Is Elden Ring Worthy of "Best Narrative"?
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- Опубліковано 20 лис 2022
- Elden Ring's story (plot) is mediocre, but it still deserves its Best Narrative nomination. Let's talk about why.
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Contextual addendum: I spend most of this video critical of ER’s narrative elements. Despite this, I think ER’s narrative fusing of gameplay and story is really respectable and better than simply using cutscenes. But, as I say in the vid, I already have multiple videos talking about that, and all the other ER creators I referenced have already defended the game from that POV. So, the video doesnt give my full view; it is a look at mainly/only the narrative elements in the game that do poorly, in attempt to bridge the conversation between ER criticizers and ER defenders. Just a bit of nuance to keep in mind
Sekiro probably is the closest to a narrative we become accustomed to for gaming for decades now .
Taking Elden Ring's strength of ambiguous storytelling is unfair. It feels like you're making Elden Ring fight with it's hands tied behind its back. Discussing Elden Rings' story without the lore just can't be done because they are interwoven and provide the significance and context for the world and what your purpose is. The equivalent would be taking away Kratos backstory from the old trilogy. Krato's character is interesting because of how he was in the old trilogy. I should also add that there is no way to gleam most of Kratos past life in the current games instead it relies on players having played the old ones. Then there's also the Norse mythology the game spews exposition about through Mimir. Are we really going to say this type of world building is better than Elden Ring. Elden Ring is as significant as the player makes it which is the same as God of War. I think Elden Ring does deserve its nomination. I'll agree that the NPCs in Elden Ring lack any significant character development and should be improved but the narrative engagement comes from your understanding and knowledge of the world. Essentially the world is the character. Many people refer to the item descriptions for how to recieve the lore but the architecture gives the same amount if not more.
Games is choices so I'm into who has more choices in story. Imagine if they did GOWR like Witcher 3 endings or even DS3.
I really don't want fromsoft to have a more fleshed-out story, because if it has, content creators like The Tarnished Archeologist and Quelaag would probably not make the mind-blowing content that they make. The way that they do the story has its charm and that's why discussions on fromsoft lore prevalent than say GOW lore.
@@UNOgard idk, Elden Ring's character development feels more natural to me than some of Ragnarok's character development. that's why Hewg calling me a lord is more impactful to me than Brok blessing my weapon, because Hewg's development feels more natural and unexpected and Brok's development felt like a necessary story beat in order to keep the player's engagement
I wish Kalé's questline wasn't cut; he clearly would've been the most well developed character in the game and actually has a character arc
There are so many characters like that lol
I feel like his questline was cut due to its similarities to the holocaust🧐
the mimic tear side story too, it's easily the strongest summon we can have and i'd of loved to of had the questline showing how a mimic effectively wants to become us. Instead of just finding it in a chest
I feel the same way about Yura. In his cut dialog he mentions the "worm like writhing that has long plagued the back of my eyes", obviously referencing the frenzied flame which makes meeting Shabriri so much more impactful. I wonder if they cut stuff because maybe they thought the game would be too bloated, it's a shame really.
@@TheStarvingAfrican well if that were true then the merchants likely would have been cut and the entire Subterranean Shunning Grounds would have been too. I don't think that's why
On disc, i give no fuck about software stories.
People who spend years of their free time analysising these stories make them interesting. If youtube and reddit and other "forums" didnt exist i doubt the story section would be as popular as gameplay
Boom yes i just said that
exactly! I've been saying this! that's why lore videos have so many views, no one understood the fucking story
I do love Melina and I honesty felt she was lacking some sort of character development or personal more interaction to make us more care for her. The only time is when she uses herself to burn to tree which is suppose to be a emotional scene to know we lost her but it would be more impactful if we get more side missions with her or cutscenes to see her more personally for us.
Tbh I saw her as a like a contractor or straight business coworker. We both had goals and they somewhat aligned so we worked together when it was convenient. Nothing more nothing less.
I actually love that. I have spent so many hours of speculation because there is obviously so much going on with her during the story. We just don't get to see any of it, just the result.
Yeah just something to see her character develop wouldve been great since she was with us for so much of the game
I disagree, I feel like stagnation, stasis, and numbness are core themes in Elden Ring. By the time any given Tarnished returns to The Lands Between, they've been through likely centuries of war, SO much trauma, fatigue, constant stress, and ACTUALLY being killed, and subsequently resurrected, no wonder most can't see grace anymore, and you come back home to find it in ruins, nothing left of its former glory, but the few whisps of grace, only certain Tarnished, that have yet to completely lose themselves to despair, can still see. So, Melina's sacrifice is nothing a Tarnished hasn't experienced a thousand times over. They've learned to never get attached.
@@involuntaryanalysis Ok, so I guess we just won't care about her then
I think the premise of “best narrative” might be too limiting for todays video game landscape. It might be better to have that award split into something like
Best world building
Best character development
Best visual storytelling
Best story(?) etc…
Because fromsoft is great at a type of narrative, just not the same as others.
Good point. I mean, if ”best narrative” is so important we could all watch movies or tv shows instead.
Definitely agree on the different kind, and was just wondering if they'd split it up at all one year
Definitely spot on, it seems whenever narrative in video games is brought into a conversation. It has to follow the same style, same formula, same trend as games like GOW or last of us where it is shown by cutscenes and dialogue. don't get me wrong, that is definitely one way to tell a story but there are also many other ways to tell a story that is just as good or even better through other formulas like lore driven or exploration driven narratives etc.
Honestly, I don't think there are enough examples of storytelling that isn't linear narratives to justify splitting the category up. At this point I believe the category should just be renamed to 'Best Story/Storytelling' to reflect what they're actually looking at. This is actually a major problem I have with the industry as a whole. They're pigeonholing FromSoft's (and any other similar game's) storytelling into a category that doesn't need to exist on its own for video games, because a game doesn't need a good narrative to have a good story, whereas a book/movie (which is clearly what they're copying this category from) very explicitly does need the former to have the latter.
An example I like to bring up is Outer Wilds. That game has a phenominal story but no real narrative to speak of and having any form of narrative would actually diminish the experience of playing the game as a whole. So in this it's an example of a game can have a story that's actively better for not having an overall narrative attached to it, which is something that only interactive fiction can really have.
Another strong example is TTRPGs as a whole. I've played some amazing stories through TTRPGs that would be absolutely terrible if I try to narrate them to someone (even if I spend the effort to make sure the narration itself is high quality). If you want to experience this you can also just go look at any high quality playing session and then consider afterwards how you would explain to someone what happened without showing them the video (and how much of an impact that would have on the quality of what happened).
God of war would win all of those categories as elden does none of those things well. Not even slightly
If it wasn't for UA-cam, it would be impossible to peace together the story. It has a beautiful lore but item descriptions is no way to tell a story
Elder Ring has lore sure in the majority of textbook style..., Narrative story - barely. There's a reason no D&D based game will be nominated for narration despite being lore and story deep. Book style story telling is never comparable to full narration story telling in games.
Also, Lore is past and can be in relation with narration that is present of story being told. But typically, lore is not considered narration on its own. Elden Ring got pretty good lore. barely any active narration.
compared to GoW, Horizon, tale plague, these games contain both in an active manner.
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This.
I've said this before as well. Lore is only ever considered narrative when it has bearing/influence on the players choices/opinions of the main story.
For example. Rykard in Volcano Manor. You can find out everything about Rykard, to a point where you know how many moles he got. But none of that lore/information is considered narrative because it simply does not matter. Regardless of what Rykard is, you still have to kill him and whatever you find out about him never changes that and ultimately has no bearing on your decisions later on. They are simply information about a boss you just brutally murdered for no good reason.
truly strange people defending ER's "narrative" as "good" when the vast majority of you only understood the "narrative" after watching Vaati and Quelaag. i do not think that constitutes good storytelling, as a fromsoft fan.
It's not that hard to read item descriptions and reach conclusions based on contextual clues. I'm geniunely curious how many troglodytes who shit on ER's story thought their game bugged when Kirk's set dropped in front of the Fair Lady.
