"You have died, and the Nexus has trapped your soul."

"You cannot escape the Nexus."

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CW: Brief discussion on the game's use of rape

In Elden Ring, you can never discover anything once. That was the thought that entered my head early in the experience and never quite left it. One of the most evocative parts of the game's genuinely stunning art direction is the walking cathedral, a strange and arresting colossus that stumbles across the Weeping Peninsula, each step ringing the bell that hangs beneath its torso. It was a sight of strange, beautiful magic, the kind of which these games have been good at in the past.

Except, to describe this creature in the singular would be inaccurate. Because Walking Cathedrals appear all over the world of Elden Ring, each one identical in appearance, each one performing an identical, express mechanical function for the player. This cannot be left alone as a strange, unique beast, it has to be reduced to a Type of Content a player can engage with over and over again for a characterless transaction of pure mechanics. It is the excitement of coming across something esoteric that the Souls games have made a core part of their identity, utterly commodified and made into the exact same arc that applied to Assassin's Creed the moment climbing a tower to survey the environment and taking a leap of faith into a haystack below shifted from an exciting and evocative moment into a rote and tiresome mechanical interaction.

Because, that's right everyone, Dark Souls Is Now Open World. Not an open world in the same way that Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, or Dark Souls II were, where you could freely venture down different paths to different bosses and take things in an order outside of the game's expected leveling curve. No, this is an Open World as we understand it today: an enormous ocean of discrete repeated Activities dotted with islands of meaningful bespoke design. There's plenty of stuff to do in this world, but it's all of a specific type - in a catacomb you will navigate stone gargoyles and chalice dungeon designs to a lever that will open a door near the entrance that will contain a boss that you've likely found elsewhere in the world, and will be filled with stone gargoyles. Mines will be filled with mining rock-people and upgrade materials. Towers will have you find three spectral creatures around them in order to open them up and obtain a new Memory Slot. Camps will contain a patrolling enemy type and some loot. Even genuinely enchanting vistas and environments get their space to be repeated in slight variations. Boss battles too will be repeated endlessly, time and time again, with delightful designs like the Watchdog tragically becoming something I sighed and was annoyed to see crop up half-a-dozen times over the course of the adventure, and I was truly, deeply annoyed at fighting no less than about ten or twelve Erdtree Avatars and Dragons, with whom the moves never change and the fight plays out the exact same way every single time.

The first time I discovered these things, I was surprised, delighted even, but by even the second time, the truth that these are copied-and-pasted across the entirety of the Lands Between in order to pad it out became readily apparent, and eventually worn away even the enthusiasm of that first encounter. When I look back on my genuine enjoyment of the first battle with the Erdtree Avatar, I can only feel like an idiot for not realizing that this fight would be repeated verbatim over and over and become less fun every single time. When you've seen one, you've really seen all of them, and this means that by the time you leave Limgrave, you've already seen everything the Open World has to offer.

This is, of course, to be expected. Open world games simply have to do this. They are an enormous effort to bring into life, and the realities of game production mean that unless you're willing to spend decades on one game, you're going to have to be thrifty with how you produce content. I expect this, I understand this. Fallout: New Vegas is probably my favorite Open World game, but its world is also filled with this template design. But what's to be gained from this in a Dark Souls game? Unlike contemporaries like Breath of the Wild, your verbs of interaction in these games are frighteningly limited, with almost all of the experience boiling down to fighting enemies, and without a variety of interactions, the lack of variety in the huge amounts of content stands out all the more. Does fighting the same boss over and over and traversing the same cave over and over make Souls better? Even if you choose to just ignore all of these parts of the Open World (which is far easier said than done, as due to a very harsh leveling curve and the scarcity of crucial weapon upgrade materials outside of The Mines, the game's design absolutely pushes towards you engaging in these repetitious activities), the Legacy Dungeons that comprise the game's bespoke content are functionally completely separate from the Open World, with not even your Horse permitted to enter. This is no Burnout: Paradise or Xenoblade Chronicles X, which retooled the core gameplay loop to one where the open world was absolutely core to the design: this is a series of middling Dark Souls levels scattered among an open world no different from games like Far Cry or Horizon: Zero Dawn that many Souls fans have historically looked down on, and the game is only worse for it.

NPC storylines in particular suffer massively, as the chances of you stumbling upon these characters, already often quite annoying in past games, are so low as to practically require a wiki if you want to see the end of multiple questlines. However, that assumes that you will want to see the end of these stories and that you are invested in this world, and I decidedly Was Not. Souls games have always had suspect things in them that have gone largely uninterrogated but Elden Ring really brings that ugliness to the surface, with rape being an annoyingly present aspect of the backstories of many characters, and even having multiple characters threaten to rape you, none of which is deployed in a way that is meaningful and is just insufferable edgelord fantasy writing, and the same could be said of the grimdark incest-laden backstory, the deeply suspect trans panic writing surrounding one of the characters, and the enthusiastic use of Fantasy Racism tropes in the form of the Demi-Humans. I remain convinced that George RR Martin's involvement in this game was little more than a cynical publicity stunt, but certainly the game's writing indulges in many of that man's worst excesses, whilst having almost none of his strengths.

