A few additional points I see coming up in the comments- - - - Pausing in Sekiro is fine because that's a completely different kind of game. This one doesn't register with me. Sure there are some gameplay differences, but I feel like this is a rationalization being made after the fact. If Sekiro didn't have a pause button, I believe that most of the people who are saying it's okay in Sekiro (but wouldn't welcome it in Elden Ring / Dark Souls) would be opposed to its hypothetical implementation there as well. It's just that in the end, having a pause button doesn't actually change the vibes or stakes all that much. They recognize it wasn't an issue in Sekiro, but rather than recognizing it's because adding a pause to these games overall just isn't a big deal, it's attributed to only being okay there because it's a different-enough game. It's difficult to overstate how similar these games are. When Bloodborne came out, I remember people debating if it counted as a "Souls" game, with its differences being exaggerated to the point of acting like it was some fundamentally extremely-different game experience. Of course Sekiro is further off the path, but its differences from a Souls game/ Elden Ring are very specific in ways that don't really relate to the vibe/ tension of being able to pause. I'm just not convinced that the line we can draw between these games changes how most players would feel about pausing in them. (With the sole caveat being that I don't want to be able to access the equipment and items menus in a paused Souls game in the same way that Sekiro allows. Wanting the pause to work a little differently makes sense to me) - - - I probably should've elaborated this on section #4 about bonfires -- I've seen a decent number of people saying being able to pause devalues finding bonfires. Because of this idea that you're really only safe until you find one. Here's why I don't think the impact of pausing really takes anything away from that: Pausing doesn't achieve what resting at a bonfire does. Finding a bonfire isn't your moment to suddenly be free to pause the game and take a deep breath of relief. You're relieved because you finally got to a new respawn checkpoint, and it refilled your estus. Pausing doesn't provide the same kind of relief at all. In my opinion it also incorrectly frames bonfires as being the only moments of safety you have. It's not like you're being chased/ hunted by enemies constantly, and this will become apparent even if you're new to these games pretty quickly. There are countless opportunities to go AFK while away from a bonfire, the only wrinkle of concern being if there's some enemy patrolling that might find you. In playing through the Elden Ring DLC now, even in areas that are completely new to me where I don't have the enemy layouts memorized yet, being able to guess when I'm safe to put the controller down is quite easy and a pretty safe bet 99% of the time. I just don't think the ability to pause undermines the purpose of bonfires, or the relief felt when finding one. Something that *overwhelmingly* trumps the effect that pausing may have is how spaced out your bonfires are and how hard you have to work to get to them. It was a big relief especially in older souls games to find bonfires not because of the lack of a pause, but because of the level design. Pausing is a drop in the bucket compared to how something like adding Stakes of Marika changes the vibe and tension of these games. Something that I don't think was all that controversial and was actually largely welcomed (though it may have its detractors still). - - - Another common response is that dying in these games isn't a big deal, so what's the matter? I think I've come so far out on the other end of this that I feel differently about its implication. Dying is absolutely not a big deal to me. I'll always tell new players to not feel like dying was a loss or defeat of some kind, and to just embrace it as part of the expected gameplay loop. It's a routine thing that I've always been very patient with in these games, so the hypothetical ability to pause isn't born out of fear from the idea that dying and having to play through a section of the game again would be some horrible thing to have happen. It's just that dying is routine/ mundane enough to me that dying from the lack of a pause doesn't heighten the challenge in an interesting way. Dying is not that big of deal, so what's one less death just because you were able to pause? - - - Lastly, this hasn't even come up in the comments yet but there's a tangential discussion to be had about photo mode in general and what it allows. The concerns about pausing being able to take away from the tension are most on-point to me when it comes to something like photomode. The key difference there is that it goes further than pausing the game and we're starting to talk about being able to move the camera a pretty good distance to look around corners! This is very understandably going a little too far and I'd agree with people who don't like the sound of being able to do that. However, photo mode is pretty sick, you know? I'd love if the rest of the Souls games had them too. The middle ground solution I've always pictured was to have it be a NG+ unlock. Make it so that once one of your characters beats the game, photo mode becomes enabled. Not only would that be the most valuable and kick-ass reward for beating these games that they've ever had, but it'd help encourage replay value. Saving it for players who are already familiar with the game would diminish concerns about using it to investigate threats, and it'd give you a really really fun tool to play with in NG+ or on your 2nd character.
I 100% believe that people would abuse the pause button for the simple reason of it being an effective way to regain your nerves during tense moments. I commented earlier with this point but people will either instictively or active pause when startled or truly heeby-jeebey'd. Some of the most tense moments for me is having to push down the feeling of grossness and being uncomfortable with having worms spewed in my face and fighting back because pausing isnt an option. It would be interesting to see what places in Sekrio people pause the most to get an idea of why people pause while playing. I have seen multiple of playthroughts where people pause when spooked
i guess i don't see the point in arguing whether or not they could or should. they did. i think the more interesting discussion is what they may have been trying to accomplish.
@@SmittyWerbenJag3rmanJenson Then make pausing less snappy. Put it in the menu rather than mapping it to a button. That way they can't just pause easily, but still have some kind of option.
@@SmittyWerbenJag3rmanJenson "Abusing the pause button" Come on man. No one in their right mind is playing a game and pausing everytime a challenge comes up to think of a strategy. Especially in a reactions-based game like this, if you pause the game during a combo to think what your next step is going to be, you are getting hit the moment you hit unpause. There are so many ways to abuse/cheese these games, pausing is so far down the list that apparently the rest of the entire game industry didn't think it 100% abusable. The only games I can even think of where pausing the game is exploitable, excluding pausebuffering, is in old NES games where pausing the game would unload actors on screen
Good video, the onky thing I found missing was explaining how saved positions quit outs wouldn't quite be pauses either but would be closer. I feel like of it wasn't a passing DS2 mention you would've had a bit to say
This guy broke into my house while I was fighting O&S and started putting my things into a bag. I said, "Can you just wait a minute? There's no pause button on this game and I'm almost done." As he was about to walk back out the door, he turned to me and said, "git gud, scrub" before disappearing into the night.
I was with you, mostly, until the bathroom break point. If you aren’t willing to piss your pants mid Capra demon, maybe you just aren’t the real chosen undead
A funny thing about FromSoft and pausing games. Kings field the ancient city both pauses in the menu and has a dedicated pause button that just brings up a screen stating the game is paused. What im saying is kings field took all the pause budget from future titles by living large with 2 pauses
Some people seem disappointed about the ghosts not being live. They were never said to be live and, in fact, the loading screens and manuals written by Fromsoft claim they are memories of player actions in another world. Memories are in the past people.
@@stu.chainz Sometimes (maybe in other games, idrk) and mainly around bonfires the ghosts seem to react to you, like wiggling their shield too. I believe it's another kind of spirit though (the coloured one). From that people might generalize for all of them being live.
I feel like people just have the dream of seeing a ghost, waving to it, and having the player on the other end be quick enough to wave back. Learning the ghosts are asynchronous means that dream was always impossible
One time I left Bloodborne open in the background while I did a bunch of chores, and when I picked it up to play again I saw my *own* player ghost for a few seconds. Same weapon, same outfit, standing perfectly still in exactly the same position. Shit was trippy as hell lol
My biggest argument in favor of pausing in From Software games is and has always been that you can pause during ranked multiplayer and even\tournament matches in Age of Empires 2: DE (a real-time strategy game). Your opponent can un-pause without you, but the etiquette is that you are people and sometimes you really have to piss, your food just arrived, or your kid spilled their Spaghetti-O's and you'd like someone to treat you the same way. Even during active, time sensitive multiplayer it's more than feasible to allow pausing. It's not about easiness or "pandering to casuals", its accessibility for people who have anything else happening in their life besides Bloodborne even needing to suddenly use the bathroom during play where no other real humans are interacting with you.
I agree with the benefits of pause, but an "opponent can unpause" system in RTS games relies on there being a chat feature that can help judge intent and coordinate unpause timing and such.
Even in a game like Dota 2 with 10 players (i think it's that many) you're allowed to pause the game and it does it for everyone! They just have it on a limited usage kind of like calling timeout in american football.
This video is the opposite of the “inventing someone to be mad at” twitter trap, because you mentioned a bunch of people’s arguments which I believed were mostly hypothetical, but then see every single one of these people appearing in the comments section, proudly repeating the exact lines they don’t know IW already wrote for them. Amazing.
I've always thought that Nioh's pause mechanic would slot in fine to Souls games. Opening the menu doesn't pause the game but you can press another button to pause completely. It is disabled when in multiplayer, doesn't allow you to get any "unfair advantages" like easy equipment swaps or examining the area while it's paused, but gives the opportunity to leave the game without risking death or requiring a quit out.
The difference with Nioh is that online pvp only existed in the first game in a controlled environment from the lobby and it just outright doesn't exist in 2.
Some games even take this idea a step further. I can't recall what I'm thinking of exactly, but there are a handful of games that even allow you to pause in multiplayer, if everyone else in the session does so. Obviously, good luck getting invaders to pause, lol. But the point is they could even offer the pause in co-op if they really wanted to.
I am pretty sure the Elden Ring 'pause menu' is just another type of the Tutorial promts you get in first playthroughs. These will have to pause the game as they pop up in normal combat to educate about mechanics. Not pausing the enemies around you would be terrible.
yeah, i'm sure this is it. I think you can't attribute too much intent to how the Menu Explanation dialog is implemented because it's probably just calling the same code as the dialogs that show up in e.g. the Cave of Knowledge, and the pausing was mostly meant to make that experience smoother
@@aritsunes Yeah I don't think it's really "intended" as a pause function, but also the point of the video was more to demonstrate "there's no technical reason why you can't pause because it already exists in-game", and it's the best demonstration since the other tutorial popups are one-time only while the menu explanation can be called on demand.
The prompt doesn't pause enemies around you during invasions and it doesn't need to stay there in the menus if it's a tutorial prompt, they intentionally left it there and coded around it so it'd work well with the multiplayer
A while ago I saw one of my students watching your channel, and I said "hey, is it that Illusory Wall? I like him" and the student stopped the video, turned to me, and said "no." Maybe adding pause to the games would allow a similar thing.
@@Spellweaver5 "Why is this old dude interested in the same thing as me? What a weirdo. Now he's trying to talk to me. Better act uninterested so he leaves me alone."
Doesn't add nothing to the video but my sister summoned me and after the fight she saw my ghost outside of messmer's arena and we lost our minds, it was super neat to see :) hope you all have a great day!!!
It's so good to see someone with a head on their shoulder. I wasn't aware of how the online features worked behind the scene, so that settles my own 'but online features' defence.
@@irgendwer3610 Basic fact from probability theory: If you add independent identically distributed random variables to every point of a Poisson process, the result is still a Poisson process.
This has me thinking, there's GOT to be some people who thinking being unable to LOOK at the map because a hollow half a mile away hidden behind a rock is targeting you is actually super deep symbolism that is crucial to the game's story.
i assume it's something like he said in this video, was just an easy way for the devs to not allow fast travel during combat, rather than specific design choice to not allow looking at map during combat
@@Alexander-xr8tr what's funny is that they already have a fast travel blocking system while exploring uncleared caves and catacombs, that still lets you see the map. Wish they implemented the same system while in combat.
@@Alexander-xr8tr Yeah, it's just hyper, hyper annoying. The extreme aggro range of the golem archers has been sore point for me ever since base game, really.
I adore these games, but with Crohn's disease, there are moments where I abruptly need to use the bathroom under a short notice. Pausing would be a nice quality of life when I am in the middle a boss fight.
just over the course of playing the Elden Ring DLC, I got 2 calls that required me to get up and have the doorbell ring once, while fighting bosses. So, yes, having a pause button for that would be nice instead of being forced to quit out.
People who insist on "taking the L" and trying again are OK with Bad Game Design, apparently. Since the game punishes you for real life issues you have no control over and need to prioritize. So much for expert game design lmao
And that's why on my 5th or so attempt at playing through elden ring, I installed Well The pause mod. You press a key and everything pauses. You can still interact with menus but that's about it. My daily life is filled with dozens of times I have to pause games or videos I'm watching, so having the ability to pause the game has been invaluable. Of course any of the online aspects aren't a concern because the mods I use don't allow online play, but none of the online mechanics actually appeal to me.
@yetanotherhankhill1032 what's really astounding to me is the amount of bitching, pissing and screeching auts who think too highly of themselves believe they're entitled to whatever they want to change, acting like they have any say or knowledge into what makes good or bad game design is, truly baffles me. It's like yall just enjoy making something out of nothing for absolutely no good reason and contribute nothing to anything other than bad takes, crying and thinking you know better at something than someone who actually does it for a living. The audacity defies logic!
Yooo that bit about the ds1 bell ringing for you when other players ring it is so cool! I thought it was just on a timer or something more simple like that.
One of my favorite bits of asynchronous multiplayer action in the games. To use another big word, I love the ludonarrative resonance it gives. Makes the desolate game feel that much cozier and populated, too
@@chompythebeast I haven't fully watched this video yet, but I would argue against a pause function for this reason. Pausing completely breaks immersion in a franchise that loves and arguably demands it from the player
@@GusJenkinsEliteYou can't convince me that being able to pause the game would be more detrimental to immersion than enemies having health bars, damage numbers appearing when you hit them, the lock-on icon, the reticle when using a bow, the dozens of menus you spend your time in, all with arbitrary numbers, the loading screens. The King's Field and Shadow Tower games are arguably more immersive than the Soulsborne games could ever hope to be, and you _can_ pause in those series.
I imagine a pause menu in these games could work like in Kingdom Hearts. If you’re not in combat, pausing allows you to access the menu and all things available. If you are in combat, pausing simply brings up a screen that literally says “Paused.” I know someone will argue that this defeats the point of being able to swap equipment, so just make two pauses, the inventory pause and the pause pause. One allows you to change equipment but keeps the game live, the other actually pauses the game but only allows you to resume, change options, or quit and is accessible by a button within the inventory.
KH's pause would probably the most "in spirit" for a Soulslike. You're locked in on your equipment choices for the fight, but can still avoid dying if you sneeze. Pausing doesn't make fighting Mysterious Figure as Terra any easier, so seems fair to me!
Opening map in combat pauses the game. Best thing I can think of. It should lock you from interacting with anything, but you should still be able to look around and breathe
Personally I wouldn't mind if From implemented a pause feature like this, but I have a feeling a lot of PvP players, speed- and challenge runners would be up in arms. Hardswapping can be very important and being unable to access your equip menu in a fight would kill that.
@@Nostradankus I play pvp a lot and, honestly, I don't think you should be able to switch equipment on the fly. This basically skirts a crucial game mechanic, weight and burden, and allows you to have any weapon available to you at any time. It's kinda stupid. If you want a secondary weapon you *should* have to waste levels on endurance so your weight limit is higher.
@@Nostradankus not commiting to a build mid fight sounds like a cowards way of saying "I'm skillful" or the game is badly balanced for mp that you need to pull a switcheroo mid fight just not to get "countered".
