Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

I think those are all very valid criticisms. I think you're OTM about the rogue-like-ness of the rewards; it was kind of frustrating to repeatedly be rewarded with weapons or spells that were worthless for my spellsword build. Rewards pose an interesting design challenge in a game that allows for a diversity of playstyles, but which, by virtue of the stinginess of the leveling & upgrade systems, really ask players to commit to a certain build.

The most practical solution might be to only reward the player with souls/runes/etc and make everything accessible via a shop, but then that takes away the fun and world-building mystique of finding unique items out in the world.

I disagree with most of those criticisms!

Not to negate them or anything I just didn’t feel the same way— I found the lore engrossing, the upgrading balanced, the Tree Sentinel before Maliketh an appropriate challenge, and I got kinda emotional about the challenge presented by (specifically) the Farum Azula Crucible Knight, like it was a curtain call

My issues were with the comparative underdeveloped multiplayer, the copy-paste feeling about the catacombs, the oft-repeated Ulcerated and Putrids; the Astel rerun in particular felt kinda insulting

Aside from that, the game reached such dizzying heights for me that I feel disinclined to game again and more inclined to remind my body about push-ups and chin-ups

i really kinda love what is being described as random, "worthless" item drops, but it maybe requires you be the type of person who finds intrinsic value in the lore bits. i enjoy getting whatever weapon or incantation or whatever that's totally useless to my build because no matter what (with the exception of some ashes of war), there's going to be a new bit of lore attached in the description, and i love that shit. if you're focused on uncovering the world you're exploring, that part becomes the reward in itself.

and as a part of that, nothing is actually placed randomly. it can feel like that, but there's almost always a connection between the item and the circumstances that brought you to it.

and the ease with which the game allows you to change builds means that no drop is ever truly useless, you can always look at whatever massive greatsword or whatever and plan to try it out after a respec.

i do agree about weapon upgrades though, i think it's balanced badly and it makes experimenting with new weapons a great big hassle. i sort of wish that instead of making stones infinitely available to purchase if you have the right bell bearing, you can just transfer your upgrades between weapons. i don't want to have to stumble upon 3 random bell bearings all located in standard caves and then spend a ton of runes just to see how this new weapon compares to my +14 standard.

The one thing I wish they'd done was put the Bell Bearing Husk Maidens a little closer to Hewg. Running back and forward through those rooms for AGES, in the meantime forgetting whether it was a 4 x Smithing Stone (8)s or 8 x Sombre Smithing Stones (4) to upgrade this particular weapon.
And like you say x, it's never fully obvious whether a particular weapon is worth upgrading.

I think the story is fine, but the lore is insane. If I had the time, I could spend HOURS watching YouTube lore videos; it's just beyond belief. The story of the game; i.e. your character's journey isn't the story at all - it's a means to discovering what is actually happening.

I played Bloodborne not really realising that these games have so much lore; I played it like an arcade game really. "Oh there's another fucked up dude!" *SMASH*

The game does make me feel quite stupid and unobservant though. There'll be cut scenes (most recently Placidusax) where, to me, "fucked up shit" is going on. How am I supposed to really understand that lying down in a pit is actually making time go backwards, hence why the original Elden lord is still alive and Farum Azula is no longer crumbling, therefore allowing me to reverse something that happened much earlier in the game using one specific object I picked up but needed to "unalloy" in another specific place? Yes, yes, I know this is just the way of From Soft, but if other people are figuring this all out just from watching the cutscenes and reading item descriptions, hats off to them

Yeah, that's all why I stressed I don't think the game is bad at all. Just that for what is essentially the ultimate Dark Souls game, which happened to follow the From game that deviated most from formula, it was a missed opportunity to merge the two approaches, offer something new and expand the game play while keeping all the From quirks and character, like the obscure story/lore (which as said Youtube videos show, always, somehow, ties together, if you put in the work; and yeah, hats off to those doing the work!).

