Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Open-World Design
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Just like how you're introduced to the world is literally how BoTW introduces you to it's own world (could it be a homage?), or something as simple as picking up consumables with a simple press of a button with no animations, little things that aren't in the way of you experiencing the world.
What I haven't put my finger on was how both of these games propel you to discover the world, and to find out what's above the hill or if there might be a cave in a cliff. I don't know if it's the terrain design that's actually thought through and not left to some algorithm, or if it's simply the perk of having a great brand behind these games that have rewarded us properly for exploring their previous worlds.
A better tittle would be : Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Bad Open-World Design
The industry influence I would credit FromSoftware with is that its ok to make really difficult games again, a trend born through their work such as the Dark Souls games and Elden Ring etc. It's been a long time IMO since games this difficult were this mainstream.
I do have to admit it was perfectly aimed at someone like me, who remembers the glory days of video games but no longer has the time or skill to play at a top level.
Put it in context back before the game existed. The Zelda games are selling well, but they’re never Nintendo’s most successful games. What they are is Nintendo’s most revered. They have a great formula, designed by Miyamoto and polished to perfection by his successors. The critiques are getting deafening though. It’s getting too linear, the dungeons are turning slowly into content tubes, and the time spent on story is too long. What do you do? You don’t do Breath of the Wild to break the mould, you do Link Between Worlds.
Link Between Worlds is less linear, and harkens back to the SNES for its story and interaction. You take a step back from your mould, you redefine it.
But then BAM! They completely redesigned everything with Breath of The Wild. Link Between Worlds is but a mere footnote. That’s gutsy, and risky.
Interestingly it seems Nintendo understood that it could possibly not succeed, by where they placed the story in the timeline.
Nintendo, at least ever since the success of the Wii, hasn't been unwilling to make gutsy moves - but even then they do them in ways that they have fall-back positions if they're not as successful as they'd like.
It is amazing to see how many games today have taken inspiration from Zelda BOTW.
The first time I played the game, I decided it was more fun just exploring the open world and visiting all the Sheikah Towers.
I didn't have good armor/equipment/food/etc, and I had a complete blast doing it. That was one of my fondest memories of gaming.
Enemy, dungeon, weapon, skill, play style, and boss variety is massive in Elden Ring. BotW does not hold a candle to it.
I sure love when someone reviews a game they hardly even played.
Doesn’t BOTW have a similar option to rush to the end boss?
Also, this video shows BOTW doesn’t have to be like what you say
Rather uncharitable to compare a four year old game to one that just came out.
The main artistic voice of the game says he was inspired by BoW, yet because you don’t like it, you say it’s not an influence.
Take a step back from your own preferences when discussing art, it helps.
I care about judging the actual work. It doesn't matter what he thinks. The reality is that there's nothing of BOTW in Elden Ring.
Just because somebody is calling out the massive shortcomings in a piece of art you enjoyed doesn't mean whatever value it held to you is reduced. Not everyone has to like what you do. No need to cry over it.
The world in Elden Ring is beautiful but the controls and interactivity of the world is just lacking. I've died so many times that I never would have in botw (as the controls are precise and predictable).
Switching flasks is a pain and using them after getting hit once so you don't get killed is just so repetitive. It would be much better to have enemies hit a third of the damage and give you a third of the flasks.
Music in both is 10/10. Breath of the Wild story/characters I prefer. ER horse I prefer. ER world I prefer visually. Gameplay wise, I prefer breath of the wild's world.
Wish there was climbing, ability to destroy non furniture (of which you can't jump on to platform in this even if you wanted to). I don't like that I can't climb a two foot castle wall. If there is a chair next to the wall I just jump through it and break it.
Both are incredible games but I find the creativity, freedom, and puzzles what I look for in a game more than rolling through an absolutely stunning and detailed world.
Then you're missing out on half of the fun. If one playstyle is repetitive then switch your build out. Learn dragon rot, pick a colossal weapon and apply ridiculous skills to it. Choose a faith build and spam buffs until bosses can hardly scratch you while you fat roll away. It sounds like you're just bad tbh. Stick to Zelda.
Reskilling takes so much time to do as well so it's not like you can just swap and try out something else quickly. You have to go to Raya Lucaria, re skill, then level your items with stones, then go back to where you wanted to try something else out for a fight. You might find you actually don't like that and you have to do the whole thing over again.
Counterpoint, there is one form of attack in BotW, you have coupled it with a few prescripted interactions which give you the illusion of emergent behaviour, you will not actually be able to perform this action in 99.9% of your fights. In addition, your fire/attack/tree fall all just do "damage", ruling out a small number of specific exceptions your enemy will not respond differently to any so whichever achieves the higher numbers is best.
