Death to Death Runs

With the release of Hollow Knight: Silksong, the always tiresome debate over difficulty in games has risen again to fuel our never-ending need for discourse. Obviously, that has compelled me to join the fray on the side that death runs are lame and suck and they should die.

Do I Need to Git Gud?

I know the response, just git gud, right?

Before I address my ability to git gud, let’s define a death run. Simply, you respawn after you die, and it's the path you have to take to get back to where you died. Sometimes it’s close to where you failed, other times it is not. It’s the other times I have a problem with.

As fun as it may be to throw a classic “git gud” in someone’s face, it’s not really a criticism that works when it comes to death runs. The problem isn't a lack of skill, it's the fact that doing the same piece of content over and over is tedious and boring.

Some may argue that death runs are part of the complete package of something like getting back to a boss. That the obstacles put in your way, the challenges like the platforming or what have you, are all part of the experience.

Think of them like a little “level” of the game where you must reach the end to fight the boss -- classic game design.

Maybe the first time going through the obstacle course that is a death run is really cool and fun, so the whole package does make sense. It's something you really enjoy. Will you enjoy it 5 times from now? 10? In reality, quite a bit more than that?

If doing the same thing over and over is fun for you, more power to you. For a lot of people, myself included, it’s tedium at best.

Especially when the point of so many games that employ death runs, like soulslikes, is overcoming a challenge and besting something difficult – the satisfaction of finally winning.

So, why in the hell would I want to do the same piece of content over and over again that I have already bested?

Origins of Death Runs

Naturally, I found myself asking just what is the point of the death runs? Where did they come from and why have they stuck around?

Old-school games are well-known for their difficulty, and they were notorious for having you play the same level or part of a level over and over again. There’s a few reasons for that. 

Some reasons were physical in that cartridges didn't have a ton of memory, so some games had to be smaller, meaning making them more difficult lengthened their playtime. The influence of arcade games can't be overlooked either, where game design was incentivized to up the difficulty so players would fail and be forced to shell out more quarters to keep going.

Then there are the technical limitations like a lack of saving or checkpoints, so each level had to be self-contained and completed in one successful run.

There are certainly more reasons why games were hard and repetitive, but the majority were not made that way with the idea of making the game more fun or enjoyable. Technical limitations and things like incentives to eat up more quarters were more at the forefront than anything else.

At best, old-school games and gamers were just used to the idea that trial and error, throwing yourself at something over and over, was just how you played games. Things like tutorials, saves, and other conveniences we take for granted now just weren’t around.

Now that we no longer have those limitations, I don’t quite see the allure of making players do the same thing over and over again.

Are Death Runs Good Game Design? 

Even if we accept the idea that doing a death run on the way to a boss over and over is a good one, the design goals seem to be in conflict with one another. 

We want players to fight the boss, right? So, do we make the death run back just as challenging as the normal part of the game? If we don't, doesn't that conflict with the general design elsewhere in the game? If we do, is it maybe unfair or too challenging knowing there's a boss fight waiting at the end?

Also, does it make sense to make players redo content over and over as a sort of "gate" before a boss? Why do we want to make it a chore to get back to the most exciting parts of our game?

Some games seem to ask those questions above during level design, while other's don't consider the run back or where you respawn much at all. That means players are sometimes running through already-played, difficult sections to get back to where they died. Early Souls games are notorious for that in particular. 

So what do the vast majority of players do with games like that? Run and dodge like hell to avoid any and all enemies on the way back to the boss, praying they don’t get swiped along the way. Thinking of it another way, they aren’t engaging with the designed elements of the game at all, and they’re really only hoping to not be penalized as they run back – no real pay off, just a downside.  

Presenting those two ideas -- something easier and therefore less engaging, and something players don’t engage with at all -- can feel disingenuous, but there’s really no middle ground with it. 

Well, I suppose there’s the third option that makes you do the insane obstacle course or enemy gauntlet prior to a boss every time, which, well, there you really have no option but to git gud I guess. 

I think a good majority fall into those first two categories, though. So it really begs the question, why do we have them at all then?

Other than to pad some time, what is the reason? I mean, even the kings of this sort of game FromSoftware realized death runs kind of suck when they added the Stakes of Marika in Elden Ring. 

At best, death runs are a flawed, incomplete experience of game design that get repetitive. At worst, they are repetitive obstacles in your way that players feel aren't worth engaging with. 

Death Runs and Immersion 

A final thing I want to address is a common retort I see online that something like a death run helps immersion or contextualize where you are in a game. I can’t seriously entertain that idea. 

Why is one arbitrary point of respawn somehow more immersive than somewhere else? Why is having to run through a part of a game again, likely many times, more immersive?

The answer is it just isn’t. It’s an arbitrary position tied to some sort of save or checkpoint, that’s all. 

There is no context gained by seeing the part of a level that leads up to the boss again. You’ve already seen it, and it’s not like dying to a boss wipes your memories. 

If anything, having to start over far away breaks immersion more, taking you out of the area you just were. Is it not more immersive to remain immersed in that same area, continue the fight? 

Also, I don’t need an arbitrary death run to serve as a “breather” to take a beat before I try a boss fight again. Believe it or not, I'm capable of just waiting and doing that all by myself.

So Yeah, Death to Death Runs

From all I can see, death runs are arbitrary and don’t serve much of a purpose than to pad some time. Even the well-intentioned design decisions to have them are flawed at best.

Here I focused on games designed around things like a unique challenge or boss fight as the exciting moment the game builds you up to. There may be some worthwhile discussion on games where they are more level-based, run-based in design.

But that’s a discussion for a different day.

So, death runs, please go away. They waste my time and keep me from engaging with the best parts of a game.