Having played a few open world games by now (albeit games driven more by narrative), I do feel that the open world here is something of a shell game, as fun and surprising as it can be. And it is fun and surprising! Those teleportation traps and other portals were great additions, for example. No idea what lore purpose they serve, but they're an example of a way to shake things up a little. You can use it to your advantage, or you can panic.

I do love that people are into the lore, btw, and I actually do appreciate it as a From facet, I just don't find it compelling (in any of these games, honestly). Especially this far along in the series, it's kind of a Mad Lib of magic and blood and rebirth and world in ash and flames and supplanting a god on the throne or whatever. The fact that George Martin has his name on this but there is no significant difference imo from the From formula underscores this. I think that's another reason I liked Bloodborne. There are other characters in that game experiencing the same thing as you, kind of. Some of them are on the loose. Some of them are locked away in fear. But you kind of feel like you have more of an explicit role to play in navigating this horrifying world. At least I did, but it's been a while.

I agree that going back and forth between the Maidens and the blacksmith was another example of busy work. The number of times I went to the wrong room, ugh.

There might be a method to the madness in terms of item placement, but if it's totally obscure then it's kind of a wash, imo. I'm not even sure what (for example) Astel even was, but yeah, its first placement made some sort of sense, but the second one, in whichever catacomb it was, felt totally rote. Like, here we go again.

Oh, and my full list of enemies Just Not Worth Fighting:

giant octopus
giant lobster
giant dogs
giant birds
bears (though I liked having them around to keep you on your toes)
crucible knights
most things in the consecrated snowfield
those spidery spazz things with swords that suddenly appear and go aggro
those gross things that vomit maggots and death
giant hands
those centipede dudes with homing missiles
death birds (though I liked fighting black bridge knights)
trolls/giants/whatever they are (which are easy, but easier to avoid)
bell bearing hunters (though the first time I encountered one was a memorable event)

I may be forgetting a few.

The real joy in the game imo is fighting the basic knights— Godrick, Cuckoo, whatever the Caelid ones were, Gelmir, Leyndell, Mausoleum, Haligtree, Cleanrot.

The longer I played and experimented, the more I realized that the upgrade system was made balanced by the fact that the vast majority of the weapons are totally viable, there isn’t really a ‘wrong’ one to upgrade (except some shields and bows).

i've been using the twinblade like 90% of the time, it just feels so much faster than any of the other swords and i can't deal with how slow the bigger swords feel after using the twinblade. are there other weapons that have that similarly zippy feel that i should keep any eye out for? the claws are the only ones that feel close so far

Lots of great posts! I agree that the item placement is thoughtful, even if you inevitably end up finding lots of things that aren't applicable for your build or playstyle.

Also agree that running back and forth between Hewg and the twin maidens drove me crazy, and that it would have been nice if they let you swap upgrades between weapons as easily as they did affinities and ashes of war this time around. Also multi-player covenants were a huge missed opportunity, although I get that they were trying to make the online elements more streamlined and understandable (which the furled fingers did not help).

NA, I found dual straight swords to be nearly as fast as the claws, with more range. Also dual curved swords, and one-handed katanas. Knives and rapiers are very fast too obviously, but with more drawbacks (not a lot of range for knives, and no horizontal attacks for thrusting swords).

Regarding the lore-as-storytelling thing, I genuinely feel as if this is From's greatest eureka in this series. Every other narrative medium requires that the level of plot exposition be evident enough to be parsed by the audience, things that are "obvious" to the creators aren't obvious at all to an audience (to the detriment of the work). From (perhaps accidentally) have discovered that obscurantism actually works in game storytelling, provided that a game is compelling enough without traditional exposition. That "a plot" in a game can rely upon online community discussion to be fully parsed, and the gradual discovery of "what the hell is going on" is its own unique method of receiving a story.

