I'm not ashamed to admit, that I shed a few tears when I first fought Soul of Cinder. The Gwyn's music and moveset broke me. Being a fan of DS1 since its release, the fight had a huge impact on me.
I started with DS3 so I didn't pick up on any of that, to me it was just a cool boss fight. Now that I've gotten more into Souls games and know the full context it managed to make me emotional even in retrospect
Iam a father of two in my thirties, i was overwhelmed with sorrow and goosebumps when Gwyn's music played in soul of cinder fight. Lore wise he was a tyrant and selfish but i can't help but love him, such a tragic character, sunlight for life! It's perfect the way it is and i wouldn't change anything in souls series.
I think the main problem is that many people refuse to view video games as their own genre. Elden Ring (and almost all Soulsborne games) tells a story in a way that a movie, TV show or book never could and that definitely deserves recognition.
That's a very good point, very often when people talk about a video game with a good story, they talk about games that ape movies (and in the context of JP games, anime). To the point that you can clearly see how video game storytelling is influenced by the latest trends in Hollywood. So anything that doesn't fit that mold is mischaracterized as having "no story". I think the real discussion is wether or not ER's story is engaging enough, and not that there isn't any. Personally it's definitely engaging enough to make me watch tons of lore videos, but not enough to make me feel much during gameplay although the game does have its moments.
It's an issue film went through initially. An early critique was always that Films felt unnatural and seperated compared to Theatre, and was inferior to novels. Animation is a submedium that has gone through similar, but viewed as "childish" by the West, and it's only been the incredible popularity and success of anime (Japan seems to be leading the way in modern narratives) that has seen it been recognised; Castlevannia and Arcane being mature and critically acclaimed Western animations.
Yup. Every medium has its specific things. Thats why so many shows and movies based on books are adapted horribly ( Wheel of Time ... )... In a book you imagine the world on guidelines but you can be inside the head of characters. In movie / tv show, you see the world but inside of a characters head has to be shown to you somehow and thats where it often fails because they tell more and not show. In a game you see the world and see inside of a characters head but with a twist, its your head and how you imagined the world in books based on guidelines that way you feel and think based on guidelines, but it is not the same for every person. Thats why games need to convey emotion by atmosphere, otherwise they make the same mistake movies and tv shows make when the characters give rapport of their internal monologue instead of showing it. P.S: .. to add, i think not everything can be adapted to everything else. For all others who like Wheel Of Time books, i think this cant be adapted to a tv show / movie because of too much of the atmosphere is conveyed through inner exposition of characters. Now... to a "souls-like" game, Wheel Of Time could be adapted perfectly in my opinion.
Yes and no. Watch the movie Angels Egg, which was a key piece of inspiration for the aesthetics music and storytelling of Miyazaki's work to the point the Ringed City DLC was an homage to the film. Its also free on youtube, and to add extra reason to watch it it was directed by Mamoru Oshii who made the original 1995 Ghost In The Shell movie
It's about someone who's maiden less and then meets a talking doll who's friend is a literal furry and then decides to marry said doll after beating their mother/father in law
For me, I think the thing alot people miss that bring all the elements of Souls narratives together is that you the player character being an inquisitive mind trying to figure out what happened is a part of the narrative. You're not just the Chosen Undead/Moon-Scented Hunter/Foul Tarnished, you're also an archaeologist and when looking at it through that lens that all the item description and environmental story telling makes alot more sense.
You ARE the chosen undead/hunter/tarnished... you might have an inquisitive mind, you might not. From make you play a nobody in a tough situation they dont fully comprehend is to bring the player character's mindset closer to us
Imagine if you will, actually impactful conversations with characters and between other characters that aren’t talking directly to you. That is narrative
A way to describe the community aspect of the narrative that is probably most accurate would be it’s like historians trying to understand long lost civilizations and their history. For the individual experience I can’t describe it, because souls games are excellent at making each players journeys unique and they are often something that will stick with you. Bloodborne helped me live through a traumatic time of my life. When I first played through Bloodborne it was still able to cement itself as my favorite game but it didn’t have that profound of an effect on me. That is until I played through it while dealing with the constant fear of losing my mother and dealing with my declining health. Piecing the narrative together and understanding the meaning of the game became a lot more important to me during that second playthrough
Is that so wrong if I'm still having fun? Thats literally what I do for all the souls games. Its like monster hunter. Just kill some bosses and become the lord of everything. I do agree with the journalist. This gameplay/atmosphere = narrative doesnt really work for me.
So it doesn’t work for you specifically who thinks fromsoft is making monster hunter ( I would too love to see the chosen undead or some random tarnished hunting dinosaurs) but I don’t think killing a few monsters then becoming the lord of everything is how monster hunter works nor how elden ring or any fromsoft game works.
@@trytoo5167 How did you come to that conclusion? This was clearly meant as a cheeky nod that Bloodborne has some amazing stuff to tell if you look below the surface and that From themselfs are beeing cheeky with that exact responce from Gherman.
@@godw1ll99 That fact refers more to your lack of comprehension and observation skills than to any shortcomings of the game. Just because you can't shoot 3's like Curry, doesn't mean it's a stupid way to play basketball. Hence, just because you don't like plot and story that isn't fed to you at the level of a 5th grader, doesn't mean that it doesn't have a good narrative, or that it's a bad way to present narrative.
@@haggus71 look up the definition of narrative... the game has amazing lore but shit narrative. dont talk to me as if i dislike the game, i love it. in fact ive been a huge fan of the entire dark souls series since demon souls. the difference is im not going all fanboy over this and deluding myself in to believing it has a good narrative while at the same time saying "its there you just have to look for it and figure it out yourself" because that is literally the exact opposite of what narrative is.
"Souls games have no narrative" is one of the most baffling thing I've ever heard and says alot about the stagnation of the video game industry as a whole. There's so many games that just spoonfeed the story to players (which is fine) that they don't even recognize that there's many ways to tell a story
I think some of it, too, is that there are a lot of people working in the games industry who aspire towards making interactive films more than "games". I put that in quotes, because I don't mean it disparagingly - those are valuable uses of the media to tell great stories. But, I definitely saw it a lot while I was in school; particularly in that it wasn't just game studios that would come to give presentations, but also various film and animation companies. There seemed to be this unsaid assumption that "being like films" was the more prestigious, serious, and impactful way to make games if they were going to be big "blockbusters" (another film term). I suspect this is playing a big part in some of the outcry, because there are people for whom "a big impactful game" necessarily should be more like a film - a blockbuster, worthy of an award at an awards show. Sadly, what's being missed, is the very thing that makes games unique as a medium *distinct* from film, radio, television, and books: the actual gameplay itself; and it's this that the Soul's games use masterfully to tell their story. Now, whether I think the game deserves the award for best narrative? I'm not sure, but it certainly doesn't *not* deserve the nomination.
I think that what you're talking about here was covered pretty well in another video I've watched a few times, called "The Tragedy of Dark Souls 3's Bosses", made by DJ Peach Cobbler. He deliberately ignores the lore found in item descriptions and past games, to instead explain how you can perceive and analyze the bosses, and through them, the story of the world, purely based on things like the leadup, the arena, the music, the cutscenes, and the boss itself.
Sounds like a pretty cool concept to show off the actual narrative value of these games honestly, especially if done so while aware of what he's doing, prop to him.
ah a fellow dj peach cobbler enthusiast, +rep unrelated but there was some guy saying gowr for goty cause you can pet the big dog and it reminded me of the "Elden ring feels like the end" video
@@sentii8131 You may have missed the point where he *deliberately* ignores lore from items to underline how WELL story is told from boss fight perspective alone. Story is everywhere in From games, not only in item descriptions.
Video games being able to utilize interactivity and meta concepts to tell stories are something only video games have. MGS is often cited as a movie genre of games but no movie could pull off Psycho Mantis or The End. No standard storytelling could deliver narratives using gameplay structures of say a roguelike like Hades, nor could they use new game plus like Taro games to shape a greater picture, like learning about what Shades are in NieR, or the various perspective of characters like NieR A. Video games are not only a culmination of traditional mediums but have additional means of delivering narrative exclusive to them that needs more recognition.
YEAH but Psycho Mantis is actually an interesting character. I can't believe I have to repeat this: GOOD CHARACTERS MAKE GOOD STORIES REGARDLESS OF THE MEDIUM. WORLD BUILDING DOES NOT EQUAL CHARACTER ARCS. If Elden Ring had strong characters its narrative would be stronger. End of story.
This is why I don't think using narrative (instead of story/storytelling) really fits when it comes to games. Unless rigidly linear, too much of a game's narrative depends on how the player interacts with it (because you're partly writing the narrative of your playthrough as opposed to simply consuming an imposed narrative such as a book or movie has) and thus there's a large variance in how the narrative is perceived. Story, on the other hand, is static. If I don't read a piece of lore it doesn't cease to exist within the story, I just chose not to read it. On the other hand, if I don't read that lore it is very explicitly not part of the narrative that I'm experiencing. That's the big difference to me. A story just is. It's a collection of information and doesn't change even if you're only engaging with parts of that information. A narrative is how the story is being told and it does absolutely get affected by what information is included and excluded, what order the information is given in etc. I view them as two fundamentally different things and the only reason this issue has come up is only because they're so tightly integrated in non-interactive media and we the industry hasn't really come to grips with how different storytelling is in an interactive medium.
as a language teacher I felt really happy when Elden Ring was nominated; different and creative ways to tell a story are often praised among those who studied the language, it about time that FS gets the recognition that for long deserved.
Honestly I am amazed to the objective quality of your video. The reasoning and examples you provide are very well executed. I would half expect you saying the same things zulie and the others did but going with an argument of the person on twitter and then showing the story moments that happen purely through gameplay. Bravo!
That's a reflection of your low standards. Even this guy contradicts himself in their Uninterpretable video. That and this are paradoxes. Lol Objectivity. People also forget how journalists were actually right about DS2 and it took the public a long time to come around.
The sad irony is that this means of story telling isn't exactly new, or unique to souls. There's lots of games that follow the same formula of story telling through lore, flavor text, or even through gaining seemingly irrelevant information that becomes very impactful when analyzed as a whole. A lot of those games also suffer the same stigma of having no story due to it not being presented in an obvious way, and despite their respective communities almost always being very active in discussing and piecing it together.
@Armando Molina This is something I was thinking about as well! I felt like there was a lot of similarity between Souls games and my recent biggest TES game obsession: Oblivion. When you think about it, the story, plot, narrative, WHATEVER you wanna call it, is nothing more, nor nothing less, than what you *do.* Never killed some goblins to help prospecting villagers out? It's not part of the story. Never associated with the Thieves Guild? They aren't a part of the story. You thoroughly ignored the mages guild simply because you find getting all the recommendations irritating? Story wise, *it never happened* nor was it meant to. You can engage with as much or as little as you want to. In that regard, Souls games are textbook examples of an RPG. Oblivion also tends to keep answers from you till the very end of a questline, but if you're attentive, you can find or otherwise piece together the answer. And Oblivion is generally agreed upon to be a pretty good game, with a decent story and narrative. So, if (admittedly, just in my opinion) Oblivion and, say, Elden Ring are *so similar,* why is Elden Ring treated like narrative garbage?
I was surprised that Elden Ring got a nomination for Best Narrative, but I don't expect it to win. The fact that there are people protesting its nomination tells me how close-minded a vast majority of the gaming community is on how narrative is delivered in games. It seems to me that most are protesting due to its narrative method, not the actual narrative. I don't know if there are games that are more deserving for the nomination, but to me the nomination for Elden Ring is a tacit nod to the innovation in narrative that the recent FromSoftware games brought. So I'm fine with just the nomination. Games are a different media from others, like movies. If you think the best narrative in games should be cinematic and shown passively just like in movies, then you are greatly limiting creative possibilities in gaming.
Couldn't have said it better myself. People want simplistic, cinematic narratives that are given to them in a specially dedicated area outside of the gameplay. Where as Elden Ring actually works the experience in to the game itself. The world, the models, the music. I also wish to add on to this that often times people literally do not know what they like. They'll say they enjoyed the narrative of GOW more but put that into a book, and they wouldn't like it. A lot of people mistake the overall production value + visual effects for a good narrative, because it gets them more invested into the cutscenes. I have even seen people argue that, minimalistic writing isn't justified an award for narrative quality. While minimalistic literature is literally an entire style in English literature and is considered to be one of the more artistic and impressive styles of writing in the 'modern' era. I don't expect it to win either. It's like putting a Marvel movie next to Citizen Kane. While one is obviously far more impressive and will stand the test of time, the other is more appealing to the casual audience and so that will win a popularity award. Though I enjoy arguing about it.
@@pagatryx5451 Lol what an pretentious wannabe critic writing paragraphs and actually comparing this piece of trash with Citizen Kane XD. Sorry buddy but Miyazaki would be lucky to get hired as Orson's cobbler, putting the objectively inferior way of ER's way of telling a story aside, the story by itself is what a 5 year old would come up with, basic generic story becoming this lord and stop the war blah blah blah, zero motivations for why our character is doing what he is, terrible side quest along the way with characters with zero personality and worst of ALL of it's endings are borderline terrible, it says alot when your best ending is literally just getting married in the end. What an absolute disgrace of a game, even by FS' standards this is by far their weakest game when it comes to story, DS, Sekiro Bloodborne all of them had a far superior story than this garbage. The truth is Miyazaki bootlickers are just hiding how terrible the story is behind the curtain of it's unusual storytelling.