It's not that hard to follow the story along, but people simply don't care enough and perfer to put out L takes like this.
@@hoked2194 Thats kind of the point tho. Take D&D game like pathfinder kingmaker. It has a pretty decent story and plenty of lore (sense it based on D&D) but it would never get a nomination because the fact is that its reading heavy. a lot of people Arnt into reading their games. There a reason UA-cam channels of people going through lore / text-based story is so popular.
I think that "Narrative Development" doesn't necessarily mean character development and/or progression. To me, the _narrative development_ of Fromsoft games is starting with very little information about the world of the game, and gradually learning the events that have transpired in those lands. Discovering, bit by bit, everything that happened in the Lands Between - the wars that took place, the fate of Caelid and Cleanrot Knights, what a Tarnished is, Ranni's involvement with the Black Knives and her motivation, the relation between Radagon and Marika, etc. - _That_ what I see as the narrative development of the game. Ever engaging the player to discover and explore is, by itself, a form of development. This style is obviously not for everyone, but to me, learning the twists and turns of events in Elden Ring is more impactful than what many straightforward stories could ever be. (By the way, I beat Ragnarok and loved it all the way through.)
I agree, while GoW has id say more in depth and detailed characters, its not presented in a way where you truly learn with your character, youre almost watching from the sidelines. In Elden Ring its just that much more immersive uncovering and understanding the world, lore and its current affairs. Personally I feel like both games are deserving of this award. Although the actual game of the year award is highly in favor of ER and its depth imo
@@ioverslept. honestly though elden ring also has plenty of deep characters, like Rykard is a complex character and so is his entire faction, same with Miquella, Morgot, Mogh, Marika/Radagon and on and on
@@Kidcrowley yea of course, but theyre not really explored as much as a game with a ton of cutscenes and full of dialogue
You start with very little and they give you barely any more after that. It's lazy af. It's not compelling because there is nothing to it, and the stuff that is there is horribly written and makes no sense most of the time
@@johndodo2062 this clearly wrong, you have an opinion, but it doesn't make it right. It is written well, just not like other mainstream games.
It sounds like my experience of Elden Ring might have been more unusual than I thought. For me, it was a deeply emotional journey. I think it's largely because of just how LONG I spent with the game and its characters - almost 200 hours in-game, gradually accumulated over four and a half months. My spotty understanding of the lore was secondary to the tale that was formed by my actions, of a vagabond knight in search of someone worth fighting for, gradually watching the Roundtable Hold empty out as everyone she liked and trusted died or worse. Often it was because those characters' own pursuits led there, but some were mistakes that I later learned could have been avoided with different choices and interactions. The knight had genuinely failed to save some people who might have lived longer otherwise, and I grieved for them. The morose music of Leyndell was a song of mourning for all those who had fallen in order to get me that far. Even as more characters came to see the knight as worthy and even call her their Lord, still they fell. Even Melina, the longest-standing companion - whom I'd known for actual months as I'd been chipping away at the game - so close to the end, had to sacrifice herself for the knight to succeed. The cutscene of her kindling left me in tears. "I'll finish this," the knight swore. "For you, and everyone else."
Admittedly, that was the emotional climax of the game for me; I was hoping for a bit more catharsis from the final fight, which left me more confused than anything. Ranni's ending confused me in the moment too, but it's nice to know now that it's probably the best one. Even so, I think there's a lot to like about the emotional arc of the game, even if maybe you have to be a sappy person like me to get it to click.
I overall, respectfully disagree. Less because you dont make good points, or say anything specifically hurtful, but more because I think the way you come at the conversation, much like those attempting to belittle the story on places like twitter, is fundamentally flawed. You dish out "lore" and "story" into two different camps. I do not think this is a useful, nor reasonable way to approach the subject. The lore serves the story, and the story is based apon lore. They are not separate entities. If we are truly talking about the fullest scope of the narrative, to attempt to place both into separate camps only serves as an attempt to dishonestly hurt one games form of storytelling while raising another. If we were to boil down the award into more specific categories, this approach would be more reasonable. Having awarded for best worldbuilding, best environmental storytelling, ect ect. But thats not what we are dealing with. We are solely looking at "best narrative", and the contextual lore is simply part of the overall narrative of elden ring. Regardless of its in a cutscene, a book, or an item description, it is still aspects of the world given to the player to further the story. If said aspects were given in a cutscene, this conversation would in most likelihood not even be happening. But fromsoft chose to convey its history, story, and worldbuilding in its own way, attempting to only take the parts of that match up to more normalized storytelling and base an evaluation off that just goes as a way to willfully hinder one game at the benefit of others. If we are talking about the TRUE full scope of the narrative, lore and all, I simply find elden ring to be a more interesting game then God of war. Others can disagree, but a conversation about the metritis of one over the other cant be had unless both are given access to the full extent of what counts as "narrative" to be explored.
Elden Ring definitely feels like it has the closest thing to a narrative development for the player character, IMO. I felt closer to my Tarnished after my first play through than I did to my Chosen Undead or Good Hunter. The problem for ER as a character-driven narrative is that was almost entirely done BY ME. I went in with a vague plan on how I wanted to RP my character based on the limited lore info I had going in. That was a very rewarding and memorable experience, but again it was mostly on me. In games like New Vegas I feel more like I'm working with the game to make a cool story, whereas in ER I feel like I'm pitching ideas to a DM who cares more about their world building. That said, it's a great fucking world and I'm super into it.
I don't believe so. Working as hard as we do as a community to understand everything that has happened story wise is not a good narrative. That being said it is a wonderful story worth the work for the non casual fans.
As I say in the vid, I agree that it doesn't make a good story/plot narrative, which I think is what many have found issue with. But yes the search is a great thing in its own (also narratively meaningful) way
Most of her character development is by the end of the game (giant mountain and flame of frezny)
I'd definitely say New Vegas has a better narrative than Elden ring. You bring up some fair points about Elden Ring's shortcomings in the narrative department.
Most people I feel are on one of the two extremes, but it's fine to enjoy and appreciate what is there, but admit that it's not all that much in certain aspects.
Feels like it might've just been a kneejerk reaction to the people that were upset about Elden Ring's nomination at all that led many in the community to overblow just how good the story is in it's defense.
I think this is a pretty fair take, especially since its pretty easy to rile up the Souls/ER community with spicy tweets
Elden ring has amazing lore and world building but a fairly uninspired story if we're seeing it purely from the perspective of the tarnished. Its closest to something like five nights at freddies where the plot in of itself is fairly straight forward and boring. I do think it might be a bit overrated, if we pretended youtube lore videos didn't exist then I don't think elden ring in of itself is that impressive, the impact its narrative has is largely due to the community that's formed around it
@@kavinh10 but this myriad of lore videos were spawned by the way these games' narrative works, which has to be worth something. Imo while the game's story in of itself is a pretty standard one, the way it is presented elevates it by a fair margin, and both the gaming community and the award committees aren't adequately equipped to gauge its worth yet.
It's weird that no one besides Morgott and Godfrey seems to actively try to stop the protagonist from entering the Erdtree and becoming Elden Lord, like, Ranni's whole plan depends on the Tarnished helping her, what if he decides to go for the Frenzied flame? shouldn't absolutely EVERYONE try to stop your ass from destroying the world, specially the blue witch who has been waiting for her chance to take the ER from the LB since probably centuries?.
