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A Critical discussion on Elden Ring and Innovation

GigaBowser

The bear of bad news
Quick translation for everyone who doesn’t want to read the full thing:

”I barely played the game, think its highly overrated, and mischaracterize why people call the game innovative and fantastic to further bolster my crappy opinion.”
What did the game innovate?
 
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To start off, I saw Kssio_Aug's criticism thread a while back. He just compared Elden Ring to prior Fromsoft games and said he felt it was overrated.

I'm not going to criticize Elden Ring in terms of other Fromsoft games, since I don't feel people set enough standards for Fromsoft.
I'm looking at this from the viewpoint of what a critically acclaimed open-world game IN 2022 should be like.

The game was a technical mess on release (don't know the situation now), with all the stuttering and lags, on next-gen and PC. But what makes me even more critical is that the game doesn't really have anything computational that's weighing it down. What the hell is intensive in Elden Ring that was making it stutter on a PS5? With all it's power? I wonder🤔. With what I have seen so far, if it was even remotely optimized well, a PS3 would be able to run it. No joke.

I do not know what whoever at Fromsoft set the stock keyboard input layout for PC was thinking. Who the hell presses G to open a map? F to run? For all the crap games like RDR2 received for convoluted controls, this takes the cake.

Exploration is just looking for loot or bosses to kill. With all the acclaim for being an inventive open world, I thought they would have nailed the element of surprise. Like creeping slowly to get some loot, only to get captured by a plant monster with vine ropes, from which you would have to break free quickly or you die.

The world is terribly static to say the least. Using a telescope you could see enemies afar off just rotating around the same territory, back and forth. Ghosts and any NPCs only exist to mutter one or two lines of dialogue and nothing else. The rest of the world only exists to attack you. The world seems like it waits for you to act. You can wait at a spot for hours and nothing will happen, as long as you're not fighting.

The game has a God-tier art style and brilliant boss designs, but even those are brought down to earth by the PS3 level graphics and average character models. I have a fair tolerance for things like pop-in and all that graphical jargon, but that and artifacts on distant objects in this game are honestly terrible.

The game's enemy AI and gameplay is dated: the enemies have always had the same purpose. Attack the character with the same, one or two janky animations until he's down. But how about bringing a new enemy mechanic, instead of the old parrying and slashing? Instead implementing new gameplay features like using magic spell to make enemies attack themselves, or having the ability to take possession of an enemy and attack the others. You should be able to use a potion to masquerade as an enemy once, so you can move past without combat. Bosses should have had the ability to change fighting tactics to keep the game more challenging, with you having the ability to find a weak spot to strike, like in Sekiro.This isn't hard for crying out loud. I played some DS3 back in the day, and I kid you not, I was seeing similar if not same animations. It kinda reinforces my point that they did not care to update their engine to add new animations.

You cannot swim. In 2022. Swimming is a standard feature of open world games (at least of ER's scale). The last open world game I know that had this issue was RDR from 2010. If you guys want to bring up the issue of relevance of swimming, then why did they add water to the game? FS could have even added running on water as a mechanic to reach further places like islands. Now THAT is a new mechanic.

I will never dispute the fact that anyone can have fun with the game despite it's barrage of issues. Fun is subjective. But what I do not understand is how ppl can ignore glaring game design problems and overhype it as some innovative open world, when in reality it's just a repetition of FS's prior games.

Look at Horizon Forbidden West. I cant speak for story and mechanics as I haven't played it, and honestly I'm not so into it, but it is a genuine technical masterpiece as it was able to maintain the best graphics on the PS4 and run smoothly on it, while being cross-gen with the PS5, and adding great character details. Instead of highlighting that achievement, reviews were only bordered on "lack of innovation", which I feel is more apt to Elden Ring by the way.

I would have way more respect for Miyazaki if he actually had the balls to take risks and actually push to innovate on the established souls formula after 11 years of the nearly the same game, bar Sekiro.

As a matter of fact, I feel Sekiro is by far Fromsoft's best game, at least innovation wise. Fromsoft at least innovated on it. It goes in new territory, added new stealth combos kills and attacks, and some of the mechanics were genuinely graceful. The story was good, and the some of the characters were charismatic.

