Elden Ring - AAA game publishers have hard lessons to learn

Originally Posted by fadedc
I would disagree with the writers faith that nothing in the lore or monster placement is arbitrary though. The soulslike games aren't designed to have cohesive lore. From what I've seen from the designers comments his goal in them is more to inspire your imagination and let you speculate about what's going on, but that he doesn't necessarily have any more clue than anyone else.

You should read more of his comments, then.

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
You should read more of his comments, then.

Maybe I should, if you have any good ones to start with I'm happy to read them. I'm mostly going by his Dark Souls comments too, so I'm not as up on what he has said about Elden Ring.

Originally Posted by fadedc
Maybe I should, if you have any good ones to start with I'm happy to read them. I'm mostly going by his Dark Souls comments too, so I'm not as up on what he has said about Elden Ring.

Miyazaki and FROM have a pretty good idea of what and who constitutes the worlds they build. Lore descriptions are not randomly thrown out there. There's a consistency that wouldn't exist if that was the case. I know this from playing the games myself, and from reading various interviews with Miyazaki over the years. I wouldn't be able to find most of them now, but here's a snippet from an interview I do know how to find, talking about Big Hat Logan:

"Miyazaki: I suppose it wasn't. As to why I made him naked, I wanted to show that the character had found enlightenment but unfortunately the models in Dark Souls weren't built with a wide range of emotional expressions, so as I was thinking about how to overcome this problem, for some reason, I came up with the idea of making him naked…

It's Logan's goal to gain the power of the ancient dragons, so in order to do this, I had an image of him casting off his human clothes. It's similar to using the Dragon Head or Torso Stone, you have to remove your equipment. Of course there are gameplay reasons for this too, but there was also this image of the player leaving something of their humanity behind. Similarly, Logan removing his clothes is his attempt to bring himself closer to Seath in some way. Although I couldn't take his hat off because no one would recognise him, but personally I like to think that unlike the followers of the path of the Dragon, Logan sought to gain the dragons power while retaining his pride as a human."

The interview is largely about character/monster designs, but there's still a lot of good stuff in there that shows the thought process behind the games. https://darksouls.wiki.fextralife.co…orks+Interview

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
Miyazaki and FROM have a pretty good idea of what and who constitutes the worlds they build. Lore descriptions are not randomly thrown out there. There's a consistency that wouldn't exist if that was the case. I know this from playing the games myself, and from reading various interviews with Miyazaki over the years. I wouldn't be able to find most of them now, but here's a snippet from an interview I do know how to find, talking about Big Hat Logan:

"Miyazaki: I suppose it wasn't. As to why I made him naked, I wanted to show that the character had found enlightenment but unfortunately the models in Dark Souls weren't built with a wide range of emotional expressions, so as I was thinking about how to overcome this problem, for some reason, I came up with the idea of making him naked…

It's Logan's goal to gain the power of the ancient dragons, so in order to do this, I had an image of him casting off his human clothes. It's similar to using the Dragon Head or Torso Stone, you have to remove your equipment. Of course there are gameplay reasons for this too, but there was also this image of the player leaving something of their humanity behind. Similarly, Logan removing his clothes is his attempt to bring himself closer to Seath in some way. Although I couldn't take his hat off because no one would recognise him, but personally I like to think that unlike the followers of the path of the Dragon, Logan sought to gain the dragons power while retaining his pride as a human."

The interview is largely about character/monster designs, but there's still a lot of good stuff in there that shows the thought process behind the games. https://darksouls.wiki.fextralife.co…orks+Interview

Most of it just seems to be about theme and imagery though. I would never deny that Miyazaki is the master of creating memorable themes.

Lore is obviously not their strong point. Let's not even try to pretend otherwise.

I agree with fadedc about the open world. I like it a lot. It's all about personal taste of course, but I vastly prefer it over the design of the DS games.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Lore is obviously not their strong point. Let's not even try to pretend otherwise.

It's absolutely one of their strong points. I don't have to pretend. I'll take what they do over the fiftieth copy/paste Tolkein/D&D based world any day.

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
I'll take what they do over the fiftieth copy/paste Tolkein/D&D based world any day.

I think the rest of us know by now that you'll take anything that has to do with this game over anything from any other game.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I think the rest of us know by now that you'll take anything that has to do with this game over anything from any other game.

