Alex Hutchinson, lead designer forAssassin’s Creed III,recently told Edgethat easy mode can often “ruin” games. To be clear, he isn’t saying that easy mode “always” ruins games, he simply states that if it is not done correctly, it can take away from the spirit of the game, and change it into something else entirely — often times, an inferior product.
For instance, he gives the example, “if you have a cover shooter and you switch it to easy and don’t have to use cover, you kind of broke your game.” TheAssassin’s Creedseries already circumvents this issue by historically offering a standard difficulty level, but allowing players to nab optional objectives for 100% completion, like “don’t take damage” or “stay undetected the entire level.”
As someone who has a penchant for difficult games, I’m honestly torn on this one, as I think it should be on a case by case basis. You guysalready had a very well spoken debate on thisin a recentDark Soulspost, and I think both sides of the argument have their merits.
I’ve always said that major action games should include aDevil May Cry-esque“easy automatic” modeso that non-fans can get acclimated to the mechanics, and eventually work their way up to higher levels of difficulty. Specifically, I think that technical games should have easy modes.
But for exploration-based games likeDemon’sandDark Souls, I believe that the ability to select an easier difficulty would in fact ruin the experience. At the end of the day, both of those games are not particularly hard.
Playing them on a lower difficulty would cheapen the experience, as theSoulsseries ismadeon forcing you to always be on your toes, expecting danger at every turn. Allowing players to instantly take that aspect out with an easy mode option would take away the sense of accomplishment you get from conquering a tricky portion of the game for the first time: and you’re able to never get that back.
To some degree, I think that applies forAssassin’s Creed, but I never thought the series was honestly all that hard anyway.
What do you think? “Yay” or “nay” for easy modes, as a general rule?
Easy mode often ruins games[Edge]
