From Software Elden Ring - From Software's new game with writing by GRRM

[mediocrepoet]

Since some of you seem to really care about lore, here's the only real lore video I've listened to so far. If you have an hour to listen to someone's at least semi-plausible ass pull that brings in a bunch of George RR Martin stuff a la ASOIAF novels, I think it's worth a go.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

Gradually finished the rest of main content in post game over a few weeks. Mercifully no need for NG+ or a new char. Didn't change my overall opinion, but some thoughts:

• Volcano manor is good. Well developed area with its own NPC quests, a good dungeon with some unique enemies (snakemen) and a fun fight with Rykard. Proper high effort legacy dungeon, shows in the encounter design. The wider Gelmir area has some nice verticality but the majority of the fights suffer from the same lack of polish as the rest of the overworld.
• Haligtree and Elphael look great. Encounter design is reasonable. Loses a few marks for heavy enemy reuse/reskinning. That Erdtree Avatar on the narrow bridge can fuck off though, cheesed that dickhead by throwing pots.
• Not much to say about Memelenia that hasn't already been said. If she doesn't have both health regen and waterfowl dance she's easy, but with them she's obnoxious as all hell. Me and Tiche bled her to death eventually, couldn't be arsed to memorise roll timings for her moveset.
• Missed Shitlord Placidsexxx before. Fun fight apart from the big AoE laser attack. Considered dooting him to death with a longhorn after getting tapped by that move a few times. Persisted and got there eventually.
• Shaded Castle is the best mini-castle.
• The Leyndell Sewers are another good legacy dungeon. Subterranean Shunning Grounds is a nice bit of environmental story telling, shame the generic catacombs tileset was used.
• Problems with torqued up enemy attack damage in the late game are definitely real, even at level 150+ with 40-50 vigor. Damage mitigation talismans are almost mandatory at some points if you want to play with a reasonable margin for error. The spookified babyskull birdworm near Apostate Derelict sticks out in my memory – absolutely insane damage output.
• Liked both the Ordina evergaol gimmicks and then found out both were repeats after doing Sellia/fighting more black knives.
• I think Godrick, Rykard and Radahn are probably the best implemented bosses in terms of their backstory. No creative item description interpretation required to make sense of their place in the world. Comes naturally from exploring their locations and some light exposition.
• I’ve actually read posts unironically pushing a lore justification for the Godrick evergaol cutpaste.

That’s me done and dusted save for any expansions I think, no desire to replay this one otherwise.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Crazy, so many Youtubers are morons, but this guy gets it. Same guy as the lore video I put above.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Game of the generation? Elden Ring is absolute shit both when it comes to FS past games and when compared against great modern open world games, such as Breath of the Wild, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Witcher 3.

Most people got into it cause of the hype and lack of competition (BotW2 delayed, Cyberpunk 2077 flopped) and left it somewhere in the middle due to boring overworld and trash combat.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Game of the generation? Elden Ring is absolute shit both when it comes to FS past games and when compared against great modern open world games, such as Breath of the Wild, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Witcher 3.

Most people got into it cause of the hype and lack of competition (BotW2 delayed, Cyberpunk 2077 flopped) and left it somewhere in the middle due to boring overworld and trash combat.

You forgot falling asleep while holding L1 and standing still, then waking up and not understanding why they're dead.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Game of the generation? Elden Ring is absolute shit both when it comes to FS past games and when compared against great modern open world games, such as Breath of the Wild, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Witcher 3.

Most people got into it cause of the hype and lack of competition (BotW2 delayed, Cyberpunk 2077 flopped) and left it somewhere in the middle due to boring overworld and trash combat.

You forgot falling asleep while holding L1 and standing still, then waking up and not understanding why they're dead.

It really hurts you that I solved ER's dumbassery at the root, while you learned the roll patterns like a good Pavlov's dog, doesnt it?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

If you have an hour

you gotta wait for the annoying youtuber overanalysis dlc

It has arrived!