@@hydrocy.9165 "what a* pretentious" You also use the word 'paragraph' yet don't know how to implement them in to your own writing apparently. I'm sorry dude, but you should just not talk about writing quality. Your arguments are essentially "This is bad." you don't have the knowledge or intelligence to communicate your problems with the writing in a proper fashion. It's ok though. But you should probably stick to your Marvel movies.
@@pagatryx5451 "Please look at me, I praise the pretentious garbage I watched which were all IMDB's highest rated ones, it had 38839393 lines of dialogues about nature of a human, explosions fights bad and dumb" One of the biggest "plot twist " moments of this game was that Margit was a clone, and the real one is actually MARGOTT, any explanations? How does that work? It's all Magic, it just works! Making your clones is pretty broken ability, why not make it a numbers game against us then? Why fight one on one? That's the storytelling ability that FS can reach, that's their ceiling, and over this, I would even rather watch Cinderella. You know this games storytelling peaked with Radhann, and even then it was just the same story of a fallen warrior who wants to go out in respectable way, pretty generic, but you why it is this games peak? BECAUSE IT WAS THE MOST CINEMATIC! Or was that just a coincidence?
The paradox is that there is rarely anything in souls games that exists for no reason. So everything around you is telling the story. Enemies, items, environment, etc.
This exactly. A lot of people are used to walking through environments and looking at characters and hearing music, all of which is essentially set dressing; It doesn’t do much other than to set a scene and convey very basic information if any at all Therefore, they look at a FromSoft game with that same lens and all they see narrative wise is some short cutscenes with nonsense dialogue and a bunch of text in a menu
I think this is less true in Elden Ring though, due to the need for so much content. See: random astel in a cave, Godrick body double in evergaol, the extremely game-y way every catacombs has a lever and random bosses, etc.
You don't work at fromsoft, you have no idea if everything is there for a reason or if you're just making up any reason that makes some kind of sense. As others have said, a lot of it is clearly there because it's a video game that had X amount of content to fill
@@r6scrubs126 that only applies to Elden Ring, due to the open-world. Their previous games are much more contained, and there has been the designworks published for each and every single one of them. Regardless, telling people that their points are invalid just because they are "not the chef" is just obnoxious.
The way I always saw it (and you do mention it in this video) is that the story of these games is conveyed in the gameplay, but also in the characters we meet or learn about. If you check in on NPCs often enough, you do get a story unfolding - the tragedy of Blacksmith Hughes, Gideon betraying you to assert that no tarnished is capable of doing what you must, the unfortunate fate of Yura and the legend of Iron Fist Alexander. Elden Rings plot is simple - you must defeat the Demi-Gods and claim the title of Elden Lord, but the story is so much more than that because of the characters in it. Melina herself shifts the entire goal of the plot to committing an untold atrocity in order to do your duty, and with the help of Ranni you can rewrite the laws of the land, or you can succumb to ruin and burn it all down. Elden Rings story is very character based, but in a self-driven way. You have to care enough to constantly seek out characters and figure out more about them, how to help them if you so choose. If you don't pay attention, if you don't care about that - its why you'd think there is no narrative, or at least very little.
@@Uriseph "ER’s completely segmented lore hunting shouldn’t win best narrative." That's not what will win it best narrative. All the lore is totally unnecessary and arguably even counter-productive to that end. But it does deserve to win best narrative.
@@Uriseph in my first playthrough, I didn't read most item descriptions, I missed a good portion of the questlines too, and yet, I still think it deserves to win best narrative, because lore isn't all there is to narrative
My favorite example of fromsofts ability to tell a story so simply is lothric an lorian. It's tragic, and the dialog is next level for fromsoft "rise if you would; for that, is our curse." Still get me every single time because of just how tragic the brothers story is. They even use boss animations to convey story to the player. My joy in fromsoft stories comes from the fact you have to work to understand the world you are in, but once you do the work it's moving. Anri, sigward, lady Maria, Ludwig, maiden astraea, king Allant, all have amazing moving stories that you have to work to understand.
Soul of Cinder's theme unironically makes me cry. It's such a powerful narrative being delivered in such a way that just hits me at my core. No words, no cutscenes, just you, the boss, and a sad sense of nostalgia.
The frame of all the dead (?) people in that pit after Mohg, the Omen, is also a great way to show what Ratatoskr is trying to say, even if he doesn't actually mention it. Through a cut quest, you're supposed to be informed, by that merchant Kale (excuse the incorrect e) that every person down there is a member of the Grand Caravan, who's surviving merchants are scattered all over the Lands Between for you to trade with. But even with the quest being cut, thereby removing the traditional way narrative is delivered, at least in the minds of the critics, you're still able to figure this out. You might remember how many of the merchants are very introverted, almost scared. You might notice that the instruments that the merchants play above ground are the same ones being played down there - the same tune, even. If you were unfortunate, you might've aggroed a merchant and had to fight them - and you notice that the few enemies down there have the same moveset, down to the, before strange and inexplicable, Frenzy incantations, that now make PERFECT sense. These are the *same people* and they are *suffering.* Then, maybe, you find out about Shabriri through the relevant Talisman. Maybe you meet him, in Yura's body. You get the feeling for what kind of person he is; a scheming, lying little rat. And you begin to piece together even more of what's happened. And the truth, which you unraveled on your own, simply through pure observation, horrifies you *to the bone.* This is nothing like what a game like God of War could ever achieve. Don't get me wrong, the story of that game is also very compelling, and I like it a lot. But no amount of direct, linear storytelling that irritatingly forces me to do it one way or no way, will EVER have as strong an impact on me as any one of the Souls games; where revelations aren't told, they're discovered, *by you.* And you might just regret it, sometimes. And that's absolutely. Fucking. *Brilliant.*
You can still get the information about the merchants in the pit from the merchant armour set you get by destroying some obstacles about half way down the hole too
Dark souls 3 did this amazingly. There’s so many moments where there’s corpses everywhere and an enemy wandering among them. There is no fanfare, no cutscene going over their deeds, no NPC to tell you that they are to be feared, but you immediately know the strength of that enemy. Calied takes this to a whole other level, it’s crazy entering this place, and later finding out that it was all the work of one person. Even if you know nothing about the game’s lore or bosses, and I didn’t at the time, you know that boss is going to be super hard. And I think that this form of storytelling and world-building is unique to gaming. The examples you have especially, couldn’t be captured in any other medium. A lot of games, God of War and A Plague tale, have more conventional narratives, and that’s not to say they are bad, but we could easily watch a God of War movie and have the same story-telling experience. Still, even though I love this method of story-telling I could see how it’d be off-putting.
@@pinkrose5286 yeah, I agree. I didn't say it, but I understand that this way of delivering narrative isn't for everyone. I'm just irritated that people dare to look at something different; not better, not worse, just different, and say that it doesn't deserve to be acknowledged.
It's kind of irrelevant whether or not Elden Ring deserves to be nominated because at the end of the day we all know God of War Ragnarok is taking home the W for best narrative
Yeah I've got no arguments against that, ER gets GOTY, but damn when it comes too traditional storytelling and narrative Ragnarok is perhaps the very definition of the gold standard
@@iammaleniabladeofmiquella9159 The only thing "traditional" about storytelling is that it always leans on its characters regardless of medium. What people don't understand is that Elden Ring doesn't have memorable characters and that's why it being nominated for "best narrative" is so laughable. Literally my GoTY but it could be 100x better with a writer who knows what a good character drama is. We don't know what Marika thought when she shattered the Elden Ring. We don't know what Hora Loux felt when he was banished. We don't even know what kind of person Ranni is. All tell no show.
@@AuthorityCat So because exposition doesn't declare the relief Goldmask felt as he itched his crotch, it doesn't tell a good story? Some details aren't important, you don't need to know how they feel when they do something. What matters is what they did, and they do demonstrate the consequences of said actions.
My personal gripe with ERs story/lore (whatever you want to call it) is it felt like such a large and complicated puzzle that I could never put most of it together on my own. I went in reading every item description I could get my hands on and recorded everything notable in a Discord server. I had channels for characters, for Great Rune bosses, for areas, for locations. Sometimes I would purposely farm enemies to get an armor drop I could read. I was able to make a few connections. Realizing the Radagon/Godfrey family tree was really satisfying and made a lot of things make sense. Outside of that realization it felt like I was trying to solve a puzzle with pieces I didn’t know existed. Like the puzzle box came with pieces missing and only other players had the other pieces who could help me out. Lore videos help tie things together but it was still frustrating in my play through to have a lot of facts I couldn’t connect together
I personally don't even try to solve the puzzle, beyond watching youtuber videos on it from time to time. I just like to exist within the narrative, whether i actually understand the narrative to a great degree doesn't really matter to me. A different perspective might solve your gripe, but if you just really want to understand everything that's going on in the world, then yeah i don't think any soulsborne game is going to do it for you, storywise atleast.
My thing is, game made me feel like I was on the adventure and let me experience the world how the characters in a story would. Other games just simulate movies, you hold stick up to progress. Narrative is how you tell a story, this game told it to me by tricking me into thinking I made the story as I went. I love it.
@@DioDCynic and what point did he make? That the story is good if you make it up and imagine that it's actually good? And you know that there is not only one alternative to this type of storytelling, there isn't only fs games and last of us you tool. Smoothbrain fanboys like you are the reason fs games are stagnating and not improving enough because you're unable to accept these games have a lot of flaws that didn't change since demon souls
@@user-ik3xt1bx2n smoothbrain fanboys like me? I accept these games have flaws you asshole. I was talking about the fact the Dark Souls games have different narrative, gameplay controversy aside. You are the one coping, insulting anybody with a difeferent opinion, it's almost as if you had no idea how to be an adult and you lean on actung like an emotional baby. I wasn't even being mean or rude to you, grow a pair of balls if you want to engage in controversial discussions, shitbrained fuckface.
I want to add that Souls Games use enemy placement as story telling as well. Countless examples in the whole Souls Series. You can do a deep analysis for each singular enemy at every location. Because there is a certain reason, always.
Eh, there’s probably just as good an argument to made the opposite way here. It was one of my biggest gripes getting into the franchise, found it hard to be immersed in a world where enemies often just sit next to a ledge just out of view waiting for me to walk by so they can kill me the first time I’ve gone somewhere. They’d benefit a lot from having enemies partake in more idle tasks imo that aren’t just patrolling or sitting/standing around
@@davids7646 I can agree in to some extent on this. but DS2 was a game with troubled development and I guess they didn't have the time and/or resources to make proper iterations. I mean, I never found out why the gargoyles are where they are. So yea, I can agree. but some enemies still hold up to it. Point is, there is more to it then just placement intent.
@@kleverklogs I think that is what Rata tried to make a point of. The story becomes abstract, because there isn't someone telling you straight away what happened, but that someone usually tells something in regards to what happened, but with room to speculate. sometimes, that room is very narrow and the story is quite clear, sometimes it is so far open there is no distinct answer. Me personally, I never thought so far into any element, like why TF is the gapping dragon there, in a way0 Zulie or Rata does (or even epicnamebro when he was still doing FromSoft content (a better name to put every product under one name)). Still, with them opening my eyes, I began to see more of how the world is crafted and I started to suspect certain enemies based on rules of the environment, and that made me feel hilariously good when I was right. But, since I don't think far into it, I can see your point: The story IS abstract, it IS hard to get when you don't specifically engage with every item, every lore bit. And that becomes triple or quadruple as hard when you take into account that a lot of text lines in the game are one-time-only events and you can't read them a second time. (a feature I started to wish for when I started learning more of the world of DS1). Sorry for the long text!
@@pascal2666 i have more problems with scholar of the first sin rather than the original, so troubled development doesnt matter here as sotfs came after.
I agree with everything you said here. But... I don't think that is why Elden Ring was nominated. I think Elden Ring was nominated because G.R.R.Martin was involved. I think the nominators said "Oooh, game devs working with a famous author to develop their story -- how innovative!" Maybe I'm cynical, but I think it really is that shallow.
Unfortunately that’s definitely why and why the game became so popular. It’s kind of a shame because fromsoft already has such interesting lore in prior games. But you put a famous writer on the box and it will get way more press and recognition. I think it’s a great game and has the most interesting lore of any game released in the last year or 2. But may have been nominated for the wrong reasons ?
Many critics in the gaming industry seem to only want the artistry and storytelling in games to grow in very limited ways. It's very similar to how some outside the industry refuse to see video games as valid mediums for storytelling. Their narrow-mindedness is sad. They sound like the disgruntled gamers I've often heard critics complain about.
Doesn't change the fact that Fromsoft has weak characters. Disco Elysium exists so there's no excuse and no amount of world building is going to replace a good character.