ER has different moves for light/heavy, one hand/two hand, running, rolling then the hundred plus the ashes of war skills which can be customised on each weapon. You can indeed set fire to the ground (it's a torch skill), you can catch a gust of wind (ash of war), you can freeze opponents etc. Enemies have meaningful resistances, choosing your armaments carefully makes a difference.
> Reskilling takes so much time to do as well so it's not like you can just swap and try out something else quickly
I tried this out to guage how onerous it actually is, this takes less than 15 minutes. Are you sure you're making these points in good faith?
What makes tetris or animal crossing any less repetitive? Nothing, and yet they're fun games people can sink hundreds of hours into.
Miyazaki cited Fumito Ueda's work such as Shadow of the Colossus (2005) as an influence that "inspired him to create" Elden Ring, while also drawing influence from "the design and the freedom of play" in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017).
So I guess all-in-all I agree with your thesis though. Elden Ring does seem to have managed to leave the worst aspects of previous games while inviting the best ideas along for the ride. Add to that the most beautifully crafted world FROM has ever made and you have something that simply exudes GOAT.
Skyrim, GTA, and RDR2 all share the same "Main Mission" mechanic that helps keep players centered on overall story progression while leaving room for side quests and exploration. This "go there, do this, go there" cycle doesn't exist in BOTW or Elden Ring.
That sums it up. Enjoyment comes from core game play mechanics, not quest content. I'd be just as happy with core Street Fighter mechanics in an open world, with no-explanation filler content between boss encounters.
A friend of mine installed minecraft after like 5 years or even more, he was playing it like crazy back then. He died like ten times before giving up...
I feel like new players have a hard time now in Minecraft because its full of "new mechanics" and monsters and traps and god knows what..
You can think about it as how the games fall on the hand-holding spectrum. Elden Ring and BOTW are clustered closer together on the left side of "No Guidance", and the further right you go towards "Linear" you'll see the other games. Sure there's a big gap between ER and BOTW, but it's less than between BOTW and its next peer.
There's also the added dimension that Elden Ring and BOTW both share this unique quality that even random encounters can turn life-or-death, especially when running into new classes of mobs, and you have to be very patient and get absorbed into the moment or you're rewarded with death even when you're convinced you did the right thing. There's no room for quick drags of a cigarette in the middle of a fight, and instead you're rewarded with the outcome possible with incredible focus and game play experience that leaves you feeling like a superhero.
The whole "exiting the cave to reveal the world" is Socrates cave shit. Old as the hills.
I don’t think video game starting caves have “shadows on the wall” though?
Nintendo's open-world is the only open-world I liked.
I can't get immersed in GTA's open world because I'm just a random going on a killing spree for 15 minutes then shut the game down.
I hated Skyrim, the world is big but empty. There is nothing particular about the landscape that makes me want to "go there". Most of the time, I discovered areas because I was going in straight lines.
Zelda on the other hand, I was like "oh wow, a mountain split in two, I wanna see it". The landscape view makes you want to see what's going on and act as a map ("oh so the gemini mountain is on my right, I must be at XXX"). You're on top of a tower, look at the volcano, and you're like "what is that thing moving on the horizon". Same thing for pretty much all divine beasts.
The other nice thing about BOTW's open world is the map. You don't need it. In The Witcher 3 you have a GPS that tells you where to go. When people tells you to go somewhere in this Zelda, you ask people, you look at the road signs, and you go there. This makes the world much more realistic and less empty because you need to interact with it.
To go to the Goron village, you have many ways of doing it, stockpile a huge amount of food to heal while you burn, or go around and talk to people to find the potion. If you choose to stockpile food, you need to hunt, to cook, and to interact with the world once again.
The world is part of the game play, unlike many other open world games where the world is just the scenery where the game play take place.
While quite different of course, they have basically the same goal: you first have to get lost in order to find your way.
The fun begins when you explore and stumble across things by mistake.
Also many landmarks in BOTW are straight up taken from the NES game, like the twin mountains in the gerudo desert.
After Ocarina of Time, the Zelda games went to a linear story with a dungeon formula almost copy pasted for 20 years. BOTW breaks this pattern to get back to its roots: exploration.
Just watch the interviews of Aonuma explaining this.
Zelda 2 was pretty linear too.
The twin mountains are spectacle rock. They have appeared in many games. Most notably, imo, they’re in the crater of death mountain in ocarina of time. If you squint at the way the fire temple is built (two towers) it’s sort of implied to be built inside of it. Very cool
Both BotW and WoW also made exploring the "empty" areas rewarding (they're not actually empty, and there are things to find).
Weirdly, that's what every FFXI player did almost every day and for years, until they finally added fast(er) travel options in later expansions. Even using the Chocobo to increase run speed, it took 30+ minutes of travel to get to any end game content. And it was very easy to accidentally die along the way in places where nobody could resurrect you without also dying themselves, and then you would need to make the entire trip again. It was absolutely stupid and a complete waste of time, and yet I have nothing but fond memories of it.
