Ought to motion video games allow us to skip the motion?

“We will introduce an additional difficulty level [to The Blood of Dawnwalker], but an easier one, because many people are asking for a more easy difficulty.

The Story mode which we have right now will be a different difficulty—we will call it Demanding or something like this—and we will add a new Story mode which will be even easier for people who don’t want to experience the combat, they just want to learn the story and go through the game without this gameplay challenge.” (by way of Eurogamer)

Wait, does that imply a fight skip choice is coming?

I spent around 50 hours playing The Blood of Dawnwalker for my review. I played on the default “Fair” difficulty and didn’t find it very challenging: as far as modern blockbuster RPGs go it’s pretty easy-going (and I speak as someone who is not an apex gamer. Metal Gear Solid 4 is currently kicking my ass. How did I cope with this in 2008?).

So Rebel Wolves’ new “even easier” difficulty is an interesting proposition. Based on Tomaszkiewicz’s quote it sounds like the new setting will allow players to skip combat entirely, which—if true—is quite a radical move.

Are there parallels? There aren’t many action-oriented games that let you turn the action off entirely, because that wouldn’t leave a lot of meat on the bone. But the recent South of Midnight is one rare example. If you toggle on “combat skip” in that game, you get a skip prompt whenever fighting starts.

A slightly less elegant approach is taken by Dragon Age: The Veilguard: it has an invincibility mode that’s not framed as a cheat per se but as an accessibility option. Turn it on, and you can just breeze through all encounters.

Most recently, one of my favourite games of 2026, Derelict Star, has assist options that transform a deliberately difficult game into something much, much more palatable. For example, one option lets the player create a checkpoint wherever they want, which is the super-est of superpowers in a twitch-oriented platformer.

Whatever the case, it’ll be interesting to see how Rebel Wolves approaches this when the patch lands in early October. Is combat skip shaping up to be a new must-have in blockbuster games? I get the sense there are plenty of people who’d enjoy an option like that in narrative-heavy affairs—The Last of Us Part 2 comes to mind.

In the same Eurogamer interview it’s confirmed that a New Game Plus mode is coming to The Blood of Dawnwalker, but no word yet on timing for that.