Instead of assuming that people who ask for features like this want the Destruction And Casualization Of All Gaming As We Know It, perhaps we should think more as to what makes people think of this in the first place.
Perhaps we should be looking at not the combat itself, but the games that this...
A big part of Dark Souls is the exploration and how the narrative is constructed. A Dark Souls fan who only likes Dark Souls because of the combat doesn’t fully get why it’s a great game. In fact, he’s probably the guy who made Lords of the Fallen which has Dark Souls’s combat but none of its storytelling methods.
As far as books and movies go, I do wish gamers were more generally aware of them just so they knew what good stories actually are. I generally avoid games that are hyped only because of their story because if I want a good story, I’ll go get one from a medium more suited to it. Games are good at gameplay, world building, and exploration. Not so much on story, unless it just has cutscenes. This is probably why I’ll never play The Last of Us despite the fact that it came with my PS4. I liked MGS back in its heyday, but I’m fully aware that it is a movie occasionally interrupted by a stealth game (a game genre that I love). The older I get, the more I just want solid gameplay over all else. But when I was a kid, I ran away from random battles in Final Fantasy to get to the next plot point.
Dark Souls is actually cogent to all this. The way it tells its story through exploration and item collection are pretty much unique to gaming. You could not tell a story that way in any other medium. Almost every other game with a story just uses movie storytelling methods. Dark Souls does not. And one could love that without loving the combat.