But literally days of walking would be too much without something (either plot along the way or fast travel).
I discovered the Elders Scrolls via Morrowind, then because I enjoyed it so much I was overjoyed about Oblivion coming out, and a little bit less about Skyrim.
... But these last two left me with that feeling of emptiness about the world. Oblivion had some redeeming qualities on specific quests (going into that painting was absolutely fantastic, although way too short), but felt like a drag overall. Skyrim felt like you never stop stumbling on something, encounters and quests felt evenly spaced and incredibly generic, succumbing to a Horror Vacui of sorts[0]. Also since everything dynamically adjusts in difficulty to your progress, everything is always as easy as it ever was. As a result there's no risk, no surprise, no tension.
Comparatively, Morrowind had many many flaws but I just kept on wanting to explore the world more, go past this ridge, reach to that spiky thing on the horizon, enter this weird tomb, walk down that windy road...
Breath of the wild is a game full of secrets. Things are there and they need to be found.
Many other open world games are not. They’re full of missions. Because the ui is so informative, you actually get rapid confirmation that there is nothing.
A lot of missions start at a hub and make you go to a place and then come back. That’s how that portion of the world gets used. Botw doesn’t do this much. Most content that you find is immediately relevant there because that place is interesting in itself.
Lastly, you don’t have a dearth of dialogue to get through things. Dialogue is fine and all but side quests are conceptually very stupid and the writing is inevitably tiresome. It breaks immersion when someone needs you to collect maguffins again.
Nintendo rested on their laurels and released a literal 3/10 game but people still ate it up for some reason. I don't think I have ever been so disappointed with a game in my life, and I've been playing Zelda since I was four years old. I wasn't asking for much, perhaps if the map was 1/10th the size they could have spent more effort filling it with content.
Elden Ring is in total juxtaposition. Exploration is rewarded with secret weapons, armor and skills that don't break and are actually useful. Your build is totally up to you and the wide variety means options for how you play the game, fight the bosses, and navigate enemy corridors is huge. FromSoft added respec this go around which lets you change it up if you're getting decimated over a bad build or just want to try something else. The bosses are unforgiving but manageable if you're resiliant. The map is still large enough to get lost in, but small enough that it doesn't feel empty. You're forced to ditch your horse in many areas out of respect for navigating on foot. And of course the story/lore which FromSoft is known for being bad at delivering (usually told through items and notes collected through the game) is leagues better than previous titles, having GRRM consult and help build out the lore was a brilliant idea as well. This game is 10/10, they did not compromise on their core values of delivering a legit challenge to players and improved upon every conceivable part of the game.
If it's not clear, I really love this game. I'm 75hrs into my first playthrough and only 50% of the trophies achieved. This has been great value in my opinion.
It’s got a lot of rough edges, but it’s an absolute breath of fresh air; and even my gf says it’s the one she’s enjoyed watching me play the most.
They were inspired to reinvent it by watching the reviews for Shadow of the Colossus which was “modeless” (low-UI) and refused to explain anything, like Fromsoft does now.
For all its flaws, Elden Ring is packed with “oh wow” moments as you unlock new areas. And the design of the “dungeons” is inspired, they’re so intricate and rich, yet never so lengthy that they outstay their welcome. The main gripe I have with the game is that a number of the enemies and bosses stray from being fun challenges into just being frustrating. I’d have preferred if they’d made the game just a bit smaller and focused on making each boss encounter as memorable as those on the critical questlines.
I would say BotW was more akin to Animal Crossing. That Japanese genre of relaxation game where you sort of mindlessly wander around doing menial tasks to decompress. That said, I did get like 150hrs out of Animal Crossing with my girlfriend so I do see the appeal, I just did not want that for Zelda.
When I got a Switch BotW was the only game worth playing on the platform. I played it for over a year exclusively and had fun all the way.
I tried to play Elden Ring but I made the mistake of provoking an NPC and dying about 10 times until I figured out how to shake him off. Then I proceeded to die another 10-15 times on the next NPC and a dragon until I figured out how to run away from those. I gave up after dying again on the encounter that followed those.
Eventually I'll try to play it again but at the moment I'm sunk into Ghost of Tsushima which is awesome.
It felt all wrong and... Hacked together? Like they planned a different game and then put the zelda theme on top of it. Something like that..
That's something they probably picked up from Monster Hunter.