The thing thats even worse about that #4 point is that (unless they fixed this) there are certain sites of grace where enemies can literally still notice and attack you out of it. Its not even a pause button, so we'd STILL like a pause button there.
Nah I’m not gonna get ratioed like that because u bots are too stupid to realise what I was talking about. Go use ur crutch pause button and live with the fact that you’ll never accomplish anything in these games.
You're in an unfamiliar environment, you chose to rest there instead of warping to a familiar place or closing the game. Sure it's a little unfair but that's a running theme with the souls games.
@@pineappleudh6561 Except that doesn't add anything meaningful to the game. It's just straight up inconvenience. It's not hard to warp to somewhere else, but who the fuck wants to sit through multiple loading screens every time they want to look away from the game.
@@lIlIlIlIllIl if an enemy is suddenly attacking you, you cant open the map to teleport. you need to kill everyone hostile around or flee to an empty place something one should know before saying shit like this
@@pineappleudh6561 Not even survival horror games are dumb or cruel enough the let dangers into the safe houses, because they're meant to be safe. Even if a Licker, Tyrant, or Ganado is outside the door, it'll wait nicely outside, or fuck off for a bit. Bonfires that mess that up are mistakes, not intentionally trying to be unfair, which isn't the mission statement of Souls games (even if FROM messes that up a lot in every entry.)
I don't think the game should be paused in the inventory, mostly because I find shuffling through menus while in combat to be a pretty fun and tense experience. However, I do think that the game should be paused in the settings menu, there is no reason I should be getting shot by skeletal archers while messing with the audio settings
I have a new baby and never really cared about pausing before, just die and try again, but this new dad life has me thinking it sure would be cool to be able to pause every now and then 😅
To be clear you do know that you can technically pause in Elden Ring right? I haven’t watched that much of the video so idk if he goes over that but entering tutorial mode pauses the game. I’m pretty sure you just press some button on the map screen and it’ll open up a help box that does a true pause as a side effect. Of course that is still a shitty option as I’m just remembering you can’t open map in combat but 90% of the time it’s very feasible to just quick kill everyone around you to get the map back. But at that point just afk-ing is nearly just as safe, I afk all the time and have yet to be killed very few enemies actually patrol they just kinda chill entirely motionless until you get near, a bit weird now that I think about it lol
@@monhi64 the menu help is on every menu screen, not only the map. and you can pause everywhere dlc boss arenas included (personally I do it from the equipment screen :) )
it's kinda hilarious how cocky and confident they are explaining how you can't pause for code reasons and whatnot while they are literally apparently wrong
Yea! Not saying net code is the easiest thing in the world, but if the pvp can work "fine enough" then a synchronized pause feature seems like an easy thing to implement.
When yuvi was setting up the demons souls private server there was an option between live player ghost and legacy player ghost. The difference seemed to be that the legacy would replay ghosts from long ago and play them in a loop so if you waited youd see the ghosts start repeating. The live player ghost i assume was just one of the most recent 8second chunks recorded and sent to you by any other player currently in game and in your "zone" Ive been curious about ghosts forever. I only know ^ abt the des ghosts but i wish i could learn exactly how they work in each game. I love how ds1 has ghosts and then switches to actual 1 to 1 player models when the ghost is at a bonfire
Only in Dark Souls 1! Well, also in Dark Souls 2 (and maybe 3?) if it's within your first few seconds of sitting a bonfire, but the later games do have bonfires disable invasions if they aren't already pending. Though to be totally honest I haven't yet checked what happens when using a Taunter's Tongue in Elden Ring and then immediately sitting at a Site of Grace...
I think a lot of people understand that there is a certain jank and lack of polish in parts of FromSoft’s games, especially their older ones. But in specific discussions people will still tend to assume every weird thing about Demon’s Souls or Dark Souls was some kind of deliberate artistic choice even when it’s a weird thing that could also be explained by time constraints or lack of polish
Totally, I think some people are so concerned with getting the best, most pure version of "the designer's intent" that they forget designers are human beings who don't always make the best possible decision, and also that... taking into account people who are stumbling into the game new, or don't find everything, or don't "get" everything, is usually part of "the intent" too. Developers generally just want you to have a good overall experience! VERY few of them actually sit up at night worrying that people didn't enjoy their game right!
I'd say the main argument against that would be that happening once, that makes sense, but when they choose to keep it in subsequent games, it's more likely a design choice. The same way that them making pausing available in newer games is also a choice.
@@184SwitchI’d say it’s more that FromSoft saw they could get away with it so they decided to roll with it. Kinda like how the Dark souls games and Bloodborne didn’t have mouth movements for NPC’s.
All art exists outside of their creators, the moment it leaves their hands the audience contributes something to it in their interpretation of it. It doesn't really matter if what they put in there was intentional or not, what matters is that it's there, and it makes you feel a certain way. Yeah characters don't move their mouths when they talk and From probably would've wanted them to do so, but the games as they are make something of it. To me, it contributes to the bizarre, almost dream like atmosphere of the series. To others, it might make them think of low budged or retro game vibes. There's value in that too, and you can make of it whatever you want. The lack of pause is the same. I, at least, like these games for what they *are*, not whatever they were supposed to be or not.
Any given piece of appreciated art is an idea, and then a sequence of happy accidents. It doesn't change the experience the audience ends up having, once it's in their hands it's theirs to enjoy and interpret. So it doesn't change anything whether it was intentional or not (which none of us likely will never know regardless), if you feel the inability to pause added to the immersion of the game then that's all that matters and indeed vice versa. If you feel the limited audio systems in the old games ended up creating an interesting atmosphere, if you feel that the bass boosted voice of that fire merchant guy gave that character a charm, if the confusing gravelord message only peeked curiosity and not frustration, all this kind of stuff, it's all just as valid no matter if any of these were unintended. The developers created a game, that game and the experience it ended up becoming now belongs to the players and those same players have had an experience they enjoyed and hope to see again, that's it.
I was going to comment something about #6 but you went over it riiight at the end. When family calls for my help or the cat jumps on top of the keyboard, my immersion is already broken long, long before the pause button does it. I want it purely and exclusively because real life HAPPENS while I'm playing, and the game should never be the 1st priority when it does. I'd like the developers to recognize and respect that fact!
I've never been able to buy the idea that it would ruin the vibe of Souls to be able to pause cause that just... isn't true for any other game. Being able to pause in King's Field, in Baroque, in Silent Hill, in Shadow of the Colossus, any number of games with amazing atmosphere didn't ruin them
That's exactly how I feel. It really only breaks immersion if you go out of your way to pause a lot for no reason. It's also interesting to me the amount of people insisting it's okay in Sekiro on the grounds that it's a different kind of game. The idea that somehow, it's different enough where a pause isn't unwelcome there but it would be in Dark Souls is hard for me to grasp (outside of the menuing it allows, of course).
@@illusorywall The only REAL difference between Sekiro and Dark Souls is that you can't change your stats and there's no multiplayer. So the argument comes full circle around to "it will ruin the multiplayer which is integral to the game." These are probably the same people who say it's my fault that I'm getting invaded in Darkroot and Oolacile because I had the audacity to want to try fighting the bosses in unhollowed. Obviously because I am playing the game, I am agreeing to their very specific desire to invade in the area of the game where invasions are easiest and most profitable.
@@illusorywallto touch on the Sekiro comparison, I do think the games are very different thematically, and I think not bring and to pause contributes in a serious way to the idea of an oppressively hostile world where you can't ever be safe, where Sekiro is considerably less apocalyptic. I'm having trouble explaining my thoughts but the tldr is I think being unable to pause in dark souls meaningfully contributes to the mood
@@OtakuUnitedStudioYes you are agreeing to be invaded to fight bosses unhollowed... That allows you to summon an NPC for bosses which makes them easier, so to balance that out it's harder to get to the boss. That's how the game works... If you don't like it play a different game. This whole comment section sounds like vegans trying to force veganism on other people. If you don't like it then play a different game that allows you to pause, play a game where you can't get invaded, don't try and change mechanics that have been in the game for over a decade and hasn't been an issue till now...
Quitouts are insanely broken, i remember getting black world tendency on 4-1 and Katsuki & red enemies didn't allow me to even play, so i managed to pass them by contantly performing quitouts.
you know someone doesnt know jackshit about the game and its "immersion" or difficulty when they suggest quitting out as pause. anyone that watched a speedrunner video knows that's literally a get-out-of-jail-free card. you can run straight through the most difficult areas with a quick reset button
@@gamongames totally agreed, that's a thing dark souls 2 did well, in addition to no s during some animations like fog gates or opening doors, a lot of people complained about this but I believe it was they right call. Sadly the implemented immortality in those animations in further games
@@gamongames When most people say "quit out to pause," they're basically admitting that the only reason they would stop playing the game at all is because they're done playing for the time being, and not just taking a few seconds or minutes to take care of something. But on the other hand, speedrunners aren't people who (at least during a speedrun) engage with the world or try to immerse themselves. They want to beat the game as fast as possible rather than actually delve into it. All that said, the immersion absolutely is broken by quitting to menu. I don't understand how that's supposed to maintain the illusion of the reality of the setting.
Well you can't though as he literally just explained. If you have all these exceptions for when someone is actually in your game you're not pausing in an online game. You don't have that ability to pause if an invader is in your game so why is that any less important than pausing on a boss? If a child crisis comes up you still die to the invader and go back to the bonfire all the same.
@@SM-nz9ff so, why bother improving experience in scenario A if you can't improve the experience in an unrelated scenario B due to technical limitations? Is that your point?
One reason that the “Menu Explanations” might have the pause effect is because it’s a sort of tutorial. During regular gameplay, you’ll occasionally get pop-ups that explain things, especially in regards to the multiplayer. These pop-ups pause the game while they’re open, leading me to believe that the “Menu Explanations” button was at some point one of these pop-ups but was moved to a reusable button that never lost its pausing behavior.
Just make it so that when you pause you can't enter your inventory. Simple. I don't get why people think pausing makes the game easier or anything like that, if a boss is about to hit me with a grab then a pause isn't gonna let me get out of it. Even if I use it to get some breathing room, I'm still in the fight, if a boss is about to hit me or I'm stuck chugging estus, I'm still gonna get hit or be stuck chugging. The game can still play without pausing when you enter your inventory, you can still do the risky gambling of entering your inventory in a boss fight and risk getting hit, hell you don't have to use it at all. Its legit just an optional button press, your playthrough is yours and it can be easily disabled if you ever access coop
>talks about pause buffering Oh hey, that thing Ryukahr does when playing Mario Maker. >shows Ryukahr pause buffering Bruh. Not the crossover I expected to see, lol
@@xSilentZeroXx It's hilarious that people think that can even be remotely applied to fromsoft games Tried out against Balteus Spoiler alert: It didn't go so well
Dude I just got ripped to shreds a couple months ago too for saying I wish there was a proper pause, even did the whole “at least let me pause offline thing” and gave similar explanations why it should work. And of course they gave the same shitty non explanations for why it’s impossible and made sure to toss in a million insults even though I was chill. There’s definitely a reason why I saw a “games with the worst fanbases” post and Elden Ring topped the list, so many of us are the worst
Another problem with the "just quit out" method is that you have to sit through all of the logos and the game connecting to the multiplayer server, the latter of which takes ages when playing Demon's Souls on PS3, despite the servers being shut down years ago.
@@lIlIlIlIllIl Reread my comment. I'm not saying they should bend over backwards to add the pause button to DeS. I'm stating another downside to the quit-out method of "pausing".
I really wish they would bring back the feature they had in the Original Demon's where you could directly load a character while in game, instead of returning to main menu and then loading
Shoutout to the shambling corpse who will roam over and attack you while resting at the first site of grace in Shaded Castle. I did not learn from my mistake there and in a later playthrough in that same dungeon I tried to afk on the ladder up out of the first part of the dungeon and an enemy likewise roamed over and killed me there too. Edit: Lavender Rex's video on DS1 has its own bit of a defense for Capra Demon so definitely take a look at that.
Photo mode would be so welcome in these games! I've always felt that if From was worried about the "vibe" of it, eg not wanting you to be able to pause boss fights the first time you see them to be able to take closer looks at them, or look around corners for threats, etc, then my solution was always to make it be a NG+ / game-cleared unlock. Then you don't have to worry about players "being taken out of the gameplay experience" or whatever concerns you may have, if it's used by players already familiar with the game. Plus that would be the best unlock these games have ever had and would add a lot to the replay value.
@@illusorywall Ooh, I was about to object to this idea since I think the vibe is really enhanced by the 3rd person view, it keeps us grounded and unable to get a perfect view of everything, but as a NG+ feature I think it'd be great. Just allows us to get a closer look at everything after we've been through the experience once as intended :)
I would love to be able to take a closer look at a lot of the bosses that move really erratically. There’s so many that I don’t really know what they look like up close because if I took the time to check I’d die
I’ve always praised FromSoft for not taking control of the camera away except in boss introductions and the rare teleport transition… but now I’m wondering if their camera code is just jank or they just don’t want to bother, lol
A note about Elden Ring's "menu explanation" pause trick. You can still be summoned as a blue, which scared the crap out of me during a bathroom break. This does mean that, without deactivating that ring, it's actually not safe to leave the game "paused" this way for a long time, because you (presumably?) wouldn't be paused after loading back into your own world.
It did force you off of bonfires in Dark Souls 1, though later titles changed this and had it block invasions. Although honestly I haven't yet tested using the Taunter's Tongue and then immediately resting at a Site of Grace in Elden Ring...
@@illusorywall I remember trying to kindle the first bonfire down in Tomb of the Giants and midway through that process I was either kicked out or locked out of interacting because someone with the sunlight maggot helmet had invaded me lol
alt+F4 is my pause atm, but I could go for better. I'm a lone adult with adult responsibilities and a pause button would be such a quality of life change in the rare occasions I need it. Since this renewed controversy I've been saying 'put it on the map'. Nobody has any use for time progressing while in the map, it covers the whole screen, and just disallow teleportation in combat. If you think placing a waypoint while in combat is cheese in any way, shape or form, I'm currently in your walls and I'm coming out while you sleep. To add to point 6: The reason I need to pause already breaks my immersion and finding my pause button in ER is just tedium. When my door bell or phone rings, my immersion is already gone. Just give me my instant button so I don't need to struggle through a menu and miss my package (skill issue, I know, but missing my package isn't part of the gameplay. A toddler climbing a counter and falling off isn't part of the gameplay, unless you can show me part of the code or design document that intentionally handicaps parents) Lastly, you don't need this pause button as you said in chapter "My thoughts on the following objections". That you advocate for them regardless is a class move. If we happen to run into each other, I'll buy you a drink
> I'm a lone adult with adult responsibilities and a pause button would be such a quality of life change in the rare occasions I need it This is such an important point. Sometimes you get a call, the door bell rings or whatever and it's entirely out of your control. The ability to interrupt a game quickly and cleanly is really important and maintains immersion better than anything else, and I always wished for this over my hundreds of hours of combined playtime in souls-games. I know it's kind of an Ad Hominem, but I imagine most people advocating against pausing are people whose only interruptions is their parent coming into their room.
