He got called out.
A 30 kg backback certainly is heavy, but nothing a normal guy can't lift, and a bit worse for girls who tend to be weaker and lighter. Once it's on your back it's not that bad, though. Still heavier than "recommended" hiking backback weight, though, which is about a third of your own weight. From what I learned in the Scouts, at least.
However, these are elites. They shouldn't have trouble with something like that.
But what really bugs me about that is that a backpack is something you pack yourself. You have to know where everything is before you head out, so you won't have to dig through it to search for stuff.
Hey, look, Proud Wolf is useful.
Unless their goal is to make as many drop out as possible; weeding out the chaff, so to speak.
I'm guessing that's a large part of their success.
Man, Dryad is seen so rarely I almost didn't recognize her on the colour page.
I miss her. She's a fun character who should appear more often.
Perception of difficulty is a very strange thing. Say, if you desgin a level for a game, you could think it's challenging but not too hard but a play tester could find it way too hard or even extremely easy.
Actual advice I've heard from more than one game developer: Set the difficulty level the way you think it is. Then lower it by one. That's your
Hard difficulty.
Normal is one level below that.