Why do Godrick's men still attack me after killing him if they hate me? why do Carian Knights attack if you befriend the remaining Carian Family? the world is cool and all but it is not very reactive to your choices besides the endings and a few NPCs
Ranni did not want to be elden lord. She wanted to walk the dark empyrean path ( by killing her fingers and burning her flesh) only after we talk to her in ainsel lake does she suggest we usher the age of the stars
The carian knights have rebelled on the royal family, which is why has only 3 allies and renalla is imprisoned
@@meatboy5714 I'm pretty sure the Carian knights are still loyal, the ones that betrayed the Carian royals were the Cuckoo
@@meatboy5714 Carian Knights are loyal, you're talking about the Raya Lucarians
@@meatboy5714 Yeah but it is strange that she doesn't do much to acomplish her goal of making the age of star a reality if we don't help her, also she should try to kill us if we receive the Frenzied flame
This is the main problem with the entire story. Morgot, mogh, where Godfrey has been and why he left, Melania, so so many missed opportunities
I ONLY felt for Blaiid simply because all he wanted was to help Ranni and he lost himself to madness, but it’s deeper than that. He was BUILT tht way. He was literally created with that fail safe in him the whole time, but none of us know until after we search OUT of game lore
Simply bad storytelling, which is wildly disappointing because they wrote out all the lore and information it seems as though they just refused to put it in the game
They could have used cave drawings, npcs, left over armor, weapons, notes, scrolls, tablets, carvings. THINGS TO FIND AND INTERACT WITH, but no
It angers Me because the game is so fun and it could of truly been amazing if they just didn’t leave everything that gave weight to our actions outside of the game
I can marry ranni yes it's worthy of a nom.
Indeed lol 😂
There are also toxic people on the other side who stand up for ER’s way of telling a story. Responding just as immaturity as the original instigators in turn shows just how immature some people truly are. Regardless of their actual good points. It reveals a level of insecurity that is actually pretty sad. There’s a way for people to respond without sinking to their level. You gotta be nice and respectful. But no, “being nice makes you weak right? I gotta be cool. I gotta be macho by being a jerk. I have to stick it to them and make them look stupid.” Most people don’t want to do that. Because “they said something that offended me and that I subjectively/objectively disagree with, fuck them.” Unlike Mad here who knows what he has to say and communicates his opinions in a fair and cordial manner. Please learn from him. There’s immaturity on both sides here. And if you fall into that category you still lost. Don’t make a fool out of yourself. Especially in this modern world were many people claim to be smarter than previous generations. Especially with all this information, technology and history at our disposal.
Elden Ring “best narrative “ even a nominee makes me not take that award seriously AT ALL. LOL.
I love Elden Ring but best narrative? That’s not it’s strength
I believe everyone is just confused about what narrative means. The fact that it is told to has nothing to do with a narrative. The fact that if you don't know the background of the stories or lore built into the story [e. g. the religion, culture, and civilizations of the past( real life)] it becomes confusing. This is what hurts the comparisons. One story, secret, feels like you have to be in a club to understand. The other, well known, is built on a shared knowledge.
elden ring does not have story it has lore letters lmao
I'd consider myself a hardcore-FS-Fan since 2006 and i absolutely love ER
BUT [!] even though it is super rich
in 'LORE' it has a weak 'NARRATIVE' ,
which precisely is what makes it's appeal.
People need to look up a damn Lexicon:
Lore ≠ Narrative
The real problem is that these so called "awards" are too single dimension for games nowadays.
when i played Souls i always wondered why the place seems abandoned or the Locals already fleeing from the land trying to get away from the chaos that is Lordran, Lothric, and Drangleic.
the average player isn't going to look through item descriptions are watch a vaatividya to figure out what the fuck is happening, this game does not have a good narrative. Maybe great lore? Sure, a clear story? Nah.
- Narrative is simply story. Or should I say Narrative is simply connected story.
- So what's the Narrative of Elden Ring? It's the story of the Player(Tarnished) and his journey to become Elden Lord. Basically it's the "Main Quest" of the game.
So then why does Elden Ring have bad narrative? Or why is the story telling bad?
Because in order for any piece of media, be it video game, movie, novels, etc to have good narrative/storytelling. It has to have a good (main)character. And that main character has to have good motivation or reason to partake in the main quest. Because the character's motivation/reason is what starts the story and what drives the story. The motivation and reason is what makes the main character worth rooting for.
Elden Ring storytelling is thus bad because it fails to develop the character. It fails to give the player character any reason to do anything that he/she does. Nor does the game succeed as the video said in developing any of the NPC.
People mostly choose Ranni ending. But then why? Before you progress Ranni questline you have maybe 2 whole sentence dialogue with her. And that somehow convinces you to pick Ranni, to support and help her, to swear lifelong allegiance/servitude to her? Does any of that sound like good story telling. The answer is no. It's not good storytelling nor is it good character development.
i love the way that from software creates its world the immersion in the world and lore is really good but i think having more conversations and more impact on the world would be really nice.
but I believe that the from software fandom is already used to fanservice
on the one hand this is great because you get more information in the fandom.
but having more impact on the world would make the game better after all character development is always great.
yeah because i dont think we know anything about anyone beside the Omen twins lol. perhaps we get more info in the dlc or maybe elden ring 2 with marika's story, if that's even a thing
“a spoken or written account of connected events; a story” that’s the definition of narrative. I think the written lore that tells a massive connected story is 100% a narrative and 100% develops as you play. Also, your choices do impact the game as you have several endings with drastic different results. I personally think ER should win over Ragnarok in both GOTY and Best Narrative and this is coming from someone who has 100%ed ER while exploring every area and finding every item AND I platinumed Ragnarok as well as 100%ing every realm
This all seems especially strange to me because Ragnarok also has a MASSIVE amount of lore. And it's all integral.
The entire entire history of Svartelheim, Alfheim and Vanaheim.
Freya, Freyr, Sindri, Brok, Surtr, and Mimir's backstories.
And all the Horrible things that Odin, Thor, and the other Aseir have done.
So people who say that none of that counts are harming GOW too.
Er has barely any story to speak of, much less compare to GoW
@@officeimpact6377 Maybe you didn't actually read our comments.
Let me simplify our point:
Lore IS part of the story. So ER has actually a LOT of story. (Or Narrative, to go with the original wording)
@@tevenpowell8023 That's not what he meant by story, he meant the traditional meaning. There is a clear difference between Elden Ring's "story" and most other stories. If you want to call Elden Ring's narrative a "story", then what do you want to call everything else? They are too different to simply be called the same thing.
@@xx_amongus_xx6987 OK. Then tell me the difference.
Since it's so obvious.
When I voted, I didn't even consider lore. Lore compliments a narrative. Lore has a narrative. But lore is not the entirety of lore. So why did I vote Elden Ring anyway?
I did so as it gave me an experiences and resonated with me more than most narratives do. The simply journey of my Tarnished felt much more impactful to the journey of Kratos, and I say it as I love Cyberpunk, but V as well. The only game I argue betters it is the Witcher III.
Elden Ring is able to create meaningless connections between you and it's world as the Witcher III so masterfully did. And unlike God of War and Cyberpunk, it was the gameplay that pulled me in not the gameplay that pulled me out.
To expand on that, I'll explain on all four points. For Elden Ring, it's environmental storytelling, especially in places like Caelid and Leyndell, connected to me. The difficulty of the game combined with entering Caelid at an early level resulted in a relationship forming between me and a character I had only heard of, seen and felt the impacts of their actions, that resulted in one of the most satisfying conclusions I have ever experienced. Without the direct storytelling present, the environmental, and gameplay-adjacent storytelling, it would not have been able to create such a connection and reward it with such a payoff.
In terms of God of War, I feel like there is a disconnect between it's narrative and it's gameplay. I haven't managed my thoughts as much as the other examples, but it feels like what the gameplay is telling me is that my actions are heroic, epic, and rewarding while the narrative tells me none of that.
For Cyberpunk, it's quite similar. The narrative builds V up as an up and coming legend, but I never felt like my actions were challenging. Nothing expresses this more than the fight with Adam Smasher which felt completely different to the Adam Smasher we heard of and the Adam Smasher we ended up seeing in the anime. Unlike the anime where the animation sells me that David is an absolute Night City Legend, the gameplay does not sell me that V is.