@@AuthorityCat I disagree with the premise of your strawman argument. Your reply in no way connects to the substance of my comment. I also disagree with the idea that FromSoft creates weak characters. Their narratives aren't character-driven, but people become deeply invested in FromSoft characters. It's okay if you personally don't connect with FromSoft games or they way they approach narratives, characters, and world building. I don't think that's a fault/flaw on your part or FromSoft's. I do fault those who push the idea something is of poor quality because they couldn't connect with it. I couldn't get into some aspect of Disco Elysium myself. That doesn't mean I feel the need to tell everyone who enjoyed it they are wrong or find some flaw in the game that makes my distaste for the game correct, and your enjoyment wrong.
@@rocki_bb Bro don't be that guy that just calls any criticism a strawman, a straw man is when you attack a position that someone doesn't actually have because you don't have an answer to their actually position. He said that despite that you can enjoy the story being presented in an unconventional way there is still a problem with the characters of the game, he never said that you claimed the characters were great he littraly just said what one of his criticisms of the narrative is considering charecters are the most important pary of any story. And you can like some of the characters in fromsoft games so do I but 90% of the things you learn about them is again from mountains of lore and not the actually characters themselves or any dialogue or interactions, and more often then not its about characters that are already dead and its a side story you can learn throught texts in the game. Now fromsoft games don't have as much dialogue as other games so that obviously limits what they can do with their characters compared to other games which is a fair point but doesn't change that fact that characters are what make a story interesting so due to their being little to no interaction with almost any character in the game it limits it, there are nearly no character In their games that you root for or hate and want to lose, did you care about the motivations or goals of any of the characters in elden ring, I'm not saying you can't like any of the characters, fromsoft has had a few actually good characters like siegward in ds3 but those are limited cases and more often then not are part if side stories not the main narrative.
Yeah, Elden Ring has a story. But it doesn't exactly tell a story. The game '''''makes us want to know'''' and not ''''makes us want to know more'''' And when you know nothing, it makes you not care about anything.
@@mr_tete yeh ,it’s a good way of telling a story ,people that just want to kill the big monsters with big metal sticks can do that ,people that that like story can engage with the lore ,it’s something only a video game can do
OK but why would you use examples of FromSoftware's signature storytelling from BB and DS3 and none from Elden Ring.... the actual game that people have issue with being nominated for best narrative (which it won't win frankly)
there is a general over-emphasis on the lore found in item descriptions. i'm pretty sure miyazaki is a fan of magic the gathering, and when i see an item description, i primarily think of it as flavor text. it's nice to have. it provides some texture, but it isn't meant to be the substance of the story. i don't believe "oh there's a story but you have to read it in the item descriptions". i believe the story is present in everything the games do and even if you ignore everything but cutscenes and dialogue, there is still something there. yes even a narrative
The "problem" with the story telling of Elden Ring IMO is that it is very personal to the given player. I tried to recommend it to a friend shortly after it came out and he asked me what it was about and all I could say to that was, that basically the whole story is: "Go and become Elden Lord". Because on the surface, and in classical narrative fashion, that is the whole story, and if you do not explore, read item descriptions, don't do/find the side quests, then that is all you ever know about the game. It is only if you put in the work of exploring and finding out stuff, that you can start to formulate a backstory and reasons why you do stuff. I loved the game from the beginning just for its atmosphere alone and the weird line deliveries of the characters, even though all I knew was the story of "Go and become Elden Lord", but I put in the work, because the world invited me to do it and it became the game I spent the most time with this year. But yeah, to some extent, I understand where the critics come from. I suspect they were not able or willing to commit enough to the game to see past the surface level which left them with the most bare bones classical narrative ever. And it's hard to convey your personal experience of discovering the finer plot lines and bigger truths about the narrative, especially if you don't want to spoil it for them because the impact will be bigger if they discover for themselves.
Not even just that, you have to be able to see something and connect it. A lot of people don’t have the deductive ability to see certain things and connect them with others so they’ll just miss huge story points completely.
No, I was plenty committed just like I was in ds3, the issue is that the games have plot holes and aren’t cohesive, not to mention unless you can provide me an answer there’s still no reason your character would care about becoming Elden Lord. Every other game has a motivation, Elden Ring just saying “its your ambition,” is boring and lazy.
@@sunless9782 The whole idea of Miyazaki's is to purposefully leave some things unanswered, to invoke speculation, to bring your imagination out and stretch it out a bit. Do we know why our character wants to be Elden Lord? No. Do we HAVE to know why our character would want to be Elden Lord? Also, NO. It really doesn't matter. That character is YOU. Why YOU care to become Elden Lord is why YOUR CHARACTER cares. Is it to improve the lives of the downtrodden? Is it because of faith? Or, is it just because somebody has to do it? Your character is a literal blank slate for you to inhabit. They woke up from being dead for GOD knows how long and they're just as clueless as you, yourself are. You can't even be sure that they even knew of the Lands Between. After all, some Reedlanders also end up as Tarnished, summoned by Grace, and they've never BEEN to the Lands Between before. So, be it due to amnesia, or being a foreigner, or any other reason you can think of, should it even matter to you in the first place; your character is clueless. Just like you. And just like your character, you're not always gonna know everything there is to be known about the game. Make no mistake, a definitive version of the story exists; Miyazaki said so himself. But he *deliberately* chops it up into pieces and serves us the remains. That incompleteness is exactly what he's going for. It's not a mistake. It's premediated, it's intentional. Like Ratatoskr said in one of his videos; it's not a flaw - it's a feature. EDIT: I just saw I replied to the wrong guy, sorry Sunless, I was talking to the guy below you.
@@dylanschmeichel2008 Our character future is dim, eventual decent to madness cursed to walk the lands forever without the sweet release of death. I think that is plenty of reason to try and restore the world by becoming elden lord. Also tarnished were banished from the lands between so they could grow stronger which suggest they have been given some sort of purpose, maybe that is to become lord.
Also to add to the Ludwig boss battle serated weapons do bonus damage to beasts in the game and the same applies for Ludwig's first stage but when he regains his humanity you don't do get the bonus damage anymore
Mario kart has a narrative thru gameplay when you turn that corner you see Luigi turn his head it's like a story about the strong connections he has with his rivals...yep that is how you sound, silly right
Elden Ring was the first Souls game I played more than 10 minutes, going to start a NG+ soon. In my view the narrative is there and the ways you learn about the world and it's inhabitants was genius. Just because the game doesn't hold your hand and treat you like a child, doesn't mean the narrative is horrible or not even there.
@@hydrocy.9165 truer words have never been said. As youtuber NeverKnowsBest in his review of Elden Ring said "F the Lands in Between, I know nothing about this place, and F the people, they mean nothing to me"
@@Ell_Pacino It's alright, you can stop pretending that the story in this game is good, we all know it isn't, it's by far their weakest game when it comes to story.
@@hydrocy.9165 You perfectly illustrated how some people are not able to think for themselves and need to be hold by their hands to get a story there is so much more to the story of eleden ring its amazing how you missed 90% of it lol
I think this is a very well made and well-thought-out defense of the narrative of Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3. Now do one on Elden Ring. Remember, us fans already agree with you. Using all of your examples from other Fromsoft games doesn't do much for the argument when dealing with the adversaries.
@@VladDascaliuc No, it shows how incredibly vast and rich the story and worldbuilding is and how endlessly deep its characters are, which makes sense because it wasn't written by politically motivated hacks like the chumps at Guerrilla Games or Santa Monica, but by 6 decade long multi-generationally talented and acclaimed writers like GRRM.
The way I've always thought of it is this: in FromSoftware games since 2009, there is no present-tense story. The journey we undergo as lost souls, chosen undead, bearers of the curse, hunters, ashen ones, lone wolves, and tarnished is, at base, the quest to end other stories. We exist in a liminal space between a dying world and one we come to bring into being. We bring the closure to a world that has found no closure, we flush out the dross that has built up over an age of stagnation. Unto freedom (Dark), or unto further chains (Fire). And the people we meet, and foes for whom we grant death, are the primary vehicle for anchoring that experience in emotion & thought-provoking tragedies. The reason I dislike Elden Ring is that the characters and stories I come across do not compel me as they did in Souls. They don't feel as interesting, as well-written, or as atmospherically integral in their world. It lacks the tightly-argued, close-knit, non-open-world of Souls, which vastly contributes to this feeling of Meh. Elden Ring feels like too little stretched over too much. And the concerns of its characters are not consummate with the vastness, drama, heroism, myth, and legend of the world they are inhabiting & should be expressing. This is why I think E.R. uniquely fails compared to other FS games.
1. Stop telling me to unsubscribe. I'm still subbed. I made my choice. Stop bugging me about it. 2. I really hope God of War doesn't win, because it's writing is so insanely heavy handed. Even if enjoyable for the most part.
While I love God Of War Ragnarok's story so far and I loved the story of the first part, the way those stories are told is very much like movies. Through cutscenes which put emphasis on cinematography, lighting and especially the acting of the characters. I love movies, so I love playing and watching those stories which are told in such a familiar way. What I admire about From's games however is that their stories feel so much more integrated with the actual medium you're experiencing. You respawn because you are an undead and cannot truly die. You are sustained by the blood of your prey, so you heal from attacking your enemies and bathing in their blood. The game mechanics ARE the story in so many ways here. The fact that Elden Ring got that nomination made me hopeful that at least some people of influence in the gaming world have realized what great potential there is in the medium of videogames for telling stories that truly couldn't be told in any other art form. I truly love the story of GoW, but that story could definitely be told without much being lost if you just filmed it as a movie.
But that's not story, it's world building. Story IS character drama. You really think the game would be worse if Millicent had a more interesting and detailed character arc? Characters elevate stories regardless of medium.
I think people just want to see more progression of existing characters or characters around concepts like the lords of cinder. The thing is, you end up killing most of the bosses before you assemble a connection like the one formed around the Lord of cinder since it's a character that progresses around a concept making it more impactful when you see it grow and evolve.
The purposely vague and convoluted way that FromSoft puts lore and narrative in its games actually brings the community closer as we try to figure it out together. It's like unraveling a grand and enigmatic puzzle that's full of environmental details, subtle character traits and short descriptive texts, which I think is a beautiful thing. However, I did end up voting for God of War Ragnarök in the Narrative directory, because it has a clearer and more straightforward story and narrative that hits more like a big, direct hit of dopamine rather than the scattered and drip-fed one that Elden Ring generally delivers - if you put some thought and effort into it. There's nothing wrong with either of these approaches, in my opinion, and I actually enjoy both a great deal, but in the end I like the narrative experience of a game like God of War Ragnarök just a bit more than that of Elden Ring. That being said, Elden Ring is definitely my Game of the Year.
That is fine. If it's not your preferred way of storytelling in a game, that is your opinion. At least you aren't saying "GRRRR! no narrative! GAME BAD!" like so many so-called journalists have said.
I'm so torn on GOTY. Ragnarok is nearly perfect. Elden ring on the other hand is super unique with the most pure sense of adventure I've ever had in a game. while having an awesome blend of mechanics from my favorite series of games.
While I agree with your sentiment, it would have been a more convincing argument to use examples from Elden Ring since the discussion is about Elden Ring's nomination. Personally I think Blooborne and Dark Souls are better games narratively speaking, but those are not the games nominated this year, so they are beside the point.
Idk why he didn't use Maliketh as an example because he's literally Ludwig 5.0. He's like a more explained, better written, more lore impactful, way story-richer Ludwig in a lot of ways.
It’s sad that some narrative stories are disregarded purely because it’s not told directly, like yes God of war basically tells you what is happening at all times, if you closed your eyes you would be listening to characters telling you the narrative constantly. Elden Ring tells it through environment, you are rewarded for exploring and finding it out for yourself, the narrative can be different depending on your experience. I think knitting together an open world with countless narrative routes is much more difficult to achieve than a one track narrative, I hope people realise this before yelling about its nomination.
@@AuthorityCat you are trying to imply that none of those questions can be answered. Sorry to say, Elden Ring tells us a lot that is all built on the overarching premise and most characters have motivation and character Arcs even if many are Flat Character Arcs. You just don’t realize that since you are too used to being outright told this stuff in a way that makes drawn-out School Essays look compact.
@@AuthorityCat well if I did tell you I’d be here all night because there’s lots to talk about 🤣 and here’s a character sum up, Mogh, was outcasted, started a religion, kidnapped a royal, basically wants to create god and be their sidekick. Play it and find out what I’m talking about :3
I found ERs story interesting in a large part because of how it contrasts DS' story. It's about the turbulent end of an era and the beggining of something new instead of an age stretched so thin, it wears off into nothingness.
My take on this would be that yes elden ring does have amazing lore but it has to be found, you can go the entire game without talking to the NPC's and doing the bare minimum to finish the game. If you do that you will have basically no idea why you have done anything or why the bosses that you killed were of any importance. But then you take a game like Horizon forbidden west which has also been nominated, you could do the same thing going through the game doing the bare minimum to finish it and you will still understand what has happened and why. I want to also so I am a fan of both games and a fam of the souls series and understand about how the story's of the games are told.
''These people are bigots. These people are the good guys. These people are gay and yes they're having sex. I guarantee you that these two gay individuals who love each other despite being of the same sex and different races are most certainly having an intense physical relationship.'' That's basically Forbidden West's storytelling. That kind of forcefully shitting into our mouths isn't good storytelling. The best (and only) good tidbits of storytelling in Forbidden West were the blackboxes. You had to actively seek these out to get a grasp of what happened to the old world, and it was great. The rest was all dogshit. Just because it spoonfeeds you doesn't mean that what is being spoonfed to you is good. We are talking BEST narrative, not MOST OBVIOUS narrative.
