According to an interview with Sloclap Executive Producer Pierre Tarno, Sifu won’t be launching with difficulty options.
Speaking with MP1ST, Tarno spoke about how difficulty is handled in the game. According to Tarno, you can beat the entire game without aging or dying at all. The producer also wants players to be challenged in the game, and to give them opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
“The ability to rise up from death will help new players by allowing them to fail and try again multiple times when they face difficulty,” Tarno says. “But the price of mistakes will rapidly increase, and in order to fully complete the game they will have to master the combat system.”
games are for everyone
The interview also confirmed that Sifu would not have difficulty options when the game launches next year. But Tarno did say it’s something they might implement later on. Hearing this is quite disappointing. While it doesn’t confirm it, a lack of difficulty options implies no accessibility options. Games that have a challenge are incredible.
There’s a reason Dark Souls has inspired a whole new genre of games. Not every game can cater to every player obviously. But not providing options that make the challenge relative to the player’s abilities is unfair. A challenging game for one person is an impossible task for another.
It’s not impossible to make games more accessible for everyone. Rudeism managed to beat the entirety of Dark Souls 3 using one button and morse code. Of course, that’s more to do with accessibility in hardware. But it still proves the point that with more options, more people can play games. Players often talk about not sacrificing the developers vision, but if the vision is simply ‘challenging’, then that doesn’t have to exclude a whole group of players. Hopefully Sloclap will decide to implement difficulty options at minimum post launch.
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Featured Image Credit: Sloclap