I feel like the Witcher III succeeds through its incredibly impactful choices. The quick establishment that every choice could matter in a significant way, and the upkeep (untill the endgame with Ciri) of every choice having an illusion of significance made me feel connected to Geralt. When I made a decision, I truly felt like it was Geralt doing so and I should always choose what I think Geralt would. When Truss left, I didn't listen to Djikskra as despite the fact I felt the connection between the two, I knew that it was the hard choice Geralt would make; she goes off on her path and Geralt on his own. The gameplay and choices feel impactful and married to the narrative.
Hopefully this explains why I love the narrative of Elden Ring in just a small way. I also love the themes the game presents, and how it presents them through various constants like flames. And while I wholeheartedly think it deserves to win narrative of the year, I also recognise the flaws in it you pointed out and the arguements against it. It definitely deserves the nomination, and I'm happy it has atleast been recognised for that.
I disagree with the definition you used for narrative. What you described and critiqued I'd describe as the 'plot' of the game, this is the story of the pkayer tarnished, rather than that of the Lands Between, including the characters we meet troughout our journey which, as you said, don't really change or develop (which, while true, isn't a problem by itself). Narrative as I understand it, refers to EVERYTHING a piece of art uses to tell its story. The same way a book can use prose to give the narrator a distinct 'voice' they'll use in telling the story, a game can use gameplay, text, cutscenes, lore and a million other things to tell its whole story, not just the plot, but to help its themes come through and evoke emotions in the player. I could go on, but this isn't a good place to say it, and others have touched upon a lot of these points in their responses to this discussion.
If I develop a game with an okay but generally opaque and mysterious story full of holes, but then set it in the world of Tolkien's mythopaea that doesn't mean Tolkien's work counts as part of my narrative, or that my narrative is good because of the work Tolkien did - especially not if you then have to go read the Appendices or the Silmarillion or Tolkien's letters, or other esoteric stuff and sit down and think about it to understand what happened.
That's basically what FromSoft did here. GRRM gave them a world bible, and they wrote a somewhat barebones story in his universe. Lore isn't narrative, and Elden Ring doesn't have a hell of a lot to its story beyond lore. Give it an award for "setting" or something - the narrative one doesn't apply, so far as I'm concerned.
I love me some Dark Souls games, and their lore is really neat and really deep, but I'd be hard-pressed to say any of them have a great in-game story.
i'm sorry but i cannot disagree more with your comment. barebones story? really? go ask the lore community if the story is shallow, they will tell you that they always find a deeper layer.
also fromsoft has done this before GRRM. i think you're looking down on the story because of its ambiguity, but i personally believe that it is functionally impossible to write a fragmented story. The story is complete, it's just our pov in the that is not omniscient
@@meatboy5714 that's precisely what they are saying. you clearly missed it. "lore isn't narrative" and if you have to go to external sources to understand the "story" then your narrative has failed. again, lore is not narrative. you also must've missed miyazaki himself talking about DS's item descriptions where he said "these would not be sufficient for a full story" or something very close to that. nothing as far as narrative has changed since DS1, with the exception of Sekiro, maybe BB.
@@tronaldtv7099 Hey, someone finally understood my fairly basic argument. 100 internet points for you!
there’s admittedly a grey line between defined and developed when it’s comes to characters in stories. u make good points but the beauty of elden rings story is that you need to infer, you need to think. God of wars story doesn’t make you think. it’s a just a fun ride like a rollercoaster
It is a complex subject that is definitely marred by people adopting "just shut up" attitudes on both sides. Though it is obviously predictable that ER channels will stick up for ER, I'm pleased they did so in their nuanced ways. It is also no surprise that nobody much would do the same for Ragnarok, considering the fandoms are just "built different".
I think the bottom line is that depending on your answer to this question, you will think one or the other is a better narrative: Is the purpose of a narrative in a game to tell a story, or to drive player interest in the game? If the purpose is to make you want to keep playing, I think Elden Ring is the superior experience because it forces you to engage with the world and explore to make sense of what's happening. If the purpose is to tell a story, then God of War is the superior experience because it literally does exactly that.
So basically, do we judge game narratives the same way we judge book and movie narratives? If so, obviously God of War wins. If not, then obviously Elden Ring wins.
...a good story does both. with a story having purpose, you are driven to find out more (interest)... GoW does both...but ig you thought you had something there. ER does the latter only.
@@tronaldtv7099 I disagree. You can learn the entire GoW story and get the full satisfaction of it without playing the game for a second. If I feel like I can fully appreciate the story just watching cutscenes on UA-cam, the story is not integral to the gameplay.
@@clearlypellucid While I haven't played Ragnarok, in the previous game there were moments where the emotional impact of the story was heightened by me playing through the "scene" in question instead of merely watching it, like the first encounter with Baldur. Beating him down with my own hands was an intense and visceral experience the likes of which I haven't felt in my two decades of playing games, and which I highly doubt could have been recreated by watching a mere UA-cam video. If you had merely watched the scene instead of played it, I would say you'd be missing out big time.
Elden ring "story" should be categorized as worldbuilding, not naratives
Elden Rings narrative isn't viewed; it's explored. It makes it more impactful imo because its something you have to actively seek out.
yeah no, the opening cutscene disproves that
@Morgan Nyan yeah other 200 hours of gameplay disproves that
@@morgannyan2738 The opening is just to set a base for whats to come. Still, the game isnt a perfect narrative, but is good that it makes it into the awards because it helps to bring the idea that more open and experience story is something worth trying out, instead of just cutscene over cutscene over cutscene.
@@morgannyan2738 i see what u mean but either ur not thinking this thru or u made that argument in bad faith cuz the opening cutscene is cool and makes no sense 😂 u need to explore to understand it. it’s gives u basic info sure but everything else makes no sense until u discover it. so pls explain how the cutscene disproves his comment?
There's a line between supplemental information building depth and the world, and suboptimal storytelling of the core narrative.
In my opinion “lore,” and worldbuilding do not equal “story.” The Millennium Falcon being the Corellian freighter that completed Kessel Run in 12 parsecs is not a story. Star Wars is a story. Even the Kessel Run could be a story (although maybe it shouldn’t be with how Solo turned out).
The Lands Between is a beautifully constructed world full of intriguing concepts, factions, and people but I don’t really consider that “story” on its own. Don’t get me wrong, the game has good stories to tell like Roderika and Hewg or Cohryn and Goldmask, but the overarching plot of becoming Elden Lord or not and ushering in the new age is severely lackluster, even compared to other Fromsoft games.
Breath of the Wild and Fallout New Vegas also had great worldbuilding, characters, and sidequests while also telling much more satisfying narratives from beginning to end. I don’t know why the discourse is treating it like “cutscenes bad, exploration good” or vice versa. You can have both.
One could say that the bare bones narrative lets players make their own story. It has a few basic beats but the finer detail is down to the player. GOW is about someone else's story and we as the player are following that. In ER we forge our own story in the midst of a basic one. Also what is unique is the fandom. GOW, everyone has the same experience and there's nothing to talk about in depth as everyone has seen the same thing BUT ER has people talking in depth about the story and coming to their own conclusion. Much like Miazaki and those books. He formed his own mind on what happened and thus so are we, it's a unique for of story telling that serves well to a more inquisitive and creative player I think.
Elden does bare bones because they are lazy and cheap. There is no real story in elden and yes I put 200 hours into it. By the end it still made no sense, and the fact that I had to go to UA-cam to find out wtf happened is pathetic. From has tricked you too apparently into thinking that lazy stories are somehow mysterious. They aren't. They really are just lazy af
@@johndodo2062 And maybe if you wrote that a little more constructively and with a point to it, people wouldn't be thinking you are just not very smart...
I understand the argument that to compete in narrative it needs to be able to be distilled into a script so we can evaluate its content.
This is not the case with Fromsofts games, which are often formulated as mythos of a dying world where your character have agency for change in that you accumulate power and at the end is posed with a direction for change. But the worlds are often snapshots of a calamity that has put the world in stasis and as you travel this world you do find lore and yes, narratives told in various ways. Elden ring presenting the three fingers and nihilistic ideas of the frenzied flame IS done masterfully but in comparison that's a 15 minute animation vs a 90 minute pixar film (other games like gow) ER does have more narratives told separately line the fate of godwyn the first of the dead but now we're comparing a clipshow to a film if we're evaluating narratives in a standard way. It's polarising because imo it comes down to of we want to laud the approach ER takes towards telling narratives, which is wholly unique to games, or if we want to sum up all of its narratives and compare it to a more cohesive and traditional narrative. Which makes the nomination bad because people are going to want an explanation to the decision wether its lose or win.