 

[dacencora]

Game of the generation? Elden Ring is absolute shit both when it comes to FS past games and when compared against great modern open world games, such as Breath of the Wild, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Witcher 3.

Most people got into it cause of the hype and lack of competition (BotW2 delayed, Cyberpunk 2077 flopped) and left it somewhere in the middle due to boring overworld and trash combat.

Can’t comment on KCD, but even in the short while I’ve played Elden Ring, it is easily more fun to explore than Witcher 3 or BOTW.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Game of the generation? Elden Ring is absolute shit both when it comes to FS past games and when compared against great modern open world games, such as Breath of the Wild, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Witcher 3.

Most people got into it cause of the hype and lack of competition (BotW2 delayed, Cyberpunk 2077 flopped) and left it somewhere in the middle due to boring overworld and trash combat.

You forgot falling asleep while holding L1 and standing still, then waking up and not understanding why they're dead.

It really hurts you that I solved ER's dumbassery at the root, while you learned the roll patterns like a good Pavlov's dog, doesnt it?

No, it hurts that you have some sort of delusions of grandeur while replying to the title of the video without addressing any of his reasoning regardless of whether you accept his conclusion. I mean, I have low standards for you in particular but I'm disappointed even with that consideration. It's like no matter how far I drop the bar for you, you never fail to sail face first into it instead of clearing it, like some lamed and inbred three legged puppy. It breaks my heart.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Can’t comment on KCD, but even in the short while I’ve played Elden Ring, it is easily more fun to explore than Witcher 3 or BOTW.

What's fun to explore exactly? There is some neat out of the way places to find, but ultimately, everywhere you go is just more combat, and since the combat sucks and there's too much of it, and there's barely any dialogue/writing/etc, exploration becomes boring pretty fast.

But the trash combat and lack of tangible quests/dialogue that you can do without a wiki take it directly into garbage territory.

The only thing making ER more enjoyable to play than games like Skyrim or Fallout 4 is the power curve and sense of getting stronger and overcoming shit. Other than that, a very overrated by the mainstream media piece of trash.

No, it hurts that you have some sort of delusions of grandeur

Me destroying your weak sauce arguments every time is not delusions of grandeur, it's just a function of our relative IQs my friend.

while replying to the title of the video without addressing any of his reasoning regardless of whether you accept his conclusion.

I think you are really not grasping the theme here, my dawg. I am not going to waste my time learning the exact delay sequence of every retardedly designed boss, so I use a shield. Likewise, I am not going to waste my time watching a video that YOU linked, I am just going to insult its premise directly. I am a very efficient poster.

 

[dacencora]

What's fun to explore exactly? There is some neat out of the way places to find, but ultimately, everywhere you go is just more combat, and since the combat sucks and there's too much of it, and there's barely any dialogue/writing/etc, exploration becomes boring pretty fast.

Tbh there’s a lot of cool stuff to find all over the place. For example, right in the beginning of Limgrave, you have the SoG at the Gate Front, and there are 2 pretty cool places to explore. First, there’s the Godrick Soldier encampment right outside the gates which has a chest underground but in order to get to it you have to either take out all the enemies or try and sneak past them to find it. It’s a fun and tense little exploration set piece. Go the other way through the gates and you have an ambush waiting for you. Sure, there’s a lot of combat, but I think the combat against regular mooks is quite fun. There’s nothing really like that in Witcher 3. Tbh, exploration is one of Witcher 3’s weakest points overall. There’s never anything cool to find and the combat is only ok. There is one really great place to explore in Witcher 3, and it’s Novigrad. The rest is fairly unmemorable. BOTW suffers from 2 problems. First the map is far too large, and the content is too thinly spread. Second, there’s little motivation to explore unless you’re very taken with the art style. Because of the design paradigm of very fragile weapons, there are no cool/unique weapons to find that you can keep for very long. The best armors are crafted, and not from hard-to-find materials. I actually love BOTW’s gameplay and combat, and fighting the Guardians is massively fun, but the exploring was disappointing. The best parts were the dangerous ones, so the ruins near Hyrule Castle and Hyrule Castle itself. The Divine Beasts were also pretty sweet. I’m excited for BOTW2 because I think they can make a little bit more focused experience and really knock it out of the park.