I wrote a rather long post on this thread about how I won't, but that's okay.

Actually the lore is quite deep. It’s presenting the lore and story telling that’s not their strong point.

I don’t think anyone will have to worry too much about a bunch of Elden ring clones. Open world games are just too expensive. Look at the success of Skyrim and we are not inundated with Skyrim clones.

I’m really enjoying the game now after treating the open world as I believe FromSoft intended and that is as a travel mechanism and farming area for crafting and runes. I was disappointed at first at the lack of rewards for exploring but after playing I can see why they did it. With the horse you can pretty much traverse the open world with little to no fear of dying. If the overworld was full of great weapons and armor everyone would just ride to it and grab it right away.

I’m approaching 200 hours now (which includes several restarts) and plan to post my thoughts in a separate thread when I get a chance to do it properly.

The Radahn fight is crazy. I wish I had more time to admire his design but I'm too busy trying (and so far failing) not to die.

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
The Radahn fight is crazy. I wish I had more time to admire his design but I'm too busy trying (and so far failing) not to die.

That's one I definitely had to come back to much later.

A lof ot the encounters are really epic and well designed, and it's a shame the bosses doesn't stand still more often so you can admire that design!

To put one negative to the boss fights, I just found a little offputting that some of the bosses are rehashed/recoloured skins of previous bosses you found. There are some bosses that have the same design and attack pattern and you get to fight 5 or 6 times each. And I don't mean bosses that are found later in the game as "trash mobs", I mean actual bosses with boss bar and a different name.

Originally Posted by Nereida
To put one negative to the boss fights, I just found a little offputting that some of the bosses are rehashed/recoloured skins of previous bosses you found. There are some bosses that have the same design and attack pattern and you get to fight 5 or 6 times each. And I don't mean bosses that are found later in the game as "trash mobs", I mean actual bosses with boss bar and a different name.

Yeah, a byproduct of the open world design and sheer number of boss fights. A lot of the mini dungeons have copy/paste bosses.

All of the major bosses are very cool, though. The Rennala fight was outright beautiful, visually and auditorily.

I don't see how being open-world has anything to do with reusing the same bosses.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I don't see how being open-world has anything to do with reusing the same bosses.

Really?

Making the game open world meant peppering it with a lot more dungeons and bosses than usual for their games. Having limited time and resources while making the game several times larger than normal meant recycling some bosses with minimal variation.

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
Really?

Making the game open world meant peppering it with a lot more dungeons and bosses than usual for their games. Having limited time and resources while making the game several times larger than normal meant recycling some bosses with minimal variation.

You're talking about size and length. The level design has nothing to do with it. You said it as if being open-world automatically means stuff like that happens. It doesn't.

Originally Posted by JDR13
You're talking about size and length. The level design has nothing to do with it. You said it as if being open-world automatically means stuff like that happens. It doesn't.

Because everyone just loves big empty open worlds, right? Good god, you love to argue. You and Lackblogger should be locked in a room.

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
I don't know how to respond to a logical statement, so I'm just going to get frustrated and lash out now.

It's ok. I'm sure you just meant that the game is big.

Originally Posted by Nereida
A lof ot the encounters are really epic and well designed, and it's a shame the bosses doesn't stand still more often so you can admire that design!

To put one negative to the boss fights, I just found a little offputting that some of the bosses are rehashed/recoloured skins of previous bosses you found. There are some bosses that have the same design and attack pattern and you get to fight 5 or 6 times each. And I don't mean bosses that are found later in the game as "trash mobs", I mean actual bosses with boss bar and a different name.

It's true, a lot of the mini-dungeon bosses are kind of throw away bosses and not super interesting.

I don't usually mind though. By the time I've gotten to the end of the dungeon and I'm carrying a giant pile of runes I'm usually very happy for a nice easy fight to finish things off.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I'm not sure if that would be something you'd like. Assuming it's similar to the older games in the series, it'll be a third-person shooter. I'm surprised FromSoft is returning to Armored Core if the rumor is true.

Way back when, Mechwarrior 2 was think ultimate game.

Maybe you're right. Mech2, these days, is a bit slow and clunky. But, fuck, if anyone can bring me back to mech days its gotta be from, yeah?

I dunno. we'll see. I'm definitely paying attention.