BotW, if it wasn't for the Zelda tag in it's name, would have been judged for what it truely is: a very mediocre game. It does almost eveything wrong: the reward loop isn't satisfactory because getting a weapon that will break after a few hit feel useless, the cooking system has no tutorial and is hard to understand wihtout looking up on the internet and once understood is very tedious to use more a few time in a row, there is a lack a variety in enemies that are just copy-pasta of each other, the rain is basically stopping exploration as soon as it starts, thunder is even more infuriating: it's just a punishing mechanic that does the finger to the player, the world is big but empty, the shrines are mini-games designed by interns and feel often very out of place just as the UI (the red magnet for instance) are breaking immersion, the controls... oh the controls there are 16 different buttons + 2 joysticks (that are also clickable) on the Switch and every. single. of. them. is. used. for some action. That's 20 input to remember (I don't), bring me back the GameCube controller with its 7 buttons please! Aweful monetization too: a basic feature in an adventure game (path roamed by the player) is locked behing a DLC, and a lot of equipments are locked behind physical and expensive DLC (Amiibo). Very few memorable NPCs, forgettable music, almost no story, the list goes one.
In conclusion: this is likely the most overrated game in existence. But a Zelda (or Mario or Pokemon) in the name and people will buy it and like it whatever the quality. I regretted almost instantly spending money on it.
However, those weaknesses turn into strengths for the vast majority of people. Take raining for example. I hate the rain, but I’m glad it’s there. It forces you to change your plan when it starts. Some of my most memorable moments where after the rain forced me to rethink traversal.
Weapon durability was a common critique, but once again it’s to force you to change your weapons. Not to get married to any weapon style, and to savagely throw your weapons at your enemies. I love it.
In prior Zeldas, dungeons were architecturally complicated and treasures would bring a new kind of ability.
They are not as inventive or unique as in previous games. They all use the same textures, which is so tiring after a while.
As Nintendo and Monolith Soft (the secret MVPs of that game) develop sequels based on the formula, they’ll close the dungeon gap and give us even better games.
Looking at the trailers for the sequel, I’m pretty convinced this will be the big difference; unique dungeons based on their previous work.
> Shrines and Korok leaves are chores
They’re designed to be fun if you discover them naturally instead of actively trying to get them all.
Getting 13 hearts and two stamina wheels only takes about half the shrines, and I felt like I had plenty of inventory space after 200 or so Koroks, not to mention the “reward” for going to the trouble of getting all of the Koroks
Skyrim and AC are milestones in open-world design around 2010. Sort of mind-blowing if you played them at their initial release. Horizon, though not being top, also has its own merit. I wonder how can an author comment on open world design when literally any other open-world game does not interest him.
I could just be angry because he acclaimed ER without being fair about game design as a progress over time.
HZD seemed to generate a lot of discussion about how it’s a great science fiction story, and it is, but it’s also a really dark tale that feels hopeless even when you know how it ultimately plays out. It told two very different stories side by side and one of them was a history in our future that was utterly bleak and it told you in a way that held little back. It truly felt like every time you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did. And then Ted Faro murdered the Zero Dawn architects and deleted all of the teaching data thus dooming an entire world of unborn children to a life free from safety, food security, needless infant mortality, medicine and reading. All to hide his shame from a future he wouldn’t even be alive in. And then we learned he got to go live in his bunker while Elisabet suffocated to death in front of her childhood home. It was infuriating but fitting.
There’s bits of that sprinkled throughout Forbidden West but they’re not given the stage.
But I’m in complete agreement about with the OP about the “overpolished” aspect of Forbidden West.. just check out the Horizon subreddit right now. They just released a patch that nerfed the legendary weapons in the game. There was no real reason to do that. They didn’t feel horribly broken (especially for how much grinding it takes to upgrade them and how expensive their ammo is to craft). And come on: it’s a single player game. No idea what’s going on at that studio right now.. maybe gearing up for DLC.
I was talking to a coworker about it and the first thing he asked me is, "What about all that amazing gear you get by the end of the first game?" which I think perfectly illustrates your point. They took Aloy to the top and although they managed to make it work so far it does feel a bit awkward, like they may have jumped the shark. But hey I'm just excited to have a cool game to decompress with. I guess in the end it's not that different than a sequel to a movie. People who loved the first will more or less come back to see the second.
The game developers conference releases a lot of great talks. Some on horizon zero dawn where pretty interesting.
Character development:
Also the game follows the bigger evil fallacy which leads to the main character needing to become a super-hero to "win". I mean Aloy is already at that point, I guess. For example there is a several ton heavy fireclaw that jumps on you at every occasion. I don't see how a person would survive that. Hence it is a bit immersion breaking.
Now we're at a point where open world games are a dime a dozen, and for good reason: they sell. They're easy to understand, simple to drop in and out of, and many of them now have multiplayer. Rather than aiming to make an immersive world to get caught up in, companies run them as live service games with a drip feed of content―essentially a big sandbox that I can mess around with my friends in. On the flip-side, Breath of the Wild is strictly single player, but it has a lot of fun systemic features that combine in interesting ways (weather, elements, physics, etc), making it feel like an experimental sandbox of its own.
