I think Demon's Souls did it better than Dark Souls.

Really? How come?

I think Dark Souls is basically all the same, and everything they changed only makes it better. Like not having the central hub, and just having all areas interconnected. I think that's awesome for immersion. I also quite like the new healing system. No more stupid grass!

I agree the gameplay is a massive step-up from the hub-based gameplay of Demon's Souls, especially the healing system as you mentioned but I feel Dark Souls lacks more in atmosphere than Demon's Souls, I get a true sense of loss and hopelessness from Demon's Souls

This is probably my nostalgia speaking though, haha.

No I agree, Demon's Souls has an amazing, absolutely crushing atmosphere. Especially in the areas like the Tower of Latria.

Dark Souls still has some great atmosphere, but I felt like Demon's Souls atmosphere was much better.

 

[Joccaren]

Actually, I find it the opposite. I can LARP Akatosh reversing time to my previous save, which I regard as praying to Akatosh. However, when in a very difficult fight, my mind is on how to win. I focus more on the world and my enemy than in a fight I know I am going to win, as I have to. In a fight I know I am going to win, it is an effort to try and concentrate on the world and feel like I'm a part of it. In a fight that challenges me, there's no time. I am already thinking about the enemies, and observing the environment, to figure out the most effective way to defeat the enemy. When doing this, RP comes naturally.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

I found BLACK to be pretty good on this front... It was challenging, yet immersive, and you felt the desperation and anxiety as you went through the levels!

 

[RuralGamer]

This reminds me of an article years ago in a magazine where the guy was talking about how difficulty/death is a hindrance to experience, but noted how you can't really get round that problem without losing challenge and a sense of fun. Ultimately games are limited on how much they can immerse you.

If you want atmosphere on higher difficulties, then don't save and disable autosave (if you can); only save when you're going away to do something else and then delete the save when you come back; that way you'll definitely feel immersed!

 

[Fluffythepoo]

Youre confusing romance with reality, you can have at most one of the two

 

[Vegosiux]

I'd say the two are unrelated. They can fit together, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. I don't understand the reasoning of both people who say that you can't have one without the other and people who say it's not possible to have both.

Then again, I'm not one to measure difficulty by how easy you are to kill. And if higher difficulty levels limit the variety too much (as in, if there's just one munchkin build/strat that can get you through), then they're being done wrong. The moment difficulty lies in the fact that you have to metagame to get through, someone messed up. Badly.

So I often end up playing in a less-than-optimal way on not-the-highest-level and arguably still have a more challenging game that the munchkins who play "HARD GAMES for MEN!" do. But that's fun, because I did it my way.

If you wanna go and knock a brick wall down with your face just to prove a point, fine, just don't expect people to take you seriously if you go on about how anyone doing it differently is a noob.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHavingFunGuys and all.

 

[Woodsey]

Immersion can be fixed if its broken, and if a game's doing a good job of it (which Skyrim does) then the break that a loading screen causes is minimal.

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

Fallout 3 on the highest difficulty?

 

[lRookiel]

Damn I love getting lost in the world of skyrim, and when I die I dont get that feeling broken because I don't think about how hard that particular enemy was, or what a flaw that is on the game, I think "I'll try a different approach/weapon/power and see how I do" and continue to think about how awesome the mountains in the distance look etc etc etc.

Maybe your problem OP is that you die too much XD .lower the difficulty is my suggestion, or play a different type of game.

In games like Magicka (coop or versus), Dwarfs?! , Terraria and Minecraft, dying is part of the game and actually you can go as far to say dying is made to be fun in those games, which it is. try beating an hour long game on Dwarfs?! on tedi hardcore and you will know what to think of failure after a million tries.

 

[Fishyash]

This popped up to my mind recently when I was playing Skyrim. I was in a very, very long, big and hard dungeon where and army of Falmer and Frostbite spiders were chewing on my ass. I probably died like 15 times before finally stepping out. Then it came to me.

Isn't a game like Skyrim (or RPG's in general?) all about immersing you in the game world so you can lose yourself in the adventure and explore the landscape randomly for hours on end? Isn't a video game tradition like the death --->loading screen --->respawn routine the ultimate reminder that you are still just playing a game? Doesn't the game contradict itself this way? When you're thinking "Goddammit that one mage is just unfair game design" instead of what's around the next corner, aren't you taken out of the experience? Like when you're watching a 3D movie and there's a scene that exists purely for the sake of showing it off.

The same thing I noticed about Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a game that's all about atmosphere and immersion. When I was in the flooded cellar I died a few times, and just had to memorize what to do at what time. Then I wasn't thinking "OOOOH SHITSHITSHIT I NEED TA GIT OUTTA HERE", but "now hop on to these crates, yawn-a-rama", and felt like I was missing the whole point of the game.

Thoughts on this, please.

And before you ask: No, I haven't played either of the "Souls" games.

Hmm...

http://www.twitch.tv/luzarius

Is an example of someone who thinks the same. How he goes around it is he plays a "no death" ruleset. Whenever he dies, he starts the game over from the beginning. The reason he does it is he finds it too immersion breaking to continue playing when his character dies. If his character dies, it should stay dead, rather than reloading at the latest recent area.