Its a bit frustrating that we are in an age of gaming where AAA developers should be placing priority on advancing gaming with innovation in AI, game mechanics and upscaling their tech to take advantage of faster console and PC hardware... And then an AAA game like this comes around and gets critically acclaimed for mediocre tech and average game design.

I don't know what to term this on Fromsoft's part. It's not like FromSoft are Indie. They have been making successful games. They could have used their manpower to overhaul their game engine. They could have made use of brilliant game designers to prescribe new mechanics and features to add.
So why didn't they?

Any other developer would have been heavily criticized with the barrage of technical issues the game has, and would have even gotten torn to shreds over the fact that they did not substantially innovate with their formulae.

Just think.

Is adding a horse, (to a series that should have had it since the beginning, by the way) really an evolution?
Is adding the ability to jump a mind-blowing, inventive game mechanic?

Look. Elden Ring doesnt have to completely overhaul open worlds, but I don't see what brilliant new features or improved mechanics it brought to advance open world gaming, warranting all the praise.

I feel if Fromsoft are criticized for issues they'll drastically improve and innovate in their next games.
The innovation of ER is clear: they don’t want to give you a place where to live a virtual life, but a place ruled by game design.

No hollywood bullshit, just a game.

And in game like this, or BOTW for example, developers spent 100 to have one hour of gameplay, contrary in a game like Forbidden West they spent 100 to have 10 minutes of gameplay.

pure innovation is almost impossible in this era, game innovate iterating, not reinventing the wheel
 
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pure innovation is almost impossible in this era, game innovate iterating, not reinventing the wheel.

game like Inscryption for example are original, peculiar, not really news
 
I'll give your critique a level of credence. A game running technically well is important but if the vision over shadows the short coming that's more important in the long run. How well did the vision get accomplished. I agree the world is static but it offers so much in terms of content it being static doesn't hurt it. Dynamic game design isn't a bad thing and when done well it works. But its become rinse and repeat in the genre so far. Elden rings exploration is a pinnacle of game design. You don't need a map, or even any real directional ques. Simply the superb world design will guide you in the right direction. It's the definition of its about the journey and not only the reward. If you play games to look at the check list and see all the stuff you accomplished theres a ton of games that do that. Elden ring is in a class of its own when it comes to leaving the freedom of exploration in the gamers hands and having an organically crafted journey.

TLDR

Best designed game of all time.
 

GigaBowser

The bear of bad news
And in game like this, or BOTW for example, developers spent 100 to have one hour of gameplay, contrary in a game like Forbidden West they spent 100 to have 10 minutes of gameplay.

pure innovation is almost impossible in this era, game innovate iterating, not reinventing the wheel
You added this part in after I replied but this is untrue.

Your other example BOTW innovated by allowing you to climb every area of the map, and it expanded on physics experimentation.

Elden Ring is just a static open world with a horse and nothing else to do but combat. Not including a million icons and quest markers on the map is just a throwback to older era games.

There is literally nothing innovative about Elden Ring. Nothing.

I did still find it enjoyable because I like the Souls formula, but let's call a spade a spade here.
 
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There is literally nothing innovative about Elden Ring. Nothing.
It's innovative in how it bring multiple genre tropes together to make a master piece. The souls genre they created, open world was already an existing concept, non linear gameplay was bought back into the main stream by BOTW...it bought those all together to create a game that hasn't, doesn't and probably never will exist outside of itself. Theres no game like elden ring out there. The closest you can get is combining other masterpieces.
 
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GigaBowser

The bear of bad news
It's innovative in how it bring multiple genre tropes together to make a master piece. The souls genre they created, open world was already an existing concept, non linear gameplay was bought back into the main stream by BOTW...it bought those all together to create a game that hasn't, doesn't and probably never will exist outside of itself. Theres no game like elden ring out there. The closest you can get is combining other masterpieces.
What you describing is iteration, not innovation, and even that... yeah, Dark Souls with horses and it doesn't have quest markers all over the place. Most games have something that give them a distinct feel and are not carbon copies of eachother. That's not innovation, which is bringing something entirely new.
 
