A controversial aspect in challenging video games is artificial difficulty. One way this can manifest is input reading, a technique that allows the game’s AI to respond to certain player moves in order to consistently punish them.
Since its release, many Elden Ring players suspected that a few of the game’s bosses, especially those who have given us all the hardest time, can read our control inputs, which wades into unfair territory.
This idea isn’t actually new, and has been brought up time and again with other FromSoftware games, more recently with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. But Elden Ring is a massive game by any standard, so while those instances are few compared to the sheer number of bosses the game has, there are enough of them to raise a few eyebrows.
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