Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.
"This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.
'Miyazaki says that, this time, FromSoftware has tried to create "something that's not quite open field and not quite legacy dungeon" – with the latter referring to areas such as Stormveil Castle and Raya Lucaria Academy in the base game, which feel more reminiscent of Dark Souls' classic dungeons. Instead, he says: "It's something that kind of blends the two together and creates that better sense of verticality. While you do have the large open field area… we wanted to not just capture the sense of scale and granularity, but the sense of variety as well."
Ultimately, it sounds as though Shadow of the Erdtree's Land of Shadow could end up feeling a little more like a middle ground between the Elden Ring we already know and love and the Dark Souls trilogy.'
Given that every time i stepped into a legacy dungeon the quality of the game instantly gained extra points for me, some kind of unholy marriage between open world and real level design might end up being decline. UNLESS this is just a reworking of the open world and the classic legacy dungeons are still there. If the latter, and there's no reason to be hopeful but with FromSoft you never know, they might solve the issue with open world which might help when they do the inevitable sequel to Elden Ring. It's possible they realize the open world design was lacking and are actively trying to improve upon it.
Instead, he says: "It's something that kind of blends the two together and creates that better sense of verticality. While you do have the large open field area… we wanted to not just capture the sense of scale and granularity, but the sense of variety as well."
This feels like a complete misdiagnosis of the problem. The open world is design wise perfectly fine and in many ways a step above most other open worlds(like Saints Row, Two worlds or Skyrim). The problem is that the otherwise well done space is left empty by the stock souls formula that for some reason does not believe in readables or quests.
Going through a forest and finding just another melted mushroom or copy pasted bear enemy feels lame no matter how well done the forest is. Especially when the same crap can be found all around the place and depending on the build may not even be of any use. However finding a shack with a woodcutter you can chat with and maybe learn something is always going to register as something more exciting. Hell, they could just place those ghosts around reenacting scenes from the past. Even a note saying "Ofnir was here :===D" would be more exciting to find than what from software does 90% of the time.
I remain optimistic but this really feels like they are trying to solve a content issue by level designing their way around it.
Given that every time i stepped into a legacy dungeon the quality of the game instantly gained extra points for me, some kind of unholy marriage between open world and real level design might end up being decline. UNLESS this is just a reworking of the open world and the classic legacy dungeons are still there. If the latter, and there's no reason to be hopeful but with FromSoft you never know, they might solve the issue with open world which might help when they do the inevitable sequel to Elden Ring. It's possible they realize the open world design was lacking and are actively trying to improve upon it.
Miyazaki also discussed the density of the map. Previously, he told Eurogamer the team "wanted to go more in depth and bring a denser richer level design", blurring the boundary between field and dungeon.
"Obviously it being exactly the same, but smaller, wouldn't quite cut it, so we wanted to approach from a sense of granularity, is the word we're using," he said. "How dense this map is, and the ratio of legacy dungeon to open field areas, and how they intertwine. This is something we wanted to explore anew in the DLC: In terms of recapturing that sense of scale but in a slightly different way with a slightly different granularity."
So he basically wants a legacy dungeon the size of Caelid/Altus/Limgrave etc.
One legacy dungeon = one world area. With all that entails.
All this esoteric bullshit talk when he could have said this instead.
highlights of playthrough #2, trying to explore every nook and cranny again:
+ re-experiencing Leyndell is as amazing as I remembered. It reminds me so much of Yharnam. It felt smaller to me this time around, but I loved it nonetheless and feel is the best part/dungeon of the game
+ I really like that they added NPC markers to the map, I wish they would do a better job of signaling
- the UI/inventory is annoying when you want to read the flavor text when acquiring new items. thankfully this is being patched with the expansion such that a "newly acquired" tab will be added. Currently, I have to re-sort it every damn time I boot the game and find the Tab category the item is in (wait, was that a talisman, a key item...oh it was a weapon)
- I'd love to be able to rematch boss fights, especially b/c you can encounter many of them at wildly different levels. sometimes it's a cakewalk, sometimes you're clearly over your head and your weapons do piss damage
-encountering NPCs in the wild is ass as they're so easy to miss (again, the map markers help)
-lastly, I wish the overworld felt as handcrafted as the legacy dungeons. much of it feels superfluous, and not very rewarding as an OCD "what's around the corner" type of player.