What you describing is iteration, not innovation, and even that... yeah, Dark Souls with horses and it doesn't have quest markers all over the place. Most games have something that give them a distinct feel and are not carbon copies of each other. That's not innovation, which is bringing something entirely new.
I don't think a game, movie, music has to be 100% new to be considered innovative. If that's the case only the people who made pong are truly innovative. If the game you make has nothing like it due to a plethora of its features its a form of innovation. It's a spectrum, you have the truly unique games that do it's own thing and games that have innovative aspects on top of already established one. Skyrim's both innovative and iterative...they can coexist.
 

GigaBowser

The bear of bad news
I don't think a game, movie, music has to be 100% new to be considered innovative. If that's the case only the people who made pong are truly innovative. If the game you make has nothing like it due to a plethora of its features its a form of innovation. It's a spectrum, you have the truly unique games that do it's own thing and games that have innovative aspects on top of already established one. Skyrim's both innovative and iterative...they can coexist.



Definition of innovation

1 : a new idea, method, or device : novelty. 2 : the introduction of something new.

I don't see anything in Elden Ring that meets this description. Borrowing ideas from other games and mashing them together to create a game with its own flavour is not innovation. It's actually what most games do.

I do applaud the Souls series in general for being a throwback to games that don't hold your hand, but no by very definition it's not innovative.
 

Buggy Loop

Member
Yes and a big arrow pointing your way. Remove one hit kills by bosses.
Also keep back story of the bosses maybe turn based combat ?

I think we fixed it.

Oh oh?! Needs white/yellow paint on ledges to indicate which areas you can jump to or climb!
 
Yeah we get it, it’s cool to be critical of Elden ring now because it was so well received and now we’re overly concerned with every flaw, everything that went against your taste. Fair enough. Lotta people played it so there’s gonna be haters. They’re in the minority. The technical problems are nowhere near cyberpunk’s and the game is way better (and I enjoyed cyberpunk).
 

GigaBowser

The bear of bad news
Yeah we get it, it’s cool to be critical of Elden ring now because it was so well received and now we’re overly concerned with every flaw, everything that went against your taste. Fair enough. Lotta people played it so there’s gonna be haters. They’re in the minority. The technical problems are nowhere near cyberpunk’s and the game is way better (and I enjoyed cyberpunk).
Cyberpunk was absolutely God awful and doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as any From game but to each their own.
 

Meicyn

Gold Member
Definition of innovation

1 : a new idea, method, or device : novelty. 2 : the introduction of something new.

I don't see anything in Elden Ring that meets this description. Borrowing ideas from other games and mashing them together to create a game with its own flavour is not innovation. It's actually what most games do.

I do applaud the Souls series in general for being a throwback to games that don't hold your hand, but no by very definition it's not innovative.
Yeah, I concur with this, and I loved the hell out of Elden Ring, warts and all.

It’s like what World of Warcraft did for MMOs, took a lot of ideas from elsewhere and formed a really well-designed, albeit flawed in its own ways, product that ended up selling insanely well. Iterative, not innovative.
 

jufonuk

not tag worthy
Oh oh?! Needs white/yellow paint on ledges to indicate which areas you can jump to or climb!
Yes and also we need a side kick shouting catchphrases.

What about we design the character so that they have a robotic leg, that it is later revealed contains or is made from parts of that characters deceased partner. This is brilliant stuff as good as anything Peter Molyneaux has designers.

I hope the makers of Elden Ring use these ideas.
 
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Cyberpunk was absolutely God awful and doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as any From game but to each their own.
I liked it for what it was. But it’s not close to Elden ring that’s for sure, I don’t even feel the Witcher 3 is on Elden rings level. I’d put BOTW up there. But that’s it.

And I think people are not giving enough credit here to what Elden ring accomplished. People have tried to copy BOTW and it doesn’t work nearly as well. If it wasn’t fun to explore for you - I don’t know what to say. It was the most fun I’ve had exploring in any video game. Just because you never knew what imaginative piece of environment work or enemy you could come upon. It’s truly magical in that way. Surprises everywhere.
 
