William A.

The Sekiro difficulty debate has spawned a great meme

Behind the ‘You cheated not only the game, but yourself’ copypasta

The recent release of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice has reignited the debate over developer FromSoftware’s games, primarily around their legendary difficulty and whether the studio should offer alternate difficulty options so that more players can experience the game firsthand.

Along the way, that fiery discussion has conflated accessibility for a more casual, less dedicated game-playing audience with accessibility for all players, particularly those who might have physical disabilities. It has also rankled FromSoftware fans who grouse at the notion that the studio would sacrifice its design vision, thereby undermining the sense of accomplishment that comes from overcoming difficult gaming challenges.

I’m not here to address that. I’m here to address the very good meme it has spawned, one that even Sonic the Hedgehog is on.

The person responsible for kicking this whole thing off is Twitter user Fetusberry, who, in response to a story from PC Gamer about using a mod to beat Sekiro’s final boss, said the following:

With shades of “I studied the blade” and “I don’t know how much the rest of you know about Japanese culture (I’m an expert),” Fetusberry’s tweet took off. It quickly became a widespread copypasta, finding its text pasted over Metal Gear Solid codec conversations and Devil May Cry 5’s literary bad boy V’s dialogue. The tweet itself racked up thousand of retweets and more than 20,000 likes.

Then the copypasta got more elaborate, working its way into edits of Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, and Animal Crossing.

Seemingly sensing a Nintendo bias to the spreading meme, Sonic the Hedgehog (or rather, his Twitter account) even got in while the copypasta was still warm.

If you’re wondering whether Fetusberry was being serious about this whole thing or whether he was tweeting it ironically, here’s his response to his take’s exploding popularity:

I’m off to spend the remainder of my evening bashing my head against the Demon of Hatred in Sekiro, risking it all. Wish me luck.

Source: Polygon

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