Unsubscribe!?!!?!! Never! Ur videos are way to unpolished and obtuse, theres no journal to keep track of everything youve said. The user experience is frankly terrible. 10/10 will watch again
True lol but Nepheli is easy mode, since she always goes back to roundtable after you find her for the first time in stormveil. The real hard mode is Millicent. "I'm going on a journey, maybe we will meet again". "Where?" *leaves*
A more realistic continuation would be: "Hey, give this potion to Nepheli, and make sure she drinks it." "Alright, where is she?" "We'd best be going now, and don't forget to give this potion to Nepheli, and make sure she drinks it." "Alright, so where is she?" "We'd best be going now, and don't forget to give this potion to Nepheli, and make sure she drinks it." "..."
Every moment in Elden Ring is like an adventure. I always find myself going "whats next!" or "What shall I do today". Love the little to no guidance the developers make.
@@Rodrik18 Lols, that was my reaction when I first "accidentally" ended up in Caelid and instead of getting to the nearest Site of Grace and going back to relative safety I decided to explore, and saw one of those tyrannosaurus dogs, immediately noped out of there 😐
That's it. I play with my gf. When I get home and turn the console on she asks me "what are you going to do today?" This is the first game that give me this feeling of freedom that I can pick what to do not only follow the marker to the next quest
Elden Ring in my experience. Was the first time in a long time I felt like I was on an adventure. I wasn't on a tour, I had little guidance, and there was adversity everywhere. I love FromSoft for giving me an opportunity to be the adventurer I never could be in other games and get lost in a beautiful, if not ruthless world, where I have to create my own legacy instead of having it already predetermined for me.
right ? when i played horizon i felt that i was just the puppet making whatever i was commanded to do. "oh i should use my focus" "oh i should enter this cave" "hmmm maybe I should follow those footsteps" shut the fuck up aloy and let me play the fucking game
Ive play this game from day one with my brother playing it next to me. We have both had two completely different experiences by not sharing info with eachother. I have items he hasnt seen and he has items i havent seen. This game is the only adventure game ive ever played that feels like MY adventure and not the same adventure everyone else has had.
@@adamhinckley5062 it's so cool man. I play with friends and we keep on sharing our maps and they are totally different even in same areas and then we coop to guide one another to loot and fun areas to run pass and murder everything and get invaded and kill invaders. this is such a fun game
This is my first FromSoft game, and I dont usually play solo fighting-style games like this. Ive played about 200 hours and have loved every bit of it. I'm on my second character, and working toward killing every boss in game as well as finding every site of grace. I know there are quests Ive missed, and endings Ive ruined, and that just gives the game replay value. I like having to remember npc quests and dialogue. The game becomes mentally challenging as well rather than just skill-reliant.
This was a really great video, but I think you missed a point that I consider pretty integral to the design of Souls games. Fromsoftware does not expect everyone to find everything in the game on their own, and I think that's because they don't want players to only play these games alone. There are messages left by other players all over the world, and they made summoning more accessible than any previous game. There are gestures and even prattling pate items for rudimentary communication. They didn't make the game's content obscure so it wouldn't be played, they made it obscure so people would engage with their storytelling outside the game. Moreso than any other series I'm aware of, Souls games has an incredibly active community - perhaps not so large, but certainly very active. Everything about the way these games are designed makes such a thing as the Souls community inevitable. I think that's part of the vision. Back in the days of the original Zelda for example, the only real way to find a lot of the game's content was to talk about what you find with friends, and I think Fromsoftware has that in mind when they hide away large amounts of their content.
Agreed and well said. I vaguely remember reading an interview somewhere with Miyazaki for either DeS or DaS waaaaay back when, and how there was an intention of accidental discovery (such as finding an illusory wall because you were engaged with an invader and happened to hit it)and also discovery through both direct multiplayer and asymmetrical multiplayer. Without those core design philosophies the games wouldn’t be the same, even if they are more than perfectly playable offline.
Yes. This is compounded by the fact that the shadows and messages this time aren't left by other decrepit hollows, but your fellow brother-in-arms Tarnished. You're not summoning hobos to survive, but heroes to fight for glory. I almost think the trailer that says this game is a dark fantasy is a misnomer. It's closer to traditional high fantasy with ethereal soft magic permeating the world.
This is my first Souls game, and the design approach is something that I can't stop thinking about. It demands immersion and attention. Everything is up to the player, which gives them responsibility. You are responsible for listening to the person you walked up to and finding out what they're talking about, decoding where it might be, what you should try, what you're even looking for. You are responsible for expanding the world-map, seeking secrets, manually marking locations relevant to YOUR playthrough and returning to them when you are ready - not a quest log to clear a dungeon. You are responsible for paying attention to enemies, their movements, their moveset, inconsistencies and timing, not an attack indicator, or you will die and you will not progress until you're responsible enough to handle power. You are responsible for your character, your demise, improving and stats, your curiosity which leads to growth for pushing through the darkness and finding grace. Lift that responsibility and we're back to being handheld, and that isn't satisfying, subconscious knows it too. Creativity is clearly better without boundaries.
The past few years it's been pretty apparent that people are doing away with things such as humility, sense of embarrassment, dignity, self worth (outside of perceived social rank for constant online virtue signaling). So it's no surprise that most want to be handheld. They want the easy way. And they aren't afraid to tell you they are too weak to actually put effort into anything they do. Not everyone will like this game, i get that. But the amount of effort needed and ability to push through difficult situations, automatically disqualified a hell of a lot of people before they even started. And their strong feeling of FOMO is why you see so many angry reviews. They can't have you liking something they can't do!! And yeah this is my first Souls game as well and i cannot get enough. Fantastic game.
Play dark souls 3 next and then play bloodbourne, bloodbourne is the best souls game and a fan favorite. It's Gothic horror mixed with elden ring and dark souls. The enemies are very disturbing and the whole adventure in like going through a Gothic horror nightmare. It's super hard at first. But my God the game rocks, If you want an even bigger challenge Sekiro is elden ring in Japan and you are a swift moving samurai named wolf
I explored Stormveil castle so much, that it felt larger than the entire area of Lothric from DS3. And yet I missed not only the item and scarab you showed on screen, but even the fact that Rogier had a quest in the first place. I'm a completionist when it comes to some games, and I thought I was playing Elden Ring with that intention, but the density of content is so overwhelming that despite my 150 hours into the game, I'm still missing so many things, and many more I'm not even aware of. I guess I better let go of that FOMO and simply enjoy what I do find.
the souls series have always been a throwback to old school gaming imo. it's just a game that you have to figure out. all the complaints about ER's accessibility have made me realize just how dumbed down current games are. and there is a whole generation of gamers who don't know what to do when a game doesn't hold their hand.
@@jp-sn6si 100000% I got into dark souls 1 because I was craving a game that felt as hard and obscure as games from the 90s, boy did I find what I was looking for. Here we are like 6 games later (didn’t play blood or sekiro much tbh) fucking loving it
@@jp-sn6si Yeah accessibility is always such a funny talking point for me. I can't remember what game I started but before even starting the game there was a massive list of questions for accessibility. Why play a game if I get to make up all the rules? I dowloaded Sifu and will most likely never finish that game, it's just too hard for me, but would I play on an easier difficulty if there was one? no.
All the more reason to embark down different paths and become a different elden lord in your next play through. I love Fromsoft because they allow you to pull so much from their games. Each play through I get to find and discover as much as I want and progress through the game at my own pace. The immersion for these games is immense compared to so many other triple A titles that pollute your HUD with quests, map markers, everything that hand feeds you.
I went from a "meh" on this game, as my very first From Soft game, to obsessing over it for the last two weeks, the fights are hard, the lore is deep, the secrets you can find are just mind boggling, I have 20 sets of armor in my inventory right now from just diving into every corner I can and I just found out today some of them have stat bonuses.. or that you can get buffs from your flasks also new to me today, even after 100 hours of play, I'm still finding things, thats just insane.
I feel like this game's core philosophy is "look harder". It's always asking you to investigate that weird noise. Or to go to the end of the cliff. No, not just look at the end of the cliff. Go to the end and look down. This is my 4th From game and I'm so used to these mechanics that its second nature to me to just keep looking, because I know how the designers think - and I'm usually rewarded! They really know their audience. Also, this game has SO many hints! It just doesn't spoonfeed you them. There are literally old codgers who will take you to dungeons, and statues that will point in the direction of catacombs. They deliberately place a scarab that makes noise near the entrance to the well in Leyndell so that you go looking and find it.
i gotta admit i love that detail he explained in the video about the bloodstain. that is next level woke nonsense that totally would have fooled me. At this point I assume every note saying "no item ahead/ item ahead" and "secret ahead/ or try jumping" are absolute lies and I just ignore them unless something else catches my attention
@@zacharyjackson1829 i personally like to humor the messages for the hell of it. Its fun and sometimes funny to fuck around and find out what people may be hinting at. Or maybe it's just a message about a pickle
@@jenbooob One time in Elden Ring I listened to the "secret ahead" message and I hit the wall and it was actually an illusion and got a free level 2/3 smithing stone
Seeing designers react this way to a game getting good reviews while defying their design expectations demonstrates that the issue isn't that there are consumers who don't want their hands held, but that there is a good number of industry professionals who can't conceive value outside of the industry's increasingly specific set of norms. A game can be good without a series of stronghold fights and lookout points strung together by NPC's spoonfeeding exposition.
Yea, makes me sad thinking about the future of games, they've become more and more like movies and it seems the problem/reason for that on both sides is much bigger than I thought, when even professional designers see this great design as bad and amateur.
@@Failzz8 if you look at any major game or movie series you can generally see the artistic choices lose touch with what makes the property unique as new entries are created with choices intended to widen appeal. For example, I love Elder Scrolls and Fallout, but its clear that Bethesda's games have simplified leveling systems and quest design over time in order to make their properties more accessible for mainstream audiences. The general trend is alarming for FromSoftware in that Elden Ring is their biggest property yet.
It's like Ubi and Guerilla both made open worlds, looked at each other and went, "Niiiiiiice." As soon as someone else does the same thing with their own company flare, they're all, "Wait, no, not like that!"
I legit laughed my ass off when I saw that the senior quest designer for horizon thought the quests are bad. I genuinely have little to no hope for almost all future triple A titles
Have you ever talked to someone about a game, and they tell you about something they found but you missed? Or maybe the other way around? It makes the game world feel big and believable, like you could get lost in it. It’s a really cool feeling you can’t get when the game doesn’t let you miss anything.
Yes. This game takes me back to the times of the Nintendo and Super Nintendo, with kids starting dumb rumors on school about games and they seemed true just because games were so mysterious. And sometimes they WERE true. I was told about how to find the flute in Zelda A Link to the Past by a friend and went and did it in my game at home. That kind of experience is something I haven't had for a LONG time since childhood, and Elden Ring is exactly that game, it brings that back. This game is fucking magical as far as I'm concerned, it's what gaming should go back to and be in the future. I want the people who have turned my hobby into super optimized engagement metric driven live service garbage to leave forever, and if they think Elden Ring is bad then GOOD, hope they quit the industry.
Skyrim felt like that too. "Did you do the XYX quest and speak to ABC and get the DEF as a reward?" Nope after 500 hours playing I still somehow missed that quest. As an aside, I'm just 30 hours level 52 Champion class wandering around Elden Ring seeing what I find and fighting everything in sight. It feels huge.
I've been chatting with a friend and my brother who also started the game at the same time, and we all have had different experiences and discovered different things. Its been amazing!
This video along with the comments in the begining and Skyrim references only reminded me how much I love Morrowind and how much it is "unplayable" by a certain portion of new generation gamers. No markers. There is a journal, yeah, but navigating through it (at least in the vanilla version) was a pain. You would have to keep track your progress in a textbook for example and keep it near you while playing, like on the real desk in the real world. I would write down the recipes for potions so I could remember how to create them and what ingredients to hunt for. There was no compass, and you would get lost all the time. Sometimes you would delve into some cave, find some great loot and that would be the moment when you would want to teleport back to the city to sell all of that. Well, not at the low levels of the game - going back to the "civilization" was a quest on its own, your gear would break, your armor would be demolished, you would get diseases and at times you would encounter our most precious and lovely bone walkers... which would quickly skyrocket your creative process capabilties on how to get your stuff back home. Even now, after playing Morrowind countless of times over the last 20 years, I can't say I have seen everything. There are still some places that I did not visit, some artifacts I did not find, some questlines I did not complete. And I am fine with that. I will probably play the game once again at some point and still miss tons of things. With Skyrim, or even Oblivion, I don't have such a dynamic. I have once done all the quests in Oblivion just to clear the journal and since that time, the game did not suck me in one bit. Maybe Shivering Isles still has something to offer for me, but I just can't get back. With Skyrim, it is the same. The game feels like a chore, quests like something I have to do, just to clear the journal, to complete work - otherwise I have this feeling of non-completion. And I hate that feeling, I hate that the games became like that. And it's not like a bounced back from those games. In both of them I have hundreds of hours time spent. Even in Witcher 3, the game I adore the most, I have found myself that I am charging through the map, from one question mark to another, just to clear them. There was no true exploration to it, I didn't get lost anywhere and I had no interest in doing so. I was just going from point A to point B, and then the next task. And truth be told, some players will prefer that approach. I guess there is nothing wrong with playing games like that. But I certainly miss the times, when the game didn't tell you everything. That you had to immerse yourself in the world to truly admire it and find its secrets. That's why I also fell in love with Kingdom Come as well. Some of these arguments don't stand gameplay-wise (you could say that it would be good if the players experience everything devs had created for them - or have the option to save the game at any point, just to save your time and keep your frustrations levels on "healthy"), but if the creators have done that deliberately, to totally change the experience from the one that has become mainstream - then I can truly respect that. And to see it sells - well, what else is there to say
Same here. I'm at level 174 to after 77 hours and I've most loved the game, however, I do have some complaints. I wish there was a way to track side quests, the story was more fleshed out, there were more cutscenes, and a few other QOL upgrades.
Same. Tbh if I had read those criticisms before actually playing the game while knowing that you really don't have any quest log, no magic marker on the map etc, I would have agreed with them because it sounds crazy... who can remember everything?? But actually playing the game, it just works! And I realize that all that guidance in other games actually amounts to clutter that is burdening my experience.
@@jadawin1137 At the very least, I think a small journal would be HUGE. Just to help out a little. I could do without quest markers, but a way to look up active side quests would be HUGE.
@@patryk_lewandowskiabc I enjoyed Oblivion and Skyrim, but Morrowind was truly the last great game Bethesda made, Elder scrolls used to be my favorite game series, sadly I don’t think we’ll ever see anything half decent from them again.
Because of how elden ring does quests and information. I’m actually paying more attention to what characters are saying, using what they say to hint me to where I go and just having more fun exploring. At first with the other soul games this was kind of not my thing but because of elden ring I’m planning on going back to the older soul games and actually play them. I am now starting to see why soul fans are so passionate about this series and just love how much freedom you are given in this series.
fax skip ds2 tho i found it not enjoyable idk why (still your choice if you want to play it) but 1 and 3 are awsome + you could give sekiro a try if you like souls like!
Yeah I feel a lot of complaints about stuff like, "no tutorial or explenation of how to do stuff" are spam skipping the prompts that explain everything in the game. They're also probably the typet that ran by the tutorial though instead of taking some time to look around. DND taught me to always look at ceilings when entering an area and with this my first souls game my friends told me to treat it a bit like dnd. Which means observing your surroundings. Games really dont make you do that anymore.
@@Meowthix I think also since I had undiagnosed pretty bad ADHD I was just to prone to lose focus and not be able to pay attention on the little details. But ive noticed ever since I was diagnosed and on the medication im able to slow down a bit and be able to take in the information. And yea no tutorial didnt bother me since they are on the messages in the beginning of the game. I do wish when it comes to PC they actually had the key bindings and not the controller prompts.
This is my first Souls game and I remember seeing this young woman near a main road in the south. She told me that her home (Castle whatever) was having a mutiny or something amongst the help or something and her father was still there and could I give him something (a letter or somethiing) I did find him and told him I saw his Daughter. After I cleared the place I eventually wondered what happened to her (Spoiler)>> ...I go back to the same spot and she is DEAD AF!!! Blood all over next to a big ass sword and her dead body. She just gone. Was not really a quest as I did not get anything and I am fine with that. But I will remember that for awhile.
I feel like I fall somewhere in the middle of this debate. I love that Elden Ring doesn't hold your hand and I've never want quest markers, but I think that an in-game journal where you could see which side quests are active and maybe re-read an NPC's dialogue from the pause menu would be a nice addition. It's so easy to get sidetracked in this game because of how enormous it is that I can 100% see myself just outright forgetting that I was supposed to be doing something for someone, a way to just refresh your memory would be appreciated for me.
I would like to also add. A lot of what these games do is what makes an actual community around the game. When I am playing I see and find different stuff than my friend. We share details and experiences with each other. I have been talking with many people in different discord communities about the same stuff and they find somethings I haven't and I find stuff they haven't. Even in this video. The quest you are talking about I did parts of it by accident. But i didn't find the bloodstain or even the NPC in the area before killing Godrick. And that's what makes the game an Adventure. We are all a bunch of adventurers sitting in a digital tavern together swapping stories. While the game does have some things to be legitimately criticized. I think many people are overlooking some of the magic Fromsoft's philosophy brings to us. It feels like back in the day before the internet when everyone played a certain game and so many myths and stories were shared. How many people have walked up to a wall that had a message saying hidden passage and bonked it just to see? How many people tried to get Mew from under that truck?
best explanation to the game i’ve ever read. It’s to fun and cool seeing swords or armor i never knew existed and searching or asking around to find out how to get it. it’s like the community MAKES the quest lines.
YES! That! In conventional RPGs these days you are interactively playing out a set story, not unsimilar to passively watching it on Netflix. Sure, your character might lorewise not know where to go or what to do, but you do, because you have all the questmarkers etc. in your interface. You are thereby detached from your character. Player and Character are not the same thing. In Elden Ring you are MAKING that story on your own. You are not consuming someone else's adventure, you are going on the adventure yourself. You are your character / the adventurer in the tavern.
I always considered this style of quest design as similar to an Alternate Reality game, in that the intention is for it not be solvable by one person but solvable by an entire community. The fun is piecing it altogether with the help of the entire community searching through the game. This philosophy permeates into it's game design and narrative design as well, as mechanics often have hidden attributes that are never explained and require people to go in and test it and then leave guides about it. Narratively you never truly understand what's going on until you have lore masters and their communities piece things together and make videos on it. I personally love this, and it gives people a lot to talk about and allows the game to market itself in a way (so many guides and youtube videos are made because of this). Games are not supposed to create solutions for us, they are supposed to give us problems to solve. If it was solutions then they are merely repetitive chores to do. But as problems they are challenges to overcome.
Kinda similar to easter eggs too. The devs go out of their way to hide these things that finding them feels like a freak accident. This encourages the playerbase to discuss and see what it meant and if there were more to be found. I feel bad for people who find this kind of quest design "bad design".
@@Ipunchips i forsee a future in which we use an app with cool eye candy to personally type down quest related info, separate from the game, third party for all open world games that hopefully take the mantra of this one
“It’s the price that they pay for making sure the things that you do find feel more valuable” that makes so much sense. Most RPGs i’ve played i get so overwhelmed with npcs and quests telling me where to go i simply stop caring at some point and start skipping dialogs. On Elden Ring, i’m so incredible happy whenever i find an NPC, and get very invested on progressing their stories and finding out what the next step should be. It’s my first souls game and i wasn’t used to this but i love it and really wish all games were like this
I feel you… It’s quite depressing looking at a quest tab and see that you have 23 open side quests because every npc got a grandma and you are the chosen one to deliver milk and eggs to them. 😫
I'm gonna be honest. Being as I'm many, many hours into this game, and loving it, I don't see how I'm ever going to enjoy the traditional rpg design ever again. This game is that good. The feeling of adventure, fear, shock, joy, RAGE, is undeniable and yet oh so satisfying. More developers need to design like this. Enough with the hand holding. It's so boring and insulting. Rock on Elden Ring!
The thing is that this game, and other Fromsoft titles, are actually so much more like the traditional RPG. Fucking Horizon and assorted ubishit are not even remotely RPGs.
yeah tired of hand holding. the actual arrogance of some of these people saying skyrim has a superior story just blows my mind.. it was cookie cutter 12 year old content for when we were that age. it's now old and dated, gamers grew up and want better story and less hand holding
You should try out Outer Wilds if you haven't. It's a space mystery & there's no combat, but most everything in the world is simulated. There are a lot of details that make it feel so visceral & memorable, like no true quest markers, the map being a real overview of exactly what's happening in the solar system you're in, & that same feeling of exploring a world where people are still alive but you can tell it's past it's prime & are discovering things that happened in the past. If you do decide to give it a shot, DO NOT spoil anything in the game for yourself. The main mechanic is a 21 minute time loop, so once you know how to finish the story, you can do so in those 21 minutes, so spoilers can hugely damage your experience. It started out as a student project & I've honestly never seen so much love & passion poured into a world before. You're deeply rewarded for exploration & finding things through your own deduction. I've gone on long enough, but I seriously can't stress just how special of an experience it is. I'm not usually the type of player who enjoys "walking simulator" type of games, but Outer Wilds kept me deeply engaged til the end despite it not having combat.
@@arisumego Ubisoft and other "accesible" games definitely messed up the rpg image. I honestly do not miss the quest markers and journal with the quests listed (although it's quite hard to memorize what all the npc's tell you)
Something I think would be a good middle ground is if whenever you talk to a new NPC you could get a note in your inventory with their name, picture, and their dialog. I think that would be more than enough to alleviate some frustrations and still let the quests be obscure and lead to multiple different outcomes.
But also wouldn't follow FromSoft design philosophy as player experience is concerned. I love the lack of direction, the ability to explore and experience the game in an almost truly unique way.
@@excaligirra Y'all kiss Fromsoft's ass like they're the supreme deities of videogame development. They aren't perfect. No one is. Simply accepting glaring faults in something while claiming it's a "design philosophy" is stupid.
@@excaligirra i dont think having a note about a friendly npc you met during your journey would get rid of that philosphy, if they did it where it showed u exactly where to go to find em next then of course it would, but i think the op has a solid idea, in my head it would make more sense to just have a note about the npc and key words that youll hear again, i think it adds to that experience tbh gets you more invested
That whole part about Rogier's questline has me absolutely stunned. The gargantuan sized testicles needed to put a whole entire questline behind something so small is astonishing, yet it works so wonderfully well. Elden Ring really is peak game design, and this is only confirmed by everything new I learn about the game
There's a second way into that questline that a lot more people are likely to find -- if you find the black knifeprint just from exploring around (its location is marked on the map as pretty clearly a location where *something* interesting is), next time you talk to him, you'll end up starting his quest that way.
SPOILERS FOR EARLY GAME QUEST While watching this it dawned on me that I've never been one to do side quests in open world games. That said, every time I've come across an NPC in Elden ring, I almost instinctively go out of my way to do their quest rather than what I was in the middle of. Before I fought Margit I ended up finding Irina, delivering her letter, fighting the Leonine Misbegotten, and finding her father at her corpse. A completely optional part of the game, but given the way quests are done in Elden ring, I wanted to do it. The way these quests are portrayed as just people with problems makes it feel natural (at least for me) to help them, while other games portray nearly all quests like a list of chores. 10/10 Will sadly witness Irina die again.
That quest gutted me. I was so happy to go back and see them reunited. I was cursing myself for bypassing all the enemies that waylaid her coach on my way to the castle. I wonder if you do the whole thing in one go without letting the enemies respawn and travel back to irina in between if there's a way to save her.
@@Empinada God, yeah, it's pretty depressing, and the quest itself is full of unreliable narrators. At least Irina and her father are unreliable narrators! Look around the castle, especially at the dungeon and the fact that the WHIP is found there, and you'll discover that the misbegotten are far more gray than we were led to believe. They're not monsters who plotted to murder a just and noble ruler, they're servants or slaves who were mistreated for far too long, and rose up against their oppressors. Did Irina need to die? No, but unfortunately such anger often becomes indiscriminately destructive.
@@Empinada like a “kill the little head lamp crabby things to save Solaire” kinda thing? Hmmm 🤔. Also, anyone else notice that the Dung Eater wears Solaire’s sun symbol on his neck? I wonder what that’s about. Also, why is he colored like an invader in the Hold? (If it’s revealed in his quest don’t tell me. Thanks 🙏)
The quest design is what hooked me when I first got into Souls games. The not knowing exactly what to do next to advance the quest, having to actually pay attention to dialogue and the area was amazing! It was a feeling I hadn’t experienced since playing SNES games as a kid. I understand these games aren’t for every one, there’s nothing wrong with that, but people saying the games aren’t polished are just foolish.
Right? It blows my mind that people would rather have the "go exactly here and do exactly this" style of mindless side quests. Granted, that style works for a lot of games. But it's just so much more natural and intriguing to HEAR an npc and figure out how to help them yourself. Edit: you mentioned haven't had experienced it since SNES games, souls quests bring me back to Morrowind.
The thing about quest trackers is that it doesn't achieve any amount of immersion in the game because it just becomes a stream of doing favors for people and pulls you away from the environment because your attention is now on the quest marker. An open world isn't truly open world and free with quest trackers because instead of exploring as you want your now more likely to just go do what the tracker tells you to do.
Just a few days ago me and my friend were exploring the Academy and I was hitting every wall in a room hoping for an illusionary wall. He was like "there's no illusionary wall here bro" after like a minute, and the next swing I took I opened up a hidden pathway. We both popped off and it was super awesome. This hard earned bonus is what the Souls games are about.
The amount of visual clutter present at 4:53 makes me appreciate Elden Ring's UI and acutely aware that if the game had a mini map and those silly question mark icons, I'd be far less likely to explore as thoroughly as I have been
The map design is also especially inspired, the way they lay it out is almost to the point of actually having markers bcos it's quite easy (IMO) to say "there's probably something near by there" and lo and behold I've literally only missed around 10 or so dungeons I discovered from a map online.
Don't mind that picture, just look at 4:47. That's not a joke HUD but how it actually looks like in game... I really enjoyed HZD and had even bought Forbidden West deluxe edition (although Sony canceled my purchase due to lack of stock, something which has made me quite happy after that tweet) but something like that makes you appreciate Elden Ring's UI.
I would not want to explore anything if my character was constantly like "hmm I should explore that cave", Aloy talking at every turn is one of the big reasons why I don't want to play Horizon
When the player finds something themselves that they weren't told about, and that was hidden well, THAT is true discovery. That is the sense of wonder and exploration that I wish more game developers understood. When I follow a quest marker on a minimap, there is no sense of discovery, satisfaction, or wonder. I am just completing a task. It makes me feel like a monkey, not a human exploring another world.
@@RunescapeWhack Well its game you can play when you have the time, so why would you be in a rush to complete it. What does it matter if it takes you 50 hours to complete?
just like Elder scrolls Morrowind. No helping hand in the game, just a journal and a printed map on my table, i just loved that game and i will buy Eldenring when gaiming room i finished! =)
@@RunescapeWhack There are millions of things to do in the world why do u need an NPC telling you to go and do them? New World has quests and a quest log and all of them suck. Go kill 6 goats. That’s a quest.