Yeah, I concur with this, and I loved the hell out of Elden Ring, warts and all.

It’s like what World of Warcraft did for MMOs, took a lot of ideas from elsewhere and formed a really well-designed, albeit flawed in its own ways, product that ended up selling insanely well. Iterative, not innovative.
As far as innovation - I can’t think of a game that’s actually innovated much on a technical level in the past 15 years? Like what has truly innovated? Half life 2 I guess with physics? I guess there’s been multiplayer innovations. Usually everything has been done at some point in time in some way. But it does innovate in the way it mixes it all together. For an open world game - in terms of newness - most open world games aren’t nearly this combat focused, in fact none of them I can think of. You have dialogue options in most open world games - not here. Your horse can double jump and it appears out of thin air - don’t really know other games that do that. It’s innovative largely on the bullshit it gets rid of, diluting things down to a refreshing experience.
 

Fredrik

Member
Yes and also we need a side kick shouting catchphrases.

What about we design the character so that they have a robotic leg, that it is later revealed contains or is made from parts of that characters deceased partner. This is brilliant stuff as good as anything Peter Molyneaux has designers.

I hope the makers of Elden Ring use these ideas.
Don’t forget that when we die at a boss they could do it so you start over at the beginning, wiping your progress, but you get to keep the summoning bell and some smithing stones, and they could leave your old corpses on the map, they can rearrange the map too, not all new but move the areas around, so you never get tired of exploring and it feels like you get to play this awesome game again at every death as if your save was wiped, I hear people shout GOTY for this stuff, very very popular.
 
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Meicyn

Gold Member
As far as innovation - I can’t think of a game that’s actually innovated much on a technical level in the past 15 years? Like what has truly innovated? Half life 2 I guess with physics? I guess there’s been multiplayer innovations. Usually everything has been done at some point in time in some way. But it does innovate in the way it mixes it all together. For an open world game - in terms of newness - most open world games aren’t nearly this combat focused, in fact none of them I can think of. You have dialogue options in most open world games - not here. Your horse can double jump and it appears out of thin air - don’t really know other games that do that. It’s innovative largely on the bullshit it gets rid of, diluting things down to a refreshing experience.
Your 15 years remark isn’t too far off. Last game I can think of that was truly innovative for gameplay was Narbacular Drop, which led to the creation of Portal. There was just nothing even remotely like it at the time.

I still wouldn’t call Elden Ring innovative. Distilling things down to what From Software does best is why the game is so good. Sometimes I feel like games are chasing too many features to please too many people, and you end up with half-baked ”okay” systems. Elden Ring tries to do less, and so it does what it concentrates on extremely well.

Folks decrying that Elden Ring doesn’t have a living breathing world… well yeah, we know. I don’t begrudge the game for it, because that’s not the experience they’re aiming for. If I want a living breathing world, I’ll go play Red Dead Redemption 2, a game that provides the optimal cowboy experience if that’s what you’re after… but the combat is nowhere near as tight or satisfying as Elden Ring.
 

jufonuk

not tag worthy
Don’t forget that when we die at a boss they could do it so you start over at the beginning, wiping your progress, but you get to keep the summoning bell and some smithing stones, and they could leave your old corpses on the map, they can rearrange the map too, not all new but move the areas around, so you never get tired of exploring and it feels like you get to play this awesome game again at every death as if your save was wiped, I hear people shout GOTY for this stuff, very very popular.
Also after all the effort. The final prize can be an NFT but it’s the same NFT for everyone the letters NFT
 

I_D

Member
ER is one of the best open-world game I've ever played, and probably the worst modern FROM game. It is still absolutely excellent, though (as is DS2; just sayin'...).
The things that make FROM games so amazing, in my mind (the level design, the challenging but fair gameplay, the huge variety of play-styles), are all there, but aren't quite up to par with what I've come to expect.




The caves/dungeons, for example, are way too repetitive for my tastes. The game should have instead used BB's Chalice Dungeon tech to keep the caves forever-playable. I mean, c'mon... at least make them not all look the same. FROM couldn't have added some different color palettes to at least a few of them?

