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Elden Ring is FromSoftware’s biggest game yet, with a humongous continent to explore. So what’s it like to trek across The Lands Between?
=== Before you watch ===
Spoiler warning: This video shows all areas and major bosses in Elden Ring
=== Sources ===
[1] Miyazaki Interview | Famitsu Weekly
Translation: https://www.frontlinejp.net/2022/03/05/elden-ring-release-interview-with-director-miyazaki-part-1/
[2] Elden Ring Global Gameplay Stats | Steam (Cited November 2022)
https://steamcommunity.com/stats/1245620/achievements
[3] Hidetaka Miyazaki interview: FromSoftware’s president explores the unknowns of Elden Ring | EDGE
Web Version: https://www.gamesradar.com/elden-ring-fromsoftware-hidetaka-miyazaki-interview/
[4] From Software’s Hidetaka Miyazaki on the Secrets of Elden Ring’s Development | Xbox Wire
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/05/27/from-softwares-hidetaka-miyazaki-on-the-secrets-of-elden-rings-development/
=== Chapters ===
00:00 – Intro
01:13 – Elden Ring Recap
04:42 – Freedom and Exploration
09:41 – Enemy Balancing
13:48 – Content Repetition
15:50 – Restrictive End Game
18:15 – Conclusion
=== Games Shown ===
Elden Ring (2022)
Dark Souls (2011)
Bloodborne (2015)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017)
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)
Ghost of Tsushima (2020)
Horizon Forbidden West (2022)
Assassin’s Creed: Origins (2017)
Rage 2 (2019)
Crackdown 3 (2019)
Demon’s Souls (2020)
Demon’s Souls (2009)
Dark Souls III (2016)
Hollow Knight (2017)
Dark Souls II (2014)
=== Credits ===
Music provided by Epidemic Sound – https://www.epidemicsound.com/referral/vtdu5y (Referral Link)
Cinematic Shots courtesy of FransBouma’s Camera System – https://github.com/FransBouma/InjectableGenericCameraSystem
=== Subtitles ===
Contribute translated subtitles – https://amara.org/videos/C2SP372USgpo/
source
Hey! This video does cover the entirety of Elden Ring, but if you're worried about spoilers then the beginning of the video only discusses content up the end of Leyndell Royal Capital. Then, from 15:50 onwards, I discuss the final section of the game and show all of the end bosses.
You're the first person I've heard say "Siofra" correctly in the 10 months the game's been out.
personally I find the 'static enemy levels' one of my favorite parts of the game I mean why would I roam around for better levels and gear only to find the boss I was stuck on get more difficult yes I have better gear but this really discourages independent travel.
The game reminds me a ton of Symphony of the Night (in particular), more than anything else.
Fornite is better
Adding the photomode camera mod was the best damn thing I've done for this game, you can see minute small details to the huge scope of the world and castles. It's sad 99% of players won't get to see it.
I actually enjoy way more static enemies over enemies that level with you. It gives you a sense of progression, the fuckers you had huge trouble against at the begin kiss your boots at the end of the game. I find this cool, and way better than what Skyrim or Oblivion had. Just remember how stupid it looked like that every bandit ran around with glass swords and elven armor.. The game should give you challenge all the time, thats true, but at the same time you should be able to absolutely ruin basic enemies in my opinion.
I can totally agree on Enemies or Bosses that seems overwhelming and After Leveled up enough they can turn into joke when you get back, and tunnels and mine bosses really turned into Bloodborne's Repetitive Dungeons. But still it's great game tho 🔥💯
At this point it wouldn't really be a Souls game without a weaker second half lmao. I think Sekiro is the only game in the series that doesn't have a noticeably weaker second half.
Elden ring was a failure
Why is it silly to want to be forced to overcome a challenging boss rather than the game encouraging me to go level up till the boss isn't even fun anymore because oops I leveled up too much for this area. This game is broken. I really can't take what you say too seriously anymore after this video.
I don't like from software games , not really into fantasy games and they are way behind in technical aspect of making video games but their courage to let players miss content they have painfully created is something I respect massively.
This is the game of the decade… maybe of all time for “hardcore gamers”
Yeah, I did like it, but the last 80 hours or so are kinda boring
If you don't visit all of the catacombs and tunnels, I feel like you won't have open-world fatigue. It makes for some nice ongoing content for those of us who always want a little bit more, while remaining almost entirely unnecessary for people who can't bear such content. I would have preferred more open areas to cover rather than catacombs, but maybe expansions will deliver that.
My biggest problem with the game is something that I haven't really heard a lot of people talk about before, and it's that some routes through the game make other items obsolete. Like when I first played through the game made it to the Altus plateau without using the lift of Dectus, but once I found the medallion I was very excited to use it. I went to the lift, used the medallion expecting to go somewhere new, and then realizing that it was essentially useless for me. There are other examples of this too, but it's also why I don't really like the whole class build set up, because half the time I'll do this cool quest line or work really hard to kill a mini boss only to get an item that I can't use because I made the choice 20 hours ago to build my character a different way. I'm not really sure what the solution to that is, but it is my least favorite part of current open world games.