Here’s the primary reason that exploration is fun in Elden Ring, and it’s not really in Witcher 3 or BOTW. In Elden Ring, I see some strange and/or interesting structure in the distance, and when I go near it, a boss runs out of it at me. That’s pretty fun. This sort of dynamic world doesn’t really exist in W3/BOTW. BOTW is too empty, W3 is either copy-paste or cutscenes. Finding the NPCs in Elden Ring is pretty fun too.

(BTW, Witcher 1 exploration >>>>>> Witcher 3 exploration)

 

[mediocrepoet]

Me destroying your weak sauce arguments every time is not delusions of grandeur, it's just a function of our relative IQs my friend.

Certainly the fact that you think you've destroyed anyone's argument ever would demonstrate that. I agree.

Likewise, I am not going to waste my time watching a video that YOU linked, I am just going to insult its premise directly. I am a very efficient poster.

We both know that you lack the attention span for it. But that's ok. If nothing else, I agree that you're a very efficient buttoner. You're certainly the Codex's collective hemorrhoid.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Tbh there’s a lot of cool stuff to find all over the place. For example, right in the beginning of Limgrave, you have the SoG at the Gate Front, and there are 2 pretty cool places to explore. First, there’s the Godrick Soldier encampment right outside the gates which has a chest underground but in order to get to it you have to either take out all the enemies or try and sneak past them to find it. It’s a fun and tense little exploration set piece. Go the other way through the gates and you have an ambush waiting for you.

These are both on the main progression route, so really bad examples of exploration. The grace trail literally points through them. It's like saying Diablo has great exploration cause the dungeon you are supposed to go through is neat.

Sure, there’s a lot of combat, but I think the combat against regular mooks is quite fun. There’s nothing really like that in Witcher 3.

The combat in Witcher 3 slightly modded is actually better than in Elden Ring. Install something like Enemies of Rivia so enemies block and dodge, and you have a much better combat system than this rollfest.

Tbh, exploration is one of Witcher 3’s weakest points overall.

Yes, exploration is W3's weakest aspect, and ER's best, and yet it's not a huge draw in ER either, and in other ways, W3 shits all over it.

BOTW suffers from 2 problems. First the map is far too large, and the content is too thinly spread. Second, there’s little motivation to explore unless you’re very taken with the art style. Because of the design paradigm of very fragile weapons, there are no cool/unique weapons to find that you can keep for very long. The best armors are crafted, and not from hard-to-find materials. I actually love BOTW’s gameplay and combat, and fighting the Guardians is massively fun, but the exploring was disappointing. The best parts were the dangerous ones, so the ruins near Hyrule Castle and Hyrule Castle itself. The Divine Beasts were also pretty sweet. I’m excited for BOTW2 because I think they can make a little bit more focused experience and really knock it out of the park.

The content was perfectly spread. Not everyone is autistic enough to need to fight something every 2 steps. Some of us like to mix combat with exploration and dialogue and other stuff. There was tons of unique and neat stuff to find in BotW, maybe you just weren't very good at it. And if you didn't like breaking weapons so much, btw, you could use exploration to find stuff that doesn't break.

Certainly the fact that you think you've destroyed anyone's argument ever would demonstrate that. I agree.

Don't be so upset. Porky is just better.

We both know that you lack the attention span for it. But that's ok. If nothing else, I agree that you're a very efficient buttoner. You're certainly the Codex's collective hemorrhoid.

