[STEAM] Hidetaka Miyazaki Says Making Elden Ring Easier Would 'Break the Game' as Shadow of the Erdtree Launches

[Steam 0]

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expansion

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will seemingly feature developer FromSoftware's toughest ever bosses, as toning down the difficulty would "break the game itself" according to game director Hidetaka Miyazaki.

FromSoftware games are known for being challenging but the conversation around video game difficulty reached new heights thanks to

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. Amid some calls for the developer to make things easier or add different difficulty modes, however, Miyazaki has clarified why FromSoftware instead looks to continuously push players.

"If we really wanted the whole world to play the game, we could just crank the difficulty down more and more, but that wasn’t the right approach," Miyazaki told

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.

"Had we taken that approach, I don’t think the game would have done what it did, because the sense of achievement that players gain from overcoming these hurdles is such a fundamental part of the experience. Turning down difficulty would strip the game of that joy, which, in my eyes, would break the game itself."

Shadow of the Erdree, which arrives today, June 21, 2024, features bosses with which

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, Miyazaki said ahead of its release. In fact, getting into the expansion even poses a challenge as

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.

Those eager to explore every inch of the expansion can check out

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, which covers

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, its various quest lines, and how to defeat those pesky new bosses.

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, IGN said: "Like the base game did before it, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree raises the bar for single player expansions," we said. "It takes everything that made the base game such a landmark RPG, condenses it into a relatively compact 20-25 hour campaign, and provides fantastic new challenges for heavily invested fans to chew on."

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

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