Lore-based storytelling is so much more compelling to me than the decades-old-now method of "cutscenes" that I find myself bored and distracted at cutscene-based exposition (in Elden Ring and elsewhere), like, just give me some hints as to what's going on as I go, it makes uncovering the plot feel like its own subquest

Before starting Elden Ring I was playing the first Horizon game, with its "picking up data logs and reading them at your leisure" storytelling base (my first encounter with this method-of-exposition I can recall was System Shock in the 90s). The story to Horizon was more interesting ultimately than Elden Ring's story, but its mode of transmission (data logs, cut scenes, option-based dialogue that you have to exhaust) took up so much in-game time in comparison; I've been being told stories in this fashion for decades. Horizon's plot was worth it in the end for the couple of "big reveals", but I do hope more games recognize what From has been going for here and try and develop lore as a viable storytelling mechanism, I guess. It's really nice when a plot is optional, and highly rewarding when engaged with, and reveals itself with a coy subtlety

fgti, I know how much you dig and dug into the lore, but did you think that the lore of this particular From game was better or more interesting than the lore of any of the others? I find most of it pretty interchangeable. And what is your opinion of the maddeningly specific multi-step NPC quests? That's an example of being actively required to invest in an almost impossibly unfathomable series of tasks to progress an obscure narrative with no clear guarantee of a satisfying payoff, imo. Which is a big ask!

I was thousands of times more invested in the lore of Elden Ring than I was in previous From games, including Bloodborne. Bloodborne I found perplexing, and was interested in certain character arcs (Ioselka i.e.) but wasn't invested at all in the main story. Dark Souls had a wonderful mood but I didn't give a shit about any of the characters or anything, really, in the end, aside from (I suppose) the Astorias stuff.

Elden Ring on the other hand was fascinating. It's interesting that people didn't feel it was particularly informed by GRRM's style, because I felt a definite analog between the houses of the Seven Kingdoms and the various demigods and their armies. I literally had no clue about anything on my first playthrough, had zero idea who Miquella was or what this egg was in Mohg's underworld. The Radagon Is Marika moment had me scratching my head because I literally was confusing Radahn and Radagon, there was no difference between these individuals in my mind. I smirked at the Hoarah Loux reveal because his name sounds like Horton Hears A Who, and this big revelation was meaningless to me, on my first play through. I was just titillated with the world design and parsing out my build. I was definitely invested in certain characters. Hyetta and Ranni in particular. I didn't fully understand what Ranni was up to or why I was doing it and still felt a cleansing moment of resolution when I completed her quest line. I didn't even put together that she was dead and I'd located her corpse on top of that tower until much later.

But then, reading shit online, playing through some more, it all started to come together. I became invested in the diverse personalities of the main characters. I felt moved by Vyke's quest line and how it seemed (to me) as if he'd been successfully swayed by Shabriri into getting fingered, with the same rhetoric Shabriri was attempting on me. Patches became a sympathetic character and I felt much more interested in his stuff than I had in previous From games. Fia's whole deal was genuinely moving to me. The plight of the merchants was moving, Morgott's seeming "I'm gonna be dutiful even if people are prejudiced toward my omenism" was moving, the pervert stuff with Seluvius and Dung-Eater and Mohg was sufficiently gross in an SVU kinda way. Loved Blaidd, obviously. Loved Millicent, was creeped out by Gowry, appropriately. Playing through a second time and understanding the significance of the full extent that the Frenzied Flame had on certain pockets of the world, or the devastation of the Melania-Radahn conflict in Caelid, it left me feeling very elevated and transported like the best fantasy immersions of my teenage years reading idk David Eddings or whatever. I can profess at this point to being able to draw out family tree of the Elden Ring world, which I cannot do (any more) for Greek or Norse mythology. I got really invested.

Certain plots fell flat. Couldn't care less about snake lady or anything relating to Volcano Manor, I thought Rykard was uninteresting. Felt that Renalla's imprisonment felt odd and arbitrary and I didn't really understand what was going on there, and how/why Ranni felt it necessary, or why she permitted you to battle Renalla. Wish that Beardy Wizard dude in Caelid (the guy who wants you to fight Sellen) had more screen time. Didn't really think much of the Beast guy in Dragonbarrow. I wish there had been a touch more exposition regarding Godwyn/Placidusax, I feel like they missed a trick on one of the most interesting bits of the world's history. Most of the rest of the game really worked for me.