Game of the year for sure but narrative is not a category this game should care about.
Souls game including elden ring has a narrative it's just presented and done differently than mostly all games especially ones in the category. Is it the best this year ? For me I care more about the narrative in elden ring than gow even tho the game is literally walking me down the story the entire time. But I will say this ....am I drawn to the narrative of elden ring because it's the better or best narrative this year for me or because it's so Mysterious, speculative and enigmatic that's why I truly am still wondering about it ? Humans are drawn to the Mysterious and we are naturally curious 🤨 I'll leave that for you to decide like elden ring narrative LMAO 😭
Fromsoft makes my favorite games hands down and I love Elden Ring, but I really appreciate your criticism here and think it is definitely valuable to add to the discourse. You make some really good points.
I do think you focus on character development and character-driven narratives here, which is only one aspect of narrative and a particular kind of story. I do think there is a broader, more encompassing category of stories than this. But, your point is taken, Fromsoftware, and video games in general aren't the best medium for character development unless you start making compromises and essentially try to fit a scripted "animated movie" into the game. However, this comes at its cost as well, as the beauty of games is their unscripted nature IMO.
There are, to be fair, some pretty good character arcs in Elden Ring. I really like Diallos's quest, and the ending was pretty emotionally impactful. There are interesting themes in his storyline as well, and Fromsoft is good at injecting themes into their narrative and story quests, Elden Ring being no exception. Rya's development is fairly interesting as well,
Could you look into the mysteries still left unsolved in dark souls?
Personally, I think the fact that so many players are so confused and there were so many roadblocks to have even sort of an idea what was going on, like how quests function, rarely even giving you any indication of where you are supposed to go or do to advance them while the quest triggers are incredibly specific and do not follow logic. It should not be topping the narrative category. Lore existing that may or may not even have a full complete story but could just be a series of vaguely connected pieces that can endlessly be theorized about may be fun for a lot of players but it's not a true narrative. At the end of the day, the majority of players had no clue WTF was happening or what the endings mean, or even what the Elden Ring even is vs something like God of War where everyone knows what is going on, you can't just miss the entire plot or seek out parts of the plot but have no logical way to even know how to get it without Google.
I think Elden Ring has cool, interesting lore but I don't think a game should win best narrative when the vast majority have no idea what the story is even on a basic level, like those of us that seek it out and look at lore videos are a small minority. If the category was best lore then it would be different but best narrative, absolutely not for me.
For me Elden Ring narrative is genius. The story is filled with gaps because you are viewing the world by your character's eyes. It's up to you to fill the gaps. What happened with Caelid? You can made your own version of the story. You can even fill some gaps just by looking at the athmosphere. Just by looking at the minimal details of enemies, constructions, ruins, or anything. The art direction is flawless. It literally tells you a story. You don't need to have it thrown into your face. You can feel the struggle in the Land Between just by looking at it. I love that narrative design choice; Letting the player make up their own versions of this story.
yeah but i think it's a bit too much sometimes. i'd love to dig down more about marika and the empyreans, or maybe the outer world gods. i have no issue about open ending or we have to search around for infos (in which i think it's really game changing in the industry, somewhat, and undoubtedly ER's shining point) but having an established baseline is very much appreciated xD i mean we dont really know anything much about anyone aside the omen twin do we
your first point "what happened to caelid? you can make your own version of the story" i.e. not telling you the story, i.e. not having a narrative, i.e. not good storytelling.
@@tronaldtv7099 First of all: They're not obligated to tell you everything. There are MANY plotpoints who are very well established here and are PRETTY DEEP. But they don't need to throw everything in your face. Narrative? It's called a non-intrusive narrative aka "i don't need to show you bit by bit or explain everything every 5 seconds with gigantec texts or cutscenes for you to understand the world around you". And wtf? The SOULS Series are masterpieces with storytelling based just on atmosphere. If you can't compreheend, thats your problem. You could just read the itens, pay attention to the npcs and do quests, maybe? Elden ring does it's narrative just right. Perfect for the context of the game and the series aswell.
@@mercylavigne You literally just watched a video that described the difference between storytelling and narrative and the first thing you do is conflate and use them interchangeably. Also, bravo on going responding to "You're told so little about what happens to this character that you basically have to come to your own conclusion about it" with "Hur dur, story no need to give updates every five seconds." Your response is aking to someone saying that because the book was good then it follows that the prose must also have been good. But sure, if *you* can't understand how the narrative is only part of the storytelling and that the latter can be good even if the former isn't that great then that is, to quote yourself, "your problem."
THERE IS NO NARRATIVE IN ELDEN RING. there is lore and that's all.
Couldn't agree more. I've been playing souls games since DS1 steam release. A little more narrative and NPC development would make the games so much better. Gives us just a little more time with all these characters we love.
Sekiro I think is the perfect balance between having a ton of lore behind the surface while also having a decent narrative on its own
When I first heard about the nomination, I too was confused. I love Elden Ring and it's lore, but the nomination seemed strange next to story focused games like God of War, of which I just finished the first and haven't played the second yet.
However, as I was beginning this video, I thought of something that actually made it make complete sense.
When I think of a story game, I tend to think of ones like God of War, Uncharted, or even Portal. Games with a very developed and solid story akin to a movie or book. Games like uncharted can even feel like you're playing a movie at times. And I don't say that in any diminutive way, that can be amazing. But these are video games and are not limited to conventional story telling methods.
Some games feel like playing a movie or story, but Elden Ring is more of a game that takes place in and about a very storied world. And you need to play and search to appreciate it.
That makes sense to me and I think is Elden Ring taking advantage of it's medium to convey a story in a way that video games do better than anything else. I think that's why it got nominated for the Game Awards.
That said, I personally would love more character stuff in game and more development around our relationship with the characters we interact with. Since watching Zulie's video about this, it actually re-lit a spark and I am replaying through the game and imagining and intending to illustrate moments with NPC's that I like to imagine my character had. Telling Blaidd that Ranni loved him as I am forced to kill him. Convincing Melina to let me use the Frenzied Flame to save her with a plan to stifle it afterwards. These are moments I would have loved the game to be built around, but FromSoft just decided on a different kind of amazing game.
TLDR: Elden Ring has a bad narrative for From games, let alone regulars. It does not deserve best narrative.
Let me preface this by saying that Elden Ring is my favourite From Soft game, and I do not know anything about God of War games past the original greek ones, which I did not like. I have no stake in the vs battle that you insinuate is a driving force in this.
The way I often go about explaining it is that Elden Ring is an amazing adventure and archeology game, but not a good story game. Elden Ring engaged me in the world and the history of that world, all the while I was walking around in near total ignorance of the "why?" outside of "Elden Ring shatter go collect the dragon balls." I think it wasn't until I got the rune of death that I started to kind of understand, and then I looked more into it and realized that even the community can't accept a consistent timeline (or canon lol.) Whereas in say Bloodborne I was able to practically fully follow and understand the cosmic schmex jamboree that takes place. Thus we come to my personal problem; I don't think Elden Ring has a good narrative compared to other From Soft games, let alone regular ones. I don't think lore constitutes narrative, as much as I may love it.
I don't particularly care which game gets it, and I likely won't have played the game that does win (provided it's not Elden Ring,) I just straight up don't think Elden Ring deserves the award. Best open world? For sure, likely for years and years to come. Best lore? I'd read the manuscript and take it as religious gospel. But the game does not deserve best narrative.
Elden Ring deserves best narrative.