3:29 technically Red Mane Castle and the Divine Tower of Cealid could be considered Cealids Legacy dungeons.
Reused content is a bit harsh for 90% of the catacombs isn't it? They all have very different mechanics, rewards and puzzles to solve.
I watch youtube to figure out where to go in elden ring
On the point of Reused Enemy/Bosses it is lore within the game that the world is fractured so there isn't a true death, there is also creatures that are puppets and not actually living. Though I can agree with the catacomes feeling samey with little variation of mobs.
Great video as always. My biggest gripe with this game was that, as my first From Software game- I actually just wanted the open world elements, I hated the boss fights (even though I was over leveled and legit did most of them under 5 tries)- I feel like Elden Ring is the best open world of all time, but it comes with this tumour of a soulslike, and for the true die hard soulslike community they just want the boss fights and it comes with the slog of an open world.
Don't get me wrong, Elden ring is absolutely my game of the year for 2022, but I do feel like it'd be massively advantageous to From to "pick a lane" for ER 2.
dude, you should put the spoiler alert at the beginning of the video, it is more likely for people to read the description AFTER watching the video, and this resulted in screwing up some of my experience in this game that ive been lovin… well, thats that, consider this.
I'm glad that they decided to go for static enemy levels. Think of it that way: Why would the inhabitants of the Lands Between grow stronger for a Tarnished? The answer can't be "because it's a videogame".
Moreover, scaling enemies tend to take away the thrill of danger of adventuring through a high level area. There's more excitement to be found in "I shouldn't be here, but I'll take the risk to explore and loot" than there is in scaling enemy levels adapting to your own power. Equally, there's more enjoyment in returning to an early game area while feeling powerful, knowing you've actually grown stronger on your journey, than there is in encountering level-adapted enemies voiding all your past progress. If enemies adapt to your strength, getting stronger loses all meaning. Furthermore, static enemy levels in an open world game are another way of indirect player direction, suggesting a recommended ("easier") path to newcomers over a more difficult one for genre veterans seeking a good challenge.
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As for the more linear second half of the game: The game is massive, if the second half opened up a world as big and open as the first, then the chances of getting overwhelmed and exhausted from exploration would rise even more than already is the case (GMTK didn't mention playtime in the video – most players will arrive at the second half after more than 50 hours of exploration and challenging combat with probably several dozens of deaths on the count too).
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Regarding boss repeats: While they can be annoying, they also add to the journey. Bosses that a player might have struggled with the first time, not knowing their moveset, pose a chance to get sweet revenge – facing them a second time with gained knowledge and skill. It works the other way around as well: A seemingly easy boss might surprise the player with new moves for their lategame variant, suddenly posing an interesting challenge.
The more I played Elden Ring, the more I realized that this was honestly a better Zelda than Breath of the Wild. Hear me out:
If you like(d) BotW then that's fine, but I felt like Nintendo looked at previous open world games and brought a mish-mash of mechanics that I just don't feel belong in Zelda; there's the towers from Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, the side quest log of countless RPGs and points of interest. I don't hate these mechanics, but Zelda was always about just finding stuff on your own.
That's where I think Elden Ring does it best. There's map markers that kinda act like the towers but that's all they are: markers that just fill out your map, not fill it up; it's your job to keep an eye out for the NPC to continue their quest line by either riding around or remembering where they told you to go or what specific action to do; and lastly, every discovery doesn't feel like you were guided there but rather because you decided to run off the main path.
FromSoft made these games to take us back to a time when games didn't have so many rules and didn't hold our hands until the game told us we were ready. With Elden Ring, it feels like this is what the original Zelda must've felt like when it first released.
I was amazed by the catacomb in the royal city. When you keep going deeper, the catacomb makes you feel like you are stuck in a loop, (but actually it is not). In the first part of the `loop`, I killed a scary giant monster. In the second part of the `loop`, the same monster shows up again, but mourning another dead monster corpse on the ground. This scenario is so so confusing.
It tries so hard to make you believe you are stuck in a loop 🤣🤣🤣
The games a masterpiece, I think static level enemies is the best thing, I want to be overpowered when I return to them, because I'm rubbish at the game!
Bloodborne's Moon Phase system was also changing enemies in usually every level.
I hate when games level enemies dynamically to match your own level. It feels like you’re never getting stronger.
Mark's initial summary of the order of play had me going "what is he talking about?" Which speaks to just how flexible FromSoft has made this game. I've put 100 hours in and it's been a struggle at times for sure, but I took on Radahn (and beat him) without ever tackling Rennala, and I'm just now exploring the Academy and that sense of exploration and curiosity hasn't gone away yet. It's not great at storytelling in the traditional fashion (I'm not sure why I'm doing what I'm doing half the time) but it plays into that sense of adventure well (I'm enjoying it anyway).