The repeated bosses just feel lazy. I understand, lore-wise, that the characters have different names and fill certain roles, but they could at least look a smidgen different from each other. The Gargoyles, the Godskins, the Watchdogs, etc. all should at least feature some sort of differences. At least some of them have different weapons, but would it really be that tough to add some cosmetic changes to differentiate them? Shit, just give me a Scorpion/Sub Zero/Reptile skin for each one, or something simple like that.

On a similar note, I'm not a fan of having early-bosses turn into regular late-game enemies, but that's a problem that has plagued RPGs for decades.

Why does the Back/Select button bring up the map, but then not put the map away?

Why can't I stay in a coop match for more than six minutes?

Why in the world can invaders only invade teams, and not solo players? That defeats the entire purpose of the invasion system (Yes, I know about being able to summon into a 1vRivers).

"Bleed" needs to be nerfed, badly. Not even for just pvp, but also for pve.

I swear the release-version of the game allowed the horse to sprint forever without having to press the 'sprint' button a million times. Please bring that back!

Sekiro has a boss-rush-ish mode. Where's my PVP arena that has been in the Souls games since forever? Why does ER not feature the game-modes of previous games? I can't stand it when sequels (admittedly, this is a 'sequel') remove game-modes that were included in previous games.

Why does my character stop moving when I need to pick up flowers? Why the hell is this a thing in basically every modern video game? Do developers not realize how annoying it is to stop every five feet to pick up resources? The resources that they force me to pick up, since they won't just let me get the resources/items via other means?




I could go on...
The point is that ER suffers from pretty much all the same problems as other modern AAA open-world games.
It definitely has streamlined the experience, and is way more fun to play than basically all of the alternatives (to me), but it still has plenty of flaws.

It still has that proper FROM difficulty in most of the bosses, which is good.
It still has super-intricate level-design that far-surpasses basically anything that isn't 2D or a FROM game, which is good.

I currently have ten characters at end-game and 'ready' for PVP, and I still have many more builds I want to try, which is good.



On the whole, the game is good.
 

Fredrik

Member
Also after all the effort. The final prize can be an NFT but it’s the same NFT for everyone the letters NFT
And we can buy pieces of the NFT at a FROM store too if we don’t have time to play it since it takes time to replay a game over and over after death, and then they can add more pieces as time goes on so those who love the grinding gets to keep doing their thing too.
 

jufonuk

not tag worthy
And we can buy pieces of the NFT at a FROM store too if we don’t have time to play it since it takes time to replay a game over and over after death, and then they can add more pieces as time goes on so those who love the grinding gets to keep doing their thing too.
season 1 for a day we got to be the geniuses GIF by National Geographic Channel
 

Bkdk

Member
I only enjoyed this game and played it for 100 hours+ because of playing in PC with many mods available.
 
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12Goblins

Lil’ Gobbie
game is aight, but you making the wrong arguments

1. enemies and boss variety sucks
2. story sucks
3. the armor and weapons suck
4. open world games suck

it's still miles better than all the other garbage out there :3
 
game is aight, but you making the wrong arguments

1. enemies and boss variety sucks
2. story sucks
3. the armor and weapons suck
4. open world games suck

it's still miles better than all the other garbage out there :3

If you want to bring up story, that is a general Souls issue.
But I agree.
 

Fredrik

Member
game is aight, but you making the wrong arguments

1. enemies and boss variety sucks
2. story sucks
3. the armor and weapons suck
4. open world games suck

it's still miles better than all the other garbage out there :3
The story complaint is valid. I’ve played it for about 200 hours and I still don’t have a clue what’s going on.
The rest is better than most other open world games and better than the other FROM games I’ve played at least, still haven’t played Sekiro though or DS2, I’ll get there eventually.
 
Your 15 years remark isn’t too far off. Last game I can think of that was truly innovative for gameplay was Narbacular Drop, which led to the creation of Portal. There was just nothing even remotely like it at the time.

I still wouldn’t call Elden Ring innovative. Distilling things down to what From Software does best is why the game is so good. Sometimes I feel like games are chasing too many features to please too many people, and you end up with half-baked ”okay” systems. Elden Ring tries to do less, and so it does what it concentrates on extremely well.

