I had forgotten how ridiculously unpleasant some of the runbacks (sections of gameplay leading up to a boss that you cannot skip in order to retry the boss) to fight bosses are. Thankfully I only had to do each of them a few times because I’m experienced enough (and finished the original back in the day) that they aren’t super challenging once I’ve seen their moveset once or twice, but christ imagine a player struggling against King Allant or whatever and they have to do that runback (where you can easily die if you aren’t taking your time) 10+ times.
I think there are some justifications for dangerous/tedious/long runbacks to try bosses, but once you push it a certain amount it becomes inexcusable and more about the developers being hostile toward the player.
I’m reminded of people who died against the first boss in the opening chapter of Nier Automata (a chapter in which you cannot save) and had to restart the entire game, including all the tutorial stuff, in order to try it again.
What do people here think about harsh/tedious runbacks?
This is a really good question and one I’ve pondered a lot lately while thinking about difficulty in games. I think a lot of people misattribute runbacks as a core identity of Fromsoft games and the inherent difficulty, so feel compelled to defend them, but I’m not sure this is the case. All you really need to do is look at the series progression and see how much they were starting to back off it already in Dark Souls III and even more in Elden Ring.
So let’s ask two big questions:
What is the assumed purpose of a runback?
Personally how do I feel about them - on a difficulty scale do I find them more tedious or more compelling?
Purpose
If anyone has any actual sources about gamedevs discussing this point I’d be interested in reading about it, but I think most of us assume that the primary purpose is punishment or consequence for failure. Without any at all the player would simply pop back to life where they fell and the battle would continue/start anew. This isn’t very realistic and I think most people being honest with themselves wouldn’t find this very satisfying with no consequence at all so the question now becomes how far back to move the respawn?
Ideally, this is at least somewhat commensurate with the difficulty of the fight. Again, look how they learned their lesson with Malenia in Elden Ring. They knew.
Another theory I see given is that it’s to test the player; to show they can complete the game segment up to that point as a kind of “cost” to challenge the boss again. I’m not sure I entirely agree with that, but I do think by placing a few small challenges in the way it can exact a toll on the player’s resources. A used consumable or flask or maybe a small bite out of their HP.
One of the things I don’t see discussed much is breaking the flow state. I think this works both for and against the player. It’s a punishment working against in that you’re often just starting to get into the rhythm of the fight when you take a fatal blow and have to start the run back. On the other hand, this also provides the player a breather, a chance to reset and evaluate their performance. “I kept spamming dodge roll. It’s a delayed swing so I need to actually wait until I see their weapon move!”
How do I feel?
Even with all that in mind, it’s pretty subjective and varies on a case by case basis. I do come down more on the side of favoring runbacks, but only when they’re properly balanced. A moderate distance with only an encounter or two in the way to sufficiently test the player and strain their resources. Break the rhythm and provide a breather. On a very unrelated game, I have fond memories of the elevator ride up to your spaceship from Outer Wilds. It was always disappointing to have a run cut short, especially when you found a new thread to pull, but it was always a moment of reprieve to mull things over in my mind and boil down a plan of approach for the next go.
And of course in cases like Malenia where the fight pretty much IS the entire challenge itself, for god’s sake just lay off the player
From a design point of view, I think this is the main intention. In various games I’ve played with runbacks, the goal is to give the player some time to breathe between doing that boss challenge, and practice the skills that should be necessary to fight the boss.
I haven’t really played any soulslike game to really make this claim, but it would appear to me that the bosses tend to be drastically different in gameplay than the various enemies you face. The player doesn’t gain any particular skill required to fight the boss in that runback, and this probably is a misalignment in how runbacks tend to work. To incentivize the player instead, the recovery of dropped souls is a whole thing, which can feel like insult on top of injury to many players.
I agree that this entire mechanic is pretty subjective, and it centers around how the player is feeling about an encounter, and their gameplay. It gets into how that death feels too, if the player feels like the boss was “unfair“ it can hurt even more. It’s absolutely a multifaceted problem and I could understand why the developers/designers might want to move away from it, because a lot of the gameplay feels more trial and error than it is pure skill. If you expect the player to re-play a particular section, this is probably not an ideal mechanic to have in. I think it’s best applied in places where you’re trying to teach the player a particular mechanic.