I've had to use quit out a few times recently in Elden Ring, to answer my phone or to use the bathroom. It's not the end of the world but frankly that's much more immersive breaking than it would be simply to let me pause the game, since I now have to load back into the game and possibly restart a whole boss fight. I also feel that a lot of these arguments aren't made in good faith, if someone wants to make the game easier for themselves, the games already have that in spades, you can get extra levels or summon help to name a few. If you're against accessibility or quality of life features, I think that says more about you than anything else.
Yeah I'd say the only one that doesn't let you adjust the difficulty down (by overleveling or finding better weapons or upgrading your weapon or finding better spells or summoning help) is Sekiro. And that one lets you pause.
Monster Hunter already kinda solved this. When you're playing solo, there's a dedicated "Pause" menu option that you scroll to. You press it, and the game stops with a big "Paused" over the game and you can go do whatever. This stops people from being able to do stuff in the menu while the game is paused, but still lets people pause the game when you need to do something.
Exactly, this is the perfect solution for Souls games and I think it's frankly silly that there's even any disagreement about this. Allowing players to stop the game so they can pee, but NOT allowing them to access their inventory while paused, is the best of both worlds. Resident Evil 7 also had this feature.
@QuintessentialWalrus I feel like the ppl pushing hard against pausing have never played a video game other than Souls games in their lives. There is no way they can't imagine how pausing could work in Souls/Elden Ring. Video games have had this figured out for decades, it really isn't complicated.
@BurnItDown11 I think you're straw manning a little too hard there. It's not that it wouldn't work. It would work fine, especially if you are offline, or otherwise non-interactable by other players. It's that there are larger discussions about game design, artistic vision, and the synergy between game mechanics and creating an intended gameplay experience. As shown in the video, you can technically pause while offline using the help menu. But the game obviously isn't incentivising you using it as a dedicated pause button, otherwise they would have added a dedicated pause button. They didn't want to give that to players, even though they had the time and know-how. Why not? Because it's important for FromSoft's vision of the game to NOT have a dedicated pause feature.
@christopherealy8025 Not pausing being an important part of the vision seems like a weird hill to die on. Even ppl that make this argument aren't willing to claim ER is successfully because of not pausing. That's what makes this discourse and the defenders of the status quo so unserious. I love ER but not pausing is at best something I tolerate. I'm not even that passionate about adding pausing it's just strange that ppl that push back against it have to resort to grandizing this aspect of ER as if it's in anyway a major part of the whole. I agree not adding pausing is intentional, they've done it this way consistently for over a decade with SOME exceptions that it had to be. But that doesn't mean it's a good intention or that's it instrumental to the whole that is these games. And From has added QoL things to ER post launch like NPCs locations on the map, or even with the DLC a recent items tab, so clearly they dont hold the idea that art has to be stagnant. Art can evolve.
I like that you brought up that the community is basically assuming that the lack of pause was 100% intentional game design for all the reasons it’s proponents ascribe to it, when in reality it was more than likely a path of least resistance choice that was minimally considered. So many arguments based on conjecture.
Yeah. The lack of ability to pause in multiplayer games - even the most casual of them - is the norm, because it's the path of least resistance. Some elements probably were intentional, like the game not pausing when you're in your inventory. But the lack of ability to pause at all was almost certainly just a byproduct of a small studio making an incredibly complex set of online features, when online games were first hitting their stride. In reality, arguing that the lack of any pause was intentional for the sake of difficulty or immersion, is basically the same as people arguing that the tank controls in early Resident Evil were intentionally clunky for the sake of elevating the horror. Elements of design can easily work in harmony and elevate each other by accident. It's a nice sentiment to assume they knew exactly how to make clunky fixed camera controls that elevated the experience. It's a more realistic sentiment to acknowledge that they were probably just in the same boat as games like Tomb Raider, lost in the ocean of confusion that came with creating fully 3D games.
While I hate using the word, that's just pure fanboyism. In most creative works, no matter how great, not 100% of things are intentional. Everyone makes mistakes and everyone can take the easy compromised solution because you gotta move on with your project and just don't have the time to iron these things out.
It is intentional. Pause is not a new or rare feature, and is an obvious addition if the game would reasonably benefit. The reason people are asses about it is because it's the equivalent of saying that NASA "minimally considered" the earth was flat. Very few people know the full scope of reasons why there isn't a pause, but there are definite reasons. Best to leave it to them and not make clickbait out of it.
@@cykes5124 gotta milk that content bro, this kind of topic attracted a lot of people and made them debate in the comments section. Its all about algorithms
@cykes5124 You forget that Fromsoftware are pretty bad programmers who fuck up like half the mechanics in any given game. The lack of a pause feature could just as easily be explained as the programmers at Fromsoft not being confident with where and how to implement it seeing as the in-game menu for these games isn't very traditionally designed. And that comparison to NASA is bullshit, video game programmers are nowhere close to that level educated and way more flawed than you want to admit.
Honestly I was against the idea and this did convince me, mostly because I thought it would have to ONLY work during offline mode which would encourage many players to play offline. Glad to see there's much more elegant solutions to that!
I always assumed the game downloaded up-to-date ghosts, bloodstains, messages, etc. on startup and only reconnected when the player wanted to do actual multiplayer. That was probably just cope for the long wait times :c
Ah so it's not just on startup, it pulls that stuff repeatedly while you're playing. Things are on timers and it tries to send/ receive stuff every now and again.
I have had my mind changed. I was initially against pausing, and I think I still am fundamentally against it on like a theoretical level for the preservation of tension. However, if implemented correctly it will have no real effect on tension. The only exception would be like deciding in the middle of a level to pause and take a break, I do think that would be the worst way pausing could hinder the intended experience, but then again quitting out does the same thing to a more immersion breaking level. People aren’t pausing because they WANT to disrupt the flow of the game, they’re pausing because their playing was disrupted by something else. Dying as a result of something external to the game is much more immersion breaking than pausing, dealing with whatever it was and then jumping right back into the level or encounter.
That is a very well explained point. The pause isn't to break immersion. It's because it was already broken. People seem to also think everyone can control their circumstances 99% of the time, and you are expected to never be able to be interrupted when playing. Like sometimes crap happens. 🤷♂️ I don't really care to much either way if the game can be paused or not. I just find most of the arguments to be silly.
Miyazaki intended for you to beat the bosses while your toddler kocked their Fruit loops on the floor and your dog is howling at the neighbours. If you can't get past that, did you REALLY beat dark souls ?
This reminds me of the mid 1800's controversy when bookmarks were invented "What? You want to put down Pride and Prejudice mid chapter like a filthy casual?". And the less is said about the DVD chapter select riots, the better.
There was some actual controversy from teachers when erasers started appearing on pencils, because they thought it would remove the punishment for the wrong answer.
@@neon_pixels Didn't Socrates get upset at people writing things instead of commiting things to memory? "you filthy casual, stop having fun" is a universal experience.
one small caveat whilst i am watching this video: resting at a bonfire whilst embered did not save you from Invasions in Dark Souls 3. I can absolutely confirm this as someone who spent far too much time playing pvp in that game.
Another freaking wonderful upload. You've made great counterpoints / reasons for pausing. You've managed to sincerely change my opinion and be in favour of it
22:54 yes, defend that interesting experiment of a boss. he wasn't the best, but he tried something different in arena and enemy composition design as compared to yet another massive circle with a single humanoid boss in it.
I'm a firefighter/first responder and having a pause button in a game is always a welcome addition since it lets me hit a button and dash when the pager goes off then come back to it later as if nothing happened. Think many people who want a pause button are like this, its for when a genuine reason that needs immediate attention comes up and you want to be able to drop back in right where you are
I used to raise that 100%-false "it wouldn't work with their online system" objection (as recently as yesterday) - not because it made sense to me, but because it _didn't_ make sense to me that Fromsoft wouldn't have implemented a pause button by now if it were technically possible
I've been playing since Demon's Souls and I've never really even thought about it, except that in order to stop my game I had to quit out, since I couldn't pause. If they added an official pause, I think that'd be great but I also don't care that they haven't.
That's pretty much where I was at. Never really minded the lack of a pause that much, but seeing the arguments against it had me disagreeing with them.
@@illusorywall agreed, most of this discourse came off to me as extremely redundant and as sexist gamers taking the opportunity to shit on a woman for an optically bad take, despite how normal the take was
@@illusorywall I was skimming between videos and comments, so i am sorry if you cover this but i always thought they don't let you pause so you can't cheese bosses by pausing to time attacks and such which I've done in some games although I guess they could just make so you can't pause in bosses.
To me it would just be pure convenience, not needing to quit out for the occasional bathroom emergency. I feel like a lot of coffee drinkers can relate there.
@@suicune266 for me I thought it was about switching items. You can't switch gear in sekiro and AC6 so it doesnt matter. But in souls you could pause, swap to a different weapon and then unpause. You could just disable weapon swapping during combat (souls already has this feature if you try to swap mid-attack) but having no pause allows people to still switch weapons mid fight but it takes skill and risk. It could pause in settings menu without pausing in equipment menu too.
Warframe is an online game. But if you're playing without any party member, pressing escape pauses the game even though online functions like guild and chat are still working. But does nothing when you're playing with other people
Explicitly only if you are playing in solo mode though, not if you queue outside solo but just happen to be in a mission alone. Rip me thinking I can pause when I actually can't sometimes.
Ah, I wasn't paused in that moment. Right before, I was paused and they weren't moving. Free cam has you cycle through 1) game is paused and you control the camera, 2) game is unpaused but you're still controlling the camera and not the player, 3) camera is locked wherever you left it but you're in control of the player again, 4) free cam turns off and things are back to normal. What you saw was me cycling back out of freecam from step 1. :)
@@illusorywall I don't know if you've ever addressed this, but are you ever going to do Sekiro dissected? I'm not sure what topics you could make videos of in this game aside from ones you have already done for previous games. But if you can find some topic to make a video about or are ok with doing another map layout or out of bounds video etc., then please do. It's one of my favorite fromsoft games.
Really the big issue that people have with pausing I don't think is about pausing at all. People are afraid of the idea that players will demand changes to the game to suit their personal desires, and are terrified that From Software will listen to them and start making those changes. It's not the pausing, but if they start to buckle to pressure from players who want changes, it's anything else that might come along with it. I think this is why nobody cares about Sekiro, and why nobody really cares that you can pause in Elden Ring by going into menus. It's not about pausing, it's about a fear that they will start chaging the game to cater to people who want it to be different. In a new game, a pause feature won't be something people really care about. But people complaining about the lack of a pause feature, and From going back and introducing it after the fact, I think that's what people are afraid of, and again, not because of the pause feature itself, but because of what else people have demanded. It feels safe knowing that generally things don't change. Sure there's balance changes here and there, but there's nothing fundamental that changes.
I've always wondered if the people against pausing have never had obligations at home. My family is always asking me to do stuff on a whim, they always have, it's life; I just thought this experience was more universal, but apparently not. I don't really like having to wait all day until nighttime in order to be able to play a game because I can't be interrupted during it. I just started playing elden ring, and I just finished dark souls 1.. I have to say, elden ring is very "kind" to busy people. There are a lot of safe areas, and being able to warp... I was unaware of the "pausing" thing, I might have to use that next time I'm needed in the middle of a boss fight.
Unfortunately, there are rare spots where sitting at a grace, a far away patrolling enemy will eventually walk nearby and aggro you. I sat at a grace and got up to eat some lunch. Came back, my character was standing up and all my runes were gone
All I have are obligations. I just accept the death, life is more important than the game and not being able to pause has never pissed me off. They’re 2 variables that need to be overcome with a calm mind. It’s just a minor thing that adds to the games’ experience whether you like it or not.
Yeah. Knowing about the pause is great. My elderly parents can get into trouble pretty quickly, and it's pretty frustrating to have to abandon the current game state every time I have to go running.
@@yourdad5799 It's not that deep but people insist on adding a pause to a series that purposely wouldn't add it. It's part of the game by design. You don't have to like it, it's just another thing to overcome. Soul Form in DeS comes to mind, I don't love it but it's part of the game and I deal with it.
Illusorywall, Not only one of the many great investigators of the more hidden aspects of these games, showing yourself to also be A paragon of logic an reason. This video is a very well articulated and gently worded slam dunk to me. People who can't wrap their head around this must be incredibly blessed, essentially able to pause real life instead while playing their favorite games. Seriously though, In a world of soul level 1, no hit, play with your guitar as a controller challenge runs, not pausing can just be a ... really unimpressive challenge run.
In my opinion, I think pausing would help me for when I meet a one of a kind enemy and I wanna take a closer look at them, like in demon's souls. When I played the elden ring dlc, I met so many new enemies but I didn't get a good look at them, so a photo mode would be nice. Enemies are always moving, unless you somehow caught them unaware with stealth. Having spent hundreds of hours in every game, I wouldn't really need a pause to give me an advantage in thinking of a strategy. Also glad to help again!
Agree with this wholeheartedly. I had the exact same experience with elden ring's dlc, some of their best designs yet and i'm just getting a blurry distant look at them through a mix of, no real way to check them out, and having to play on low settings because my laptop can barely run the game lmao
@@losercee you know that super annoying hornset enemy in the dlc that uses two circular blades? No joke for the longest time i thought it was some type of goat because of it's stance and speed making it impossible to get a good look at.
Before watching, if anyone had asked whether these games should have a pause feature, I would have said "nah, they don't need it". But you made some good points and now I agree, so yes, you convinced at least one person.
I'm someone who deals with chronic pain. It's not nearly as bad as it is for some people but on occasion it can strike out of nowhere and it's much harder to focus when it does. A pause feature in such a situation would be nice. I'm a minority example, and it's a rare event, only happening maybe 3 times or so in my 2k+ in the series. There's lots of ways we could meet halfway on a pause button. I for one want it.
Frankly, a disability isn't the only reason a pause feature can be useful. I think the games should have one- maybe you could make it kind of prohibitive with a 1 second delay between pauses and some kind of pause splash-screen so you can't use the pause time for much other than walking away for a minute if you have to to preserve the spirit of things or whatever, but all sorts of games have a separate menu and pause feature, one being a gameplay element and the other being *only* for pausing and not letting you do anything but unpause.
I can't _believe_ the number of people in the comment section trying to argue against a pause button using the reasoning of "These games are meant to be unfair and ruin your day!! Get over it!!!" No, these games are _meant_ to be _extremely_ fair. Are we playing different games? Because in all of the games that _I've_ been playing, since 2009, it felt a lot like dying to an enemy was because you took a risk you shouldn't have, not because the game said "lol die" Isn't the saying "git gud?" That means "stop panicking and spamming dodge rolls, actually time them" or it means "don't go for a 3rd swing after you block that attack, just take your free 2 and do it again" or it means "Don't try to drink your flask after the diagonal slash, they recover and follow up faster than you can heal, drink after the vertical slash instead" If your takeaway from playing Elden Ring is that the game "isn't fair" then you're _really bad_ at this game and maybe you should pause it and take it break.