Folks decrying that Elden Ring doesn’t have a living breathing world… well yeah, we know. I don’t begrudge the game for it, because that’s not the experience they’re aiming for. If I want a living breathing world, I’ll go play Red Dead Redemption 2, a game that provides the optimal cowboy experience if that’s what you’re after… but the combat is nowhere near as tight or satisfying as Elden Ring.
Yeah the living breathing world thing - like it would never be RDR2 level. Even if it was it would just be iterating on that.

Innovation I think largely for me when I think of it now that games have sort of hit a lull in that (we still don’t have the destruction,AI or physics I would’ve thought we’d have many years ago) - is a lot more about the developers choices. So like the choice to approach an open world in the way that they did feels innovating in that I haven’t really played an open world just like it. However I’d say it’s not truly innovative in the sense of the older games, but really not much is and not much is in a way that creates a brilliant game along with it.
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
Elden Ring's scale is huge, but its scope is rather small. It's a great game, but its innovation greatly exaggerated.
I've never seen anyone say Elden Ring if innovative, if anything, it drinks a lot from BOTW formula is what I see people saying, what most actually praise the game for is for being good, that's it, as simple a that.

Also, OP finally discovered that people don't care about innovation that much? That people don't care about technical complexities that much? I see Ubisoft and Sony put so much effort on technically impressive stuff, yet when a game is good, it's not mostly because of its tech, it can help but it's the sum of its parts what makes it all excellent game, and that's also what makes criticism for individual parts mostly irrelevant for a lot of people since good games are good because of how everything merges together, even if each part is not as good individually as in other games. Same happens with BOTW.
 

Represent.

Represent(ative) of bad opinions
Fantastic post OP. It's the most overrated game of all time.

As I've said countless times before, if it wasn't for the fantastic boss designs, insane enemy variety and art design, these games would be absolute crap. And recognized as such.

PS3 level graphics and tech. Braindead AI. Non existent story. Worst in-genre hit detection and hit reaction. Same formulaic shit as all Souls games. Trash combat. I could go on and on. Amazing really, how its rated so highly.
 
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Fredrik

Member
Fantastic post OP. It's the most overrated game of all time.

As I've said countless times before, if it wasn't for the fantastic boss designs, insane enemy variety and art design, these games would be absolute crap. And recognized as such.

PS3 level graphics and tech. Braindead AI. Non existent story. Worst in-genre hit detection and hit reaction. Same formulaic shit as all Souls games. Trash combat. I could go on and on. Amazing really, how its rated so highly.
So you don’t like Souls games, great now we now. 👍

Story and AI is bad but the combat? wow.
 

Filben

Member
20 odd first posts really adding anything, just stating "nonsense" practically. Good job folks.

I think there's some legitimate criticism there, saying this as someone who thinks this, and Sekiro, are the best FS games and that ER is a generally great step forward in open world design. It's not so much a step forward but actually back to the roots of early open world games like Morrowind, Gothic, and the like. This is a more interesting concept though than the ubicrap formula that's kind of the standard now.

It's less innovation than going back to the good stuff which is... well, good. However, technical issues still persist and was worse on release. You had this rubber band effect on PC, where, as I conclude, when you're at the border of a new streaming "cell" it would generate a hiccup and then run faster to catch up with the lost frames. Then it runs okay-ish* until you reach the next streaming border; it's easily to reproduce if you ride fast back and forth over the point that introduced the stutter and rubber band effect.

*okay-ish, because even without the stutter the performance should be better for the visual effects and computation we're seeing; remember this is not about art and style which is amazing.

Not being able to swim and dive is a missed opportunity. It was in Tomb Raider 2013, in HZD and some other games and was ultimately fixed in later iterations. It's a wasted opportunity but nothing that makes the game "bad".

AI behaviour is typical FS. That can be either bad or good but I think some bosses already have mad combos and tactics so I wouldn't want another layer of (scripted) mechanics that fuck you up on top of that.

as for the loot: at first I, too, thought it was uninspiring, finding one time use only items or items with a highly specific use case. I also detest items, in any RPGs, that give you (ultra short) temporary boosts. Just make me stronger, higher numbers, permanently and thus making some encounters easier then before. Again, permanently. But this is must taste.

