[HN Gopher] The Boschian Horror of 'Elden Ring'
___________________________________________________________________
The Boschian Horror of 'Elden Ring'
Author : keiferski
Score : 210 points
Date : 2022-03-19 12:03 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (artreview.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (artreview.com)
| dash2 wrote:
| Let me save you a click:
|
| * Elden Ring is a bit like Bosch, Dore and Caspar David
| Friedrich;
|
| * Elden Ring is an open world game.
| UberFly wrote:
| Somewhat related: Here are the hyper-resolution Bosch scans
| mentioned in that article: http://boschproject.org/#/artworks/
| sharmin123 wrote:
| 127 wrote:
| If you get the chance, get the art books for these games. They
| are really something.
| ng12 wrote:
| This has always been the best part of FromSoft games. People talk
| about the difficulty first but I think that absolutely takes a
| backseat to the visuals. The art direction and atmosphere are
| absolutely unparalleled. I honestly can't think of another game
| who's world captured me like the first Dark Souls did.
|
| There's a quote from an interview with Miyazaki I really likes
| which underlines how carefully crafted the world is:
| https://imgur.com/zO6CcDq
| Razengan wrote:
| > _I honestly can 't think of another game who's world captured
| me like the first Dark Souls did._
|
| Check out Darkest Dungeon
|
| Slay the Spire
|
| Everything by Amanita Design (Machinarium, Samorost)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You're recommending Slay the Spire for the lore? It doesn't
| even _have_ lore.
| x0hm wrote:
| How?? This is insane. Dark Souls is the most absurdly plain and
| boring looking game that ever somehow defined a genre.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Have you played Blasphemous? Definitely inspired by Dark Souls.
| I think its world is even more entrancing despite it being a
| hand-drawn pixel art side-scroller. It draws on Spanish
| folklore and Catholicism, which I really liked.
|
| (Don't forget to play it with the Spanish voice acting -
| superb)
| ng12 wrote:
| Thanks for the rec. I'm only familiar with it because it was
| referenced in Dead Cells.
| k_sze wrote:
| You make me really regret throwing away my Demon's Souls disc
| when I was depressed years ago. I now have all of the Dark
| Souls games and Sekiro, no Elden Ring yet.
|
| But having all the games would probably allow me to more fully
| appreciate the art's evolution.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| If you have a decent gaming PC, you can now emulate the
| original Demon's Souls at 60FPS, which is great. The Demon's
| Souls Remake is really good too, but if you're primarily
| interested in looking at the progression of the art, that
| Remake took things in a somewhat different direction (as it
| was made by a different team). It's incredibly faithful
| gameplay wise, though.
|
| Be sure to check out Bloodborne as well.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| This is one of those reasons why I wish there was an easy mode.
| There is great value in the games beyond just the system
| mastery.
| gghhzzgghhzz wrote:
| There are plenty of easy modes available. It's not a settings
| option though, it's a play style. It really is a wonderfully
| well designed game.
| kabdib wrote:
| So far this appears to be a "choose your own difficulty"
| game. I've deliberately chosen to "git gud" at melee, since
| I've always sucked at melee. Could level to 99 and just
| blast through things, but where is the fun in that?
|
| Elden Ring has taught me calm and resolve in the face of
| overwhelming odds. Also, the value of a battle honestly
| fought. It's a great teacher, and an amazing game.
| extrememacaroni wrote:
| One of the things that cause immersion to spike for me is
| exactly the difficulty, or rather "this enemy just kicked my
| ass, WHAT do I need to do to beat it? what do I need to
| change, are there other areas I did not check, any clues I
| may have passed by" etc.
|
| If the game is too easy chances are I'll zone out and "play"
| it, in a very inert way just watching what happens.
|
| Not a Souls-like, but the game where I saw this at play the
| most is TeS Oblivion (not sure if it also works in Skyrim),
| as soon as I started playing it as a battlemage with the
| Tower sign (it takes away auto regen of magicka). Lots of
| content in Oblivion I felt was filler that I just went
| through out of inertia, but playing a battlemage with no
| magicka regen? Survival depends on the potions you craft and
| any other helpful items found along the way. Suddenly even
| the most boring dungeon became interesting and potentially
| helpful in the long run because it could contain helpful
| loot. Those ayleid ruins with the crystals that help a ton
| with magicka? Godsent rather than long and samey.