Elden Ring is basically a Souls game with two major innovations for the series:
- Previous games had mostly linear progression. Elden Ring opens up the world to the player and gives them tools to explore without penalty from the start (fast travel, for example).
- Outside of interiors, the player is afforded much more mobility because of their mount. They can outrun almost all overworld enemies, and do hit and run attacks (Interiors are traditional Souls challenges).
These two points, combined with a generous allied NPC summon system, means that the player has a lot more options in how they want to approach the game. In previous Souls titles if you reach a boss you can't defeat, the game is over for you. Elden Ring is structured in a way where you can just go in a different direction, and warp back to that boss when you feel more confident. The environmental storytelling, cryptic NPC dialog, and multiplayer systems are nicely tuned to fit the different affordances Elden Ring provides, but they're not wildly different from previous Souls titles.
Purely personal opinion - I played about ten hours of the first Horizon and I was blown away by then graphics. I liked the story and the characters and the world design.
The actual gameplay and how it was connected to the world, unfortunately, I found boring and ultimately I decided to stop playing. I had the feeling of being here before from every other open world RPG I've played in the last 15 years or so and I didn't feel like anything new was added beyond a few incremental tweaks. I didn't feel driven to explore the world and I felt it was just going to be filled with samey fetch quests and dungeons.
Yet it bored me to death. So empty. Such a terrible rhythm.
I understand why people like it, I get the game qualities, but I prefer much more density in my games.
When I played the witcher 3, I enjoyed it. But soon, I got lost in side quests. I could not even remember the main quest anymore. And side quests took me so far away, going back would have been sometimes long rides of boat and riding.
GTA had a different problem: it was very repetitive. I didn't feel like moving from one part of the city to another, I was discovering another part of the world. Just a variation of what was already existing.
That's why BoTW was the first open world I deeply appreciated: there is always something to do, anywhere, something do discover and get excited about. And going off and on the main quest is quick, easy, seamless. You can do it over and over. Also, the game is not just beautiful, it's a piece of art.
I never stopped in order to admire my surrounding in skyrim or the witcher. Not that they cannot be nice looking: max res + mod can make them outstanding. But they don't touch you inside in the way a Nintendo game landscape can, Miyazaki style. They get you attached to character much better though, so there is that.
I believe Elden Ring went for that density, that artistic quality kind, that flexibility, in a sort, that lean aspect of open world exploration. Except you get your ass kicked and then the game spit on your grave.
The downside is that it has very little replay value (you can beat the game within 5min if you already did before), but the path to get there is difficult, engaging, and extremely rewarding.
It's difficult to describe Outer Wilds, but I'd put it as an "open-world Portal", only it has numerous Portal-like quicks in itself.
There's a unique in game language (and a good, and then really good hint in the game on how to crack into it); but it is _not_ required to even get the good ending. Just enough of the lore's surface is there and a player still has a good chance of reaching the good ending. All the more so after seeing the bad and then reloading the save file (standard game mechanics).
Some fans have even put together decoder tables to assist translation of the game language to English; as well as a version of the manual that's completely translated if you don't have the time or desire to do that.
Or maybe it’s a distinction without a difference. I know I’d rather see more Outer Wilds games out there than more Skyrims.
Of course, I think that "open world" is a pretty broad label at this point, as there are other open world games that are totally different from ER but just as good. For instance, Fallout 4 (survival). It doesn't have as good enemy variety, locations, or combat as ER, no question, but the questlines are a lot better, the settlement stuff is awesome, and the general level of interactivity makes it an experience just as immersive as ER.
But overall, for that type of "combat/exploration" focused open world game, ER absolutely takes the cake. I hope the BOTW sequel takes some inspiration, especially for the dungeons. But I do think Bethesda still rules for the "simulation" style open world games.
It gets the open-world aspects right. All of the world is accessible from the start, the only limitations being your ability to tackle stronger enemies (like deathclaws). Exploration is rewarding, not forced. The world is designed such that exploration is driven less by quest markers, but by the player noticing interesting things in the world, like say a giant dinosaur out in the distance.
It has a main storyline, but it is a storyline that can accomodate a huge variety of choices made throughout the game. There's no artificial "essential NPC" mechanic, you can literally kill everyone in the game and the story still works. This makes the game very immersive - the player has absolute free choice in how they want to approach the game, and more importantly it feels like the choices you make and the factions you side with actually matter to the world
I can appreciate the detailed environments and characters, the deep lore, RPG aspects, and probably the best combat mechanics and hitbox detection in the industry.
What turns me off is that the entire gameplay loop consists of boss rushes and fighting lower level enemies, just so you can gather loot, level up and fight more enemies and more difficult bosses. It all feels very one dimensional, and before ER introduced the open world aspect, very linear.
