Elden Ring producer Yasuhiro Kitao has spoken about how they’ve made the game more accessible to newer players with the addition of boss checkpoints, in addition to giving us details about the extra content of the game and how they plan to support the game in the future.
“We were more mindful of this distance between the Sites of Grace and the Stakes of Marika in each boss fight. The States of Marika in particular, are placed strategically in order for us to alleviate that stress when exploring in the open and to encourage exploration”
In previous FromSoftware games, you were required to walk back to a boss if you were defeated, meaning that you’d also have to fight enemies again and again until you finally defeated bosses. While this was accepted and fun for most, some players felt it could be unfair to an extent that the game wasn’t. FromSoftware games traditionally are difficult yet balanced, so that everything bad that happens is purely your fault. But the inability to get back to a boss quickly turned a lot of people off.
In the same interview Kitao confirmed that there won’t be a boss rush mode in Elden Ring, unlike the boss rush mode that was added to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice a month after launch. Kitao said that there’s not only not a boss rush mode currently implemented in the game at present, but there’s no plans for one to be added in the game at any point in the future.