Funny, the snake lady was one of my favorites. I loved reading that though! I will readily admit that I'm not a huge lore person, which is why I love that it's optional. I like the item descriptions but generally just let it wash over me, although I'm liking it more and more after the fact now that I see people making the connections.

A big reason that I love the co-op and invasion mechanics is that it's true "emergent narrative", ie the kind of little stories you only get from running into people in their own worlds and having these elaborate non-verbal interactions. It's why I especially like low-level invasions in ER, because they're longer and there's more time for memorable things to occur. And tbh that stuff sticks with me more than most of the actual story. Which is why it bums me out that the newer, larger audience for ER is so vehemently anti-invasion, instead of looking at it as maybe a fun & unique part of the game (even if they die to it sometimes).

the lore just slides off my brain but i'm not really a fan of any fantasy worldbuilding so it's probably mostly just me

i just spent like an hour trying (and failing) to kill the draconic tree sentinel, circling around and around him on torrent, and now my brain is circling circling circling

Which, the one at the back door to Leyndell? Truly an ignobly difficult mini-boss.

Oh and a cool thing that I liked about the structure of the bosses/mini-bosses was how, as the game progresses, you get limited in your options. The random Farum Azula dragon can be co-op'd, but not Torrented. Later, Placidusax can neither be co-op'd or Torrented. I like this, that you have crutches on dragonfights and they gently make things more and more difficult. I love that the evergaols disallow Spirit Summons. Stuff like that. I really do wish there hadn't been a re-run of Astel. That would be something I'd hope they'd fix in an update. Not only was it a disappointing fight the second time, but it rendered the previous fight less memorable

Thanks for your posts on the lore! As I've confessed, I'm a total sap, an easy mark, and narrative games like RDR2, Last of Us, Horizon Zero Dawn, et al., I sometimes just don't want them to end. I love the worlds, the characters, *their* journeys. But the From games, I readily admit I play them *to* finish them. That is, I look forward to them being done, complete, where reaching the end is the achievement, not where the story ends but where my relationship with the game ends, if that makes any sense. So in this way the "lore" as I engage with it is the mechanics and personalities of the games themselves, their quirks, how they work and don't work, the hurdles they put up and how to get around them. If I described any of these games to anyone I would talk about how they were played, but if they asked me what the objective was I would probably just shrug and admit I don't really know! And that's part of the game's personality. Which of course is not totally accurate, since of course a story can be sewn together from bits and pieces of found narrative fabric. It's just not how I approach them.

Last week I mentioned an anecdote about Eldensplaining that I thought was humorous

I don't care about the lore of this game at all but that's just me and I can def understand why someone would. Due to some minor miracle I accidentally completed all of the steps of fia's questline without a guide and without breaking it and really thought it was done in a way that made me care about her character (without really understanding the story behind it). Just the vibe of finding her in the depths, fighting a boss in her dream, etc was cool

Watched a bit of one of the VaatiVidya lore videos. There's got to be a metaphor in there somewhere about why From would bother to create such a rich, detailed mythology and then purposefully scatter it and bury it and make it almost impossible for most to parse, the same way From also develops massive hidden levels in these games that many if not also most might outright miss, too. Sekiro may have had the most - and most missed/skipped by me - secret stuff of them all.

Same, re: Sekiro, in that I missed/skipped the entire game

lol, you should give it a shot!