Lol, the more I wreck your silly arguments, the more upset and personal you get. Relax, it's just an internet forum.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Ok, Porky 1, Fire Giant 0. Took a while to take this motherfucker down, definitely one of the toughest fights in all From Software games, for all the dumbest reasons:



Next to impossible to fight him on foot due to camera angles and his ability spam. His 3 mile attacks go around shields, and you can't dodge most of them because you can't even see anything besides his ankles. And then the fire ball spam begins. And the fucking terrain... Argh...And his rolling all the time. What an annoying fuck, no wonder a lot of people ragequit when facing him. Dumbass design at its best.

 

[CyberWhale]

People who keep calling DaS3 or ER challenging or difficult, or who keep barking "git gud" whenever someone criticizes the design of those games are missing the central fucking point: Difficulty is only a positive thing when it's well designed.

You can arbitrarily make anything difficult in dumb ways: e.g. you can require that someone jumped 5,000 times before fighting a boss in order to win, or you can make a boss have random attacks every single fight, etc. This doesn't make something challenging in a good way.

Yet DaS3 and ER are challenging in exactly this kind of way. Bosses have a completely different physical reality than your character: they do not have stamina restraints, they can have nearly infinite combos, they have hitpoint bars orders of magnitude higher than you do, they do tremendously more damage, they move completely unrealistically while being so huge, their attacks magically follow you and are AoE in most cases, their range magically changes to huge distances regardless of actual weapon reach.

In addition to this, many attacks are badly animated, ie there is very minimal telegraphing, such as windup animations, or windup animations are fake and disconnected from the actual attack, which comes out at ridiculous speed. This makes these games much tougher for many players who don't have the best reflexes, and is a strange design choice in 2020s, when many gamers are no longer in their 20s.

A good video game combat system should be one that has consistent and logical general principles, that the player can get better at by practice. And once they get better at it, they theoretically should be able to face any new enemy and know how to fight them. More challenging enemies should just be better at those general principles and force the player to hone their own skills within that text. But in ER, every new boss fight exists in a vacuum, and forces the player to die a bunch of times to learn the custom bullshit of this particular boss.

All of this is a byproduct of Hard Souls memes, coming from both the general public and fanbase alike. First two Souls games were considered hard because gaming back then has degenerated into "push button-something awesome happens", but From Software's lineup and influence (not only indie copycats, but even mainstream games aping some of the elements) has created pressure on Memezaki to ramp up the difficulty (by using cheap and unfitting means) with each new release. Open-world design and dollars/hours worth is another issue the game suffers from - it is an imbecilic system of value created as a reactionary movement by gamers to ever decreasing length of AAA games in 2010s that has spiraled out of control and now worships time required to beat the game, no matter how inflated, repetitive and mind-numbing the content becomes in the process to achieve that goal.

Ironically, another contributor to Elden Ring, George R. R. Martin suffers from same curse. His books became famous for being long, detailed and full of twists - which basically made him describe things in ever more autistic ways, pad the stories as much as possible and in the end even postpone new sequels in large part because the fanbase was able to unravel the most important plot twists decades before they were finally revealed in official book releases.

Sad/10

 

[dacencora]

The content was perfectly spread. Not everyone is autistic enough to need to fight something every 2 steps. Some of us like to mix combat with exploration and dialogue and other stuff. There was tons of unique and neat stuff to find in BotW, maybe you just weren't very good at it. And if you didn't like breaking weapons so much, btw, you could use exploration to find stuff that doesn't break.

It seems like you missed the part where I said that the art style of BOTW didn’t do much for me, so it was just very empty overall. And the lack of meaningful gear that can be found means that the exploration is just for its own sake, which is alright enough, if the world is intriguing on its own, however, only Hyrule Castle had enough intrigue to warrant an interest. The Temple of Time was really cool, but they just didn’t have enough ruins to explore IMO. Also it’s pretty cringe to talk about being “good” at BOTW, which is an easy game. Like I said, the gameplay is pretty good and a lot of fun, it just needs more content overall. More ruins, more cool weapons, more variety.

