Tone in Souls

When people talk about tutorials in video games, the emphasis is almost universally on mechanics and inputs. That makes sense to a certain degree, but Tone is one of the most important things a tutorial needs to address and it’s criminally overlooked. So what do I mean by Tone exactly? It’s basically the same concept of how it’s used in movies. As Mr Plinkett of Red Letter Media described it, Tone is how a movie feels and what genre it falls into. If you fail to establish the Tone of your film early on, the audience can easily get confused and lose focus of what the movie is trying to do. I’d argue this is even more important in Video Games because of interactivity. Since the player is an active participant, that confusion on what the game is trying to achieve can sink the entire game. If you’ve ever had an experience with a game where suddenly it got really hard, and you started asking yourself things like: “Is this supposed to be a hard game?” or “Am I doing something completely wrong?” chances are that game didn’t set the tone properly.

How and Why Souls Establishes Tone

You know how in most Souls Tutorials you end up dying? That isn’t done as a prank, that’s establishing Tone. It’s crucial in conveying to the player that in this game you’re going to die, and that’s okay. Also, this game is hard, so take it seriously. This is important as it elevates players and helps them overcome the challenges the game will present. Now we need to talk about difficulty and how people perceive it. When people talk about their video game skill, they typically talk about it in absolute terms. With this implication that everyone is at a certain amount of skill that rarely changes. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m not even talking about the of how much you can improve from practice. Your GAMERNESS™ can change drastically based on your mood, your level of attention or simply by how much fun you’re having. This is where Tone comes in. A game conveying the right Tone will make you play the game better. The more aligned you are with understanding the game, the more likely you will face the challenges properly. It can elevate you. Don’t believe me? People have noticed for a while now that Souls games actually have better completion rates than easier and more “accessible” games.

This is due to a multitude of factors. It’s true that the games are not as hard as most people think, and that plays a part. But the games are still harder than your average video game of today. Another aspect is that the Souls games are simply good video games, and do a good job of keeping you engaged with proper pacing and interesting design. But the real secret ingredient here is Tone. When difficult games were falling off at the end of the PS2 era and the start of the PS3 era, one of the mistakes they were making was with Tone. Oftentimes these games would try to hide the fact that they were offering a challenging and rewarding game. Worried that it would scare off players. The problem with this is that you’re lowering the player's guard, which only makes the game seem that much harder when they finally meet the challenges. This results in a lot more players quitting the game out of frustration. Namco and FromSoftware embraced the identity of being a hard game even in marketing, further conveying the right Tone to the player. 

Players know what they are getting into when they buy a Souls game and because of that are much more likely to face the challenges and overcome them.

Tone does a lot of other neat stuff too

In this article I’ve only focused on Tone in how it affects how the player engages with the game play. But I don’t want you to think that Tone doesn’t serve many other crucial aspects. Just like movies, Tone helps establish the type of story telling you’re going for. The type of atmosphere you want. But I think everyone understands that, like I mentioned earlier, that’s how most people know of the concept from movies. In this article I wanted to stress the specific parts of Game Design and how it works in that element. So next time you’re playing a FromSoftware game, or any game for that matter, don’t just look at what buttons they are telling you to press, or how certain mechanics work. Look to see if the developer is signaling to you what kind of game they made and how they want you to feel about it.

-MajinSweet