There’s a very special kind of annoyance when it becomes obvious that a work of art that you really like has actually impacted its medium for the worse. For instance, while I quite like the film Inception, for years afterwards movie soundtracks were dominated by slow-motion BWAMPS, absent any of the narrative or thematic connections that made them so effective in that specific story. For another instance (one which will comprise the remainder of this discussion), Dark Souls has, as dearly as I love it, had a somewhat mixed impact on the art of game design.
The problem is, perhaps, that no one can be completely certain what parts of the alchemical combination of elements that go into a great game actually contributed to that greatness. Some of Dark Souls’ design decisions, such as the reusable-but-restricted health system of the Estus Flask, are applicable to a huge number of games – it would probably improve more games than it would hurt. Some of them, like losing currency/exp on death and getting one chance to recover it before it being lost forever, are quite specific and are often carelessly applied into games where they don’t actually make very much sense (I’m looking at you, Shovel Knight). One mechanic that I’m increasingly sorting into the latter category is that of the dodge roll.
Okay, yeah: Dodge rolls didn’t start with Dark Souls – but they’ve definitely had a real uptick in popularity in the decade since its release, and everyone knows that correlation equals causation. This is not intended to be a slight on the mechanic itself: Rolling out of the way of attacks in Dark Souls is both visually and mechanically satisfying, and works well in that context. Though you get a few frames of invincibility, the real utility of rolling as a tool is just as much in shrinking your collision model down and moving rapidly to one side – in other words, the bulk of what makes a dodge roll useful in Dark Souls is exactly what might make it useful for fighting an actual giant suit of armor, with just a little invincible gravy added on top to make it more consistent.
This is not how dodge rolls tend to work in most games inspired by Dark Souls. Part of the reason for this is that many of these are 2d games, either top-down shooter/brawlers or sidescrolling platformers, indie games made by relatively small teams. In the context of a 2d game, the meaning of a roll is more difficult to communicate: Hit-boxes tend to be crude and all-encompassing so just shrinking one’s hit-box for a moment is of limited utility. In top-down games it doesn’t even make sense to shrink the hit-box: A person rolling is about the same size as a person standing when viewed from above – bigger, if anything. So instead the utility of a dodge roll becomes entirely about the invincibility that was a mere side-benefit in Dark Souls’ original design.
(I would argue that actually this is an approach that has become increasingly true of From Software’s own oeuvre starting with Bloodborne, but that’s a whole other essay.)
Several issues accompany this style of design. First, if the entire utility of a dodge ability is in how long it leaves you invincible, you now have to communicate that information to the player in extremely precise terms. You also need to communicate exactly how far the roll will carry them, when they’ll regain control, and when it is and isn’t possible to start a roll – none of these are impossible to convey, but none are trivial. Second, balancing dodge-rolling against standard movement is very tricky, and often moving around without rolling becomes nearly obsolete, something you only do while waiting for the cooldown on the roll to end. This looks silly and tends to flatten the gameplay: If the only tool you give the player to solve challenges is a hammer, then as a designer you’ve now tasked yourself with creating increasingly ornate nails. Jumping and crouching (in platformers), controlling range and angle, positioning for maximum damage in minimum time, all these concepts start to fade away and be replaced with the simple loop of attack until enemy gets mad, press the dodge button, attack again, and so forth. Attack, dodge, attack, dodge – one thing, forever, a perfect dead-brained strategy.
This is frustrating to me because one of the things I love about 2d action games is the clarity and finesse of positioning. Weaving between shots, leading attacks in one direction and switching up, setting up just outside of the arc of an attack – these are the things which 2d is exceptionally well-suited to, things which are incredibly difficult to capture in 3d games due to the limitations of perspective, but these aspects get flattened away to capture a little piece of extradimensionality. Part of what drew me to Dark Souls in the first place was how, by rejecting the false detailed fidelity of other 3d action games, it was able to create an experience closer to that of a classic 2d action game. It’s a shame to see developers applying its lessons to create the exact opposite outcome.
[…] easy to end up taking damage anyway, and for reasons I discussed in my earlier piece on the dodge roll as it is implemented in 2d games, the actual engagements tend to be very flat, largely alternating between spamming attack and […]