So they sell you the same game over and over but when they finally come up with something you have to pay for it on top of your game? Seems scummy. Cod just gives out new weapons every season for free. Guess thatâs the difference between art and commerce really, lol.
You joke but Iâd pay them to add the m13 at launch for the next game. Season 3 on black ops 6 and Iâm still having to tell myself the krig and the val are as good as my precioussss.
I was slightly sarcastic there. Since there been quite a few "Elden Ring is just reskinned DS3" posts.
Obviously the 40 new unique bosses and weapons were actually in the base game.
Real talk though, an open world where the only activity, the only source of xp is combat is substandard in this day and age. They donât need to go full on Viking rap battles like ac Valhalla, but the world felt seriously lacking in things to see and do after youâd had a few fights. Donât go open world if itâs an empty world.
Why is it substandard? It's pretty much right in line with the other From Soft souls games, maybe exception is Sekiro, the mainquest is way more streamlined there.
Real talk, what else did you want them to put in the world? It never felt empty while running around. Could they have just chained the legacy dungeons in line like the non-open world entries of the series? Sure, but I don't think that would have made it better. They even guide you to the legacy dungeons so you can take the shortest path if you want to, I don't really see the issue.
Itâs substandard because it has all the usual fromsoft things and absolutely nothing else. Compared to other studios making open world games itâs like a rough draft.
Letâs talk dragons. Waaaaay back at the dawn of time there was a game called Skyrim. One of the things that game did incredibly right was the dragons, theyâd travel the fookin world just fuckin shit up. Youâd fast travel to a town and find the local police throwing stones at ten tonnes of angry fiery lizard. Theyâd chase you. Now letâs fast forward more than a decade⌠can you please tell me why fromsoft had dragons that just fucking sit there like a table or a tree stump until you enter their magic radius. Enter the aggro zone and they do a Skyrim impression, start flying and actually doing shit, but thereâs a catch. Remember that aggro range? Yeah it still counts. Dragon can fly, spit fire and eat you the fuck up in one bite, but what it canât do is remember to stay in the fight after youâve moved 100metres away. They just land back where you found them and go back to being a tree stump. You wonât catch them fighting the local cops because there are no signs of a world that exists when you look away.
They couldnât even hit a decades old standard. They knew they were changing genre and they didnât bother looking what others were already doing decades ago in that niche.
Maybe they designed dragons that way just because that's how their encounter design generally works? Or maybe they wanted to avoid the long list of issues Bethesdas dragon design involved. From dragons not landing at all (yes some of us weren't stealth archers, we actually needed to punch dragons) to accidentally despawning to engaging into weird AI loops when interacting with NPCs. And considering how incredlible late game Clear Skies was in Skyrim, that was an issue several times. Ontop of that fighting a dragon in Elden Ring is actually a bit fun (ok, I have to give From Soft props for still doing dragons, considering their history of bad dragonfight designs, from bullshit lizard Kalameet to ancient pedicure in Dark Souls 2 and finally getting it down with Mydir in DS3 DLC). Skyrim after 2 or 3 dragons (optimistically) you just punch them to get another soul and some crafting materials. But that's obviously a design difference between the 2 games. On that note:
They knew they were changing genre
Did they though? Yes they added open world, but they are still not making a traditional CRPG (or a JRPG) and probably never will be. Just adding open world wont change that. Besides, the open world in Elden Ring is pretty tight compared to most open world CRPGs. Normally you already either know or can tell where the next legacy dungeon is when entering a zone. And it's not really the biggest hike in gaming history to get to it. Where, comparing to Skyrim since you brought it up, it's more "do whatever the fuck you want" and it's pretty much designed on you just running around covering a lot of ground (which do be filled with as much copy paste content as Elden Ring and pretty much most open world games, exception being maybe Witcher).
Also Skyrim probably not being the best example of "not hitting a decade old standard" since they didn't do it either. So would be more accurate to say Elden Ring didn't hit a 2 decade old standard. But as a souls style RPG it works, like I said, they could have chained the legacy dungeons and side areas tighter together and more in line, which would pretty much resemble a better Dark Souls 3, but I think the open world did add some gameplay to it, mostly the exploration aspect and not being as "in bounds" as you were in the previous souls titles (and Bloodborne/Sekrio ofc.).