I suppose most games can be boiled down to their essence like this and sound boring, but in a game like Fallout 4, BoTW or Skyrim there's much more to do than just combat, crafting, leveling up and exploring. There's a quest system, cooking, companions, horses (the one in ER seems just for traversal?), challenges, complex NPC interactions, branching storylines, etc. They offer a much richer experience than any Soulsborne title I've played or seen.
My impression before ER is that all Soulsborne titles are essentially minor improvements on the same formula, with a lore and environment swap. ER introduces the open world aspect, but ultimately keeps the one dimensional gameplay loop.
I'd love to be proven wrong, and get the appeal of these games, so please correct anything I'm mistaken about above. I don't even have a problem with the difficulty curve if the game would give me reasons to keep playing and git gud. It's just that it doesn't, so the high difficulty is frustrating enough to stop playing.
If you don’t enjoy the combat, then yeah, you’re not going to see the appeal. I would argue it takes quite a few hours (maybe 30?) of playing soulslike games to get to the point where the combat becomes more satisfying, as certain actions start to flow and feel more natural.
With all that said, there is a more to Elden Ring than just the combat. There are quests, actually quite a lot, with a bunch of variety, and many of them are quite long and epic. There’s upgrading weapons and upgrading summons, and all the complexity that comes along with that, such as ashes of war etc. Then there’s the secrets. So. Many. Secrets.
And I feel a bit hypocritical since I do enjoy roguelikes like The Binding of Isaac, which can certainly be seen as "just" exploring, grinding, leveling up and fighting enemies. Yet for some reason in those kinds of games I get more satisfaction from progressing and the mechanics feel more enjoyable, which keeps me playing for hours on end.
I'll probably give ER a try eventually. Maybe it clicks for me this time. :)
I honestly don't get the appeal and cult-like following around them.
The basic formula is nothing special really: take any action-adventure game, give regular enemy mobs 5x the HP, 20X for bosses. Crank up enemy damage so that player dies in 3 hits, 4 tops. Boom, you've got a Souls game.
Lots of mechanics are very out of place for a modern game. Enemies just follow their very limited waypoints until you get into their aggro range, then chase using what is very outdated pathfinding: they won't climb trees or get to you if they're not in almost a straight line of sight. Often they'll stay in a walking animation as soon as finding an obstacle. Ladders seem to be an exepetion, though.
Combat AI is very old-timey too. Enemies have 2, 3 animations that they alternate. And they are very rigid: they'll perform their fixed animations through obstacles -clipping through-, like columns or trees, trying to get to the player in a straight line of sight.
I don't think it's fair to call it an open "world" either. A world almost entirely populated by barebone AIs that exist solely to patrol their 2 waypoint routes waiting to attack the player and respawn after resting at a checkpoint makes sense as a "world". Reminds of early 2000s MMOs, specially Lineage II.
Only the player character is actually doing stuff. Everything else just sits and waits.
It's like the game doesn't even pretend not to be a game. In that I think it's somwhere in the oposite of something like Assasin's Creed that tries to explain its videogameness away, where the assasin gameplay is explained as what happens when your character relieves their ancestor's memories.
But the Soulsbourne games scatch a particular itch...
the general sin of melee action games is how unchallenging the combat is. Most of the time feels like swinging a weightless sword with a baseball bat animation much too fast. Or shooting arrows with a bow will be like a machine gun for toothpicks. Show the game to the non-initiated and the first thing they'll mention is how it takes a long time to attack. Also one of the first games with shield mechanics. RPG games before basically slaped a +25% defence! and called it a day.
This is a game that doesn't have any real "systems" past stats and stat affinities, but instead of making it limited, it makes the game incredibly replayable. There was at least one boss that I would probably have needed to level another 20 or so levels to beat, but instead of the slow offensive skill I was using, I instead equipped Quickstep on my katana and suddenly I was able to dodge attacks that were crushing me before.
Do I think some sort of internal recordkeeping for quests would help? Absolutely. I like that there's no checklist on the screen so that the game doesn't seem like a chore. But you know what the game never asks me to do? Go gather 20 of a certain item. Go kill 30 of a certain creature. There are questlines with multiple parts to be sure, but most of them are going to take a while as you actually fight your way through the world.
Because the focus of Fromsoft is on the player experience with world interaction and not with systems design, I will probably play through the game 3 or 4 more times in succession. I'm familiar with the game now, but I'm playing a bandit. Next time, it will be a magic user. The time after, a strength. Then a faith build. It can be frustrating to pick up items that you can't use, and while the game does give you the ability to respec your character to take advantage of all the stuff you find, I'm eager to continue my current playthrough on the path I chose from the start.
Best game I've ever played, and a vast improvement over the chore simulators that have come to dominate the market.