I give it 7/10. Dark souls 1 for me is a 9/10
cool
100% This game through ng+3 I rushed the last one to get 100% I still missed many things but now I'm not in a hurry in ng+4 and has many key stone keys which I really missed. Not really get bored like Witcher 3 but it does get tiresome sometime but I'm excited again in ng+4 because I don't need to worry and just do what ever I want while being challenged and then I fall in love with PvP this game is crack.
It's worth mentioning that the player level has little to do with how powerful you are in this game. It has way more to do with how high you have upgraded your weapons. A level 150+ character can still get knocked around easily when using lower level weapons in an earlier area of the game. There's nothing wrong with swapping out of your +25 weapon to a +9 when you re-explore an earlier area to find more stuff. This ties in to your point about the player being able to balance the difficulty of the game themselves.
A matter of preference, but I definitely like Elden Ring's set difficulty level in each area more than a game like Skyrim where the enemies level with the player – or in some cases different types of enemies will appear entirely depending on your level, which gives the entire game a more random and lazy feel when it comes to enemies and enemy placement. Skyrim, as an example, never makes you fear for your life and think "I shouldn't be here…" the way that Elden Ring can.
Lastly your point about how discovering the formula of the game can reveal the artifice is true. In the end we do it to ourselves with the way we consume and chew through these massive games. I'm betting a lot of people watching this video played the game in long sessions and explored most of the game within 1 week. On the other hand, I have a friend who mostly played the game 1 day a week for 3-4 hours at a time and so his experience was very different from mine. It still took me a lot longer to stumble onto the formula with Elden Ring than I did with Breath of the Wild.
Ironically, this actually looks empty as shit. And people had the nerve to say Forspoken's world was empty?
I don't see why proportional scaling isn't a thing? What I mean by this is that all enemies do scale with you, but to different degrees.
For example, let's say average enemies in Limgrave have stats set around level 10, those in Caelid at level 50, and Leyndell level 80, and Farum Azula level 100. Those areas don't scale down to a player that's a lower level than the area, but once the player gets beyond that areas level, it scales up with the player by a certain percentage which differs by zone. So, Limgrave might scale by 20%, Caelid by 40%, Leyndell by 70%, Farum Azula by 90%. So, if a player is level 200, enemies in Limgrave have a difficulty of roughly level 50, Caelid level 110, Leyndell is level 160, and Farum Azula enemies are around 190.
This means that the player can still return to earlier areas late in the game and feel powerful (though not ridiculously so), but the harder areas/enemies still have challenge and feel like worthy opponents, even post-completion.
(The numbers I've given are just to illustrate the idea, would need playtesting to find one that are appropriately balanced)
It does speak very well as a transition from what From has done to what they can do next. Really excited for the next one.
I don't level scaling would be a good idea. It kills the sense of progression of stomping enemies you struggled with before.
Maybe some soft scaling, where enemies scale until you defeat the areas boss would make it so that the difficulty remains consistent while exploring, but still giving the progression later would be a better solution.
I love Elden Ring.
As a new player to From Soft games, what some would call reused assets were in fact new to me and I appreciated getting a taste of the older games. Some have said the Erdtree Avatar is just the Asylum Demon from DS1. Ok, but I've never fought the Asylum Demon. So I get why it's lazy for some, but for me it was all new.
Way to nitpicky at the end, your opinion funneled at the end of the vid
its not night sky its cave cristals
I hard disagree with the idea that the repetition of game elements pulls away the artifice of the game, I actually think in context it does the exact opposite. Fromsoft have made a name for themselves for impeccable worldbuilding, and Elden Ring is their magnum opus of fully fleshing out a true-feeling world existing alongside and aiding in creating a robust story and thematically rich mythos. Approaching this world from the perspective of understanding the objects and entities that exist within it as internally significant, consistent, and meaningful to a constructed world makes repeated encounters with basic elements with small variations more realistic and, in my opinion, more immersive. Of course the catacombs repeat, they're burial sites. People need to be buried everywhere there's people, and the catacombs are designed for a particular form of burial that's established to be widespread, I expect there to be lots of them. Video game bosses being strictly unique is a detriment to world immersion if that boss is supposed to be a part of a group, organization, or culture in-universe, repetition reinforces the writing. Sure, it doesn't feel novel to repeat basic design elements in a video game and ensuring uniqueness in play is important to game design, but I feel that at least some of the examples you gave are more than adequate at that when you approach them with context. It's just better to enjoy a piece of art when you're appreciating it as both creative expression of ideas and emotions and a technical construction at once, I think your perspective is just failing to do that in this case.
Let's just call Elden Ring an open world game and everything else "absolute rubbish" from now on, please? I'm so unbelievably tired of the over-produced, marker-laden, cookiecutter triple-A games that get pushed out each year. Even the 'good' ones are just rubbish. Horizon is pretty but completely nonsensical, with a stupidly dull main character. God of War is so ridiculously padded. And yet they get constant 9s from every reviewer everywhere.
the way we as players solve the not scaling level in enemies is by playing without leveling but thats something only pro's dare to do. 🤣