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

[Hell Swarm]

From's style of presenting lore through item descriptions and minimalist NPC dialogues is not bad per se. It was pretty effective in Dark Souls 1 to enhance the vibe of solitude of it's world / Lordran, besides being refreshing given the hobby state as I said before. The problem is when you replicate those features to settings with different themes, as is the case with Elden Ring. Then yes, it feels lazy.

I also found the style fitted Bloodborne cosmicism like a glove, and Sekiro broke away from it to have expositive dialogues, so these games never bothered me. I never played Demons Souls or Armored Core so I don't know how the style fares in those. Probably good in DeS for same reasons as DS1 and BB, but doesn't sound a good fit in AC.

Demon souls doing it doesn't bother me because there is mystical stuff going on that could explain having knowledge you shouldn't but Dark souls is immersion breaking if you think about it. You're an amnesiac losing their memories and identity, having it chipped away with every death and you know all this super obscure lore about lost kingdoms and shit? I don't like information logs you access in a menu but it would have been a better way to present the lore snippets. You can contextualize it outside the game's world when you do it that way.

Bloodborne has issues when your character knows stuff they shouldn't as well. Depends what you consider insight to be and how it would reveal things to you. If it's the power to see the arcane world then it makes no sense your character knows who owned the hat they're wearing less. If it's insight into the world in general then maybe they can read the hat's soul and see who owned it last.

I wonder when From became aware of the Dark souls lore industry and started to intentionally play into it? Dark souls 2 was well under production and a messy development but 3 seems like where the series becomes meta. Solaire pandering in 2 sucked and it's a shame they went further down that path.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I think there's one thing that's worth mentioning reguarding the Souls style story telling, which is that you are not intended to get it all in one go.

It's obvious that FromSoft designed all their games with the idea you are supposed to discover things across multiple playthroughs. The only "help" you are supposed to get is messages from other players. The idea is that every time you replay the game, there's always something new around the corner that you missed the first time around.

This design philosophy has its place and works well with most of their games with the exception of Elden Ring if anything because the latter is so damn large that the idea of replaying the whole thing a dozen time just to get all the lore on your own is a bit much.

A lot of the people that bitch about how the lore is presented in FromSoft games are often people who expect it to get it all in one go, and get mad that they need a guide to pull that off not understanding FromSoft didn't design the game to be played once and thrown away.

 

[Hell Swarm]

I think there's one thing that's worth mentioning reguarding the Souls style story telling, which is that you are not intended to get it all in one go.

It's obvious that FromSoft designed all their games with the idea you are supposed to discover things across multiple playthroughs. The only "help" you are supposed to get is messages from other players. The idea is that every time you replay the game, there's always something new around the corner that you missed the first time around.

This design philosophy has its place and works well with most of their games with the exception of Elden Ring if anything because the latter is so damn large that the idea of replaying the whole thing a dozen time just to get all the lore on your own is a bit much.

A lot of the people that bitch about how the lore is presented in FromSoft games are often people who expect it to get it all in one go, and get mad that they need a guide to pull that off not understanding FromSoft didn't design the game to be played once and thrown away.

Never expected to find all the lore and wouldn't in one play through if I did. The lore is spread out in unnatural ways and there's so many holes it's effectively meaningless. If From wrote a "your mum" joke it would go like this.

"A woman you're related to had sex once" - Head piece

"She is heavy" - Chest piece

"She rides a whale" - Gloves

"An unknown event ruined a woman's vagina" - Legs

"A woman lactated in August 1964" - Random spell

And it would be spread over 20 hours of game play and some parts of it would have a 3% drop chance, off of an enemy you need to run a decent distance to farm.

 

[Silva]

Demon souls doing it doesn't bother me because there is mystical stuff going on that could explain having knowledge you shouldn't but Dark souls is immersion breaking if you think about it. You're an amnesiac losing their memories and identity, having it chipped away with every death and you know all this super obscure lore about lost kingdoms and shit?

You're assuming your PC is reading and absorbing that, but who said so? Perhaps those lore pieces are aimed at *the player* and not the PC. Meanwhile the benefit of the technique is twofold: 1. it incentivates the player to keep looking for new items to uncover more and more of the setting, and 2. is kept out of the way if the player is not interested in any of that.

