I frequently find myself debating whether to google an item’s location or side quest steps. A lot of times, I try to avoid it as long as I can until I eventually give in after exploring an area for hours. But I always feel a little guilty after. But then I’m like, these games are so damn cryptic, I’d have to spend the rest of my life uncovering all the secrets without google.
Thoughts?
The thing is, the intended way to play Soulslikes is with a community. Some of my favorite experiences in gaming have been the discussions I had online after the release of Sekiro and Elden Ring, where I was sharing the bits of information I had learned and learning new things from others. It’s like a fun collaborative research project!
However, once the game has been out for awhile, the community moves on. All of the secrets have been found and immortalized on a wiki or YouTube videos. At that point, it becomes more like an individual research project, where you have to dive into the archives to try and uncover what you’re meant to do.
If you’re still having fun and you don’t mind spoilers, it’s your experience, do what you want.
Many gamedevs have been designing their games with the expectation that players will reach out to others online for help in solving a part they find difficult. It’s a way of bringing people together and keeping the game relevant. So if you feel you’ll be having more fun searching for info online than discovering a game’s many secrets on your own, go ahead. Just have fun and let others have fun as well.
First playthrough I go through it blind because you only get to experience it for the first time once. Make mistakes, do what you want.
After that look up whatever you want because there is much less risk of spoilers, and stuff you will probably miss otherwise.
This is exactly my approach too. I love that these games will let you miss stuff; it makes what you do actually find after you go pull on threads all the more rewarding. After that, well I’ve had my exploration fun, if I liked the game enough to play it again then it’s time to go see what I missed
Hey! Did any of the exquisite corpses got completed?
I think it was just the two of us, I’m afraid! However I have little else to do this evening and I want to see what you drew, so I think I’m gonna go in and finish some of them. I’ll post them in this community and tag you once I do
Then I’ll finish the rest and add them to the comments ;) I also want to see how they turned out! maybe other folks will get inspired :P
This is my approach as well. Unless I get the advice of doing so, like with thw DS1 dlc. I for sure wouldn’t have found it.
Funny because I was pondering on the same dilemma with Silksong lately.
I like to try to find stuff and discover things on my own. I love the feeling of going blind in a game and googling stuff often leads to you being spoiled some aspects of the game. However, when I spend 2 hours finding nothing new and reexploring three times the whole map without anything coming up, that’s when I google stuff. Even then though I will keep it as short as possible as to continue the rest on my own.
I try to hold off on looking things up until a second playthrough. I’ve been burned by spoiling myself looking things up so fuck that shit.
A second playthrough though? You bet your ass I’m going to look up how to be the most badass I can be.
When possible, the best answer is always a good friend. I love being able to ask “hey, you know my spoiler tolerance, am I on the right track?”. “Is this reasonable for me to figure out, or is it BS that’s gonna annoy me when I do give up and google it?”. “Is there anything permanently missable here, or can I just flail around for now?”. “Can you give me a vague nudge here, and I’ll ask in a bit if I need another?”.
Not always practical, sometimes I’m the first to play a game in my group of friends, but man is it great when I can lean on them.
I try to avoid looking things up as I think finding where to go and figuring out what is needed for quests are the main challenges games offer. The developers have given me a specific set of ways to interact with the environment and achieve my in-game goals! Using external tools alters those carefully balanced game mechanics.
One exception is games that have intricate recipe structures that are not outlined in the game and would require a ridiculous amount of guesswork to land on organically. For those I’ll google recipes sometimes.
Games like Elden Ring where certain quests must be done in a certain order or else you can’t do them make me sad because they’re not very friendly to the more whimsical play style that I prefer.
First of all, I never google, I duck duck go things, or on rare occasions I might even Bing them.
Second, I only do it if I’ve already beaten the game and am looking for things I missed. Otherwise its an absolute last resort if I’m really super stuck and think I would completely bail on the game because of it. I still hate doing that, its nearly impossible to get the specific answer without seeing spoilers for other things.
I will give most things a really, really good college try before resorting to searching. The one thing I will allow myself to search immediately are build guides, to help me understand how I want to progress my character and what things to hunt for.
I use a guide as I don’t like missing out on items that I might want and hate getting gate kept from content. I try to make a healthy medium by not looking up bosses and only looking at what items do and what missable are in the area.
Back in 2008 I got a guide for Black Ops 2 from PrimaGames. If you remember trustworthy sources you don’t need a search engine, just the websites.
