The worst part about that Guerilla/Elden Ring 'drama' is that Elden Ring genuinely has UX, accessibility, and quest design problems... it's just that it's the "GOAT!!!!" right now so even industry professionals don't dare criticise those facets of the game.
It must really suck to spend months of your life developing accessibility features and/or an intuitive UI for your game only for people to shit on all that work anyway. All because the latest Fromsoft "GIT GUD!!!!!!" title, predictably, fails to feature any of them - and is allowed to not do so because of "artistic intent."
I was talking with my disabled partner about this
and though there are definitely some like UI scaling issues, there are also so many more ways to engage with the world that don’t make it the same kind of struggle that previous FromSoft titles have been
like everything is still challenging obviously but there has never been more complete freedom of approach. you can get the horse and just travel and get runes without killing… almost anything.
you can uncover huge swaths of map by sneaking and running
you can get abilities that entirely change how you play just by fucking around and exploring
you can get through the whole first major plot castle with a magic / ice ability by timing your stomps and sneaking (I can’t speak to the rest but I’m hypothetically nearly to the boss in this one)
you can get spirits that do a bunch of fighting for you, and summon coop AIs to help whittle down most of a boss while you shield a lot and get a couple ranged hits in
there are so many ways to play it that actually let you slow down and take it at your own pace, even moment to moment, and it was actually truly designed for that
that doesn’t mean there aren’t accessibility improvements to be made
but it seems like a false equivalency to act like praise for Elden Ring is shitting on accessible design in other games
and frankly, though I would like to see more accessibility and options in games, depending on the structure and intent…
we don’t… we don’t really think every game has to be a bastion of accessibility
like improvements, absolutely, and more consideration, always
but like nobody’s shitting on Olli Olli World for thrashing my partner’s finger joints (they enjoy the game and aren’t going to stop but they also have to very carefully limit the time they spend playing it)
and though maybe it would be fun to have a slower mode in that for accessibility, it’s a game about flicking sticks in directions to be a fast and fancy skateboarder
again I’m by no means arguing against accessibility
I’m just… kind of confused about the chunk of the discourse I’ve seen, and so is my disabled partner
maybe we’re missing something
I actually dig all the celebrity stars that they announced so far, even though I would prefer professional voice actors. But I did think he did a good job in Onward even though his voice was still recognizable compared to Tom Holland's but still!
