Hidetaka Miyazaki explains how Elden Ring’s “joy” comes from crushing difficulty

“According to Hidetaka Miyazaki, the President of FromSoftware and director of Elden Ring, reducing the difficulty of the game would compromise its intended design.”

Despite being a topic of gaming discussions for the past two years, Elden Ring stands out for its distinctive approach towards difficulty. In contrast to other roleplaying games like Baldur’s Gate 3, it is known for its relentless and ruthless gameplay.

During an interview with The Guardian, Miyazaki discussed the significance of Elden Ring’s difficulty and how it contributes to the game’s overall success.

Miyazaki explained that while it would have been possible to make the game more accessible by lowering the difficulty, that was not the approach they wanted to take in order to reach a wider audience.

If we had chosen to adopt that approach, I believe the game would not have achieved the same success. The feeling of accomplishment players get from surpassing these challenges is a crucial aspect of the overall experience. Lowering the difficulty would eliminate this sense of joy, which, in my opinion, would ultimately ruin the game.

The topic of discussion regarding the game’s level of difficulty has gained significant attention since the release of the Elden Ring DLC Shadow Of The Erdtree on June 20.

The DLC is only available once players have successfully reached a specific point in the base game, a difficult task that they must overcome.

Even with the challenging gameplay of Elden Ring, its popularity within the gaming community remains unchanged. In fact, the recent release of Shadow Of The Erdtree has attracted the attention of popular streamers such as Kai Cenat and Jynxzi, who are willing to face countless deaths and restarts in their pursuit to conquer the game.

Kai Cenat’s success in Elden Ring was so impressive that the developers themselves took notice and commended him for it. As a token of their appreciation, they sent him a life-sized statue of Malenia after he devoted over 24 hours to trying to defeat her during his livestream of the game.

On the contrary, Jynxzi abandoned his planned week-long stream of the game because of its challenging nature.