It feels like playing a treasure hunt or exploring an unknown area in real life. And it also brings a good sense of realism. Since you are a tarnished who is brought back to life after an unknown amount of time. You don't have memory of your past life. You are nothing special just one among the many tarnished brought back to life. Nobody truly believes in you until you reach a certain point in the game. And NPCs also don't seem to know everything that's happening in the world.
Dark Souls, and especially Elden Ring are games were I never felt guilty looking up some sort of guide or using the wiki. For example I probably never would have found the silver serpent ring in DS1 without a guide for a smaller scale thing, while I probably would not never discovered various endings in Dark Souls 3 or Sekiro without a guide. With that said I normally only look up a guide when I have naturally beaten and discovered everything that I could without any sort of guide. Once I am at the end game I will be happy to go back with a guide to tackle everything that I missed. When it comes to Elden Ring, a game I already invested about 50 hours in at this point, after another 50+ hours I will probably look up a guide and find out that I missed over 20 bosses and an entire castle for good measure because Elden Ring is so insanely vast and open that it's almost overwhelming with choice.
Once I am satisfied I have cleared a main area I often scan down the wiki's list of weapons/armour to see if there was anything major I missed. The collector and the purist in me are in a constant battle lol. Sometimes a single weapon or armour set can form the basis of a whole new character/build so I don't want to miss anything major.
Kinda similar for me but i look up items that i want/need for pvp because i know out there is a talisman that does XYZ just because there was a ring in every game that did that for example stamina regen or crit dmg enhancement or someone invaded me with a cool weapon or armor that i just absolutely need
I'm currently looking up guides. Apparently that one armed lady we save from scarlet rot has a quest line. Gonna follow it. Didn't save her just to let her die later.
i do the same thing, play on my own until i need a guide, and that hasn't happened in elden ring yet! the game feels built to discourage you from not only needing one for a casual playthrough but it makes you not even want to look one up
I actually like this way they design their open world, sure knowing where to go and where to look would be nice but the fact that there so many secrets you can miss gives more reasons to revisit this world. Usually with open world games I do everything and never comeback even if they're good games. In Elden ring there is probably tons of stuff I missed and I've already clocked in 100 hours
Agreed. Even as though people will try their hardest not to miss anything, there will always be something to revisit. As a completionist, I feel like my whole style of gaming has changed playing elden ring because of how great the world feels. I don't always have to complete it all, I can take it step by step. Feels like in elden ring, I'm living through it, not just playing the game completing this and that. It's magically refreshing really.
i mean they do add a beacon mechanic that can point you towards a location elder scrolls style. just hover over a spot on the map and press your interact button. Honestly that's a welcome addition, cause it's purely user beacons. not where a quest tells you, but where you wanna go and help you keep track of direction.
I have about 125 hours in so far, I beat all of the main story bosses and many of the side, optional bosses. My "issue", (when I say issue, I mean it's just a bit disappointing), is more in line with one of the first comments showcased in this video; the world feels ungodly empty sometimes and given this game basically tells you nothing through the story about why you're doing what you're doing, (though I can accept this last part is probably intentionally vague and ambiguous), but it also doesn't explain much of anything, at least as far as any of the lore goes. This was my first souls game, and I keep hearing that there's suppose to be so much lore to this world and all that, but I'd love to find out where tf it is, something beyond basically: "this guy is one half of this other person, he's a General and a Champion and now he's killing a bunch of shit" or, "this is the first Elden Lord; how did he come to be and what was his story? Beats me, man, just kill him for the sake of killing him, lol." Some of the few side NPCs I've found also tend expand a bit more into who they are and why they're doing what they're doing and why I might care, but still seem to have simple "stories" and they're just there to kind of be there and you do like 1-4 things for them with little explanation and then that's it. On top of that, the whole game just feels to me like it sort of is trying to be an MMORPG, somewhere between Monster Hunter and Elder Scrolls Online/Skyrim, but they couldn't actually decide what they wanted to do with it, so they jumbled a bunch of shit together and threw it in a world where basically everyone is dead, about to be dead, or you have to go on a manhunt to find 1-2 people here and there which amounts to what I said above; very little of the lore that's supposedly there is actually presented when you go and do whatever it is they want you to do. Sure, they might not care, maybe this all was very intentional, but simply not caring and doing something intentionally anyway, doesn't make something "good" in of itself. On top of that, basically all of the bosses that I've found in this game are the same. A lot of them are all practically the same in terms of character models, the fights are all pretty easy and simple, (with some bosses just being more annoying than anything, like the Godskin Duo). All the dragon fights are basically the same, all of the dragons have essentially the same move sets and the same ways to cheese them easily, a lot of the same bosses like the gargoyles, or the crucible knights in similar areas with similar ways to easily defeat them, etc. Multiple Wyrms that are, again, just the same as every other Wyrm in the game. I find myself more and more just resorting to invading people or wondering around for hours just trying to find something/someone that'll open some actual lore to me and explain a bit more basically any of the events that happen in the world or the world itself. (Like, wtf is the "land of in between" anyway? What realms or lands is it between? Is it purgatory? How did I end up in it? How did everyone else end up in it pre and post Marika, blessing, the shattering, etc.) Just recycling the same bosses throughout the world is a little disappointing. I beat the Godskin duo, then went to explore a bit more before continuing to Maliketh, the All Knowing guy, Godfrey (for round 2, by the way), the other boss, I think it was Morgott, "the last king" guy, which is basically just a copy of Margitt, from the start, and Radagon/Elden Beast, so I went around the capitol region, just to run into the same cunt Apostle that I had just beaten with the Noble, then eventually found Noble and Apostle together again, with the same attack set, in a similar small room, which is some shitty cave with a bunch of snails. On a side note with that, as an example, just to hit on my point about this game not presenting any lore or story at all, what the fuck is up with the windmill village area, which is like straight out of Midsommar, and who are/were those people? I'd love to know more about those dancing, crucifying fucks, but instead, they're just there like some empty husks to kill over and over and over again with nothing more behind them, and they're there in that state because the world is fucked and bad things happened that turned everyone into basically the same thing all across the lands. Edit - Also, sure, there are a lot of items in any given area to go loot, but like 8/10 times its something like another smithing stone, which is useless once you have something like the Sword of Night and Flame upgraded and the mimic summon and as soon as you have these two things, the game is practically already over because at least for my build, almost any enemy is no more than 2 hits away from death while they chase my mimic, whether its a boss or just some rando knight, and for some of the bosses where the SoNaF + Mimic can't as easily take them, (like Radahn), just use the mimic and hit them 2-4 times with rotten breath. (I've beaten Radahn twice, supposedly one of the hardest bosses to beat in any of the souls games, as far as I've been told, and it only takes 4 hits with rotten breath to kill him, after the first 2 hits, just run around, or just stand there slightly in the distance, letting him fight the several AI you can summon, then hit him two more times, run around a bit more, and then you're done. The second time I beat him with my friend, my friend and I beat him within 10 minutes on the first try and neither of us even had to try to strike him. All I had to do was breathe on him.)
@@salt5999 finally a reasonable complaint that i could agree on. Yeah the side bosses lack variety and movesets that make them unique. I only have played Dark souls 3 before Elden Ring and the bosses there have more unique movements.
@ödīñ ŵïlšøń "I don't like constructive critique and non-shallow thought on games and game development, a medium of entertainment we both enjoy" - got it. Just saying "the game is GOOD" is very shallow and lacking in any depth or context. The game is good, in some ways, the game is complete shit in others, whether it was done intentionally and knowingly, by the devs or not.
I love not knowing or finding EVERYTHING in a game, because it makes talking about the game more fun. I ask people about DS1 (which I have found 99% of items) and telling them new things they never found blows their minds. I love doing that for others just as much as when people show me new things in games an my reactions are usually "wait ... WHAT!" and I have to go find whatever it is they said. I love that
Yea me and my friends always talk about shit we found, don’t get me wrong I looked up a few items but the conversation isn’t as good as when we find shit, I was happy when I found the great sword and made a joke about the sword being so big I looked like Guts, and when I found out it was actually his sword I was ecstatic because I actually found it not like the sword of night and flame
Something that a lot of people seem to forget about the soul series is that the amount of guidance and knowledge you as a player have, is the same amount of knowledge and guidance your character is receiving. If you were to talk into a country you have never been to or have no memory of then why would you know where everything is or where to go? You wont just find some random persons journal sitting on a table unattended with the complex history of a location and its inhabitants. You would be lost, confused, and directionless. You would be forced to ask questions and seek for answers. When you open a souls game you are entering into the ultimate character/player development experience. The experience of creating understanding and direction for yourself the exact same way you would if you were lost in a foreign land. Something that goes sorely missed in the souls games is the aspect of community. There are many different "factions" that have been built up around these games. From the highly dedicated PvP community, the invasion community, the kind hearted "blue sentinels", strength chads, mages, explorers, and bossers. Every style of play turned into a community that want to share their experiences with one another because every experience is going to be different in a souls game. One community that I have to say is very under-appreciated though are the "historians" of the souls games. This strong community of highly dedicated players find joy in doing something that I personally as a player would never be able to do, and that's understand the lore of this game. There are entire subreddits and discords dedicated to breaking down every item description, line of dialogue, and environment to see the whole picture of what is happening. Eventually these efforts lead to wonderful videos like the "prepare to cry" series on dark souls 3 or entire pages of information on the story. A final note I want to mention is the level of thought that goes into the personality of every npc as well. At first all the NPCs can seem kind of stagnant and their depth can seem shallow. But let's looks at the example you provided in this video. Rogier's quest is a hard one to continue because of the bloodstain. But I challenge you to stop and think about WHY FromSoft would design the quest like this. If Rogier was seeking something (no spoilers on what the body of the creature is) and his search caused him to die of death blight (you can tell from his death animation) which took away his ability to walk, then why would you ever want someone else to seek it out? Rogier's quest line is easily missed because he doesn't want harm to befall the player in the same way any other kind hearted person would. It is only after finding it yourself that Rogier is willing to disclose more information to you, at first as a caution, then as insight into what he was doing. Hopefully more people playing the game for the first time will be able to come into these games with that level of understanding moving forward as more people make videos discussing this topic
"what people seem to forget is that a souls game is like being in a strange place in real life!" "in real life if you have no memory of something then you ask questions!" what you seem to forget is that you can't ask characters any questions at all. they are vague as all hell and you can't ask them things as simple as "what direction is the area you're referring to?" something that would be very EASY in real life but impossible in elden ring.
@@lavabeard5939 that’s a really good point. The only rebuttal I would have is even if you could ask where to go, until you’ve already been somewhere you wouldn’t know where to ask directions for. As an example I would never know to ask for directions to the Academy unless I knew it existed or had a reason to go there, or the Haligtree, or even Mohgwyn. There is definitely a reason to go to all these places but you wouldn’t know that till you’re there. There are definitely times that we are given explicit instructions on where places are and how to get there. An example is Rya from volcano manor. If you meet her in Liurnia and help her, she tells you to meet her mistress at the manor and how to get there in a very detailed way. The same way getting invited somewhere by an acquaintance would go. So while I agree with you, there would still definitely be a need to explore and survey your surroundings and head towards obvious land marks
Plus if rogier had trouble finding what he was looking for then itd feel a little silly if you could just walk down a hall and bam there it was, he wouldnt have had much issue if it was that easy.
I honestly dig that Elden Ring has the same amount of side-quest guidance as any game from the Soulsborne series, but applied to the open world. Leave me in blissful ignorance of what I missed so that my first playthrough and every playthrough thereafter feels special, without the need for procedurally-generated content.
When I noticed their are a lot more items that apply effects onto your weapons compared to dark souls (they are grease, which is equivalent of resins and bundles), I knew that there would be a rot grease item somewhere. I eventually found some rot grease, but could not find the cookbook to enable me to craft them, and the wiki havent even found the location for it yet. A few days later, fumbling around in a rot swamp I stumbled into, finding the nomadic cookbook [22] and checking the wiki and seeing that they have yet to discover it fuckin made my day
That's awesome dude that's the beauty of this game. The Rot swamp is such a large and hostile area that requires the player to be stocked up on scarlet rot antidotes as well as have a lot of patience to make it around that area with all the lifts and annoying basilisks enemies. I only went through that area to progress the Ranni story but now that I know I can find the rot grease cookbook there I plan to go back on my scarlet rot character and find it myself!
@@yeetyeeterson1914 when I traveled there I had like 2 rot boluses (didn't have the cookbook for those) so I allocated all my flasks to crimson and said frick it, imma explore as far as these 15 gulps of healing potion can allow me lol. That was how I found the rot grease cookbook. It really felt special when I was racing against time to find items with my hp rapidly decreasing XD I ended up surviving in that lake for a pretty long while because my messages get rated a lot
I was playing offline when I found that bloodstain too, I was thinking, I've seen that character before... oh the sorcerer then went back to him. I think it's cool how natural the progress on the quests feel. Every quest I stumbled across I completed somehow naturally. Naturally I also missed a few, bit that's what new game plus is for right
I've never played a souls game before. The trailers of Elden Ring just caught me and I gave it a try. I have to admit that it was a bit of a pain to get around at first. I had no idea what I had to do. The game basically tells you nothing at all. There is a huge open world to explore, but where to start? At first I thought it was just huge, but damn, it's even bigger than I thought. There are so many hidden maps that it's actually crazy. I've probably encountered over 40 bosses (50 hours in), but only 4 of the 6(?) main bosses. Damn this game was and still is so frustrating sometimes, but I love it at the same time. For example: I died over 20 times against Rodrick. Almost the same number against Radahn. A bit funny is that the side boss Commander Niall was the most difficult for me so far. I killed him after 25 attempts. I still somehow managed to beat them, considering I am a big noob in those type of games. And from the looks of it: I can't get enough. There are so many things to explore and so many bosses to die against many times before you finally manage to defeat them. It's really crazy how much I love this game. Most games take you by the hand and guide you through the game. You don't have to think much and just sit back and enjoy the story they write for you. With Elden Ring, I feel like from software has created a huge world with so many hidden places that it's up to you how much you want to explore. You decide where you go. You decide what you do next. You are responsible for your own enjoyment. If you need someone to hold your hand, Elden Ring may not be the right choice for you. No lies. I struggled with this a lot at first. For the first 10 hours, I was just wandering around trying to find the first big boss. Was I getting anywhere in the story? Not really, but was I having fun exploring and wandering around? Hell yes! This game is a masterpiece imo. Incredible how much fun it is to play.
Yesterday I looked up strategies pr cheese for malekith in elden ring and found basically no videos to help me. I ended up saying fudge it ima go explore cause there might be an item to deal with one of his seemingly unfair mechanics. Turns out there is infact an item that let's you parry his big dangerous attacks 2 minutes from his boss room. Exploring and finding that item made beating him so much more satisfying because i found an item that wasn't even publicly documented yet to make a boss easier.
@@Gashdalif you go down the bridge instead of up to his boss room there's a small dead end area that has a chest wit a use item that let's you parry his glowing sword attacks. It's called the blasphemous fang I think
@@loopygordo oh right. i got a bunch of shit in the lead up to the fight so it must have gotten lost with the rest of them, i remember picking that up now. we'll he's dead now so rip, maybe ng+ lol
This game is so amazing, definitely the best game I’ve ever played in my life! I just hit 75 hours and I haven’t even made it to the second main boss yet. The exploration and ability to make your own adventure is really special and done better here than in any other game. Every day is a new adventure, and multiple times I have come out of a dungeon or cave and had my mind blown by the way the world opens up into incredible vistas and you can go pretty much anywhere that you can see. It’s just insane how much stuff there is to find in this game and it’s always really valuable loot. I haven’t felt this sense of immersion and living in the world and forging my own path since Ocarina of Time on N64. What an incredible game.
@@mainaccount0007 Nah, I'm with them on this. I'm 35 hrs in and i still haven't even challenged Margit yet. The rest of the world is just too enchanting and it's easy to get swept away while exploring.
@@thegoonbats Same, but mainly because I was like literally 4 or 5 when that game came out. OoT was the first game that blew my mind and showed me the possibilities of video games. There have been few games to do the same. I don’t think Elden Ring is blowing my mind in terms of unlocking something I didn’t know was possible, but it is definitely blowing my mind that they actually managed to pull off what so many other companies have tried and failed to do. I think this is the first real “Skyrim” since the concept of creating a Skyrim has existed. I was sick of Skyrim by 20 hours in, and started to ignore any and all side quests. I’m like 75 hours played in Elden Ring across two different characters and I’m still having a good time on both.
You just have to love Miazaki. He never bend to quick money, he just do whatever he wants and poeple love it. I mean which other studio has so dedicated player base? So dedicated that you let them put together whole stories with hints that may took year to find. Also, I've never seen so rewarding open world in my life, it is first time for me to really just focus on exploration, because I know there will be something interesting.
this sort of design also vastly increases replayability, especially if you don't use guides or wikis. just started NG+ today and already found multiple NPCs and items in Limgrave / Stormveil that I had never seen before. this game is truly something special, fuck the haters.
They don't want to get into the game and appreciate it and adventure and such, they just want to consoom product, and anything that makes the product harder to consoom is seen as bad. They don't want replayability, they want to consoom the product and move on to consoom the next product. Hiding content behind exploration makes parts of the product harder to consoom, hence bad.
@@steel5897 also ya gotta wonder if the programmers for ubi & horizon might be a little salty that someone who didn't follow the general open world RPG formula of "follow marker, retrieve thing, repeat" is getting a lot more attention than their games have been getting. I enjoyed the 1st assassin's creed when it first came out, and the second as well, but after that it quickly became apparent that they were just pumping them out as fast as possible
Some people don't have time for multiple playthroughs.(life gets in the way). So it's kinda of bad that a lot of things are missed by casual players and its annoying to refer to guides while immersed in the game. I think God of war 2018 did it a little better.
I've been using journals to hand write quest logs for games since playing Myst and Riven in the 90s. It's a good habit to have, not only do you get to be a little creative with drawn illustrations but you also get a keepsake at the end of your time with the game.
I love the "you won't find everything" design of the game. It means that you're exploring a world, not being guided by a railroad. Finding some obscure item or quest in a corner of the map though your own effort is much more satisfying than following a checklist that the game has given you. I wish more game designers understood this.
would you rather: 1) visit the top of the tower 60/60 times and you can unlock a helmet 2) scrape your way through a field of dragons and you happen to find the talisman that tangibly changes the game after deliberate exploration
"not being guided by a railroad". Do you play those other games like you're on a railroad track? I don't. I go where I want when I want and do or don't do what I want. You don't HAVE to check every box, follow every quest, etc. I rarely do. "Oh, you have a quest for me? No thanks!" It's not a different philosophy than what you claim to have for Elden Ring. It just has markers and a journal to let me know where I need to go or what I have done so I can remember what I need to do next. You can still find obscure items in a corner of the map. However, more often than not it's unsatisfying to find said item in the corner of the map in Souls because it's usually a soul consumable and worthless. "I went out of my way for a whole hour for this? What a waste of my time..." Neither are wrong or right. They're just different. I wish more game players understood this.
@@Absnerdity Meh, it is less of an issue about having to go to each of those spots on the map. What really annoys me is the sense that those spots on the map are the only places worth visiting. There's often no point in exploring anywhere else, so it feels like the entire game is just a todo list.
I would like something to keep track of things, at least a journal that tells me a the name of the NPC I just accepted a guess for and the general location, where he was found and it gets updated as you find them in different places. Its more so a quality of life change, as most people would just google or look up the location of this NPC or just forget about them completely.
Also, I feel like it just increases the close knit nature of the community, because discovering new things and then sharing those things encourage others to do the same. Even the in game messages are like "Important item ahead" or "Hidden Path Ahead, there fore try rolling" Its a game that manages to find people that enjoy it and bring those people closer together. I love this game.
While that's true, there's also a lot of troll messages doing that to the point where it feels sort of discouraging to even try to search hidden walls, I'm always in the mindset that I'll probably just come back to the location later and see if there's anything hidden
"Hidden Path Ahead" is like on every wall like some stupid graffiti dude with no skill keeps spraying his shit tags on the walls. It's so discouraging that you don't even want to read other players messages anymore.
The community is definitely strong around the souls-like games. I'm actually surprised that there is no obvious faction "banner" to rally around in Elden Ring, the way that sun-bro's have been in previous games for example. And yet I see examples of the community helping each other out every time I play, from messages helping players progress, to the guy who invaded me yesterday called "Sewer Guide" who just ran around with a torch and guided me through a maze-like sewer area, pointing out all the good loot along the way. My only real community complaint is the trolls that spam "hidden wall ahead", or crowd interactable objects with messages. Would be nice if downvoted messages were actually less likely to show up.
Some companies/developers just design things differently with a different approach or want to invoke a different emotion/experience from the player. And it is almost mind-blowing to me every time I heard people dislike that because it is not "similar" or diverge from an established "norm". I'm like, do you really want every game to be the same??? Is that the goal of doing things now? Are we talking about video games as an art form or an answer sheet to a standardized exam???
Yeah, like that one guy who called it "uninspired" must've been on some shit. Like, "it does things differently from other games so it's uninspired." Even if you don't like it, that's just flat out wrong lmao.
@@Exist2Inspire87 Yeah? And who doesn't? Ubisoft? Rockstar? EA? Activision? Everyone has used their same formulas for over a decade, and FromSoft is no exception. Hell, even they are the most unique in that regard
@@chinguirrisguiano Exactly my point, that's why the praise they get is way overblown. On the contrary now they started to ape Ubisoft with some shit to pick up every five meters and a map littered with fast travel points lol.
I actually love the "If You're not looking real hard, you won't find it" and "To find out if there's an item down there, you have to jump" ideas. Those are rewarding. That they stuck to their guns on that is admirable.
i looked too hard and killed rykard while exploring, so elden ring locked me out of a the vulcano questline . i didnt know that it would trigger that, and i cant even go back on an older save. that is one thing i dislike really hard
Personally I completely disagree that the game is obscure. Sure a lot of stuff is hidden, but the game gives you every tool and hint you could ever need to find them. On my first playthrough, and without using any guide, I managed to complete the volcano questline, ranni's questline, and FIA's questline. Defeated almost every majour bosses (only missed the regal anvestral spirit and a magma warm, and the godkin apostle) The only are I didn't find was the one under the volcano manor. All of that was found simply by being curious, paying attention to NPC dialog, and environmental clues. People who think the game is too obscure honestly didn't give it the chance it deserves
@@urg6923 That's kinda the point. If you're not curious, if you're not turning over the stones around you, you'll miss it. It IS obscure, as a result, due to the fact that they chose to write a story which you'll only fully experience if you're looking to do so. And I honestly think that that's beautiful.
there was no hint that killing rykard would trigger everyone to leave. you missed him and got to do the vulcano questline and i explored and killed him, and got punished by the game.
> Talk to character -> reload area to get new dialogue -> reload area to see whether they moved or whether they died -> get shitty reward for quest > iT's oBsCurE bY dEsiGn
I believe that there are at least two waves of the Soulsborne series being mainstream. The first mainstream wave revolves around the difficulty; having no easy mode and people calling every remotely hard game a ‘soul’s like’. I don’t remember when this sparked, however it lasted since DS1 came out. The second wave of mainstream media surrounding this series/franchise, is the current idea that Elden Ring is unpolished and has no quest tracker. This upset over the game design leads to controversy and a massive influx of new gamers, I remember the difficulty wave having a spotlight on live TV back in the day. When I heard that From Software was going to be sort of open world, I knew that it would have that dark souls feeling, not difficulty, or unpolished, but focus on real exploration and self-pacing. I love the pacing of Elden Ring; the game can be hard if you make it hard, the game can be easy if you make it easy. The game, or any other dark souls game, is not hard by default. Depends on your play style and how you tackle it.
I find it a little funny that people are calling elden ring unpolished, when compared to most big launches the last few years its not even close to the amount of bugs many games have had. And it seems like this time they didn't get forced to release the game unfinished unlike ds1 and 2
@@luclin92 Not to mention how absolutely _massive_ the world is. Not in terms of sheer landmass but rather by how densely packed it is and how seemingly every nook and cranny was handcrafted, with little to no recycling of content outside of the mineshaft entrances and some parts of the catacombs. Ranni's questline and the involved areas alone could have been their own game, for one thing, but here it's just an optional sidequest that many players will probably miss on their first playthrough. The effort that clearly went into this game is absolutely insane and yet there's still idiots who call Fromsoft "lazy" for reusing a few animations from previous games, while playing copy & pasted crap like the latest Ubisoft open world or buying Skyrim for the hundredth time without a hint of irony.
@@nineflames2863 don't forget that one ruined square building I have seen all over the place😉😜 but then again that one feels more like the general architecture of one of the civilizations in the region than just a random building which is all over the place. So even when there is something reused it always has a purpose for why there is multiple of something
@@nineflames2863 The big question is - When are they going to stop? - When are they going to die? - Right now UA-cam is showing me advertisements about the new dlc for Ac Valhalla - I've played most of the Assassins Creed, Far Cry series but I've playing the same game over and over - the beginning of the year I promised to my brother i would never ever play another Ubisoft game again, the last being Ac Valhalla. Their best game was the first Watch Dogs, mind the issues, it has the best story Ubisoft has written. But same stuff over and over again expecting sh*t to change - the definition of insanity. That's their trademark!!!
@@luclin92 Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Elden Ring, however it's looking like some parts of the game actually are unfinished sadly, like the ending to Nepheli's and Kenneth's quests and maybe even an entire ending that was planned based on what data mining the game is turning up.
I think the big difference is that when designing games, FromSoftware really puts the soul on it first, and then the money comes by itself, while other companies design products, focused on making money. This kinds of questlines and world design is not new in the soul series, with items, bosses or even whole areas being very well hidden, meant to be discovered only by the most curious of souls. It also has to do with the kind of philosophy that only japanese studios have, and westerners very often fail to replicate. I've seen a lot of similarities between breath of the wild and elden ring, but not based on a video or review, it's a genuine sense of curiosity that only these two games had. Also noticed some inspiration from Shadow of the colossus on the area with three giants in Stormveil Castle, was really happy to see Miyazaki take inspiration from Uedas work. The first days i played without watching any media to not get spoiled, i have explored almost all of limgrave and Stormveil Castle before progressing, and watching some videos i've been discovering new places after thinking i have found all there as to be found. Having a wonderful experience.
I love the old fashioned quest design. Reminds me of the old days of talking to my friends and we all experienced things differently. Some people found one thing while another found something else. Then you feel the need to go back and find those things for yourself. It can certainly be annoying but I also enjoy that in some way. I feel like if a game makes me feel great highs and lows I tend to enjoy it much more. If a game is only positive experiences It tends to not have as much of a grip on me.
This is one of the reasons I think the original Pokémon games hold up so well despite their myriad of issues. Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow were basically my first experience with a Souls type of community where people shared their hidden knowledge. All the rumours about the Mew under the truck, Pikablu, but also including actually real glitches like Missing NO. and power duplicating items by saving and shutting down your Gameboy while in your PC were all ways to extend the mystery and longevity of what was in many ways a very simple game on the surface. Elden Ring is my first actual Souls game from FromSoftware and the aspect I absolutely love about the game is all the messages that people leave behind to help/trick players. I have also discussed the hidden secrets of the game with classmates at a 3D graphics school that are playing/have played Elden Ring, which is not something I have done with since the 2000s with World of WarCraft. This game is so special to me because it actually allows for actual mysteries to exist in the game that players might not find until years have past, which is severely lacking in modern games.
