Why Pausing in Elden Ring / Dark Souls Would Be Fine

Something a bit different from my usual Dark Souls Dissected videos; I wanted to talk about why pausing in multiplayer/ online was never a serious obstacle for these games. I also share my opinion about why adding a pause feature would be welcome/ fine.

0:00 Introduction
2:58 Why Pausing Online Works
7:40 Pausing In Sekiro
9:03 Pausing in Demon's Souls (Remake)
11:46 Pausing in Elden Ring
15:07 My Thoughts on the Following Objections
16:09 1 - Menuing While Paused
16:24 2 - Difficulty Concerns
18:30 3 - The Quit Out Method
19:49 4 - No Need For Pausing w/ Bonfires
20:43 5 - Maybe This Isn't For You
21:09 6 - Pausing is Bad for Immersion
25:40 Outro

If There's No MARIO MAKER 3... THIS IS WHY:

[illusorywall]

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.

[milesfp]

>unpause the game after an hour
>hear 37 Bells of Awakening all playing at once

[oliverb]

Any time I need to pause Elden Ring I simply uninstall the game and reinstall it on a brand new computer.

[James_Rustled]

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

[cptnoremac]

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.

[algi]

True illusory wall fans didn't pause the video.

[epyjacek]

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.

[PaytonRobey]

i’ll bet you had trouble finding a remnant in sekiro that wasn’t just t-bagging or guard spamming lol

[genexplore]

A lot of the argument/disconnect has got to come from confusing "pause as a feature" and "opening inventory pauses the game."

[BackseatStreams]

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.

[dudeglove]

illusory wall will take any opportunity to play the battletoads pause music

[gaelforcewind]

Imagine being the guy trying to explain Fromsoft game mechanics to illusory wall. That's like 2 steps below doing that to Miyazaki himself

[TechnologicalShadow]

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

[BaleonRosen]

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.

[heatherfrom]

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.

[ObiWan_KenOBean]

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.

[jamesarthurkimbell]

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.

[naherathe]

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!!!

[Treyway]

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

[Nilon]

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.