All of Elden Ring's tutorial pop-ups (such as the first time you pick up a physick or Scadutree Fragment, or when you first go through the Cave of Knowledge) also pause the game - the Menu Explanation thing really just seems more like an oversight than a feature with design intent
I really needed this video Honestly, the most annoying thing happens if you are actually interested in info about why can't some of these games be paused, officially. Internet searches are so saturated with online discussions of fans gatekeeping the games, that you never really get info on why this was a decision. People prefer to laugh at others instead. Seriously, everyone turns into a game designer, when a discussion about a pause button in the souls series is opened.
Intended or not, the lack of a pause button on the older souls games made me feel helpless when i first played them. There was no "safe place". Only when i'm resting on a bonfire i could actually rest in real life. When i was watching the video and saw you pausing during a battle i immediately thought about Slender: The Arrival. Weird thing to say, i know, but in that game you couldn't pause when Slenderman was on the screen, the game would just glitch out and not let you. This was an intended feature for the game, as you could pause when Slenderman wasn't around. And that opportunity to pause the game when you were "safe" reminds me of the Dark Souls bonfires. I still think adding a pause button is a very welcome quality of life improvement, however the lack of one in my first time experiencing the game made me understand and fear the virtual world i was in just a little bit more. Great video.
While I support adding a pause feature, I do agree with what you're saying. Assuming that it is an intentional design choice to prevent pausing, I wonder if actually giving people the option to allow pausing or not could work - for example, pausing could be off by default, and when someone goes into the menu to enable it, a message pops up explaining that the game was not intended to be paused but has been added as a quality of life feature which may reduce the atmosphere of the game while being played
@@NichRerezzed Interesting solution if the player wants to sacrifice a tiny bit amount of immersion for the sake of accessibility, which i think it's perfectly reasonable as the game itself is pretty scary even with a pause feature. The option being there for those who want it it's genius. This is, in my opinion, the best way to handle the pause dilemma, however imagine if instead of an option it was an item that "pauses the time, but also pauses the player". This is probably a terrible idea but a more creative one! I do see exploits with an item like this, though.
@@burn1none Well, bonfires mean a safe place. You can rest, refill your estus flask, level up, etc. It's also a checkpoint, you return to the bonfire when you die. The funny thing is when you rest at the bonfire all the enemies that you killed are now back, meaning that it's never a safe place outside of a bonfire. Which is kind of like a pause feature in the sense that danger never goes away, but pausing the game wouldn't have all the advantages a bonfire has...it just means that the game is now frozen in place. So yeah, i'm kind of all over the place with this one. I still think that having the option to pause the game or not is perfect for the game, even with the lack of a terrifying discovery that you can't freeze the game when in danger on your first playthrough.
only a quick mention of this, but I wanted to resonate with the defense of the cursed stat in Dark Souls. I only got to playing DS in the remaster (first was DS3) so i was closer to being on the fromsoft wavelength, I think, by the time I got cursed in DS Remastered. Sure, it was inconvenient, but to its bones, that first time it happened was a mechanically driven quest prompt. I got a curse. I had to go fix it. once I got it fixed a merchant with purging stones was right in front of me. I did this in the new londo ruins and didn't realize curses allowed me to fight the ghosts, but if i did that would be even better. Like we forget how electrified everyone was when we learned we got a little debuff from receiving a hug in Elden Ring. these moments of debuff are incredibly memorable, and while i don't expect them to permenantly cut someone's health in half until they go on a little quest they weren't planning on in the future, it really worked for me.
I'm generally on team let developers do what they want, so I don't anyone's vote should count outside fromsoft, that being said my vote is that the convenience of being able to go let the screaming cat out of your bedroom isn't outweighed by the non-issue of having multiplayer timers reset or whatever.
"I'm generally on team let developers do what they want" I don't believe you. Like... are you telling me that you have never critcized a developer for something you didn't like in a game because it's their vision?
@@lhumanoideerrantdesinterne8598 I call bullshit too. Everyone complains about stuff they don't like in video games, the discussion should be around whether the complaint is valid.
@@lhumanoideerrantdesinterne8598 You can dislike and even hate a game feature without earnestly thinking that developers should at any point in time listen to your advice. That's the difference between the two major paradigms "some games aren't made for some people, and if a game is not for me, I will either power through (or mod/cheese the game on my own etc.) or accept it and move on to other games", and "games should be accommodating to the widest range of players, and features should be changed based on feedback to ensure that".
@@lhumanoideerrantdesinterne8598It isn't a binary. Wanting devs to stick to their guns while also having the capacity to be critical of them aren't mutually exclusive tendencies. I agree that devs should do what they want and if their vision fails to capture or retain an audience then they only have themselves to blame.
@@lhumanoideerrantdesinterne8598 You can criticize developers, you can complain about mechanis, you can debate for hours with internet strangers who dont agree, and even with all that you can just ... accept when they implement something you dont like. The devs are free to do so and that's ok. Having critique on something is different from thinking the devs should listen to the complaints of the players.
Could it be that the menu explanation screen pauses the game because it has the same logic as the tutorial messages that appear on first playthrough, which also pause the game?
The proper solution: just do the same pause setup as Monster Hunter, the regular menu works the same as it normally does but theres a “pause” option that just pauses like the menu explanation thing already does (until you press a button), since so you can’t do things like change weapons instantly (and again it disables the option online)
As a person with bladder issues who is playing his first Souls-like, Elden Ring, I really could use a pause feature. Thanks for mentioning that "Menu info" work-around. That is really going to help me.
For the record, if you’re playing on a PlayStation then there IS a pause option - push the PS button and go to the Home Screen. Game is paused. Unless you’re in multiplayer, of course.
i could have sworn this wasn't the case, as i distinctly remember trying this while being inflicted with toxic (and having about half my hp) and needing to check the wiki only to come back dead
Interestingly that little quirk of phantoms building up while paused is still around in Elden Ring, I use that pause every now and then and when I come back there would be 8 phantoms walking around nearby
Once i was in someone else's world, and i left when they reached a new bonfire. A little bit after i reentered my workd (i was at the same bonfire) the ghost of the host played in front of me doing the exact same movements and with the exact same gear as i saw live. I was shocked, then disappointed for your exact reason.
@@thaias9654why would it have ever been live? That’s way too much bandwidth. Just save the script and send it out to the server, then send to other players
I found out when I got myself from earlier that day backstep dancing while I was waiting to invade , drip was too bad and build was too niche for me to believe it could be a rando lol.
The argument that feels strongest to me is the "vibes" one, which is obviously extremely subjective. For me personally it invokes nostalgia for playing world of Warcraft as a kid and coming back to a death screen after getting up when I thought I was safe. It feels like the world is both intensely hostile and alive, continuing on whether you like it or not. Again tho this is a purely subjective argument and I'm not surprised you were dismissive of it. It's by no means required for immersion and it's a source of frustration much more often than any joy. As you pointed out, quitting out has always been a stronger and far less immersive option.
I'm not too fussed one way or the other about whether or not pausing should be included overall, but I am gonna nitpick a little bit of your portrayal of Elden Ring's "pause function" as being "oddly buried and unlabeled". Pausing is clearly not the primary function of the Menu Explanation command, and it seems secondary at best to the primary function of "conveying information to a player who is unfamiliar". I didn't even realize it *did* pause the game when I used it, but I will say it seems consistent with the game pausing during the tutorial popups. Those probably pause the game because they can be kind of wordy and when you get many of them is different for different players and often don't come up in controlled environments. This makes me think the pausing is a courtesy extended to newer players who are seeking information.
As long as you can't change equipment/use items while paused, then yeah, there should ALWAYS be a pause option whilst not actively involved in co-op/PvP. I've had times where I was in the middle of a co-op boss fight when someone knocked on my door and literally had no option but to sigh, put the controller down, and accept that I was going to listen to my character die horribly in the background because real life stiff needs to be taken care of... That sucks, but that shouldn't also have to happen during single player.
It's funny because at first I was in the "allow pausing" side, but after the bit where you mention the bonfires I couldn't stop thinking about the feeling of "safeness" that bonfires gave me in my first playtrough of Dark Souls 1... I think that only for the feeling I once felt I wouldn't want the Dark Souls series to have a pause button. I feel the pause feature would hurt that feeling of safeness with the bonfires, altough I wouldn't mind if Demon Souls, Bloodborne and Elden Ring suddenly have a pause feature because I didn't felt that way with the bonfire equivalent of those games. Pd: Im trying to think this from the perspective of a first playtrough and not after playing a lot of souls. Pdd: Loved the video :)
I'm glad you made this video to actually break this down, & even showed examples of people not knowing what they're talking about. I was sick of the contradictory " you can't pause the game because of the online nature" argument being combined with " actually you can pause through the help menu " by the same people making the same argument.
Fun fact: Switch version of Dark Souls Remastered pauses itself after 1-2 seconds when you press Home Menu button or power/sleep while in handheld mode (from what I know, it's supposedly certification requirement for all Switch games); no idea how it interacts with online features since I never went online. And since my job requires me to quite often pick up a phone call at random times without any idea if it'll take 10s or few hours, having pause option in all games I play is basically a necessity. I always thought lack of intended pause button was there to encourage players to make sure they can give the game uninterrupted undivided attention - as sort of "don't play until you can secure enough time to get to next spot that doesn't require pause" similar to how some pure online games (shooters, MOBAs) tend to do. Development shortcut makes much more sense here.
A few additional points I see coming up in the comments-
- - -
Pausing in Sekiro is fine because that's a completely different kind of game.
This one doesn't register with me. Sure there are some gameplay differences, but I feel like this is a rationalization being made after the fact. If Sekiro didn't have a pause button, I believe that most of the people who are saying it's okay in Sekiro (but wouldn't welcome it in Elden Ring / Dark Souls) would be opposed to its hypothetical implementation there as well. It's just that in the end, having a pause button doesn't actually change the vibes or stakes all that much. They recognize it wasn't an issue in Sekiro, but rather than recognizing it's because adding a pause to these games overall just isn't a big deal, it's attributed to only being okay there because it's a different-enough game.
It's difficult to overstate how similar these games are. When Bloodborne came out, I remember people debating if it counted as a "Souls" game, with its differences being exaggerated to the point of acting like it was some fundamentally extremely-different game experience. Of course Sekiro is further off the path, but its differences from a Souls game/ Elden Ring are very specific in ways that don't really relate to the vibe/ tension of being able to pause. I'm just not convinced that the line we can draw between these games changes how most players would feel about pausing in them.
(With the sole caveat being that I don't want to be able to access the equipment and items menus in a paused Souls game in the same way that Sekiro allows. Wanting the pause to work a little differently makes sense to me)
- - -
I probably should've elaborated this on section #4 about bonfires -- I've seen a decent number of people saying being able to pause devalues finding bonfires. Because of this idea that you're really only safe until you find one. Here's why I don't think the impact of pausing really takes anything away from that:
Pausing doesn't achieve what resting at a bonfire does. Finding a bonfire isn't your moment to suddenly be free to pause the game and take a deep breath of relief. You're relieved because you finally got to a new respawn checkpoint, and it refilled your estus. Pausing doesn't provide the same kind of relief at all. In my opinion it also incorrectly frames bonfires as being the only moments of safety you have. It's not like you're being chased/ hunted by enemies constantly, and this will become apparent even if you're new to these games pretty quickly. There are countless opportunities to go AFK while away from a bonfire, the only wrinkle of concern being if there's some enemy patrolling that might find you. In playing through the Elden Ring DLC now, even in areas that are completely new to me where I don't have the enemy layouts memorized yet, being able to guess when I'm safe to put the controller down is quite easy and a pretty safe bet 99% of the time. I just don't think the ability to pause undermines the purpose of bonfires, or the relief felt when finding one.
Something that *overwhelmingly* trumps the effect that pausing may have is how spaced out your bonfires are and how hard you have to work to get to them. It was a big relief especially in older souls games to find bonfires not because of the lack of a pause, but because of the level design. Pausing is a drop in the bucket compared to how something like adding Stakes of Marika changes the vibe and tension of these games. Something that I don't think was all that controversial and was actually largely welcomed (though it may have its detractors still).
- - -
Another common response is that dying in these games isn't a big deal, so what's the matter? I think I've come so far out on the other end of this that I feel differently about its implication. Dying is absolutely not a big deal to me. I'll always tell new players to not feel like dying was a loss or defeat of some kind, and to just embrace it as part of the expected gameplay loop. It's a routine thing that I've always been very patient with in these games, so the hypothetical ability to pause isn't born out of fear from the idea that dying and having to play through a section of the game again would be some horrible thing to have happen. It's just that dying is routine/ mundane enough to me that dying from the lack of a pause doesn't heighten the challenge in an interesting way. Dying is not that big of deal, so what's one less death just because you were able to pause?
- - -
Lastly, this hasn't even come up in the comments yet but there's a tangential discussion to be had about photo mode in general and what it allows. The concerns about pausing being able to take away from the tension are most on-point to me when it comes to something like photomode. The key difference there is that it goes further than pausing the game and we're starting to talk about being able to move the camera a pretty good distance to look around corners! This is very understandably going a little too far and I'd agree with people who don't like the sound of being able to do that. However, photo mode is pretty sick, you know? I'd love if the rest of the Souls games had them too. The middle ground solution I've always pictured was to have it be a NG+ unlock. Make it so that once one of your characters beats the game, photo mode becomes enabled. Not only would that be the most valuable and kick-ass reward for beating these games that they've ever had, but it'd help encourage replay value. Saving it for players who are already familiar with the game would diminish concerns about using it to investigate threats, and it'd give you a really really fun tool to play with in NG+ or on your 2nd character.
I 100% believe that people would abuse the pause button for the simple reason of it being an effective way to regain your nerves during tense moments. I commented earlier with this point but people will either instictively or active pause when startled or truly heeby-jeebey'd.
Some of the most tense moments for me is having to push down the feeling of grossness and being uncomfortable with having worms spewed in my face and fighting back because pausing isnt an option.
It would be interesting to see what places in Sekrio people pause the most to get an idea of why people pause while playing. I have seen multiple of playthroughts where people pause when spooked
i guess i don't see the point in arguing whether or not they could or should. they did. i think the more interesting discussion is what they may have been trying to accomplish.
@@SmittyWerbenJag3rmanJenson Then make pausing less snappy. Put it in the menu rather than mapping it to a button. That way they can't just pause easily, but still have some kind of option.
@@SmittyWerbenJag3rmanJenson "Abusing the pause button" Come on man. No one in their right mind is playing a game and pausing everytime a challenge comes up to think of a strategy. Especially in a reactions-based game like this, if you pause the game during a combo to think what your next step is going to be, you are getting hit the moment you hit unpause.