Yeah I had never played a souls game and was so used to generic copy paste mmorpgs that i was selling gear and whatnot i didnt intend to use. I realized after some hours that a lot of stuff you only get once so save everything and restarted with my newfound knowledge of how to play. Been enjoing the oldschool style a TON.
I also think another part of that design philosophy is replayability. I remember being excited for my second playthrough when my first wasnt even done yet, just because of a few missed quests. Every single fromsoft game has made me excited for my second playthrough when my first one isn't even over yet, and not a single game has come close to it
"Oh no… the game doesn’t tell me what to do!" That’s reality in a nutshell. I remember playing Indiana Jones and Monkey Island as a child with my dad. Back then your progress was based on the items you found, dialogues and how good you could use your brain. You actually had to figure out things on your own! People nowadays don’t like to use their brain. They like others to tell them what to do. These old games are still far superior in my opinion obviously not in graphics but in everything else.
Graphics and sound and frame rate and resolution, and button placement ya. But if you past that, they can be considered better. Though I don't think that. There are still games who leave things up to players. Like Hollow Knight.
Monkey island was grate! The gaming industry now days mame 6 times more money than the movie industry. Games should be free and the people making them should get what they needed to be able to make them. Now the goal of a game is to make profit to make ritch people richer. More than 15% of money spent on skyrim was advertising.
@@Irohbro that's a stupid idea. If games were just free all of sudden, what's going to happen to the share holders money. I guess just give it back, but it would still upset them. And you say this like making a game is easy. People should be paid for there work. Saying that it's worth 6 times more than movies just makes it worse. That just means it will take an even bigger hit on economy if it was free. And yes your right. Developers should be given the tools to make these games. The better solution should be to make development kits free, not games. And you have no evidence that all the profit just goes to the higher ups. That just not logical.
dude i remember my selft at 8yo literally the same story but with Sheep Rider for the Ps1, game challenging your brain in every level in funnier ways every time. good old days
It's one of the few game studios that still appreciates in game secrets, I used to love when I was a kid hidden items and rewards on games I still check every nook of every map of every game and 95 percent of the time I find only disappointment I like the idea when I pick something up in a hidden area I fell into by accident that I may be the first person with this item or I may be the first to find a hidden path. I'm sure I'm not but it's that feeling that is so exciting in a game and so underutilized in open word formats which is where they shine the brightest
yo if you haven't played it, you should try out legend of grimrock or grimrock 2, both super amazing classic rpg/puzzle games, where the puzzle is never ever telling you what the fuck you are supposed to do, it's absolutely amazing
Yes! this is exactly the sentiment that I was trying to describe to someone the other day when they asked me what makes Elden Ring is so special. It's that in many ways it makes me feel nostalgic, because of how different and unique everybody's experiences are, based upon the things they find or they don't find. And then talking about those experiences with friends and other people who enjoy the game is like classic Nintendo or Sega games when nobody had complete guides. So things like hidden doors, chests, cheat codes you had to go and gather from talking to people and were a thrill to share with your friends who didn't know about them.
honestly its just lazyness thats the community has now championed as such sadly. you have a rabid ego centered group in these series who will fan boy/girl defend any flaws these games have. ive played every single one, and have done no hit runs on Ds1 and 3. while i love these games elden ring has many MANY issues that the other souls series have BUT because of it being an open world those flaws have been multiplied by x10. there was nothing secret about anything in this game, before it even launched every single thing was mapped out via the interactive map, any feelings of being the first do discover anything is purely delusion/ignorance on the player's part most of the open world map is an illusion, most of the map is covered in cliffs/mountains you cannot access to fill out the world map. and the vast majority of the open world is empty and lifeless aside from side dungeons and areas around key locations there is nothing very important to discover aside from one of the like 3-5 quest lines and those are so botched in this game compared to the others. the reason why this game is getting hate when the other dark souls games didn is because of this key reason map design..... the map in dark souls 1 for example like all the other games is very linear, in ds1 you have 3 ways out of the starting hub (4 but thats unlocked once you get far enough to drop the elevator from the church) the games map was designed to push you towards a certain area to start off with naturally and the challenge started off easy then slowly ramped up in difficulty letting you ease into it.... elden ring has none of that here, first boss is margit which is the "hardest" 1st boss the souls series has ever had excluding the fake bosses in which your supposed to die at the start of some of the games (elden ring and bloodborne for example) so new players hit a dead end because the game its self tells them yo head to him first. and before the fan boys/girls start REEEEing at me "um bruh its a teaching mechanic" or the always unorriginal "git gud" comments note i have had zero issues with this game. its the easiest game in the entire series and the worse designed one at that, as well as hyper rushed (reuse of many MANY buildings and locations, reuse of several bosses both in open world AND other side dungeons) this game is also god shit at teaching new players the bare basic systems and mechanics of this game. the tutorial for example is "hidden" off the side of that cliff. many new players didnt even know it was there... bad game design, a smart developer would of made said tutorial ontop of those obvious stairs ahead of where you spawn while having the path to skip it off the cliff there fore making sure new players cannot miss your tutorial. the whole lie that these games do not hold your hand is laughable seeing as the other games the map design holds your hand the entire time, narrow hallways with some side areas hidden for those who search them at the right game stage after the right instance. lets talk about the ashe summons and how the game does this poorly as well. so you get your first one from the chick in the shack on the way to godrick, she gives you a jelly fish and no way to use it.... new players never knew or found that if you went back to the first church at night you would meet that blue wifu chick who would give you the bell and some wolves to summon.... again bad design... have the first chick give you the bell AND jellyfish and have the night thot give you the wolves as a reward for discovering her. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! fan boys/girls i LOVE elden ring, but lets be objective here, and i hate i have to constantly say i loved this game multiple times a comment when i call out its bad part's so dumb people reading understand its not blind hate but just criticism. the games directions are incorrect as well in telling you what general area to search. narrowing down the search area would help a lot of new players out. no adding a easy mode for the souls series were always easy if you do what almost every long time fan does.. A) abuse and cheese game mechanics and exploit or B) memorize attack patterns of bosses and harder enemies either one of those is the key to fromsoft games lets be real here. in elden ring most people are just going to abuse bleed, or sorcery using the flask to grant 10-15 seconds of unlimited FP to shoot the azur comet to delete bosses. or abuse the poise system and spam jump attack using duel wield colossal weapons over and over and over till they kill the boss and get loads of crits on them. or by abusing the ashes of war system in this game which is pretty busted and everything above coupled with the mimic tear makes this game the most brain dead and easy part of the series to date, and this may trigger fellow long time fans of the games. so lets try and be objective here and stop defending poor game design as a way to try and inflate our ego's into thinking we are good at a game where the main way to win is to cheese/exploit your way through. AGAIN!!! i love these games, but im not gona lie to people and try and dismiss the flaws in them simply because i love this game.........
In the age of "!" over peoples head that has quests for you, having to actually listen to the dialog of NPC's is rather refreshing, played Lost Ark before ER and the first hour I was invested in whatever NPC's had to say, but after that it was "yeye, just show me where I need to go and kill X or do Z". If there is one change I would want, its a dialog tracker, since sometimes they just mention the last sentence if you talk to them again, I would like to either hear everything again or just read up on what which person said.
yeah, I think a dialogue tracker or a journal (think morrowind) would be juuust helpful enough that it doesn't feel like they're just giving it to you, but at the same time, that you can pick back up on quest steps you may have forgotten about (assuming it's not too late to continue said questline)
@@ratmagic1774 Yeah, I actually thought the same thing. It would be nice to have the dialogue written somewhere so that the player still has to do all the heavy lifting but can go back over the information whenever they want. At the same time, no journal gives every interaction with an NPC so much more weight when you know you'll have to remember - maybe even write down - what they say to you.
Persona 5 did this. If you missed dialogue in a convo you could pause it and then rehear the conversation from the beginning till the part you stopped in. That might be too “video gam-y” for ER but I loved in P5.
Deus Ex has one of these too! It's super handy. I like the sound (heyyy haha) of being able to replay voice lines you're previously heard as well as being able to reread it. XD
To be fair the quest system could be much better. Considering how large the game is, the classic dark souls like quest design just doesn't work in this case. I don't expect quest markers but even a little notes section with hints or information about characters would help immensely.
Crucially, there's another way in from under Leyndell, too. It might even be called the "intended" way because of how much there is to it and how much more natural the transition is.
I hope so much FS will never listen to people asking for quest markers or logs etc. They have such a unique and awesome way of dealing with their gameplay... i simply love every decision they made
They won't. They don't make games that cater to this sort of thing. This has been a complaint for years and everything they've done suggests to me that their attitude is "don't like it? Don't play it, that's cool" They've never come across like a team that designs a game to make money and this is what makes Elden Ring being such a huge success so bloody beautiful.
I've heard the issue you're talking about referred to once as "the other fridge problem" from a developer I spoke to once. Which is this extended metaphor where you have house builders that due to a clerical error, order two fridges for a home they're working on and rather than return one they install both and install the second one not in the kitchen where it would be useful but wouldn't fit, into some other room where it fit's but it's unavoidable, like the living room. The new home owners now have to wonder why there's this huge second fridge in the living room that they don't need or want there, but it comes with the house so they're just supposed to deal with it. The metaphor is for game development and the fridges represent the content that developers make for a game. The second fridge is the content that developers made that doesn't quite fit or isn't super necessary, but someone worked on it dang it, so you the player are going to be essentially forced to see it. That there's this assumption that because time and effort was spent on making a thing, it's really important that players always be directed toward that content, even if it's like a big ugly fridge in the middle of your living room where it just gets in the way. There's a supreme issue in a lot of game dev where devs are extremely afraid to cut content they've made, or make things obscure or hidden in case no one knows it's there. One of the major differences in approach FromSoft has made since the very beginning of the Souls games is a total rejection of this concept. The souls games have always been very user friendly in terms of how much of their content is available for the user to absorb, but also how completely hands off they are at directing you toward it. You can have Souls players who give no fucks about the story or lore or characters or anything like that, and just want to play a good melee action game, and it works for them on that level and nothing more or less. Or you can have souls players who view the entire single player experience as training and equipment gathering for PVP duels at the SL MP cap, and it works for them. Then you have others who want to (as you said Rat) "roomba" up every single piece of information in the game, and it works for them as well. By not insisting that all players see all things, their games end up appealing to a larger variety of players, while the games that insist that every player see everything end up aggravating some of those player types - the action guy just skips cutscenes and the MP guy skips half the levels because he looked up the wiki and the katana he wants is only in one level so he doesn't need any of the rest, etc. The dev who told me this metaphor btw, was from Rock Star San Diego and had worked on Red Dead Redemption. He told me that whole story because he was one of the guys on that game who spent years working on this fully function horse wrangling and bartering mini-game where you'd find and trade horses then buy and upgrade ranches to stable them and build a small horse trading empire and all of it got cut by release. And he was totally fine with it because he knew, and so did the leads on the project, that it was going from a step beyond "neat wild western simulation" to unnecessary padded BS.
Tldr: game devs and gamers are fuckin idiots. Most of it is trash and should be expected to remain that way. Do not try to compromise real games because of losers.
And it's not like you have to stick to one of those playstyles either. I want to roomba the lore and items. But I'm also looking forward to doing pvp at some point as well.
Went into Elden Ring with zero spoilers or expectations. I don't play like a Roomba- rather- I traveled to places that looked interesting (it all looks interesting!!) And just explored as organically as possible. When I encountered a strong enemy, I would either decide to skip past or really buckle down and make it my mission to defeat them. Many other games with fixed quest markers wouldn't give me such a choice. I liked exploring - and when I started NG+ and found NPCs in different places from the last go-through, it made it all the more worthwhile, it's called discovery.
I hope developers see this game and start making more like them. It feels like my journey with there being no guidance but huge payoffs. I want more open world games where I can load it up and say “ what should I do today” and just go with no idea of what’s going to happen.
Every time you see the words “clunky” “slow combat” “no tracking” etc you can just tell that those people got absolutely smashed by a boss and rage quit 😂
After finally giving in and just spamming the R1 night and flame ability to down valiant gargoyle I can empathize with someone who wants to just finish the game feeling that way. But also it’s the point of the game and I love it
Yeah, when they say “slow combat” you KNOW they used a shield to block the attacks instead of dodging them lmao. I find most of the criticism funny since it comes from people that don’t actually know what the game is about, the guy who said “all quests are short and they’re just about bringing an item to an old lady” would be so embarrassed to see how some quests even allow you to enter massive secret zones, or quests that give massive chunks of lore and secret endings.
@@salarmer1633 brings to mind the Dark Lord ending of DS1 and DS3, there was so much digging to be done just to uncover the beginning of those journeys.
Maybe, but not always. I *love* difficult games that require decision making in combat (attack, block, or dodge) but never explored the souls series because of the slow/clunky combat. I like high-speed, high-response flying all over the place combat (From's own Armored Core 4, Nier:Automata, Devil May Cry series, etc). After seeing the hype around Elden Ring, I looked for some build videos on youtube to get an idea of what was possible. I came across someone using Bloodhound's Step and decided to give Elden Ring a try, because that ability is more aligned with the style of gameplay I desire. And I'm LOVING it!
@@TatakaiEX if you like fast paced gameplay you can also check out bloodborne, it’s a lovecraftian themed fast paced dark souls, it’s fucking amazing, search gameplay from the game or if you want to be amazed then search “bloodborne orphan of kos boss fight”
I’m a first time Fromsoft player and I’ve have thoroughly enjoyed this game, every 100 hours so far. What I enjoy the most is watching Elden Ring videos and seeing an item someone found and I’m like “where the hell is that, I gotta have it” and then I go get it. I personally love this, it makes the game fresh for me and always exciting. Get something new, try it out and work it into a strategy, then rinse and repeat. It makes my play style always evolving. Obviously I find a lot of stuff on my own, but I love watching people’s videos who love the game as I do. Like this one!
me and my friends are sharing map markers and info like some sort of item hunting, this is by far one of the most interesting games to explore that i have ever played.
Exactly same for me, it's my first time and I too watch videos then see some cool shit then try to find them myself. I love how game even allows you to get those items you really want no matter how underlevelled you are.
The first quest i activated, i was walking around limgrave and someone said "hey" to me. I was really confused cuz there was no one in sight. I stayed in the area a couple minutes until i realized that that "hey" came from a tree, and it transformed into a person. This made fromsoft's design philosophy very clear to me. If I can get a quest from a tree, and it doesnt even really tell me what the quest is except for tree guys dialogue, clearly they want the process of completing a quest to be about the journey and discovery.
What I love about the game, is that everyone will have a different experience when they play. One person can do a melee only strength build, and only follow the main path and beat the game that way. Someone else will do a magic build, and spend 100 hours exploring every inch of the map. The path everyone will take is also going to be different. Some people won’t even go to Caelid, or the weeping peninsula, or volcano manor. The amount of optional content in this game is staggering. It also makes the game more replayable. I can’t wait to start my second play through to find all of the stuff I missed. It’s so rewarding when you discover things. I cleared out all of the capitol city (or so I thought), and then when I was back at round table I talked to an NPC that gave me a key for a door in the sewers. I was surprised that there was sewers down there. I decided to go back and check it out. Eventually I found a tiny well, that is easy to miss. You jump down there and there is a huge underground area. There’s even a dungeon within that dungeon. It took me a few hours to clear that area, and by the end of it I was blown away that all of this was just hiding under a well that most players will miss. This is the best game I’ve ever played. There’s not even a close second.
U have to go to caelid to beat the game I think to activate the lift of dectus u need the medallion piece at fort faeroth, but oh yeah there is a hidden secret passageway also to get there with a dragon boss fight :)
@@millyrock6420 You actually don't even need to go up the Lift of Dectus, there's a mountain pass off to the side that takes you up to the Altus Plateau
The reason I enjoy these games is how mysterious and secretive it feels to play, it actually feels as if you’re in that world or realm that Elden Ring takes part in. Just like irl we don’t know a whole lot unless we take the chance and or plunge to discover it ourselves. With the game giving us no guidance or quest logs it simultaneously gives each player a unique gameplay experience more of an impact to the player themselves for each player will experience the game in their own unique way.
It is exactly that feeling of mysteriousness that makes me want to play this game. And the exact reason why i have no interest in Horizon Forbidden West.
I've literally never once thought to myself "I wish this game had more cutscenes where I can just passively sit and be fed information instead of PLAYING A GAME" for any game ever.
Yes i was thinking exactly the Same Thing If used Here and there they are fine. But WHO just plays a Game and thinks to Themselfes "wow i would rly Love a cutscene right now"
@@notoriouswreck3237 i used to love cutscenes in games because they were so rare. I remember the awesome feeling I got watching cloud ride down the steps on a motorcycle in ff7 when I was like 8. Nowadays every game has a cutscene every 5-10 minutes. I got far cry 6 on sale, I thought ah screw it I liked far cry 5 those games can be good dumb fun. Little did I know the entire 2-3 hours of the expierience are nothing but scripted events and cutscenes. It’s like Ubisoft doesn’t even know what’s fun about their own games. Filling a sand box with interesting locations and fights that I can chose to tackle how I please is the only reason I want to play a far cry game. Now it’s an RPG-light narrative driven game with a voiced protagonist.
@@michawkwalter4205 there are really few cutscenes but they are so memorable, "someone must extinguish thy flame" and "i command thee knell" (to quote cutscenes from the trailer) are short and badass and will be remembered far longer than most other game's cutscenes.
But I do feel a bit disappointed we didn't get an amazing CGI cutscene intro like in Dark Souls 1 as for cutscenes during gameplay, they can be annoying when I'm just waiting to regain control of my character.
This design philosophy definitely has had its ups and downs over the years. I remember being extremely frustrated at dark souls 3 for hiding its early pyromancy trainer in a little corner that is easily missed in the undead settlement: To get there, you have to jump off a bridge onto a ledge to a 'secret' bonfire, then walk out of the room where you are purposefully placed facing AWAY from the direction the pyromancy trainer is. So you you then have to turn around, climb some stairs, kill some dudes, and then walk across what seems like a ledge you can't walk on to find him. I don't mind subplots and npc storylines like Rogier's to be well-hidden and easily missed. In fact, I think that's a brilliant move. It makes everyone's experience unique and gives friends things to talk about and show each other, making the game all the more memorable. I do, however, mind when an NPC that is pretty much essential for one type of character build is hidden in such a manner. I went into dark souls 3 wanting to play a pyromancer, and it was incredibly defeating have to look up where the trainer was about a third into the game because they put in him in such an easily missed spot.
He wasn't hidden at all, right after the boss fight with the tree, there's a set of stairs that takes you up to the area where he resides. You're just bad at exploring.
"I helped a stranger once and she didn't even tell me where she would go next so i could write it down and get involved in her life when i feel like it" *Truly immersion breaking.*
Funny thing is many at times when they do tell you where they're going, these fools just skip the dialogue. And then complain why there's no quest log.
@@arcanefire7511 yeah exactly , and even when they don't , they'll either be at an important locations / site of grace or give you a clue as to where they're going
Huh... ya know... that uh... remember the Activison/Blizzard information about the harassment and bizarre sxxual stuff that the public became aware of in the last year? It's almost like these game companies are staffed people who are... ya know... nevermind. Maybe that's related to these bizarre quest designs that western companies do. *Gives NPC the 5 fish I was asked for* OH WAOOOW YOURE MY SUPER BESTEST FRIEND NOW. WE'RE TOGETHER TIL THE END. HERE'S 300 PHCKING GOLD COINS MUTHERPHCKER. I LOVE YOU.
I remember once someone expressing their view in these games to me as something like ''In a world of spoon-fed trackers and unmissable hand-guided experiences with a one way only, this sort of games rely on only the player to decide both how to interpret experience and progress, it's up to you to do the tracking, the solving and the advancing'' Which, I personally agree with. Now, these sort of designs in games are not bad, we've been implementing these as quality of life, but it doesn't mean they reign supreme as absolute bests, specially for a series of tittles known for their difficulty. The souls style of game is, while frustrating at many times, one of the most rewarding in my experience, progress, findings and lore digging all feel very satisfying due to the fact, most of the time these results were achieved by you alone, without more directions than a vague purpose. All in all, it really comes down to preference, I personally respect how they've maintained their style for the most part, that while introducing more streamlined changes and options, along making it more new player friendly to some degree, it retains it's ''we know who we're targeting, we don't care if you like it or not, so long they do''
Similar to other comments I've seen, I do love how their quest design is subtle, that true self-discovery is fantastic. The open-world nature can unfortunately hurt this style though since you can go through a later area for a quest before you progressed the quest in another. They do give you more hints in this game than previous titles to help account for that, but I've run into a handful of quests that don't seem to give you any hints between specific quest points, making it feel a bit frustrating and confusing to any who want to find it. I hope they add some extra dialouge at some points for quests to actually give a hint to their next location and possibly an in-game way to keep track of dialogue.
You nailed it. I've been a AAA developer for over 10 years and I've seen this attitude over and over. It boils down to this: designers refuse to allow the player to have agency. They want to control the experience like a film director controls the emotions of their audience. This is not film and players know when they are being corralled and coerced into doing and feeling a certain way. That's not to say that linear games cannot work; they obviously can. But I do believe that their power over audiences is waning. Players can get a tightly manicured experience from Netflix. But games can provide so much more when designers set their controlling tendencies aside and concentrate on building a sandbox rather than a rollercoaster.
Yep. Its the "it's our job to tell you what to think" mentality of the hyper-left California elites, where many of these devs (the actual people, not the company) live or grew up around. That mentality corrupts everything it touches because it's the "first principle" that supports authoritarianism/slavery. The belief that you deserve to, have to, or should "lord" over any other person because you're "better" and they're "lesser" and must be trained/conditioned/controlled for "the greater good."
@@randomuserame LOL, thats right wing logic, their presumptions when they talk about vouchers, charity instead of government, private property and inequity.
@@randomuserame I think there's an element of personality/temperament and ideology involved in these types of design decisions. But there's other things at play too; for example many designers/directors are "failed filmmakers" who would rather be directing a movie in Hollywood. And many others simply got their design sensibilities "baked in" during the golden era of linear games, back when quicktime events and long cinematics were still cool. Personally, I think we need fresh blood. I can't wait to see what the Minecraft generation does once they get in charge of the design departments.
I actually like the way quests are done in Elden Ring it feels a lot less artificial if you're not given any markers (aside from that one quest that puts a marker on your map) and the sheer number of things to do in Elden Ring makes it so I don't really care if I miss things, since I'll probably find other things instead. There are a few things I find wack about Elden Ring, but this isn't one of them for sure.
I think the only thing I'm not a fan of with the quests is that you can fail for accidentally wondering a little too far in one direction.. but that's reaching for something to complain about. I enjoy this game.
How beautiful is a game, when an hour later after you sidetracked down the rabbit hole on 8 other things, that you remember, "oh shit, I forgot I had to go back and finish this quest/section"? This game will not get old and shelved for a while!
It's astounding to me how many people do not understand that you can NOT have enjoyable exploration in a game when there are quest markers pointing you to everything interesting.
Hit the nail on the head. If everything is marked, anything unmarked is automatically considered filler to me. Never really consciously considered that until now.
Once you get map fragments of an area you can find the major landmarks depicted on the fucking map, you can place markers, placeholder pins, and it's a optional quest. Obscure, sure, annoyingly easy to fail, arguably. But it's called a fucking notebook or remembering something important. I played skyrim and can't remember half of it like a shitty fever dream. I tried old school Runes scape and thought "this is the most tedious fucking busy work I've ever seen to pad out 2 hours to 12 months" .. these are my opinions, but my point is. Fucking realize there is more to something than at first glance, I know skyrim isn't that bad and runes runescape being better than just busy work, but if I didn't stop bitching long enough to look into them I wouldn't know. I know some of the hidden lore of elder scrolls, but someone saying elden ring is shallow compared to it is blatantly false. That sideshow had more info than the entirety of the main quest of skyrim.
I was born too late to explore the Earth, and too early to explore the stars. But I CAN explore beautiful, fictional or historical worlds in videogames. GameDevs: Hey, look, we already explored the map for you! Just click on marker to go to the secret! FromSoft: Hey, here's a large world to Exlore Other GameDevs: Uhh, FromSoft, your game is broken. It is clearly not like ours.
@@hossdelgado626 hell yea, even im not the target market for this type of obscure questlines so i just look em up online but i know people enjoy this so i dont go around saying it's bad design
@@juamibenito2558 Right? My only complaint is finishing a questline after 5 tries and you talk to the wrong person killing it. Legit my only issue, yet... it feels more real. Still annoying, but if someone asked me what I think should change it would not be on the list (now moon veil, that fucking weeb's wet dream. That thing can go to hell. I am sick of seeing it)
I've found so much in this game. And had no clue there was an under portion of Stormveil Castle. And I can't wait to miss more stuff and finally figure out what I missed. What a great game
Elden ring was one of my first from software games and I’ve never played a game as hard as this in my life, even though it is difficult it’s one of the best game I’ve played in months if not years. The difficulty of the game is what I’d have to say is what makes it fun
@Rensen86 I mean I wouldn’t call sekiro old… but Elden ring seems like the be all end all of fromsoftware games, I love that they have skills and such from sekiro in it. They took all the good from all their games and finally put it all together.
If you haven't played the first dark souls, I'd very much recommend you play it sometime, the way the map is built and interconnected to make such a small map feel so huge and rich is something very special. I'm usually terrible at navigating and remembering paths, yet even after all those years I can still recall pretty much the entire ds1 map. Also it's just a great game in general.
"The lack of quest markers" It's almost like the game has a map that expect YOU to place the markers you want, when you want. We get these fucking smooth brains every release. They actively refuse to engage the game the way the game wants them to, and then complain about it. Give it a few more weeks and they'll go away, like always.
Yeah but... there is a character who will mark your map for their quest... i dont get why no one else can leave a mark or give you some semblance of direction at times in that regard. Either way, id be fine with a journal log i can check at sites of grace. I dont need quest markers, just a log of crap to remember and cant misplace like i probably will irl at some point, lol
The problem is that since they leave the game not wanting to learn, their negative impact affects the game, and affects the reviews. In the end people are giving Elden Ring a worse score than it deserves for not wanting to take the time to learn how a game that goes against the standard, overly-accessible formula of modern AAA game development goes. Some of these reviews actually have the gall to ADMIT the game isn't for them and STILL leave a bad review, as if I'd leave a bad review on a sports game because I don't like playing them. Elden Ring still isn't perfection, most games cant be, but I'd still be willing to give it an 8.5 even up to a 9.5/10, because I've played DS3, and I understand that these games need to be learned first, and then with experience I've already had, it allowed me to further enjoy this game much sooner than if I was a new player.
