Enemies won't be any less difficult, but Elden Ring will be a bit less stressful for players than Dark Souls.
Click image for larger version Name: ss_e80a907c2c43337e53316c71555c3c3035a1343e.1920x1080.jpg Views: 5996 Size: 319.5 KB ID: 3515546

FromSoftware's Yasuhiro Kitao took some time to speak at the Taipei Game Show about Elden Ring. We already learned from him that Elden Ring has gone gold, but there was a wealth of additional information shared.

One of those nuggets of information is the fact that Elden Ring has been designed still be as challenging as previous FromSoftware games but will still be less stressful. In an interview conducted with producer Yasuhiro Kitao, we learn about what that even means and how FromSoftware is accomplishing it.

Kitao: "With the game's world being so large, that can produce real depth and breadth of enjoyment, but it can also lead to unnecessary stress for some players," explained Kitao. "The dev team has been very careful to avoid that where possible."

Interviewer: "With battle already being fairly difficult, I can understand wanting to reduce stress elsewhere."

Kitao: "Yes, especially as the enemies are so strong."
This seems to indicate that bosses and larger enemies will still be just as difficult as ever. If you were worried about FromSoftware nerfing those sorts of encounters to appeal to a more casual audience, you can rest your heads easy.

Instead, some of the changes From is making to make the game a bit less stressful seems to lie in how players will get to those difficult encounters over and over again. One such gameplay change is the addition of a horse that you can summon. The horse is a major area of focus for how From is reducing stress on the players.

"Horses provide a stress-free method of traveling across the long distances the player needs to travel in the game. That system was introduced as a means of quickly and enjoyably moving vertically upward in order to explore those higher areas."
Another way in which From is trying to reduce stress is to give players a bit more freedom of choice as to what areas they tackle and when. Fast travel will allow players to return to areas they have already visited. The freedom to choose where to go allows the player to try to tackle another area if the current one is too tough for them. Maybe they can return later or perhaps never return at all. Kitao specifically mentions that the Stormveil location and boss from the recent Elden Ring network test is totally optional. You can simply never go there in a playthrough or just go there much later.

Kitao continues on to say that From has been also fine-tuning enemy placement, in-game events, and item placement in the open world. It should also be noted that the time of day and weather events in Elden Ring will not have a significant impact on enemy placement, except for a "very small" number of enemy types that appear only at night.

A big change for reducing player stress is how players will go back to collect their dropped Runes (Elden Ring's equivalent of Souls) when they die.

"With the map being so vast, [traveling back to collect runes] can become an unwanted stress for the player. With that in mind, we have identified a number of difficult spots, places with lots of enemies or powerful foes, as points at which many players will die and need to re-attempt that challenge. The player is able to select the option of respawning very near the spot of their death for these locations. This kind of measure is another example of the team's efforts to implement systems to mitigate player stress caused by the sheer magnitude of the game map."
This is great that FromSoftware is taking this sort of care with these sorts of things. Now, if only they would add in an easier difficulty option to really reach a much larger audience.