All of this is to say, my mind shifts when I am playing to what CP 2077 could have been. Replace Tarnished with Edge Runner, Lands In Between with Night City, the Elden Ring bringing down a Mega Corp and it all feels natural. Not to bring up CDPR hate or anything, just that Elden Ring fills a hole that was promised by other games.
Organing Learning
You don't matter
There’s Always a Plan B
Letting the Player Breathe
Everything you need to learn, you learn by exploration. There are no tutorial, no hints, no hand holding. You are just some dude. Nobody even cares to know your name and even low level NPCs can beat you up. (Though of course the power fantasy here is that after many hours of playing you earn your place and become the hero but again, that needs to be earned.)
Enemy too strong for you? You can try to run around it. You can use a magic spell. You can master the combat system. You can lure it towards an NPC that might finish it off. Or you can just grind up your stats and come back later. So many ways to solve a problem.
Sadly even the studio was never able to recreate the magic fully in further games. Though Elex is quite decent but sadly had to make a few compromises.
[1] Gothic 1 and 2 and add-on explicitly excluding Gothic 3 which plays differently
The truly wonderful content of Elden Ring is in the areas that received the level of care all souls games have, the legacy dungeons. Stormveil, Raya Lucaria, Leyndell, the sewers..
The basic open world fields present no challenge, nothing of value, no amount of enemy ambushes can stop you from just bugging away on the horse, the areas you "explore" as you discover the world consists of copy pasted dungeon tilesets with just a few variations that were hand crafted, I've seen multiple copies that were 1:1 of some rooms in places like caves, catacombs and so on. Bosses are reused to the point of exhaustion. There's like more than 10 bosses that are essentially clones of Dark Souls 1 first boss, the Asylum Demon, just with one or two new moves, and its attack hitting you harder than the boss it clones. The game cannot receive the excuse that "you can just skip this content, it's optional" either, because it was purposefully designed to force you to do open world chores if you want to get the "full experience". Upgrading weapons other than the ones that use somber stones is very painful if you do not explore the countless repetitive mining tunnels filled with mostly the same enemies and with always a copy pasted boss at the end, where in a previous souls games the materials would be laying around in places you'd naturally traverse as you complete the game, here, the Legacy Dungeons do not offer much in the way of materials, and you would miss on a lot of game lore if you didn't complete the copy pasted content because this is, after all a souls game, and souls games have most of their writing in... item descriptions. It worked ok in a 40 hours game like Dark Souls 3 where you'd pick up items as you progress through the game. It's.. infuriating when you're told you need to do 140 hours of copy pasted content to experience the same amount of -actual- content other souls games give you.
In many ways, the side content of this game feels like.. Bloodborne's computer generated Chalice Dungeons, which were a completely optional side feature of the game that could be safely ignored and left aside. Except that this time, From removed much of the content you'd find on the normal game path, and threw it all around those new chalice dungeons. Cool weapons, unique talismans, the game lore.. if you don't do this mind numbing copy pasted content you're only getting half a game.
I know, with all the accolades this game received from the gaming press, and the sales it achieved, earning itself a large part of a new audience that never played souls games, I just know, we're never going to see a traditional game by From software anymore, and I'm sad. I don't want more open world drudgery. The world didn't need another developer to fall into this trap.
Elden Ring doesn't have the quest compass, the quest log and other "easy mode" features of a game like skyrim. But it does have the copy pasted ultra linear dungeons that you complete in 5 minutes, it does have the repeated dragon fights that are all the same except one does a breath attack with blue colors and another does flamey breath attacks. It does have the formulaic world structure - each part of the map must contain X number of objectives to do.
In Elden Ring, these are : each "square" of the map has 1 catacomb, 1 or multiple caves, tunnels, "hero tomb" with a chariot that instantly kills whatever it runs over, 1 dragon to kill, 1 Erdtree avatar or putrid tree spirit, 1 church with an upgrade for your flask, 1 tower with a ridiculously simple """puzzle""" (but often time consuming, like find three hidden turtles to kill on the island to open it), 1 evergaol with a boss you fight in an open arena...
How, exactly, is this game a breakthrough going against the grain of open world design? It doesn't go against the grain, it followed the formula to a T. Lacking the UI of mainstream games doesn't mean the world isn't designed like a Bethesda or Ubisoft game.
The only thing that is unique to Elden Ring, is the parts that was already done by every other From games. The open world of ER, though, is nothing new, nothing grounds breaking and its main purpose is to inflate the amount of playtime. I understand de gustibus and all that... but, unanimous 10/10 in the gaming press? Is that all it took? If I was a game developer at Bethesda or Ubisoft, I would be very angry with the state of the gaming press.
It's also unfortunate that this looks like a game with a lot of build variety, that would really lend itself to multiple playthroughs, but actually playing through the content again sounds like a pain. Going through the wiki and making a list of places I actually need to go is not my idea of a good time.