@@SeasoningTheObese Yeah, I don't care for the reason. You want my help, you tell me where the fuck I gotta go, or a general idea. Ranni, is perhaps the perfect example of it. Too many "secrets" Ah, you did what I asked, k, thanks, heres a this weird ass statue... "What do I do with it?" "Whatever you want" ". . . Oh and here's a doll" ". . . What?" "You gonna talk to it?" "Uhh, no" *Stops at random grace site....* "Yeah I ain't talking to it." *Stops at Grace Site in Nokstella* "TOTALLY GONNA TALK TO IT SUDDENLY!"
I respect FromSoft. They have a vision for every one of their games and they stick to it. They don't give in and cater they hold their ground. I respect it and it's why they're one of my favorite studios. They're one of the few studios out there that really put love and effort into their games and aren't out there trying to chase some trend.
The only trend I've observed them follow is making DLC for their games, which I can't hate them for since it's usually reasonably priced and of good quality.
Yeah, except the deeper issues with this issue. Like certain characters giving you wrong directions or certain items giving you vague descriptions on a Huge map and you frustrate yourself riding around for hours in the wrong places according to description. Characters changing position on a Huge map with no way of knowing where they are, easily missable even in front of your nose. Quest memorization without the option to repeat dialogue, again, on a Huge map. That stuff works in DS1 because it's way smaller here the game is trolling you with half done quests, invisible walls and absurd hidden locations. Quest tasks that you can't progress without beating certain bosses without knowing it, again wasting time in frustration until you look up a guide and spoil the experience out of frustration. There's a difference between doing it yourself and the game hindering you playing it. You could argue it's that way so players help eachother out through multiplayer. What if I want to solo? What if I don't want someone to tourguide me through the game? What if I want to see the game content that I paid for? What if I don't want to replay the game a hundred times or look for characters on a Huge map with a quest but no clue where to find them? This is bad game design deliberate or not. Unless looking up guides for playthrough was intentional.
I believe that the reason From Soft left some things the same, is that they have learned the important lesson that, sometimes the hardest thing to do, is nothing. Instead of continuously tweaking something good, until it becomes crap, they've made the conscious decision to improve the things that need improving, create some new things, and leave the good things, alone.
As I’m reading the comments I heard some guy passing my house telling his friend, excitedly, “golden seeds allow you to get more flasks” I love the community built around this game, non-souls players being brought in by vets, etc.
Im absolutely loving how this community has evolved. Had an interaction with a guy who religiously proclaimed that this game was stupid, broken, unfinished, etc. Until I broke down how the game is SUPPOSED to be viewed (being built as a community effort), to explore when things are locked and to seek help when something is stumping you. Suddenly a few days later and now he is telling me how excited he gets when he jumps in and how he's gotten his friends into it and they try to help each other through bosses and travel the map looking for "good drops" and it's the most beautiful thing to me
@@adventpsyop i like the souls community even if they are toxic or rude - not trolls though. I choose them instead of a fanbase full of SJW and lefters and political bullshit. These days companies make games for them just to have a dedicated fanbase.
Personally, I'd love a journal that told me what quests I had started, and if they were completed. I don't really need a progress tracker or marker, but there is SO MUCH in the game, I would *love* to know what I'd already done hours later. That said, people who think it's "poorly designed" doesn't understand how design works. I am not kidding. The *design* is that it's a bleak and confusing world. You're stuck in a cycle of life and death, days passing into months into years with the world in stasis. How much could you really keep track of as you were stabbed, burned, frozen, or had your mind melted through madness? It's a *design* choice to be as difficult to manage everything. It's *well* designed in this regard, even if others may not have done that design *personally*. That's something people don't get. Bad design is stuff that doesn't work, not things they personally wouldn't do.
No, no no no. If you forget what you did, the game shouldn't help you. If you missed a line of dialogue and want to hear it again, the game shouldn't let you. If you forget an NPC's name from when they first introduced themself.... Well, the latest update ruined that example by putting them on the map, but I think you get my point here. Most games you can mash through the dialogue of every character and then just look at the journal and you'll have missed nothing. There's no purpose in even paying attention, its a waste of your time. But Elden Ring? I feel like I'm being rewarded for every little thing that I've remembered, every little note I've scribbled down on the pad of paper next to me. Every little marker I leave myself on the map. Keeping track of things, for once, is actually appreciated and rewarded by a video game. And that makes me want to pay attention even more, and not miss a single word, and try my best to understand the lore. Everything feels so important to pay attention to, so I pay attention way more than I do with any other game, and I get very invested in the game's world and story and characters, and the game rewards me for that too, and it's just this amazing beautiful cycle.
@@cleverman383 You very blatantly misunderstand my point, and also that people have different subjective tastes. You might enjoy it, not many people enjoy having to remember hundreds of lines of dialogue for one obscure statement to continue the quest to get a specific item from a place that isn't marked on the map or explained in order to get the ending that they want. I'm not saying the game should point you exactly where to go for each quest, or for any quests. It's just tedious to track things without an in-game journal. Let me explain; I have no trouble keeping all of the information for the quests in memory. It's a skill I've developed over a long time. I don't *need* a journal for quests for a game like this. I *want* one so I can relax. I don't want to put that much into remembering everything flawlessly. I don't even need detailed notes, something like "Hyetta asked for a fingerprint grape." Is enough. All I want is to be able to relax rather than have to be switched on for every damn line of dialogue. I love listening, I hate memorizing the lines.
@@KodyackCasual It's interesting to me that you would feel that way about a FromSoft game in particular. When you look at their iconic brutally harsh combat, it's clearly a game that absolutely wants you to put extra effort into it, and always be switched on, not to relax. No one familiar with their games would say these kinds of things about that combat: "You might enjoy combat in FromSoft games, but people have different tastes, and not many people enjoy dying to the same boss for 5 hours straight just to get the outcome they want. I could dodge every attack from any of the boss fights, it's a skill I've developed over a long time, but I don't want to be forced to need to, I do the combat so I can relax. I don't want to have to be switched on for every damn dodge roll, I love boss fights, I hate memorizing movesets." Now obviously I'm trying to convey my point of view here, so if some of those comparisons to what you said seemed a little too extreme or exaggerated, feel free to take it with a grain of salt. After all, it's not about whether it should be AS difficult as the combat, I really just want you to understand the angle at which I'm viewing this aspect of the game design, the perspective that I'm looking at it through a similar lens that FromSoft designs the rest of their games. They like to make players have to be on their toes, fully focused on the task, brain fully active and switched on, all of that. They want you to be in that state when you try to achieve a goal, so that you feel satisfied and accomplished when you complete it. Perhaps I'm wrong about that. But if it's true, doesn't it make sense that they would approach the design of quests and open world design the very same way? There are games that I love to play when I want to turn my brain off, relax, and have fun without being pushed to a challenge. But that's just not how I've ever seen FromSoft games as being, especially before Elden Ring, I don't think that's too controversial of an opinion, right? So, following that same logic, that's how I expected the new open world stuff to be too. If they do everything else that way, then why would it be any different? And that's where you and I seem to differ in our views. I never expected any part of Elden Ring to be relaxing. I expected the entire game to want to challenge me as much as it can, and to require me to always be "switched on" even outside of combat. Perhaps you went in with a different type of expectations? Maybe you hoped it would be something less intense to do as a break between tough fights? I'd be genuinely curious to hear.
@@cleverman383 I think the difference is quite obvious; one half is open world, the other is boss fights. I *expect* to be ready and aware for a boss fight. It's active thought. Memorization of random overworld events isn't. It's passive and long term, during the part of the game that's meant to be there to destress from the fights. It's *because* the boss fights are intense I want the exploration to be more relaxed, savvy? I've played all the souls game, and Sekiro, and have done NG+ a bunch, pvp'd, done other challenge runs, whatever. But I opt into that challenge and and am ready for it and can take it in doses. Large scale memorization/note taking is not the same thing, nor is it active. It's, again, tedious. Would you feel the same way if every fight was the difficulty of Margit? No, you wouldn't. The game would be painful to play if every enemy had the moveset, hitboxes, and output that Margit has. This is even assuming their health and damage isn't changed too, but throw that in and I think you get my point. I'm not switched on when in the round table talking to NPCs too frequently. I'm not super focused on what Kenny boy is telling me about his fort, I'll get to it later. I'm switched on for the boss fights, mini-boss encounters, and to a much lesser extent, the random enemy fights on the way to my destination.
I was so used to finding all the hidden walls in DS3 by looking at all the player messages, and I genuinely gasped in excitement when I found my first hidden wall on the way to the carian mansion because I thought they got rid of them. Finding intentionally hidden parts of the game is actually fun
Never played a game from these guys before and I usually despise ”open world” games yet this game intrigues me at every turn. Usually I get so booreed because what you usually do in open worlds is ”follow this, follow that, do this blablabla” but here I just wander around. I didnt find margit until I was about 20 hrs in because I simply didnt go that way, yet I did sooo much stuff in that time. THIS IS AMAZING. Looking like it might be one of my favourite games, ever.
Thats this game key element, you dont have to follow the path, in fact, Thats a bad idea, you explore and find stuff so organically, actually, as a soul veteran, the only real reason to start a new+ story is the incress in dificulty or a special side-quest. In elden ring starting again means finding more stuff to do! This game is already at my top 3
@@joseroa5243 I believe you actually have to start a few new game pluses if you want EVERYTHING but you don’t need everything. Within 30 mins you can make any build op. Just look at all the guides on UA-cam
@@ectsy better, that means i've a year of content to explore, and i dont have to worry about finishing the game for the next reléase. I like my 60 dollar game to have 60 dollar content.
It's one of the few modern open worlds that I love. Most open worlds just feel too similar, like I'm playing the same game over and over. My favorite open world games are Skyrim, RDR2, BoTW, and Elden Ring. AC Origins gets an honorable mention for it's attention to detail and unique setting.
I found myself a bit lost yesterday while playing elden ring, and didn't know where to go (despite the obvious directions the grace gives you) until i found an entrance to some underground content, and i thought it could be just a regular dungeon and don't provide me with any progress whatsoever, but i decided to go in and complete it in case it gave me some sick weapon or magic. I died many many times, and the level design convinced me this was a main area b ut it wasn't until i had to search in google for a way to progress further in the dungeon that i realized this wasn't a main area to explore and progress, it was an optional area, and it kind of blew my mind the amount of level design put into a simple entrance in some random point in the map that probably a small portion of the playerbase ever found. Elden ring really does mean it when it says it wants to give each player a different experience.
@@mangoman1096 idk but there was a part where you could ride a chariot and you fought a bloodhound in another part and could get 2 dope armor sets. The boss was just a duped radagon wolf but still
@@perseus1293 Was this the Gelmir Hero's Grave? That dungeon was a bitch to get through. Did you find the secret area behind the lava after the first chariot?
My favorite thing about this minimal information is the organic moments of discovery. I’m heading over to the big tree in the middle of the woods to see what it’s all about, when I stumble upon a seemingly inconspicuous stone shack, which turns out to be an elevator to a massive underground world. I’m traveling through the weeping peninsula and I find a shiny lamppost. I inspect it and it creates a ghost that makes a trail of golden shit to a hidden cave that has its own boss. These moments are so exciting and really underline how FromSoftware perfected the essence of how an open world should feel.
it definitely feels like a love letter to an older generation of gamer. not everything is spelled out, things are purposely hidden, difficult, and sometimes frustrating. we will be finding secrets about this game for the next 10 years; and almost everything in elden ring CAN be easy but if you feel entitled to win just because you walk into a boss room at level 10 then thats your fault not the games.
@@Lufanos its this generations ocarina of time. which i find interesting that zelda games dont care if you can beat them either, but nobody complains about them compared to elden ring lol
One way to leave a mildly annoying comment is to tell a story that doesn't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the giant crow to Lordran. I needed a new lining for my greaves. So I decided to go to Londo, which is what they called Lordran in those days. So I tied a shabriri grape to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the crow cost something smooth or silky, and in those days, smooth stones had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a Golden Rune [2]," you'd say. Now where were we... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had a shabriri grape on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have any fresh grapes, because of the rot. The only thing you could get was those big red ones...
"Fear of missing out" is always a source of burnout when it comes to games. I really enjoyed genshin impact at first when they game felt so massive and endless, but when it came to exploring every crevice of the game (via the third party interactive maps), the game became more of a chore and dispelled a lot of the illusion of an open world game. With elden ring, I really try to limit how often I would use any guides. After all, it would probably make multiple playthroughs all the better.
This is something I really struggle with a lot. I have the wiki open because god forbid if I get locked out of a quest or accidentally miss important gear (and if I miss an illusory wall because they're a real pain to find in this game). Trying to 100% the game took out a good chunk of the fun though and I screwed up in the beginning anyways (Boggart questline if you're curious) so it was impossible. I made another save file with a different build to spice things up, for a while I just did my own thing which was fun. I fell back into the habit of trying to get everything though 🤦🏻♂️ FOMO hits me really really hard in videogames, nowadays I try to 100% stuff in games
im already burnt out of elden ring tbh. Its a very good game but a lot of the catacombs and soldier camps I just skip now. At the start I went through all of thm because of fear of missing out but they all gave shit rewards and were reallly similar in layout and enemies it became boring. And then the fact that you can become a bit too overlevelled by going through all these areas. By the time I reached Radhan I was OP af and didnt get the same challenge a lot of other people had.
@@zerkalo2861 yeah no shit. The problem is a lot of them have shit items and are basically copypasted. That's why it sucks because they get boring and start skipping them. But then you miss out on the occasional one that actually has a very good item that you desperately need like a smithing stone bell bearing. Since they're all copypasted and boring you don't know which ones you have to do. Dumbass
I feel like their quest design helps with replayability as well. When I played ds1 for the first time, I rarely talked to npcs and it took me multiple playthroughs to find kaathe in order to get the dark lord ending because everyone else in the game tells you to link the flame. Likewise, in Elden Ring most characters will say that you need to "follow the guidance of the two fingers" and "restore the golden order" while others will tell you to go against the two fingers and rebel against the erdtree. This gives the players a choice which will likely affect the ending of the game and they can choose the opposite path on another playthrough.
Nah it's open world this time, you have to smell where some NPC's show up next, with the size of the world it's worse. I didn't mind the "quests" in previous souls games. They were serviceable but this time it's just so spread out and you get punished for exploring. Aka you go somewhere you don't know is further in the story while not walking into legacy dungeons and suddenly all the NPC's are go e or have relocated. Effectively skipping a step in the "quest" while you don't know if it already has failed or you skipped a step.
@@theblackbaron4119 bro it really doesn't take away from your experience if you mess up a couple of quests. If you didn't look up anything you wouldn't even notice. I recommend going through the game without any guides or spoilers for the first two playthroughs at least, see how much you can figure out by yourself. Or share your experiences with friends but not online. Enjoy
@@justinf7107 me and my friend bought it on release day, and we are kind of competing in progression "did you beat that boss already?" but honestly it's better if you just take it slow, and explore as you wish. It's so good to find things on your own.
The quest and item discovery design also end up bringing the community together to create a lot of guides for new players that do want to do every quest. Looking for a guide feels good in this game because you know the amount of work the creator put in. You really might have never known about that facet of the game if not for the community.
You're not wrong about the comunity. ER is probably the only game i've gone onto the wiki after the fact, saw the lack of details on a certain thing, and felt the drive (seeing the effort others have put in) to spend an hour writing the wiki page for it
This game can feel a lot like PoE around that, the obscure unexplained mechanics and lore leading to a massive community driven ressource libraries, with a wiki and builds every league
I am now on my 3rd journey and have played over 300 hours in Elden Ring. Yesterday we happened to have the same conversation on Discord about the topic. And my opinion on the subject was: That the developers planned the quest design and discovery of all fades/secrets EXACTLY THAT way! It's meant to be. Likewise, the developer is aware of how such games are played and experienced today. With all the information on homepages, conversations in voice chats and watching YT videos and Twitch streams. I think it was intended from the start that the tasks/riddles/content should be discovered together with communities/friends. That you exchange ideas in conversations and compare who experienced what and when.
These videos just keep getting better. The further I get into the game the farther I want to dive deeper in. It’s nice having content creators with the same insatiable cravings for more Elden Ring. The amount of discoverability in this game is insane.
"Unimpressive visuals" the amount of times I have stopped and just admired the scenery in elden ring, probably makes up half of the 95 hours I have in the game
I don't understand where people are pulling this argument, Elden Ring is one of the most beautiful games I've seen in years. I always pull out the telescope to just enjoy the view. Everytime I go to an interesting area, my wife points out how cool or pretty it looks. It may not have top of the line graphics, but style always dates better than visual fidelity. The game has great graphics for what it is.
@@SleepyMatt-zzz I think that the people who criticise the "graphics" or "visuals" aren't referring to game's visual style, art direction, creativity and what not, but rather to the technical aspect of graphics-the graphics engine, physics, level of detail, character models, animation etc. Compare Horizon Forbidden West's graphics to Elden Ring's. HFW graphics are exceedingly more impressive on a technical level, and it looks like a next-gen game, whereas Elden Ring... not so much, imo. That's not to say that Elden Ring isn't visually impressive, because it is, but this is thanks largely to the art direction, not really because of technical graphics wizardry.
@@VimDoozy Because the game isn't meant to be that? From was never known for having ground breaking graphics, horizon Is technically beautiful but I can't for the life of me remember a single place from the first game, and didn't even bother with forbidden west, that's the importance of art direction.
I feel like From has made this intentionally as an art piece. Let me explain. Ever since the first Dark souls, me and my brothers have been massive fans of the series. Each of us playing separately and finding different approaches and secrets in our playthroughs. This will inevitably mean that we do miss things, however it also gives us something by making our viewes truly unique. We've spoken hours about the previous games and how theres alot to find and see, alot of emotions to experience. Be it sadness from Solaire or Siegmeiers questlines to rage from a series of (totally not our fault, the boss sucks) deaths. This makes everyone see a different picture, a unique experience. It brings out emotions, just as art is intended. It is however just as a painting, not for everyone. And if you're incapable of enjoying a game where things aren't handheld for you then I suggest looking elsewhere. I'm sorry, but Fromsoft has their own vision and it is something me and alot of others will enjoy far more. Personally Elden ring is the first open world game I can enjoy since the S.t.a.l.k.e.r series since nothing really feels forced upon you. That is why I consider these games true art. For no matter which game they release people will cherish, love, admonish and hate all at once. But it will nevertheless always create Debate and discussions, and that is why it will be remembered.
My first play through, coming off of watchdogs and Valhalla was such a breath of fresh air. Yeah, the quest style is “old fashioned” but since every game I’ve been playing for the past seven years has had the same UI as the Witcher 3, it’s actually really refreshing
Elden Ring doesn't say to us how we should feel about jack shit. Instead it encourages us so we ourselves give meaning to our adventure. And self put meaning is the basis to our feeling of fulfillment, self realization. It's powerful, it's art.
Kinda weird reading this comment for me, considering I've played a game that much better suits this description than elden ring itself (NieR:Automata). So it makes me feel that this statement is really 50/50 on being right and wrong. It's right from a game design and gameplay experience perspective. It doesn't force you to play any certain way mostly, except maybe some bosses that require a certain way to play to feasibly kill (malenia). But thats a gameplay thing. Elden ring is not an emotional or philosophical journey, which this comment seems to imply. So, Automata for example fits the way you phrased it at least, much better. Idk if you mean it in an emotional, philosophical and critical thinking sort of way. If so, then it's phrasing miscommunication I guess. Again, just confused by phrasing since it doesn't seem accurate, but if the statement was just slightly altered then it would make total sense to me.
@@trevorveillette8415 lol not a philosophical game? I could write a doctoral dissertation on Souls philosophy / lore, and Elden Ring is really no different. A lot of it's just not being spoon fed with the explicit narrative
In my experience, FS makes games that feel so much deeper than a game. You get out what you put it, and I’m not ashamed or don’t feel weird saying that these games have taught me deeper meaning in many different aspects of life, through sheer cutscene, and npc dialogue. I sold this game and got it for Christmas, my birthday from parents and extended family within the course of three months. I sold two of the copies and realized in my mind that something wanted me to play that game. I picked up dark souls 1 in 2011 and the rest is history. As we all know 2 was shakey but I still respected it for what it was and also found much of it thoroughly enjoyable. Sekiro and 3 being even better somehow. Amazing series, passionate productions and an amazing fan base that keeps its game so icy.
I think their design is actually really smart in today's context. This game will eventually have a wiki that is completely filled out with every single hidden thing in the game. Players will share everything they've discovered with each other. Eventually there will be no secrets. You just have to look it up. Its up to the player whether they want that revealed to them, or discover it on the own. I can say for certain that the best feeling in the world is discovering a huge area or item because you paid attention and kept curious. Why ruin that sense of discovery for people out of some fear of "wasted development costs"?
Fromsoft has been doing such things since their very first game King's Field. No quest markers, no radar, not even interaction prompts, you don't even know if anything can be interacted and no soapstone messages to help you in the PS1 offline era. The way we played was by spamming the interact button with every step, randomly we would pull objects straight out of the flat ground, tombstones etc., and we would walk 45 degrees facing walls spamming interact and hope we don't miss a hidden wall. There's pros and cons to this, the experience can be both organic but tedious, there's a chance for discovery but for most people, it's going to involve reading and getting information from outside the game instead of from the game itself. It's just what it is, it's not the best nor the worst.
The way I found the depths of stormveil was that my gf found it first and I asked her how to get there. The absence of all the tools also plays on the online aspect of assisting other players and wants to reward people for participating in the community aspect
Unsubscribe!?!!?!! Never! Ur videos are way to unpolished and obtuse, theres no journal to keep track of everything youve said. The user experience is frankly terrible. 10/10 will watch again
You mean 3/3 lol
@@danielnolan8848 dude you right!!!
I gotta fix that!
This made me chuckle.
@@verygood4376 Your name makes me chuckle.
Besides, I’m sure UA-cam will determine that you are a bot for some reason and unsub you by themselves anyway 🤗
The Elden Ring Quest Experience:
"Hey, give this potion to Nepheli, and make sure she drinks it."
"Alright, where is she?"
"Shut the fuck up."
So accurate xD but i do love it tbh, i love those lil aha moments when someone mentions a name or location i tripped on earlier
bruh tru
True lol but Nepheli is easy mode, since she always goes back to roundtable after you find her for the first time in stormveil.
The real hard mode is Millicent. "I'm going on a journey, maybe we will meet again".
"Where?"
*leaves*
A more realistic continuation would be:
"Hey, give this potion to Nepheli, and make sure she drinks it."
"Alright, where is she?"
"We'd best be going now, and don't forget to give this potion to Nepheli, and make sure she drinks it."
"Alright, so where is she?"
"We'd best be going now, and don't forget to give this potion to Nepheli, and make sure she drinks it."
"..."
Bold of you to assume many of us even recognized her name even if we met her.
Every moment in Elden Ring is like an adventure. I always find myself going "whats next!" or "What shall I do today". Love the little to no guidance the developers make.
My Elden Ring catchphrase is "What's that over there!?"
Usually followed by a lot of screaming, sometimes out if joy...or out of horror.
@@AscendantStoic yah, I'm enjoying the "huh, something is over there...what is th...aaaaAAAH OH GOD NO! WHY!?!?"
@@Rodrik18 Lols, that was my reaction when I first "accidentally" ended up in Caelid and instead of getting to the nearest Site of Grace and going back to relative safety I decided to explore, and saw one of those tyrannosaurus dogs, immediately noped out of there 😐
That's it. I play with my gf. When I get home and turn the console on she asks me "what are you going to do today?"
This is the first game that give me this feeling of freedom that I can pick what to do not only follow the marker to the next quest
And guessing if that big-ass critter in the distance is a boss or not
Elden Ring in my experience. Was the first time in a long time I felt like I was on an adventure. I wasn't on a tour, I had little guidance, and there was adversity everywhere. I love FromSoft for giving me an opportunity to be the adventurer I never could be in other games and get lost in a beautiful, if not ruthless world, where I have to create my own legacy instead of having it already predetermined for me.
right ? when i played horizon i felt that i was just the puppet making whatever i was commanded to do. "oh i should use my focus" "oh i should enter this cave" "hmmm maybe I should follow those footsteps" shut the fuck up aloy and let me play the fucking game
Ive play this game from day one with my brother playing it next to me. We have both had two completely different experiences by not sharing info with eachother. I have items he hasnt seen and he has items i havent seen. This game is the only adventure game ive ever played that feels like MY adventure and not the same adventure everyone else has had.
@Ordinary Opinion Trust me. Once you beat it that first time, you come back and bend it over the second.
@@adamhinckley5062 it's so cool man. I play with friends and we keep on sharing our maps and they are totally different even in same areas and then we coop to guide one another to loot and fun areas to run pass and murder everything and get invaded and kill invaders. this is such a fun game
@@qcydios new game plus for real feels like creative mode 💀
This is my first FromSoft game, and I dont usually play solo fighting-style games like this. Ive played about 200 hours and have loved every bit of it. I'm on my second character, and working toward killing every boss in game as well as finding every site of grace. I know there are quests Ive missed, and endings Ive ruined, and that just gives the game replay value. I like having to remember npc quests and dialogue. The game becomes mentally challenging as well rather than just skill-reliant.
Fighting style 😅 open wold rpg is the right way to say
This was a really great video, but I think you missed a point that I consider pretty integral to the design of Souls games. Fromsoftware does not expect everyone to find everything in the game on their own, and I think that's because they don't want players to only play these games alone. There are messages left by other players all over the world, and they made summoning more accessible than any previous game. There are gestures and even prattling pate items for rudimentary communication. They didn't make the game's content obscure so it wouldn't be played, they made it obscure so people would engage with their storytelling outside the game. Moreso than any other series I'm aware of, Souls games has an incredibly active community - perhaps not so large, but certainly very active.
Everything about the way these games are designed makes such a thing as the Souls community inevitable. I think that's part of the vision. Back in the days of the original Zelda for example, the only real way to find a lot of the game's content was to talk about what you find with friends, and I think Fromsoftware has that in mind when they hide away large amounts of their content.
Very well said, agree with yah
Agreed and well said. I vaguely remember reading an interview somewhere with Miyazaki for either DeS or DaS waaaaay back when, and how there was an intention of accidental discovery (such as finding an illusory wall because you were engaged with an invader and happened to hit it)and also discovery through both direct multiplayer and asymmetrical multiplayer. Without those core design philosophies the games wouldn’t be the same, even if they are more than perfectly playable offline.
Yes. This is compounded by the fact that the shadows and messages this time aren't left by other decrepit hollows, but your fellow brother-in-arms Tarnished. You're not summoning hobos to survive, but heroes to fight for glory. I almost think the trailer that says this game is a dark fantasy is a misnomer. It's closer to traditional high fantasy with ethereal soft magic permeating the world.
This
you can also voicechat with people these days.
like, the option existed in the past but it actually functions now!
This is my first Souls game, and the design approach is something that I can't stop thinking about. It demands immersion and attention.
Everything is up to the player, which gives them responsibility. You are responsible for listening to the person you walked up to and finding out what they're talking about, decoding where it might be, what you should try, what you're even looking for. You are responsible for expanding the world-map, seeking secrets, manually marking locations relevant to YOUR playthrough and returning to them when you are ready - not a quest log to clear a dungeon. You are responsible for paying attention to enemies, their movements, their moveset, inconsistencies and timing, not an attack indicator, or you will die and you will not progress until you're responsible enough to handle power. You are responsible for your character, your demise, improving and stats, your curiosity which leads to growth for pushing through the darkness and finding grace. Lift that responsibility and we're back to being handheld, and that isn't satisfying, subconscious knows it too.