A video game’s narrative should be revealed through the game. Not cutscenes. That’s a movie, not a game. There are 3.5 hours of cutscenes in God of War Ragnarock, and it only takes 20 hours to complete. The narrative isn’t given to you via gameplay despite supposedly being a “game.” So it doesn’t deserve to be best game narrative. A game that tells its story through the gameplay does. Completing the main story of Elden ring would take a minimum of 54 hours, of which maybe 10-15 minutes total would be cut scenes. That’s a game that tells a story through gameplay, not what is essentially an accompanying dvd bundled with the game.
I like gameplay-fueled story more than the next guy, but we really out here claiming MGS aint a video game series??
Except a majority of people who play Elden Ring have no clue what the story is and that's why they go online to watch videos about the game they just played, probably amounting to 10x the amount of cutscenes that are self-contained within GoW. I like Fromsoft's way of telling stories, but it doesn't make sense to argue that GoW doesn't tell its story during the gameplay when Elden Ring doesn't either, unless you count reading hundreds of paragraphs of text entries and piecing them together in a notepad document as Elden Ring's gameplay. I like games that tell their stories through gameplay, but neither GoW or Elden Ring do so. New Vegas on the other hand is a game that tells its (main) story through the gameplay, ignoring all the text entries.
@@MadLuigi No, but if you can take away the gameplay and still be left with most of the narrative, then that’s a narrative that excelled because it was committed to being a movie/cinematic experience. It makes no sense to judge a game’s narrative based on how much money and time they dumped into making half the game into a film. A game narrative should be judged based on how that narrative is incorporated into gameplay, because it’s a game…
No one judges movie narratives based on metrics sourced from another form of media. Why should games be? The whole thought process and what we’ve gotten used to with video game narratives seems flawed to me.
@@chasingvictory659 "No one judges movie narratives based on metrics sourced from another form of media."
Patently false. People praise movies for their writing all the time. By your logic movies should be told though visuals alone, without any dialogue or other form of writing whatsoever, or else they're not real movies, just wannabe novels. It's nonsense, and I guarantee that you'd never uphold movies to the same standards of "purity" that you're proposing videogames be subjected to.
Just as writing is a tool which is primarily characteristic of literary mediums but which is also useful in other mediums, such as movies and videogames, so too is cinematography a tool which is primarily characteristic of movies and TV shows but which is also useful in other mediums, such as videogames.
@@st0pnsw0p I said no such thing. Movies, texts, and games are multimedia platforms to varying degrees. I don’t dispute this.
Older games like Ocarina of Time are a great example. Virtually no cut scenes outside of boss intros, entering new areas, and a handful of key events. Would you say Ocarina of Time doesn’t have a good narrative? The story is overwhelmingly communicated by a diverse combination of gameplay elements: aesthetics, text/s, npc interactions, tone, and player enthusiasm and exploration-and it’s better off for it.
You watch a movie (which includes audio and visual and even text to a certain degree).
You read a book (which is both text and imagery provided by the imagination or by illustrations and descriptive writing).
You PLAY a game (which includes all of the above plus the kinesthetic act of direct engagement with and manipulation of the given environment, which is what defines the genre).
You judge a movie narrative by how it presents that narrative through a visually dominated medium, plus supporting, not dominate, aspects from other media.
You judge a book’s narrative by how it presents that narrative through writing.
Thus, logically, you judge a game’s narrative by how it presents that narrative through gameplay.
These are all logical starting points with which to judge each form of media. They are not absolutes, but they are certainly where you begin and the lens you are given for each.
We as the player are the end of a lot of characters stories, our arrival marks the last notes of their story, but we do determine the outcome of the current cycle.
I played Elden Ring for lore. I spent 200+ hours (9+ days) in the game, just scraping up the lore. I like the story I put together, but would gladly trade it for a canon that tells me I'm completely wrong.
Good lore and bad storytelling. Having however much of the story/world/etc in txt files attached to items is obviously suboptimal. And I reiterate that I played for 9+ days because I enjoy reading those item descriptions.
I think this is very interesting to hear a different point of view that somehow opposite to the one Ratatoskr and Ziostomr are sharing.
In my opinion, it doesn’t matter much if Elden Ring will win the GOTY or not, all the games that were nominated for different reasons truly deserve it.
Each nominated game have his own advantage and even if I would like to see Elden Ring nominated as the GOTY, we will get the DLC anyway.
So no matter the result, everything is a question of time.
I had a debate about this with my friend. Truthfully told I have never played elden ring. I am going into college for English literature and education so I want to teach literature. The way they build the world and its lore is very impressive imo. Only the from soft teams can do things like imo despite not playing any of the souls games. If other teams could do this they probably would but they can’t. But the lore isn’t a story, It enhances the story. I appreciate the grounded take you had on this video. Despite loving the lore and the world around it the genuine narrative itself is nothing special. Again I’m not saying that’s a good nor bad thing. But if you want to critically look at a story with a good narrative this game isn’t it.
better then god of war fanfic
I pretty much agree with all of this. ER's story is really fleshed out when us, the community, have to work together to really get a sense of what's going on. I think what FromSoft could do is have npc questlines evolve and depending on how we do, their demise or success comes to fruition. It is interesting that the current npc's try to reach a higher plane of existence, but die as a result. This is dark fantasy, so maybe we can see some of these npcs evolve and turn into a boss or something.
Imo it all comes down to the divide between games as interactive movies and games as player experiences. The industry standard for a long time has been to treat games as gameplay segments between which there's movie segments, which are treated exactly like movies or books in the writing department with all the rules and structures that have been cemented over millennia of traditional storytelling.
Games as an experience however go for completely different things, they aren't really interested in telling a story, they are more akin to visiting a foreign place, where the player will meet new people and see new things that aren't there for the player's sake, they exist and the player just happens to stumble upon them. Just like in real life, you won't always see people develop or succeed and not all places exist to accommodate you or enrich your character, the mere act of interacting with them and how you do it is the payoff, and you're left to make your own stories with that.
This type of narrative is unique to video games and sadly underutilized, the interactive movie approach is so prevalent that most gamers have forgotten that video games are in fact an interactive medium and that interactivity can extend to the story part. I want ER to win this award only so that this type of narrative is advertised and more games come out utilising it as a result.
ER is a book of short stories that all take place in an amazing world. I would say a better description would be “Best Setting”. I would say ER is the better game. Happy Turkey Day!
"book of short stories"? Have you played ER? The main story - story of the Lands Betwen will take probably couple hundred pages to write down. Without any side stories
@@BigChiken44 it didn't take a couple hundred pages to get all the item descriptions written. There isn't that much text in the game lol. Games like Destiny could literally have novels written on their expansive lore. .
Honestly, I do agree that ER main plot could be told to be more engaging, making players more likely to delve deeper into the lore, but I don't agree with your points on characters. Characters don't always need an arc or progression to be interesting. Ancient demigods like Ranni or Morgott already have thousands of years to truly understand what they want to do, I doubt a new comer Tarnished can change their character in a few weeks.
That said, they DO have character development. Take Ranni for example, she first seemed uncaring, telling you to use her henchmen as they would to you, but that's not true. When you get the doll and talk to her more, she starts to truly open up and revealed a more gentle side, probably since you proved a trustworthy companion. That's still development, learning more about the character.
Can it be done better? Sure, but there IS development for the vast majority of characters in ER, that's all.
Cool how I can agree with the poins in all those other videos and yours at the same time 😎
Why is this video not acknowledging there are more then 2 games on the nomnie list Elden Ring is a good game but Elden Ring and God of War aren't the only games nominated. Story wise I think Stray wins by a fair bit but game play wise Elden Ring wins
Dont agree but thats ok.
I think that character development in Elden Ring is lacking because it is done to exacerbate the rigidity of the Golden Order and the others that came before it, relics, as you said. Hence the Two Fingers retreating to the Greater Will at one point.
The Two Fingers realise that (to quote The Crucible in Mass Effect 3): "A new solution is needed."
I would have never guessed that Rodirika is a reference to Farnese.