None of this is to say that Elden Ring is devoid of enjoyment. While the fact that it did hit just in time for a manic-depressive mood that made me perfectly suited to play a game I could just mindlessly play for a couple of weeks, I did see it through to the end in that time, even if I did rush to the end after a certain point. From Software's artists remain some of the best in the industry, with some incredible environments and boss designs that deserve Olympic gold medals for how much heavy-lifting they're doing to keep the experience afloat. I loved being kidnapped by chests into other parts of the world, and I wish it happened more than a couple of front-loaded times. But the enjoyment I had in it never felt like stemmed from the open world, and even its highest points don't hang with the best bits of the prior installments. Stormveil is probably the level design highlight of the game but it already fades from my mind in comparison to the likes of Central Yharnam or the Undead Burg or the Dragon Shrine. Indeed, the fact that they exist as islands in an ocean of vacuous space between them precludes the so-called "Legacy Dungeons" of this game from having the satisfying loops and interconnections that are often the design highlights of prior entries. The bosses are a seriously uneven mixed bag as well; even setting aside the repetition, as the nasty trend of overturned bosses that started in Dark Souls III rears its unfortunate head again. The superboss Melania is an interesting design utterly ruined by her obscene damage output, and my personal highlight of the game, Starscourge Radagon, who is the only boss fight that felt like it played to the things that Elden Ring brought to the table, and is a moment among the series that the game can truly claim as it's very own...but the tuning of the fight prevented it from being the triumphant coming-together moment that it is clearly attempting for many of my friends, who left the fight feeling that it was just annoying and tedious. Modern From Software could never make a fight like Maiden Astrea again because they'd insist on making her really hard in a way that actively detracts from the emotional experience in the fight. Boss fights can be about more than just providing a challenge, and I think From has forgotten that.

Taken as a series of its legacy dungeons, of its finest moments, I think Elden Ring would only be a middling one of these games. The additions to the formula feel anemic and unbalanced, the multiplayer implementation is honestly a quite considerable step back from prior games (the decision to have the majority of invasions only occur during co-operation feels like an attempt to weed out trolls picking on weaker players but in reality what it does is make equal fights are next-to-impossible and put Seal-Clubbers in a place where they are the only players who can effectively invade, a completely baffling decision), but it's really the open world I keep coming back to as the reason this game doesn't work. Not only does it add nothing that wasn't already present in better ways in prior games, but it actively detracts from the experience. The promise of the Open World is one of discovery, of setting off in uncharted directions and finding something new, but do Open Worlds actually facilitate this any better than more linear games? I don't know if they do. I felt a sense of discovery and finding something in so many of these games, even the most linear ones, and felt it stronger because the game was able to use careful, meticulous level design to bring out those emotions. Walking out of a cave and seeing Irithyll of the Boreal Valley, or Dead Man's Wharf stretch out before me, were moments of genuine discovery, and they would not be improved if I found six more Dead Man's Wharfs throughout the game. Contrary to their promise, in my experience, the open world, rather than create a sense of discovery, undermine it due to the compromises necessary to create these worlds. All the openness does for your discoveries is let you approach them from a slightly different angle as everyone else.

That is, if you can even claim to have discovered anything in the first place. To call Elden Ring derivative of prior games in this milieu would be a gross understatement. I am far from the first person to note that the game's much-hyped worldbuilding is largely content to regurgitate Souls Tropes with the Proper Nouns replaced with much worse ones, but it goes beyond that - entire questlines, plot beats, character arcs, dungeon designs, enemies, and bosses are lifted wholesale from prior games practically verbatim. More often than not Elden Ring feels closer to a Greatest Hits album than a coherent piece in and of itself, a soulless and cynical repackaging of prior Souls Classics, irrevocably damaged by being torn from the original context from which they belonged. I'm not a fan of Dark Souls III, in part because it too is also a game that leans on repetition of prior games, but at the very least the game was about those repetitions, where yes, old areas and characters would be repeated, but at least it was thematically resonant with what the game was doing. Elden Ring can't even claim that. Whatever this shallow mess of a narrative, easily the worst of the franchise thus far by my reckoning, is going for, it is done no favors by being this stitched-together Frankenstein of Souls.

I was particularly shocked by the sheer ferocity with which the game steals from the fan-favorite Bloodborne. Quick, tell me if you've heard this one before: you encounter a hunched, bestial foe, who fights you with their fists, but once you get their health halfway down, the battle stops, a cutscene plays, where they speak coherently, summon a blade from their past, and stand with their former dignity restored, the music changes, and their name is revealed to be "X the Y Blade". Or what about a hub area, separated in its own liminal space from the rest of the map, that can be discovered in its True Form in the material world? What about when that hub area is wreathed in spectral flame and begins to burn as the final hours of the game is nigh? These are far from the only examples, as there are multiple enemies and ideas throughout the game that are shamelessly lifted from my personal favorite From Software effort, but these stand out as the most noxious of all, as they simply repeat beats that were effective in the game they originated from because the game was able to build to them and have them resonate with the rest of the experience. You cannot just graft things whole cloth from prior work onto a new one and expect it to work as a coherent piece, the very prospect is ridiculous.