Not many people agree with me on this but I think the Elden Beast is a beautiful example of this. We just finished facing off against one of the most epic battles with the way the music plays with Radagon and then we get the disappointing fight of the Beast. It just displays how useless the Greater Will was without being able to parasite off of those who follow it, very representative of Gods, who have no power without those who follow them. The fact that the final boss caused so much outrage shows that that kind of story telling did exactly what it was intended to do, elicit a feeling of frustration and disappointment on what we expected to be a formidable force in the Greater Will.
I understand the points you made and I think you had some great examples, but I think it says a lot that you couldn't think of any examples from Elden Ring specifically. 😂 There just aren't many gameplay moments that narratively contextualize or recontextualize your understanding of the world in any meaningful way. Oh, Radagon is Marika? Umm.. ok. That doesn't really mean anything to me because I don't have any concrete notion of what these character's goals or motivations are to begin with. Oh, Ranni killed her Finger? Good for her! I'm glad she didn't die and completed her goal. Very brave of Fromsoft to allow a character I meet to not die tragically. Like I understand there IS a narrative of some kind, but I just don't think it was particularly great or anything. Definitely not the best of the year.
I did vote for god of war on the narrative end but id say elden ring came very close, it was the first traditional souls like story i was even engaged with, sekiro was the one i preferred up to that point because it’s storytelling devices were very normal unlike most of fromsofts games. That said my favorite story in gaming this year was not even nominated lol, xenoblade 3. Horizon I’m playing right now and while it’s fun, the story is so mind numbingly boring if you removed the characters you interact with it would boil down to “get the ai’s and fight the Saturday cartoon baddies”
I'm only partway in the video, but God Ludwig was a great example. I thought he was an incredible boss, from the thematic changes in his character to the music, this clip reminded me of how much I loved Bloodborne
While I agree that the way the story is told works beautifully for the world and its bosses and I absolutely love Elden Ring for its world, combat and bosses. I cannot help but disagree when it comes to the story of the npc characters and the story of the player character. Especially the latter has some glaring issues, in my opinion, while this is arguably the main story of the game. The first problem I have with the story of the characters (the side-quests if you will) is how there is hardly any way to finish them by playing naturally without guides. While it would have been fine for a few storylines to take this route of random locations and items driving them forward. I feel like it is overused. In my travels through the lands between I have found many secrets and saw most locations without the help of guides, but I was unable to see most of the side-quests to their conclusion simply because of the order in which I explored the regions. I feel like the world has become too big to simply put a character in a location without any hints. Secondly, why are you required to simply follow the whims of all of them. If I wish to play a righteous character I might not want to go along with Varré or the Volcano Manor. But there is no reward for not doing these questlines and, perhaps worse, there is no consequence when you do do these questlines. Thirdly, why can I not question Ranni and Fia. Ranni is an actual demigod standing right in front of me. She has lived through and played part in so many of the most interesting events prior to the game. Why can I not question her about her motives, her aspirations and the future she envisions for the world. No, I simply must go through the motions and end up with a vague ending about the new order of things. The same goes for Fia, why can I not ask her what value she finds in living in death. The only things living in death we find in the world have a pitiable existence. They hang from trees, crawl out of graves or stand around in tombs. What about this existence is worth protecting according to Fia. If nothing was From's point then they succeeded, but the way Fia speaks makes me feel like it is not. Lastly and the main reason why the above irks me, is that the game tells you that this is a story about you becoming Elden Lord. It tells you that you get to decide the natural laws of the land. It even gives you choice (if you actually manage to find the endings that is). However it does not tell you how these choices will effect the Lands Between. Then what is the point of the choice? If I were to become a lord I would wish to know what these new laws meant, but we cannot, even though the people who champion these endings are right in front of us. The only one that is clear to me is Dungeater's ending. And how much more powerful would the frenzied flame ending be if Shabriri was not a raving lunatic, but a sane serious person who considered his sins justified to reach his desired end. Another question I have is what do we as Elden Lord actually rule over. I feel like I murdered every single human left in the Lands Between and I did not feel bad for killing them, because they all seem like zombies to me. I read that the design philosophy is about seeing and enjoying beautiful moments between the suffering. And while that certainly succeeded in the natural world I feel like it is missing for the humans. There are no cries of joy or signs of love. No secret lovers' letters and no names carved into a tree. Just endless amounts of zombies waiting to attack you. When Melina asks whether there is beauty in the continued births all I can ask is "Is there?", because you've certainly not shown it to me.
maybe it's because most people are just use to a story being fed to you instead of the story being told thru discovery. Elden Ring turned that on it's head and THAT is what immersed me into the game for 800 hours. As I went thru the game and things started connecting in my mind, I kept thinking of what I might have missed. Anyone can write a good story in the traditional sense where engagement is just you being a witness basically. I much prefer the discovering of the story as in Elden Ring.
Not anyone can write a “good” story with traditional engagement, that’s the thing. Look at the massive budget and following TLOU2 had; “good” meaning a story most people who play will enjoy. GOW uses massive setpieces, cinematic techniques for action and character interaction. And Elden Ring uses the merits you described and more. The fact of the matter is, though, that doesn’t make it superior. There’s a reason why being a “witness” to a story is the mainstay of almost every single one; it works, and it works well. And Elden Ring IMO isn’t even the best example of Fromsoft storytelling, environmentally or dynamically, let alone heavy enough to win best narrative this year. But it’s definitely deserving of a nomination and hopefully they master the science well enough to be deserving of the award (in my opinion) in the future.
@@whosey2807 It may not be the best from Fromsoft, but it easily has the best narrative of any nominee. Dont get me wrong, GOWR is a great game, but the story is lackluster and the way they convey it is even worse.
I think you are correct regarding narrative - as it is an instrument to tell a story, not story itself. And From Software are doing it in the iconic way. Every player can objectively gauge and assess narrative, without diving into decoding a story or don’t care about it at all. It would be a different thing if there was a “best story” nomination - Elden Ring, due to heavily relying on interpretation, has no definite story to tell, so it would pose a question: which exactly story are we nominating, awarding etc?
he is wrong about the narrative part he is confusing it with it being a good story which it is. If the award was for best story then yeah he does have a point.
My main complaint with this nominee (not that i care about TGA much) is that most people who defend ER story didnt even try to piece it out themselves. In fact, from what I've gathered by discussions on reddit and other platforms, it seems like 90% of the playerbase just watches vaati or other lore videos then set on the idea that they must be right because they have a yt channel or something, when sometimes the info they're feeding this chunk of the community is just plain wrong or misinterpreted, or doesnt consider another description that contradicts their theories. And for those 3 fools out there who like to invest their time in piecing together the lore by themselves then confront with the rest of the community, it becomes so frustrating that there's barely any good discussion, and most of the comments are snarky unfunny sarcasm or 'but vaati said this/that'. And dont get me started on mistranslations and cut content that sometimes ends up being crucial in understanding specific story points... (this is true for all other FS games aswell). All that said, I dont believe ER deserves a nomination because after months passed at piecing together the game timeline of events, it just comes out as a weaker version of dark souls lore, but with sligthly different variations. While DkS main theme felt fresh and it was very much cohesive and impactful, ER just presents the same points but in a less impactful form imho. With GRRM involvment I expected a fresher storyline, but here we are again with the usual themes of demigods that refuse to let hold of their crumbling power and ambitious outcast humans trying to claim that power for themselves. Sekiro and Bloodborne were vastly superior in this regard, they felt fresh and unique, yet they are so rarely discussed for their storyline and lore :/
I haven't even noticed the lore myself to be able to draw comparison to other games, I think this makes it a weaker story, if the average person doesn't understand the story, is it a good way of storytelling. What's the point if most won't even notice it's there.
''but here we are again with the usual themes of demigods that refuse to let hold of their crumbling power and ambitious outcast humans trying to claim that power for themselves.'' It's funny how you whine about this in Elden Ring, yet this sentence out of context could confuse many into thinking you're talking about any of the GOW games, Ragnarok included.
Use this comment as "I came from Asmongold channel" button.
I saw like 5 minutes of asmons vid and yeah I was like “why did it push this and not Ratatoskr himself” lol
Well, I didn't, but now I have to check what Asmongold has to say. Dude's chill as heck.
same here
Asmon continuing to steal content from other people to fuel his own channel, just great.
@@alihasanabdullah7586 you know that reaction channels are a thing? right?
"Create an environment so toxic that Miyazaki wants to put it in his next game." That's a good one, I'm writing that one down.
JAJAJJA
but he already made Living Failures in Bloodborne
ua-cam.com/users/clipUgkxxbUJS1uVu9l_afoG9rBnI4GAsCADXO7d
Jfc, that one got me so good. I'm, similarly, going to use that one in the future.
The next game will have the swamp of youtube comments.
I forgot to put a spoiler warning in the video. There's spoilers for Dark Souls 3, and Bloodborne. Sorry fellas. 😔
Too little too late
I've yet to play Bloodborne but it's fine
OOF
@@yiangaruga4928 play it !
It's worth it
Can I stay subbed if I'm a FromSoft groupie who was unexpectedly, emotionally rolled into becoming a GoW Ragnarok fan?
I'm not ashamed to admit, that I shed a few tears when I first fought Soul of Cinder.
The Gwyn's music and moveset broke me. Being a fan of DS1 since its release, the fight had a huge impact on me.
Well said 👏
I started with DS3 so I didn't pick up on any of that, to me it was just a cool boss fight. Now that I've gotten more into Souls games and know the full context it managed to make me emotional even in retrospect
same,hurts to just trike him down
Iam a father of two in my thirties, i was overwhelmed with sorrow and goosebumps when Gwyn's music played in soul of cinder fight. Lore wise he was a tyrant and selfish but i can't help but love him, such a tragic character, sunlight for life! It's perfect the way it is and i wouldn't change anything in souls series.
It’s a very poetic ending to dark souls 3. The dlc even managed to be poetic with gael too without negatively impacting the actual final boss either.
I think the main problem is that many people refuse to view video games as their own genre. Elden Ring (and almost all Soulsborne games) tells a story in a way that a movie, TV show or book never could and that definitely deserves recognition.
That's a very good point, very often when people talk about a video game with a good story, they talk about games that ape movies (and in the context of JP games, anime). To the point that you can clearly see how video game storytelling is influenced by the latest trends in Hollywood. So anything that doesn't fit that mold is mischaracterized as having "no story".
I think the real discussion is wether or not ER's story is engaging enough, and not that there isn't any. Personally it's definitely engaging enough to make me watch tons of lore videos, but not enough to make me feel much during gameplay although the game does have its moments.
It's an issue film went through initially. An early critique was always that Films felt unnatural and seperated compared to Theatre, and was inferior to novels. Animation is a submedium that has gone through similar, but viewed as "childish" by the West, and it's only been the incredible popularity and success of anime (Japan seems to be leading the way in modern narratives) that has seen it been recognised; Castlevannia and Arcane being mature and critically acclaimed Western animations.
Yup. Every medium has its specific things. Thats why so many shows and movies based on books are adapted horribly ( Wheel of Time ... )...
In a book you imagine the world on guidelines but you can be inside the head of characters. In movie / tv show, you see the world but inside of a characters head has to be shown to you somehow and thats where it often fails because they tell more and not show. In a game you see the world and see inside of a characters head but with a twist, its your head and how you imagined the world in books based on guidelines that way you feel and think based on guidelines, but it is not the same for every person.
Thats why games need to convey emotion by atmosphere, otherwise they make the same mistake movies and tv shows make when the characters give rapport of their internal monologue instead of showing it.
P.S: .. to add, i think not everything can be adapted to everything else. For all others who like Wheel Of Time books, i think this cant be adapted to a tv show / movie because of too much of the atmosphere is conveyed through inner exposition of characters. Now... to a "souls-like" game, Wheel Of Time could be adapted perfectly in my opinion.
Yes and no. Watch the movie Angels Egg, which was a key piece of inspiration for the aesthetics music and storytelling of Miyazaki's work to the point the Ringed City DLC was an homage to the film. Its also free on youtube, and to add extra reason to watch it it was directed by Mamoru Oshii who made the original 1995 Ghost In The Shell movie
“Telling a story” and “being nominated for best narrative” are very different.
Gotta give Elden Ring props. Its narrative truly is the friends we made along the way.
The friends we help get killed*
It's about someone who's maiden less and then meets a talking doll who's friend is a literal furry and then decides to marry said doll after beating their mother/father in law
Shout out from south africa bro 🇿🇦
@@WisdomAkpan211 ayyy shout out my dude 🇿🇦
@@fdevaa Nailed it. 🧐
For me, I think the thing alot people miss that bring all the elements of Souls narratives together is that you the player character being an inquisitive mind trying to figure out what happened is a part of the narrative. You're not just the Chosen Undead/Moon-Scented Hunter/Foul Tarnished, you're also an archaeologist and when looking at it through that lens that all the item description and environmental story telling makes alot more sense.