There are so many ways to abuse/cheese these games, pausing is so far down the list that apparently the rest of the entire game industry didn't think it 100% abusable. The only games I can even think of where pausing the game is exploitable, excluding pausebuffering, is in old NES games where pausing the game would unload actors on screen
Good video, the onky thing I found missing was explaining how saved positions quit outs wouldn't quite be pauses either but would be closer. I feel like of it wasn't a passing DS2 mention you would've had a bit to say
>unpause the game after an hour
>hear 37 Bells of Awakening all playing at once
Deaf Souls: Perforate the Drum Edition
@@milesfp2001 and its still not going to be as loud as the walking mausoleums
You totally missed the idea of that they never want you to feel safe, and that’s Miyazakis intention. You really think he hasn’t thought about this?
@@bizzzzzzle i dunno bonfires make me feel pretty safe
This was all I thought about during that section. They should just let you un pause and have a ghost party I think that would be way more fun.
Any time I need to pause Elden Ring I simply uninstall the game and reinstall it on a brand new computer.
The way REAL MEN pause games
just as Miyazaki-san intended 🙏🏻
The fact that Elden Ring is the only one you can pause that I know of makes this so much better
That's how I used to reboot Windows.
This video is gonna save you A TON of time now
This guy broke into my house while I was fighting O&S and started putting my things into a bag. I said, "Can you just wait a minute? There's no pause button on this game and I'm almost done." As he was about to walk back out the door, he turned to me and said, "git gud, scrub" before disappearing into the night.
Can confirm, I was the robber, you sucked
HOUSE BURGLARIZED
I was with you, mostly, until the bathroom break point. If you aren’t willing to piss your pants mid Capra demon, maybe you just aren’t the real chosen undead
hell I do that for fun
Every true gamer has soiled their pants in Dark Souls at least once.
! SOILED !
Dark Souls Piss% speedrun
Who has ever had this problem? Like genuinly
True illusory wall fans didn't pause the video.
Oh no, what have I DOOOONEEEEEEEEEE!?!?
My kid knocked over some spaghetti-o’s so instead I had to close the UA-cam player.
I streamed it with a friend ngl, I deprived myself of its true and intended experience
You can't... its online duh
pausing the video to pee breaks the imersion fr
A funny thing about FromSoft and pausing games. Kings field the ancient city both pauses in the menu and has a dedicated pause button that just brings up a screen stating the game is paused. What im saying is kings field took all the pause budget from future titles by living large with 2 pauses
Some people seem disappointed about the ghosts not being live. They were never said to be live and, in fact, the loading screens and manuals written by Fromsoft claim they are memories of player actions in another world. Memories are in the past people.
Yea don’t know where anyone got the idea they were live
@@stu.chainz Sometimes (maybe in other games, idrk) and mainly around bonfires the ghosts seem to react to you, like wiggling their shield too. I believe it's another kind of spirit though (the coloured one). From that people might generalize for all of them being live.
As good as Elden Ring is, we have a ton of new players who absolutely refuse to pay attention to anything in the games.
I feel like people just have the dream of seeing a ghost, waving to it, and having the player on the other end be quick enough to wave back. Learning the ghosts are asynchronous means that dream was always impossible
One time I left Bloodborne open in the background while I did a bunch of chores, and when I picked it up to play again I saw my *own* player ghost for a few seconds. Same weapon, same outfit, standing perfectly still in exactly the same position. Shit was trippy as hell lol
i’ll bet you had trouble finding a remnant in sekiro that wasn’t just t-bagging or guard spamming lol
Oh my god I went through like 4 guard spamming messages first, lmao.
Working as intended!
Sekiro was definitely too easy because of pausing. I only needed to use 6 of my Jizo statues to beat ISS
@@TheIncognitiveyeah those one use extremely limited consumables that you don’t really start getting until NG+? Cool
@@TheIncognitive You can only use 2 at a time.
My biggest argument in favor of pausing in From Software games is and has always been that you can pause during ranked multiplayer and even\tournament matches in Age of Empires 2: DE (a real-time strategy game). Your opponent can un-pause without you, but the etiquette is that you are people and sometimes you really have to piss, your food just arrived, or your kid spilled their Spaghetti-O's and you'd like someone to treat you the same way. Even during active, time sensitive multiplayer it's more than feasible to allow pausing. It's not about easiness or "pandering to casuals", its accessibility for people who have anything else happening in their life besides Bloodborne even needing to suddenly use the bathroom during play where no other real humans are interacting with you.
I agree with the benefits of pause, but an "opponent can unpause" system in RTS games relies on there being a chat feature that can help judge intent and coordinate unpause timing and such.
Even in a game like Dota 2 with 10 players (i think it's that many) you're allowed to pause the game and it does it for everyone! They just have it on a limited usage kind of like calling timeout in american football.
illusory wall will take any opportunity to play the battletoads pause music
I'm just glad someone recognizes it, lol. I think this is the 3rd video its showed up in now, haha.
it's impossible to hear it without beatboxing along for at least a few notes
Well, it IS a bop
Perfectly warranted.
What are the other videos including it?
This video is the opposite of the “inventing someone to be mad at” twitter trap, because you mentioned a bunch of people’s arguments which I believed were mostly hypothetical, but then see every single one of these people appearing in the comments section, proudly repeating the exact lines they don’t know IW already wrote for them. Amazing.
then see them appearing in the comments...
can you begin to imagine how much I envy you
it's been years
A lot of the argument/disconnect has got to come from confusing "pause as a feature" and "opening inventory pauses the game."
and another big chunk of it comes from people confusing asynchronous online and live multiplayer connections
@@---cz7vs did you... watch the video?
@@champagnesupernova1839 skipped the intro where he brought it up for a few seconds lol
I've always thought that Nioh's pause mechanic would slot in fine to Souls games. Opening the menu doesn't pause the game but you can press another button to pause completely. It is disabled when in multiplayer, doesn't allow you to get any "unfair advantages" like easy equipment swaps or examining the area while it's paused, but gives the opportunity to leave the game without risking death or requiring a quit out.
The difference with Nioh is that online pvp only existed in the first game in a controlled environment from the lobby and it just outright doesn't exist in 2.
Some games even take this idea a step further. I can't recall what I'm thinking of exactly, but there are a handful of games that even allow you to pause in multiplayer, if everyone else in the session does so. Obviously, good luck getting invaders to pause, lol. But the point is they could even offer the pause in co-op if they really wanted to.
@@malpheus4299 How is that relvelant? Pausing is disabled during multiplayer in Nioh.
@@iamcitizen38 it's relevant because souls games have invasions, nioh doesn't.
@@malpheus4299 And the pause mechanic would be disabled when you get invaded, just like how the quit game option is disabled when you get invaded.
I am pretty sure the Elden Ring 'pause menu' is just another type of the Tutorial promts you get in first playthroughs.
These will have to pause the game as they pop up in normal combat to educate about mechanics. Not pausing the enemies around you would be terrible.
yeah, i'm sure this is it. I think you can't attribute too much intent to how the Menu Explanation dialog is implemented because it's probably just calling the same code as the dialogs that show up in e.g. the Cave of Knowledge, and the pausing was mostly meant to make that experience smoother
@@aritsunes Yeah I don't think it's really "intended" as a pause function, but also the point of the video was more to demonstrate "there's no technical reason why you can't pause because it already exists in-game", and it's the best demonstration since the other tutorial popups are one-time only while the menu explanation can be called on demand.
The prompt doesn't pause enemies around you during invasions and it doesn't need to stay there in the menus if it's a tutorial prompt, they intentionally left it there and coded around it so it'd work well with the multiplayer
@@CatCheshireThei pause in all these games by exiting to main menu i thought everyone did that😅
@@cdeo4l668 If you are needed irl when a boss is at 30% health, I don't think you would want to quit the game.
A while ago I saw one of my students watching your channel, and I said "hey, is it that Illusory Wall? I like him" and the student stopped the video, turned to me, and said "no."
Maybe adding pause to the games would allow a similar thing.
Why would he say "no"?
@@Spellweaver5 Teenagers, especially teenagers engaging with a screen, can be a bit uncooperative
Dang.
@@Spellweaver5 "Why is this old dude interested in the same thing as me? What a weirdo. Now he's trying to talk to me. Better act uninterested so he leaves me alone."
I would be delighted if my teacher was interested in the same stuff as i was.
Imagine being the guy trying to explain Fromsoft game mechanics to illusory wall. That's like 2 steps below doing that to Miyazaki himself
Lance McDonald, Sophie (and Sin), illusory wall... Who else belongs in the Behind-the-Scenes Knowledge of Soulsborne Pantheon?
@@chompythebeast Zullie the Witch probably
@@chompythebeastZulli the witch has definitely earned a spot.
@@bobertastic6541 Oh for sure, how could I forget Zullie!
miyazaki ain't a programmer
Doesn't add nothing to the video but my sister summoned me and after the fight she saw my ghost outside of messmer's arena and we lost our minds, it was super neat to see :) hope you all have a great day!!!
In the less populated areas of DS2 you can see your own ghost at the bonfires. It's rly cool
@@CallN0w damn.
i love comments like this. in this sea of toxicity you are an essential organism
@@kayeskibbler647 glad you liked it :)
It's so good to see someone with a head on their shoulder. I wasn't aware of how the online features worked behind the scene, so that settles my own 'but online features' defence.
the rabdomized delay on the bell rings in ds1 is probably there to lower the chance of the sound effect playing on top of each other
when multipile people would ring it at the same time
I've wondered if it was that, to help prevent like a phasing of sorts if a few were rang at nearly the same moment.
Just adding random shifts would do nothing to prevent overlap, you'd have to calculate the shifts precisely.
@@AlexanderShamov its doesn't do nothing, it's not a 100% guaranteed solution but it does reduce the amount of overlap
@@irgendwer3610 Basic fact from probability theory: If you add independent identically distributed random variables to every point of a Poisson process, the result is still a Poisson process.
This has me thinking, there's GOT to be some people who thinking being unable to LOOK at the map because a hollow half a mile away hidden behind a rock is targeting you is actually super deep symbolism that is crucial to the game's story.
lol. If I had to choose between a dedicated pause and letting me look at the map whenever, I'm choosing the map!
@@illusorywall hard same! especially when it's a golem archer or furnace golem a million yards away that's still &!%@&% aggroed
i assume it's something like he said in this video, was just an easy way for the devs to not allow fast travel during combat, rather than specific design choice to not allow looking at map during combat
@@Alexander-xr8tr what's funny is that they already have a fast travel blocking system while exploring uncleared caves and catacombs, that still lets you see the map. Wish they implemented the same system while in combat.
@@Alexander-xr8tr Yeah, it's just hyper, hyper annoying. The extreme aggro range of the golem archers has been sore point for me ever since base game, really.
I adore these games, but with Crohn's disease, there are moments where I abruptly need to use the bathroom under a short notice. Pausing would be a nice quality of life when I am in the middle a boss fight.
just over the course of playing the Elden Ring DLC, I got 2 calls that required me to get up and have the doorbell ring once, while fighting bosses.
So, yes, having a pause button for that would be nice instead of being forced to quit out.
People who insist on "taking the L" and trying again are OK with Bad Game Design, apparently. Since the game punishes you for real life issues you have no control over and need to prioritize. So much for expert game design lmao
And that's why on my 5th or so attempt at playing through elden ring, I installed
Well
The pause mod. You press a key and everything pauses. You can still interact with menus but that's about it.
My daily life is filled with dozens of times I have to pause games or videos I'm watching, so having the ability to pause the game has been invaluable.
Of course any of the online aspects aren't a concern because the mods I use don't allow online play, but none of the online mechanics actually appeal to me.
Cry some more about it.
@@PhukPKummings The lack of self-awareness in why people hate parts of this community is astounding.
@yetanotherhankhill1032 what's really astounding to me is the amount of bitching, pissing and screeching auts who think too highly of themselves believe they're entitled to whatever they want to change, acting like they have any say or knowledge into what makes good or bad game design is, truly baffles me. It's like yall just enjoy making something out of nothing for absolutely no good reason and contribute nothing to anything other than bad takes, crying and thinking you know better at something than someone who actually does it for a living. The audacity defies logic!
Yooo that bit about the ds1 bell ringing for you when other players ring it is so cool! I thought it was just on a timer or something more simple like that.
it was really satisfying to help someone through the gargoyles and hear the bell when you got back to your own world
One of my favorite bits of asynchronous multiplayer action in the games. To use another big word, I love the ludonarrative resonance it gives. Makes the desolate game feel that much cozier and populated, too
@@IliumGaming That sounds awesome. I have to go back and help someone now 😁
@@chompythebeast I haven't fully watched this video yet, but I would argue against a pause function for this reason. Pausing completely breaks immersion in a franchise that loves and arguably demands it from the player
@@GusJenkinsEliteYou can't convince me that being able to pause the game would be more detrimental to immersion than enemies having health bars, damage numbers appearing when you hit them, the lock-on icon, the reticle when using a bow, the dozens of menus you spend your time in, all with arbitrary numbers, the loading screens.
The King's Field and Shadow Tower games are arguably more immersive than the Soulsborne games could ever hope to be, and you _can_ pause in those series.
I imagine a pause menu in these games could work like in Kingdom Hearts. If you’re not in combat, pausing allows you to access the menu and all things available. If you are in combat, pausing simply brings up a screen that literally says “Paused.” I know someone will argue that this defeats the point of being able to swap equipment, so just make two pauses, the inventory pause and the pause pause. One allows you to change equipment but keeps the game live, the other actually pauses the game but only allows you to resume, change options, or quit and is accessible by a button within the inventory.
KH's pause would probably the most "in spirit" for a Soulslike. You're locked in on your equipment choices for the fight, but can still avoid dying if you sneeze. Pausing doesn't make fighting Mysterious Figure as Terra any easier, so seems fair to me!
Opening map in combat pauses the game. Best thing I can think of. It should lock you from interacting with anything, but you should still be able to look around and breathe
Personally I wouldn't mind if From implemented a pause feature like this, but I have a feeling a lot of PvP players, speed- and challenge runners would be up in arms. Hardswapping can be very important and being unable to access your equip menu in a fight would kill that.
@@Nostradankus I play pvp a lot and, honestly, I don't think you should be able to switch equipment on the fly. This basically skirts a crucial game mechanic, weight and burden, and allows you to have any weapon available to you at any time. It's kinda stupid. If you want a secondary weapon you *should* have to waste levels on endurance so your weight limit is higher.
@@Nostradankus not commiting to a build mid fight sounds like a cowards way of saying "I'm skillful" or the game is badly balanced for mp that you need to pull a switcheroo mid fight just not to get "countered".
The thing thats even worse about that #4 point is that (unless they fixed this) there are certain sites of grace where enemies can literally still notice and attack you out of it. Its not even a pause button, so we'd STILL like a pause button there.
Nah I’m not gonna get ratioed like that because u bots are too stupid to realise what I was talking about. Go use ur crutch pause button and live with the fact that you’ll never accomplish anything in these games.
