tl;dr Souls games used to be their own thing people tried to copy, Elden Ring tries to copy other games thing.
WARNING: Do not read this if you like Open Worlds game and don't want that fondness to be shattered.
Open world games are bad. Almost 100% of the time. There are some exceptions to this but anytime a franchise has gone from being a non-open world game to an open world one, it fails. Every. Single. Time. The only reason people think they like open world games is because they like "exploring a world". K, go play a walking simulator.
A game, is meant to be a game. So, when you go from tightly crafted levels with clever flowing in previous Souls games to just pooping the player out into the world one key concept of the greatness of the franchise is lost: the level design. Sure, sure, you get to places eventually that feel like a traditional level, in the same vein as Breath of the Wild. But, like that game, we run into the second reason why open world games don't work.
Open world games have an exceedingly high "time to engagement" What is "time to engagement" you ask. Time to engagement is how long it takes the player to go from doing something autonomous and that doesn't require active thought like walking, running, driving etc till they are actively engaged, usually in the form of combat or puzzle solving.
All open world does is lengthen the "time to engagement". So, you've gone from a series where you damn near couldn't even look away from the screen safely for more than a few minutes in an unfamiliar area less some random creature kill you, to one where you can casually scroll through your twitter feed as you hold forward on your analog stick while you wait to get to the next engagement area.
So, now we have the two reasons why nearly ALL open world games are bad. And we understand why players are tricked into thinking they're good. But now I will address why a Souls style game in an open world is the epitome of terrible thinking.
Souls games dont hold your hand. Thats sort of their bread and butter. And when you have 2-4 paths open to you at once, thats good. Hand holding isnt all that needed. The thing is, open world games sort of need to hold your hand. It is yet another reason why open world games are bad.
Anthony Davis
They are so full of stuff that it usually takes an hour or more for the game to fully introduce you to all its systems, how to engage in them, and how to further the progression through them. Elden Ring, as a Souls style game doesn't do this. And why would it? I just got done saying that would be against its own form.
The problem then is as such: I see all this stuff to collect. All these resources to farm. I've played open world games. I know where this will go. But the game hasn't told me exactly. Sure, I could play along and just pretend like this is fun or exciting. But, that would be pretending. It's not fun or exciting. Its repetitive. Its the same thing we've done in dozens of other games.
And this isnt even getting into the nitty gritty of the changes to combat that largely are unnecessary. But, thats even more subjective and due to personal preference than what I have laid out so far and I dont feel like writing more than this given that I am sure this will receive more down votes than times I have died across Demons, Dark 1-2-3, and Bloodborne (not Sekiro though, it would be 10s of thousands if we counted it) and what would be the point.
Leo Sanchez
Name an open world that does open world the way ER does. Because I've been longing to play an open world like this my entire life. The closest has been BotW, and BotW fucked up my entire enjoyment of the whole game once I figured out that the only two rewards I'd ever see for my exploring would be either 1) breakable weapons in generic shrine #514 or 2) korok seeds. ER is literally the open world I've been craving since Gothic 1/2
The dogs in Caelid one shots me. I m running dex katana and can't even kill one. What should I do?
Levi Sullivan
>here's a bunch of empty hallways connecting empty meaningless locations: the game Dragon's Dogma isn't an open world. I find it hilarious that someone would criticize ER for presumably lacking meaningful content in its open world (demonstrably untrue btw, you literally can't take 10 steps without seeing something that will draw your attention, with original content and a meaningful reward) and would name DD as a good open world. There's absolutely nothing in DD beyond open empty fields with occasional trash mobs and long empty hallways. 90% of the map is completely empty
>buzzwords when your obscure meme game is demonstrated to be trash >needing to criticize the SUPREME ULTIMATE GAME OF ALL TIME to feel like you have a personality Fuck you and die
You literally have yellow piss streams ingame and on map to show you where to go, how is that difficult for you
Zachary Torres
You know everything would be a fuck ton better if all the meaningful content was a located in the Limgrave region.
Cameron Rivera
go elsewhere? there's a massive map dude, if you can't fight shit in the zone you're at just go somewhere else, get stronger then come back
Jaxson Hernandez
>i hate popular things online because it makes me feel like i'm an edgy and unique person YWNBAW
Nathaniel Walker
rent free
Brayden Baker
YWNBAW
Andrew Collins
TL;DR
Nicholas Wilson
takes your meds bro
Michael Howard
Listen, everyone knows tarnished is cook as fuck. But who knows what he's thinking? Who knows why he crushes dogs? And why do we think about him as fondly as we think of the mythical (nonexistent?) Dr. Pepper? Perchance.
Elijah Green
The main design just feels like a single player MMO to me...with the same kind of lifeless NPCs and same theme parky camps of mobs you have to grind on. But it has better combat and bosses going for it at least, unlike mmos. That part of Souls isn't lost.
