Death Stranding
A new war in the realm of video game gatekeeping has broken out in the wake of Hideo Kojima announcing that his upcoming game, Death Stranding, will have a Very Easy Mode. Kojima says that he wanted to include something like that so that people who were attracted by the star-studded cast, which includes Norman Reedus, Mads Mikkelsen and Lea Seydoux among others could be experienced by fans as if it were something more akin to a movie.
Naturally, this has sparked outrage among a certain subsection of video game fans who believe the existence of “cake difficulty” modes like this to make video games less game-like and more cinematic disparages in the medium in some way. Many are cutely calling it “Game Journalist Mode” based on a meme that game journalists are bad at video games after a select handful of videos showing subpar gameplay from journalists for certain games have surfaced in the past, the Polygon DOOM one perhaps the most notable. I won’t relitigate that whole nonsense but it’s akin to picking a few random YouTubers or Twitch streamers being bad an X game they might not be familiar with and saying that applies to everyone in that scene.
Anyway, the ultimate point is that this really should not even be a conversation. Not only is this concept not new for most games, nearly every major game you play these days has an “I’m just here for the story” difficulty setting, but it’s not even new for Kojima himself. Almost all Metal Gear games have had easy modes in some capacity, and a few have even allowed for outright cheat codes granting the player an enormous amount of power. Remember the chicken hat that effectively lets you be invisible?
Furthermore, we don’t really even know what type of game Death Stranding is supposed to be at this point with barely any gameplay footage shown. But from what we do know, it’s not supposed to be Dark Souls or Bloodborne or Nioh where the core “point” of the game is its difficulty, asking the players to bang their heads against walls until they’re able to plow through.
Death Stranding
I think it’s a separate question about whether games where difficulty is one of the main draws should have easy modes, and I’m still not convinced of one side or another there (I usually lean toward they shouldn’t). But with Death Stranding? Kojima is well within his rights as the game’s creator to put in an ultra-easy mode if he wants. These are the same people arguing that creators should be allowed to not have easy modes in games like Dark Souls, and I’m not sure I see the difference.
I personally don’t like playing on easy mode as for me, it kind of taints the experience. I did this for Bioshock 1 and ever since I’ve regretted it and my first playthrough is always on normal, at the very least. And yet I understand why some people would want that option. Easy modes can be an accessibility issue, if a player is not physically able to complete some of the tougher challenges in the game. It can be a time issue, if a player wants to see the story through but doesn’t want to bother failing sections on repeat. Or it can be almost a marketing issue, as Kojima is describing here as he tries to attract movie fans with his A-list cast. I have some doubts that most casual observers will be able to follow the story of Death Stranding based on what we’ve seen, but I understand the concept, at least.
This really should not be an issue. If you don’t want to play Death Stranding on Very Easy Mode, you don’t have to. I’m certainly not going to, despite being a games journalist, but I don’t begrudge anyone who wants to choose that mode for whatever reason. And you shouldn’t either, as this entire conversation is pretty pointless.
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