You're in an unfamiliar environment, you chose to rest there instead of warping to a familiar place or closing the game.
Sure it's a little unfair but that's a running theme with the souls games.
@@pineappleudh6561 Except that doesn't add anything meaningful to the game. It's just straight up inconvenience. It's not hard to warp to somewhere else, but who the fuck wants to sit through multiple loading screens every time they want to look away from the game.
@@lIlIlIlIllIl if an enemy is suddenly attacking you, you cant open the map to teleport. you need to kill everyone hostile around or flee to an empty place
something one should know before saying shit like this
@@pineappleudh6561
Not even survival horror games are dumb or cruel enough the let dangers into the safe houses, because they're meant to be safe. Even if a Licker, Tyrant, or Ganado is outside the door, it'll wait nicely outside, or fuck off for a bit. Bonfires that mess that up are mistakes, not intentionally trying to be unfair, which isn't the mission statement of Souls games (even if FROM messes that up a lot in every entry.)
I don't think the game should be paused in the inventory, mostly because I find shuffling through menus while in combat to be a pretty fun and tense experience. However, I do think that the game should be paused in the settings menu, there is no reason I should be getting shot by skeletal archers while messing with the audio settings
How often are you messing with audio settings beyond the first time loading into the game?
@@papabaddadyeah lol
@@papabaddad that's just one example, from managing graphics setting to adjusting controls.
@@aryabratsahoo7474Why would anyone wait to do these things until they were in combat?
This is a non issue. If I have a issue with graphics, movement, or audio settings I'm changing that at the grace
I have a new baby and never really cared about pausing before, just die and try again, but this new dad life has me thinking it sure would be cool to be able to pause every now and then 😅
To be clear you do know that you can technically pause in Elden Ring right? I haven’t watched that much of the video so idk if he goes over that but entering tutorial mode pauses the game. I’m pretty sure you just press some button on the map screen and it’ll open up a help box that does a true pause as a side effect. Of course that is still a shitty option as I’m just remembering you can’t open map in combat but 90% of the time it’s very feasible to just quick kill everyone around you to get the map back. But at that point just afk-ing is nearly just as safe, I afk all the time and have yet to be killed very few enemies actually patrol they just kinda chill entirely motionless until you get near, a bit weird now that I think about it lol
Unless I’m mistaken, hopefully not
@@monhi64 you can just setup a macro for the pause button if you want it
@@repriat6846 presumably that’s PC only? I’m locked into ps5 at the moment
@@monhi64 the menu help is on every menu screen, not only the map. and you can pause everywhere dlc boss arenas included (personally I do it from the equipment screen :) )
it's kinda hilarious how cocky and confident they are explaining how you can't pause for code reasons and whatnot while they are literally apparently wrong
@alex-qn5xp huh? Well because they're wrong while treating people like they're stupid for thinking otherwise..?
@@alex-qn5xpme when i don't watch the video at all
Yea! Not saying net code is the easiest thing in the world, but if the pvp can work "fine enough" then a synchronized pause feature seems like an easy thing to implement.
@@alex-qn5xp no ofc not he's great :)
They are ignorant jackasses parroting bullshit from someone who has 0 idea what they are talking about over and over
When yuvi was setting up the demons souls private server there was an option between live player ghost and legacy player ghost.
The difference seemed to be that the legacy would replay ghosts from long ago and play them in a loop so if you waited youd see the ghosts start repeating.
The live player ghost i assume was just one of the most recent 8second chunks recorded and sent to you by any other player currently in game and in your "zone"
Ive been curious about ghosts forever. I only know ^ abt the des ghosts but i wish i could learn exactly how they work in each game.
I love how ds1 has ghosts and then switches to actual 1 to 1 player models when the ghost is at a bonfire
Only true dark souls veterans know that if you’re sitting at a bonfire, you can still get invaded
Only in Dark Souls 1! Well, also in Dark Souls 2 (and maybe 3?) if it's within your first few seconds of sitting a bonfire, but the later games do have bonfires disable invasions if they aren't already pending.
Though to be totally honest I haven't yet checked what happens when using a Taunter's Tongue in Elden Ring and then immediately sitting at a Site of Grace...
I think a lot of people understand that there is a certain jank and lack of polish in parts of FromSoft’s games, especially their older ones. But in specific discussions people will still tend to assume every weird thing about Demon’s Souls or Dark Souls was some kind of deliberate artistic choice even when it’s a weird thing that could also be explained by time constraints or lack of polish
Totally, I think some people are so concerned with getting the best, most pure version of "the designer's intent" that they forget designers are human beings who don't always make the best possible decision, and also that... taking into account people who are stumbling into the game new, or don't find everything, or don't "get" everything, is usually part of "the intent" too. Developers generally just want you to have a good overall experience! VERY few of them actually sit up at night worrying that people didn't enjoy their game right!
I'd say the main argument against that would be that happening once, that makes sense, but when they choose to keep it in subsequent games, it's more likely a design choice. The same way that them making pausing available in newer games is also a choice.
@@184SwitchI’d say it’s more that FromSoft saw they could get away with it so they decided to roll with it. Kinda like how the Dark souls games and Bloodborne didn’t have mouth movements for NPC’s.
All art exists outside of their creators, the moment it leaves their hands the audience contributes something to it in their interpretation of it.
It doesn't really matter if what they put in there was intentional or not, what matters is that it's there, and it makes you feel a certain way.
Yeah characters don't move their mouths when they talk and From probably would've wanted them to do so, but the games as they are make something of it. To me, it contributes to the bizarre, almost dream like atmosphere of the series. To others, it might make them think of low budged or retro game vibes. There's value in that too, and you can make of it whatever you want.
The lack of pause is the same. I, at least, like these games for what they *are*, not whatever they were supposed to be or not.
Any given piece of appreciated art is an idea, and then a sequence of happy accidents. It doesn't change the experience the audience ends up having, once it's in their hands it's theirs to enjoy and interpret. So it doesn't change anything whether it was intentional or not (which none of us likely will never know regardless), if you feel the inability to pause added to the immersion of the game then that's all that matters and indeed vice versa. If you feel the limited audio systems in the old games ended up creating an interesting atmosphere, if you feel that the bass boosted voice of that fire merchant guy gave that character a charm, if the confusing gravelord message only peeked curiosity and not frustration, all this kind of stuff, it's all just as valid no matter if any of these were unintended. The developers created a game, that game and the experience it ended up becoming now belongs to the players and those same players have had an experience they enjoyed and hope to see again, that's it.
I was going to comment something about #6 but you went over it riiight at the end. When family calls for my help or the cat jumps on top of the keyboard, my immersion is already broken long, long before the pause button does it. I want it purely and exclusively because real life HAPPENS while I'm playing, and the game should never be the 1st priority when it does. I'd like the developers to recognize and respect that fact!
Exactly
I've never been able to buy the idea that it would ruin the vibe of Souls to be able to pause cause that just... isn't true for any other game. Being able to pause in King's Field, in Baroque, in Silent Hill, in Shadow of the Colossus, any number of games with amazing atmosphere didn't ruin them
That's exactly how I feel. It really only breaks immersion if you go out of your way to pause a lot for no reason. It's also interesting to me the amount of people insisting it's okay in Sekiro on the grounds that it's a different kind of game. The idea that somehow, it's different enough where a pause isn't unwelcome there but it would be in Dark Souls is hard for me to grasp (outside of the menuing it allows, of course).
@@illusorywall The only REAL difference between Sekiro and Dark Souls is that you can't change your stats and there's no multiplayer. So the argument comes full circle around to "it will ruin the multiplayer which is integral to the game."
These are probably the same people who say it's my fault that I'm getting invaded in Darkroot and Oolacile because I had the audacity to want to try fighting the bosses in unhollowed. Obviously because I am playing the game, I am agreeing to their very specific desire to invade in the area of the game where invasions are easiest and most profitable.
Because these games don't have a mechanic where when you die you can lose your xp and currency.
@@illusorywallto touch on the Sekiro comparison, I do think the games are very different thematically, and I think not bring and to pause contributes in a serious way to the idea of an oppressively hostile world where you can't ever be safe, where Sekiro is considerably less apocalyptic.
I'm having trouble explaining my thoughts but the tldr is I think being unable to pause in dark souls meaningfully contributes to the mood
@@OtakuUnitedStudioYes you are agreeing to be invaded to fight bosses unhollowed... That allows you to summon an NPC for bosses which makes them easier, so to balance that out it's harder to get to the boss.
That's how the game works... If you don't like it play a different game. This whole comment section sounds like vegans trying to force veganism on other people.
If you don't like it then play a different game that allows you to pause, play a game where you can't get invaded, don't try and change mechanics that have been in the game for over a decade and hasn't been an issue till now...
Quitouts are insanely broken, i remember getting black world tendency on 4-1 and Katsuki & red enemies didn't allow me to even play, so i managed to pass them by contantly performing quitouts.
quitouts make souls game speedruns unwatchable
you know someone doesnt know jackshit about the game and its "immersion" or difficulty when they suggest quitting out as pause.
anyone that watched a speedrunner video knows that's literally a get-out-of-jail-free card. you can run straight through the most difficult areas with a quick reset button
@@gamongames totally agreed, that's a thing dark souls 2 did well, in addition to no s during some animations like fog gates or opening doors, a lot of people complained about this but I believe it was they right call. Sadly the implemented immortality in those animations in further games
@@papabaddadi wish no quit-out speed runs were more popular, most of the runs are loading screen watching sessions.
@@gamongames When most people say "quit out to pause," they're basically admitting that the only reason they would stop playing the game at all is because they're done playing for the time being, and not just taking a few seconds or minutes to take care of something. But on the other hand, speedrunners aren't people who (at least during a speedrun) engage with the world or try to immerse themselves. They want to beat the game as fast as possible rather than actually delve into it.
All that said, the immersion absolutely is broken by quitting to menu. I don't understand how that's supposed to maintain the illusion of the reality of the setting.
The best part is those guys will still be arguing in the Twitter comments about why you can’t pause in an online video game after this video is out
Well you can't though as he literally just explained. If you have all these exceptions for when someone is actually in your game you're not pausing in an online game. You don't have that ability to pause if an invader is in your game so why is that any less important than pausing on a boss? If a child crisis comes up you still die to the invader and go back to the bonfire all the same.
Just don't go to twitter lol
Only the most braindead takes go there.
@@SM-nz9ff so, why bother improving experience in scenario A if you can't improve the experience in an unrelated scenario B due to technical limitations? Is that your point?
@@SM-nz9ffSemantics
@@SM-nz9ff Why should you eat food when children in Africa are starving? In the end it's all the same so you might as well starve too, right?
One reason that the “Menu Explanations” might have the pause effect is because it’s a sort of tutorial. During regular gameplay, you’ll occasionally get pop-ups that explain things, especially in regards to the multiplayer. These pop-ups pause the game while they’re open, leading me to believe that the “Menu Explanations” button was at some point one of these pop-ups but was moved to a reusable button that never lost its pausing behavior.
Just make it so that when you pause you can't enter your inventory. Simple.
I don't get why people think pausing makes the game easier or anything like that, if a boss is about to hit me with a grab then a pause isn't gonna let me get out of it. Even if I use it to get some breathing room, I'm still in the fight, if a boss is about to hit me or I'm stuck chugging estus, I'm still gonna get hit or be stuck chugging.
The game can still play without pausing when you enter your inventory, you can still do the risky gambling of entering your inventory in a boss fight and risk getting hit, hell you don't have to use it at all. Its legit just an optional button press, your playthrough is yours and it can be easily disabled if you ever access coop
>talks about pause buffering
Oh hey, that thing Ryukahr does when playing Mario Maker.
>shows Ryukahr pause buffering
Bruh. Not the crossover I expected to see, lol
@@xSilentZeroXx It's hilarious that people think that can even be remotely applied to fromsoft games
Tried out against Balteus
Spoiler alert: It didn't go so well
still can’t get over someone calling you a “From Software tourist” for explaining that a pause button would work fine in game lol
Dude I just got ripped to shreds a couple months ago too for saying I wish there was a proper pause, even did the whole “at least let me pause offline thing” and gave similar explanations why it should work. And of course they gave the same shitty non explanations for why it’s impossible and made sure to toss in a million insults even though I was chill. There’s definitely a reason why I saw a “games with the worst fanbases” post and Elden Ring topped the list, so many of us are the worst
@@monhi64 Tryhards being proud of being good at a game designed to be beaten is so sad.
Another problem with the "just quit out" method is that you have to sit through all of the logos and the game connecting to the multiplayer server, the latter of which takes ages when playing Demon's Souls on PS3, despite the servers being shut down years ago.
Well duh no fucking shit that an older game is gonna take longer to pause, tf u want them to do go back and add it 😂 It’s 2024 lmao
@@lIlIlIlIllIl Reread my comment. I'm not saying they should bend over backwards to add the pause button to DeS. I'm stating another downside to the quit-out method of "pausing".
I really wish they would bring back the feature they had in the Original Demon's where you could directly load a character while in game, instead of returning to main menu and then loading
@@lIlIlIlIllIlLearn to read.
Shoutout to the shambling corpse who will roam over and attack you while resting at the first site of grace in Shaded Castle. I did not learn from my mistake there and in a later playthrough in that same dungeon I tried to afk on the ladder up out of the first part of the dungeon and an enemy likewise roamed over and killed me there too.
Edit: Lavender Rex's video on DS1 has its own bit of a defense for Capra Demon so definitely take a look at that.
Yeah i got attacked by the zombies at the first bonfire of shaded castle but thankfully i saw it and didn't unalive there.
One point most are missing is - think of all the funny moments you'd see when someone panic pauses right before they get hit/caught by something.
Am I the only one to REALLY like the sound Demon's Souls makes when you enter photo mode? That THUNK is just audio candy.
Demon Souls Remake has some of the most satisfying sound effects. I wish it was ported to PC or someone made sfx replacer for ER or DS3.
@@aryabratsahoo7474 yeah the parry sound effect is so satisfying its like a shotgun blast
Satisfying menu sounds really makes a difference. Old monster hunter menu sounds were so good
they went so hard on the sound design in the remake
Forget pausing where is photo mode? Its 2024 and we still have to pull CE for freecam and decent screenshots.
Photo mode would be so welcome in these games! I've always felt that if From was worried about the "vibe" of it, eg not wanting you to be able to pause boss fights the first time you see them to be able to take closer looks at them, or look around corners for threats, etc, then my solution was always to make it be a NG+ / game-cleared unlock. Then you don't have to worry about players "being taken out of the gameplay experience" or whatever concerns you may have, if it's used by players already familiar with the game. Plus that would be the best unlock these games have ever had and would add a lot to the replay value.