When Elden Ring did all this, my jaw about hit the floor from the sheer unmitigated gall. When it chose to conclude itself with a straight-faced Moon Presence reference, complete with an arena that directly evokes the Hunter's Dream, I just had to laugh. The final statement the game made on itself, the bullet point it chose to put on the experience, was "Remember Bloodborne? That was good, wasn't it?" Because in many ways, that really was a perfect conclusion to this game.

While it would be a mistake to claim, as people seem increasingly eager to, that Souls emerged entirely out of the magical ocean that is Hidetaka Miyazaki's unparalleled genius or whatever, as these games have always drawn heavy inspiration from properties like Berserk, Book of the New Sun, and The Legend of Zelda, and were built on top of a framework clearly established by past Fromsoft series King's Field, the reason I think that myself and many others were initially enthralled by the promise of Demon's Souls or Dark Souls was because they were decidedly different. Their esoterica, willingness to buck modern design conventions and hugely evocative online elements were why these games set imaginations alight so strongly, and proved enormously influential for the past decade of game design.

Demon's Souls felt like something new. And while successive games in this series have felt far less fresh, none of them have felt as utterly exhausted as Elden Ring: a final statement from the designers and writers at From Software that they have officially Ran Out of Ideas, that the well has long gone dry, that all they can do is to hastily staple on the modern design trends they once rejected onto a formula that does not gel with them, and that they are wandering without life through a never-ending cycle of their own creation, branded by the Darksign. Perhaps it's no surprise that their least inventive, least consistent, and least creative game since Demon's Souls is also by far their most successful. Once From Software defied conventions and trends, and now, they are consumed by them.

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"You have died, and the Nexus has trapped your soul."

"You cannot escape the Nexus."

Rise unhindered, augur of darkness. Your life is one defined by many behind you, of furtive pygmies and bearers of wretched curses, where chosen undead and champions of ash spill blood and reap countless souls in the unbroken climb towards an insurmountable goal. The Age of Fire has burnt out, The Hunt has concluded, and atop the carnage of a million shambling corpses, you stand triumphant. However, time flows unceasingly, and with it, the memories of the past become one with the ether, and a valiant hero is called to usher in a new era. Hunters all, Kindred, Chosen, and Cursed, flow into a corporeal amalgam. Awaken, Tarnished. Raise your blade in the face of yet another unending struggle, and earn your place in the hollow halls of history. A tale told in cyclical fashion, the story repeats anew, Soulsborne by way of AI generation.

Elden Ring survives off of a concentrated slurry of highlights from From Software’s extended catalog, a regurgitation of recollections better left to the past. Mechanically, narratively, thematically, down to the aesthetics of the Lands Between, the world speaks in jumbled Dark Fantasy Mad Libs and “If [X] than [Y]” statements carefully pruned from its predecessors. Run through the gameplay loop with me: You, a Hollow – I mean, Tarnished, must fight against unbearable odds, earning Souls – er, Ruins, which you spend at a Bonfi– Lost Grace, while exploring desiccated castles, rotting villages, and vile swamps, all in the name of Ending the Age of Fire Becoming the Elden Lord and ringing in the Age of Darkness Stars.

It is impossible to put into words how much Elden Ring thrives off of being derivative, which… hurts, considering From Software's obvious skill at what they do. The formula of a Souls game has been perfected to science here, but in the process of refining it over a decade, the eponymous soul of the series has faded. What remains, a slideshow of “best of” snapshots, seeks to embolden dedicated fans of the Souls series into believing this is the definitive experience, a shambling husk wearing the skin of innovation.

None of this is to say that the game doesn’t have its moments, but the issue lies in repetition. Elden Ring is a vast void, a massive blank canvas splattered with algorithmic strokes, “content-aware fill” as a design principle. Case in point, the Tree Sentinel exists as the first truly foreboding enemy you encounter, an indestructible knight that aims to smash and skewer Tarnished too brave to give up and too stupid to run. However, the memories associated with that first conflict muddle when he returns… But There’s Two Of Him. Or even further on, where a third match-up happens, with the key difference being “do bigger numbers”. Let's not get into the many times Godrick is thrown at the player as a threat, over and over and over again.

For something derived from Dark Souls, it's painful to see how soulless this successor feels. Mechanically, systematically, it’s fine, but there’s no real passion or love found beneath the surface. Writing too deeply about it almost feels wasteful: It’s Dark Souls Again. If you want Dark Souls, here it is, almost entirely unaltered. If you don’t, this is still Dark Souls, you’ll get nothing new out of it. The Age of Stars extends its icy reach to the cosmos, and all I can do is recollect on nostalgia's frozen embrace.