However, as you progress you unlock additional mechanics soon exploration reeeally pays off and feels rewarding: when you get that special flask where you can mix your own ingredients; when you get the parfum bottle; when you get big runes and activate them, etc.

Another thing that could be better in my opinion is multiplayer. It's so convoluted but by design because they want everything as plausible in-game in-universe as possible and that's why multiplayer is such a chore. I understand their pov but I don't like it. Just give me multiplayer button from the menu, a lobby and permanent co-op and be done with it. With so many easy modes (AI companions, invocations/ghosts) it doesn't matter if you have an option more, especially if that option allows you to easily play with your friends and having together.

Some what I find to be flaws are inherent in their design choices and/or my personal taste. Nonetheless I cannot deny the fact that I was having amazingly +30 hours of fun and I also acknowledge their countering the trend of most modern open world games.

In that sense you got a semi-innovation: melancholic and depressing and sick FS art direction in an old school open world concept that seems to have died some 10 to 15 years ago.

Reviving this and giving it the FS twist in this AAA landscape is quite the achievements despite ER's flaws.
 

Chukhopops

Member
Fantastic post OP. It's the most overrated game of all time.

As I've said countless times before, if it wasn't for the fantastic boss designs, insane enemy variety and art design, these games would be absolute crap. And recognized as such.

PS3 level graphics and tech. Braindead AI. Non existent story. Worst in-genre hit detection and hit reaction. Same formulaic shit as all Souls games. Trash combat. I could go on and on. Amazing really, how its rated so highly.
I think FROM games need some kind of Sony mode where a talking head spells out everything about the story and world for you: locations, lore behind bosses, questlines etc.

This would really help the story’s accessibility and allow a wider audience to enjoy it. Kind of like an easy mode but for lore comprehension.

Also good to see you’re still mad about ER after all those months :messenger_tears_of_joy:.
 

Fredrik

Member
Not being able to swim and dive is a missed opportunity. It was in Tomb Raider 2013, in HZD and some other games and was ultimately fixed in later iterations. It's a wasted opportunity but nothing that makes the game "bad".
When is it actually needed? The deeper water is just there to keep you on the map. And I’m wondering if swimming in a knight armour is even a thing. Wouldn’t you sink like a rock?

It’s a non-issue anyway and plenty of big games don’t have it, possibly because it takes too much time to get water movement right, unless it’s just on the surface like in BOTW, iirc that was what Cory said about not having it in God of War.
 

Drizzlehell

Banned
The game is not innovative, it’s iterative. That’s it. I don’t know why this makes some people frown but it’s just a fact.
And that’s perfectly fine.
Because I've seen plenty of people act like this game is the second coming of Christ because they added a jump button.

Of course it's fine to be just a solid ass video game but those turbo fans who glaze their controllers in cum over Elden Ring really need to pipe down.
 

Fredrik

Member
Of course it's fine to be just a solid ass video game but those turbo fans who glaze their controllers in cum over Elden Ring really need to pipe down.
Goes for those burning their controllers and gather up likeminded hateful people to walk out on the streets with pitchforks as well.
 
How long ago was this? I haven’t played any console version so I don’t know how bad it was or is, just know that it has received many patches since launch, might be unfair to claim people were exaggerating if you jumped back in way layer.
I finished couple after they patched the frost stomp and bleed skills slight nerf took two day brake and started a new playthrough but did not finished the game but until the capital there wasn't any major issue. Yeah some fps drops here and there but not something that hindered the experience.
 

Kumomeme

Member
i dont think there is any 'new' innovation in Elden Ring. it has all element or mechanic that already common for atleast a decade and the game designed around those already existing stuff.

but what make the game so 'special'?

it just do what tons of game outside there should do right and for that they didnt shy for saying 'no' to popular current trend.

even Souls game are like that. BOTW is another example.

stuff like swim for example should not be counted much, since it is common that for 'first game' didnt have all mechanic and the game already designed without that.

this is their first open world game, we no need to be inpatient. better let them nailed most important aspect first before expanded the rest in another game.
 