Regardless of how you rationalize the technique, it's a win-win solution in my book, a pretty elegant one even. I guess if you keep attached to old RPGs conventions it may bother you to some degree? Pesonally, I find the electronic RPG genre sterile for a long time now, and don't mind seeing it shaken up like From did.

 

[Hell Swarm]

it incentivates the player to keep looking for new items to uncover more and more of the setting

It makes people check wikis instead of searching through endless hours of game play. Wikis written through ripping the content from the game not finding it themselves.

It doesn't bother me as such. I think there's better ways to tell a story and From should have adopted more of them instead of carried on remaking Demon's souls. But then that's all From have done so it's not just the lore that's a problem.

 

[Silva]

Hell Swarm , I never checked any wiki during my playthroughs of DS1 and BB. Rather, by being given a trail of lore breadcrumbs to find (or miss) by myself, I was enthralled by those settings in a way I don't remember other settings doing in a very long time. Perhaps this is the intended way to play these games by the devs? Anyway, after I finished them yes, I looked a bunch of lore videos on youtube and found them cool and informative cause they usually had information and lore connections I've missed. And that only shows how good those settings and games are.

Frankly, as with everything, the problem was never with the games but with the community around turning them into a massified fad that eventually got boring. Yes, I grew tired of the formula (Elden Ring confirmed it) but I can't blame From for the masses of fanboys that follow them. What's the saying again, "problem isn't Jesus but the guy's fanclub"?

 

[Hell Swarm]

Hell Swarm , I never checked any wiki during my playthroughs of DS1 and BB. Rather, by being given a trail of lore breadcrumbs to find (or miss) by myself, I was enthralled by those settings in a way I don't remember other settings doing in a very long time. Perhaps this is the intended way to play these games by the devs? Anyway, after I finished them yes, I looked a bunch of lore videos on youtube and found them cool and informative cause they usually had information and lore connections I've missed. And that only shows how good those settings and games are.

Frankly, as with everything, the problem was never with the games but with the community around turning them into a massified fad that eventually got boring. Yes, I grew tired of the formula (Elden Ring confirmed it) but I can't blame From for the masses of fanboys that follow them. What's the saying again, "problem isn't Jesus but the guy's fanclub"?

Which is a failure of story telling. If everyone reads 2-3 bits of your lore than goes to youtube to find out the rest of it (which was data mined) then you fucked up telling the story in a way people can access. Notes suit shorter games but not 100 hour RPGs with missable loot and NPCs.

 

[Silva]

Which is a failure of story telling. If everyone reads 2-3 bits of your lore than goes to youtube to find out the rest of it (which was data mined) then you fucked up telling the story in a way people can access

It's not a failure of storytelling, just a different style of storytelling, more deductive than expositive. Further, whoever does what you describe above is missing the point. Miyazaki is vocal about the games' lore having blank spaces on purpose so each player interpret and fill the blanks on their own. Watching lore vids in search of absolute answers (or datamined stuff WTF) is nonsensic. Again you just corroborate my point that it's the "Jesus fanclub" that fucks things up, and not really the guy.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Which is a failure of story telling. If everyone reads 2-3 bits of your lore than goes to youtube to find out the rest of it (which was data mined) then you fucked up telling the story in a way people can access

It's not a failure of storytelling, just a different kind of storytelling, more deductive than expositive. Further, whoever does what you describe above is missing the point. Miyazaki is vocal about the games' lore having blank spaces on purpose so each player interpret and fill the blanks on their own. Watching lore vids in search of absolute answers for everything is nonsensic. Again, you just corroborate my point that it's the "Jesus fanclub" that fucks things up, and not really guy.

The guy also said they use this method because it's cheap and they can mess with item descriptions when it suits them.

 

[Silva]

So? If the method works AND is cheap to implement, kudos to Miyazaki for creating it. Win-win.

I forgot to say that Elden Ring is a case of Jesus doing crap, yeah. The formula has run it's course by now and it's Miyazaki's fault for regurgitating it for money. They should seek new horizons.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Storyfags are cancer.