You ARE the chosen undead/hunter/tarnished... you might have an inquisitive mind, you might not. From make you play a nobody in a tough situation they dont fully comprehend is to bring the player character's mindset closer to us
Imagine if you will, actually impactful conversations with characters and between other characters that aren’t talking directly to you. That is narrative
@@skryonix357 I mean you get that tho in Elden ring?
A way to describe the community aspect of the narrative that is probably most accurate would be it’s like historians trying to understand long lost civilizations and their history. For the individual experience I can’t describe it, because souls games are excellent at making each players journeys unique and they are often something that will stick with you. Bloodborne helped me live through a traumatic time of my life. When I first played through Bloodborne it was still able to cement itself as my favorite game but it didn’t have that profound of an effect on me. That is until I played through it while dealing with the constant fear of losing my mother and dealing with my declining health. Piecing the narrative together and understanding the meaning of the game became a lot more important to me during that second playthrough
Booooo 👎
Those people probably heard Gherman say: Just hunt a few beasts, don't think too hard about it. And took it 100% seriously
Is that so wrong if I'm still having fun? Thats literally what I do for all the souls games. Its like monster hunter. Just kill some bosses and become the lord of everything. I do agree with the journalist. This gameplay/atmosphere = narrative doesnt really work for me.
So it doesn’t work for you specifically who thinks fromsoft is making monster hunter ( I would too love to see the chosen undead or some random tarnished hunting dinosaurs) but I don’t think killing a few monsters then becoming the lord of everything is how monster hunter works nor how elden ring or any fromsoft game works.
@@trytoo5167 How did you come to that conclusion? This was clearly meant as a cheeky nod that Bloodborne has some amazing stuff to tell if you look below the surface and that From themselfs are beeing cheeky with that exact responce from Gherman.
I doubt Elden Ring will win the best narrative, but FromSoft's way of storytelling is something that absolutely deserves the recognition.
i disagree. the fact that i learned literally nothing about elden rings narrative after playing the entire game says it all.
@@godw1ll99 You didnt look for it. Game tells you everything, just not directly.
@@godw1ll99 Another game journalist level player who needs their hand held.
@@godw1ll99 That fact refers more to your lack of comprehension and observation skills than to any shortcomings of the game. Just because you can't shoot 3's like Curry, doesn't mean it's a stupid way to play basketball. Hence, just because you don't like plot and story that isn't fed to you at the level of a 5th grader, doesn't mean that it doesn't have a good narrative, or that it's a bad way to present narrative.
@@haggus71 look up the definition of narrative... the game has amazing lore but shit narrative. dont talk to me as if i dislike the game, i love it. in fact ive been a huge fan of the entire dark souls series since demon souls. the difference is im not going all fanboy over this and deluding myself in to believing it has a good narrative while at the same time saying "its there you just have to look for it and figure it out yourself" because that is literally the exact opposite of what narrative is.
"Souls games have no narrative" is one of the most baffling thing I've ever heard and says alot about the stagnation of the video game industry as a whole. There's so many games that just spoonfeed the story to players (which is fine) that they don't even recognize that there's many ways to tell a story
You could just imagine the soy-latte journo with a communist-writter's degree which wrote that drab...
Yes, and Souls games picked the worst way to tell their stories
@@hydrocy.9165 L take
I think some of it, too, is that there are a lot of people working in the games industry who aspire towards making interactive films more than "games". I put that in quotes, because I don't mean it disparagingly - those are valuable uses of the media to tell great stories. But, I definitely saw it a lot while I was in school; particularly in that it wasn't just game studios that would come to give presentations, but also various film and animation companies. There seemed to be this unsaid assumption that "being like films" was the more prestigious, serious, and impactful way to make games if they were going to be big "blockbusters" (another film term).
I suspect this is playing a big part in some of the outcry, because there are people for whom "a big impactful game" necessarily should be more like a film - a blockbuster, worthy of an award at an awards show. Sadly, what's being missed, is the very thing that makes games unique as a medium *distinct* from film, radio, television, and books: the actual gameplay itself; and it's this that the Soul's games use masterfully to tell their story. Now, whether I think the game deserves the award for best narrative? I'm not sure, but it certainly doesn't *not* deserve the nomination.
@@hydrocy.9165 no they didnt lol, its farrrr more immersive and connects with the players much more than forcing cutscenes down your throat
I think that what you're talking about here was covered pretty well in another video I've watched a few times, called "The Tragedy of Dark Souls 3's Bosses", made by DJ Peach Cobbler. He deliberately ignores the lore found in item descriptions and past games, to instead explain how you can perceive and analyze the bosses, and through them, the story of the world, purely based on things like the leadup, the arena, the music, the cutscenes, and the boss itself.
he should not ignore lore from past games considering the fact that the trilogy is a single story
Sounds like a pretty cool concept to show off the actual narrative value of these games honestly, especially if done so while aware of what he's doing, prop to him.
ah a fellow dj peach cobbler enthusiast, +rep
unrelated but there was some guy saying gowr for goty cause you can pet the big dog and it reminded me of the "Elden ring feels like the end" video
@@sentii8131 You may have missed the point where he *deliberately* ignores lore from items to underline how WELL story is told from boss fight perspective alone.
Story is everywhere in From games, not only in item descriptions.
@@nu1x Where do I mention item descriptions? What is the relevance of your reply at all I am merely saying the trilogy is a singular story
Video games being able to utilize interactivity and meta concepts to tell stories are something only video games have.
MGS is often cited as a movie genre of games but no movie could pull off Psycho Mantis or The End. No standard storytelling could deliver narratives using gameplay structures of say a roguelike like Hades, nor could they use new game plus like Taro games to shape a greater picture, like learning about what Shades are in NieR, or the various perspective of characters like NieR A.
Video games are not only a culmination of traditional mediums but have additional means of delivering narrative exclusive to them that needs more recognition.
YEAH but Psycho Mantis is actually an interesting character. I can't believe I have to repeat this: GOOD CHARACTERS MAKE GOOD STORIES REGARDLESS OF THE MEDIUM. WORLD BUILDING DOES NOT EQUAL CHARACTER ARCS. If Elden Ring had strong characters its narrative would be stronger. End of story.
This is why I don't think using narrative (instead of story/storytelling) really fits when it comes to games. Unless rigidly linear, too much of a game's narrative depends on how the player interacts with it (because you're partly writing the narrative of your playthrough as opposed to simply consuming an imposed narrative such as a book or movie has) and thus there's a large variance in how the narrative is perceived. Story, on the other hand, is static. If I don't read a piece of lore it doesn't cease to exist within the story, I just chose not to read it. On the other hand, if I don't read that lore it is very explicitly not part of the narrative that I'm experiencing.
That's the big difference to me. A story just is. It's a collection of information and doesn't change even if you're only engaging with parts of that information. A narrative is how the story is being told and it does absolutely get affected by what information is included and excluded, what order the information is given in etc. I view them as two fundamentally different things and the only reason this issue has come up is only because they're so tightly integrated in non-interactive media and we the industry hasn't really come to grips with how different storytelling is in an interactive medium.
Or spec ops the line
@AuthorityCat Elden Ring does have good, strong characters.
as a language teacher I felt really happy when Elden Ring was nominated; different and creative ways to tell a story are often praised among those who studied the language, it about time that FS gets the recognition that for long deserved.
The Bloodborne and dark souls series deserved awards. Elden ring isn't as deep, or as thematicly consistent
@@emmyturner7385 Sounds like you didnt finish the game....
@@ottovonweaboo6355 I got to then end. I consider that finishing it. I didn't 100% it cuz it's a bad game.
@@emmyturner7385 XDDDDDDDDDD
@@emmyturner7385 if you consider it a bad game, your opinion automatically goes into a trash can, hope you understand that
Honestly I am amazed to the objective quality of your video. The reasoning and examples you provide are very well executed. I would half expect you saying the same things zulie and the others did but going with an argument of the person on twitter and then showing the story moments that happen purely through gameplay. Bravo!
If I had to pick one person to defend Souls games in front of the Supreme Court it would be Ratatoskr.
That's a reflection of your low standards. Even this guy contradicts himself in their Uninterpretable video. That and this are paradoxes. Lol Objectivity.
People also forget how journalists were actually right about DS2 and it took the public a long time to come around.
The sad irony is that this means of story telling isn't exactly new, or unique to souls. There's lots of games that follow the same formula of story telling through lore, flavor text, or even through gaining seemingly irrelevant information that becomes very impactful when analyzed as a whole. A lot of those games also suffer the same stigma of having no story due to it not being presented in an obvious way, and despite their respective communities almost always being very active in discussing and piecing it together.
I'd like you to make some examples. I may don't know some of the games you are referring to, and I'm curious.
@@nicola4251 Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Dark Souls 1....
@Armando Molina This is something I was thinking about as well! I felt like there was a lot of similarity between Souls games and my recent biggest TES game obsession: Oblivion. When you think about it, the story, plot, narrative, WHATEVER you wanna call it, is nothing more, nor nothing less, than what you *do.* Never killed some goblins to help prospecting villagers out? It's not part of the story. Never associated with the Thieves Guild? They aren't a part of the story. You thoroughly ignored the mages guild simply because you find getting all the recommendations irritating? Story wise, *it never happened* nor was it meant to. You can engage with as much or as little as you want to. In that regard, Souls games are textbook examples of an RPG. Oblivion also tends to keep answers from you till the very end of a questline, but if you're attentive, you can find or otherwise piece together the answer. And Oblivion is generally agreed upon to be a pretty good game, with a decent story and narrative. So, if (admittedly, just in my opinion) Oblivion and, say, Elden Ring are *so similar,* why is Elden Ring treated like narrative garbage?
@@nicola4251 Hollow Knight is an example that comes to mind off the top of my head
@@nicola4251 Inside and Limbo.
I was surprised that Elden Ring got a nomination for Best Narrative, but I don't expect it to win. The fact that there are people protesting its nomination tells me how close-minded a vast majority of the gaming community is on how narrative is delivered in games. It seems to me that most are protesting due to its narrative method, not the actual narrative. I don't know if there are games that are more deserving for the nomination, but to me the nomination for Elden Ring is a tacit nod to the innovation in narrative that the recent FromSoftware games brought. So I'm fine with just the nomination.
Games are a different media from others, like movies. If you think the best narrative in games should be cinematic and shown passively just like in movies, then you are greatly limiting creative possibilities in gaming.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
People want simplistic, cinematic narratives that are given to them in a specially dedicated area outside of the gameplay. Where as Elden Ring actually works the experience in to the game itself. The world, the models, the music. I also wish to add on to this that often times people literally do not know what they like. They'll say they enjoyed the narrative of GOW more but put that into a book, and they wouldn't like it. A lot of people mistake the overall production value + visual effects for a good narrative, because it gets them more invested into the cutscenes.
I have even seen people argue that, minimalistic writing isn't justified an award for narrative quality. While minimalistic literature is literally an entire style in English literature and is considered to be one of the more artistic and impressive styles of writing in the 'modern' era.
I don't expect it to win either. It's like putting a Marvel movie next to Citizen Kane. While one is obviously far more impressive and will stand the test of time, the other is more appealing to the casual audience and so that will win a popularity award. Though I enjoy arguing about it.
@@pagatryx5451 Lol what an pretentious wannabe critic writing paragraphs and actually comparing this piece of trash with Citizen Kane XD. Sorry buddy but Miyazaki would be lucky to get hired as Orson's cobbler, putting the objectively inferior way of ER's way of telling a story aside, the story by itself is what a 5 year old would come up with, basic generic story becoming this lord and stop the war blah blah blah, zero motivations for why our character is doing what he is, terrible side quest along the way with characters with zero personality and worst of ALL of it's endings are borderline terrible, it says alot when your best ending is literally just getting married in the end. What an absolute disgrace of a game, even by FS' standards this is by far their weakest game when it comes to story, DS, Sekiro Bloodborne all of them had a far superior story than this garbage. The truth is Miyazaki bootlickers are just hiding how terrible the story is behind the curtain of it's unusual storytelling.
@@hydrocy.9165 "what a* pretentious"
You also use the word 'paragraph' yet don't know how to implement them in to your own writing apparently.
I'm sorry dude, but you should just not talk about writing quality. Your arguments are essentially "This is bad." you don't have the knowledge or intelligence to communicate your problems with the writing in a proper fashion.
It's ok though. But you should probably stick to your Marvel movies.
@@pagatryx5451 "Please look at me, I praise the pretentious garbage I watched which were all IMDB's highest rated ones, it had 38839393 lines of dialogues about nature of a human, explosions fights bad and dumb"
One of the biggest "plot twist " moments of this game was that Margit was a clone, and the real one is actually MARGOTT, any explanations? How does that work? It's all Magic, it just works! Making your clones is pretty broken ability, why not make it a numbers game against us then? Why fight one on one? That's the storytelling ability that FS can reach, that's their ceiling, and over this, I would even rather watch Cinderella. You know this games storytelling peaked with Radhann, and even then it was just the same story of a fallen warrior who wants to go out in respectable way, pretty generic, but you why it is this games peak? BECAUSE IT WAS THE MOST CINEMATIC! Or was that just a coincidence?
Elden ring has no narrative
Came from Asmonds video just to absolutely praise your outro, best outro on UA-cam.
Subbed.
