Elden Ring found me at a transitory part of my life. The cultural shift to work from home due to the pandemic allowed me to purchase and move into my first house on March 30th, 2022. In the following weekends since that time, I've wandered through this house while performing some much needed updates, and the whole time I can't help but wonder what the story of this place is. The selling agent told me that the house was previously owned by a husband and wife who lived here with their four children.
There is not enough space in this house for four children. The upstairs has two bedrooms. One, I imagine, was used for the husband and wife. I am now using this bedroom as an office; it has a door. The other bedroom on is slightly larger, and is what I am using for my own bedroom. This room did NOT have a door. I've heard stories of parents who don't respect their childrens' privacy taking the doors off their bedrooms. I have to imagine the 4 children crammed into the room that now houses my queen sized bed grew up, generally, without any sort of privacy. Perhaps the door removal wasn't even malicious on the parents' part. It's totally possible that there wasn't ever enough room in the bedroom for a door and the necessary 4 beds.
Which makes me wonder why they didn't convert the large downstairs living room into a bedroom. You could even fit 2 bedrooms down there if you wanted to. Maybe some of the children did sleep down there. I'm not sure.
The owners left me a poorly written note about the light switches that control the outside lights. I've spent weeks trying to decipher the arcane method with which the previous owners turned off the LED floodlights; and, for the most part, I've failed. The guidance from the Elder owners left me feeling confused and lost.
The note, combined with the NRA stickers that were slapped on both the front AND rear doors of the house caused me to wonder whether lead could be present in the water. It's in a lab being tested right now.
All that to say, I've spend a lot of time thinking about the history of this place and how I'm going to change it.
Elden Ring feels like a game burdened by its history. How can you possibly create the next Dark Souls? We've seen something like this in the past. Little game (Dragon Age: Origins/Dark Souls) becomes something of a cult hit. It sells a LOT, but the sequels never quite live up to the original. Years go by, you make Mass Effect & Sekiro, some people like you, others don't. What the People really want though, is another of those Dark Souls games. But you can't just make Dark Souls 4.
So you make Dragon Age: Inquisition. You cram their face full of so much Dark Souls that they'll be satisfied for the next 25 years. You make the world so large, so densely packed with enemies and hidden dungeons and items and vistas and forts and other NOUNS that a player can easily spend over 100 hours exploring the digital landscape you've created.
But for what? What is gained by making the world so large? Dark Souls already had beautiful vistas, it had multitudes of memorable encounters, it had hidden dungeons and forts. It already had things! The quasi-open world nature of Dark Souls allowed for a game where encounters, either with enemies or with the environment, could be scripted. We all remember how to navigate the world of Dark Souls 1, and that's because it has intended, scripted pathways. How do you get from the depths in Dark Souls back to Fireline Shrine? There are a million ways, different paths, some hidden. It lights up the part of your brain that you use for navigation in such a novel way that even thinking about how to get from point A to point B is fun. In Elden Ring, you get on your horse.
That's my biggest issue with the game. When Elden Ring is Dark Souls, it's amazing. Scaling castles, hopping from roof to roof, uncovering shortcuts, challenging boss fights, fashionable clothes, it's all there. But where Dark Souls carefully guides you from moment to moment, vista to vista, combat to combat, Elden Ring meanders. It's a pacing problem. You'll spend 10 hours in a mega-dungeon (fun!), then 5 wandering around a giant snowfield on your horse while you mash LB and wait for a dragon to die (boring!). I'm just not sure what the Dark Souls formula gains from switching to an open world.
It's frustrating. You can see the good ideas they had (and I do like the game quite a bit), but I can't help but feel like so much of the changes FROM made were because they didn't want to make Dark Souls 4, but Elden Ring ends up feeling like Dark Souls 4 anyway. It feels like a half measure, taking the familiar mechanics from Dark Souls and slapping them into an open world. It's not as innovative as it could be; it's just More.
