I still haven't had the chance to play Elden Ring, though it should be downloaded to my PS4 at this point (haven't checked since I started the download a couple days ago). For non-gaming reasons our living room has not been usable for gaming this weekend, so I'm having to experience the game vicariously through YouTube videos and the like.
What I have seen of it seems really exciting. I think I've grown a little weary of the "open world" genre of late, particularly feeling a disconnect with the general public when I found Breath of the Wild to be more frustrating and unstructured than free and exciting (which seems to be the more common response). I didn't think Breath of the Wild was bad, per se, I just felt that a lot of the things that I enjoy about Zelda games were absent from it (in some ways, it had the very opposite problems that Skyward Sword did).
I remember when I was in high school and my best friend showed me Grand Theft Auto III. While the idea of an open game world wasn't really new (you could argue that the original Zelda was the first "open world" game) this created a new model for it. And I think I spent a lot of my teen years really having fun causing mayhem with no regard to actual game objectives.
There's a concept in game design that distinguishes between "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" rewards for playing. Extrinsic are the simpler ones to define: if you beat this dungeon, you get this sword, or you progress this reputation, or you see your stats go up in some way. Intrinsic rewards are the sort of emotional feeling you get when you pull off a really cool move or the rush of excitement when you take down that difficult boss.
One of the deep flaws in a lot of open-world design (and MMO, but that's not this post) is that so much of its reward system is extrinsic - missions and the like become chores to do. The Assassin's Creed games had a lot of these issues even from early on, like having a bunch of feathers to collect.
This isn't always a problem - Assassin's Creed II had several runes you were supposed to find left by "Subject 16," who was the previous guy Abstergo stuck in the Animus, and they led to these puzzles that then built out a crazy history of Templar conspiracies. But often there was a sense of "here's some busywork to justify the size of the map."
There's a paradox, I think, in open-world design. When we talk about really good level design (something that the Soulsborne series is known for) one adjective that is often used is "tight." This can be metaphorical, but it is often quite literal. Consider, for example, in the late stages of Bloodborne, the Upper Cathedral Ward. This manages to feel like a really significant "level" of the game, but it is more or less one building and one courtyard and then the upper levels of the Grand Cathedral. The central building (which I assume is meant to be the headquarters of the mysterious Choir that governs the Healing Church) is just built in such a way that you need to go around to a back door, make your way through a narrow corridor, and kind of work your way into the central room before you can open the main doors and essentially make the entire building very accessible.
Because of the enemy encounters and the care that you're expected to take going through a game like this, these areas feel bigger and more expansive than they are.
So, when a game like Elden Ring takes that design and expands it to a genuinely huge world, I really wonder what that will be like. What I have heard is that the world is dotted with small (and some not-so-small) dungeons that are built with that tight From Soft level design. But I've also heard that the regions between (in the aptly named Lands Between) don't feel particularly empty either - that there aren't kind of blank spaces on the map that solely exist to create distance.
Naturally, I have yet to see it for myself.
I've been thinking about what kind of build I want to go with. Of course, there's no build that gets to do everything. Even Pyromancers in Dark Souls III, who split their stats between Intelligence and Faith, don't really get to use the really high-level Sorceries or Miracles. Similarly, "quality" builds get to use lots of weapons, but not the ones with really high Strength or Dexterity requirements.
I think the element of the game's yet-to-be-uncovered lore that interests me the most is the cosmic/stellar/gravitational stuff, which I think leans toward Sorcery, so I'll likely kick things off with the Sorcerer (I think it's actually called the Astrologer) starting class.
Still, I'm also excited to try out melee combat (those guard counters feel like a really great way to feel like I'm not just a noob for using a shield). If I understand correctly, changing weapon scaling in this game is way easier and "cheaper" to do than in DS3, so perhaps going Int-focused isn't going to hurt me too much for weapons.
I saw VaatiVidya's video in which he was using a flail as his primary weapon, and that does look fun. So far it looks like they're doing a decent job of distinguishing the visual style from Dark Souls - it's still medieval and ruined, but it's far more colorful and I'm really excited to learn a new visual language - like it seems that one of the mini-dungeons' bosses being a lion-man could have some important significance.
So, I will definitely post some more when I get to play the game.
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