Zanzibart was a pretty lame joke coined by a person who wrote for Borderlands.
His whole argument was that the writing is so obtuse to the point that there's nothing in there, just random words, which is not true.
It works and you don't need Vaati to get anything, the whole story is buried within Midra's mansion and it's one of my most favorite locations in ER.
In entertainment, vibes is all that matters
His argument was that there was no point putting effort into writing good dialog any more because a post-it note (nanaya's torch) and a single line of dialog is enough to make 7 hour essays on youtube. And he's completely correct. From did exactly what he said they did and I can find multiple discussions on Nanaya who isn't a character and what we read may as well be random words.
You're a drug addict or a child. Wait til you discover lava lamps and electronic music. You will never touch another souls game again.
Well, then it kinda goes in favor to FromSoftware to make things such compelling that people enjoy so much to discuss it endlessly, huh? Maybe that Borderlands person wasn't even attacking FS, but admiring their efficiency?
That is something that many developers that try to repeat FromSoftware's vibes and fail: they write too much text. Too many names, too many descriptions. They also try to mitigate their low budgets and cram everything into text, while FS provides the vibes with not only text, but visuals and sounds. Midra's cutscene is very strong and without it I doubt people would care about this odd couple that much
From write the same way JJ Abrams does. As long as there is a mystery box it doesn't matter if you ever reveal what's in it. Which is fine if it's not the dominate way you write your story and the rest isn't "and then kill every powerful being in the land because... well because". Elden Ring gives you no reason to want to become Elden Lord. It doesn't tell you what being an Elden lord means or what it does for YOU. You just wake up and a cut scene your character doesn't see says "go kill these people". And then we meet consort Radahn who is effectively another Elden lord since he's the right hand man to a God and he's literally nothing special or different.
Great point, too bad it's about Dark Souls 2. Correct me if I'm wrong: The story of Elden Ring is that something has gone wrong with the afterlife so people aren't dying properly anymore, and it's believed that restoring the Elden Ring will fix that, which is why so many Tarnished, including the PC, are trying to do it. That seems like a straightforward and compelling enough motivation to me.
I thought the shards used after decapitation were to prevent them from turning into the lantern dudes.
Dark souls 2 has a motivation. You're going Hollow and heard there's a cure for it in Dranglec. Why you have to murder people to get it I don't know, but that's a fair shake. Elden ring is "you come from a distant land to become Elden lord because... you just do okay?"
I like how angry you are. It's funny and you should keep being angry
No, I'm pretty sure it's for exactly the reason I said.
Does any one even tell you how you're supposed to cure the world or that the world is even fucked and you're the one to save it?
Yeah, but that is no basis for a story with a beginning and an end. Player arrives in Drangleic, consumes powerful souls for a while and then the game just sort of ends? That's a shit story. If the throne absolves the player of having to seek souls (in essence, if it lifts the curse) then that's fine, that's an end to the story. But nothing in the game says it does.
If we take the amnesia thing at face value, that would mean that your character has no motivation at all, and simply goes around killing these powerful beings for no reason. Which, again, fair enough, that's how the game starts and I have no problem with that, but you're always looking for a way to get uncursed, and if the game doesn't tell you how to do that at the beginning, it needs to do it at some point before the end of the game or the whole thing is pointless.
I swear the game tells you that the shattering fucked up the process of deceased souls proceeding to the afterlife (or being taken into the Greater Will, if you prefer), making the Lands Between either a purgatory, or a mortal world/purgatory combo. Now, you being your difficult self, and me not being able to cite anything specific to back this up, we can say I hallucinated all that, in which case the murderhobo motivation still remains.
On the contrary, the good From games that I've played have simple, easily summarised stories.
Well since you asked here goes.
Okay, so it's: Elden Ring is shattered -> War breaks out -> War causes the Greater Will to fuck off. The shattering is still the catalyst. Besides, that doesn't really have any bearing on my synopsis, does it? It's still broadly right.
The first time you are told that fixing the elden ring would even register on the greater will's radar is only after getting your first great rune. Before that point nobody even tries to sell you on the idea that the elden ring is something you should or even could care about.
Metyr's staff later on confirms that the greater will has left the lands between but its highly debatable when that happened.
If you beat all 3 DLCs and go to vendrick's memory you can form a united crown that disables the hollowing mechanic. You can argue that is DLC and doesn't count, but it does completely validate the story of Dark souls 2. Vendrick never conquered the other kings to become the true king. You do and get an item that validates your entire quest.
The lands between aren't a From exclusive idea. I forget where it's borrowed from now but it is and you fail to understand even the basic story elements present here.
Yes, but only in the sense that you are at some point told becoming the elden lord is a fix to... something. What exactly it will fix or how is it going to be fixed or what even are you going to do after is never touched upon or eve alluded to.
Perfectly rational? Hardly. The tarnished are a group of people who were explicitly stripped of their grace(which btw is another thing that was basically never explained but lets not dwell on that) and banished from the lands to wage war in far away lands. Plus based on the intro(and nothing the fuck else because the game again never elaborates on this any further) the tarnished were not even allowed to die properly and are only now being revived by... someone again, not explained.
Fair point but still a fuck up on From's part. The game needs to at least explain the basics of its world and the nouns it uses to describe it otherwise its just a word salad that means little to nothing. My character knowing what is an elden lord and how the elden ring can fix everything is fine and dandy but somehow that knowledge needs to be passed onto the player as well.
Fair enough then. I only finished the game in its pre-DLC state, never after playing the DLCs.
Why did William the Conqueror invade England? Why did Clint Eastwood get involved with the gangs in A Fistful of Dollars? Why is Donald Trump running for president?
Per the intro, the known state of things at the beginning of the game is that Marika is AWOL and her children (along with certain Tarnished of high renown) are fighting over who gets to be Elden Lord. The player character is aware of this because he lives in the world where it's happening, and the player is aware of this because he watched the intro cutscene. Again, we're circling back to: why does anyone seek power? The undeniable fact is that people have done it throughout history and it is the basis of many great stories.