There's this sense I got while playing Elden Ring of being burdened by the past. The decisions made by those who came before you that weigh on your mind. The compulsion to wear their shoes, to try to understand who they were, what thoughts they had. How could you ever make the next Dark Souls?
And just where did all those kids sleep, anyway?
There is not enough space in this house for four children. The upstairs has two bedrooms. One, I imagine, was used for the husband and wife. I am now using this bedroom as an office; it has a door. The other bedroom on is slightly larger, and is what I am using for my own bedroom. This room did NOT have a door. I've heard stories of parents who don't respect their childrens' privacy taking the doors off their bedrooms. I have to imagine the 4 children crammed into the room that now houses my queen sized bed grew up, generally, without any sort of privacy. Perhaps the door removal wasn't even malicious on the parents' part. It's totally possible that there wasn't ever enough room in the bedroom for a door and the necessary 4 beds.
Which makes me wonder why they didn't convert the large downstairs living room into a bedroom. You could even fit 2 bedrooms down there if you wanted to. Maybe some of the children did sleep down there. I'm not sure.
The owners left me a poorly written note about the light switches that control the outside lights. I've spent weeks trying to decipher the arcane method with which the previous owners turned off the LED floodlights; and, for the most part, I've failed. The guidance from the Elder owners left me feeling confused and lost.
The note, combined with the NRA stickers that were slapped on both the front AND rear doors of the house caused me to wonder whether lead could be present in the water. It's in a lab being tested right now.
All that to say, I've spend a lot of time thinking about the history of this place and how I'm going to change it.
Elden Ring feels like a game burdened by its history. How can you possibly create the next Dark Souls? We've seen something like this in the past. Little game (Dragon Age: Origins/Dark Souls) becomes something of a cult hit. It sells a LOT, but the sequels never quite live up to the original. Years go by, you make Mass Effect & Sekiro, some people like you, others don't. What the People really want though, is another of those Dark Souls games. But you can't just make Dark Souls 4.
So you make Dragon Age: Inquisition. You cram their face full of so much Dark Souls that they'll be satisfied for the next 25 years. You make the world so large, so densely packed with enemies and hidden dungeons and items and vistas and forts and other NOUNS that a player can easily spend over 100 hours exploring the digital landscape you've created.
But for what? What is gained by making the world so large? Dark Souls already had beautiful vistas, it had multitudes of memorable encounters, it had hidden dungeons and forts. It already had things! The quasi-open world nature of Dark Souls allowed for a game where encounters, either with enemies or with the environment, could be scripted. We all remember how to navigate the world of Dark Souls 1, and that's because it has intended, scripted pathways. How do you get from the depths in Dark Souls back to Fireline Shrine? There are a million ways, different paths, some hidden. It lights up the part of your brain that you use for navigation in such a novel way that even thinking about how to get from point A to point B is fun. In Elden Ring, you get on your horse.
That's my biggest issue with the game. When Elden Ring is Dark Souls, it's amazing. Scaling castles, hopping from roof to roof, uncovering shortcuts, challenging boss fights, fashionable clothes, it's all there. But where Dark Souls carefully guides you from moment to moment, vista to vista, combat to combat, Elden Ring meanders. It's a pacing problem. You'll spend 10 hours in a mega-dungeon (fun!), then 5 wandering around a giant snowfield on your horse while you mash LB and wait for a dragon to die (boring!). I'm just not sure what the Dark Souls formula gains from switching to an open world.
It's frustrating. You can see the good ideas they had (and I do like the game quite a bit), but I can't help but feel like so much of the changes FROM made were because they didn't want to make Dark Souls 4, but Elden Ring ends up feeling like Dark Souls 4 anyway. It feels like a half measure, taking the familiar mechanics from Dark Souls and slapping them into an open world. It's not as innovative as it could be; it's just More.
There's this sense I got while playing Elden Ring of being burdened by the past. The decisions made by those who came before you that weigh on your mind. The compulsion to wear their shoes, to try to understand who they were, what thoughts they had. How could you ever make the next Dark Souls?
And just where did all those kids sleep, anyway?