You can have good exploration in a path you’re meant to traverse. Not to mention the chest under the encampment is left entirely to the player on how to get to it. BOTW does have some of this, but the rewards are never worth the effort, because it’s either 20 rupees or 10 arrows lol. Some of the DLC definitely addressed this which is why I’m hopeful for BOTW2. They added some cool armor sets that are in dangerous areas. A huge plus. In fact, for me, the DLC gives BOTW a huge bump.

As far as a “modded” Witcher 3 having better combat than Elden Ring? Probably not, but it’s a moot point, because you said Witcher 3, not modder Witcher 3. And vanilla W3 doesn’t beat Elden Ring at open world design. Not by a long shot.

Edit: also LOL, there is literally 1 Unbreakable weapon in BOTW. I just confirmed it because I was pretty sure I didn’t miss anything. The tridents don’t count because they still break. It’s not really a big deal but it does make exploration inferior to something like Elden Ring

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

It seems like you missed the part where I said that the art style of BOTW didn’t do much for me, so it was just very empty overall.

Wut? You thought the world was empty because you didn't like the art style? Umm, ok...

You can have good exploration in a path you’re meant to traverse. Not to mention the chest under the encampment is left entirely to the player on how to get to it.

Did you find the 200 copy-paste dungeons in Elden Ring yet?

Edit: also LOL, there is literally 1 Unbreakable weapon in BOTW. I just confirmed it because I was pretty sure I didn’t miss anything. The tridents don’t count because they still break.

Fake news. Besides the master sword, there is a shield you can find that's pretty much functionally unbreakable (has like a gazellion hitpoints).

It’s not really a big deal but it does make exploration inferior to something like Elden Ring

BotW had actual exploration. There was a giant world full of wonder, where you could interact with it in many different ways, with different weather, different climates, climbing, puzzles, heart warming stories, actual NPCs to find and talk with, settlements, mini-games, etc. Elden Ring barely has any exploration, the only thing it has that would pass for exploration is finding out of the way spaces to fight additional enemies and find loot, like a glorified Diablo. It's not even a contest.

 

[dacencora]

No the world is empty because it’s devoid of meaningful content. Unless you love the art style and are enamored with the visuals, it’s an empty world, because the groups of enemies and chests give no reward, so there’s little point to doing them. The shrine quests are ok, but not that great and the shrines themselves are boring because they always give you the same reward at the end. There’s little variety, outside of the landscape. The landscape is pretty, sure, but I just was never very taken in by it. There are no dynamic events, no environmental storytelling, no organic dungeon exploration, very little variety in world bosses (literally just Hinox and Lynels) which means the exploration is only worth it for exploration’s sake. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, but it’s not going to compare well against a more fully-realized world.

A shield != a weapon, and it does still break, so LOL.

There are so few world puzzles that they’re not even worth mentioning. Bringing them up only casts more ire upon BOTW because nearly every other Zelda has far superior world puzzles. I find the NPC interactions very similar between Elden Ring and BOTW, except that I am biased towards the Elden Ring ones because they’re strange and weird.

It’s a great tech demo, can’t wait to play the actual game they make with it.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

No the world is empty because it’s devoid of meaningful content. Unless you love the art style and are enamored with the visuals, it’s an empty world, because the groups of enemies and chests give no reward, so there’s little point to doing them. The shrine quests are ok, but not that great and the shrines themselves are boring because they always give you the same reward at the end. There’s little variety, outside of the landscape. The landscape is pretty, sure, but I just was never very taken in by it. There are no dynamic events, no environmental storytelling, no organic dungeon exploration, very little variety in world bosses (literally just Hinox and Lynels) which means the exploration is only worth it for exploration’s sake. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, but it’s not going to compare well against a more fully-realized world.

