One particularly skillful streamer has already defeated the remake of Demon's Souls without taking a single hit. The remake has been out for less than a month; it came out as a launch title for the PlayStation 5. Fans have already wholeheartedly embraced the new take on From Software's classic brutal RPG. Developer Bluepoint has remained very faithful to the initial version of the title, with one curious exception in the form of a mysterious hidden door that was only recently opened by fans.
The original Demon's Souls was the first in From Software's proud legacy of punishingly difficult RPGs. It was succeeded by the more prominent Dark Souls franchise, which come much more readily to mind when one thinks of overwhelming video game difficulty. From Software's Souls games are so infamous in their challenge that they've birthed an entire subgenre of similar games called Souls-likes, which are all based on the same RPG progression mechanics and, more importantly, the same brutal difficulty curve. As fundamental as difficulty is to the Souls games, Bluepoint did consider adding an easy mode to the remake. The team decided against it to preserve From Software's legacy.
The Souls Games' punishing difficulty makes them fertile grounds for video game streamers eager to prove themselves. Demon's Souls is just as difficult as its successors, if not more so, and even though the remake's still only weeks old, it's still being tackled with enthusiasm. Twitch streamer The Happy Hob (via Game Rant) has already achieved what most players would find impossible, and beaten the entire remake without taking a single hit. He did this over the course of a roughly six hour stream and even celebrated with his dog at the end. Hob is an old hand at no-hit streams, and has even completed what he calls a "golden run," defeating Demon's Souls, all three Dark Souls games, and Bloodborne all in one go without taking any damage.
The difficulty of the Souls games has been a central issue in the discussion of accessibility in video games. Many fans believe that the developers should provide options to make the games easier so that more fans can enjoy them without being turned away by the steep difficulty curve. It would also make the games more approachable to people with disabilities that prevent them from mustering the reflexes and motor skills necessary to navigate the games as they are. Others contend that lowering the difficulty of notoriously hard games like the Soulsborne titles would cheapen them and reduce the accomplishment of tackling them. Still, this hasn't prevented famously hard co-op cooking game Overcooked from introducing a slew of accessibility features in its recent next-gen remaster.
Regardless of where one stands on the issue of accessibility and difficulty, it can't be denied that The Happy Hob is a brilliantly skilled player. Mastering the game to such an intense level and then performing such a feat so soon after the release of the remaster is a huge accomplishment, and one that surely took a lot of practice. One only hopes that in the future, there'll be a way for more fans to enjoy the Souls games on the same deep level as Hob, without needing his incredible skill level. In the meantime, there are still plenty of gamers out there who are surely eager to test their mettle against the remake of Demon's Souls.
Source: The Happy Hob (via Game Rant)
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