+- playing in Online mode feels like I'm playing with a hints system. I think I'll play the DLC offline 1st, then come back to see the shit I've missed.
fun things I missed out on the first time:
Volcano Manor dungeon
invisible wall behind sewer Mohg
reaching Mohg's palace (I think I killed Varre on my virignal playthrough and missed out. apparently there's an alternate way to get there in the Snow area but I missed that too).
Seems like Miyazaki knows the dungeons > overworld and them trying to do a better of blending the 2 for the DLC sounds excellent to me.
So he basically wants a legacy dungeon the size of Caelid/Altus/Limgrave etc.
One legacy dungeon = one world area. With all that entails.
All this esoteric bullshit talk when he could have said this instead.
I read through some of the gameplay preview stuff from those who had early access and it sounded to me like they were describing a number of legacy dungeons, each with distinct themes, blended together by shorter sections of overworld. Of course, they only had access to a small preview section of the start of the DLC but Miyazaki's comments seem to suggest that this was the goal for area design.
Of course I could be talking out my arse and most of the information coming from journos and youtubers is probably untrustworthy at best, but sometimes it's fun to speculate.
Still mulling over whether i want to just skip this for now or not. I got burned out hard last year but at the same time it's great to catch a FromSoft game at release so i'm not sure.
Still mulling over whether i want to just skip this for now or not. I got burned out hard last year but at the same time it's great to catch a FromSoft game at release so i'm not sure.
50h is based, an expansion that is half the length of the entire original game is pretty darn good. Just hope its meaty but I heard that the map is more dense, so that sounds kino. Plus, I believe there are 18 new bosses that are "main" bosses if I am not mistaken. The main game has 12 "main" bosses. Yatta!!!
I wonder if they raised the soft and hard caps on attributes. You'd think they would have to since this is basically a whole new game, atleast in terms of size/length.
Fuckin hell, I just read you gotta make it all the way to Mohg in order to access the DLC. I was hoping it would be earlier. Shouldn't take very long with a high level character I guess.
I wonder if they raised the soft and hard caps on attributes. You'd think they would have to since this is basically a whole new game, atleast in terms of size/length.
Fuckin hell, I just read you gotta make it all the way to Mohg in order to access the DLC. I was hoping it would be earlier. Shouldn't take very long with a high level character I guess.
Erm if you watched Vaati's video, he PERFECTLY predicted where the DLC area would be so you could have anticipated this but erm whatever it's totally fine I guess
Lock on has always been terrible in FROM games, after a while you have to learn to play without it. It's not lik you're doing more damage if you hit certain limbs or whatever anyways.
I find playing without lock on is fine for horizontal slashes, but with thrusts and particularly with single target spells it seems pretty necessary for me. The hitbox for thrusts doesn't seem particularly forgiving and I can't work out how to get non-locked on lightning/fire casts to reliably end up anywhere near where I think I'm aiming lol
It would be nice if they had some kind of targeting reticule for the vague direction spells were headed if you aren't locked on.
On the one hand, its both peak Soulsbourne and peak open world game. Beautiful, huge, with nice exploration, some of the best Soulsborne dungeons (called legacy dungeons here), fun combat, some neat, epic bosses.
On the other hand, its infected with some nasty open world game diseases, like copy-paste locations / mini-dungeons, enemy reskins with level-scaled stats, and, to add insult to injury, even bosses casually re-skinned and re-used multiple times.
Some late game locations are just sad, barren filler, particularly Consecrated Snowfields and Mountaintops of the Giants.
I guess it depends if you like the Soulsborne games and open world games.
This marriage is not a bad one, but has its issues.
Okay, should be good to go for the expansion right off the bat. The game reminded me why I didn't want to play through it a second time. Traversing and navigating the overworld feels like a giant pain in the ass. It was fun the first time through but it's not something I want to do ever again. Hopefully this is From Software's last open world Soulsborne game. Elden Ring just doesn't hold up like their earlier games.