|
| Of course I eventually leveled up enough to become OP and the
| game ended up being a chain of filler stuff once more, but
| that was several tens of hours into the playthru. But those
| first tens of hours were an amazing experience, where I
| needed to carefully plan out and scour the world for items in
| order to hope to survive.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Do you start each of these games with SL1 runs? Likely not.
|
| This means that you are engaging with the game in an
| optional way that makes the game easier (leveling up). You
| do not have to do that. In what way is somebody engaging
| with the game in a different optional way that makes the
| game easier unacceptable?
|
| What it sounds like you want is for the game to sit near
| the top of an individual players' capabilities. What if
| making the game optionally easier achieves that for some
| people?
| extrememacaroni wrote:
| Watching a playthrough is the easiest optionalest option,
| also one that is doable from start to finish by the
| largest number of gamers. Such an extra-inclusive option,
| all games should feature it. "Watch the bots play".
|
| With your philosophy, you get games with pointless
| difficulty systems like Skyrim & co. Sliders that range
| from "enemies die in one hit" to "you'll spend half an
| hour hitting this boss before it dies because now it has
| hitpoints defined by your_level * 9999999999". None of
| the bosses in Souls games take half an hour to fight
| unless you do something exotic like SL1 runs, if you're
| not done with a boss in a couple of minutes chances are
| something's wrong with your build, because otherwise your
| skills are good, else you wouldn't survive for 2 minutes
| with a Souls boss.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > None of the bosses in Souls games take half an hour to
| fight unless you do something exotic like SL1 runs, if
| you're not done with a boss in a couple of minutes
| chances are something's wrong with your build, because
| otherwise your skills are good, else you wouldn't survive
| for 2 minutes with a Souls boss.
|
| I spent several days on O&S. Two hours would have been
| fun and I would have felt a sense of accomplishment. In
| the end, I cheesed it by pinning Smough to the broken
| pillars.
| setr wrote:
| He meant the battle itself ends in roughly a few minutes.
| The number of battles and attempts could be much longer.
|
| It's a major deviation in difficulty definitions between
| fromsoft and difficulty sliders -- the usual increase in
| difficulty is to just bump the stats, which typically
| just means you have to play perfectly for longer
| durations.
|
| Fromsoft just asks you to play perfectly for a minute,
| maybe two (and honestly not that perfectly).
|
| Eg I'm playing triangle strategy atm, and the hard mode
| difficulty bumps their stats so high that the strategy
| ultimately devolves into some kind of cheesing in many
| cases (and then spend 15 minutes executing that cheese
| because the enemies are taking chip damage). At the same
| time, normal mode (apparently) is easy enough to just
| plow through, so I'm pretty much stuck if I want an
| actual challenge -- and that's hardly a surprising state
| of affairs.
| eldenringthrow wrote:
| dharmab wrote:
| There's a few places in Elden Ring where you can trivially
| and quickly farm and overlevel your character.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Isn't that _worse_ than an easy mode? The outcome is the
| same but it takes hours rather than seconds and the
| locations where you can quickly farm levels are not obvious
| in game and require you to look up advice online.
| kipchak wrote:
| A potential upside is that because it's tedious, you'll
| probably want to do it for only as long as necessary
| before trying again so the difficulty is somewhat
| adjusted to the player's need, and you don't actually
| change how enemies behave - the mechanics of the game are
| still the exact same, your numbers are just a bit bigger.
| When I imagine an easy mode I would figure making changes
| for how things work would be necessary, like having a
| boss' attacks be more predictable.
| gretch wrote:
| You don't have to farm levels. You just go do something
| else that naturally results in levels or loot making your
| character stronger. Since all of the game is wonderfully
| designed, it's never a situation where you run off and
| "kill 10 bats" that people might have in mind due to
| precedents set by e.g. world of Warcraft.
