Lies of P, the Dark Souls-flavored RPG starring Pinocchio, will get a big expansion later this year in the form of Overture. To complement the new content, the game will receive a free update at around the same time, introducing a Boss Rush mode, a “Battle Memories” mode that will let us tweak the difficulty settings of the game’s boss battles, and—uncontroversially—two new difficulty modes.
When the free update drops in summer, Lies of P will get not one but two new easier difficulty modes, named ‘Butterfly’s Guidance’ and ‘Awakened Puppet’. This flies against conventional Soulslike logic, though for exactly what reason depends on who you ask. For Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki himself, overcoming insurmountable odds is “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”.
This debate crops up at least biannually, and is usually fought brutally. It’s possible to have complex views on the easy mode question, though my views are uncomplex: Lies of P succeeds because it’s tense, and if the tension is siphoned out of it, so is a core aspect of its appeal. Am I glad that people who want an easy mode will get one? No. I don’t think all things should be for all people: that’s dumb. If that was a universally obeyed truth, we wouldn’t have niche modern classics like Baldur’s Gate 3, Clair Obscur, or Labyrinth of the Demon King.
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But also Neowiz made the game and they can do what they want, I guess.
In a roundtable discussion attended by VGC, game director Jiwon Choi explained that the team wanted “to make sure a wider audience of players could play the game”. Player feedback naturally had a hand in it too: “We have a lot of feedback from customers, and from our developers. So by making development adjustments and introducing these difficulty options, we can offer the experience to different types of players. This broadens the base.”
The new difficulty modes will apply to both the base game and the expansion campaign, which is apparently set in a frosty zoo. After Overture, the Neowiz team will focus its entire attention on a sequel to Lies of P.
It’s a little rude of Lies of P to kickstart the difficulty debate again so close to Elden Ring: Nightreign, which will inevitably bring the easy mode question kicking and screaming back into “the discourse”. I suggest taking a side and maintaining a smug sense of superiority over your ideological adversaries: it may seem slightly undignified to anyone watching from the sidelines, but it sure feels good.