This whole discussion really comes down to silly semantics and people's seeming inability to agree on what narrative means in this context, and also whether or not you believe that the _plot_ of a game is the only thing that should be evaluated for the award. Should the wider elements of the narrative of a game, such as in-game lore (which is a component of/type of narrative by definition and I'm tired of people pretending it somehow isn't), be considered and valued in the same way that a strong core plot is?
If all we talk about is the central plot then God of War wins 100%, but if we expand the criteria to encompass every aspect of a narrative then Elden Ring suddenly matches up quite well against the competition.
Lore is not inherently a compontent nor a type of narrative. Lore is information. Whether or not that information ties into an actual story is another matter. For instance in pokémon games the pokédex provides a bunch of lore but basically none of the information it gives you has any bearing on the game's story.
ER was never meant to be a character focused story. I thought that much was obvious.
The story is good while the narrative and story deserves it form story I can’t say it should win because if the majority of players cant see it you could go threw the full game with only a quarter of story told. This is like saying SHADOW THE HEADGE HOG has a great story if have you play the game over and over again to get the full story that’s a bad game design
Agreed, while I love the way Fromsoft tells their stories, a majority of the people who play these games play them without spending hundreds of hours learning the lore or they don't go out of their way to watch youtube videos on them. They just play the game and call it a day. There is a reason most other games don't just flood their players with lore or excess amounts of information in a way where they have to do things outside of the game in order to understand anything. Same criticism goes for books and movies.
When UA-camrs don’t know the difference between story and narrative
Elden ring has a mind blowing open world, the environment, boss designs and fight all are epic.. But despite all it doesn't have any deep story you could connect with like in Dark souls series. Instead of making Radahn and malenia side bosses they should have been part of main storyline. Ending feels too rushed.. All in all a very great game but fades infront of souls series
If only Merchant Kale's side quest wasn't just cut content.
Im surprised as to why no one discused how "show don't tell" rule aplyes to Elden Ring and other souls games
Yeah there's so much the game tells you just by visual exposure it's on another level
It's a debate over semantics really.
What is meant by the word "narrative"
I am giving this a upvote solely because you correctly used the word 'reify'
Finally someone understanding the difference between lore and narrative/storytelling. ;_; TY
ER doesn't have to be everything. We can easily leave the 'best' narrative to other games that indeed solely focus on that category or does thrive in story-telling as its primary feature.
Bought time someone took a nuanced view of this.
Elden ring is just more true to life than most games. How much did your crazy ex "grow and develop"?
I think that this video presents a narrow understanding of the narrative. In order to make your argument you had to extricate the “active story” in Elden Ring from all of its context and world-building. In reality, the context provided by the world building is incredibly relevant to understanding and interpreting the events in the story, and not just the world it takes place in. This isn’t even unique to video games. You can’t just say “Waiting for Godot is a bad story because the characters don’t change and nothing happens” because the story is presented in a context that adds enormous value to the events in the story while also allowing the audience a high level of interpretability of their meaning. I think Elden Ring is no different from this and so adding more story beats or dramatic cutscenes wouldn't add anything to From’s storytelling method.
edited for minor spelling/grammar fixes
Most people don't care or have the time to learn the lore or watch videos of it online, this is just a thing for the non-casual fans. Many people who have played and beaten the game still don't understand the story at all, and many of those people never will.
Little babby gamer is used to having daddy developer walk them through every little piece of worthless exposition there is in one of the 200 dialogue cutscenes of their 50+ hour narrative borefest, so a game that puts you on trial by fire immediately and doesn't tell you how to do shit except lift a sword and swing, all the while telling its tale through scenery and pattern identification comes way out of left field for them. It's no wonder western movies died, and it was not just because of market saturation.
I swear Miyazakucks are some of the most annoying people on the internet
@@brendanmuller7301 I couldn't give less of a shit about Miyazaki, the deranged foot fetishist, but seeing how babby gamers like you fumble when a game doesn't have to cater to the lowest possible denominator in order to be successful shows me that, no matter how much of a loonie he is, his work is still miles ahead of the crap most western game "writers" put out nowadays.
@@MaxEisenhardt616 Ive been playing these games since Kingfield stop assuming my opinions.
Yeah, apparently simple text entries are better than cutscenes, makes sense. You know what the usual difference between lore entries and cutscenes is? Text entries are usually used in indie games that can't afford cutscenes in order to tell a story.
I agree with you, i dont think elden ring should be the best narrative but it deserves the nomination.That said im against God of War getting the best narrative, its a borin hollywood movie that i cannot get the strength to watch, ive tried to check it plenty of times but somehow i dont get the motivation.
It just two completely different approaches to narrative...the one is the classic character driven, character growth story. Will the characters overcome their differences? Will the characters overcome the external threats? Will the characters learn to work together to overcome those threats? The other is a world driven narrative. Most of the time I don't really feel that special in Fromsoft games. There's other tarnished, other undead, other ashen ones trying to do similar things to me with similar abilities and usually the world is what's to overcome. And also the player must overcome himself, frustration, developing skill, learning the patterns, etc. In FromSoft games you only feel special when you down those bosses. And Storywise you're the ending to a lot of built up stories, like in the video, they all have developed backgrounds and then you come along, kill and their story is finished. Of course there's the different big quests to lead to the big endings and there is okay or even good story/narrative, the most vanilla ending has a pretty boring story.
Then of course there's differences in how a story is presented and these differences are so big between ER and GoW:R you can't really even start to compare. It's also very subjective, because some people just prefer one way over the other.
I pretty much agree with the video, ER could have a better main storyline, maybe more dialogues, maybe more frequent NPC interaction, maybe a little voice over cutscenes for regions or bosses, not to explain lore, but to explain story
A lot of bosses have cutscenes that directly impact and show the story. e.g Malenia waking up from her slumber, then becoming the goddess of rot. Godfrey killing Serosh. Maliketh unleashing destined death from his body. Radahn being defeated so that the stars continue their movement and a meteor reveals the path to Nokron. etc.
I think Elden Ring could have benefitted from putting small settlements with small groups of non-hostiles in various areas that could have provided an opportunity for additional narrative and perspective. You are right, the actual story of our character is very flat and all these "legends" we meet are all card board cut outs.
By putting a few little clusters of buildings with folks riding the storm out, it would make the world seem still alive. Also while in these places it could have provided opportunities for moments with NPC's we already know. Imagine Melina appearing and following you around places like Jarburg and maybe have an interaction with a few things to grow her personality beyond her duty.
They should have recorded a lot more lines with Ranni's VA. One of the benefits of getting the small doll of her could be that she chimes in every so often. She could talk about areas you travel through that she has history, or give context to an event outside of her quest line. Maybe every now and again when you are fighting if your health is low you get hit you hear her gasp in concern. If you have the doll with you when you fight Rykard that should unlock a whole convo that plays out while you fight.
Upon defeating Fia's champions and demonstrating you aren't there to kill her she should ask more of you and talk to you more, about more than just the quest. I have no idea why she didn't weaponize us to fend off the Golden Order or to even strike back. Shouldn't we, upon becoming a champion for those that live in death have been sent to spread Death Blight. Heck, D's alright and all but why didn't the path of the Dusk Lord have us collide with Gurranq (outside of the mandatory fight in Farum Azula). It would have been awesome if, pursuing a Golden Order ending or Dusk Lord ending puts you in opposition with NPC's that would be friendly if you were on the other side but are now acting as invaders.
They needed to add a few more beats to Milicent's quest. Elden Ring needed better quest writers and I think better script writers for the story of their games. It has the potential, but the story of the tarnish that would become Elden Lord is ultimately very lacking. There is fragmented story telling but I don't know, I feel like Elden Ring sorta fails at telling a story that is actively happening while mystifying us with stories of what has already happened. I love the game but yeah, you have to make your own story for your Tarnished's time in the Lands Between as the story beats are very anemic.
Yes
Did SOMA ever win best narrative? Should have...
I don’t know about narrative / story that subjective. I think it should win for best gameplay or overall game for 2022.
I’m gonna be subjective now :
But the difference between god of snore and elden ring is god of war is boring and uninteresting characters Elden ring is a fantastical world filled with mystery.
