​​The falling leaves tell a story... Or do they?

To me, the most impressive thing about Elden Ring is the slight and subtle shift from one specific fantasy aesthetic (Dark Souls) to another that shares some elements with the first while at the same time being its own thing. A beautiful thing, more vibrant, fantastical, with more hope and comedic elements of talking pots, turtle popes and what nots.

Also, the Erdtree is just staggeringly beautiful and gives a player a meaningful way to orient themselves around the world, not unlike the castle towers of Disneyland. The masterful spatial design of Disneyland has been discussed alot by game developers. In Elden Ring, the Erdtree provides the same utility of orienting the player. The Erdtree also works as a constant reminder of the central mystery of the gameworld, which is a brilliant idea.

Mechanicly Elden Ring feels to me mostly like a Dark Souls game with elements added from From's other games. Weapon movesets, the non-Dark Souls boss battle archetypes, sneaking, outer space gods and so on. Here, there isn't much new stuff for a veteran From Software fan. Elden Ring works more as a greatest hits album in a gameplay sense. And also, there is a horse spirit. That's kinda neat.

The open world structure of Elden Ring is no doubt the biggest change from earlier games. And while it comes with some interesting aspects I sadly have to say that the negatives outway the positives.

The positives being, feeling like a tiny speck exploring this enormous world that just keeps on growing. The genuine feeling of discovery and surprice. And actually, the graces guiding you to a more linear game experience is the most interesting innovation of the now elden open world formula I’ve seen in a while.

The negatives, on the other hand, result in an empty and largely uninteresting world. We have all seen open worlds before, we've figuratively played Skyrim multiple times, even if the name on the box is something else.

At this stage, just being open world is not enough to excite. Just being an open world that happens to contain a huge Souls-game isn't enough to excite. And sadly, just being an open world Souls-game with all of the best qualities, innovations and aesthetics of Elden Ring isn't enough to constitute a masterpiece.

So why isn't Elden Ring a masterpiece? This should be clear to anyone who has played the game for 100 hours or more and cares deeply about game design. Inside Elden Ring there might exist a masterpiece lost somewhere that could only be summoned by subtracting from what is needlessly left in the finished piece. Yes, the map is huge, but the contents of Elden Ring is also immense compared to other Soulsborne-games. Yet, the map is still too big to showcase the actual contents of the game in a masterful way. There is probably one and a half worth of a Bloodborne/Dark Souls-quality level game here. But the problem is that Elden Ring contains more stuff that would have been cut from a aforementioned sized game.

There are multiple boss battles that don't rise to the quality and lore significance of what we have come to expect from a Souls-boss. This reduces what it means to be a Souls-boss and that's a shame. I'm talking about having multiple Crucible Knights, multiple Misbegotten Warriors and multiple crystal bug things. But yes, if they just would have changed the lifebar from a boss sized one to a normal enemy lifebar, this problem would have been solved… kind of. Not doing this feels like a failing of direction and quality control.

Other bad things, you might ask? While the mysterysolving in the world can be interesting, finding a note with a place crossed on a map and going there to find a key is cool. But the inventory system is way too obtuse and convoluted to make this a good intuitive experience. Here, just marking the map with a red dot is more effectful.

For some reason, personally I didn’t find the mystery of this world as compelling as with Bloodborne or Sekiro. I think one part of it is the way it unravels with so many loose threads and not tying any of the stories of the bosses together. This maybe just being a more Dark Souls way of doing it, compared to how lore and story is done in Bloodborne and Sekiro. Just a worse way in my opinion.

It should be clear that I still mostly enjoyed Elden Ring while sometimes being frustrated by the spoiled potential. I have talked about solutions to specific problems, but the big solution would be to just cut the size of the map by 40% and still having a HUGE WORLD, at the same time cutting a lot of stuff that doesn’t rise to the level of a true From Software masterpiece.

Cocoon fully achieves what it sets out to do. Its an amazing experience. The artstyle, atmosphere, the world, sound design, the music and how deeply woven it is into the fabric of the game design, all these components are masterfully crafted. Yet, I've been torn.

The problem I have with the game is that I disagree with what direction it should have taken and how deeply the ideas should have been explored. I can't help myself but wonder what Cocoon could have been if the ambition was to create an even greater work, delving much deeper into the consequences of the mechanics. I hoped to get lost in worlds within worlds and having my mind blown on the level of a "The Witness" or a "Fez". But clearly that was never the ambition. The ambition was something smaller, way more streamlined and easy going.

This being the first game from a new studio would explain why the scope of the game is what it is. But I can't help but feel, that if you were going to create that world and introduce these mechanics, why not see them through to the very end? When Cocoon ends, it doesn't even feel like we're halfway there.

Yet, the sliver that I saw of the perfect and illusory whole, I deeply loved.

This is a weird game!

I was surprised to see how deeply Humanity explores delves into these core mechanics in interesting ways. The thematics are bold, out of left field and kept me guessing what would come next.

But I have to say that in the later sequences, this exploration loses direction and needless ideas seep into the game like a curse, breaking the trust between the player and developer. A lot of boss battles and levels with the follow command have this problem. It's a shame, but ultimately, it doesn't make it a bad game. Just another case illustrating the importance of subtractive design and homing in on the true essence of the game.

Aesthetically, it's wonderful and original. I love to see such a strong conviction behind such a weird idea.