You keep repeating this, but that doesn't make it any more true. What you are really saying is that to you, like to a lab rat, exploration only is worth it if you get a piece of cheese at the end of it, or in your case, some loot. But to a lot of people, including myself, exploration can be meaningful without loot. In BotW, you can find great quests, beautiful and emotionally touching memories, old friends, interesting NPCs, entire settlements with their own backstory, all kinds of wondrous creatures and places, TONS of environmental storytelling, interesting puzzles, and even some great loot too, though not as much as some other games. Oh and btw, all of these things besides loot are missing in Elden Ring. A game with such shit lore exposition that anyone who hasn't played it 7 times needs to watch a youtube video to understand what the fuck actually happened in the world. Without settlements, with shitty emo NPCs with a few throw-away lines. Where all the wonder of the world is distilled into tons of trash combat.

 

[mediocrepoet]

PSA: Today's reminder that arguing with Porky is kind of like shitting your pants, except less profound and much less enjoyable.

 

[dacencora]

True. Very true. I mean he's very defensive of BOTW and claims it has better exploration than Morrowind which is pretty lulzy. Some of the things he says are so ludicrous I have to think he's an expert troll or something. Anyways, you're right. Porky can think that BOTW is the pinnacle of open-world game design, it's ok.

(I actually quite like BOTW, I just don't think it's the greatest game of all time, nor really worthy of all the praise it gets. It's got a lot of great things, but there are a lot of things it does wrong too.)

 

[dacencora]

It's just going to bother me.

exploration only is worth it if you get a piece of cheese at the end of it, or in your case, some loot

. There are no dynamic events, no environmental storytelling, no organic dungeon exploration, very little variety in world bosses (literally just Hinox and Lynels) which means the exploration is only worth it for exploration’s sake

BOTW just doesn't have the same kind of content that other open world games have. This is a common defense of BOTW, but the loot is only a symptom of the problem. I am just not that wowed by the weather events, and the gliding. It's like ok, cool. Just Cause did the fun traversal thing first, plus you can blow up anything you want, so in the end, it's a more fun exploration sandbox, even if it too doesn't have that much variety. I want to see environmental storytelling like you can see in Morrowind and New Vegas and other such games.

 

[Bloodeyes]

Starting again has shown me the skills I gained. Because enemies were getting tougher I wrongly assumed that I wasn't getting better (and possibly getting worse). This couldn't be further from the truth. I'm loving the early game at least. Hopefully I can set myself up better for later on this time, so everything doesn't become a frustrating slog later.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

PSA: Today's reminder that arguing with Porky is kind of like shitting your pants, except less profound and much less enjoyable.

In other words, if you lose EVERY SINGLE argument to Porky, switch to ad hominem attacks and HOPE that he doesn't notice you are not very good at those either.

Stop shitting your pants and git gud at debating.

True. Very true. I mean he's very defensive of BOTW and claims it has better exploration than Morrowind which is pretty lulzy.

BotW has MUCH better exploration than Morrowind. The world interaction is a thousand times more advanced, the regions and wild animals are much more varied and interesting (a zoo's worth of critters vs cliff racers, LOL), everything has much more AI and dynamic behavior, the content feels more unique than the copy-pasted Morrowind dungeons, etc.

It's just going to bother me.

Cause deep down you KNOW you are absolutely wrong about this.

It's like ok, cool. Just Cause did the fun traversal thing first, plus you can blow up anything you want, so in the end, it's a more fun exploration sandbox,

Yeah, some pointless inferior GTA wannabe clone is more fun than a beautifully designed masterpiece of open world gameplay.

 

[dacencora]

At the end of the day, it really boils down to handcrafted world vs emergent gameplay. I like handcrafted more, and the games I like (Elden Ring, Morrowind, New Vegas, etc) blow BOTW out of the water on that front. BOTW certainly has great emergent gameplay, but it has little to no varied handcrafted content. That’s the core difference. I definitely prefer stuff that’s more handcrafted, and even for emergent gameplay, I prefer most roguelikes to BOTW. It just doesn’t excel at very much in my opinion, but it’s ok for us to have different opinions.

EDIT: and yeah no, the thing that’s bothering me are your constant strawmans. BOTW has very little environmental storytelling. By default it loses to Morrowind for me on that aspect alone.