Creativity is clearly better without boundaries.
The past few years it's been pretty apparent that people are doing away with things such as humility, sense of embarrassment, dignity, self worth (outside of perceived social rank for constant online virtue signaling). So it's no surprise that most want to be handheld. They want the easy way. And they aren't afraid to tell you they are too weak to actually put effort into anything they do.
Not everyone will like this game, i get that. But the amount of effort needed and ability to push through difficult situations, automatically disqualified a hell of a lot of people before they even started. And their strong feeling of FOMO is why you see so many angry reviews. They can't have you liking something they can't do!!
And yeah this is my first Souls game as well and i cannot get enough. Fantastic game.
Wonderfully said.
FromSoftware*
well said! The immersion is incredible. No handholding
Play dark souls 3 next and then play bloodbourne, bloodbourne is the best souls game and a fan favorite. It's Gothic horror mixed with elden ring and dark souls. The enemies are very disturbing and the whole adventure in like going through a Gothic horror nightmare. It's super hard at first. But my God the game rocks, If you want an even bigger challenge Sekiro is elden ring in Japan and you are a swift moving samurai named wolf
I explored Stormveil castle so much, that it felt larger than the entire area of Lothric from DS3. And yet I missed not only the item and scarab you showed on screen, but even the fact that Rogier had a quest in the first place. I'm a completionist when it comes to some games, and I thought I was playing Elden Ring with that intention, but the density of content is so overwhelming that despite my 150 hours into the game, I'm still missing so many things, and many more I'm not even aware of.
I guess I better let go of that FOMO and simply enjoy what I do find.
the souls series have always been a throwback to old school gaming imo. it's just a game that you have to figure out. all the complaints about ER's accessibility have made me realize just how dumbed down current games are. and there is a whole generation of gamers who don't know what to do when a game doesn't hold their hand.
@@jp-sn6si 100000%
I got into dark souls 1 because I was craving a game that felt as hard and obscure as games from the 90s, boy did I find what I was looking for.
Here we are like 6 games later (didn’t play blood or sekiro much tbh) fucking loving it
@@jp-sn6si Yeah accessibility is always such a funny talking point for me. I can't remember what game I started but before even starting the game there was a massive list of questions for accessibility. Why play a game if I get to make up all the rules? I dowloaded Sifu and will most likely never finish that game, it's just too hard for me, but would I play on an easier difficulty if there was one? no.
FromSoftware: +12m sales.
Ubisoft/Guerrilla Games: "You died."
All the more reason to embark down different paths and become a different elden lord in your next play through. I love Fromsoft because they allow you to pull so much from their games. Each play through I get to find and discover as much as I want and progress through the game at my own pace. The immersion for these games is immense compared to so many other triple A titles that pollute your HUD with quests, map markers, everything that hand feeds you.
I went from a "meh" on this game, as my very first From Soft game, to obsessing over it for the last two weeks, the fights are hard, the lore is deep, the secrets you can find are just mind boggling, I have 20 sets of armor in my inventory right now from just diving into every corner I can and I just found out today some of them have stat bonuses.. or that you can get buffs from your flasks also new to me today, even after 100 hours of play, I'm still finding things, thats just insane.
same but 2 months instead of 2 weeks
I feel like this game's core philosophy is "look harder". It's always asking you to investigate that weird noise. Or to go to the end of the cliff. No, not just look at the end of the cliff. Go to the end and look down.
This is my 4th From game and I'm so used to these mechanics that its second nature to me to just keep looking, because I know how the designers think - and I'm usually rewarded! They really know their audience.
Also, this game has SO many hints! It just doesn't spoonfeed you them. There are literally old codgers who will take you to dungeons, and statues that will point in the direction of catacombs. They deliberately place a scarab that makes noise near the entrance to the well in Leyndell so that you go looking and find it.
i gotta admit i love that detail he explained in the video about the bloodstain. that is next level woke nonsense that totally would have fooled me.
At this point I assume every note saying "no item ahead/ item ahead" and "secret ahead/ or try jumping" are absolute lies and I just ignore them unless something else catches my attention
@@zacharyjackson1829 i personally like to humor the messages for the hell of it. Its fun and sometimes funny to fuck around and find out what people may be hinting at. Or maybe it's just a message about a pickle
I've found a lot of awesome items by doing so. It really rewards you
@@jenbooob One time in Elden Ring I listened to the "secret ahead" message and I hit the wall and it was actually an illusion and got a free level 2/3 smithing stone
@@zacharyjackson1829 woke nonsense? Play offline more brudda, it's the best way to go for your first playthru. XD
Seeing designers react this way to a game getting good reviews while defying their design expectations demonstrates that the issue isn't that there are consumers who don't want their hands held, but that there is a good number of industry professionals who can't conceive value outside of the industry's increasingly specific set of norms. A game can be good without a series of stronghold fights and lookout points strung together by NPC's spoonfeeding exposition.
Yea, makes me sad thinking about the future of games, they've become more and more like movies and it seems the problem/reason for that on both sides is much bigger than I thought, when even professional designers see this great design as bad and amateur.
@@Failzz8 if you look at any major game or movie series you can generally see the artistic choices lose touch with what makes the property unique as new entries are created with choices intended to widen appeal. For example, I love Elder Scrolls and Fallout, but its clear that Bethesda's games have simplified leveling systems and quest design over time in order to make their properties more accessible for mainstream audiences. The general trend is alarming for FromSoftware in that Elden Ring is their biggest property yet.
I am so damn sick of stronghold fights
It's like Ubi and Guerilla both made open worlds, looked at each other and went, "Niiiiiiice." As soon as someone else does the same thing with their own company flare, they're all, "Wait, no, not like that!"
I legit laughed my ass off when I saw that the senior quest designer for horizon thought the quests are bad. I genuinely have little to no hope for almost all future triple A titles
Have you ever talked to someone about a game, and they tell you about something they found but you missed? Or maybe the other way around? It makes the game world feel big and believable, like you could get lost in it.
It’s a really cool feeling you can’t get when the game doesn’t let you miss anything.
Yes. This game takes me back to the times of the Nintendo and Super Nintendo, with kids starting dumb rumors on school about games and they seemed true just because games were so mysterious. And sometimes they WERE true. I was told about how to find the flute in Zelda A Link to the Past by a friend and went and did it in my game at home. That kind of experience is something I haven't had for a LONG time since childhood, and Elden Ring is exactly that game, it brings that back.
This game is fucking magical as far as I'm concerned, it's what gaming should go back to and be in the future.
I want the people who have turned my hobby into super optimized engagement metric driven live service garbage to leave forever, and if they think Elden Ring is bad then GOOD, hope they quit the industry.
@@steel5897 Did you know you can find mew under the truck in red and blue? Crazy right?
Also, the community aspect that this type of game creates is amazing. Telling you that you are not alone in overcoming something hard.
Skyrim felt like that too. "Did you do the XYX quest and speak to ABC and get the DEF as a reward?" Nope after 500 hours playing I still somehow missed that quest. As an aside, I'm just 30 hours level 52 Champion class wandering around Elden Ring seeing what I find and fighting everything in sight. It feels huge.
I've been chatting with a friend and my brother who also started the game at the same time, and we all have had different experiences and discovered different things. Its been amazing!
As a brand new souls player Elden ring has been absolutely amazing. Extremely difficult but amazing nonetheless. Well done fromsoft
This video along with the comments in the begining and Skyrim references only reminded me how much I love Morrowind and how much it is "unplayable" by a certain portion of new generation gamers.
No markers. There is a journal, yeah, but navigating through it (at least in the vanilla version) was a pain. You would have to keep track your progress in a textbook for example and keep it near you while playing, like on the real desk in the real world. I would write down the recipes for potions so I could remember how to create them and what ingredients to hunt for.
There was no compass, and you would get lost all the time. Sometimes you would delve into some cave, find some great loot and that would be the moment when you would want to teleport back to the city to sell all of that. Well, not at the low levels of the game - going back to the "civilization" was a quest on its own, your gear would break, your armor would be demolished, you would get diseases and at times you would encounter our most precious and lovely bone walkers... which would quickly skyrocket your creative process capabilties on how to get your stuff back home.
Even now, after playing Morrowind countless of times over the last 20 years, I can't say I have seen everything. There are still some places that I did not visit, some artifacts I did not find, some questlines I did not complete. And I am fine with that. I will probably play the game once again at some point and still miss tons of things.
With Skyrim, or even Oblivion, I don't have such a dynamic. I have once done all the quests in Oblivion just to clear the journal and since that time, the game did not suck me in one bit. Maybe Shivering Isles still has something to offer for me, but I just can't get back. With Skyrim, it is the same. The game feels like a chore, quests like something I have to do, just to clear the journal, to complete work - otherwise I have this feeling of non-completion. And I hate that feeling, I hate that the games became like that. And it's not like a bounced back from those games. In both of them I have hundreds of hours time spent.
Even in Witcher 3, the game I adore the most, I have found myself that I am charging through the map, from one question mark to another, just to clear them. There was no true exploration to it, I didn't get lost anywhere and I had no interest in doing so. I was just going from point A to point B, and then the next task.
And truth be told, some players will prefer that approach. I guess there is nothing wrong with playing games like that. But I certainly miss the times, when the game didn't tell you everything. That you had to immerse yourself in the world to truly admire it and find its secrets. That's why I also fell in love with Kingdom Come as well.
Some of these arguments don't stand gameplay-wise (you could say that it would be good if the players experience everything devs had created for them - or have the option to save the game at any point, just to save your time and keep your frustrations levels on "healthy"), but if the creators have done that deliberately, to totally change the experience from the one that has become mainstream - then I can truly respect that. And to see it sells - well, what else is there to say
Same here. I'm at level 174 to after 77 hours and I've most loved the game, however, I do have some complaints. I wish there was a way to track side quests, the story was more fleshed out, there were more cutscenes, and a few other QOL upgrades.
Same. Tbh if I had read those criticisms before actually playing the game while knowing that you really don't have any quest log, no magic marker on the map etc, I would have agreed with them because it sounds crazy... who can remember everything?? But actually playing the game, it just works! And I realize that all that guidance in other games actually amounts to clutter that is burdening my experience.
@@jadawin1137 At the very least, I think a small journal would be HUGE. Just to help out a little. I could do without quest markers, but a way to look up active side quests would be HUGE.
@@patryk_lewandowskiabc I enjoyed Oblivion and Skyrim, but Morrowind was truly the last great game Bethesda made, Elder scrolls used to be my favorite game series, sadly I don’t think we’ll ever see anything half decent from them again.
Because of how elden ring does quests and information. I’m actually paying more attention to what characters are saying, using what they say to hint me to where I go and just having more fun exploring. At first with the other soul games this was kind of not my thing but because of elden ring I’m planning on going back to the older soul games and actually play them. I am now starting to see why soul fans are so passionate about this series and just love how much freedom you are given in this series.
fax skip ds2 tho i found it not enjoyable idk why (still your choice if you want to play it) but 1 and 3 are awsome + you could give sekiro a try if you like souls like!
@@blackhero1312 that i think was the first one i tried the scholars of something i think. That was the one that kind or turned me away from series.
Yeah I feel a lot of complaints about stuff like, "no tutorial or explenation of how to do stuff" are spam skipping the prompts that explain everything in the game. They're also probably the typet that ran by the tutorial though instead of taking some time to look around.
DND taught me to always look at ceilings when entering an area and with this my first souls game my friends told me to treat it a bit like dnd. Which means observing your surroundings. Games really dont make you do that anymore.
@@Meowthix I think also since I had undiagnosed pretty bad ADHD I was just to prone to lose focus and not be able to pay attention on the little details. But ive noticed ever since I was diagnosed and on the medication im able to slow down a bit and be able to take in the information. And yea no tutorial didnt bother me since they are on the messages in the beginning of the game. I do wish when it comes to PC they actually had the key bindings and not the controller prompts.
This is my first Souls game and I remember seeing this young woman near a main road in the south. She told me that her home (Castle whatever) was having a mutiny or something amongst the help or something and her father was still there and could I give him something (a letter or somethiing) I did find him and told him I saw his Daughter.
After I cleared the place I eventually wondered what happened to her (Spoiler)>>
...I go back to the same spot and she is DEAD AF!!! Blood all over next to a big ass sword and her dead body. She just gone. Was not really a quest as I did not get anything and I am fine with that. But I will remember that for awhile.
It’s so refreshing to hear someone talk about stuff like this in a calm, well spoken, non-combative manner
He is an educated young man
"non-combative" ah contraire. he pours citrus on a laceration with each salable.
oh my god you just made me realise that most youtube videos are overhyped streamers screaming into their mic..
I feel like I fall somewhere in the middle of this debate. I love that Elden Ring doesn't hold your hand and I've never want quest markers, but I think that an in-game journal where you could see which side quests are active and maybe re-read an NPC's dialogue from the pause menu would be a nice addition.
It's so easy to get sidetracked in this game because of how enormous it is that I can 100% see myself just outright forgetting that I was supposed to be doing something for someone, a way to just refresh your memory would be appreciated for me.
Yeah I agree. It would not add any handholding, but would increase the fun of figuring out a quest.
the fact that you can ruin a quest with one bad choice or not doing it in the right order is too bad too
@@lafrencho1831 sounds to me like a good non-linear approach to game design and philosophy.
ikr, i have to constantly watch UA-cam tutorials: Fia Questline...
I would like to also add. A lot of what these games do is what makes an actual community around the game. When I am playing I see and find different stuff than my friend. We share details and experiences with each other. I have been talking with many people in different discord communities about the same stuff and they find somethings I haven't and I find stuff they haven't.
Even in this video. The quest you are talking about I did parts of it by accident. But i didn't find the bloodstain or even the NPC in the area before killing Godrick.
And that's what makes the game an Adventure. We are all a bunch of adventurers sitting in a digital tavern together swapping stories.
While the game does have some things to be legitimately criticized. I think many people are overlooking some of the magic Fromsoft's philosophy brings to us.
It feels like back in the day before the internet when everyone played a certain game and so many myths and stories were shared.
How many people have walked up to a wall that had a message saying hidden passage and bonked it just to see?
How many people tried to get Mew from under that truck?
best explanation to the game i’ve ever read.
It’s to fun and cool seeing swords or armor i never knew existed and searching or asking around to find out how to get it.
it’s like the community MAKES the quest lines.
YES! That!
In conventional RPGs these days you are interactively playing out a set story, not unsimilar to passively watching it on Netflix. Sure, your character might lorewise not know where to go or what to do, but you do, because you have all the questmarkers etc. in your interface. You are thereby detached from your character. Player and Character are not the same thing.
In Elden Ring you are MAKING that story on your own. You are not consuming someone else's adventure, you are going on the adventure yourself. You are your character / the adventurer in the tavern.
When I hear that there's a secret in an area I keep an eye to the ground looking for messages from helpful players.
@@beersandxanax The community making quest lines is an amazing way to put it!
Poor Mew, still stuck there...
I always considered this style of quest design as similar to an Alternate Reality game, in that the intention is for it not be solvable by one person but solvable by an entire community. The fun is piecing it altogether with the help of the entire community searching through the game. This philosophy permeates into it's game design and narrative design as well, as mechanics often have hidden attributes that are never explained and require people to go in and test it and then leave guides about it. Narratively you never truly understand what's going on until you have lore masters and their communities piece things together and make videos on it. I personally love this, and it gives people a lot to talk about and allows the game to market itself in a way (so many guides and youtube videos are made because of this). Games are not supposed to create solutions for us, they are supposed to give us problems to solve. If it was solutions then they are merely repetitive chores to do. But as problems they are challenges to overcome.
I agree with you. If you want to know all the game has to offer, you must praise the sun and get into jolly cooperation!
You cloud also Do this game while maintaning your own quest journal, this game is just pure adventure
Kinda similar to easter eggs too. The devs go out of their way to hide these things that finding them feels like a freak accident. This encourages the playerbase to discuss and see what it meant and if there were more to be found.
I feel bad for people who find this kind of quest design "bad design".
@@Ipunchips i forsee a future in which we use an app with cool eye candy to personally type down quest related info, separate from the game, third party for all open world games that hopefully take the mantra of this one
a true metaverse
“It’s the price that they pay for making sure the things that you do find feel more valuable” that makes so much sense. Most RPGs i’ve played i get so overwhelmed with npcs and quests telling me where to go i simply stop caring at some point and start skipping dialogs. On Elden Ring, i’m so incredible happy whenever i find an NPC, and get very invested on progressing their stories and finding out what the next step should be. It’s my first souls game and i wasn’t used to this but i love it and really wish all games were like this
Well said, I feel exactly the same.
I feel you… It’s quite depressing looking at a quest tab and see that you have 23 open side quests because every npc got a grandma and you are the chosen one to deliver milk and eggs to them. 😫
THIS!! Thanks for saying this! My first one as well! I got overwhelmed as well.
Me too. Usually I loose interest in story and dialoge at 30% of what open games have to offer.
The fact that souls games have so few friendly npcs makes you care about them that much more.
I'm gonna be honest. Being as I'm many, many hours into this game, and loving it, I don't see how I'm ever going to enjoy the traditional rpg design ever again. This game is that good. The feeling of adventure, fear, shock, joy, RAGE, is undeniable and yet oh so satisfying. More developers need to design like this. Enough with the hand holding. It's so boring and insulting. Rock on Elden Ring!
The thing is that this game, and other Fromsoft titles, are actually so much more like the traditional RPG. Fucking Horizon and assorted ubishit are not even remotely RPGs.
yeah tired of hand holding. the actual arrogance of some of these people saying skyrim has a superior story just blows my mind.. it was cookie cutter 12 year old content for when we were that age. it's now old and dated, gamers grew up and want better story and less hand holding
You should try out Outer Wilds if you haven't. It's a space mystery & there's no combat, but most everything in the world is simulated. There are a lot of details that make it feel so visceral & memorable, like no true quest markers, the map being a real overview of exactly what's happening in the solar system you're in, & that same feeling of exploring a world where people are still alive but you can tell it's past it's prime & are discovering things that happened in the past.
If you do decide to give it a shot, DO NOT spoil anything in the game for yourself. The main mechanic is a 21 minute time loop, so once you know how to finish the story, you can do so in those 21 minutes, so spoilers can hugely damage your experience. It started out as a student project & I've honestly never seen so much love & passion poured into a world before. You're deeply rewarded for exploration & finding things through your own deduction.
I've gone on long enough, but I seriously can't stress just how special of an experience it is. I'm not usually the type of player who enjoys "walking simulator" type of games, but Outer Wilds kept me deeply engaged til the end despite it not having combat.
@@arisumego yea that’s cool and all but don’t fix your lips to talk down on Horizon
@@arisumego Ubisoft and other "accesible" games definitely messed up the rpg image. I honestly do not miss the quest markers and journal with the quests listed (although it's quite hard to memorize what all the npc's tell you)
Something I think would be a good middle ground is if whenever you talk to a new NPC you could get a note in your inventory with their name, picture, and their dialog. I think that would be more than enough to alleviate some frustrations and still let the quests be obscure and lead to multiple different outcomes.
But also wouldn't follow FromSoft design philosophy as player experience is concerned. I love the lack of direction, the ability to explore and experience the game in an almost truly unique way.
@@excaligirra Y'all kiss Fromsoft's ass like they're the supreme deities of videogame development. They aren't perfect. No one is. Simply accepting glaring faults in something while claiming it's a "design philosophy" is stupid.
@@excaligirra i dont think having a note about a friendly npc you met during your journey would get rid of that philosphy, if they did it where it showed u exactly where to go to find em next then of course it would, but i think the op has a solid idea, in my head it would make more sense to just have a note about the npc and key words that youll hear again, i think it adds to that experience tbh gets you more invested
That whole part about Rogier's questline has me absolutely stunned. The gargantuan sized testicles needed to put a whole entire questline behind something so small is astonishing, yet it works so wonderfully well. Elden Ring really is peak game design, and this is only confirmed by everything new I learn about the game
I was wondering if there was a way to help him. Welp, guess I'll have to wait until next run!
I COMPLETELY missed him moving to where he does after Stormveil on my first file.. I wonder how much else I missed :)
There's a second way into that questline that a lot more people are likely to find -- if you find the black knifeprint just from exploring around (its location is marked on the map as pretty clearly a location where *something* interesting is), next time you talk to him, you'll end up starting his quest that way.
Ass quest design. Impossible to know puzzles. Some things so vague you have no idea what to do unless you google it: “amazing quest design “ my ass
SPOILERS FOR EARLY GAME QUEST
While watching this it dawned on me that I've never been one to do side quests in open world games. That said, every time I've come across an NPC in Elden ring, I almost instinctively go out of my way to do their quest rather than what I was in the middle of. Before I fought Margit I ended up finding Irina, delivering her letter, fighting the Leonine Misbegotten, and finding her father at her corpse. A completely optional part of the game, but given the way quests are done in Elden ring, I wanted to do it. The way these quests are portrayed as just people with problems makes it feel natural (at least for me) to help them, while other games portray nearly all quests like a list of chores. 10/10 Will sadly witness Irina die again.
Exactly
This isn't just "quest recieved"
It's a case of "This person needs help and they ask you. What kinda douche would I be to say no o.o"
That quest gutted me. I was so happy to go back and see them reunited. I was cursing myself for bypassing all the enemies that waylaid her coach on my way to the castle. I wonder if you do the whole thing in one go without letting the enemies respawn and travel back to irina in between if there's a way to save her.
@@Empinada God, yeah, it's pretty depressing, and the quest itself is full of unreliable narrators. At least Irina and her father are unreliable narrators! Look around the castle, especially at the dungeon and the fact that the WHIP is found there, and you'll discover that the misbegotten are far more gray than we were led to believe. They're not monsters who plotted to murder a just and noble ruler, they're servants or slaves who were mistreated for far too long, and rose up against their oppressors. Did Irina need to die? No, but unfortunately such anger often becomes indiscriminately destructive.
Later on you can find an area with lots of dead Misbegotten.... Something, something
@@Empinada like a “kill the little head lamp crabby things to save Solaire” kinda thing? Hmmm 🤔.
Also, anyone else notice that the Dung Eater wears Solaire’s sun symbol on his neck? I wonder what that’s about. Also, why is he colored like an invader in the Hold? (If it’s revealed in his quest don’t tell me. Thanks 🙏)
The quest design is what hooked me when I first got into Souls games. The not knowing exactly what to do next to advance the quest, having to actually pay attention to dialogue and the area was amazing! It was a feeling I hadn’t experienced since playing SNES games as a kid. I understand these games aren’t for every one, there’s nothing wrong with that, but people saying the games aren’t polished are just foolish.
From Soft games have the worst questlines I've experienced. A guide is practically essential for Elden Ring if you actually want to finish questlines.
Right? It blows my mind that people would rather have the "go exactly here and do exactly this" style of mindless side quests. Granted, that style works for a lot of games. But it's just so much more natural and intriguing to HEAR an npc and figure out how to help them yourself.
Edit: you mentioned haven't had experienced it since SNES games, souls quests bring me back to Morrowind.
It's called "not spoonfeeding/handholding".
Old-school RPG's do this a lot.
Some of Them have NO tells however, like hyettas questline, she just teleports random places and expects you to find her
The thing about quest trackers is that it doesn't achieve any amount of immersion in the game because it just becomes a stream of doing favors for people and pulls you away from the environment because your attention is now on the quest marker. An open world isn't truly open world and free with quest trackers because instead of exploring as you want your now more likely to just go do what the tracker tells you to do.
Just a few days ago me and my friend were exploring the Academy and I was hitting every wall in a room hoping for an illusionary wall. He was like "there's no illusionary wall here bro" after like a minute, and the next swing I took I opened up a hidden pathway. We both popped off and it was super awesome. This hard earned bonus is what the Souls games are about.
The amount of visual clutter present at 4:53 makes me appreciate Elden Ring's UI and acutely aware that if the game had a mini map and those silly question mark icons, I'd be far less likely to explore as thoroughly as I have been
If i knew where every goodie or talisman was I wouldnt have looked around every cliff and corner
Press X to activate tarnished sense 😂
The map design is also especially inspired, the way they lay it out is almost to the point of actually having markers bcos it's quite easy (IMO) to say "there's probably something near by there" and lo and behold I've literally only missed around 10 or so dungeons I discovered from a map online.
Don't mind that picture, just look at 4:47. That's not a joke HUD but how it actually looks like in game... I really enjoyed HZD and had even bought Forbidden West deluxe edition (although Sony canceled my purchase due to lack of stock, something which has made me quite happy after that tweet) but something like that makes you appreciate Elden Ring's UI.
I would not want to explore anything if my character was constantly like "hmm I should explore that cave", Aloy talking at every turn is one of the big reasons why I don't want to play Horizon
When the player finds something themselves that they weren't told about, and that was hidden well, THAT is true discovery. That is the sense of wonder and exploration that I wish more game developers understood. When I follow a quest marker on a minimap, there is no sense of discovery, satisfaction, or wonder. I am just completing a task. It makes me feel like a monkey, not a human exploring another world.
I agree with you. Unfurtunatly most people don`t have that much free time to invest in discovering stuff in a game
@@RunescapeWhack Well its game you can play when you have the time, so why would you be in a rush to complete it. What does it matter if it takes you 50 hours to complete?
just like Elder scrolls Morrowind. No helping hand in the game, just a journal and a printed map on my table, i just loved that game and i will buy Eldenring when gaiming room i finished! =)
@@wibban678 Nah. Elder Scrolls had a lot of quests you could find. Elden Ring has like 4 or 5 quests and you easily miss them
@@RunescapeWhack There are millions of things to do in the world why do u need an NPC telling you to go and do them? New World has quests and a quest log and all of them suck. Go kill 6 goats. That’s a quest.
It feels like playing a treasure hunt or exploring an unknown area in real life. And it also brings a good sense of realism. Since you are a tarnished who is brought back to life after an unknown amount of time. You don't have memory of your past life. You are nothing special just one among the many tarnished brought back to life. Nobody truly believes in you until you reach a certain point in the game. And NPCs also don't seem to know everything that's happening in the world.
Dark Souls, and especially Elden Ring are games were I never felt guilty looking up some sort of guide or using the wiki. For example I probably never would have found the silver serpent ring in DS1 without a guide for a smaller scale thing, while I probably would not never discovered various endings in Dark Souls 3 or Sekiro without a guide.
With that said I normally only look up a guide when I have naturally beaten and discovered everything that I could without any sort of guide. Once I am at the end game I will be happy to go back with a guide to tackle everything that I missed.
When it comes to Elden Ring, a game I already invested about 50 hours in at this point, after another 50+ hours I will probably look up a guide and find out that I missed over 20 bosses and an entire castle for good measure because Elden Ring is so insanely vast and open that it's almost overwhelming with choice.
Exactly what I did after spending 85ish hours on my first run.
Once I am satisfied I have cleared a main area I often scan down the wiki's list of weapons/armour to see if there was anything major I missed. The collector and the purist in me are in a constant battle lol. Sometimes a single weapon or armour set can form the basis of a whole new character/build so I don't want to miss anything major.