|
| Also, few ppl understand this, but community knowledge is
| actually a core part of the design philosophy. That's why
| there's player messages and blood stains built into the
| game. It's not a dirty thing in this game to look stuff
| up or ask for help. There's a huge community and
| comradary aspect to the game.
| kache_ wrote:
| The difficulty is part of the artform
| UncleMeat wrote:
| _Part of._ The context for this discussion is the
| atmosphere, lore, and art. That is independent of
| difficulty.
|
| And further, it is clearly not the case in any of the
| soulsborne games that the difficulty is tuned perfectly for
| each player. If that were true, there would be no interest
| in SL1 runes or there wouldn't have been patches
| rebalancing of Lost Izalith in DS1 or summons wouldn't be
| an available option.
| jibe wrote:
| The difficulty and risk of death and loss is
| intrinsically intertwined with the atmosphere. There are
| many other games with amazing dark art, but without the
| actual fear of death from the game system, they have less
| impact.
| deckard1 wrote:
| You're going to need a guide to understanding the lore
| and atmosphere. The hard mode is not contained to the
| game play. Bloodborne, for example, has the atmosphere
| change based on certain unlocked events and paths you
| choose to go down. Even if you notice the change in
| atmosphere, you're not going to understand how it fits
| together with the story.
|
| I'd just watch a YouTube walkthrough if you don't want to
| play. Playing the game, alone, is not enough to fully
| appreciate any of the Souls games.
| Filligree wrote:
| For many people, this level of difficulty is just
| impossibility.
| qwertycrackers wrote:
| I feel like people who say this sort of thing just have
| not actually played these games. I understand that in
| theory, a game could require extremely good reaction
| times or complicated inputs which make it exclusive. But
| Elden Ring is definitely not hard in that respect. In
| fact, part of the difficulty is that all the animations
| are long and you can't cancel them. This actually removes
| the need for good reaction time -- you have more than
| enough time to hit a button when you know you will need
| to.
|
| The "difficulty" really arises from the need for game
| knowledge -- you have to keep dying until you figure out
| the right weapon, right spell, or right attack which
| works well against a particular encounter. And find all
| the places you can upgrade your weapons and tools and
| such. After you do these things, the game is in fact
| quite easy. Hunting around and gathering this stuff is
| the core fun of the game and I can't see how this is
| exclusionary toward anybody who would want to play.
|
| I suppose there is a segment of people who would like to
| see images of the game without doing that but honestly...
| just watch a Let's Play. That way you don't even need to
| pay for the game.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > I feel like people who say this sort of thing just have
| not actually played these games.
|
| I think this is uncharitable. You can look at completion
| rates on Steam for some data. I personally stopped
| playing the xbox360 version of DS1 because the goddamn
| giants in Lost Izalith kept respawning (something that
| was mercifully changed with patches). I'd have kept going
| if I had the patched (and easier) game.
| dkersten wrote:
| > You can look at completion rates on Steam for some
| data.
|
| I think we have to accept that not every game is for
| every person. How adamantly FROM Software fans defend the
| difficulty shows that this style of game is greatly
| appreciated by many and, while it sucks to not be into
| that if the rest of the game looks good to you, I think
| we just have to be ok with the fact that ok maybe this
| game was made for people who are into that.
|
| Personally, I appreciate that FROM Software basically
| force me to learn their games mechanics rather than
| button mashing my way through, even if it is very
| frustrating in the moment. I know I'm not good enough to
| persevere if I could just play in easy mode, and I would
| have missed out on some truly exhilarating moments. I
| understand that that's just me and everyone is different,
| but I mean, there's plenty of games out there, not all
| have to cater to everyone. There are certainly plenty of
| games that I think look really cool but ultimately I
| don't feel are for me (most multiplayer games, really.
| Even if they look awesome, I just don't have the
| dedication for it).
|
| This is also why I think its important to watch gameplay
| videos before you buy, so that you know what you're
| getting yourself into.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I do agree that not every game is for every person. I'd
| prefer it if the games could be made easier, but FromSoft
| can do what they want. What I find frustrating is that
| asking for this feature produces intense backlash in many
| communities.
