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

[Barbarian]

 

[Silva]

Like I said this game pulls you in in a way that none of the TES games could.

It's your modern gfx bias speaking. Not even in dreams this has better ambience than Morrowind.

 

[Talby]

Elden Ring's lore fell mostly flat for me, I never felt connected to any of the characters like I did when I played Dark Souls and Bloodborne. With all the similar names it's annoying just to keep track of who's who. A bad design choice IMO, to have a "theme" of characters mirroring eachother in ways, but it just makes them forgettable.

 

[Silva]

Almost finishing it and I must say the game grew on me. The narrative picked up in the final third with cutscenes/dialogues moving the NPCs arcs forward and building to a nice climax while leaving behind the felling of directionless that plagues the early/midgame, the levels got even better (Haligtree is beautiful), and the bosses get really nice. Oh, and the game keeps raining new gear & stuff at you that's useful or fun to use. The amount of possible combos and builds here vast and fun in itself. Kudos for from.

That said, I still think this setting is too bloated for it's own sake and the Arthurian + Cosmic themes hardly mesh. That and the game is still poorly balanced with overly abuseable items and mechanics. The constant estus recharge in the open world makes exploration piss easy (as do the overly mobile horse), some ashes, skills and spells trivialize enemies, the ability to teleport out of any situation is terrible (it should be forbiden on legacy dungeons), etc.

Also, anybody else misses the references to lands outside the game area proper? It gave another dimension to the world of Dark Souls looking to the horizon from Lordran and wondering where Astora, Thorolund, Catarina, etc are out there. There's nothing of the sorts here and so the game world end up feeling small, restrict, in some way. But then there's so much cruft already inside the setting that maybe it's for the better.

So I stand corrected and the game is great even with it's problems. Still not on par with From créme that is DS1 and BB though, and I'm skeptical the DLC could change that.

Elden Ring's lore fell mostly flat for me, I never felt connected to any of the characters like I did when I played Dark Souls and Bloodborne. With all the similar names it's annoying just to keep track of who's who. A bad design choice IMO, to have a "theme" of characters mirroring eachother in ways, but it just makes them forgettable.

I agree. Not only the Tarnished motivations are the weakest among all From's protagonists, the crew of NPCs in Roundtable, which are supposed to help propelling you in said narrative, is extremelly unlikeable/unrelatable. I mean, Dung Eater? That and there are too many actors in the royal family drama to keep track of.

 

[Melmoth]

elden ring is a vibe riff on ds. in contrast to the berserk style brutality desperation and improvising with materials while chased by gruesome demons from worlds beyond ken, it has expanded systems of no consequence and ethereal lore and imagery with little gravity. its picturesque oneirism, soothing soundtrack and weather effects make it appropriate for sleep time play with some nice honey chamomile. ive stretched my elden ring playthrough to literally hundreds of hours by continually falling asleep without quitting to desktop. there is no point of traction here for a waking mind and so i prefer it in many ways.

in the fructose basin the withered lamps beach themselves on the cusp of gratuity again and again. i dodge the flung platitude like a ceiling mounted landmine

 

[Child of Malkav]

In a recent 4chan post there was a From financial report or something (apparently it's public) and in it there was mention of DLC being in development but they're not ready to announce a release date yet. So probably nothing happens in February.
What the fuck kind of DLC they're working on for 2 years now? I'm starting to believe that leak about the shadow world. It would explain why it takes so long.
Edit 1: it's the Kadokawa report. Whatever that is.

 

[Barbarian]

In a recent 4chan post there was a From financial report or something (apparently it's public) and in it there was mention of DLC being in development but they're not ready to announce a release date yet. So probably nothing happens in February.
What the fuck kind of DLC they're working on for 2 years now? I'm starting to believe that leak about the shadow world. It would explain why it takes so long.
Edit 1: it's the Kadokawa report. Whatever that is.

I agree it is a very big dlc. Game is already massive so it is kind of hard to fathom.

I also think they will go the way of "old hunters" and add a lot to existing areas, character quests and maybe fix inconsistencies.

Makes me regret buying the official guidebook in a way.

 

[Silverfish]

What the fuck kind of DLC they're working on for 2 years now?

They're replacing the entire open world with a poison swamp.

 

[oldbonebrown]

hopefully Martin is too busy with not writing books to fill the DLC with mythobabble

 

[Goldschmidt]

How many cocks were sucked and pussies licked to get this game a 10/10 rating?

For a gamer who grew up on the pc, this game is complete shovelware. Pirated this shit to see what the fuss is about. Completely uninstalled immediately because of crap controls. How low has the pc gamer fallen to play such trash.

 

[Silva]

Something interesting about the spirit ashes is that their AI is different to match their themes. Some are defensive, others aggressive, others are more mobile and dodge often, others slow, etc.