Yes, the history and exact nature of From's Soulsborne settings isn't completely known by the player or character in any fully reliable manner. That is part of the setting and atmosphere and is also appropriate since the whole deal is about decline into ruin/oblivion and power struggles you're not necessarily aware of where other forces are manipulating you as a pawn, cf. Morrowind.

 

[Hell Swarm]

So? If the method works AND is cheap to implement, kudos to Miyazaki for creating it. Win-win.

I forgot to say that Elden Ring is a case of Jesus doing crap, yeah. The formula has run it's course by now and it's Miyazaki's fault for regurgitating it for money. They should seek new horizons.

It doesn't work as you pointed out. It works as 1 game, it doesn't work as an entire series of ever expanding bullshit.

That is part of the setting and atmosphere and is also appropriate since the whole deal is about decline into ruin/oblivion

The undead curse is also part of the setting and atmosphere. As you get more undead you should lose memories not know about Vike's hemorrhoids.

 

[mediocrepoet]

That is part of the setting and atmosphere and is also appropriate since the whole deal is about decline into ruin/oblivion

The undead curse is also part of the setting and atmosphere. As you get more undead you should lose memories not know about Vike's hemorrhoids.

Show me what item mentions hemorrhoids.

Other than that, as mentioned above, it's not clear that any item descriptions are your character's knowledge as opposed to descriptions for the player. Even if you were to assume that they are the character's knowledge, in some cases, such as with kingdoms or even characters, maybe it is your character's knowledge that is remembered due to an encounter with an object.

Otherwise, most of the games also have some time fuckery as well, so I'm not sure why you are hung up on this so much as if it needs to progress in a linear fashion in the manner you expect. I'm also not clear how the hell anyone would represent what you seem to want anyway. You start off with every item description in the game and they gradually disappear as you progress until at the end you have no UI or HUD and are just hoping you're even doing anything and aren't certain if you're even alive because you have no information to go on and you're hollow? Seriously. Storyfags are cancerous shit and you're one of the worst parodies of them I've come across recently.

 

[Silva]

Hell Swarm it's clear you're Halfling Rodeo alt by now. Okay, you hate From's games. We got it. Let's move on.

 

[Hell Swarm]

You start off with every item description in the game and they gradually disappear as you progress until at the end you have no UI or HUD and are just hoping you're even doing anything and aren't certain if you're even alive because you have no information to go on and you're hollow?

 

[mediocrepoet]

You start off with every item description in the game and they gradually disappear as you progress until at the end you have no UI or HUD and are just hoping you're even doing anything and aren't certain if you're even alive because you have no information to go on and you're hollow?

Send me a key, I'll write a review.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Send me a key, I'll write a review.

 

[Skinwalker]

Exploring Mount Gelmir, I felt the urge to take another spit in the face of the insane demon clown at FS who stuck progression-breaking teleporters everywhere. Working your way up to the Volcano Manor through this blasted and very atmospheric and unique area was quite satisfying. Especially as a follow-up to the Altus Plateau.

Too bad it's basically a self-imposed challenge you won't know you need to take on your first playthrough, because you do one simple side-quest for the weird girl, and then the first thing that happens when you arrive at Altus - the weird girl teleports you straight into the volcano manor. How are you supposed to know that the right thing to do here is immediately teleport out and work your way back the hard way?

At some point in this game's development, FS became terrified that most players will never reach their intricate legacy dungeons, and "solved" it with the most crude and uninspired method possible. What a clusterfuck.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Hell Swarm is butthurt because I'm kicking ass in Monster Hunter. He probably shouldn't be giving his opinions on Soulsborne games of all things. If a manchild is butthurt that a man is doing things he could never dream of, he should keep his opinion to herself.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Exploring Mount Gelmir, I felt the urge to take another spit in the face of the insane demon clown at FS who stuck progression-breaking teleporters everywhere. Working your way up to the Volcano Manor through this blasted and very atmospheric and unique area was quite satisfying. Especially as a follow-up to the Altus Plateau.

Too bad it's basically a self-imposed challenge you won't know you need to take on your first playthrough, because you do one simple side-quest for the weird girl, and then the first thing that happens when you arrive at Altus - the weird girl teleports you straight into the volcano manor. How are you supposed to know that the right thing to do here is immediately teleport out and work your way back the hard way?