@@illusorywall Ooh, I was about to object to this idea since I think the vibe is really enhanced by the 3rd person view, it keeps us grounded and unable to get a perfect view of everything, but as a NG+ feature I think it'd be great. Just allows us to get a closer look at everything after we've been through the experience once as intended :)
I would love to be able to take a closer look at a lot of the bosses that move really erratically. There’s so many that I don’t really know what they look like up close because if I took the time to check I’d die
The amount of content creators who are banned because of freecam is astonishing
I’ve always praised FromSoft for not taking control of the camera away except in boss introductions and the rare teleport transition… but now I’m wondering if their camera code is just jank or they just don’t want to bother, lol
I think the final argument was the most sensible. But really the whole argument really only exists for people to bicker about it on Twitter.
A note about Elden Ring's "menu explanation" pause trick. You can still be summoned as a blue, which scared the crap out of me during a bathroom break.
This does mean that, without deactivating that ring, it's actually not safe to leave the game "paused" this way for a long time, because you (presumably?) wouldn't be paused after loading back into your own world.
I wish they had a ring for coop and invasions
Also another point about the bonfires if you rest at one you can still be invaded while sitting at a bonfire it just forces you out of resting.
It did force you off of bonfires in Dark Souls 1, though later titles changed this and had it block invasions. Although honestly I haven't yet tested using the Taunter's Tongue and then immediately resting at a Site of Grace in Elden Ring...
@@illusorywall interesting.
@@illusorywall I remember trying to kindle the first bonfire down in Tomb of the Giants and midway through that process I was either kicked out or locked out of interacting because someone with the sunlight maggot helmet had invaded me lol
This video is a breath of fresh air. Thank you so much for making it. I hope the audience that needs to hear this listens... I doubt they will
alt+F4 is my pause atm, but I could go for better. I'm a lone adult with adult responsibilities and a pause button would be such a quality of life change in the rare occasions I need it. Since this renewed controversy I've been saying 'put it on the map'. Nobody has any use for time progressing while in the map, it covers the whole screen, and just disallow teleportation in combat. If you think placing a waypoint while in combat is cheese in any way, shape or form, I'm currently in your walls and I'm coming out while you sleep.
To add to point 6: The reason I need to pause already breaks my immersion and finding my pause button in ER is just tedium. When my door bell or phone rings, my immersion is already gone. Just give me my instant button so I don't need to struggle through a menu and miss my package (skill issue, I know, but missing my package isn't part of the gameplay. A toddler climbing a counter and falling off isn't part of the gameplay, unless you can show me part of the code or design document that intentionally handicaps parents)
Lastly, you don't need this pause button as you said in chapter "My thoughts on the following objections". That you advocate for them regardless is a class move. If we happen to run into each other, I'll buy you a drink
> I'm a lone adult with adult responsibilities and a pause button would be such a quality of life change in the rare occasions I need it
This is such an important point. Sometimes you get a call, the door bell rings or whatever and it's entirely out of your control. The ability to interrupt a game quickly and cleanly is really important and maintains immersion better than anything else, and I always wished for this over my hundreds of hours of combined playtime in souls-games.
I know it's kind of an Ad Hominem, but I imagine most people advocating against pausing are people whose only interruptions is their parent coming into their room.
I've had to use quit out a few times recently in Elden Ring, to answer my phone or to use the bathroom. It's not the end of the world but frankly that's much more immersive breaking than it would be simply to let me pause the game, since I now have to load back into the game and possibly restart a whole boss fight. I also feel that a lot of these arguments aren't made in good faith, if someone wants to make the game easier for themselves, the games already have that in spades, you can get extra levels or summon help to name a few. If you're against accessibility or quality of life features, I think that says more about you than anything else.
Yeah I'd say the only one that doesn't let you adjust the difficulty down (by overleveling or finding better weapons or upgrading your weapon or finding better spells or summoning help) is Sekiro. And that one lets you pause.
Monster Hunter already kinda solved this. When you're playing solo, there's a dedicated "Pause" menu option that you scroll to. You press it, and the game stops with a big "Paused" over the game and you can go do whatever. This stops people from being able to do stuff in the menu while the game is paused, but still lets people pause the game when you need to do something.
Exactly, this is the perfect solution for Souls games and I think it's frankly silly that there's even any disagreement about this. Allowing players to stop the game so they can pee, but NOT allowing them to access their inventory while paused, is the best of both worlds. Resident Evil 7 also had this feature.
@QuintessentialWalrus I feel like the ppl pushing hard against pausing have never played a video game other than Souls games in their lives. There is no way they can't imagine how pausing could work in Souls/Elden Ring. Video games have had this figured out for decades, it really isn't complicated.
@BurnItDown11 I think you're straw manning a little too hard there. It's not that it wouldn't work. It would work fine, especially if you are offline, or otherwise non-interactable by other players. It's that there are larger discussions about game design, artistic vision, and the synergy between game mechanics and creating an intended gameplay experience. As shown in the video, you can technically pause while offline using the help menu. But the game obviously isn't incentivising you using it as a dedicated pause button, otherwise they would have added a dedicated pause button. They didn't want to give that to players, even though they had the time and know-how. Why not? Because it's important for FromSoft's vision of the game to NOT have a dedicated pause feature.
@christopherealy8025 Not pausing being an important part of the vision seems like a weird hill to die on. Even ppl that make this argument aren't willing to claim ER is successfully because of not pausing. That's what makes this discourse and the defenders of the status quo so unserious.
I love ER but not pausing is at best something I tolerate. I'm not even that passionate about adding pausing it's just strange that ppl that push back against it have to resort to grandizing this aspect of ER as if it's in anyway a major part of the whole. I agree not adding pausing is intentional, they've done it this way consistently for over a decade with SOME exceptions that it had to be. But that doesn't mean it's a good intention or that's it instrumental to the whole that is these games.
And From has added QoL things to ER post launch like NPCs locations on the map, or even with the DLC a recent items tab, so clearly they dont hold the idea that art has to be stagnant. Art can evolve.
@@christopherealy8025 Where's the official statement from Miyazaki that not pausing is part of the experience?
I like that you brought up that the community is basically assuming that the lack of pause was 100% intentional game design for all the reasons it’s proponents ascribe to it, when in reality it was more than likely a path of least resistance choice that was minimally considered. So many arguments based on conjecture.
Yeah. The lack of ability to pause in multiplayer games - even the most casual of them - is the norm, because it's the path of least resistance. Some elements probably were intentional, like the game not pausing when you're in your inventory. But the lack of ability to pause at all was almost certainly just a byproduct of a small studio making an incredibly complex set of online features, when online games were first hitting their stride.
In reality, arguing that the lack of any pause was intentional for the sake of difficulty or immersion, is basically the same as people arguing that the tank controls in early Resident Evil were intentionally clunky for the sake of elevating the horror. Elements of design can easily work in harmony and elevate each other by accident. It's a nice sentiment to assume they knew exactly how to make clunky fixed camera controls that elevated the experience. It's a more realistic sentiment to acknowledge that they were probably just in the same boat as games like Tomb Raider, lost in the ocean of confusion that came with creating fully 3D games.
While I hate using the word, that's just pure fanboyism. In most creative works, no matter how great, not 100% of things are intentional. Everyone makes mistakes and everyone can take the easy compromised solution because you gotta move on with your project and just don't have the time to iron these things out.
It is intentional. Pause is not a new or rare feature, and is an obvious addition if the game would reasonably benefit. The reason people are asses about it is because it's the equivalent of saying that NASA "minimally considered" the earth was flat. Very few people know the full scope of reasons why there isn't a pause, but there are definite reasons. Best to leave it to them and not make clickbait out of it.
@@cykes5124 gotta milk that content bro, this kind of topic attracted a lot of people and made them debate in the comments section. Its all about algorithms
@cykes5124
You forget that Fromsoftware are pretty bad programmers who fuck up like half the mechanics in any given game. The lack of a pause feature could just as easily be explained as the programmers at Fromsoft not being confident with where and how to implement it seeing as the in-game menu for these games isn't very traditionally designed.
And that comparison to NASA is bullshit, video game programmers are nowhere close to that level educated and way more flawed than you want to admit.
Honestly I was against the idea and this did convince me, mostly because I thought it would have to ONLY work during offline mode which would encourage many players to play offline.
Glad to see there's much more elegant solutions to that!
The prominence of DeS in this video has really turned up my craving for the remainder of your compare-through 👀
I always assumed the game downloaded up-to-date ghosts, bloodstains, messages, etc. on startup and only reconnected when the player wanted to do actual multiplayer. That was probably just cope for the long wait times :c
Ah so it's not just on startup, it pulls that stuff repeatedly while you're playing. Things are on timers and it tries to send/ receive stuff every now and again.
Have you never seen messages disappear/appear in front of you? They phase in and out for me all the time
I have had my mind changed. I was initially against pausing, and I think I still am fundamentally against it on like a theoretical level for the preservation of tension.
However, if implemented correctly it will have no real effect on tension. The only exception would be like deciding in the middle of a level to pause and take a break, I do think that would be the worst way pausing could hinder the intended experience, but then again quitting out does the same thing to a more immersion breaking level.
People aren’t pausing because they WANT to disrupt the flow of the game, they’re pausing because their playing was disrupted by something else.
Dying as a result of something external to the game is much more immersion breaking than pausing, dealing with whatever it was and then jumping right back into the level or encounter.
That is a very well explained point. The pause isn't to break immersion. It's because it was already broken.
People seem to also think everyone can control their circumstances 99% of the time, and you are expected to never be able to be interrupted when playing. Like sometimes crap happens. 🤷♂️
I don't really care to much either way if the game can be paused or not. I just find most of the arguments to be silly.
Miyazaki intended for you to beat the bosses while your toddler kocked their Fruit loops on the floor and your dog is howling at the neighbours. If you can't get past that, did you REALLY beat dark souls ?
This reminds me of the mid 1800's controversy when bookmarks were invented "What? You want to put down Pride and Prejudice mid chapter like a filthy casual?". And the less is said about the DVD chapter select riots, the better.
Wait! Was there ever really a controversy with bookmarks?? I really hope that's true, lol.
@@illusorywall sadly, I made it up for the joke, but it wouldn't surprise me if some silliness like that actually happened in the past.
There was some actual controversy from teachers when erasers started appearing on pencils, because they thought it would remove the punishment for the wrong answer.
@@neon_pixels Didn't Socrates get upset at people writing things instead of commiting things to memory? "you filthy casual, stop having fun" is a universal experience.
one small caveat whilst i am watching this video: resting at a bonfire whilst embered did not save you from Invasions in Dark Souls 3. I can absolutely confirm this as someone who spent far too much time playing pvp in that game.
Another freaking wonderful upload. You've made great counterpoints / reasons for pausing. You've managed to sincerely change my opinion and be in favour of it
22:54 yes, defend that interesting experiment of a boss. he wasn't the best, but he tried something different in arena and enemy composition design as compared to yet another massive circle with a single humanoid boss in it.
DEFENSE OF THE CAPRA DEMON❗❗❗❗🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Hell yeah
I'm a firefighter/first responder and having a pause button in a game is always a welcome addition since it lets me hit a button and dash when the pager goes off then come back to it later as if nothing happened. Think many people who want a pause button are like this, its for when a genuine reason that needs immediate attention comes up and you want to be able to drop back in right where you are
Saying there's no need for a pause button is really easy when you don't have real life responsibilities.
I actually thought ghosts were synchronous. I kinda feel like a kid who just found out Santa isn't real
Wait, what's this about Santa??
I used to raise that 100%-false "it wouldn't work with their online system" objection (as recently as yesterday) - not because it made sense to me, but because it _didn't_ make sense to me that Fromsoft wouldn't have implemented a pause button by now if it were technically possible
Thank you for making this! I am so sick and tired of trying to explain this to people
I've been playing since Demon's Souls and I've never really even thought about it, except that in order to stop my game I had to quit out, since I couldn't pause.
If they added an official pause, I think that'd be great but I also don't care that they haven't.
That's pretty much where I was at. Never really minded the lack of a pause that much, but seeing the arguments against it had me disagreeing with them.
@@illusorywall agreed, most of this discourse came off to me as extremely redundant and as sexist gamers taking the opportunity to shit on a woman for an optically bad take, despite how normal the take was
@@illusorywall I was skimming between videos and comments, so i am sorry if you cover this but i always thought they don't let you pause so you can't cheese bosses by pausing to time attacks and such which I've done in some games although I guess they could just make so you can't pause in bosses.
To me it would just be pure convenience, not needing to quit out for the occasional bathroom emergency. I feel like a lot of coffee drinkers can relate there.
@@suicune266 for me I thought it was about switching items. You can't switch gear in sekiro and AC6 so it doesnt matter. But in souls you could pause, swap to a different weapon and then unpause.
You could just disable weapon swapping during combat (souls already has this feature if you try to swap mid-attack) but having no pause allows people to still switch weapons mid fight but it takes skill and risk.
It could pause in settings menu without pausing in equipment menu too.
Warframe is an online game. But if you're playing without any party member, pressing escape pauses the game even though online functions like guild and chat are still working. But does nothing when you're playing with other people
Explicitly only if you are playing in solo mode though, not if you queue outside solo but just happen to be in a mission alone. Rip me thinking I can pause when I actually can't sometimes.
@@malpheus4299holy shit, that explains why it never seems to work. I typically use invite-only as a replacement for solo
Only Illusory Wall can make me watch and enjoy a video about a topic I'm 100% indifferent about.
7:00 so you’re paused but the NPC’s are still moving from breathing? How does that work, shouldn’t they be static?
Ah, I wasn't paused in that moment. Right before, I was paused and they weren't moving. Free cam has you cycle through 1) game is paused and you control the camera, 2) game is unpaused but you're still controlling the camera and not the player, 3) camera is locked wherever you left it but you're in control of the player again, 4) free cam turns off and things are back to normal. What you saw was me cycling back out of freecam from step 1. :)
@@illusorywall I don't know if you've ever addressed this, but are you ever going to do Sekiro dissected? I'm not sure what topics you could make videos of in this game aside from ones you have already done for previous games. But if you can find some topic to make a video about or are ok with doing another map layout or out of bounds video etc., then please do. It's one of my favorite fromsoft games.
@@user-tw1pm6nr5eplease this
Really the big issue that people have with pausing I don't think is about pausing at all. People are afraid of the idea that players will demand changes to the game to suit their personal desires, and are terrified that From Software will listen to them and start making those changes. It's not the pausing, but if they start to buckle to pressure from players who want changes, it's anything else that might come along with it.
I think this is why nobody cares about Sekiro, and why nobody really cares that you can pause in Elden Ring by going into menus. It's not about pausing, it's about a fear that they will start chaging the game to cater to people who want it to be different. In a new game, a pause feature won't be something people really care about. But people complaining about the lack of a pause feature, and From going back and introducing it after the fact, I think that's what people are afraid of, and again, not because of the pause feature itself, but because of what else people have demanded.
It feels safe knowing that generally things don't change. Sure there's balance changes here and there, but there's nothing fundamental that changes.
I've always wondered if the people against pausing have never had obligations at home. My family is always asking me to do stuff on a whim, they always have, it's life; I just thought this experience was more universal, but apparently not.
