Boss fights are arguably the bread-and-butter of most FromSoftware games, and despite all the broken controllers they've caused over the years, they're usually – usually – fair to players. Even if you can't always execute the right moves to beat them, you almost always know exactly what you did wrong on any given failed attempt. Those kinds of clear telegraphs are essential to good boss design, according to the dev bringing these fights to life in Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis.
"Make attacks clear with the visual and audio cues," Marcin Matuszczyk of Flying Wild Hog says in a talk at the Digital Dragons conference in Kraków, Poland, attended by GamesRadar+. "Telegraph them through character signals. Ensure the losses come from the player's mistakes, not from confusion."