Kinda similar for me but i look up items that i want/need for pvp because i know out there is a talisman that does XYZ just because there was a ring in every game that did that for example stamina regen or crit dmg enhancement or someone invaded me with a cool weapon or armor that i just absolutely need
I'm currently looking up guides. Apparently that one armed lady we save from scarlet rot has a quest line. Gonna follow it. Didn't save her just to let her die later.
i do the same thing, play on my own until i need a guide, and that hasn't happened in elden ring yet! the game feels built to discourage you from not only needing one for a casual playthrough but it makes you not even want to look one up
I actually like this way they design their open world, sure knowing where to go and where to look would be nice but the fact that there so many secrets you can miss gives more reasons to revisit this world. Usually with open world games I do everything and never comeback even if they're good games. In Elden ring there is probably tons of stuff I missed and I've already clocked in 100 hours
Agreed. Even as though people will try their hardest not to miss anything, there will always be something to revisit. As a completionist, I feel like my whole style of gaming has changed playing elden ring because of how great the world feels. I don't always have to complete it all, I can take it step by step. Feels like in elden ring, I'm living through it, not just playing the game completing this and that. It's magically refreshing really.
i mean they do add a beacon mechanic that can point you towards a location elder scrolls style. just hover over a spot on the map and press your interact button. Honestly that's a welcome addition, cause it's purely user beacons. not where a quest tells you, but where you wanna go and help you keep track of direction.
I have about 125 hours in so far, I beat all of the main story bosses and many of the side, optional bosses. My "issue", (when I say issue, I mean it's just a bit disappointing), is more in line with one of the first comments showcased in this video; the world feels ungodly empty sometimes and given this game basically tells you nothing through the story about why you're doing what you're doing, (though I can accept this last part is probably intentionally vague and ambiguous), but it also doesn't explain much of anything, at least as far as any of the lore goes.
This was my first souls game, and I keep hearing that there's suppose to be so much lore to this world and all that, but I'd love to find out where tf it is, something beyond basically: "this guy is one half of this other person, he's a General and a Champion and now he's killing a bunch of shit" or, "this is the first Elden Lord; how did he come to be and what was his story? Beats me, man, just kill him for the sake of killing him, lol."
Some of the few side NPCs I've found also tend expand a bit more into who they are and why they're doing what they're doing and why I might care, but still seem to have simple "stories" and they're just there to kind of be there and you do like 1-4 things for them with little explanation and then that's it.
On top of that, the whole game just feels to me like it sort of is trying to be an MMORPG, somewhere between Monster Hunter and Elder Scrolls Online/Skyrim, but they couldn't actually decide what they wanted to do with it, so they jumbled a bunch of shit together and threw it in a world where basically everyone is dead, about to be dead, or you have to go on a manhunt to find 1-2 people here and there which amounts to what I said above; very little of the lore that's supposedly there is actually presented when you go and do whatever it is they want you to do.
Sure, they might not care, maybe this all was very intentional, but simply not caring and doing something intentionally anyway, doesn't make something "good" in of itself.
On top of that, basically all of the bosses that I've found in this game are the same. A lot of them are all practically the same in terms of character models, the fights are all pretty easy and simple, (with some bosses just being more annoying than anything, like the Godskin Duo). All the dragon fights are basically the same, all of the dragons have essentially the same move sets and the same ways to cheese them easily, a lot of the same bosses like the gargoyles, or the crucible knights in similar areas with similar ways to easily defeat them, etc. Multiple Wyrms that are, again, just the same as every other Wyrm in the game. I find myself more and more just resorting to invading people or wondering around for hours just trying to find something/someone that'll open some actual lore to me and explain a bit more basically any of the events that happen in the world or the world itself. (Like, wtf is the "land of in between" anyway? What realms or lands is it between? Is it purgatory? How did I end up in it? How did everyone else end up in it pre and post Marika, blessing, the shattering, etc.)
Just recycling the same bosses throughout the world is a little disappointing. I beat the Godskin duo, then went to explore a bit more before continuing to Maliketh, the All Knowing guy, Godfrey (for round 2, by the way), the other boss, I think it was Morgott, "the last king" guy, which is basically just a copy of Margitt, from the start, and Radagon/Elden Beast, so I went around the capitol region, just to run into the same cunt Apostle that I had just beaten with the Noble, then eventually found Noble and Apostle together again, with the same attack set, in a similar small room, which is some shitty cave with a bunch of snails.
On a side note with that, as an example, just to hit on my point about this game not presenting any lore or story at all, what the fuck is up with the windmill village area, which is like straight out of Midsommar, and who are/were those people? I'd love to know more about those dancing, crucifying fucks, but instead, they're just there like some empty husks to kill over and over and over again with nothing more behind them, and they're there in that state because the world is fucked and bad things happened that turned everyone into basically the same thing all across the lands.
Edit - Also, sure, there are a lot of items in any given area to go loot, but like 8/10 times its something like another smithing stone, which is useless once you have something like the Sword of Night and Flame upgraded and the mimic summon and as soon as you have these two things, the game is practically already over because at least for my build, almost any enemy is no more than 2 hits away from death while they chase my mimic, whether its a boss or just some rando knight, and for some of the bosses where the SoNaF + Mimic can't as easily take them, (like Radahn), just use the mimic and hit them 2-4 times with rotten breath. (I've beaten Radahn twice, supposedly one of the hardest bosses to beat in any of the souls games, as far as I've been told, and it only takes 4 hits with rotten breath to kill him, after the first 2 hits, just run around, or just stand there slightly in the distance, letting him fight the several AI you can summon, then hit him two more times, run around a bit more, and then you're done. The second time I beat him with my friend, my friend and I beat him within 10 minutes on the first try and neither of us even had to try to strike him. All I had to do was breathe on him.)
@@salt5999 finally a reasonable complaint that i could agree on. Yeah the side bosses lack variety and movesets that make them unique. I only have played Dark souls 3 before Elden Ring and the bosses there have more unique movements.
@ödīñ ŵïlšøń "I don't like constructive critique and non-shallow thought on games and game development, a medium of entertainment we both enjoy" - got it.
Just saying "the game is GOOD" is very shallow and lacking in any depth or context.
The game is good, in some ways, the game is complete shit in others, whether it was done intentionally and knowingly, by the devs or not.
I love not knowing or finding EVERYTHING in a game, because it makes talking about the game more fun. I ask people about DS1 (which I have found 99% of items) and telling them new things they never found blows their minds. I love doing that for others just as much as when people show me new things in games an my reactions are usually "wait ... WHAT!" and I have to go find whatever it is they said. I love that
My brother and I talking about Elden ring in a nutshell
Yea me and my friends always talk about shit we found, don’t get me wrong I looked up a few items but the conversation isn’t as good as when we find shit, I was happy when I found the great sword and made a joke about the sword being so big I looked like Guts, and when I found out it was actually his sword I was ecstatic because I actually found it not like the sword of night and flame
I love the feeling of discovering stuff, I don’t see the point of looking stuff up then going and doing it lmao ruins the experience for me
Something that a lot of people seem to forget about the soul series is that the amount of guidance and knowledge you as a player have, is the same amount of knowledge and guidance your character is receiving. If you were to talk into a country you have never been to or have no memory of then why would you know where everything is or where to go? You wont just find some random persons journal sitting on a table unattended with the complex history of a location and its inhabitants. You would be lost, confused, and directionless. You would be forced to ask questions and seek for answers. When you open a souls game you are entering into the ultimate character/player development experience. The experience of creating understanding and direction for yourself the exact same way you would if you were lost in a foreign land.
Something that goes sorely missed in the souls games is the aspect of community. There are many different "factions" that have been built up around these games. From the highly dedicated PvP community, the invasion community, the kind hearted "blue sentinels", strength chads, mages, explorers, and bossers. Every style of play turned into a community that want to share their experiences with one another because every experience is going to be different in a souls game. One community that I have to say is very under-appreciated though are the "historians" of the souls games. This strong community of highly dedicated players find joy in doing something that I personally as a player would never be able to do, and that's understand the lore of this game. There are entire subreddits and discords dedicated to breaking down every item description, line of dialogue, and environment to see the whole picture of what is happening. Eventually these efforts lead to wonderful videos like the "prepare to cry" series on dark souls 3 or entire pages of information on the story.
A final note I want to mention is the level of thought that goes into the personality of every npc as well. At first all the NPCs can seem kind of stagnant and their depth can seem shallow. But let's looks at the example you provided in this video. Rogier's quest is a hard one to continue because of the bloodstain. But I challenge you to stop and think about WHY FromSoft would design the quest like this. If Rogier was seeking something (no spoilers on what the body of the creature is) and his search caused him to die of death blight (you can tell from his death animation) which took away his ability to walk, then why would you ever want someone else to seek it out? Rogier's quest line is easily missed because he doesn't want harm to befall the player in the same way any other kind hearted person would. It is only after finding it yourself that Rogier is willing to disclose more information to you, at first as a caution, then as insight into what he was doing.
Hopefully more people playing the game for the first time will be able to come into these games with that level of understanding moving forward as more people make videos discussing this topic
The first point you make perfectly encapsulates why I love the souls games so much. The mystery is too captivating for me to stop playing
"what people seem to forget is that a souls game is like being in a strange place in real life!" "in real life if you have no memory of something then you ask questions!"
what you seem to forget is that you can't ask characters any questions at all. they are vague as all hell and you can't ask them things as simple as "what direction is the area you're referring to?" something that would be very EASY in real life but impossible in elden ring.
@@lavabeard5939 that’s a really good point. The only rebuttal I would have is even if you could ask where to go, until you’ve already been somewhere you wouldn’t know where to ask directions for. As an example I would never know to ask for directions to the Academy unless I knew it existed or had a reason to go there, or the Haligtree, or even Mohgwyn. There is definitely a reason to go to all these places but you wouldn’t know that till you’re there. There are definitely times that we are given explicit instructions on where places are and how to get there. An example is Rya from volcano manor. If you meet her in Liurnia and help her, she tells you to meet her mistress at the manor and how to get there in a very detailed way. The same way getting invited somewhere by an acquaintance would go. So while I agree with you, there would still definitely be a need to explore and survey your surroundings and head towards obvious land marks
Plus if rogier had trouble finding what he was looking for then itd feel a little silly if you could just walk down a hall and bam there it was, he wouldnt have had much issue if it was that easy.
Prepare to Cry has been going strong since dark souls 1 man, and even then VaatiVidya was just picking up where ENB left off. Lore Gang runs deep
The fun is discovering things as a community.
I love that FromSoftware respects us as players so much that they don't baby us through their games.
true, this is the first game that actually made me hang out in discord because everyone discover different things and you’re like oh wtf really
I honestly dig that Elden Ring has the same amount of side-quest guidance as any game from the Soulsborne series, but applied to the open world. Leave me in blissful ignorance of what I missed so that my first playthrough and every playthrough thereafter feels special, without the need for procedurally-generated content.
When I noticed their are a lot more items that apply effects onto your weapons compared to dark souls (they are grease, which is equivalent of resins and bundles), I knew that there would be a rot grease item somewhere. I eventually found some rot grease, but could not find the cookbook to enable me to craft them, and the wiki havent even found the location for it yet. A few days later, fumbling around in a rot swamp I stumbled into, finding the nomadic cookbook [22] and checking the wiki and seeing that they have yet to discover it fuckin made my day
That’s awesome
That's awesome dude that's the beauty of this game. The Rot swamp is such a large and hostile area that requires the player to be stocked up on scarlet rot antidotes as well as have a lot of patience to make it around that area with all the lifts and annoying basilisks enemies. I only went through that area to progress the Ranni story but now that I know I can find the rot grease cookbook there I plan to go back on my scarlet rot character and find it myself!
@@yeetyeeterson1914 when I traveled there I had like 2 rot boluses (didn't have the cookbook for those) so I allocated all my flasks to crimson and said frick it, imma explore as far as these 15 gulps of healing potion can allow me lol. That was how I found the rot grease cookbook. It really felt special when I was racing against time to find items with my hp rapidly decreasing XD
I ended up surviving in that lake for a pretty long while because my messages get rated a lot
I praise thee, discoverer of the Rot Grease.
You cant say that and not tell us where it is!!
I was playing offline when I found that bloodstain too, I was thinking, I've seen that character before... oh the sorcerer then went back to him. I think it's cool how natural the progress on the quests feel. Every quest I stumbled across I completed somehow naturally. Naturally I also missed a few, bit that's what new game plus is for right
I've never played a souls game before. The trailers of Elden Ring just caught me and I gave it a try. I have to admit that it was a bit of a pain to get around at first. I had no idea what I had to do. The game basically tells you nothing at all. There is a huge open world to explore, but where to start? At first I thought it was just huge, but damn, it's even bigger than I thought. There are so many hidden maps that it's actually crazy. I've probably encountered over 40 bosses (50 hours in), but only 4 of the 6(?) main bosses. Damn this game was and still is so frustrating sometimes, but I love it at the same time. For example: I died over 20 times against Rodrick. Almost the same number against Radahn. A bit funny is that the side boss Commander Niall was the most difficult for me so far. I killed him after 25 attempts. I still somehow managed to beat them, considering I am a big noob in those type of games. And from the looks of it: I can't get enough. There are so many things to explore and so many bosses to die against many times before you finally manage to defeat them. It's really crazy how much I love this game.
Most games take you by the hand and guide you through the game. You don't have to think much and just sit back and enjoy the story they write for you. With Elden Ring, I feel like from software has created a huge world with so many hidden places that it's up to you how much you want to explore. You decide where you go. You decide what you do next. You are responsible for your own enjoyment. If you need someone to hold your hand, Elden Ring may not be the right choice for you. No lies. I struggled with this a lot at first. For the first 10 hours, I was just wandering around trying to find the first big boss. Was I getting anywhere in the story? Not really, but was I having fun exploring and wandering around? Hell yes!
This game is a masterpiece imo. Incredible how much fun it is to play.
Yesterday I looked up strategies pr cheese for malekith in elden ring and found basically no videos to help me.
I ended up saying fudge it ima go explore cause there might be an item to deal with one of his seemingly unfair mechanics. Turns out there is infact an item that let's you parry his big dangerous attacks 2 minutes from his boss room.
Exploring and finding that item made beating him so much more satisfying because i found an item that wasn't even publicly documented yet to make a boss easier.
exactly, the fun of finding an item and then seeing that it doesn't even exist on the wiki is indescribable
i just beat that guy. what item are you talking about?
@@Gashdalif you go down the bridge instead of up to his boss room there's a small dead end area that has a chest wit a use item that let's you parry his glowing sword attacks. It's called the blasphemous fang I think
@@loopygordo oh right. i got a bunch of shit in the lead up to the fight so it must have gotten lost with the rest of them, i remember picking that up now. we'll he's dead now so rip, maybe ng+ lol
Malekith was a piece of piss if you're using Bleed weapons, he's super weak to it.
This game is so amazing, definitely the best game I’ve ever played in my life! I just hit 75 hours and I haven’t even made it to the second main boss yet. The exploration and ability to make your own adventure is really special and done better here than in any other game. Every day is a new adventure, and multiple times I have come out of a dungeon or cave and had my mind blown by the way the world opens up into incredible vistas and you can go pretty much anywhere that you can see. It’s just insane how much stuff there is to find in this game and it’s always really valuable loot. I haven’t felt this sense of immersion and living in the world and forging my own path since Ocarina of Time on N64. What an incredible game.
Jesus 75 hrs and not second boss yet? Taking it to a whole new level of 'taking it at your own pace.'
@@mainaccount0007 Nah, I'm with them on this. I'm 35 hrs in and i still haven't even challenged Margit yet. The rest of the world is just too enchanting and it's easy to get swept away while exploring.
@@mainaccount0007 95 hours in and I still have three more shardbearers 💀 (I think I'm finished with rennas quest line, but I can never be sure)
OoT definitely is the last time that I ever experienced this type of discovery.
@@thegoonbats
Same, but mainly because I was like literally 4 or 5 when that game came out.
OoT was the first game that blew my mind and showed me the possibilities of video games.
There have been few games to do the same.
I don’t think Elden Ring is blowing my mind in terms of unlocking something I didn’t know was possible, but it is definitely blowing my mind that they actually managed to pull off what so many other companies have tried and failed to do. I think this is the first real “Skyrim” since the concept of creating a Skyrim has existed.
I was sick of Skyrim by 20 hours in, and started to ignore any and all side quests. I’m like 75 hours played in Elden Ring across two different characters and I’m still having a good time on both.
You just have to love Miazaki. He never bend to quick money, he just do whatever he wants and poeple love it. I mean which other studio has so dedicated player base? So dedicated that you let them put together whole stories with hints that may took year to find. Also, I've never seen so rewarding open world in my life, it is first time for me to really just focus on exploration, because I know there will be something interesting.
this sort of design also vastly increases replayability, especially if you don't use guides or wikis. just started NG+ today and already found multiple NPCs and items in Limgrave / Stormveil that I had never seen before. this game is truly something special, fuck the haters.
They don't want to get into the game and appreciate it and adventure and such, they just want to consoom product, and anything that makes the product harder to consoom is seen as bad. They don't want replayability, they want to consoom the product and move on to consoom the next product.
Hiding content behind exploration makes parts of the product harder to consoom, hence bad.
Ngl, I'll probably look up shit for my second playthrough
@@steel5897 also ya gotta wonder if the programmers for ubi & horizon might be a little salty that someone who didn't follow the general open world RPG formula of "follow marker, retrieve thing, repeat" is getting a lot more attention than their games have been getting. I enjoyed the 1st assassin's creed when it first came out, and the second as well, but after that it quickly became apparent that they were just pumping them out as fast as possible
@@steel5897 *consume
Some people don't have time for multiple playthroughs.(life gets in the way).
So it's kinda of bad that a lot of things are missed by casual players and its annoying to refer to guides while immersed in the game.
I think God of war 2018 did it a little better.
The feeling of obtaining an item that feels like you wasn't intended to get, is just the best in this game.
I've been using journals to hand write quest logs for games since playing Myst and Riven in the 90s. It's a good habit to have, not only do you get to be a little creative with drawn illustrations but you also get a keepsake at the end of your time with the game.
I'd love to see what you've drawn and wrote on those games. Did you do it for Skyrim?
That's awesome g, do you play DnD?
I LOVE THIS IDEA!!!!
Please make a video showing what you've drawn!!!
I'm going to start implementing your idea. I've been a gamer for 30 years and this never crossed my mind.
I love the "you won't find everything" design of the game. It means that you're exploring a world, not being guided by a railroad. Finding some obscure item or quest in a corner of the map though your own effort is much more satisfying than following a checklist that the game has given you. I wish more game designers understood this.
would you rather:
1) visit the top of the tower 60/60 times and you can unlock a helmet
2) scrape your way through a field of dragons and you happen to find the talisman that tangibly changes the game after deliberate exploration
"not being guided by a railroad". Do you play those other games like you're on a railroad track? I don't. I go where I want when I want and do or don't do what I want. You don't HAVE to check every box, follow every quest, etc. I rarely do. "Oh, you have a quest for me? No thanks!"
It's not a different philosophy than what you claim to have for Elden Ring. It just has markers and a journal to let me know where I need to go or what I have done so I can remember what I need to do next. You can still find obscure items in a corner of the map.
However, more often than not it's unsatisfying to find said item in the corner of the map in Souls because it's usually a soul consumable and worthless. "I went out of my way for a whole hour for this? What a waste of my time..."
Neither are wrong or right. They're just different. I wish more game players understood this.
@@Absnerdity Meh, it is less of an issue about having to go to each of those spots on the map. What really annoys me is the sense that those spots on the map are the only places worth visiting. There's often no point in exploring anywhere else, so it feels like the entire game is just a todo list.
I would like something to keep track of things, at least a journal that tells me a the name of the NPC I just accepted a guess for and the general location, where he was found and it gets updated as you find them in different places. Its more so a quality of life change, as most people would just google or look up the location of this NPC or just forget about them completely.
@@kazsura9812 Yea, admittedly I was happy when they at least started marking their last seen locations on the map XD
Also, I feel like it just increases the close knit nature of the community, because discovering new things and then sharing those things encourage others to do the same. Even the in game messages are like "Important item ahead" or "Hidden Path Ahead, there fore try rolling" Its a game that manages to find people that enjoy it and bring those people closer together. I love this game.
While that's true, there's also a lot of troll messages doing that to the point where it feels sort of discouraging to even try to search hidden walls, I'm always in the mindset that I'll probably just come back to the location later and see if there's anything hidden
"Hidden Path Ahead" is like on every wall like some stupid graffiti dude with no skill keeps spraying his shit tags on the walls.
It's so discouraging that you don't even want to read other players messages anymore.
@@therealKrak yea, i legit just went to offline mode just so i wouldn't even have to see the stupid messages
The community is definitely strong around the souls-like games. I'm actually surprised that there is no obvious faction "banner" to rally around in Elden Ring, the way that sun-bro's have been in previous games for example. And yet I see examples of the community helping each other out every time I play, from messages helping players progress, to the guy who invaded me yesterday called "Sewer Guide" who just ran around with a torch and guided me through a maze-like sewer area, pointing out all the good loot along the way. My only real community complaint is the trolls that spam "hidden wall ahead", or crowd interactable objects with messages. Would be nice if downvoted messages were actually less likely to show up.
Wish I had a giant but hole
Some companies/developers just design things differently with a different approach or want to invoke a different emotion/experience from the player. And it is almost mind-blowing to me every time I heard people dislike that because it is not "similar" or diverge from an established "norm".
I'm like, do you really want every game to be the same??? Is that the goal of doing things now? Are we talking about video games as an art form or an answer sheet to a standardized exam???
Yeah, like that one guy who called it "uninspired" must've been on some shit. Like, "it does things differently from other games so it's uninspired." Even if you don't like it, that's just flat out wrong lmao.
Other Devs: this game 1/10 because it's not how I do it
Lmao From has been making the same game for over a decade, uninspired is completely right.
@@Exist2Inspire87 Yeah? And who doesn't? Ubisoft? Rockstar? EA? Activision?
Everyone has used their same formulas for over a decade, and FromSoft is no exception. Hell, even they are the most unique in that regard
@@chinguirrisguiano Exactly my point, that's why the praise they get is way overblown. On the contrary now they started to ape Ubisoft with some shit to pick up every five meters and a map littered with fast travel points lol.
I actually love the "If You're not looking real hard, you won't find it" and "To find out if there's an item down there, you have to jump" ideas. Those are rewarding. That they stuck to their guns on that is admirable.
i looked too hard and killed rykard while exploring, so elden ring locked me out of a the vulcano questline . i didnt know that it would trigger that, and i cant even go back on an older save. that is one thing i dislike really hard
Personally I completely disagree that the game is obscure.
Sure a lot of stuff is hidden, but the game gives you every tool and hint you could ever need to find them.
On my first playthrough, and without using any guide, I managed to complete the volcano questline, ranni's questline, and FIA's questline.
Defeated almost every majour bosses (only missed the regal anvestral spirit and a magma warm, and the godkin apostle)
The only are I didn't find was the one under the volcano manor.
All of that was found simply by being curious, paying attention to NPC dialog, and environmental clues.
People who think the game is too obscure honestly didn't give it the chance it deserves
@@urg6923 That's kinda the point. If you're not curious, if you're not turning over the stones around you, you'll miss it. It IS obscure, as a result, due to the fact that they chose to write a story which you'll only fully experience if you're looking to do so.
And I honestly think that that's beautiful.
@@TheMineKnight and i got punished for exploring too much and killing rykard early, locking me out of the vulcano manor questline.
there was no hint that killing rykard would trigger everyone to leave. you missed him and got to do the vulcano questline and i explored and killed him, and got punished by the game.
> Talk to character -> reload area to get new dialogue -> reload area to see whether they moved or whether they died -> get shitty reward for quest
> iT's oBsCurE bY dEsiGn
I believe that there are at least two waves of the Soulsborne series being mainstream. The first mainstream wave revolves around the difficulty; having no easy mode and people calling every remotely hard game a ‘soul’s like’. I don’t remember when this sparked, however it lasted since DS1 came out.
The second wave of mainstream media surrounding this series/franchise, is the current idea that Elden Ring is unpolished and has no quest tracker. This upset over the game design leads to controversy and a massive influx of new gamers, I remember the difficulty wave having a spotlight on live TV back in the day. When I heard that From Software was going to be sort of open world, I knew that it would have that dark souls feeling, not difficulty, or unpolished, but focus on real exploration and self-pacing. I love the pacing of Elden Ring; the game can be hard if you make it hard, the game can be easy if you make it easy. The game, or any other dark souls game, is not hard by default. Depends on your play style and how you tackle it.
I find it a little funny that people are calling elden ring unpolished, when compared to most big launches the last few years its not even close to the amount of bugs many games have had. And it seems like this time they didn't get forced to release the game unfinished unlike ds1 and 2
@@luclin92 Not to mention how absolutely _massive_ the world is. Not in terms of sheer landmass but rather by how densely packed it is and how seemingly every nook and cranny was handcrafted, with little to no recycling of content outside of the mineshaft entrances and some parts of the catacombs. Ranni's questline and the involved areas alone could have been their own game, for one thing, but here it's just an optional sidequest that many players will probably miss on their first playthrough. The effort that clearly went into this game is absolutely insane and yet there's still idiots who call Fromsoft "lazy" for reusing a few animations from previous games, while playing copy & pasted crap like the latest Ubisoft open world or buying Skyrim for the hundredth time without a hint of irony.
@@nineflames2863 don't forget that one ruined square building I have seen all over the place😉😜 but then again that one feels more like the general architecture of one of the civilizations in the region than just a random building which is all over the place. So even when there is something reused it always has a purpose for why there is multiple of something
@@nineflames2863 The big question is - When are they going to stop? - When are they going to die? - Right now UA-cam is showing me advertisements about the new dlc for Ac Valhalla - I've played most of the Assassins Creed, Far Cry series but I've playing the same game over and over - the beginning of the year I promised to my brother i would never ever play another Ubisoft game again, the last being Ac Valhalla. Their best game was the first Watch Dogs, mind the issues, it has the best story Ubisoft has written. But same stuff over and over again expecting sh*t to change - the definition of insanity. That's their trademark!!!
@@luclin92 Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Elden Ring, however it's looking like some parts of the game actually are unfinished sadly, like the ending to Nepheli's and Kenneth's quests and maybe even an entire ending that was planned based on what data mining the game is turning up.
I think the big difference is that when designing games, FromSoftware really puts the soul on it first, and then the money comes by itself, while other companies design products, focused on making money. This kinds of questlines and world design is not new in the soul series, with items, bosses or even whole areas being very well hidden, meant to be discovered only by the most curious of souls. It also has to do with the kind of philosophy that only japanese studios have, and westerners very often fail to replicate. I've seen a lot of similarities between breath of the wild and elden ring, but not based on a video or review, it's a genuine sense of curiosity that only these two games had. Also noticed some inspiration from Shadow of the colossus on the area with three giants in Stormveil Castle, was really happy to see Miyazaki take inspiration from Uedas work. The first days i played without watching any media to not get spoiled, i have explored almost all of limgrave and Stormveil Castle before progressing, and watching some videos i've been discovering new places after thinking i have found all there as to be found. Having a wonderful experience.