Maybe it’s because of the presentation. In many open world games the UI makes it clear that there are “X towers to climb” or “Y camps to clear”… there’s a checklist of goals. Elden Ring just lets players stumble on things as they will. Even as the map design may be similar to other open world games I feel less pressure to “do all the things”; as a result my personal journey feels more organic.
I did recognize the template pieces used in caves/mines and it did turn me off a bit. But because I’m not guided to clear all of them checkbox style it was less offensive. In a way it’s smoke and mirrors: a lack of information makes the design more mysterious than it really is.
A sibling comment mentions that the length makes multiple playthroughs a pain, but I generally am a one and done for souls games.
In another thread I commented that the open world gives a casual player more options instead of getting forever stuck on a single challenge. I think that feeling of freedom combined with faster (but buggy) movement is responsible for the broader appeal and high scores. Oh and the art direction doesn’t hurt.
Some of that just isn't true though. I can't remember the last single player game I really cared about the story, I mostly skip it. Gameplay is solid in _many_ games these days, or a huge variety of types.
For example, Elden Ring, the story is not a lot more than: there's an Elden Ring you should go explore the world and find, have fun. It's pretty far from a book in game form.
This is probably the best time to be a gamer there's ever been, the only real blemish being that GPUs are ridiculously priced right now.
Is there more to it other than the fact that as one gets older, one has higher expectations? I keep wondering about it...
I can even ignore, and did miss whole areas on my first play through. I did end up finishing my first play through in 80 hours.
I then decided to wait for the DLC to begin my second play through.
I've been playing Elden Ring too, and while it's quite tedious, it's interesting enough that I might be able to grind through it (it's huge in terms of hours).
Actually, most Japanese games aren’t like that at the moment. There’s a move away from turn based JRPGs to having more action.
Linear storylines and sidequests, are often used as interactive tutorials. They give the player some structure within the game. For example, in Dying Light 2, a level 1 player is partitioned off from level 6 areas. A level 1 player facing off hordes of level 6 zombies, volatiles, etc. will have no shot. That would be frustrating for players not explicitly looking for that sort of experience.
In soulslike games, it's expected that your hand isn't going to be held and you might blindly walk into areas for which you're severely under equipped. That's a part of the experience, which again, is expected by players when they load up Elden Ring for the first time.
TL/DR: Elden Ring can have an organic open world without linear quest elements, because that's what players expect when picking up the game.
Game even goes out of it's way to place Sellia Crystal Tunnel teleporter extremely close to start point if you immediately start going east.
That’s also why there isn’t an easy mode, but if you want to make progress there’s other “modeless” ways to get stronger.
[0] Japanese media has a lot of running jokes about BDSM fetishes, which they think are personality types
But most of that gets boring fast.
The Catacombs and random ruins do start to get repetitive, though.
So I started over with whatever the first character is (already forgot what they called that type of character). Jumped in the training pit again and .... got to the first hard character and died. Zero indication what I'm supposed to do. Extremely infuriating programming that it takes sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo long to start from the last statue. Like gees! Literally no more than 1-2k of data changed but lazy programmers mean I have to wait way to long to try again. That's a hard punishment on dying but with zero help and zero instruction there was no way I was going to go through the torture of figuring out how to fight that first guy. Yea, I blocked with my shield but if he hits me once I'm dead because my character doesn't recover in time to get out of the way for the next hit.
I get fans love this difficulty. I hate it. It's not something that Zelda games do (I know, From Software fans will say Zelda sucks). But ugh, at least train me a little? I feel zero of this famed "it's so great because you know what you did wrong so you'll try again". No, I don't know what I did wrong. All I know is "You Died" now wait too long to see "Yo Died" again with zero help.
What am I missing?
- Watch YouTube videos, there are beginners guides, tips and tricks, etc.
- Try to see each death as a challenge, what can you try next time to potentially not die? Dying and improving is “the process” in these games.
> "For my personal experience with Demon's Souls, when it was close to final I spent close to two hours playing it and after two hours I was still standing at the beginning at the game," he admitted. "I said, 'This is crap. This is an unbelievably bad game'. So I put it aside."
He later became a massive fan of the series.
These games don't click with everyone, but they're not meme games. And for some people, it takes awhile before they finally understand the appeal. I hated every second of Dark Souls until I got about 7 hours in (due to continual prodding by a friend), and then everything clicked, and suddenly I couldn't play or think about anything else for a very long time.
The worst part about it is how clunky and unintuitive some of the things are, and how incredibly poor the PC port is in UX. Some controls can't even be changed, or even seen anywhere in the settings page.
In general, though, I think it's pretty safe to assume that when millions of people are enjoying something and you aren't, it's probably because it's a good thing in the grand perspective, and it's you that doesn't "get it". Assuming that it's a "meme" is kind of like ignoring overwhelming evidence proving you wrong and thinking everyone else is an idiot.