In a gaming world increasingly built out of Soulslikes, where the concept of the boss battle becomes the central game mechanic, some of us have been left behind. I have always hated boss fights, and while I have no interest in convincing anyone else to agree with me, I have long lamented the lack of accommodation made for the many other people who are already with me. But, sniff the air, something’s changing.
I recently loaded South of Midnight, interested to check out such a gorgeous-looking game, and was immediately delighted by the art and the extraordinary performances in the cutscenes, but then—as Zack warned us—I was immediately underwhelmed by the repetitive combat. However, while idly fiddling through the game’s settings to see what was what, I saw a toggle I absolutely was not expecting: “Boss skip option.”
In 2017, I wrote one of the most controversial articles of my career. A piece for which I received literal death threats, alongside hundreds of more banal insults and wishes for my imminent demise. As someone battle-hardened by Gamergate, it takes quite a bit for the scale of a backlash to take me by surprise, and while I knew it would piss some people off, I didn’t predict the volume. I wrote an article suggesting that boss fights should be skippable. Imagine my temerity.
There are so many games I’ve never seen the end of (but for YouTube, I suppose), because I just wasn’t physically capable of completing the later bosses. I’ve never finished a Metroid Prime game, for instance, despite it being one of my all-time favorite gaming series. There are other games I’ve been enjoying so, so much, but just had to abandon because every so often there would be a difficulty spike of such enormous disproportion that eventually I’d lose all will to try. And to be abundantly clear, this isn’t just about my incompetence. There are, obviously, a billion boss fights I’ve successfully completed, but almost none I’ve even vaguely enjoyed. For me (and millions of others), they are mostly tedious obstacles that get in the way of enjoying the rest of the game.
So, it struck me, why not just let me skip past them? Who loses out? Well, it turns out the answer to that question in 2017 was: very angry people. For reasons never quite comprehensively elucidated, my being able to carry on playing a game I like without finishing a specific fight causes them great personal injury. To skip over a boss is, I was told, both a moral and physical affront, and the addition of such an option would very likely destroy video games, if not all of society.
And yet, in the month since South of Midnight released, I have yet to witness the collapse of humanity. In fact, I’ve heard only very few people talking about it.
This is not the very first time a game has offered a way past tough spots. A fair few big-name games have had options to let you skip entire missions should you fail them enough, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Days Gone for instance, while many others will offer to lower the difficulty if you’re flailing. But it’s still vanishingly rare, and South of Midnight is the only instance of specifically being able to skip the bosses that I’m aware of. (Let me know of other examples!)
And it harms no one. Not even that guy, you know, Dave, the one who still unironically says “git gud.” It just lets more people play more games the way they want to.
But you know what, it used to be commonplace. It was incredibly rare that a game didn’t ship with a suite of hidden cheat codes! You’d find them in the next edition of your favorite gaming magazine, and then type them in to become invincible, or have infinite ammo, and then blitz through the boss that was troubling you. And yet the schools remained open, the supermarkets still had toilet paper on sale, everything was still OK. If anything, not being able to cheat past an impossible boss is the crime against nature.
I’m fairly certain this has appeared in South of Midnight as a consideration for accessibility, and that’s wonderful. (It’s worth noting the game even lets you skip combat, although given how dull it is, this seems to fix another issue entirely.) In the last few years, we’ve seen a dramatic change in how AAA games are being made, with the needs of players put front and center. Few big-name games launch these days without offering a wealth of incredibly specific options, allowing people to tailor games to their specific requirements. Which is all well and good, until you reach a difficulty spike boss fight in which all such amenities seem to get thrown out of the window. Oi, you, be good enough at this bit, no matter your specific situation, or you’re done playing.
But could South of Midnight be the start of a trend? And no, Dave, I don’t mean I’m demanding that Soulslike games, in which the entire point is mastering the techniques required for all eight trillion bosses, all let me skip over every moment. (I mean, it’d be brilliant if they did! I’d love to explore the Lands Between because that place looks amazing, if not for all the immediate death.) As games superbly copy one another with their accessibility options, could we start to see the boss fight skip button become standard?
It’s an impossible thing to believe in, because we’re never allowed nice things. The gatekeeping around the topic is about as fierce as anything gets in this hobby, so many Daves horrified that others might enjoy a part of a game for which they have not demonstrated their worth. But I still allow myself a glimmer, to stare through the crack in the wall South of Midnight has offered at the beautiful, sunlit fields beyond.
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