Elden Ring - Gameplay Trailer & Release Date

Indeed, the interview has quite a bit of interesting tidbits. This one, though, is a bit worrying.

https://twitter.com/GermanStrands/status/1404448127361466374

30h estimated playtime? How is that possible in a game that seems so large. I imagine they mean only a main-story run, but 30h seems very low. Both Bloodborne and Sekiro took me around 80-100h to fully complete, and those are quite linear.

They also mention Elden Ring will feature a world map, which is a first for a souls game. I hope when they say world map, they mean an artistic representation of the world map, and not a radar, as most games seem to implement a map. Where you see all details in the world. I hope you still have to learn the world and keep it in your mind. This was never an issue in their previous games since the world is so memorable. I hope the move to open-world doesn't mean we get loads of generic scenery that is not memorable.

More bad news:

https://wccftech.com/elden-ring-30-hours-bosses-endings-story-character/

As for the game’s playtime, Miyazaki said that he estimates that players will need roughly 30 hours to complete the game without taking too many side trips. Talking about the bosses in the game, the game director said that there will be a limited number with some being optional for players to beat.

What the actual fuck? I hope this is some misunderstanding. I want a big meaty experience. I hope to god it's not gonna a quick in-out run. I also wonder what does he estimate the 30h to. The brand new player who needs to learn mechanics/fights, or someone experienced?

The playtime in Dark Souls is the same with optional bosses that you can skip if you want to reach the end. There are even speed runs on youtube!

For a normal player, you can spend easily double that time in Dark Souls in side areas/quests, exploring or grinding. So there is nothing to be surprised about from the comment about 30 hours game time.

I have found in most games that the estimated time is typically less than a third of the time I end up playing. A big reason for this is that I will test several starts before settling in with one character.

SpoonFULL said:

The playtime in Dark Souls is the same with optional bosses that you can skip if you want to reach the end. There are even speed runs on youtube!

For a normal player, you can spend easily double that time in Dark Souls in side areas/quests, exploring or grinding. So there is nothing to be surprised about from the comment about 30 hours game time.

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crpgnut said:

I have found in most games that the estimated time is typically less than a third of the time I end up playing. A big reason for this is that I will test several starts before settling in with one character.

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From your mouths to gods ears. I hope so. I haven’t finished DS but I’d be curious what did they estimate for Bloodborne and Sekiro.

EDIT: I couldn't find any official estimate, but the usual websites that track playthrough length seem to estimate a main-quest of Bloodborne at around 40h, and Sekiro at 30h. Ok, maybe I'm being an alarmist. But still, I'd expect an open world game to have the base length longer than a linear game. Anyways, we shall see.

A lot of the time spent playing games like Dark Souls and Sekiro is reloading and fighting the same enemies over and over again until you overcome them.

I'm guessing Miyazaki's estimate isn't taking reloads into account.

30h does sound pretty alarming. What is that, 5 hours per zone including dungeon?

Typical Fromsoft, always making a shitload of game assets then having the player walk through them and they're gone. World of Warcraft would manage to get 200h out of 6 zones and 6 dungeons.

But I guess that's also what's good about the games. Most devs wouldn't want to waste time on content the player is never going to see but almost all of the NPC storylines in DS are quite easy to miss if you don't advance them with some obscure event. I feel like it was more by accident or inexperience that this has happened and they might suddenly realise they're wasting resources and sort of ruin their games by making everything hard to miss. They could easily send the player back through the zones to find new encounters after some event triggers it and get more play time out of them. But they might not want to waste a boss by making it hard to find. Especially since professional game reviewers are often rush through. It's a tricky situation.

I think it took me around 60h to finish Dark Souls games in average, so 30 does sound low. I do like to sidetrack, farm souls and beat all optional content though. To me, the biggest flaw of Resident Evil games, for example, is how little they last, especially considering they are always some of the most expensive games. Hopefully Elden Ring will be better than that.

Sometimes these playing time estimates are really inaccurate. That or they are simply timing people that don't explore and avoid side quests completely, I know for a fact that either I play extremely slowly or differently from most of these people that get timed, because I always seem to take a bit longer with most games. I do like to explore!