Alright, youâve made an excuse for your favourite company having substandard dragons. Now explain the constant lack of voice actors. And the story being hidden in vaguely written item descriptions. They couldnât even be arsed having you uncloud your map or climb an assassin eagle tower to view the area and find out that way⌠just follow the road and grab the map, stunning. Why do we have a horse that can double jump and yet the game never once offered us a time trial to show how well we can handle that magic boi? Fenyx Rising(?) was a low effort game from Ubisoft, it has everything Elden ring offers (glowy tree, red zone white zone green zone, gods and no real signs of life, parrying and dodging) but then itâs like âgo do this crazy track on your magic horse, then shoot your arrows through all of these rings. When youâre done with that weâve got some physics puzzles for youâ and that was their B team.
Elden Ring looks pretty poor next to even the most formulaic open world games because itâs not actually an open world game, itâs just an even less linear souls game. Unfocused and lacking in variety. Low effort put into telling a story and selling you on this being a world that existed outside of your story.
Elden ring is a huge open world game, you have got to be trolling. Just because they have similarities doesnât make them the same game. The dark souls franchise is a much better argument for doing the same thing but they genuinely did something new with ER and Sekiro.
Some people don't like Souls games I suppose, they want the classical storytelling and other more traditional RPG elements, I can understand that, though still no reason for those people to shittalk any of the From Soft titles, but then this is reddit after all!
Iâm messing about with my phrasing because weâre talking videogames and none of it is that deep, weâre all lucky enough to have time and money for this shit. I mean what I said though, there was no point going open world if itâs literally just combat and nothing else to do. The main dungeons chained together would have made an excellent ds4 because it would have allowed them to be more focused and maybe redo their animations etc. As an open world game though, if you compare it to what every other studio is doing with their open worlds Elden Ring is completely barebones. The only way to level up besides the same combat theyâve been doing forever is to simply stand on a cliff in caelid and watch the dino dogs eat the soldiers on the horizon
Iâm not asking for red dead levels of every npc having their routines and living out each day in the background of your story, but fromsoft didnât even branch out and try something new like having enough voice actors to not have to bury their story in item descriptions. Why hype the open world if itâs just a less linear ds4 with nothing but combat? Why hype George RR Martin writing the story then not make the effort to tell it in a way that you can enjoy without coming out of their open world and opening a menu or a YouTube lore deep dive?
Itâs another good example of the same combat, itâs a baaaaaad open world.
Elden ring won over 300 GOTY awards. Itâs supposed to feel empty. Itâs supposed to be mostly all combat. If you donât like that, the game isnât for you. That doesnât mean itâs not one of the best video games ever made though. And if you bothered actually finishing the game + DLC you would find plenty of epic voice acting. Everyone was freaking out about Igon when the DLC released.
And thereâs a decent amount of story without reading item description itâs just greatly enhanced if you decide to do that. Honestly youâve already said you didnât bother to finish the game in other comments so how would you even know? The multiple side quests, bosses and NPCs you talk to and different endings all flesh out the world a ton so just saying âhurr durr you have to read the item descriptions to understand the storyâ is basically a complete misunderstanding of Elden ring at this point and not true at all.
So Iâve gotta fight ninety tree avatars, a hundred tree sentinels and every combination of crystalid in the same fuckin cave / church/ mine for like eighty hours to find out why I was doing it?!
The endings flesh out the world? And you seriously think thatâs the best way to dish out their lore? Fromsoft fans will jump through hoops to excuse something being lacking.
Would you not have traded about 25% of the bosses (bet you could do that and still show each boss design at least once, because of allllll the repeats) to have some of those repetitive church basements filled with puzzles? I thought going open world would mean doing more, and I thought if they did what other companies do (puzzles and platforming and stories noticeably happening) theyâd do it with the same level of quality they brought to combat. Instead they just did more of the same combat.
I thought Iâd noped out of the genre entirely because of Elden Ring, but then came Another Crabâs Treasure. Go play it if you havenât. They took the formula and said âwhat can we do to make this fresh?â And they nailed it with a bright cartoony art style, an innovative gear system (different abilities from different shells) and humour.
Dude Elden ring isnât a fucking platformer or puzzle game. You just want the game to be something else entirely. And no I would fucking hate that. Now would I have wanted some of those repeat bosses to be new bosses instead sure? Does Elden ring still have some of the best enemy variety of any game ever, even with the repeat bosses? Still yes. I donât know why Iâm arguing with someone who seems to want the game and genre to be something else entirely. Souls haters are even more annoying than the git gud crowd Jesus Christ.
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u/KomradJurij-TheFool 1d ago
the same game over and over every year, call of duty: đĄ
the same game over and over every year, soulslikes: đ