I've twice given it a shot and been unable to beat the very first mini-boss general. For whatever reason my skill set is void in that game

Every other narrative medium requires that the level of plot exposition be evident enough to be parsed by the audience, things that are "obvious" to the creators aren't obvious at all to an audience (to the detriment of the work). From (perhaps accidentally) have discovered that obscurantism actually works in game storytelling, provided that a game is compelling enough without traditional exposition.

i can gush about the lore itself for basically the same reason... from has a level of confidence and commitment to it that i just haven't found anywhere else. most other modern AAA games have a certain self-aware awkwardness in their lore/worldbuilding which is a barrier for me to really get engrossed. i know it's weird and possibly silly to say it about a game where you can spend an entire playthrough with no idea what's going on, but from makes it feel like every aspect of the game springs out of the world/story itself and not the other way around (of course that's not true, but they're really good at making it feel that way)

admittedly i think the lore could be a lot worse in itself and i'd still gush over it because of how well integrated it is/how enjoyable the sense of discovery is

I was dead pleased with myself when I beat Astel quite easily today (only took a few tries). But that was quickly erased when I came up against the bloody glinstone dragon. Apparently spamming him with rotten breath is the go and now - at levvel almost 100- I find out I could have just bought that spell ages a fucking go?!

Some fantastic posts itt. Funny, I thought the Rykard/Tanith story was one of the most interesting, accessible and disturbing ones, and that Gelmir / Volcano Manor was among my favourite sections of the game

And it is peculiar how differently I have come to think of this game to Bloodborne. I had no interest in builds or lore with that game whereas for me with ER that literally is the game. I couldn't imagine playing this as a straight battle romper, no way

One of the many aspects of Bloodborne I liked was the ability to get some of your health back by attacking. I also liked having to find the enemy with the glowing eyes to get your souls back. I feel like that and the faster play in general was Miyazaki actively pushing people *into* combat, forcing them to get more aggressive. Iirc there were no shields in the game, either, save one, which is literally a joke. He took that to its apotheosis with Sekiro, which essentially gives you one weapon that can't be upgraded, but lots of different ways to engage in battle, which itself demands your hyper engagement with the enemy to get ahead. No more winning by attrition and cheese opportunities iirc were pretty infrequent. There was real stealth, though, which was new, and there was the grappling hook, which provided a verticality and speed its relatively methodical/plodding predecessors lacked. With ER, it's back to more weapons, back to more shields, back to more familiar fantasy. There is some degree of stealth, but I honestly forgot it was even a factor. There is some verticality, a little jumping, but that's not really a factor, either. Those are a few reasons why I consider ER a step back closer to the status quo. Again, not criticisms, per se - it's a good game - just some reasons I maybe expected more than just ... more. Lore aside, I guess.

I think reducing Elden Ring to just “more of the same” really sells it short. Yes, it’s more but it’s also a refinement and a significant expansion. Building an open world like this is a massive undertaking that they have never done before. The amount of balancing and design considerations that go into something like this is boggling.

It’s the best, most ambitious game they’ve made by a considerable margin imo. I personally don’t need (or want) entirely new, novel combat systems every time out when the basic template they’ve been refining for years is this good.

I replayed most of Sekiro after ER and while I love the idea of the active combat/parry system, I found it really only shines when you’re dueling. Like that Genichiro rooftop battle is still probably the best From boss fight of all time. Unfortunately, a not insignificant portion of the game is spent fighting monsters or humanoids in a non-sparring sorta way and that stuff can be a chore.

I’d like to revisit Bloodborne but tbh despite it being a more consistent game than its predecessors, I didn’t think it was more fun or memorable (Dark Souls 2 excluded). Hoping for like a 60 fps patch for PS5.

I like their bread and butter best, generally. I thought it was getting a little stale with Dark Souls 3, but they completely re-captured the magic this go around.

I don’t pay for online access but suddenly today i seem to have access to the online functions? I can see messages and bloodstains but haven’t figured out how to summon anyone. I’m guessing they’re giving free access for a limited time to try and entice people to paying for it

dunno about any free trials but to summon another player you need to spend a furlcalling remedy to make non-NPC summon signs appear in your game and then activate the sign of your choice

signs can deliberately be put down anywhere the game allows, but if players use the summoning pool item instead of the "place sign here" item then their signs will cluster around the marika statues

Beat the game last night, to my own surprise!