Yes, yes it does
Based answer
No it doesn't.
I don't follow biased soul fans
@@clivir8809 its based*
@@satwikmahapatra9079 according to biased
The paradox is that there is rarely anything in souls games that exists for no reason. So everything around you is telling the story. Enemies, items, environment, etc.
This exactly. A lot of people are used to walking through environments and looking at characters and hearing music, all of which is essentially set dressing; It doesn’t do much other than to set a scene and convey very basic information if any at all
Therefore, they look at a FromSoft game with that same lens and all they see narrative wise is some short cutscenes with nonsense dialogue and a bunch of text in a menu
Except the randomly placed enemies in the boring copy pasted shrine dungeons as well as late game areas that make no sense being there, sure.
I think this is less true in Elden Ring though, due to the need for so much content. See: random astel in a cave, Godrick body double in evergaol, the extremely game-y way every catacombs has a lever and random bosses, etc.
You don't work at fromsoft, you have no idea if everything is there for a reason or if you're just making up any reason that makes some kind of sense. As others have said, a lot of it is clearly there because it's a video game that had X amount of content to fill
@@r6scrubs126 that only applies to Elden Ring, due to the open-world. Their previous games are much more contained, and there has been the designworks published for each and every single one of them. Regardless, telling people that their points are invalid just because they are "not the chef" is just obnoxious.
The way I always saw it (and you do mention it in this video) is that the story of these games is conveyed in the gameplay, but also in the characters we meet or learn about.
If you check in on NPCs often enough, you do get a story unfolding - the tragedy of Blacksmith Hughes, Gideon betraying you to assert that no tarnished is capable of doing what you must, the unfortunate fate of Yura and the legend of Iron Fist Alexander.
Elden Rings plot is simple - you must defeat the Demi-Gods and claim the title of Elden Lord, but the story is so much more than that because of the characters in it. Melina herself shifts the entire goal of the plot to committing an untold atrocity in order to do your duty, and with the help of Ranni you can rewrite the laws of the land, or you can succumb to ruin and burn it all down.
Elden Rings story is very character based, but in a self-driven way. You have to care enough to constantly seek out characters and figure out more about them, how to help them if you so choose. If you don't pay attention, if you don't care about that - its why you'd think there is no narrative, or at least very little.
i love your outros, they're so much betrer at getting me to want to actually do the things
game journalists don't know what to do when a story is more than a moving picture book
It's still just a moving picture book, except this time the pictures have vague half thought out pretentious dialogues with them instead of pictures
I can’t speak for games journalists; but ER’s completely segmented lore hunting shouldn’t win best narrative. Not by a long shot.
@@Uriseph It should, i'll cya when it wins
@@Uriseph "ER’s completely segmented lore hunting shouldn’t win best narrative."
That's not what will win it best narrative. All the lore is totally unnecessary and arguably even counter-productive to that end.
But it does deserve to win best narrative.
@@Uriseph in my first playthrough, I didn't read most item descriptions, I missed a good portion of the questlines too, and yet, I still think it deserves to win best narrative, because lore isn't all there is to narrative
My favorite example of fromsofts ability to tell a story so simply is lothric an lorian. It's tragic, and the dialog is next level for fromsoft "rise if you would; for that, is our curse." Still get me every single time because of just how tragic the brothers story is. They even use boss animations to convey story to the player. My joy in fromsoft stories comes from the fact you have to work to understand the world you are in, but once you do the work it's moving. Anri, sigward, lady Maria, Ludwig, maiden astraea, king Allant, all have amazing moving stories that you have to work to understand.
That piano in Soul of Cinder STILL gives me chills
The outro killed me. Thanks mate.
Soul of Cinder's theme unironically makes me cry. It's such a powerful narrative being delivered in such a way that just hits me at my core. No words, no cutscenes, just you, the boss, and a sad sense of nostalgia.
seek for help man, you are crying for another reason and you simply try to find any excuse to let a tear shed.
@@DioDCynic yes that seemed true, his nostalgic are somehow connected to certain event on his life during his nostalgic moments
That's like asking if Ratatoskr deserves this like and subscription.
That outro was a pure gold!
Always appreciate the level headed viewpoints you present.
The frame of all the dead (?) people in that pit after Mohg, the Omen, is also a great way to show what Ratatoskr is trying to say, even if he doesn't actually mention it. Through a cut quest, you're supposed to be informed, by that merchant Kale (excuse the incorrect e) that every person down there is a member of the Grand Caravan, who's surviving merchants are scattered all over the Lands Between for you to trade with. But even with the quest being cut, thereby removing the traditional way narrative is delivered, at least in the minds of the critics, you're still able to figure this out. You might remember how many of the merchants are very introverted, almost scared. You might notice that the instruments that the merchants play above ground are the same ones being played down there - the same tune, even. If you were unfortunate, you might've aggroed a merchant and had to fight them - and you notice that the few enemies down there have the same moveset, down to the, before strange and inexplicable, Frenzy incantations, that now make PERFECT sense. These are the *same people* and they are *suffering.* Then, maybe, you find out about Shabriri through the relevant Talisman. Maybe you meet him, in Yura's body. You get the feeling for what kind of person he is; a scheming, lying little rat. And you begin to piece together even more of what's happened. And the truth, which you unraveled on your own, simply through pure observation, horrifies you *to the bone.* This is nothing like what a game like God of War could ever achieve. Don't get me wrong, the story of that game is also very compelling, and I like it a lot. But no amount of direct, linear storytelling that irritatingly forces me to do it one way or no way, will EVER have as strong an impact on me as any one of the Souls games; where revelations aren't told, they're discovered, *by you.* And you might just regret it, sometimes. And that's absolutely. Fucking. *Brilliant.*
You can still get the information about the merchants in the pit from the merchant armour set you get by destroying some obstacles about half way down the hole too
@@ammo7 ah, you're right. I haven't played in a while due to college, so I forgot. Thanks.
Dark souls 3 did this amazingly. There’s so many moments where there’s corpses everywhere and an enemy wandering among them. There is no fanfare, no cutscene going over their deeds, no NPC to tell you that they are to be feared, but you immediately know the strength of that enemy. Calied takes this to a whole other level, it’s crazy entering this place, and later finding out that it was all the work of one person. Even if you know nothing about the game’s lore or bosses, and I didn’t at the time, you know that boss is going to be super hard.
And I think that this form of storytelling and world-building is unique to gaming. The examples you have especially, couldn’t be captured in any other medium. A lot of games, God of War and A Plague tale, have more conventional narratives, and that’s not to say they are bad, but we could easily watch a God of War movie and have the same story-telling experience. Still, even though I love this method of story-telling I could see how it’d be off-putting.
@@pinkrose5286 yeah, I agree. I didn't say it, but I understand that this way of delivering narrative isn't for everyone. I'm just irritated that people dare to look at something different; not better, not worse, just different, and say that it doesn't deserve to be acknowledged.
The fact that this quest was cut is the reason Miyazaki games don't deserve it. He cuts the best bits, like artorias or quelag monologue
It's kind of irrelevant whether or not Elden Ring deserves to be nominated because at the end of the day we all know God of War Ragnarok is taking home the W for best narrative
Yeah I've got no arguments against that, ER gets GOTY, but damn when it comes too traditional storytelling and narrative Ragnarok is perhaps the very definition of the gold standard
@@iammaleniabladeofmiquella9159 The only thing "traditional" about storytelling is that it always leans on its characters regardless of medium. What people don't understand is that Elden Ring doesn't have memorable characters and that's why it being nominated for "best narrative" is so laughable. Literally my GoTY but it could be 100x better with a writer who knows what a good character drama is. We don't know what Marika thought when she shattered the Elden Ring. We don't know what Hora Loux felt when he was banished. We don't even know what kind of person Ranni is. All tell no show.
@@AuthorityCat “doesn’t have memorable characters” 🤓🤓🤓
@@AuthorityCat So because exposition doesn't declare the relief Goldmask felt as he itched his crotch, it doesn't tell a good story? Some details aren't important, you don't need to know how they feel when they do something. What matters is what they did, and they do demonstrate the consequences of said actions.
@@trutyatces8699 I mean to be honest it really doesn't aside from bosses, npc they're not that memorable.
YOU good sir are the reason I wish more UA-camrs still did outros.
The soul of cinder section got me tearing up in a coffee shop, so thanks for that Ratatoskr.
My personal gripe with ERs story/lore (whatever you want to call it) is it felt like such a large and complicated puzzle that I could never put most of it together on my own. I went in reading every item description I could get my hands on and recorded everything notable in a Discord server. I had channels for characters, for Great Rune bosses, for areas, for locations. Sometimes I would purposely farm enemies to get an armor drop I could read. I was able to make a few connections. Realizing the Radagon/Godfrey family tree was really satisfying and made a lot of things make sense. Outside of that realization it felt like I was trying to solve a puzzle with pieces I didn’t know existed. Like the puzzle box came with pieces missing and only other players had the other pieces who could help me out. Lore videos help tie things together but it was still frustrating in my play through to have a lot of facts I couldn’t connect together
but did you know that Malenia is the blade of Miquella?
You're talking about how this is frustrating, but to me this sounds like a fun time.
I like putting puzzles together.
I personally don't even try to solve the puzzle, beyond watching youtuber videos on it from time to time. I just like to exist within the narrative, whether i actually understand the narrative to a great degree doesn't really matter to me.
A different perspective might solve your gripe, but if you just really want to understand everything that's going on in the world, then yeah i don't think any soulsborne game is going to do it for you, storywise atleast.
@@GermanKinsmen puzzles are dope
Understandably frustrating but at the same time being able to debate what the story is, is also great.
Finally a good video explaining the narrative and way From handles its story telling throughout the games with music and environment changes
That outro is wild dude LMAO
Your increasingly specific outros are mainly why i keep watching. Looking forward to being alienated by you soon!
My thing is, game made me feel like I was on the adventure and let me experience the world how the characters in a story would. Other games just simulate movies, you hold stick up to progress.
Narrative is how you tell a story, this game told it to me by tricking me into thinking I made the story as I went. I love it.
God fromsoft faboys cope so hard
@@user-ik3xt1bx2n he made a point though, you normies seem to love your interactive movies with quick time events, and that's cancer for videogaming.
@@DioDCynic and what point did he make? That the story is good if you make it up and imagine that it's actually good? And you know that there is not only one alternative to this type of storytelling, there isn't only fs games and last of us you tool. Smoothbrain fanboys like you are the reason fs games are stagnating and not improving enough because you're unable to accept these games have a lot of flaws that didn't change since demon souls
@@user-ik3xt1bx2n smoothbrain fanboys like me? I accept these games have flaws you asshole. I was talking about the fact the Dark Souls games have different narrative, gameplay controversy aside. You are the one coping, insulting anybody with a difeferent opinion, it's almost as if you had no idea how to be an adult and you lean on actung like an emotional baby. I wasn't even being mean or rude to you, grow a pair of balls if you want to engage in controversial discussions, shitbrained fuckface.
@@DioDCynic you gonna cry over some mean words
I want to add that Souls Games use enemy placement as story telling as well. Countless examples in the whole Souls Series. You can do a deep analysis for each singular enemy at every location. Because there is a certain reason, always.
not in dark souls 2 scholar of the first sin
Eh, there’s probably just as good an argument to made the opposite way here. It was one of my biggest gripes getting into the franchise, found it hard to be immersed in a world where enemies often just sit next to a ledge just out of view waiting for me to walk by so they can kill me the first time I’ve gone somewhere. They’d benefit a lot from having enemies partake in more idle tasks imo that aren’t just patrolling or sitting/standing around
@@davids7646 I can agree in to some extent on this. but DS2 was a game with troubled development and I guess they didn't have the time and/or resources to make proper iterations. I mean, I never found out why the gargoyles are where they are. So yea, I can agree. but some enemies still hold up to it. Point is, there is more to it then just placement intent.
@@kleverklogs I think that is what Rata tried to make a point of. The story becomes abstract, because there isn't someone telling you straight away what happened, but that someone usually tells something in regards to what happened, but with room to speculate. sometimes, that room is very narrow and the story is quite clear, sometimes it is so far open there is no distinct answer. Me personally, I never thought so far into any element, like why TF is the gapping dragon there, in a way0 Zulie or Rata does (or even epicnamebro when he was still doing FromSoft content (a better name to put every product under one name)). Still, with them opening my eyes, I began to see more of how the world is crafted and I started to suspect certain enemies based on rules of the environment, and that made me feel hilariously good when I was right. But, since I don't think far into it, I can see your point: The story IS abstract, it IS hard to get when you don't specifically engage with every item, every lore bit. And that becomes triple or quadruple as hard when you take into account that a lot of text lines in the game are one-time-only events and you can't read them a second time. (a feature I started to wish for when I started learning more of the world of DS1).
Sorry for the long text!
@@pascal2666 i have more problems with scholar of the first sin rather than the original, so troubled development doesnt matter here as sotfs came after.
gosh I love your outros
God every video you make is a gem
I agree with everything you said here. But... I don't think that is why Elden Ring was nominated.
I think Elden Ring was nominated because G.R.R.Martin was involved. I think the nominators said "Oooh, game devs working with a famous author to develop their story -- how innovative!"