Exactly, this isn't new
I love the old fashioned quest design. Reminds me of the old days of talking to my friends and we all experienced things differently. Some people found one thing while another found something else. Then you feel the need to go back and find those things for yourself. It can certainly be annoying but I also enjoy that in some way. I feel like if a game makes me feel great highs and lows I tend to enjoy it much more. If a game is only positive experiences It tends to not have as much of a grip on me.
This!
That's so true. Every day at work we have something new to talk about something the other has not discovered.
Exactly. The community aspect of souls games is half the enjoyment and the less rigid design means everyone has a different experience
This is one of the reasons I think the original Pokémon games hold up so well despite their myriad of issues. Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow were basically my first experience with a Souls type of community where people shared their hidden knowledge. All the rumours about the Mew under the truck, Pikablu, but also including actually real glitches like Missing NO. and power duplicating items by saving and shutting down your Gameboy while in your PC were all ways to extend the mystery and longevity of what was in many ways a very simple game on the surface.
Elden Ring is my first actual Souls game from FromSoftware and the aspect I absolutely love about the game is all the messages that people leave behind to help/trick players. I have also discussed the hidden secrets of the game with classmates at a 3D graphics school that are playing/have played Elden Ring, which is not something I have done with since the 2000s with World of WarCraft. This game is so special to me because it actually allows for actual mysteries to exist in the game that players might not find until years have past, which is severely lacking in modern games.
Yeah I had never played a souls game and was so used to generic copy paste mmorpgs that i was selling gear and whatnot i didnt intend to use. I realized after some hours that a lot of stuff you only get once so save everything and restarted with my newfound knowledge of how to play.
Been enjoing the oldschool style a TON.
I also think another part of that design philosophy is replayability. I remember being excited for my second playthrough when my first wasnt even done yet, just because of a few missed quests. Every single fromsoft game has made me excited for my second playthrough when my first one isn't even over yet, and not a single game has come close to it
"Oh no… the game doesn’t tell me what to do!" That’s reality in a nutshell. I remember playing Indiana Jones and Monkey Island as a child with my dad. Back then your progress was based on the items you found, dialogues and how good you could use your brain. You actually had to figure out things on your own! People nowadays don’t like to use their brain. They like others to tell them what to do. These old games are still far superior in my opinion obviously not in graphics but in everything else.
Graphics and sound and frame rate and resolution, and button placement ya. But if you past that, they can be considered better. Though I don't think that. There are still games who leave things up to players. Like Hollow Knight.
Monkey island was grate!
The gaming industry now days mame 6 times more money than the movie industry.
Games should be free and the people making them should get what they needed to be able to make them.
Now the goal of a game is to make profit to make ritch people richer.
More than 15% of money spent on skyrim was advertising.
@@Irohbro that's a stupid idea.
If games were just free all of sudden, what's going to happen to the share holders money. I guess just give it back, but it would still upset them.
And you say this like making a game is easy. People should be paid for there work.
Saying that it's worth 6 times more than movies just makes it worse. That just means it will take an even bigger hit on economy if it was free.
And yes your right. Developers should be given the tools to make these games.
The better solution should be to make development kits free, not games.
And you have no evidence that all the profit just goes to the higher ups. That just not logical.
@@aydenrozzelle7691 pretty sure hes not talking about hollow knight but the oversaturated market in AAA industries
dude i remember my selft at 8yo literally the same story but with Sheep Rider for the Ps1, game challenging your brain in every level in funnier ways every time.
good old days
It's one of the few game studios that still appreciates in game secrets, I used to love when I was a kid hidden items and rewards on games I still check every nook of every map of every game and 95 percent of the time I find only disappointment I like the idea when I pick something up in a hidden area I fell into by accident that I may be the first person with this item or I may be the first to find a hidden path. I'm sure I'm not but it's that feeling that is so exciting in a game and so underutilized in open word formats which is where they shine the brightest
yo if you haven't played it, you should try out legend of grimrock or grimrock 2, both super amazing classic rpg/puzzle games, where the puzzle is never ever telling you what the fuck you are supposed to do, it's absolutely amazing
Yes! this is exactly the sentiment that I was trying to describe to someone the other day when they asked me what makes Elden Ring is so special. It's that in many ways it makes me feel nostalgic, because of how different and unique everybody's experiences are, based upon the things they find or they don't find. And then talking about those experiences with friends and other people who enjoy the game is like classic Nintendo or Sega games when nobody had complete guides. So things like hidden doors, chests, cheat codes you had to go and gather from talking to people and were a thrill to share with your friends who didn't know about them.
honestly its just lazyness thats the community has now championed as such sadly. you have a rabid ego centered group in these series who will fan boy/girl defend any flaws these games have. ive played every single one, and have done no hit runs on Ds1 and 3. while i love these games elden ring has many MANY issues that the other souls series have BUT because of it being an open world those flaws have been multiplied by x10. there was nothing secret about anything in this game, before it even launched every single thing was mapped out via the interactive map, any feelings of being the first do discover anything is purely delusion/ignorance on the player's part
most of the open world map is an illusion, most of the map is covered in cliffs/mountains you cannot access to fill out the world map. and the vast majority of the open world is empty and lifeless aside from side dungeons and areas around key locations there is nothing very important to discover aside from one of the like 3-5 quest lines and those are so botched in this game compared to the others.
the reason why this game is getting hate when the other dark souls games didn is because of this key reason
map design.....
the map in dark souls 1 for example like all the other games is very linear, in ds1 you have 3 ways out of the starting hub (4 but thats unlocked once you get far enough to drop the elevator from the church) the games map was designed to push you towards a certain area to start off with naturally and the challenge started off easy then slowly ramped up in difficulty letting you ease into it.... elden ring has none of that here, first boss is margit which is the "hardest" 1st boss the souls series has ever had excluding the fake bosses in which your supposed to die at the start of some of the games (elden ring and bloodborne for example) so new players hit a dead end because the game its self tells them yo head to him first.
and before the fan boys/girls start REEEEing at me "um bruh its a teaching mechanic" or the always unorriginal "git gud" comments note i have had zero issues with this game. its the easiest game in the entire series and the worse designed one at that, as well as hyper rushed (reuse of many MANY buildings and locations, reuse of several bosses both in open world AND other side dungeons)
this game is also god shit at teaching new players the bare basic systems and mechanics of this game. the tutorial for example is "hidden" off the side of that cliff. many new players didnt even know it was there... bad game design, a smart developer would of made said tutorial ontop of those obvious stairs ahead of where you spawn while having the path to skip it off the cliff there fore making sure new players cannot miss your tutorial.
the whole lie that these games do not hold your hand is laughable seeing as the other games the map design holds your hand the entire time, narrow hallways with some side areas hidden for those who search them at the right game stage after the right instance.
lets talk about the ashe summons and how the game does this poorly as well. so you get your first one from the chick in the shack on the way to godrick, she gives you a jelly fish and no way to use it.... new players never knew or found that if you went back to the first church at night you would meet that blue wifu chick who would give you the bell and some wolves to summon.... again bad design... have the first chick give you the bell AND jellyfish and have the night thot give you the wolves as a reward for discovering her.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! fan boys/girls i LOVE elden ring, but lets be objective here, and i hate i have to constantly say i loved this game multiple times a comment when i call out its bad part's so dumb people reading understand its not blind hate but just criticism.
the games directions are incorrect as well in telling you what general area to search. narrowing down the search area would help a lot of new players out.
no adding a easy mode for the souls series were always easy if you do what almost every long time fan does.. A) abuse and cheese game mechanics and exploit or B) memorize attack patterns of bosses and harder enemies either one of those is the key to fromsoft games lets be real here.
in elden ring most people are just going to abuse bleed, or sorcery using the flask to grant 10-15 seconds of unlimited FP to shoot the azur comet to delete bosses. or abuse the poise system and spam jump attack using duel wield colossal weapons over and over and over till they kill the boss and get loads of crits on them. or by abusing the ashes of war system in this game which is pretty busted and everything above coupled with the mimic tear makes this game the most brain dead and easy part of the series to date, and this may trigger fellow long time fans of the games.
so lets try and be objective here and stop defending poor game design as a way to try and inflate our ego's into thinking we are good at a game where the main way to win is to cheese/exploit your way through. AGAIN!!! i love these games, but im not gona lie to people and try and dismiss the flaws in them simply because i love this game.........
In the age of "!" over peoples head that has quests for you, having to actually listen to the dialog of NPC's is rather refreshing, played Lost Ark before ER and the first hour I was invested in whatever NPC's had to say, but after that it was "yeye, just show me where I need to go and kill X or do Z". If there is one change I would want, its a dialog tracker, since sometimes they just mention the last sentence if you talk to them again, I would like to either hear everything again or just read up on what which person said.
You can get that from the internet
yeah, I think a dialogue tracker or a journal (think morrowind) would be juuust helpful enough that it doesn't feel like they're just giving it to you, but at the same time, that you can pick back up on quest steps you may have forgotten about (assuming it's not too late to continue said questline)
@@ratmagic1774 Yeah, I actually thought the same thing. It would be nice to have the dialogue written somewhere so that the player still has to do all the heavy lifting but can go back over the information whenever they want. At the same time, no journal gives every interaction with an NPC so much more weight when you know you'll have to remember - maybe even write down - what they say to you.
Persona 5 did this. If you missed dialogue in a convo you could pause it and then rehear the conversation from the beginning till the part you stopped in. That might be too “video gam-y” for ER but I loved in P5.
Deus Ex has one of these too! It's super handy. I like the sound (heyyy haha) of being able to replay voice lines you're previously heard as well as being able to reread it. XD
To be fair the quest system could be much better. Considering how large the game is, the classic dark souls like quest design just doesn't work in this case. I don't expect quest markers but even a little notes section with hints or information about characters would help immensely.
I would have missed a whole new area if my friend didn't mention there's an "exit" in the Gargoyle duo's boss room.
Bro i discovered that area after I completed the game i didnt even know about that boss yet lmak
Do you mean the coffin that you take to the deep root depths?
@@gjram8807 yeah
@@gjram8807 I was keeping it vague on purpose lol, I want people to be as confused as I was.
Crucially, there's another way in from under Leyndell, too. It might even be called the "intended" way because of how much there is to it and how much more natural the transition is.
I hope so much FS will never listen to people asking for quest markers or logs etc.
They have such a unique and awesome way of dealing with their gameplay... i simply love every decision they made
They won't. They don't make games that cater to this sort of thing. This has been a complaint for years and everything they've done suggests to me that their attitude is "don't like it? Don't play it, that's cool"
They've never come across like a team that designs a game to make money and this is what makes Elden Ring being such a huge success so bloody beautiful.
@@Alp-xe6ty I still remember when Squaresoft was like that. I hope it holds true for as long as FromSoft exists.
"you have a book and a pencil and you are literate right?"
@@jonp1952 the fact that Elden Ring is more successful than the games that do it differently makes me optimistic that they won't change.
I've heard the issue you're talking about referred to once as "the other fridge problem" from a developer I spoke to once. Which is this extended metaphor where you have house builders that due to a clerical error, order two fridges for a home they're working on and rather than return one they install both and install the second one not in the kitchen where it would be useful but wouldn't fit, into some other room where it fit's but it's unavoidable, like the living room. The new home owners now have to wonder why there's this huge second fridge in the living room that they don't need or want there, but it comes with the house so they're just supposed to deal with it.
The metaphor is for game development and the fridges represent the content that developers make for a game. The second fridge is the content that developers made that doesn't quite fit or isn't super necessary, but someone worked on it dang it, so you the player are going to be essentially forced to see it. That there's this assumption that because time and effort was spent on making a thing, it's really important that players always be directed toward that content, even if it's like a big ugly fridge in the middle of your living room where it just gets in the way.
There's a supreme issue in a lot of game dev where devs are extremely afraid to cut content they've made, or make things obscure or hidden in case no one knows it's there. One of the major differences in approach FromSoft has made since the very beginning of the Souls games is a total rejection of this concept. The souls games have always been very user friendly in terms of how much of their content is available for the user to absorb, but also how completely hands off they are at directing you toward it.
You can have Souls players who give no fucks about the story or lore or characters or anything like that, and just want to play a good melee action game, and it works for them on that level and nothing more or less. Or you can have souls players who view the entire single player experience as training and equipment gathering for PVP duels at the SL MP cap, and it works for them. Then you have others who want to (as you said Rat) "roomba" up every single piece of information in the game, and it works for them as well. By not insisting that all players see all things, their games end up appealing to a larger variety of players, while the games that insist that every player see everything end up aggravating some of those player types - the action guy just skips cutscenes and the MP guy skips half the levels because he looked up the wiki and the katana he wants is only in one level so he doesn't need any of the rest, etc.
The dev who told me this metaphor btw, was from Rock Star San Diego and had worked on Red Dead Redemption. He told me that whole story because he was one of the guys on that game who spent years working on this fully function horse wrangling and bartering mini-game where you'd find and trade horses then buy and upgrade ranches to stable them and build a small horse trading empire and all of it got cut by release. And he was totally fine with it because he knew, and so did the leads on the project, that it was going from a step beyond "neat wild western simulation" to unnecessary padded BS.
Tldr: game devs and gamers are fuckin idiots. Most of it is trash and should be expected to remain that way. Do not try to compromise real games because of losers.
This needs more recognition lol
good comment
Dude, I want a fridge in my living room now.
And it's not like you have to stick to one of those playstyles either. I want to roomba the lore and items. But I'm also looking forward to doing pvp at some point as well.
Went into Elden Ring with zero spoilers or expectations.
I don't play like a Roomba- rather- I traveled to places that looked interesting (it all looks interesting!!) And just explored as organically as possible.
When I encountered a strong enemy, I would either decide to skip past or really buckle down and make it my mission to defeat them.
Many other games with fixed quest markers wouldn't give me such a choice.
I liked exploring - and when I started NG+ and found NPCs in different places from the last go-through, it made it all the more worthwhile, it's called discovery.
I hope developers see this game and start making more like them. It feels like my journey with there being no guidance but huge payoffs. I want more open world games where I can load it up and say “ what should I do today” and just go with no idea of what’s going to happen.
Every time you see the words “clunky” “slow combat” “no tracking” etc you can just tell that those people got absolutely smashed by a boss and rage quit 😂
After finally giving in and just spamming the R1 night and flame ability to down valiant gargoyle I can empathize with someone who wants to just finish the game feeling that way. But also it’s the point of the game and I love it
Yeah, when they say “slow combat” you KNOW they used a shield to block the attacks instead of dodging them lmao.
I find most of the criticism funny since it comes from people that don’t actually know what the game is about, the guy who said “all quests are short and they’re just about bringing an item to an old lady” would be so embarrassed to see how some quests even allow you to enter massive secret zones, or quests that give massive chunks of lore and secret endings.
@@salarmer1633 brings to mind the Dark Lord ending of DS1 and DS3, there was so much digging to be done just to uncover the beginning of those journeys.
Maybe, but not always. I *love* difficult games that require decision making in combat (attack, block, or dodge) but never explored the souls series because of the slow/clunky combat. I like high-speed, high-response flying all over the place combat (From's own Armored Core 4, Nier:Automata, Devil May Cry series, etc). After seeing the hype around Elden Ring, I looked for some build videos on youtube to get an idea of what was possible. I came across someone using Bloodhound's Step and decided to give Elden Ring a try, because that ability is more aligned with the style of gameplay I desire.
And I'm LOVING it!
@@TatakaiEX if you like fast paced gameplay you can also check out bloodborne, it’s a lovecraftian themed fast paced dark souls, it’s fucking amazing, search gameplay from the game or if you want to be amazed then search “bloodborne orphan of kos boss fight”
I’m a first time Fromsoft player and I’ve have thoroughly enjoyed this game, every 100 hours so far. What I enjoy the most is watching Elden Ring videos and seeing an item someone found and I’m like “where the hell is that, I gotta have it” and then I go get it. I personally love this, it makes the game fresh for me and always exciting. Get something new, try it out and work it into a strategy, then rinse and repeat. It makes my play style always evolving. Obviously I find a lot of stuff on my own, but I love watching people’s videos who love the game as I do. Like this one!
me and my friends are sharing map markers and info like some sort of item hunting, this is by far one of the most interesting games to explore that i have ever played.
yeah for sure! It's like the old days when communities would have to come together to find stuff in video games :)
seriously among the most rewarding games ever made
@@shaddykack It do sounds like an Isekai anime if you tell me..but yeah it is very rewarding..
Exactly same for me, it's my first time and I too watch videos then see some cool shit then try to find them myself. I love how game even allows you to get those items you really want no matter how underlevelled you are.
The first quest i activated, i was walking around limgrave and someone said "hey" to me. I was really confused cuz there was no one in sight. I stayed in the area a couple minutes until i realized that that "hey" came from a tree, and it transformed into a person. This made fromsoft's design philosophy very clear to me. If I can get a quest from a tree, and it doesnt even really tell me what the quest is except for tree guys dialogue, clearly they want the process of completing a quest to be about the journey and discovery.
Wish I hadn't just read this
@@upslide5073 don't worry, the hey didn't come from a tree. Trust me! I know.
@@upslide5073 dude that is probably the most minor spoiler i've read. not a big deal
What I love about the game, is that everyone will have a different experience when they play. One person can do a melee only strength build, and only follow the main path and beat the game that way. Someone else will do a magic build, and spend 100 hours exploring every inch of the map. The path everyone will take is also going to be different. Some people won’t even go to Caelid, or the weeping peninsula, or volcano manor. The amount of optional content in this game is staggering.
It also makes the game more replayable. I can’t wait to start my second play through to find all of the stuff I missed. It’s so rewarding when you discover things. I cleared out all of the capitol city (or so I thought), and then when I was back at round table I talked to an NPC that gave me a key for a door in the sewers. I was surprised that there was sewers down there. I decided to go back and check it out. Eventually I found a tiny well, that is easy to miss. You jump down there and there is a huge underground area. There’s even a dungeon within that dungeon. It took me a few hours to clear that area, and by the end of it I was blown away that all of this was just hiding under a well that most players will miss.
This is the best game I’ve ever played. There’s not even a close second.
U have to go to caelid to beat the game I think to activate the lift of dectus u need the medallion piece at fort faeroth, but oh yeah there is a hidden secret passageway also to get there with a dragon boss fight :)
@@millyrock6420 You only have to beat like 6 bosses to finish this game legit
@@millyrock6420 You actually don't even need to go up the Lift of Dectus, there's a mountain pass off to the side that takes you up to the Altus Plateau
"Someone else will do a magic build, and spend 100 hours exploring every inch of the map"
I feel called out
literally me refusing to fight margit until i get as many spells as possible
The reason I enjoy these games is how mysterious and secretive it feels to play, it actually feels as if you’re in that world or realm that Elden Ring takes part in. Just like irl we don’t know a whole lot unless we take the chance and or plunge to discover it ourselves. With the game giving us no guidance or quest logs it simultaneously gives each player a unique gameplay experience more of an impact to the player themselves for each player will experience the game in their own unique way.
It is exactly that feeling of mysteriousness that makes me want to play this game. And the exact reason why i have no interest in Horizon Forbidden West.
That’s funny, I just refunded my copy this morning for these exact reasons. I don’t like walking around aimlessly.
@@nolan8859 it ain’t for everyone, some people want more guidance/help than others and that’s fine
@@nolan8859 To each their own i guess. If you seek a streamlined experience, elden ring won't be able to offer that.
@@nolan8859 yo so there is this song 21 savage - glock in my lap, between the 0:11-0:21 seconds there is a good explanation for why u don't like it.
I've literally never once thought to myself "I wish this game had more cutscenes where I can just passively sit and be fed information instead of PLAYING A GAME" for any game ever.
I cldnt imagine wishing there were more cutscenes
Yes i was thinking exactly the Same Thing If used Here and there they are fine. But WHO just plays a Game and thinks to Themselfes "wow i would rly Love a cutscene right now"
@@notoriouswreck3237 i used to love cutscenes in games because they were so rare. I remember the awesome feeling I got watching cloud ride down the steps on a motorcycle in ff7 when I was like 8. Nowadays every game has a cutscene every 5-10 minutes. I got far cry 6 on sale, I thought ah screw it I liked far cry 5 those games can be good dumb fun. Little did I know the entire 2-3 hours of the expierience are nothing but scripted events and cutscenes. It’s like Ubisoft doesn’t even know what’s fun about their own games. Filling a sand box with interesting locations and fights that I can chose to tackle how I please is the only reason I want to play a far cry game. Now it’s an RPG-light narrative driven game with a voiced protagonist.
@@michawkwalter4205 there are really few cutscenes but they are so memorable, "someone must extinguish thy flame" and "i command thee knell" (to quote cutscenes from the trailer) are short and badass and will be remembered far longer than most other game's cutscenes.
But I do feel a bit disappointed we didn't get an amazing CGI cutscene intro like in Dark Souls 1 as for cutscenes during gameplay, they can be annoying when I'm just waiting to regain control of my character.
This design philosophy definitely has had its ups and downs over the years. I remember being extremely frustrated at dark souls 3 for hiding its early pyromancy trainer in a little corner that is easily missed in the undead settlement: To get there, you have to jump off a bridge onto a ledge to a 'secret' bonfire, then walk out of the room where you are purposefully placed facing AWAY from the direction the pyromancy trainer is. So you you then have to turn around, climb some stairs, kill some dudes, and then walk across what seems like a ledge you can't walk on to find him.
I don't mind subplots and npc storylines like Rogier's to be well-hidden and easily missed. In fact, I think that's a brilliant move. It makes everyone's experience unique and gives friends things to talk about and show each other, making the game all the more memorable. I do, however, mind when an NPC that is pretty much essential for one type of character build is hidden in such a manner. I went into dark souls 3 wanting to play a pyromancer, and it was incredibly defeating have to look up where the trainer was about a third into the game because they put in him in such an easily missed spot.
He wasn't hidden at all, right after the boss fight with the tree, there's a set of stairs that takes you up to the area where he resides. You're just bad at exploring.
Gut gid
How to enjoy a souls game experience:
Step 1: learn patience
Step 2: learn patterns
Step 3: get good
nah fam
git gud the rest will follow
@@yusogasora8194 you git gud by learning the rest
hmmm this is my first souls game I got smoked hard, then I learned Break the game and now I smoke hard.
And spam magic spells 😂
Oh so that’s why I didn’t enjoy the game…
"I helped a stranger once and she didn't even tell me where she would go next so i could write it down and get involved in her life when i feel like it"
*Truly immersion breaking.*
Lol
Funny thing is many at times when they do tell you where they're going, these fools just skip the dialogue. And then complain why there's no quest log.
@@arcanefire7511 yeah exactly , and even when they don't , they'll either be at an important locations / site of grace or give you a clue as to where they're going
Huh... ya know... that uh... remember the Activison/Blizzard information about the harassment and bizarre sxxual stuff that the public became aware of in the last year? It's almost like these game companies are staffed people who are... ya know... nevermind. Maybe that's related to these bizarre quest designs that western companies do.
*Gives NPC the 5 fish I was asked for*
OH WAOOOW YOURE MY SUPER BESTEST FRIEND NOW. WE'RE TOGETHER TIL THE END. HERE'S 300 PHCKING GOLD COINS MUTHERPHCKER. I LOVE YOU.
@@Yotrymp Jesse what the f*ck are you talking about
I remember once someone expressing their view in these games to me as something like ''In a world of spoon-fed trackers and unmissable hand-guided experiences with a one way only, this sort of games rely on only the player to decide both how to interpret experience and progress, it's up to you to do the tracking, the solving and the advancing'' Which, I personally agree with. Now, these sort of designs in games are not bad, we've been implementing these as quality of life, but it doesn't mean they reign supreme as absolute bests, specially for a series of tittles known for their difficulty. The souls style of game is, while frustrating at many times, one of the most rewarding in my experience, progress, findings and lore digging all feel very satisfying due to the fact, most of the time these results were achieved by you alone, without more directions than a vague purpose.
All in all, it really comes down to preference, I personally respect how they've maintained their style for the most part, that while introducing more streamlined changes and options, along making it more new player friendly to some degree, it retains it's ''we know who we're targeting, we don't care if you like it or not, so long they do''
Similar to other comments I've seen, I do love how their quest design is subtle, that true self-discovery is fantastic. The open-world nature can unfortunately hurt this style though since you can go through a later area for a quest before you progressed the quest in another. They do give you more hints in this game than previous titles to help account for that, but I've run into a handful of quests that don't seem to give you any hints between specific quest points, making it feel a bit frustrating and confusing to any who want to find it. I hope they add some extra dialouge at some points for quests to actually give a hint to their next location and possibly an in-game way to keep track of dialogue.
You nailed it.
I've been a AAA developer for over 10 years and I've seen this attitude over and over. It boils down to this: designers refuse to allow the player to have agency.
They want to control the experience like a film director controls the emotions of their audience. This is not film and players know when they are being corralled and coerced into doing and feeling a certain way.
That's not to say that linear games cannot work; they obviously can. But I do believe that their power over audiences is waning. Players can get a tightly manicured experience from Netflix. But games can provide so much more when designers set their controlling tendencies aside and concentrate on building a sandbox rather than a rollercoaster.
Well said. Elden ring does it right
Yep. Its the "it's our job to tell you what to think" mentality of the hyper-left California elites, where many of these devs (the actual people, not the company) live or grew up around.
That mentality corrupts everything it touches because it's the "first principle" that supports authoritarianism/slavery. The belief that you deserve to, have to, or should "lord" over any other person because you're "better" and they're "lesser" and must be trained/conditioned/controlled for "the greater good."
Damn. You worked on Mass Effect 2 and Anthem as a technical animator. Good shit
@@randomuserame LOL, thats right wing logic, their presumptions when they talk about vouchers, charity instead of government, private property and inequity.
@@randomuserame I think there's an element of personality/temperament and ideology involved in these types of design decisions.
But there's other things at play too; for example many designers/directors are "failed filmmakers" who would rather be directing a movie in Hollywood. And many others simply got their design sensibilities "baked in" during the golden era of linear games, back when quicktime events and long cinematics were still cool.
Personally, I think we need fresh blood. I can't wait to see what the Minecraft generation does once they get in charge of the design departments.
I actually like the way quests are done in Elden Ring it feels a lot less artificial if you're not given any markers (aside from that one quest that puts a marker on your map) and the sheer number of things to do in Elden Ring makes it so I don't really care if I miss things, since I'll probably find other things instead. There are a few things I find wack about Elden Ring, but this isn't one of them for sure.
Not a controversial opinion.
Same, but I just end up finding guides online anyway lol
Like the grave shadows. Fucking hate those things
I think the only thing I'm not a fan of with the quests is that you can fail for accidentally wondering a little too far in one direction.. but that's reaching for something to complain about. I enjoy this game.
How beautiful is a game, when an hour later after you sidetracked down the rabbit hole on 8 other things, that you remember, "oh shit, I forgot I had to go back and finish this quest/section"? This game will not get old and shelved for a while!
It's astounding to me how many people do not understand that you can NOT have enjoyable exploration in a game when there are quest markers pointing you to everything interesting.
