While this blog post does contain specific mechanical
spoilers about Hollow Knight: Silksong, they're
only at the very end, clearly marked, and hidden by default.
Most of the post is spoiler-free.
Many games, video and otherwise, are structured in a way that
presents the player with both challenges tools they can use to
address those challenges. In video games specifically, much
hay is made online of the challenges themselves: everyone
talks about Ornstein and Smough, Absolute Radiance, or
Balteus. But to the player in the moment, the shape of the
tools they use determines as much or more about their actual
experience.
Tools aren't just in-game items. They're anything that aids
the player or allows them to engage with the game, from their
character's stats to movement mechanics to the very concept of
"make your character not be where the attack is". In sports,
the players themselves are the most important tools. In chess,
the pieces are tools but so are rules castling and stalemates.
It's an intentionally broad term to discuss a broad set of
game structures.
These tools are not only the ultimate determiner of how
difficult the challenge is, a well-designed arsenal gives players the opportunity to
sculpt their experience, creating a mode of play that fits
both the needs of the challenge at hand and their own personal
preference. Often players end up self-sorting into two rough
camps: those who choose one set of tools (a "build") and stick
with it for every challenge and so experience challenges that
may be easy for others as very difficult when the tools
they've chosen don't line up well, and those who see each
challenge as an opportunity to puzzle out the exact optimal
set of tools and so take down the challenge as easily as
possible. I myself fall into either camp depending on the
specific context.
One of the first thing a player will ask when choosing which
tools to use is, "what's the most powerful?" And in some cases
the answer to this is straightforward. In Dark Souls,
the Straight Sword Hilt is certainly among the weakest weapons
you can use by any objective measure. But in many cases the
answer is unclear. There is no consensus "best" weapon in
Dark Souls nor its successors, because what "power"
even means depends on the player's play style, their goals,
and to a substantial degree, their skill.
Defining Skill
I want to take a moment here to clarify what I mean by
"skill", at least for the purposes of this post. I don't
really want to get into the weeds discussing video game
difficulty here and now, but I do think that discourse has
made it difficult to mention skill as a concept without
raising everyone's hackles and bringing in a bunch of extra
baggage. So I'll try to be explicit about how I'm using the
term here.
I'm not talking about skill as in some sort of innate talent
at video…