Maybe I'm cynical, but I think it really is that shallow.
Unfortunately that’s definitely why and why the game became so popular.
It’s kind of a shame because fromsoft already has such interesting lore in prior games. But you put a famous writer on the box and it will get way more press and recognition. I think it’s a great game and has the most interesting lore of any game released in the last year or 2. But may have been nominated for the wrong reasons ?
Many critics in the gaming industry seem to only want the artistry and storytelling in games to grow in very limited ways. It's very similar to how some outside the industry refuse to see video games as valid mediums for storytelling. Their narrow-mindedness is sad. They sound like the disgruntled gamers I've often heard critics complain about.
Thank you. Some people just want things fed to them on a conveyor belt.
Doesn't change the fact that Fromsoft has weak characters. Disco Elysium exists so there's no excuse and no amount of world building is going to replace a good character.
@@AuthorityCat I disagree with the premise of your strawman argument. Your reply in no way connects to the substance of my comment.
I also disagree with the idea that FromSoft creates weak characters. Their narratives aren't character-driven, but people become deeply invested in FromSoft characters.
It's okay if you personally don't connect with FromSoft games or they way they approach narratives, characters, and world building. I don't think that's a fault/flaw on your part or FromSoft's. I do fault those who push the idea something is of poor quality because they couldn't connect with it. I couldn't get into some aspect of Disco Elysium myself. That doesn't mean I feel the need to tell everyone who enjoyed it they are wrong or find some flaw in the game that makes my distaste for the game correct, and your enjoyment wrong.
@@rocki_bb Bro don't be that guy that just calls any criticism a strawman, a straw man is when you attack a position that someone doesn't actually have because you don't have an answer to their actually position. He said that despite that you can enjoy the story being presented in an unconventional way there is still a problem with the characters of the game, he never said that you claimed the characters were great he littraly just said what one of his criticisms of the narrative is considering charecters are the most important pary of any story. And you can like some of the characters in fromsoft games so do I but 90% of the things you learn about them is again from mountains of lore and not the actually characters themselves or any dialogue or interactions, and more often then not its about characters that are already dead and its a side story you can learn throught texts in the game. Now fromsoft games don't have as much dialogue as other games so that obviously limits what they can do with their characters compared to other games which is a fair point but doesn't change that fact that characters are what make a story interesting so due to their being little to no interaction with almost any character in the game it limits it, there are nearly no character In their games that you root for or hate and want to lose, did you care about the motivations or goals of any of the characters in elden ring, I'm not saying you can't like any of the characters, fromsoft has had a few actually good characters like siegward in ds3 but those are limited cases and more often then not are part if side stories not the main narrative.
The ending of this video got me so good 😂😂
i never even thought about storytelling in combat, or a link between theme and gameplay in general
huge thumbs up from me
I sorta get we’re some people are coming from “story is told ,lore is found “ is something that comes to mind when reading the more critical comments
Yeah, Elden Ring has a story. But it doesn't exactly tell a story.
The game '''''makes us want to know'''' and not ''''makes us want to know more''''
And when you know nothing, it makes you not care about anything.
@@mr_tete yeh ,it’s a good way of telling a story ,people that just want to kill the big monsters with big metal sticks can do that ,people that that like story can engage with the lore ,it’s something only a video game can do
OK but why would you use examples of FromSoftware's signature storytelling from BB and DS3 and none from Elden Ring.... the actual game that people have issue with being nominated for best narrative (which it won't win frankly)
there is a general over-emphasis on the lore found in item descriptions. i'm pretty sure miyazaki is a fan of magic the gathering, and when i see an item description, i primarily think of it as flavor text. it's nice to have. it provides some texture, but it isn't meant to be the substance of the story. i don't believe "oh there's a story but you have to read it in the item descriptions". i believe the story is present in everything the games do and even if you ignore everything but cutscenes and dialogue, there is still something there. yes even a narrative
Yo that line about toxic environments floored me, the man does love his swamps
Thanks for the video on why Bloodborne should have won best narrative Ratatoskr.
If someone says that Elden Ring doesn't have a narrative then I'll force them to binge Smoughtown
He really has some of of the very best elden ring content. It's fun to listen like a podcast while playing or doing other stuff.
That outro was awesome xD
The "problem" with the story telling of Elden Ring IMO is that it is very personal to the given player. I tried to recommend it to a friend shortly after it came out and he asked me what it was about and all I could say to that was, that basically the whole story is: "Go and become Elden Lord". Because on the surface, and in classical narrative fashion, that is the whole story, and if you do not explore, read item descriptions, don't do/find the side quests, then that is all you ever know about the game. It is only if you put in the work of exploring and finding out stuff, that you can start to formulate a backstory and reasons why you do stuff. I loved the game from the beginning just for its atmosphere alone and the weird line deliveries of the characters, even though all I knew was the story of "Go and become Elden Lord", but I put in the work, because the world invited me to do it and it became the game I spent the most time with this year.
But yeah, to some extent, I understand where the critics come from. I suspect they were not able or willing to commit enough to the game to see past the surface level which left them with the most bare bones classical narrative ever. And it's hard to convey your personal experience of discovering the finer plot lines and bigger truths about the narrative, especially if you don't want to spoil it for them because the impact will be bigger if they discover for themselves.
Not even just that, you have to be able to see something and connect it. A lot of people don’t have the deductive ability to see certain things and connect them with others so they’ll just miss huge story points completely.
No, I was plenty committed just like I was in ds3, the issue is that the games have plot holes and aren’t cohesive, not to mention unless you can provide me an answer there’s still no reason your character would care about becoming Elden Lord. Every other game has a motivation, Elden Ring just saying “its your ambition,” is boring and lazy.
@@dylanschmeichel2008 I agree about plot holes, but I have a feeling they are there on purpose. Questions will be answered with dlc I’m hoping.
@@sunless9782 The whole idea of Miyazaki's is to purposefully leave some things unanswered, to invoke speculation, to bring your imagination out and stretch it out a bit. Do we know why our character wants to be Elden Lord? No. Do we HAVE to know why our character would want to be Elden Lord? Also, NO. It really doesn't matter. That character is YOU. Why YOU care to become Elden Lord is why YOUR CHARACTER cares. Is it to improve the lives of the downtrodden? Is it because of faith? Or, is it just because somebody has to do it? Your character is a literal blank slate for you to inhabit. They woke up from being dead for GOD knows how long and they're just as clueless as you, yourself are. You can't even be sure that they even knew of the Lands Between. After all, some Reedlanders also end up as Tarnished, summoned by Grace, and they've never BEEN to the Lands Between before. So, be it due to amnesia, or being a foreigner, or any other reason you can think of, should it even matter to you in the first place; your character is clueless. Just like you. And just like your character, you're not always gonna know everything there is to be known about the game. Make no mistake, a definitive version of the story exists; Miyazaki said so himself. But he *deliberately* chops it up into pieces and serves us the remains. That incompleteness is exactly what he's going for. It's not a mistake. It's premediated, it's intentional. Like Ratatoskr said in one of his videos; it's not a flaw - it's a feature.
EDIT: I just saw I replied to the wrong guy, sorry Sunless, I was talking to the guy below you.
@@dylanschmeichel2008 Our character future is dim, eventual decent to madness cursed to walk the lands forever without the sweet release of death. I think that is plenty of reason to try and restore the world by becoming elden lord. Also tarnished were banished from the lands between so they could grow stronger which suggest they have been given some sort of purpose, maybe that is to become lord.
You still haven’t alienated me. But I love chaos.
Also to add to the Ludwig boss battle serated weapons do bonus damage to beasts in the game and the same applies for Ludwig's first stage but when he regains his humanity you don't do get the bonus damage anymore
Mario kart has a narrative thru gameplay when you turn that corner you see Luigi turn his head it's like a story about the strong connections he has with his rivals...yep that is how you sound, silly right
There’s been five good games all year. Elden ring is one of the two of those five that are great. So yes.
EldenRing, Ragnarök and which are the other three? Personally I really loved Signalis.
@@seracris8357 i vote for requiem to be in that list. The story and visual so far are amazing
The other i can think are stray and forbiden west
Elden Ring was the first Souls game I played more than 10 minutes, going to start a NG+ soon. In my view the narrative is there and the ways you learn about the world and it's inhabitants was genius. Just because the game doesn't hold your hand and treat you like a child, doesn't mean the narrative is horrible or not even there.
Become the lord and stop the war, sorry buddy but the game expects you to have a brain of child to be impressed with this generic story template
@@hydrocy.9165 truer words have never been said.
As youtuber NeverKnowsBest in his review of Elden Ring said
"F the Lands in Between, I know nothing about this place, and F the people, they mean nothing to me"
@@hydrocy.9165 Illustrating their point perfectly lmao
@@Ell_Pacino It's alright, you can stop pretending that the story in this game is good, we all know it isn't, it's by far their weakest game when it comes to story.
@@hydrocy.9165 You perfectly illustrated how some people are not able to think for themselves and need to be hold by their hands to get a story there is so much more to the story of eleden ring its amazing how you missed 90% of it lol
haha love that ending note, consider me subscribed
the ending made me like, comment and subscribe
I think this is a very well made and well-thought-out defense of the narrative of Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3. Now do one on Elden Ring. Remember, us fans already agree with you. Using all of your examples from other Fromsoft games doesn't do much for the argument when dealing with the adversaries.
I heard game journalist and my brain immediately turned off
Best outro I've heard in a long time.
Considering its been so long since game came out the fact we still have long lore videos getting pumped out weekly says something
Yes, it says how obnoxiously offuscated most of its story is for the sake of creating a sense of mistery.
@@VladDascaliuc No, it shows how incredibly vast and rich the story and worldbuilding is and how endlessly deep its characters are, which makes sense because it wasn't written by politically motivated hacks like the chumps at Guerrilla Games or Santa Monica, but by 6 decade long multi-generationally talented and acclaimed writers like GRRM.
@@TheStraightestWhitest No, not really.
Yes, yes it does.
10:04 the fact that this still gives me chills!!
This is the only channel I watch for the outro 🤣
The way I've always thought of it is this: in FromSoftware games since 2009, there is no present-tense story. The journey we undergo as lost souls, chosen undead, bearers of the curse, hunters, ashen ones, lone wolves, and tarnished is, at base, the quest to end other stories. We exist in a liminal space between a dying world and one we come to bring into being. We bring the closure to a world that has found no closure, we flush out the dross that has built up over an age of stagnation. Unto freedom (Dark), or unto further chains (Fire). And the people we meet, and foes for whom we grant death, are the primary vehicle for anchoring that experience in emotion & thought-provoking tragedies.
The reason I dislike Elden Ring is that the characters and stories I come across do not compel me as they did in Souls. They don't feel as interesting, as well-written, or as atmospherically integral in their world. It lacks the tightly-argued, close-knit, non-open-world of Souls, which vastly contributes to this feeling of Meh. Elden Ring feels like too little stretched over too much. And the concerns of its characters are not consummate with the vastness, drama, heroism, myth, and legend of the world they are inhabiting & should be expressing. This is why I think E.R. uniquely fails compared to other FS games.
Every video I feel more and more alienated and inspired to be more toxic than any souls game swamp, thank you funny squirrel.
unfortunately, I currently lack the toxicity of the Lake of Rot, I'm only at Farron Keep levels of toxic right now, any tips?
That Plin Plon Plan of Gwynn’s theme always makes me tear up
Good vid. you should make a follow up to this. And use examples from Elden ring
1. Stop telling me to unsubscribe. I'm still subbed. I made my choice. Stop bugging me about it.
2. I really hope God of War doesn't win, because it's writing is so insanely heavy handed. Even if enjoyable for the most part.
While I love God Of War Ragnarok's story so far and I loved the story of the first part, the way those stories are told is very much like movies. Through cutscenes which put emphasis on cinematography, lighting and especially the acting of the characters. I love movies, so I love playing and watching those stories which are told in such a familiar way.
What I admire about From's games however is that their stories feel so much more integrated with the actual medium you're experiencing. You respawn because you are an undead and cannot truly die. You are sustained by the blood of your prey, so you heal from attacking your enemies and bathing in their blood. The game mechanics ARE the story in so many ways here.
The fact that Elden Ring got that nomination made me hopeful that at least some people of influence in the gaming world have realized what great potential there is in the medium of videogames for telling stories that truly couldn't be told in any other art form. I truly love the story of GoW, but that story could definitely be told without much being lost if you just filmed it as a movie.
ha! very well said mate
But that's not story, it's world building. Story IS character drama. You really think the game would be worse if Millicent had a more interesting and detailed character arc? Characters elevate stories regardless of medium.
I love your videos man, I’ve been dying to see people’s thoughts on the game awards
This is why i subscribed to your channel. A calm, reasonable and lucid way to make an argument without being an asshole.
I think people just want to see more progression of existing characters or characters around concepts like the lords of cinder. The thing is, you end up killing most of the bosses before you assemble a connection like the one formed around the Lord of cinder since it's a character that progresses around a concept making it more impactful when you see it grow and evolve.
you've never played a Souls game have you?
@@scotttowers1759 Actually, just trying to understand new comers. Easy misconception since I was trying to put myself in their shoes here.