...yeah it's kinda weird, but it's the only way he enjoys playing the games.

My opinion? The game should punish you in at least SOME way. Dying must set you back, and you don't always need a system to "replace" death as punishment because it is rather simple. Although I do commend games that do that, but death is easy, simple and makes the most sense.

 

[Mr.Tophat]

I

The "Souls" series pretty much tries to accomplish this.

This, although I think Demon's Souls did it better than Dark Souls.

Really? How come?

I think Dark Souls is basically all the same, and everything they changed only makes it better. Like not having the central hub, and just having all areas interconnected. I think that's awesome for immersion. I also quite like the new healing system. No more stupid grass!

I agree the gameplay is a massive step-up from the hub-based gameplay of Demon's Souls, especially the healing system as you mentioned but I feel Dark Souls lacks more in atmosphere than Demon's Souls, I get a true sense of loss and hopelessness from Demon's Souls

This is probably my nostalgia speaking though, haha.

No I agree, Demon's Souls has an amazing, absolutely crushing atmosphere. Especially in the areas like the Tower of Latria.

Dark Souls still has some great atmosphere, but I felt like Demon's Souls atmosphere was much better.

The Tower of Latria was the only thing in a game that gave me a straight up nightmare. Goddamn that tower and all its godamned chime sounds.

Granted, while it didn't impact me quite as much, I REALLY like the painted world of Ariamis in Dark Souls, atmosphere wise.

 

[Nalbis]

I do agree that a game that is trying to immerse you in its world but is difficult enough that you are going to face a few deaths does break itself. Saying that though I love a challenge in a game and I don't play every game to be immersed.

Amnesia I only died once and it wasn't in the water passageway either! But if anything the scare that my death gave me immersed me more because I was actually more scared after it happened. If I died in for example, Mass Effect - that would break the immersion for me, which is why I only play the ME and DA series on casual/normal, not because I don't like a challenge, its just that I know a death will ruin the experience.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

That was the whole point of Demon's Souls (and now Dark Souls, of course). Most people spent so much time hyping up the difficulty that they never stopped to think about why it's there and how it fits in to the overall experience. The fact that repeated deaths are explained within the context of the game is also pretty important for this to work (El Shadai did that part as well).

I think it also worked very well for God Hand, although in a very different way.

 

[Vivi22]

Ive never really got this immersion lark people are talking about so having to reload a save reminds you that you are playing a game? so your saying that until that point you had forgotten?

I'm so glad that there is someone else out there that thinks this way. I've thought for the last few years that immersion in the sense of the player forgetting they're playing a game and getting lost in the experience doesn't really exist. What people usually mean when referring to a game as immersive is really more along the lines of that game being engaging. They're engrossed in the experience and every facet of it because it's compelling in some (or multiple) way. Whether it's gameplay which is well balanced and challenging, or a world filled with places, people and backstory to explore.

In that sense, I don't think death really takes away from engagement in games, so much as handling death poorly can frustrate the player more than help them. For example, in a game like Uncharted, if every fight was so hard that making one mistake could lead to death and you died 15 times before getting past a segment of the game, this takes away from an experience which is supposed to be punctuated by fast paced and fairly frantic action sequences and set pieces.

Contrast that with something like Demon's Souls and Dark Souls where the goal isn't to have a fast paced game, but a more methodical experience based around building your character and mastering the combat. In that case, the higher difficulty and frequent deaths actually serve the game as it creates a great deal of tension, even in fights with some fairly low level enemies, but also adds to the feeling of accomplishment as you master skills and progress. In the case of those games, the atmosphere is actually better served by the difficulty level.

It's simply a question of what the goal is for the experience, and whether or not a high difficulty really serves that purpose, or simply gets in the way.

 

[Loonyyy]

Difficulty and atmosphere don't go together most of the time. Difficulty usually comes from killing the player, but it's possible to avoid this by avoiding killing the player. If you can abstain from killing the player for all but the stupidest or most obvious attempt at testing the game, then you can create atmosphere with difficulty. The trick is to make the game harder without killing them or frustrating them. So, non-fatal problems, like, a monster you know the location of, but have to get past, that you can easily escape if you give up your attempt, but not easily get past. But it's very difficult to get the balance between difficult, frustrating, and immersion breaking death, right.

 

[FallenTraveler]

well, ever play silent hill? It may not be considered super hard, but those survival horror games can be quite difficult at times... and they have GREAT atmosphere

 

[AlternatePFG]

Granted, while it didn't impact me quite as much, I REALLY like the painted world of Ariamis in Dark Souls, atmosphere wise.

Yeah, the Painted World was pretty great, gameplay and atmosphere wise. It seems really desolate and lonely. Those damn wheel skeletons though, they were annoying as hell in that level.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Generally it's a problem, yeah. You need some element of danger otherwise the spooky stuff gets boring. You want to feel as if you could get killed, without actually doing so, which is tricky.

I don't know if it's the reloading that's the problem, though, or just the frustration at not progressing anymore in general, same as if there's an annoying puzzle or you have to go back and get something you forgot.