I don't really like having to wait all day until nighttime in order to be able to play a game because I can't be interrupted during it.
I just started playing elden ring, and I just finished dark souls 1.. I have to say, elden ring is very "kind" to busy people. There are a lot of safe areas, and being able to warp... I was unaware of the "pausing" thing, I might have to use that next time I'm needed in the middle of a boss fight.
Unfortunately, there are rare spots where sitting at a grace, a far away patrolling enemy will eventually walk nearby and aggro you.
I sat at a grace and got up to eat some lunch. Came back, my character was standing up and all my runes were gone
All I have are obligations. I just accept the death, life is more important than the game and not being able to pause has never pissed me off. They’re 2 variables that need to be overcome with a calm mind. It’s just a minor thing that adds to the games’ experience whether you like it or not.
Yeah. Knowing about the pause is great. My elderly parents can get into trouble pretty quickly, and it's pretty frustrating to have to abandon the current game state every time I have to go running.
@@Charon569 it's never that deep. A pause button doesn't ruin anything
@@yourdad5799 It's not that deep but people insist on adding a pause to a series that purposely wouldn't add it. It's part of the game by design. You don't have to like it, it's just another thing to overcome. Soul Form in DeS comes to mind, I don't love it but it's part of the game and I deal with it.
Illusorywall, Not only one of the many great investigators of the more hidden aspects of these games, showing yourself to also be A paragon of logic an reason. This video is a very well articulated and gently worded slam dunk to me. People who can't wrap their head around this must be incredibly blessed, essentially able to pause real life instead while playing their favorite games.
Seriously though, In a world of soul level 1, no hit, play with your guitar as a controller challenge runs, not pausing can just be a ... really unimpressive challenge run.
In my opinion, I think pausing would help me for when I meet a one of a kind enemy and I wanna take a closer look at them, like in demon's souls. When I played the elden ring dlc, I met so many new enemies but I didn't get a good look at them, so a photo mode would be nice. Enemies are always moving, unless you somehow caught them unaware with stealth. Having spent hundreds of hours in every game, I wouldn't really need a pause to give me an advantage in thinking of a strategy.
Also glad to help again!
Agree with this wholeheartedly. I had the exact same experience with elden ring's dlc, some of their best designs yet and i'm just getting a blurry distant look at them through a mix of, no real way to check them out, and having to play on low settings because my laptop can barely run the game lmao
@@losercee you know that super annoying hornset enemy in the dlc that uses two circular blades? No joke for the longest time i thought it was some type of goat because of it's stance and speed making it impossible to get a good look at.
Very much looking forward to the Capra Demon advocacy video you mentioned. I've always thought he was a great boss, dogs included
Before watching, if anyone had asked whether these games should have a pause feature, I would have said "nah, they don't need it". But you made some good points and now I agree, so yes, you convinced at least one person.
I'm someone who deals with chronic pain. It's not nearly as bad as it is for some people but on occasion it can strike out of nowhere and it's much harder to focus when it does. A pause feature in such a situation would be nice. I'm a minority example, and it's a rare event, only happening maybe 3 times or so in my 2k+ in the series.
There's lots of ways we could meet halfway on a pause button. I for one want it.
Frankly, a disability isn't the only reason a pause feature can be useful. I think the games should have one- maybe you could make it kind of prohibitive with a 1 second delay between pauses and some kind of pause splash-screen so you can't use the pause time for much other than walking away for a minute if you have to to preserve the spirit of things or whatever, but all sorts of games have a separate menu and pause feature, one being a gameplay element and the other being *only* for pausing and not letting you do anything but unpause.
As long as the game doesn't let you into the item and equipment menus, I'm completely fine with there being a pause button.
I can't _believe_ the number of people in the comment section trying to argue against a pause button using the reasoning of "These games are meant to be unfair and ruin your day!! Get over it!!!"
No, these games are _meant_ to be _extremely_ fair. Are we playing different games? Because in all of the games that _I've_ been playing, since 2009, it felt a lot like dying to an enemy was because you took a risk you shouldn't have, not because the game said "lol die"
Isn't the saying "git gud?" That means "stop panicking and spamming dodge rolls, actually time them" or it means "don't go for a 3rd swing after you block that attack, just take your free 2 and do it again" or it means "Don't try to drink your flask after the diagonal slash, they recover and follow up faster than you can heal, drink after the vertical slash instead"
If your takeaway from playing Elden Ring is that the game "isn't fair" then you're _really bad_ at this game and maybe you should pause it and take it break.
All of Elden Ring's tutorial pop-ups (such as the first time you pick up a physick or Scadutree Fragment, or when you first go through the Cave of Knowledge) also pause the game - the Menu Explanation thing really just seems more like an oversight than a feature with design intent
Thank you for this video! It's wild to me that community needs to be convinced that adding a basic convenience is not a bad thing.
I really needed this video
Honestly, the most annoying thing happens if you are actually interested in info about why can't some of these games be paused, officially.
Internet searches are so saturated with online discussions of fans gatekeeping the games, that you never really get info on why this was a decision. People prefer to laugh at others instead.
Seriously, everyone turns into a game designer, when a discussion about a pause button in the souls series is opened.
What I took away from this is that I really wish FROM put photo mode in Elden Ring
It's really really cool.
Intended or not, the lack of a pause button on the older souls games made me feel helpless when i first played them. There was no "safe place". Only when i'm resting on a bonfire i could actually rest in real life.
When i was watching the video and saw you pausing during a battle i immediately thought about Slender: The Arrival. Weird thing to say, i know, but in that game you couldn't pause when Slenderman was on the screen, the game would just glitch out and not let you. This was an intended feature for the game, as you could pause when Slenderman wasn't around.
And that opportunity to pause the game when you were "safe" reminds me of the Dark Souls bonfires. I still think adding a pause button is a very welcome quality of life improvement, however the lack of one in my first time experiencing the game made me understand and fear the virtual world i was in just a little bit more.
Great video.
100% this
While I support adding a pause feature, I do agree with what you're saying. Assuming that it is an intentional design choice to prevent pausing, I wonder if actually giving people the option to allow pausing or not could work - for example, pausing could be off by default, and when someone goes into the menu to enable it, a message pops up explaining that the game was not intended to be paused but has been added as a quality of life feature which may reduce the atmosphere of the game while being played
@@NichRerezzed Interesting solution if the player wants to sacrifice a tiny bit amount of immersion for the sake of accessibility, which i think it's perfectly reasonable as the game itself is pretty scary even with a pause feature. The option being there for those who want it it's genius.
This is, in my opinion, the best way to handle the pause dilemma, however imagine if instead of an option it was an item that "pauses the time, but also pauses the player". This is probably a terrible idea but a more creative one! I do see exploits with an item like this, though.
finally someone who gets it. it's not about convenience it's about setting a tone. bonfires would mean squat if you could pause at any time imo
@@burn1none Well, bonfires mean a safe place. You can rest, refill your estus flask, level up, etc. It's also a checkpoint, you return to the bonfire when you die. The funny thing is when you rest at the bonfire all the enemies that you killed are now back, meaning that it's never a safe place outside of a bonfire.
Which is kind of like a pause feature in the sense that danger never goes away, but pausing the game wouldn't have all the advantages a bonfire has...it just means that the game is now frozen in place.
So yeah, i'm kind of all over the place with this one. I still think that having the option to pause the game or not is perfect for the game, even with the lack of a terrifying discovery that you can't freeze the game when in danger on your first playthrough.
only a quick mention of this, but I wanted to resonate with the defense of the cursed stat in Dark Souls. I only got to playing DS in the remaster (first was DS3) so i was closer to being on the fromsoft wavelength, I think, by the time I got cursed in DS Remastered. Sure, it was inconvenient, but to its bones, that first time it happened was a mechanically driven quest prompt. I got a curse. I had to go fix it. once I got it fixed a merchant with purging stones was right in front of me. I did this in the new londo ruins and didn't realize curses allowed me to fight the ghosts, but if i did that would be even better.
Like we forget how electrified everyone was when we learned we got a little debuff from receiving a hug in Elden Ring. these moments of debuff are incredibly memorable, and while i don't expect them to permenantly cut someone's health in half until they go on a little quest they weren't planning on in the future, it really worked for me.
Another banger from illusory wall.
I'm generally on team let developers do what they want, so I don't anyone's vote should count outside fromsoft, that being said my vote is that the convenience of being able to go let the screaming cat out of your bedroom isn't outweighed by the non-issue of having multiplayer timers reset or whatever.
"I'm generally on team let developers do what they want"
I don't believe you. Like... are you telling me that you have never critcized a developer for something you didn't like in a game because it's their vision?
@@lhumanoideerrantdesinterne8598 I call bullshit too. Everyone complains about stuff they don't like in video games, the discussion should be around whether the complaint is valid.
@@lhumanoideerrantdesinterne8598 You can dislike and even hate a game feature without earnestly thinking that developers should at any point in time listen to your advice. That's the difference between the two major paradigms "some games aren't made for some people, and if a game is not for me, I will either power through (or mod/cheese the game on my own etc.) or accept it and move on to other games", and "games should be accommodating to the widest range of players, and features should be changed based on feedback to ensure that".
@@lhumanoideerrantdesinterne8598It isn't a binary. Wanting devs to stick to their guns while also having the capacity to be critical of them aren't mutually exclusive tendencies. I agree that devs should do what they want and if their vision fails to capture or retain an audience then they only have themselves to blame.
@@lhumanoideerrantdesinterne8598 You can criticize developers, you can complain about mechanis, you can debate for hours with internet strangers who dont agree, and even with all that you can just ... accept when they implement something you dont like. The devs are free to do so and that's ok. Having critique on something is different from thinking the devs should listen to the complaints of the players.
Could it be that the menu explanation screen pauses the game because it has the same logic as the tutorial messages that appear on first playthrough, which also pause the game?
The proper solution: just do the same pause setup as Monster Hunter, the regular menu works the same as it normally does but theres a “pause” option that just pauses like the menu explanation thing already does (until you press a button), since so you can’t do things like change weapons instantly (and again it disables the option online)
As a person with bladder issues who is playing his first Souls-like, Elden Ring, I really could use a pause feature.
Thanks for mentioning that "Menu info" work-around. That is really going to help me.
For the record, if you’re playing on a PlayStation then there IS a pause option - push the PS button and go to the Home Screen. Game is paused. Unless you’re in multiplayer, of course.
Interesting because the game still runs on switch in the background
This definitely didn't work in the PS3 days, I remember trying this and coming back to being at a bonfire
I'm fairly certain that Elden Ring doesn't pause when you do this on PS5
i could have sworn this wasn't the case, as i distinctly remember trying this while being inflicted with toxic (and having about half my hp) and needing to check the wiki only to come back dead
Interestingly that little quirk of phantoms building up while paused is still around in Elden Ring, I use that pause every now and then and when I come back there would be 8 phantoms walking around nearby
i feel cheated finding out the ghosts arent live, tragic
i always liked to imagine that the persons ghost could see me walking around as well. Dreams crushed
Once i was in someone else's world, and i left when they reached a new bonfire. A little bit after i reentered my workd (i was at the same bonfire) the ghost of the host played in front of me doing the exact same movements and with the exact same gear as i saw live.
I was shocked, then disappointed for your exact reason.
@@thaias9654why would it have ever been live? That’s way too much bandwidth. Just save the script and send it out to the server, then send to other players
Well they _are_ a ghost, ghost's kinda not supposed to be live
I found out when I got myself from earlier that day backstep dancing while I was waiting to invade , drip was too bad and build was too niche for me to believe it could be a rando lol.
The argument that feels strongest to me is the "vibes" one, which is obviously extremely subjective. For me personally it invokes nostalgia for playing world of Warcraft as a kid and coming back to a death screen after getting up when I thought I was safe. It feels like the world is both intensely hostile and alive, continuing on whether you like it or not.
Again tho this is a purely subjective argument and I'm not surprised you were dismissive of it. It's by no means required for immersion and it's a source of frustration much more often than any joy. As you pointed out, quitting out has always been a stronger and far less immersive option.
it could always be an option that you can choose when starting the game
I'm not too fussed one way or the other about whether or not pausing should be included overall, but I am gonna nitpick a little bit of your portrayal of Elden Ring's "pause function" as being "oddly buried and unlabeled".
Pausing is clearly not the primary function of the Menu Explanation command, and it seems secondary at best to the primary function of "conveying information to a player who is unfamiliar". I didn't even realize it *did* pause the game when I used it, but I will say it seems consistent with the game pausing during the tutorial popups.
Those probably pause the game because they can be kind of wordy and when you get many of them is different for different players and often don't come up in controlled environments. This makes me think the pausing is a courtesy extended to newer players who are seeking information.
As long as you can't change equipment/use items while paused, then yeah, there should ALWAYS be a pause option whilst not actively involved in co-op/PvP.
I've had times where I was in the middle of a co-op boss fight when someone knocked on my door and literally had no option but to sigh, put the controller down, and accept that I was going to listen to my character die horribly in the background because real life stiff needs to be taken care of...
That sucks, but that shouldn't also have to happen during single player.
It's funny because at first I was in the "allow pausing" side, but after the bit where you mention the bonfires I couldn't stop thinking about the feeling of "safeness" that bonfires gave me in my first playtrough of Dark Souls 1... I think that only for the feeling I once felt I wouldn't want the Dark Souls series to have a pause button. I feel the pause feature would hurt that feeling of safeness with the bonfires, altough I wouldn't mind if Demon Souls, Bloodborne and Elden Ring suddenly have a pause feature because I didn't felt that way with the bonfire equivalent of those games.
Pd: Im trying to think this from the perspective of a first playtrough and not after playing a lot of souls.
Pdd: Loved the video :)
ua-cam.com/video/OtWRuOiI9ao/v-deo.htmlsi=U7E0kjIj58unj25Q
I always felt like the "pause" was returning to firelink, or majula or the roundtable hold. Ive idled at all of these places many times
I'm glad you made this video to actually break this down, & even showed examples of people not knowing what they're talking about. I was sick of the contradictory " you can't pause the game because of the online nature" argument being combined with " actually you can pause through the help menu " by the same people making the same argument.
Fun fact: Switch version of Dark Souls Remastered pauses itself after 1-2 seconds when you press Home Menu button or power/sleep while in handheld mode (from what I know, it's supposedly certification requirement for all Switch games); no idea how it interacts with online features since I never went online. And since my job requires me to quite often pick up a phone call at random times without any idea if it'll take 10s or few hours, having pause option in all games I play is basically a necessity.
I always thought lack of intended pause button was there to encourage players to make sure they can give the game uninterrupted undivided attention - as sort of "don't play until you can secure enough time to get to next spot that doesn't require pause" similar to how some pure online games (shooters, MOBAs) tend to do. Development shortcut makes much more sense here.
yeah but sadly it only works in handheld mode since turning the switch off in docked mode is hust as slow as quitting to the menu