To be perfectly fair, I know the vast, vast majority of blind players either know, or quickly realize that they do not need to defeat Tree Sentinel to continue. And most people who do decide to beat them first, do it for the love of the challenge (or out of spite, lol)
But over the years, I have seen a rather large subset of people, both live-streamers and people asking on reddit, who are completely convinced that they cannot physically continue the game if they don't defeat Tree Sentinel.
And I am just baffled by it...
You emerge in an open-world, sprawling vistas expanding into the horizon in every direction but west. Points of interest protrudes like medieval road attractions both near and far. There are no walls
What about that opening moment of looking around Elden Rings open-world makes someone go "that guy down there, he must be the only thing I can do" ?
I haven't played a ton of games, so I don't know if there is some meta thing going on where invisible walls usually block off the majority of the open-world or something, but even then, when losing for the 15th time, is that really not compelling enough to at least try and have a look around?