@@scotttowers1759 Sounds like I did a great job haha
The purposely vague and convoluted way that FromSoft puts lore and narrative in its games actually brings the community closer as we try to figure it out together.
It's like unraveling a grand and enigmatic puzzle that's full of environmental details, subtle character traits and short descriptive texts, which I think is a beautiful thing.
However, I did end up voting for God of War Ragnarök in the Narrative directory, because it has a clearer and more straightforward story and narrative that hits more like a big, direct hit of dopamine rather than the scattered and drip-fed one that Elden Ring generally delivers - if you put some thought and effort into it. There's nothing wrong with either of these approaches, in my opinion, and I actually enjoy both a great deal, but in the end I like the narrative experience of a game like God of War Ragnarök just a bit more than that of Elden Ring.
That being said, Elden Ring is definitely my Game of the Year.
That is fine. If it's not your preferred way of storytelling in a game, that is your opinion. At least you aren't saying "GRRRR! no narrative! GAME BAD!" like so many so-called journalists have said.
I'm so torn on GOTY. Ragnarok is nearly perfect. Elden ring on the other hand is super unique with the most pure sense of adventure I've ever had in a game. while having an awesome blend of mechanics from my favorite series of games.
@@Szt1998 ''Ragnarok is nearly perfect.'' wat...
The outro was a banger
"Music doesn't usually happen in normal environment"
Milfanitos enter chat. 😆
While I agree with your sentiment, it would have been a more convincing argument to use examples from Elden Ring since the discussion is about Elden Ring's nomination. Personally I think Blooborne and Dark Souls are better games narratively speaking, but those are not the games nominated this year, so they are beside the point.
Idk why he didn't use Maliketh as an example because he's literally Ludwig 5.0. He's like a more explained, better written, more lore impactful, way story-richer Ludwig in a lot of ways.
It’s sad that some narrative stories are disregarded purely because it’s not told directly, like yes God of war basically tells you what is happening at all times, if you closed your eyes you would be listening to characters telling you the narrative constantly. Elden Ring tells it through environment, you are rewarded for exploring and finding it out for yourself, the narrative can be different depending on your experience. I think knitting together an open world with countless narrative routes is much more difficult to achieve than a one track narrative, I hope people realise this before yelling about its nomination.
Ok, what does Elden Ring tell us? Who was your favorite character? What were their motivations? What was their character arc?
@@AuthorityCat you are trying to imply that none of those questions can be answered. Sorry to say, Elden Ring tells us a lot that is all built on the overarching premise and most characters have motivation and character Arcs even if many are Flat Character Arcs. You just don’t realize that since you are too used to being outright told this stuff in a way that makes drawn-out School Essays look compact.
@@AuthorityCat well if I did tell you I’d be here all night because there’s lots to talk about 🤣 and here’s a character sum up, Mogh, was outcasted, started a religion, kidnapped a royal, basically wants to create god and be their sidekick.
Play it and find out what I’m talking about :3
I'm just glad Plague Tale is getting recognized. These video games have really stuck with me.
Coming over from Asmon, just giving your channel some interaction in hopes to feed your algo
I found ERs story interesting in a large part because of how it contrasts DS' story. It's about the turbulent end of an era and the beggining of something new instead of an age stretched so thin, it wears off into nothingness.
damn man this is a good line, ill be stealing it for my story
My take on this would be that yes elden ring does have amazing lore but it has to be found, you can go the entire game without talking to the NPC's and doing the bare minimum to finish the game. If you do that you will have basically no idea why you have done anything or why the bosses that you killed were of any importance. But then you take a game like Horizon forbidden west which has also been nominated, you could do the same thing going through the game doing the bare minimum to finish it and you will still understand what has happened and why. I want to also so I am a fan of both games and a fam of the souls series and understand about how the story's of the games are told.
Lore isn't narrative. I'm sorry but it's just the same thing.
Shoving the story down peoples’ throats is an example of bad storytelling, not a good one.
''These people are bigots. These people are the good guys. These people are gay and yes they're having sex. I guarantee you that these two gay individuals who love each other despite being of the same sex and different races are most certainly having an intense physical relationship.'' That's basically Forbidden West's storytelling. That kind of forcefully shitting into our mouths isn't good storytelling. The best (and only) good tidbits of storytelling in Forbidden West were the blackboxes. You had to actively seek these out to get a grasp of what happened to the old world, and it was great. The rest was all dogshit. Just because it spoonfeeds you doesn't mean that what is being spoonfed to you is good.
We are talking BEST narrative, not MOST OBVIOUS narrative.
Maria of Astravo click tower, her intro cuscene is also very iconic and nothing alike
11:16 Aaahhh... Soothing refuge for our Bearer of the Curse... 😌😌
Excellent video, completely agree
"Does Elden Ring Deserv-" Yes
Does Elden Ring deserve the hate?
The story of God of war was the characters telling me how to solve the puzzles 2 seconds into my attempt to solve them.
Not many people agree with me on this but I think the Elden Beast is a beautiful example of this. We just finished facing off against one of the most epic battles with the way the music plays with Radagon and then we get the disappointing fight of the Beast. It just displays how useless the Greater Will was without being able to parasite off of those who follow it, very representative of Gods, who have no power without those who follow them. The fact that the final boss caused so much outrage shows that that kind of story telling did exactly what it was intended to do, elicit a feeling of frustration and disappointment on what we expected to be a formidable force in the Greater Will.
I understand the points you made and I think you had some great examples, but I think it says a lot that you couldn't think of any examples from Elden Ring specifically. 😂 There just aren't many gameplay moments that narratively contextualize or recontextualize your understanding of the world in any meaningful way. Oh, Radagon is Marika? Umm.. ok. That doesn't really mean anything to me because I don't have any concrete notion of what these character's goals or motivations are to begin with. Oh, Ranni killed her Finger? Good for her! I'm glad she didn't die and completed her goal. Very brave of Fromsoft to allow a character I meet to not die tragically. Like I understand there IS a narrative of some kind, but I just don't think it was particularly great or anything. Definitely not the best of the year.
I did vote for god of war on the narrative end but id say elden ring came very close, it was the first traditional souls like story i was even engaged with, sekiro was the one i preferred up to that point because it’s storytelling devices were very normal unlike most of fromsofts games. That said my favorite story in gaming this year was not even nominated lol, xenoblade 3. Horizon I’m playing right now and while it’s fun, the story is so mind numbingly boring if you removed the characters you interact with it would boil down to “get the ai’s and fight the Saturday cartoon baddies”
The plot vs narrative point is the best. Similar but not the same.
I'm only partway in the video, but God Ludwig was a great example.
I thought he was an incredible boss, from the thematic changes in his character to the music, this clip reminded me of how much I loved Bloodborne
While I agree that the way the story is told works beautifully for the world and its bosses and I absolutely love Elden Ring for its world, combat and bosses. I cannot help but disagree when it comes to the story of the npc characters and the story of the player character. Especially the latter has some glaring issues, in my opinion, while this is arguably the main story of the game.
The first problem I have with the story of the characters (the side-quests if you will) is how there is hardly any way to finish them by playing naturally without guides. While it would have been fine for a few storylines to take this route of random locations and items driving them forward. I feel like it is overused. In my travels through the lands between I have found many secrets and saw most locations without the help of guides, but I was unable to see most of the side-quests to their conclusion simply because of the order in which I explored the regions. I feel like the world has become too big to simply put a character in a location without any hints.
Secondly, why are you required to simply follow the whims of all of them. If I wish to play a righteous character I might not want to go along with Varré or the Volcano Manor. But there is no reward for not doing these questlines and, perhaps worse, there is no consequence when you do do these questlines.
Thirdly, why can I not question Ranni and Fia. Ranni is an actual demigod standing right in front of me. She has lived through and played part in so many of the most interesting events prior to the game. Why can I not question her about her motives, her aspirations and the future she envisions for the world. No, I simply must go through the motions and end up with a vague ending about the new order of things. The same goes for Fia, why can I not ask her what value she finds in living in death. The only things living in death we find in the world have a pitiable existence. They hang from trees, crawl out of graves or stand around in tombs. What about this existence is worth protecting according to Fia. If nothing was From's point then they succeeded, but the way Fia speaks makes me feel like it is not.
Lastly and the main reason why the above irks me, is that the game tells you that this is a story about you becoming Elden Lord. It tells you that you get to decide the natural laws of the land. It even gives you choice (if you actually manage to find the endings that is). However it does not tell you how these choices will effect the Lands Between. Then what is the point of the choice? If I were to become a lord I would wish to know what these new laws meant, but we cannot, even though the people who champion these endings are right in front of us. The only one that is clear to me is Dungeater's ending. And how much more powerful would the frenzied flame ending be if Shabriri was not a raving lunatic, but a sane serious person who considered his sins justified to reach his desired end. Another question I have is what do we as Elden Lord actually rule over. I feel like I murdered every single human left in the Lands Between and I did not feel bad for killing them, because they all seem like zombies to me. I read that the design philosophy is about seeing and enjoying beautiful moments between the suffering. And while that certainly succeeded in the natural world I feel like it is missing for the humans. There are no cries of joy or signs of love. No secret lovers' letters and no names carved into a tree. Just endless amounts of zombies waiting to attack you. When Melina asks whether there is beauty in the continued births all I can ask is "Is there?", because you've certainly not shown it to me.
maybe it's because most people are just use to a story being fed to you instead of the story being told thru discovery. Elden Ring turned that on it's head and THAT is what immersed me into the game for 800 hours. As I went thru the game and things started connecting in my mind, I kept thinking of what I might have missed. Anyone can write a good story in the traditional sense where engagement is just you being a witness basically. I much prefer the discovering of the story as in Elden Ring.
Not anyone can write a “good” story with traditional engagement, that’s the thing. Look at the massive budget and following TLOU2 had; “good” meaning a story most people who play will enjoy. GOW uses massive setpieces, cinematic techniques for action and character interaction.
And Elden Ring uses the merits you described and more. The fact of the matter is, though, that doesn’t make it superior. There’s a reason why being a “witness” to a story is the mainstay of almost every single one; it works, and it works well.
And Elden Ring IMO isn’t even the best example of Fromsoft storytelling, environmentally or dynamically, let alone heavy enough to win best narrative this year. But it’s definitely deserving of a nomination and hopefully they master the science well enough to be deserving of the award (in my opinion) in the future.
@@whosey2807 It may not be the best from Fromsoft, but it easily has the best narrative of any nominee. Dont get me wrong, GOWR is a great game, but the story is lackluster and the way they convey it is even worse.
@@whosey2807 is Elden ring best narrative, imo no. I think that would probably be tlou 2 for the reasons you illustrated.
@@enkimerlin3209 TLOU2 is absolutely worthless in terms of its narrative. It's the most shallow of executions of the "Revenge bad" trope.
I think you are correct regarding narrative - as it is an instrument to tell a story, not story itself. And From Software are doing it in the iconic way. Every player can objectively gauge and assess narrative, without diving into decoding a story or don’t care about it at all.
It would be a different thing if there was a “best story” nomination - Elden Ring, due to heavily relying on interpretation, has no definite story to tell, so it would pose a question: which exactly story are we nominating, awarding etc?
he is wrong about the narrative part he is confusing it with it being a good story which it is. If the award was for best story then yeah he does have a point.
This UA-cam video deserves to be nominated!
My main complaint with this nominee (not that i care about TGA much) is that most people who defend ER story didnt even try to piece it out themselves.
In fact, from what I've gathered by discussions on reddit and other platforms, it seems like 90% of the playerbase just watches vaati or other lore videos then set on the idea that they must be right because they have a yt channel or something, when sometimes the info they're feeding this chunk of the community is just plain wrong or misinterpreted, or doesnt consider another description that contradicts their theories.
And for those 3 fools out there who like to invest their time in piecing together the lore by themselves then confront with the rest of the community, it becomes so frustrating that there's barely any good discussion, and most of the comments are snarky unfunny sarcasm or 'but vaati said this/that'.
And dont get me started on mistranslations and cut content that sometimes ends up being crucial in understanding specific story points... (this is true for all other FS games aswell).
All that said, I dont believe ER deserves a nomination because after months passed at piecing together the game timeline of events, it just comes out as a weaker version of dark souls lore, but with sligthly different variations.
While DkS main theme felt fresh and it was very much cohesive and impactful, ER just presents the same points but in a less impactful form imho.
With GRRM involvment I expected a fresher storyline, but here we are again with the usual themes of demigods that refuse to let hold of their crumbling power and ambitious outcast humans trying to claim that power for themselves. Sekiro and Bloodborne were vastly superior in this regard, they felt fresh and unique, yet they are so rarely discussed for their storyline and lore :/
I haven't even noticed the lore myself to be able to draw comparison to other games, I think this makes it a weaker story, if the average person doesn't understand the story, is it a good way of storytelling.
What's the point if most won't even notice it's there.
''but here we are again with the usual themes of demigods that refuse to let hold of their crumbling power and ambitious outcast humans trying to claim that power for themselves.'' It's funny how you whine about this in Elden Ring, yet this sentence out of context could confuse many into thinking you're talking about any of the GOW games, Ragnarok included.
@@TheStraightestWhitest havent played that, but im pretty sure the protagonists there are gods themselves lol.