Hit the nail on the head. If everything is marked, anything unmarked is automatically considered filler to me. Never really consciously considered that until now.
Once you get map fragments of an area you can find the major landmarks depicted on the fucking map, you can place markers, placeholder pins, and it's a optional quest. Obscure, sure, annoyingly easy to fail, arguably. But it's called a fucking notebook or remembering something important. I played skyrim and can't remember half of it like a shitty fever dream. I tried old school Runes scape and thought "this is the most tedious fucking busy work I've ever seen to pad out 2 hours to 12 months" .. these are my opinions, but my point is. Fucking realize there is more to something than at first glance, I know skyrim isn't that bad and runes runescape being better than just busy work, but if I didn't stop bitching long enough to look into them I wouldn't know. I know some of the hidden lore of elder scrolls, but someone saying elden ring is shallow compared to it is blatantly false. That sideshow had more info than the entirety of the main quest of skyrim.
I was born too late to explore the Earth, and too early to explore the stars. But I CAN explore beautiful, fictional or historical worlds in videogames.
GameDevs: Hey, look, we already explored the map for you! Just click on marker to go to the secret!
FromSoft: Hey, here's a large world to Exlore
Other GameDevs: Uhh, FromSoft, your game is broken. It is clearly not like ours.
@@hossdelgado626 hell yea, even im not the target market for this type of obscure questlines so i just look em up online but i know people enjoy this so i dont go around saying it's bad design
@@juamibenito2558 Right? My only complaint is finishing a questline after 5 tries and you talk to the wrong person killing it. Legit my only issue, yet... it feels more real. Still annoying, but if someone asked me what I think should change it would not be on the list (now moon veil, that fucking weeb's wet dream. That thing can go to hell. I am sick of seeing it)
I've found so much in this game. And had no clue there was an under portion of Stormveil Castle. And I can't wait to miss more stuff and finally figure out what I missed. What a great game
Elden ring was one of my first from software games and I’ve never played a game as hard as this in my life, even though it is difficult it’s one of the best game I’ve played in months if not years. The difficulty of the game is what I’d have to say is what makes it fun
Put ur Hp in 60, u will unlock easy mode
Welcome to the club :)
It’s the satisfaction of learning all of the boss’ moves and finally knocking them down
@Rensen86 I mean I wouldn’t call sekiro old… but Elden ring seems like the be all end all of fromsoftware games, I love that they have skills and such from sekiro in it. They took all the good from all their games and finally put it all together.
If you haven't played the first dark souls, I'd very much recommend you play it sometime, the way the map is built and interconnected to make such a small map feel so huge and rich is something very special.
I'm usually terrible at navigating and remembering paths, yet even after all those years I can still recall pretty much the entire ds1 map. Also it's just a great game in general.
"The lack of quest markers"
It's almost like the game has a map that expect YOU to place the markers you want, when you want. We get these fucking smooth brains every release. They actively refuse to engage the game the way the game wants them to, and then complain about it. Give it a few more weeks and they'll go away, like always.
Yeah but... there is a character who will mark your map for their quest... i dont get why no one else can leave a mark or give you some semblance of direction at times in that regard. Either way, id be fine with a journal log i can check at sites of grace. I dont need quest markers, just a log of crap to remember and cant misplace like i probably will irl at some point, lol
The problem is that since they leave the game not wanting to learn, their negative impact affects the game, and affects the reviews. In the end people are giving Elden Ring a worse score than it deserves for not wanting to take the time to learn how a game that goes against the standard, overly-accessible formula of modern AAA game development goes. Some of these reviews actually have the gall to ADMIT the game isn't for them and STILL leave a bad review, as if I'd leave a bad review on a sports game because I don't like playing them. Elden Ring still isn't perfection, most games cant be, but I'd still be willing to give it an 8.5 even up to a 9.5/10, because I've played DS3, and I understand that these games need to be learned first, and then with experience I've already had, it allowed me to further enjoy this game much sooner than if I was a new player.
You can mark your sites of grace on your map though. One playstation it’s triangle then R3
Don't disrespect smoothbrains by comparing us to those ignorant people.
@@SeasoningTheObese Yeah, I don't care for the reason. You want my help, you tell me where the fuck I gotta go, or a general idea. Ranni, is perhaps the perfect example of it. Too many "secrets"
Ah, you did what I asked, k, thanks, heres a this weird ass statue... "What do I do with it?" "Whatever you want" ". . . Oh and here's a doll" ". . . What?" "You gonna talk to it?" "Uhh, no"
*Stops at random grace site....* "Yeah I ain't talking to it."
*Stops at Grace Site in Nokstella* "TOTALLY GONNA TALK TO IT SUDDENLY!"
I respect FromSoft. They have a vision for every one of their games and they stick to it. They don't give in and cater they hold their ground. I respect it and it's why they're one of my favorite studios. They're one of the few studios out there that really put love and effort into their games and aren't out there trying to chase some trend.
The only trend I've observed them follow is making DLC for their games, which I can't hate them for since it's usually reasonably priced and of good quality.
@@honeypotusername yup, plus those DLC's are actual new content they made after they released a finished game. not a bandaid for unfinished garbage.
Yeah, except the deeper issues with this issue. Like certain characters giving you wrong directions or certain items giving you vague descriptions on a Huge map and you frustrate yourself riding around for hours in the wrong places according to description. Characters changing position on a Huge map with no way of knowing where they are, easily missable even in front of your nose. Quest memorization without the option to repeat dialogue, again, on a Huge map. That stuff works in DS1 because it's way smaller here the game is trolling you with half done quests, invisible walls and absurd hidden locations. Quest tasks that you can't progress without beating certain bosses without knowing it, again wasting time in frustration until you look up a guide and spoil the experience out of frustration. There's a difference between doing it yourself and the game hindering you playing it. You could argue it's that way so players help eachother out through multiplayer. What if I want to solo? What if I don't want someone to tourguide me through the game? What if I want to see the game content that I paid for? What if I don't want to replay the game a hundred times or look for characters on a Huge map with a quest but no clue where to find them? This is bad game design deliberate or not. Unless looking up guides for playthrough was intentional.
I believe that the reason From Soft left some things the same, is that they have learned the important lesson that, sometimes the hardest thing to do, is nothing. Instead of continuously tweaking something good, until it becomes crap, they've made the conscious decision to improve the things that need improving, create some new things, and leave the good things, alone.
you do realize they have already nerfed things in this game, leaving things alone my butt
@@reynaaiken4542 theres a difference between good and TOO good. Mimic and hoarfrost NEEDED to be nerfed.
@@reynaaiken4542 its irrelevant, the point of the guy is how they made the game ,not how they balance the game ...
As I’m reading the comments I heard some guy passing my house telling his friend, excitedly, “golden seeds allow you to get more flasks” I love the community built around this game, non-souls players being brought in by vets, etc.
Yeah I mostly find good folks in the FromSoft fan community. Counter to the common narrative that all of us are toxic and like a cult.
Im absolutely loving how this community has evolved. Had an interaction with a guy who religiously proclaimed that this game was stupid, broken, unfinished, etc. Until I broke down how the game is SUPPOSED to be viewed (being built as a community effort), to explore when things are locked and to seek help when something is stumping you.
Suddenly a few days later and now he is telling me how excited he gets when he jumps in and how he's gotten his friends into it and they try to help each other through bosses and travel the map looking for "good drops" and it's the most beautiful thing to me
@@adventpsyop i like the souls community even if they are toxic or rude - not trolls though. I choose them instead of a fanbase full of SJW and lefters and political bullshit. These days companies make games for them just to have a dedicated fanbase.
I love the community! Except when you parry or backstab me 😔
@@N3V3L lol fair enough
Personally, I'd love a journal that told me what quests I had started, and if they were completed. I don't really need a progress tracker or marker, but there is SO MUCH in the game, I would *love* to know what I'd already done hours later.
That said, people who think it's "poorly designed" doesn't understand how design works. I am not kidding. The *design* is that it's a bleak and confusing world. You're stuck in a cycle of life and death, days passing into months into years with the world in stasis. How much could you really keep track of as you were stabbed, burned, frozen, or had your mind melted through madness?
It's a *design* choice to be as difficult to manage everything. It's *well* designed in this regard, even if others may not have done that design *personally*. That's something people don't get. Bad design is stuff that doesn't work, not things they personally wouldn't do.
@@dakota5672 yeah but thats to much work :( smh people are so lazy
No, no no no. If you forget what you did, the game shouldn't help you. If you missed a line of dialogue and want to hear it again, the game shouldn't let you. If you forget an NPC's name from when they first introduced themself.... Well, the latest update ruined that example by putting them on the map, but I think you get my point here.
Most games you can mash through the dialogue of every character and then just look at the journal and you'll have missed nothing. There's no purpose in even paying attention, its a waste of your time. But Elden Ring? I feel like I'm being rewarded for every little thing that I've remembered, every little note I've scribbled down on the pad of paper next to me. Every little marker I leave myself on the map. Keeping track of things, for once, is actually appreciated and rewarded by a video game. And that makes me want to pay attention even more, and not miss a single word, and try my best to understand the lore. Everything feels so important to pay attention to, so I pay attention way more than I do with any other game, and I get very invested in the game's world and story and characters, and the game rewards me for that too, and it's just this amazing beautiful cycle.
@@cleverman383 You very blatantly misunderstand my point, and also that people have different subjective tastes.
You might enjoy it, not many people enjoy having to remember hundreds of lines of dialogue for one obscure statement to continue the quest to get a specific item from a place that isn't marked on the map or explained in order to get the ending that they want.
I'm not saying the game should point you exactly where to go for each quest, or for any quests. It's just tedious to track things without an in-game journal.
Let me explain; I have no trouble keeping all of the information for the quests in memory. It's a skill I've developed over a long time. I don't *need* a journal for quests for a game like this. I *want* one so I can relax. I don't want to put that much into remembering everything flawlessly. I don't even need detailed notes, something like "Hyetta asked for a fingerprint grape." Is enough.
All I want is to be able to relax rather than have to be switched on for every damn line of dialogue. I love listening, I hate memorizing the lines.
@@KodyackCasual It's interesting to me that you would feel that way about a FromSoft game in particular. When you look at their iconic brutally harsh combat, it's clearly a game that absolutely wants you to put extra effort into it, and always be switched on, not to relax.
No one familiar with their games would say these kinds of things about that combat:
"You might enjoy combat in FromSoft games, but people have different tastes, and not many people enjoy dying to the same boss for 5 hours straight just to get the outcome they want. I could dodge every attack from any of the boss fights, it's a skill I've developed over a long time, but I don't want to be forced to need to, I do the combat so I can relax. I don't want to have to be switched on for every damn dodge roll, I love boss fights, I hate memorizing movesets."
Now obviously I'm trying to convey my point of view here, so if some of those comparisons to what you said seemed a little too extreme or exaggerated, feel free to take it with a grain of salt. After all, it's not about whether it should be AS difficult as the combat, I really just want you to understand the angle at which I'm viewing this aspect of the game design, the perspective that I'm looking at it through a similar lens that FromSoft designs the rest of their games.
They like to make players have to be on their toes, fully focused on the task, brain fully active and switched on, all of that. They want you to be in that state when you try to achieve a goal, so that you feel satisfied and accomplished when you complete it. Perhaps I'm wrong about that. But if it's true, doesn't it make sense that they would approach the design of quests and open world design the very same way?
There are games that I love to play when I want to turn my brain off, relax, and have fun without being pushed to a challenge. But that's just not how I've ever seen FromSoft games as being, especially before Elden Ring, I don't think that's too controversial of an opinion, right? So, following that same logic, that's how I expected the new open world stuff to be too. If they do everything else that way, then why would it be any different? And that's where you and I seem to differ in our views. I never expected any part of Elden Ring to be relaxing. I expected the entire game to want to challenge me as much as it can, and to require me to always be "switched on" even outside of combat. Perhaps you went in with a different type of expectations? Maybe you hoped it would be something less intense to do as a break between tough fights? I'd be genuinely curious to hear.
@@cleverman383 I think the difference is quite obvious; one half is open world, the other is boss fights. I *expect* to be ready and aware for a boss fight. It's active thought.
Memorization of random overworld events isn't. It's passive and long term, during the part of the game that's meant to be there to destress from the fights.
It's *because* the boss fights are intense I want the exploration to be more relaxed, savvy?
I've played all the souls game, and Sekiro, and have done NG+ a bunch, pvp'd, done other challenge runs, whatever.
But I opt into that challenge and and am ready for it and can take it in doses. Large scale memorization/note taking is not the same thing, nor is it active. It's, again, tedious.
Would you feel the same way if every fight was the difficulty of Margit? No, you wouldn't. The game would be painful to play if every enemy had the moveset, hitboxes, and output that Margit has. This is even assuming their health and damage isn't changed too, but throw that in and I think you get my point.
I'm not switched on when in the round table talking to NPCs too frequently. I'm not super focused on what Kenny boy is telling me about his fort, I'll get to it later.
I'm switched on for the boss fights, mini-boss encounters, and to a much lesser extent, the random enemy fights on the way to my destination.
I was so used to finding all the hidden walls in DS3 by looking at all the player messages, and I genuinely gasped in excitement when I found my first hidden wall on the way to the carian mansion because I thought they got rid of them. Finding intentionally hidden parts of the game is actually fun
Never played a game from these guys before and I usually despise ”open world” games yet this game intrigues me at every turn. Usually I get so booreed because what you usually do in open worlds is ”follow this, follow that, do this blablabla” but here I just wander around. I didnt find margit until I was about 20 hrs in because I simply didnt go that way, yet I did sooo much stuff in that time. THIS IS AMAZING. Looking like it might be one of my favourite games, ever.
I love looking at the map and seeing be open areas and spending hours snooping around every corner
Thats this game key element, you dont have to follow the path, in fact, Thats a bad idea, you explore and find stuff so organically, actually, as a soul veteran, the only real reason to start a new+ story is the incress in dificulty or a special side-quest. In elden ring starting again means finding more stuff to do! This game is already at my top 3
@@joseroa5243 I believe you actually have to start a few new game pluses if you want EVERYTHING but you don’t need everything. Within 30 mins you can make any build op. Just look at all the guides on UA-cam
@@ectsy better, that means i've a year of content to explore, and i dont have to worry about finishing the game for the next reléase. I like my 60 dollar game to have 60 dollar content.
It's one of the few modern open worlds that I love. Most open worlds just feel too similar, like I'm playing the same game over and over. My favorite open world games are Skyrim, RDR2, BoTW, and Elden Ring. AC Origins gets an honorable mention for it's attention to detail and unique setting.
I found myself a bit lost yesterday while playing elden ring, and didn't know where to go (despite the obvious directions the grace gives you) until i found an entrance to some underground content, and i thought it could be just a regular dungeon and don't provide me with any progress whatsoever, but i decided to go in and complete it in case it gave me some sick weapon or magic. I died many many times, and the level design convinced me this was a main area b ut it wasn't until i had to search in google for a way to progress further in the dungeon that i realized this wasn't a main area to explore and progress, it was an optional area, and it kind of blew my mind the amount of level design put into a simple entrance in some random point in the map that probably a small portion of the playerbase ever found. Elden ring really does mean it when it says it wants to give each player a different experience.
What was it called
@@mangoman1096 idk but there was a part where you could ride a chariot and you fought a bloodhound in another part and could get 2 dope armor sets. The boss was just a duped radagon wolf but still
@@perseus1293 cool
There are examples of this EVERYWHERE
@@perseus1293 Was this the Gelmir Hero's Grave? That dungeon was a bitch to get through. Did you find the secret area behind the lava after the first chariot?
My favorite thing about this minimal information is the organic moments of discovery. I’m heading over to the big tree in the middle of the woods to see what it’s all about, when I stumble upon a seemingly inconspicuous stone shack, which turns out to be an elevator to a massive underground world. I’m traveling through the weeping peninsula and I find a shiny lamppost. I inspect it and it creates a ghost that makes a trail of golden shit to a hidden cave that has its own boss. These moments are so exciting and really underline how FromSoftware perfected the essence of how an open world should feel.
it definitely feels like a love letter to an older generation of gamer. not everything is spelled out, things are purposely hidden, difficult, and sometimes frustrating. we will be finding secrets about this game for the next 10 years; and almost everything in elden ring CAN be easy but if you feel entitled to win just because you walk into a boss room at level 10 then thats your fault not the games.
This.
@@thunderborn3231 As an early wow player, this really speaks to me. Elden ring isn't GOTY, it's GOTD (Decade).
@@Lufanos its this generations ocarina of time. which i find interesting that zelda games dont care if you can beat them either, but nobody complains about them compared to elden ring lol
@@thunderborn3231 Exactly, people need to get good or stop moaning.
One way to leave a mildly annoying comment is to tell a story that doesn't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the giant crow to Lordran. I needed a new lining for my greaves. So I decided to go to Londo, which is what they called Lordran in those days. So I tied a shabriri grape to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the crow cost something smooth or silky, and in those days, smooth stones had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a Golden Rune [2]," you'd say. Now where were we... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had a shabriri grape on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have any fresh grapes, because of the rot. The only thing you could get was those big red ones...
"Fear of missing out" is always a source of burnout when it comes to games. I really enjoyed genshin impact at first when they game felt so massive and endless, but when it came to exploring every crevice of the game (via the third party interactive maps), the game became more of a chore and dispelled a lot of the illusion of an open world game. With elden ring, I really try to limit how often I would use any guides. After all, it would probably make multiple playthroughs all the better.
This is something I really struggle with a lot. I have the wiki open because god forbid if I get locked out of a quest or accidentally miss important gear (and if I miss an illusory wall because they're a real pain to find in this game). Trying to 100% the game took out a good chunk of the fun though and I screwed up in the beginning anyways (Boggart questline if you're curious) so it was impossible. I made another save file with a different build to spice things up, for a while I just did my own thing which was fun. I fell back into the habit of trying to get everything though 🤦🏻♂️ FOMO hits me really really hard in videogames, nowadays I try to 100% stuff in games
im already burnt out of elden ring tbh. Its a very good game but a lot of the catacombs and soldier camps I just skip now. At the start I went through all of thm because of fear of missing out but they all gave shit rewards and were reallly similar in layout and enemies it became boring. And then the fact that you can become a bit too overlevelled by going through all these areas. By the time I reached Radhan I was OP af and didnt get the same challenge a lot of other people had.
@@zerkalo2861 yeah no shit. The problem is a lot of them have shit items and are basically copypasted. That's why it sucks because they get boring and start skipping them. But then you miss out on the occasional one that actually has a very good item that you desperately need like a smithing stone bell bearing. Since they're all copypasted and boring you don't know which ones you have to do. Dumbass
I feel like their quest design helps with replayability as well. When I played ds1 for the first time, I rarely talked to npcs and it took me multiple playthroughs to find kaathe in order to get the dark lord ending because everyone else in the game tells you to link the flame. Likewise, in Elden Ring most characters will say that you need to "follow the guidance of the two fingers" and "restore the golden order" while others will tell you to go against the two fingers and rebel against the erdtree. This gives the players a choice which will likely affect the ending of the game and they can choose the opposite path on another playthrough.
Nah it's open world this time, you have to smell where some NPC's show up next, with the size of the world it's worse. I didn't mind the "quests" in previous souls games. They were serviceable but this time it's just so spread out and you get punished for exploring. Aka you go somewhere you don't know is further in the story while not walking into legacy dungeons and suddenly all the NPC's are go e or have relocated. Effectively skipping a step in the "quest" while you don't know if it already has failed or you skipped a step.
@@theblackbaron4119 "I don't want to experience the open world aspect in a open world game". That is what I just read.
@@theblackbaron4119 bro it really doesn't take away from your experience if you mess up a couple of quests. If you didn't look up anything you wouldn't even notice. I recommend going through the game without any guides or spoilers for the first two playthroughs at least, see how much you can figure out by yourself. Or share your experiences with friends but not online. Enjoy
@@L.K.48 honestly. There’s no rush to complete the game, but the desire is definitely there!! That’s why the play throughs stay fresh for me
@@justinf7107 me and my friend bought it on release day, and we are kind of competing in progression "did you beat that boss already?" but honestly it's better if you just take it slow, and explore as you wish. It's so good to find things on your own.
The quest and item discovery design also end up bringing the community together to create a lot of guides for new players that do want to do every quest. Looking for a guide feels good in this game because you know the amount of work the creator put in. You really might have never known about that facet of the game if not for the community.
Almost everything I have is because of a guide lol and I like that a lot
You're not wrong about the comunity. ER is probably the only game i've gone onto the wiki after the fact, saw the lack of details on a certain thing, and felt the drive (seeing the effort others have put in) to spend an hour writing the wiki page for it
me hunting for all the deathroots and finding them all before any guide did was probably the best feeling I've ever had in a video game lol
This game can feel a lot like PoE around that, the obscure unexplained mechanics and lore leading to a massive community driven ressource libraries, with a wiki and builds every league
I am now on my 3rd journey and have played over 300 hours in Elden Ring.
Yesterday we happened to have the same conversation on Discord about the topic.
And my opinion on the subject was:
That the developers planned the quest design and discovery of all fades/secrets EXACTLY THAT way! It's meant to be.
Likewise, the developer is aware of how such games are played and experienced today.
With all the information on homepages, conversations in voice chats and watching YT videos and Twitch streams.
I think it was intended from the start that the tasks/riddles/content should be discovered together with communities/friends. That you exchange ideas in conversations and compare who experienced what and when.
These videos just keep getting better. The further I get into the game the farther I want to dive deeper in. It’s nice having content creators with the same insatiable cravings for more Elden Ring. The amount of discoverability in this game is insane.
"Unimpressive visuals" the amount of times I have stopped and just admired the scenery in elden ring, probably makes up half of the 95 hours I have in the game
The people saying that are playing on $100 graphics cards😂
I don't understand where people are pulling this argument, Elden Ring is one of the most beautiful games I've seen in years. I always pull out the telescope to just enjoy the view. Everytime I go to an interesting area, my wife points out how cool or pretty it looks.
It may not have top of the line graphics, but style always dates better than visual fidelity. The game has great graphics for what it is.
@@SleepyMatt-zzz I think that the people who criticise the "graphics" or "visuals" aren't referring to game's visual style, art direction, creativity and what not, but rather to the technical aspect of graphics-the graphics engine, physics, level of detail, character models, animation etc.
Compare Horizon Forbidden West's graphics to Elden Ring's. HFW graphics are exceedingly more impressive on a technical level, and it looks like a next-gen game, whereas Elden Ring... not so much, imo. That's not to say that Elden Ring isn't visually impressive, because it is, but this is thanks largely to the art direction, not really because of technical graphics wizardry.
@@VimDoozy Because the game isn't meant to be that?
From was never known for having ground breaking graphics, horizon Is technically beautiful but I can't for the life of me remember a single place from the first game, and didn't even bother with forbidden west, that's the importance of art direction.
by ps5 standard textures are not 4k
I feel like From has made this intentionally as an art piece.
Let me explain.
Ever since the first Dark souls, me and my brothers have been massive fans of the series.
Each of us playing separately and finding different approaches and secrets in our playthroughs.
This will inevitably mean that we do miss things, however it also gives us something by making our viewes truly unique.
We've spoken hours about the previous games and how theres alot to find and see, alot of emotions to experience.
Be it sadness from Solaire or Siegmeiers questlines to rage from a series of (totally not our fault, the boss sucks) deaths.
This makes everyone see a different picture, a unique experience.
It brings out emotions, just as art is intended.
It is however just as a painting, not for everyone.
And if you're incapable of enjoying a game where things aren't handheld for you then I suggest looking elsewhere.
I'm sorry, but Fromsoft has their own vision and it is something me and alot of others will enjoy far more.
Personally Elden ring is the first open world game I can enjoy since the S.t.a.l.k.e.r series since nothing really feels forced upon you.
That is why I consider these games true art.
For no matter which game they release people will cherish, love, admonish and hate all at once.
But it will nevertheless always create Debate and discussions, and that is why it will be remembered.
My first play through, coming off of watchdogs and Valhalla was such a breath of fresh air. Yeah, the quest style is “old fashioned” but since every game I’ve been playing for the past seven years has had the same UI as the Witcher 3, it’s actually really refreshing
Elden Ring doesn't say to us how we should feel about jack shit. Instead it encourages us so we ourselves give meaning to our adventure. And self put meaning is the basis to our feeling of fulfillment, self realization. It's powerful, it's art.
Kinda weird reading this comment for me, considering I've played a game that much better suits this description than elden ring itself (NieR:Automata). So it makes me feel that this statement is really 50/50 on being right and wrong.
It's right from a game design and gameplay experience perspective. It doesn't force you to play any certain way mostly, except maybe some bosses that require a certain way to play to feasibly kill (malenia).
But thats a gameplay thing. Elden ring is not an emotional or philosophical journey, which this comment seems to imply.
So, Automata for example fits the way you phrased it at least, much better. Idk if you mean it in an emotional, philosophical and critical thinking sort of way. If so, then it's phrasing miscommunication I guess.
Again, just confused by phrasing since it doesn't seem accurate, but if the statement was just slightly altered then it would make total sense to me.
@@trevorveillette8415 lol not a philosophical game? I could write a doctoral dissertation on Souls philosophy / lore, and Elden Ring is really no different. A lot of it's just not being spoon fed with the explicit narrative
In my experience, FS makes games that feel so much deeper than a game. You get out what you put it, and I’m not ashamed or don’t feel weird saying that these games have taught me deeper meaning in many different aspects of life, through sheer cutscene, and npc dialogue. I sold this game and got it for Christmas, my birthday from parents and extended family within the course of three months. I sold two of the copies and realized in my mind that something wanted me to play that game. I picked up dark souls 1 in 2011 and the rest is history. As we all know 2 was shakey but I still respected it for what it was and also found much of it thoroughly enjoyable. Sekiro and 3 being even better somehow. Amazing series, passionate productions and an amazing fan base that keeps its game so icy.
I think their design is actually really smart in today's context. This game will eventually have a wiki that is completely filled out with every single hidden thing in the game. Players will share everything they've discovered with each other. Eventually there will be no secrets. You just have to look it up. Its up to the player whether they want that revealed to them, or discover it on the own. I can say for certain that the best feeling in the world is discovering a huge area or item because you paid attention and kept curious. Why ruin that sense of discovery for people out of some fear of "wasted development costs"?
Isn't it awesome how games like this that isn't straight forward brings a community together
Minecraft is another example that did this flawlessly, and built one of the largest gaming communities in existence.
Fromsoft has been doing such things since their very first game King's Field. No quest markers, no radar, not even interaction prompts, you don't even know if anything can be interacted and no soapstone messages to help you in the PS1 offline era.
The way we played was by spamming the interact button with every step, randomly we would pull objects straight out of the flat ground, tombstones etc., and we would walk 45 degrees facing walls spamming interact and hope we don't miss a hidden wall.
There's pros and cons to this, the experience can be both organic but tedious, there's a chance for discovery but for most people, it's going to involve reading and getting information from outside the game instead of from the game itself. It's just what it is, it's not the best nor the worst.
The way I found the depths of stormveil was that my gf found it first and I asked her how to get there. The absence of all the tools also plays on the online aspect of assisting other players and wants to reward people for participating in the community aspect