Btw, any favorites? My favorite is the Black Knife girl as she's very aggressive and mobile, plus the destined death effect is great. I also like Latena as sniper on the back when the arena is big, and the headless armored for tank. I still haven't tried the different soldiers but I will. I'm a fan of those Radhan troops facing the rot with flame, hope theyre good as summons too.

 

[Child of Malkav]

I only tried a few. Tiche is very good. Mimic tear is my favorite but they made him stupid. Still, Bullgoat + that giant slab shield + hoarfrost stomp or moghwyn trident for that bleed ash of war results in some pretty cool moments, gangbanging bosses from different sides. Plus night comet so the bosses don't dodge the projectile, erdtree heal, sleep pots etc. Hilarious times.

 

[Child of Malkav]

For a gamer who grew up on the pc

I did too, 100% PC. Master race, it is what it is.

this game is complete shovelware

If you played previous From titles (Demon's Souls (2009), Dark Souls 1 (2011)/2(2014)/3(2016), Bloodborne(2015)) and liked them to some degree this game is the same, but bigger. Of course, plenty of changes and improvements here and there, plenty of cons and issues but won't go into details. My main issues are with the boss fights and open world but whatever. At the very least it's not a movie game, which in this day and age, it matters.

uninstalled immediately because of crap controls

I mean, if this is your criteria of whether a game is good or not, you haven't played games with actual shit controls. Also, only starting with Sekiro (2019) the PC version has keyboard and mouse icons and everything. Kinda sad really that it took them 10 years but eh.

Edit 1: btw, in the settings menu there is an option to show PC device onscreen prompts. That was the first thing I did really before starting to play.

 

[Silverfish]

Btw, any favorites?

I initially hated the hollow sorcerer (low health, low damage, infrequent attacks), but when I discovered he could headshot and stagger large targets, he became a staple for me.

 

[Skinwalker]

What the fuck kind of DLC they're working on for 2 years now?

The kind that gets branched out into a sequel with a release date in 2018.

 

[Skinwalker]

I had completely forgotten that at the end of the Nameless Eternal City area there's a portal that takes you straight to Leyndell, bypassing the entire Altus plateau. Kind of crazy, if you think about it. Working your way up to Leyndell is kind of an important feat of game progression, and they just cut you out of it if you're not wise enough to turn back and not use that teleporter.

I don't even see the point of it. To continue Fia's quest you need the cursemark from Ranni's dead body, but there's nothing in Leyndell that would help you get it.

Who was that one retarded person who broke into the FromSoftware development server and injected a bunch of random teleporters everywhere?

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Sorry, but what complex dialogue?

complex dialogues systems

 

[Skinwalker]

Moronwind had dialogue systems? I don't think walking wikipedia articles counts as dialogue.

Elden Ring, otoh, has all the azn weirdness/autism of FS games, with slightly more effort put into coherent and expansive questlines. It's not really the dialogue system that's at fault here. It's the "dialogue".

They even managed to break a fundamental rule of dialogue responses, by sometimes putting an NPC response into what should be the PC response.

 

[JarlFrank]

That and there are too many actors in the royal family drama to keep track of.

This is how you know GRRM was involved in the writing.

 

[silphCo]

Too many characters to care, and a game that should have been a fourth it's size.

 

[mediocrepoet]

That and there are too many actors in the royal family drama to keep track of.

This is how you know GRRM was involved in the writing.

Nah, many writers are guilty of that. You know it's GRRM due to all the incest.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

We know it's George Raymond Martin because

1. There are a great many characters with names beginning with the letters 'G', 'R', and 'M'.
2. Dung-Eater

Fortunately, he didn't have much else to do with Elden Ring.

 

[Silva]

Milicent's quest is *chef's kiss*, and the

Spoiler

Haligtree

level where it's concluded conveys a fitting tone of sadness.

Now, we need to talk about Gowry. Dafuq this old man was plotting? Did he find the 4 girls infected in the swamp, or he took 4 healthy children and infected just to experiment rot flowering shenanigans on them?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Given that children don't seem to exist in Elden Ring, I'm assuming they sprang up out of the swamp. Also, I just realized what the DLC will be about: there's not currently an ending where you embrace the rot. Malenia, as the god of fucking swamps, is clearly intended to be the true ending. Miyazaki clearly had them cut the questline because it wasn't yet awesome enough to live up to his vision. In the DLC, we'll finally be able to turn the entire world into a swamp, creating a paradise for all time.

 

[Barbarian]

Miquella's dreamworld and Miquella as a boss sounds plausible to me as the main dlc theme. Maybe a way to redeem Malenia within this but I'm not sure.

Godwyn as a boss is also a possibility but I figure the dlc title and promotional material would be about it. I mean he would be the "true" boss of the game.