Israel vs Palestine is new. That’s been going back and forth for a few centuries

If you mean in the sense of invading foreign powers, sure.

For player messages you’re absolutely right.

But phantoms are shown in (semi?)realtime and bloodstains are a recording of the few seconds before death. Scenes of people pausing kind of undermines some of what the devs built around online play.

This Simpsons episode is from 1994. It is older than some users on Lemmy discussing party politics.

It really is a big part of the games. Even when not playing multiplayer the online component was significant.

Not just player messages: bloodstains and phantoms are a big part of the storytelling.

You consistently see glimpses of other player phantoms in realtime and you see recordings of their deaths. I am not sure a pause button would work well with those.

The ‘savepoints’ in the game are where players ‘pause/reset’ the level. Otherwise quitting out the game entirely is quick, easy, and does mostly the same purpose. Unless you’re in a few specific points you’re right where you were when you quit out. Enemy positions reset, but otherwise progress is saved in realtime with the exception of bossfights. They reset the room entirely until defeated.

(Players can actually quit out fast enough that they can ‘undo’ falling off a cliff as the game resets their position to the last point on a solid ground.)

So there is effective pausing of the game, just not a pause while panicking midgame button.

That’s usually just it. Even though the series has had them in every entry, the games aren’t about gimmicks. Souls games did a great job at giving players a ‘what you see is what you get’ experience. The game is about ‘git gud’ because the boss generally doesn’t get easier because you did some dialogue, flipped a switch, or otherwise. The earlier entries really tempered power scaling too so the absolute answer to difficulty in RPG type games: grinding levels to get stronger, wasn’t as effective either.

So it boiled down to just dodge the damage and deal it back. Revolutionary in its simplicity.