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Some of us just like to sit back relax and enjoy the extraordinarily good stuff in (gaming) life.

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:messenger_sun:
I have over 130 hundreds hours over 2 (60h first and 70 second) playthroughs. One just playing the game without any guide only for some quests and one with explore everything and getting every item/skills possible in one playthrough but with mapgenie..still working on it little by little and at the moment at the capital
 

RyRy93

Member
I don't remember anybody calling it innovative just that it was a really good Souls game adapted to an open-world setting and they were partly right IMO
 

Fredrik

Member
People play at different paces. Some take longer than others to kill certain bosses. I am clocked at around 200+ and haven't even finished the last 3 bosses because I enjoy messing with the other stuff and exploring. I could end the game at any moment if I wanted too for example.
Yeah I ended my first playthrough at around 190 hours, with some big areas and catacombs still not cleared.

My playtime for some games people like to hate on for various reasons:
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If I’m enjoying a game then I take my time playing it. 👍
 
People thinking no quest markers and maps is “innovative” and fun, however almost everyone I knew who played the game almost entirely relied on walkthroughs and tutorials to complete the game which is lame.

I really hope others from the industry don’t fall for ER’s false sense of innovative game and quest design.
 

M1987

Member
Yeah I ended my first playthrough at around 190 hours, with some big areas and catacombs still not cleared.

My playtime for some games people like to hate on for various reasons:
4IQlPIN.png


If I’m enjoying a game then I take my time playing it. 👍
I'm about 50 hours into Elden ring, and I have only just beat Tree sentinel, so it's probably going to take me over 300 hours to complete 😂 spent most of it getting runes to level up
 

Fredrik

Member
I'm about 50 hours into Elden ring, and I have only just beat Tree sentinel, so it's probably going to take me over 300 hours to complete 😂 spent most of it getting runes to level up
No worries just more fun for your bucks, and Tree Sentinel is tough, took me quite awhile to understand what to do.
What’s your level? And have you taken any bigger bosses?
If you’re struggling, go out and explore instead of classic grinding, makes playing to level up much more fun, 👍
 

M1987

Member
No worries just more fun for your bucks, and Tree Sentinel is tough, took me quite awhile to understand what to do.
What’s your level? And have you taken any bigger bosses?
If you’re struggling, go out and explore instead of classic grinding, makes playing to level up much more fun, 👍
I'm level 38,and I'm still fighting Margit when I'm not grinding for runes. Fighting him on a fucking bridge makes things much harder, or I would be able to beat him quite easily. I struggled a lot with Tree sentinel, until I decided to just make him miss, then stay close to him and swing it out.
 

ANDS

King of Gaslighting
It's innovative in how it bring multiple genre tropes together to make a master piece.

Stop it.

. . .also, Dark Souls 3 was already markedly more open the previous versions of the game. Going full open-world, while it sounded great at the time, wasn't really that huge of a leap in hindsight. But seriously, just smashing together two genre of games and leaving the fundamental gameplay (and other systems unchanged) is about the lowest effort of innovation as one can get.

People thinking no quest markers and maps is “innovative” and fun, however almost everyone I knew who played the game almost entirely relied on walkthroughs and tutorials to complete the game which is lame.

I really hope others from the industry don’t fall for ER’s false sense of innovative game and quest design.

. . .it's not even like the game doesn't have guided direction in communicating the location of important features. The map is highly detailed and literally shows important locations, so the idea that we're just stumbling upon "adventure" in ER is nonsense. Contrast this with ACO/V (haven't played Origins) that just have a featureless map with small dots identifying points of interest and you'll see the gulf between communicated information isn't really that wide here.
 

Swift_Star

Banned
Because I've seen plenty of people act like this game is the second coming of Christ because they added a jump button.

Of course it's fine to be just a solid ass video game but those turbo fans who glaze their controllers in cum over Elden Ring really need to pipe down.
Maybe these people need to broaden their gaming habits, because ER is like apple: it does what everyone is doing in a more refined or interested way bar the terrible technical issues. But, yeah, not innovative.
 
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