I think god of war 2018 and the sequel has a way to approach more common mainstream which some might find that boring
All I gotta say is they cut way too many side quests
Er has a rich and deep story the only downside is it's not told directly and why should it be? Wouldn't it be more respectful to the player saying we trust you to try and piece it all together besides look at Tolkien he intensionally leaves things vague for a reason Same as Miyazaki does interpretation and speculation. gowr is just a modern child/parent journey simulator granted some of it made me laugh but it's predictable in the sense of everyone turning against Odin for the most part and kratos just talks to Thor Naruto style and he changes his alignments and dies because of it. Nothing against it but gowr isn't a great story on it's own.
you're comparing Tolkien to Miyazaki? i read the first line of this and thought "lmao." after that tho, i'd dyingggggg
@@tronaldtv7099 lol no you didn't read it right so that says something what I said was they both had the same idea less is more
Rich and deep story from a 500pg book you have to hunt the pages for sure. Something most people won't do... Simulator or no, the other games nominated had in gaming standards a narration in every aspect. ER does not. It basically the same truth the D&D game titles share like pathfinder kingmaker (that I love personally). I wouldn't expect the game to be nominated because it mostly read text style.
The lore is an integral part of the narrative in this game. IMO your working definition of narrative here is too narrow. In ASIOF you would never consider the POV of one character a separate narrative. In fact, the books stories are told through the lens of several characters separated by chapters, but together form the narrative. Here, Miyazaki follows Martin’s lead by taking a multi perspectival approach to storytelling that is deeply embedded in its own unique rich, historical universe.
Gow Ragnarok and ER are two sides of the same coin. One has story but not very in depth combat(although I would argue that they both have very similar combat overall [hack,slash,ability,dodge/deflect] especially with ER's poor balancing leading to damage sponge bosses) and one has ineffectual story (yes I am familiar with Souls like story telling as I have played all but Demon Souls and DS1) and slightly more in depth and enjoyable combat. I feel like ER lacks the moral dilemma of previous games. It is not as interesting as GOWR, which I might add, has more renown as it is older more mainstream, (although Soulsborne games have also become so recently.) and has a richer story than ER. ER is the first of a new IP. It may get better as it goes on. I want a souls game to finally get GOTY just like everyone else. (excluding Sekiro bc it is very different from DS and BB) ER was not the culmination of all FS's talent. I think Sekiro was. They tried something new with ER and that means they've yet to master it. Maybe next time.
Tbh considering what it is up against. It doesn't really fall out of the boat.
INO it's worthy but not for the public.
FromSoft doesn't present a story during its development, but at its climax.
All the important events have happened and all are in a stalemate.
You, the player are here to end that era to start a new or continue the stalemate.
development
I disagree. For me having less dialogue and less interaction makes me more invested in the characters. Everytime I speak to them and I find them it feels much more impactful. Having a companion at all times also takes aways from the atmosphere of feeling lost and alone in a massive world, where almost everything is outside of your control. I also wanted to mention that the stories of Elden Rings characters have IMO a lot of character development for what little we get to see of them and are a big step up from their previous games. Milicent remembering everything and deciding against life. Diallos realising what an idiot he is and removing himself from his family to do what he wants to do. Nepheli Loux breaking down because she realises what she was doing. Edgar going completely mad. I don't think you gave justice to how much is happening in the story of Elden Ring at this moment when compared to Fromsofts other games, yes even Sekiro. I have issues with how arbitrary finding NPC's is and that it was impossible for me to complete a quest without looking anything up, because the game is so massive and you have so much freedom to do different things in different order. But to me what the questlines actually were if you got to see them was great.
No. And to compare it is a bit of a crime. Elden Ring has "lore" but it doesn't have a particularly good story. Nor does it have a narrative besides NPCs giving the player exposition dump after exposition dump. Background lore like why Godfrey was a loser and how he became Grafted isn't part of the narrative or story at all. What is a part of the story is that he stands in the way. Nobody would tolerate a comic book having a link to an article lecturing you with the deeds of a particularly villain while the comic book itself only has a picture of them being beat. Nobody would be pleased by that so why would it be okay here? If you have to seek the information it isn't part of the narrative. Which leaves Elden Ring with virtually no story.
I disagree strongly with a lot of the points in this video but one thing that gets my goat is the idea that you somehow found the characters of ER, even in their present in game states, lack luster.
If I read a book and watched as a character, say Hayetta, made her way across the Lands Between being fed "grapes" and following a dim and distant light only to end up finding out that she hasn't been eating grapes, but has been eating eyes and following the path to chaos... my mind would be blown.
Sure, she didn't become a totally different person by the end or anything, but juts her journey would be enough to sow the seeds of intrigue and wonder.
I could list so many other character, Alexander for example, who I would have enjoyed reading about and I know, at least for me, i would have found their journeys, as they are in game, entertaining at least.
I think ER deserves the awards not only because of its world and lore but because of its already iconic cast and their, admittedly straightforward, roles in the Lands Between.
But like, youve told almost all of her story in just that quip. Add a bit of setup and where she finds herself at the end and thats it, her whole arc. Just doesnt feel like a well done character when compared with really good novels or movies. Its basically like most of the characters have interesting single-page short stories; I just wish they got a few more pages
@@MadLuigi i understand, but, as I'm sure you know, that one page of character goes a long way.
Anyway, since we're both lore nerds, at least we can agree that the lore I'd epic and that in itself demands recognition. 😅
I love elden ring lore videos and how the people with too much time on their hands figure shit out. But for a normalo like me, from my perspective, the narrative of ER is Horseshit. You can easily miss key quests to finish a Characters questchain or frankly miss all of it. I dont want to read item descriptions, i dont want to google elden ring millicent story guide on my second monitor, yet i have to, because no way you find this shit on your own with your second playtrough. Its fucking annoying and i feel forced to do it to get certain items. Elden Ring despite its positives, has also huge shortcomings.
Thank you for making this video and for breaking it down so concisely!
I think that it's kind of crazy to talk about your choices not impacting the story and not mention the endings.
Yeah exactly… if that’s not a big impact that im not sure what is.
those are the endings though. you can't actually explore any of the cool concepts you bring out of them. i wouldn't really consider the player having made choices in the traditional sense when most of the endings aren't choice based you just follow obscure npc questlines. it's genuinely hard to stack that up against any other purely narrative driven games
The thing is FromSoft never explores the endings or does anything with them. Personally, their open ended endings lost their luster for me after Dark Souls 2.
While you can choose the endings, you don't get much else. Whereas in other RPGs, your choices can determine what kind of gameplay you engage in to a greater extent (talk your way out of trouble, kill everything, stealth, etc) and who you are as a character in your interactions with other characters. Its not as much of a "choice" in ER where you can do essentially every ending quest in one playthrough if you really know what you're doing; then, the only "choice" is which option you select at the ending.
The endings are literally just a few different cutscenes that don't actually change anything or add much new to the narrative
I sent this exact same thing in the facebook post I saw this video from.
Comparatively, even if you investigate to high heaven it's story still isn't very good when matched up with the other games in the list.
Video games need to be judged as a whole even when it comes to specific things such as narrative.
You mean to tell me that Elden Ring's narrative will top or even compare to the narrative hooks, reveals, *presentation*, and experiences that A Plague Tale, God of War, Horizon, and Immortality, especially when you literally don't even see or experience 80% of the narrative that Elden Ring provides even if you actually investigate things and read the lore?
Nope. Miss me with that shit. Elden Ring is probably the weakest nominee from this list and this is still me continuing to love the experience I've had with the game.
Blind fanboyism helps nobody.
Also that endingtron-3000. I thought we were past this games industry but when FromsoftJesus does it everyone just ignores it and even thinks it's the next earthly manifestation of christ.
I'm probably more of an Elden Ring Stan than most when it comes to the narrative, but you make solid points and I appreciate the absence of kool-aid in your breakdown. Great jorb!
I take the latter stance.