At some point in this game's development, FS became terrified that most players will never reach their intricate legacy dungeons, and "solved" it with the most crude and uninspired method possible. What a clusterfuck.

The teleporters are really badly placed and it's part of From not understanding hard but fair. Dumping newbies right out the gate into 2 difficult bosses and then finding a treasure chest sending them to one of the hardest dungeons in the game is bad game design. They spoil so many of the difficult areas by revealing them too early when you have to back off every enemy or get nuked by pest threads. A hard teleporter trapping you some where is fine mid game, should never have been right out the gates in one of the most obvious areas for a newbie to visit.

Hell Swarm is butthurt because I'm kicking ass in Monster Hunter. He probably shouldn't be giving his opinions on Soulsborne games of all things. If a manchild is butthurt that a man is doing things he could never dream of, he should keep his opinion to herself.

I think it's funny watching your rampant mental illness spewed onto the forum. You keep using summons to play through Monster hunter world and gloating how great you are. Then spam multiple threads mentioning me because I told you you were a scrub for not being able to beat a mid-DLC boss based on an earlier easy boss. Please keep posting 5 posts in a row in the MHW thread every day. It's funny to see them all lack a porn star avatar. You couldn't even bribe the jews in charge to enable your craziness. Shows a lack of masculinity.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

From's style of presenting lore through item descriptions and minimalist NPC dialogues is not bad per se. It was pretty effective in Dark Souls 1 to enhance the vibe of solitude of it's world / Lordran, besides being refreshing given the hobby state as I said before. The problem is when you replicate those features to settings with different themes, as is the case with Elden Ring. Then yes, it feels lazy.

I also found the style fitted Bloodborne cosmicism like a glove, and Sekiro broke away from it to have expositive dialogues, so these games never bothered me. I never played Demons Souls or Armored Core so I don't know how the style fares in those. Probably good in DeS for same reasons as DS1 and BB, but doesn't sound a good fit in AC.

I'd say the storytelling in Demon's Souls is even more minimalistic than it was in Dark Souls. AC6 seems to have pretty straightforward storytelling from what I've seen and played of it.

You keep using summons to play through Monster hunter world and gloating how great you are.

I used summons on exactly three monsters. THREE, out of the whole game. One of which was designed with coop in mind. Technically I only cheated twice, otherwise I've basically been nerfing myself for over 90% of the game.

 

[Sukhāvatī]

Not too many mentions of Brightis using the search, so I'll post this review of this neat 1999 PS1 proto-Dark Souls here.

 

[Lyric Suite]

From's style of presenting lore through item descriptions and minimalist NPC dialogues is not bad per se. It was pretty effective in Dark Souls 1 to enhance the vibe of solitude of it's world / Lordran, besides being refreshing given the hobby state as I said before. The problem is when you replicate those features to settings with different themes, as is the case with Elden Ring. Then yes, it feels lazy.

I also found the style fitted Bloodborne cosmicism like a glove, and Sekiro broke away from it to have expositive dialogues, so these games never bothered me. I never played Demons Souls or Armored Core so I don't know how the style fares in those. Probably good in DeS for same reasons as DS1 and BB, but doesn't sound a good fit in AC.

I'd say the storytelling in Demon's Souls is even more minimalistic than it was in Dark Souls. AC6 seems to have pretty straightforward storytelling from what I've seen and played of it.

Sekiro did too. Same team if i remember correctly.

Story in Sekiro was pretty good BTW. AC6, not as good but still decent enough.

 

[Skinwalker]

I said earlier that every single in-game status effect and damage type has its own "outer god"/principality in the lore except poison, but I forgot about Rykard and his stupid giant snake. Don't remember if Rykard himself inflicts poison during the boss fight, but Volcano Manor is definitely serpent and poison-themed, with tons of enemies that poison you.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Item descriptions aren't the only way these games tell their stories. They also use audio/visual storytelling which I haven't seen a single MFer mention. The boss fight against Sif is almost a story in it's self. The tragedy and despair is palpable af. Maiden Astrea fight in OG Demon's Souls, same shit. You don't need to read a fucking item description to get a hint of what's happening. That's just one piece of their storytelling.