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Completely agree. Elden Ring really is uniquely positioned to be “the game” to look at for game designers when seeing the advantages and disadvantages of the open world design. Compared to much of the rest of the industry, it really is the shining example of what an open world can be when the developers are passionate, competent, and truly wanting to make a genuinely great game, not just chasing trends.
You bring up some good points. And I’m about to veer off into “personal opinion” territory, so take this for what it’s worth.
But when I think about “running past enemies” in Dark Souls, I think about the tightly designed levels, and how I had to learn the layout before running by was a viable option. And if I wanted to explore an area, I would have to be cautious and alert. Compare that to Elden Ring’s open design, and I never felt like I had to “learn the map” nor be wary of my surroundings, I could just kind of run around without consequence and only deal with enemies when I wanted to on my terms.
And I’m sure you could come up with exceptions to these generalizations for each game, but they would be exceptions. On the whole, it’s a stark difference in “game feel”. And for me personally, taking the fear and need for caution out of exploration was a large deviation from what made a Souls game feel like a Souls game. Not that it is necessarily worse mind you, just different, and shifts the formula to be something quite different. Elden Ring made me feel like I was playing something closer to an Ubisoft open world or even Breath of the Wild a little bit (obvious differences aside, just the “vibe” I got). A really good Ubisoft open world designed by far better developers mind you, but that kind of design philosophy.
And as far as the “go fuck off and farm souls”, I could definitely see how ER was a more fun game for that. If you were really in the mood to “grind some Elden Ring”, having all that content would definitely be a huge benefit. I’m just not the target audience for it however, as I felt like the repetition of bosses and enemies just to fill the world with mini-dungeons and add content was largely “filler”. I’m not much of a fan of grinding to be honest.
This may largely come down to the evolution of my tastes as time has gone on, as I used to have a much more positive opinion on this type of design. For example, when I first played Fallout 2 I thought it was a huge improvement due to the massive dungeons you could find in random encounters, giving me days of content to play around with. Same with Daggerfall, the procedural generated quests and dungeons felt like an endless supply of content. But after replaying them, I couldn’t get past the feeling that it was all “filler content” (which sounds more derogatory than I mean it to, I’m just struggling to find the best word choice for this). Same is true for the mini-dungeons and evergoals in ER.
Compare that to DarkSouls, where if I wanted “more content”, I would instead just choose to replay the game. And when I do wind up wanting to replay one of these games, I greatly appreciate the larger focus on “hand crafted and finely tuned” content over the “open world buffet” methodology. And when it comes to replaying Elden Ring, I find myself skipping a significant amount of content, and thinking to myself “what if the time they spent creating that repetitive content went into more unique content”. Sure, there would be “less content” overall, but there would be “more real content”. (Not that Dark Souls was immune to this kind of copy paste content mind you, the Demon Ruins come to mind.)
Anyways, I let that rant get away from me, so thanks for sticking with it if you made it this far. Obviously my personal opinions on the changes Elden Ring made to the Souls formula are not overly common, as it is by far many many peoples favorite of the series. And to be honest, I absolutely loved the game as well, easily one of the best games ever made. My personal critiques are purely my own feelings on a very specific aspect of the series. Different strokes for different folks and all that.
Couldn’t agree more. When open worlds were new and shiney, I enjoyed the sense of freedom and exploration. Now though, it usually just feels like padding. Like I’m being told I need to eat 20 crackers for every bite of burger.
Even worse when they are just big maps dotted with equally spaced event icons and way points that you are just expected to complete. Really makes me miss open world games that felt like they existed for their own sake like Morrowind.
As much as I enjoyed Elden Ring, I definitely felt like the open world added so little ta the formula, but took so much when you could just casually run by most enemies.
Good on ya! Fight the good fight!
Personally, I dug the “social stealth” mechanics in the early AC games, especially as it was a interesting deviation from the more line of sight based formula of the MGS games, and the light/shadow based stealth of the Theif and Splinter Cell series (everything old is new again in that regards), but I’ve always been a fan of stealth games anyway. And I found the climbing and parkour to be fun and novel at the time, even if it is extremely “automated”.
Was fortunate enough to just rent AC 1&2 for the 360 at the time, so uPlay never really entered into my decision making.
But yeah, if you were a completionist, I could see how that would get extremely boring. And Ubisoft’s business practices are super shitty.
Oh god, I hear people take 50+ hours on this one, if that turns out to be 42+ of cut scenes I’m out.
But honestly, doubt I could finish the game at all. I think I’d lose interest in about 8 hours, maybe 12? I have a tendency to drop overly long open world games randomly, even when I’m actively enjoying them. It’s a problem.
But if they don’t let me skip the overly long cut scenes… I would probably have a hard time coming back after the first night. You gotta be real good at your job to get me to watch a movie when I wanna be playing a game.
This game has been such a hard litmus test for “what would it take to get you to purchase another Assassins Creed game?” for me.
Like, “Would you buy it if it was just a genuienly good Assassins Creed game?” - Paid Ubisoft Reviewer
“No, I’ve played them during their heyday and I’m a bit over the formula” - Tired Inner gamer
“But what if it had Samurai, including the certified BAMF Yasuke?” - Ubi Devs
“hmm… I do love Samurai and Yasuke… but no, I don’t think that would do it. I don’t like Ubisoft’s business practices and would rather not support it even if it speaks to my inner Chanbara nerd.” - Inner Anti-corpo voice
“Not even if Ubisoft was taking a strong stance against the Anti-Woke nonsense culture wars? You couldn’t even let their business practices go for just one game?” - Ubi Marketing team
“No no no, I know that businesses only take these stances when it’s profitable. They would just as easily take the opposite opinion if that was where the money was at.” - Inner cynic voice
“But what if we dunked on Elon, on his own platform no less?” - AC twiiter account
“okay…I’m in… but only when it goes on a good Steam sale” - Defeated sense of self
Haha, beat me to it. They are both a bit right, and these questions have been hammered out by game designers for years with no definitive answers in sight.
I figure, so long as the design was purely for the “artistic intent/integrity” of the game and not to manipulate players into spending more money, the rest can just be left up to each player to pick whatever game suits their fancy. Mass grind, no grind, or Tony Hawks Pro-Skater grind.
A key that will send you wherever the Publisher and Distribution platforms allow for. Look at Humble for an easy example, a bunch of their games provide keys that will work on Steam, Epic, GOG, and even direct download if the publisher/developer has the servers for it. It doesn’t keep any one captive.
Borderlands 2, in the mission “Kill Yourself”
Not that I specifically disagree with anything you said. But reviewers loved to call Skyrim “as wide as an ocean, but as deep as a puddle” as well. And while Starfield suffers from a worse case of this, it’s hard to argue this hasn’t been Bethesda’s main problem for a long while now.
Maybe this flaw finally caught up to Bethesda thanks to the march of time. But gotta hand it to em, they had a great run for a team the refuses to change with the times.
Its alright. Has a lot of fun moments, sometimes tries to hard and falls on its face. 6 or 7 outta 10.
It has a lot of fun with its roots as part of the Bethesda games, so if that is what you think of as Fallout, it gets bonus point. It takes a bit of a steaming dump on its roots as part of Interplay Fallout, so if that’s your frame of reference, loses some points.
All in all, worth watching, but only good in the context of “for a show about a video game”.
Still, because of the very opinionated fanbase, it’s either the best or worst thing ever depending on who you ask.
Is what it is I guess. But at least Iron Pineapple won’t be hurting for content anytime soon.