I write this post halfway through my second playthrough of Elden Ring, and am enjoying it immensely. Like I predicted in my initial review, focusing on the main quests, locations and bosses makes for a tighter and more focused gameplay experience. However, I also replayed a few of the Dark Souls games in the meantime, and brought up the conflict I and many other Souls fans have had when playing Elden Ring a year ago.
So I thought I'd explore some of those issues and get to the bottom of why such a fun and satisfying game could sometimes feel a little off for me.
"Have a seat and get comfortable. We'll both be Hollow before you know it." - Crestfallen Warrior, Dark Souls
The first thing to note is that Elden Ring is a more accessible game than Dark Souls - and not just in the open-world design or the mechanics. The themes and tone of Elden Ring are far more optimistic and grand than the games that came before, something almost uplifting. Your goal is to become the lord of this magical land, picking up the pieces by taking on the demigods of old and rising to meet a majestic destiny.
In Dark Souls, however, your destiny is ruin. You are told as soon as possible that you are worthless - that you live in a world of decay and ruin, where an undead curse eats away at your body and mind, challenging your character in an almost spiritual way. The monsters, the characters, the very world wants to make you give in, and you have to defy it, forging a place for yourself in spite of all in your way. There is something profound about this concept, as it speaks to a deep human need for survival and perseverance. There may be hardships, loneliness and suffering in our lives, but our ability to pick ourselves up and carry on in spite of all that life throws at you is one of the most powerful strengths that we have as human beings.
Elden Ring is a fantastic world of mythology, written by George R.R Martin, one of the greatest fantasy authors of all time, but this profundity was somewhat lacking. You play as a Tarnished, a warrior who was resurrected and brought back to The Lands Between after being sent abroad to fight in a war. Like in Dark Souls, death is not a permanent end for you, but an obstacle to overcome, but there is no curse that afflicts you, nothing that ties your fate with the crumbling fate of the world, and ultimately no stakes for your soul.
If you give up in the world of Dark Souls, you become an undead shell of yourself, lost forever. If you give up in the world of Bloodborne, the corrupting blood and fighting of beasts will cause you to be locked in an endless purgatory and the night of the hunt will never end. If you give up in Elden Ring, nothing. In fact, many Tarnished characters make a life for themselves and find purpose in entirely separate goals, losing the guidance of grace that spurs them to face the demigods, a far cry from the purgatory you face in the early games.
The gameplay was brought over from Dark Souls to Elden Ring, in fact improved upon with greater uses of weapons and the ability to jump, making for more complex level design. But without the Souls DNA of fighting against the odds with a curse threatening to drag you down to the madness around you, it could only feel lesser for devoted fans.
Missed Potential
Before the release of Elden Ring, rumours and leaks came out concerning the story, world and mechanics. One of these was the concept of your character having an arm rusting away through either use or death, which could be healed or replaced with prosthetics. This idea was in the game, but surrounding the characters of Malenia and Millicent, afflicted with something called the Scarlet Rot. However, this started a trend of missed potential that each of the demigods represented, with most of them characterising an exciting new concept or secret ending that never came to be:
Godrick the Grafted - replacing your limbs with the limbs of other people or creatures. Ranni - replacing your body with that of a doll to evade judgement from the higher beings that govern the world. Malenia - sacrificing parts of your body by adopting a destructive new power. Shabriri - having to kill another character and steal their body as part of a Frenzied Flame ritual. As you can see, sacrificing your limbs, or even your whole body, is a motif in the game, only it never affects you personally.
These are just a few examples of missed potential, where making such decisions on your character would have huge implications on worldbuilding, customisation and gameplay. The best we got was slightly different coloured eyes or marks on the body from one specific quest. There were also only two factions other than the default Golden Order that you could join that affect the nature of your journey (providing different endings), and a handful of character quests that added slightly different endings to the standard path Elden Lord.
Comparing this to Dark Souls III, the game most similar to Elden Ring, there are about a dozen factions that provide unique items, bonuses and online situations (some factions defend particular areas, fight hostile invaders, help against bosses or kill all they can). One quest faction will cause you too "hollow", becoming a living corpse (something default in the first two Dark Souls games), and the dragon stones allow you to adopt a draconic form, sacrificing armour for fire-breathing and other attack benefits
Changing your form, customising yourself and joining factions massively improves RPG games such as these, especially since the precedent was set in the prior games, but this never really manifested in Elden Ring. In its defense, no DLC has yet been released for the game, and the DLC of Bloodborne is where the more outlandish customisation came in to fruition, but that is still no guarantee of improvement.
Open World Syndrome
Playing the game for a second time on foot rather than horseback, with less of a need to explore every corner, I am finding it much more enjoyable - Liurnia is a highlight, with the area separated into smaller ones - the land on the East, the giant lake in the centre with Raya Lucaria lying within, the Albanuric Village in the South and the Carian Manor in the North. By following the roads and going to key locations, forts, castles and dungeons, you can have loads of enjoyment, avoiding repetitive gameplay and copied boss fights. However, the first playthrough encourages maximum exploration - every ruin and catacomb. Without doing this, many upgrading resources will be significantly harder to find, and you will have a harder time when the difficulty takes a sharp rise after Leyndell.
Dark Souls III, on the other hand, almost feels designed to be replayed. First time around, you can explore everywhere and find everything, but the next playthroughs offer new item placements and alternate quest paths that you missed first time around. They also offer a tighter experience, so much so that you could rush the game, getting from area to area as fast as possible to get to what you enjoy most - which for many people is the bosses. This isn't as possible on Elden Ring considering you have to traverse an open map between each level.
I wouldn't completely dismiss Elden Ring's approach to world design - for one the ability to be taken aback by a large area and admire its landscape before realising the whole thing is yours to explore is something that only Elden Ring can truly do, unlike Dark Souls. However, I think some balance should be considered for the next game. Perhaps merging these large areas with the levels more seemlessly - imagine a castle or dungeon the size of Limgrave, or a smaller area with an unkillable stalker enemy that forces you to move slowly and more cautiously to explore it - maybe even having you face it as a boss toward the late game with a certain item allowing you to kill it. There is so much potential, and Elden Ring only scratched the surface. So, while this post may seem quite negative to Elden Ring, that is only because of the unrealised potential that I hope continues to be explored within future entries by FromSoftware. What do you think? Let me know in the comments, and I hope to upload again soon
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