Spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic disease that affects the nervous system and muscle control, forced 20-year-old gamer Szymon, or DeadlyPG on Twitch to get creative with his setup. He has now become familiar with voice commands by using a program called Language attackand after being inspired by Streamer Kai Cenat’s legendary Elden Ring marathonhe used it to defeat one of the most difficult bosses developer FromSoftware has ever devised: Malenia, the Blade of Miquella. And it only took him 700 attempts.
“The reason I decided to finish the game, get to Malenia and beat her was because I watched Kai Cenat do his marathon recently,” Szymon says in an interview with GamesRadar+. “Seeing that he’s not a very good player, no offense, and that he managed to do it really motivated me and made me want to do it. I think I just told myself that I could do it.”
Szymon isn’t technically paralyzed, he explains, but his muscles are so atrophied that he can only really move a single finger when gaming, for example. But he speaks quite well, as you see in his Twitch streams and as I hear over Discord, so his voice has become his weapon of choice. He plays using a regular PC and microphone, and VoiceAttack converts what he says into assigned in-game inputs. Say “left” to hold A, say “dodge” to dodge, and so on. Each game gets a different command profile, with Fortnite being the most complex at around 100 words.
Szymon uses 46 commands for Elden Ring, and some had to be developed specifically for Malenia. For example, the “ninety” command makes his character turn around and run away from Malenia’s infamous Waterfowl Dance combo. Other commands more closely reflect in-game actions – “Juice” is used to drink an Estus Flask, “Charge” for an attack, and so on. Sometimes VoiceAttack has trouble registering certain words, so Szymon finds a workaround, for example, replacing “Skill” with “Still.”
“When I create a new command, it might take me a few days to learn it,” explains Szymon. “Most of them I know by heart. Some of my most used commands for Elden Ring are obviously dodge, the whole game is based on dodge… I try to keep them as short as possible. Even then, there’s usually a delay of about a second, so it’s quite difficult, especially in a game like Elden Ring where precise timing is really important.”
What a start
I DID IT! I beat Malenia using voice control! No magic, no summoning, no cheese! Took me over 700 tries over 2 weeks! Next up is the DLC, let’s go! pic.twitter.com/mP4I6Qi9ZU24 June 2024
Szymon had never tried a FromSoftware game before Elden Ring and says it’s the game that challenges his reflexes the most. “But I love it,” he adds. “When I’m done with Elden Ring, I’ll have to go back and try some of the other games like Dark Souls.”
“When I first started playing Elden Ring, I was really terrible,” he recalls. “It took me about 20 hours to figure out how to sprint. I was bad. I had some issues with voice commands where my interact button would stay pressed for a second and I didn’t know it did something else. I couldn’t open a door, so I was stuck in the starting area at the first door for 45 minutes, thinking I had to reset the game because it wasn’t working.” I ask him if he ever tried parrying, and he says he did, but it “went terribly” due to input lag.
Widely considered the hardest boss in Elden Ring—although the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC has a lot to say about that—Malenia posed a big challenge, but Szymon wanted an even bigger one.
“I think I just got pretty lucky,” he says. “Honestly, Malenia was so difficult. I came so close and died so many times and was so sad. I still can’t believe I did it. I tried my best not to make it super easy, which in hindsight was maybe stupid. I decided not to use summons or spells or be overleveled. I decided to give myself these challenges because I wanted to show that it can be done. If I can do it with the voice, anyone can do it.”
“The attack I struggled with the most was Waterfowl Dance,” he says of the Malenia grind. “That attack gave me a lot of trouble. After about 100 tries, I figured out I could just run away from her, so I created this command for that. But if you’re right under her when she does it, it’s really hard to dodge. Watching another stream, I figured out I could use (the Ash of War) Bloodhound Step, so I used that on a dagger. I switched to that and dodged everything. After about 500, maybe 600 deaths, I finally found the right time to dodge it without anything else, just dodging it precisely. I still took a lot of damage, but I survived.
“To be honest, by the end of the fight, the hardest part wasn’t even the waterfowl dance, but that she moves really fast. Sometimes she jumps at me and because of the delay in the voice commands, I can’t dodge fast enough and get stuck.”
Compared to other games he’s played with this setup, once he got the hang of it, Szymon felt like he was dying from his own mistakes rather than the limitations of voice commands. “With this game, I feel like I have more control,” he explains. “I’m just learning the timing and animations of the enemies that lead to certain attacks. I feel like I can predict it better.”
Into the shade of the earth tree
I DID IT! I beat Malenia using voice control! No magic, no summoning, no cheese! Took me over 700 tries over 2 weeks! Next up is the DLC, let’s go! pic.twitter.com/mP4I6Qi9ZU24 June 2024
Because Elden Ring is his first FromSoftware game and he played it with an unconventional setup, Szymon has a unique perspective on the brutal reputation these action RPGs have acquired.
“Honestly, I beat Malenia and I was really happy for 15 minutes. And then I thought, I want to fight her again,” he says. “It’s weirdly addictive, even though it’s so painful. I love this game. It’s one of the best games I’ve ever played. It’s so satisfying. You fight it for hours, you try to find different strategies, and when you finally succeed, it’s so satisfying.”
As he embarks on Shadow of the Erdtree, Szymon feels more confident, having already defeated some key bosses, but he is “terrified of some of the later bosses” that can even rival Malenia. “The DLC is a whole other level,” he says, echoing much of the Souls community. “Everything kills me in one shot. It gets to the point where I really have to learn the timing. But it’s really fun.”
I asked Szymon if he had any advice for people with similar disabilities or limitations who are interested in games – which are, on the whole, much more welcoming and accessible than Elden Ring. He said: “You have to accept that it’s going to be harder. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be fun and enjoyable and doable. I think as long as you take the time to really focus on your own challenges, you can figure out how to help yourself.”
“For example, I didn’t even know that voice commands existed. If I had never heard of them, I might never have found a way to play a game. I found something that works for me, and I’m sure it doesn’t work for everyone, but I’m sure there’s something for everyone. Just try it. Keep trying. What’s the worst that can happen? It’s fun.”
“The fight was stolen from me”: Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree player suffers an empty victory after the final boss glitch and takes 32,000 damage in one hit.
