For some video game stories, the only option is to ‘git gud’

destructoid.com:

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m pretty bad at video games. The hardest difficulty I’ll usually land on is normal, and even then I can have some pretty embarrassing gameplay moments. Games have come a really long way in terms of their accessibility, and offering better options for less skilled players like me, but every time a title comes out that relies on its difficulty as one of its main features, we have a whole new round of Discourse about whether the game needs easier options to play on.

The way Elden Ring has taken over the news cycle the past few months is a great example of this — it’s a notoriously tough game, and in response, we saw a whole slew of articles, posts, and tweets about how there need to be easier skill level options. Mods even started popping up for players to download that make the game more palatable for players who prefer an easy mode, like increasing damage output, decreasing damage taken, increasing healing, etc.

The inclusion of easier difficulty settings often, but not always, overlaps with accessibility. It’s important to include accommodations so that differently abled players can play and enjoy games, too, which often includes other settings outside the typical easy mode features like damage reduction. Special sound settings can allow visually impaired or even fully blind players to play through a game without any outside assistance, for example, which is only one of the ways that games have recently made tremendous strides to become more accessible to all kinds of players.

At the same time, though, there are some games out there that include difficult gameplay as part of their artistic vision. Classic examples include all of the Soulsborne games, Cuphead, Super Meat Boy, Nioh,