Congrats, DL! Which ending did you get?

my PS5 is on the way and i'm looking forward to immediately getting this game

Accidentally kill Boc last week, had to kill Blaidd yesterday ;_; I knew it was coming but that Good Boi did not deserve it.

Felt even worse when I told Iji and then came back and found HIM dead too. This game!

i know i'm pretty overleveled because i just beat godrick and morgott within an hour of each other, second try on each (almost first try on each)

level 98, 160 hours in, lol

zchrys, I got the Age of Stars ending. Are they all that short and unceremonious? I like the economy of it I guess

Haha Z I am in the same boat - I was on a tear this weekend and beat golden shade godrick and morgott without too much pain within one days play! As well as a few nasty sub bosses in Leyndell like the treestump and some annoying zappy knights. Fuck those guys.

FINALLY I am at Rold lift and heading my way into the Skyrim climes.

Godfrey not Godrick.

One game area Ive not managed to get any purchase on is volcano manor which is a shame as I wanted to see Rya as snek girl, but I dunno if I can be bothered. Ranni/Renalla sidequest + Sellen sidequest was quite enough.

I wasnt expecting what came after I defeated Morgott. For one he doesnt seem ... quite dead? Lying in a smooshed pile behind his throne.

And now suddenly I'm being told "hey lets BURN THE TREE DOWN" by Melina and "hey dont burn the tree down LETS BURN THE WHOLE WORLD MUAHAHAHA" by that ninja hat guy and I'm like... wtf is WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE.

FINALLY I am at Rold lift and heading my way into the Skyrim climes.

SAME. i hit the first site of grace with snow and decided to take a breather. I still haven't taken on Rykard, but i thought i'd go try to murder that fool up in skyrim first.

*takes giant elden ring rip from bong*

dude let's burn the tree down

Would smash bongs with u and play co op.

BTW: why is EVERYONE in this game out to kill you no matter what. I was strolling thru the bower of bounty, quietly trying to avoid those walking cthulu-face death monsters, when I spotted an NPC soldier take one on valiantly. He wasnt doing too good. Some friends of his waded inbut were all getitng their deathblight arses handded to them, so then I stepped in and killed the monster. The fucking soldiers then all turned on ME. Thanks a lot, guys.

As Oblivion would have said "hey! I'm on YOUR side!"

I enjoyed some duelling last night. My basic no-magic double lance merryman did great, was winning 80% of the time. I’d typically die to faith-y madness people and/or anybody smart enough to try and parry me. The feeling of being beaten in a duel is unique and wonderful, unmixed feelings of respect and sportsmanship and admiration for one’s opponent

Really got a feel for “trading hits”, too. Twice the duel ended with me getting the killing blow just as their blood loss proc’d or their magma adventure brought me to a sliver.

There were a number of times in this game (offline), I feel more than in past games, where there were both enemies that took out huuuuuge hunks of my health and also fights of attrition that left me with only a sliver of health at the end. I know there's invisible math at work, but I wonder if the game is designed that way to make things more exciting?

There are actually a few enemies here that seem kinda chill. The demi-humans in the woods somewhere, if you kill the big one they just cower harmlessly. Same in one cave, iirc. The wolves will try to get you, but they're nowhere near as aggressive as the bears. Trying to think of any other humans or humanoids that don't just automatically aggro. The miners in some, erm, mines? A few other things here and there. But yeah, certainly by the end of the game I was talking to the screen, basically pleading "don't pick a fight with me because I will destroy your entire enclave." I guess all the more chill enemies are balanced out by the relentless ones, like the spider things with swords or the dogs or big birds or bears or the big guys in one of the sewers or some of the knights that follow you and gang up, and so on. Even the little white blobs that blow bubbles out of their trumpets are assholes, though nothing here is worse than the cheese-proof enemies in DS2 that do not ever de-aggro.

fights of attrition that left me with only a sliver of health at the end.

I have wondered same about attacks - some enemies, my spells will do 95% in 2 hits, and i have to waste too much mana to finish that small sliver off, it feels... intentional and trolly, haha.