|
| I'm not asking to be able to button mash my way through.
| Perhaps this is a problem with terms. I'd like a "hard
| but doable for me" mode. That mode is tuned lighter than
| the default tuning of the game as released.
|
| Consider that the games already come with many various
| forms of hard mode. You can do NG+ runs that are harder.
| You can do SL1 runs that are harder. You can put all of
| your souls into Resistance and waste your character. If
| the game shipped without level ups and everybody was
| forced into SL1 runs, would that make the game better?
| Surely for _some_ people that 'd place the difficulty
| right at their boundary of "hard, but doable." But for
| you (or certainly me) that'd be a frustrating wall.
| dkersten wrote:
| > What I find frustrating is that asking for this feature
| produces intense backlash in many communities.
|
| I can understand it though. I mean, leaving aside whether
| or not adding an easy mode actually affects the game for
| those who don't want to play in it. Its kinda like, the
| developers created a game that, as it stands, appeals to
| person A. Person B wants changes made or added to the
| game so that the game appeals more to them. Of course
| person A is going to be upset that others want the game
| changed to suit those other people, when it works
| perfectly fine for person A as is.
|
| For me, I know that adding an easy mode would affect my
| experience, but the reason for that is a me problem:
| because I know I don't have the tenacity to persevere if
| I have a choice to just play in easy instead (yet I also
| know that being forced to persevere has led to some of
| the greatest satisfaction I've gotten from playing
| games). That's my problem, though, but for me its like
| yeah well the game as is suits me, so.. please don't
| change it. Of course I totally understand that this is
| just me and that others could enjoy the game much more if
| this were added to the game, and I should just work on my
| self control in that area.
|
| But I totally get it, especially if this is the _only_
| thing that prevents someone from enjoying a game that in
| every other way would be enjoyable to them.
| jrootabega wrote:
| The controversy (or rather the online dialogue about a
| controversy which may or may not really exist) over game
| difficulty is kind of a smaller proxy battle in a larger
| culture war, as well as a topic that tends to come up
| when megacorps can use it for self-promotion. e.g.
| Microsoft/Double Fine and Psychonauts 2. Have they said
| anything whatsoever about Elden Ring accessibility?
| grogenaut wrote:
| Please continue to tell me that I'm having fun
| incorrectly.
|
| I'm 46, I have well over 10k hours in hundreds of video
| games. Been gaming since I had an Atari and games had no
| directions or guides like Indiana Jones.
|
| Having difficulty that I don't enjoy in a game is the
| number 2 reason after "it didn't click" that I abandon a
| game.
|
| There's literally nothing that stops me from reading a
| novel or watching a movie or walking through a museum or
| a world historical site to gate keep that experience.
| Games is the only one where we say "you must enjoy
| frustration or read spoilers to progress". Just gate
| keeping that great artistic vision. If it is art worth
| the experience it shouldn't behind a wall saying "get gud
| to enter". Let people experience it how they can or want
| to or have time to.
|
| We're no longer charging quarters based on deaths but
| that still has it's tendrils in our artform.
|
| To be clear I die a ton in games, I also appreciate it
| when the game is like ok buddy you tried you can go
| forward like gta5/gth2. I died 10 times to gremlin
| shamans in valheim yesterday, but that isn't gatekeeping
| some artwork, and that game has creative mode.
| TuringTest wrote:
| "I would enjoy Ulises more, if only James Joyce had
| published a 3rd Grade version alongside".
|
| Sometimes it's worthwhile to keep an artistic vision as
| intended, even if not everyone will enjoy the work for
| it.
| ng12 wrote:
| For my part I don't enjoy games where the gameplay is
| just something you do to experience a story. Last of Us
| is a good example. Great story, great atmosphere, bored
| to tears playing it. If Dark Souls were easy I would
| probably feel the same.
|
| It's also important to appreciate how difficult it is to
| balance a game especially when your character's power
| level increases throughout the game. Most games that have
| a hard mode are lazy: bosses just have more health or
| enemies suddenly get headshots all the time. The game
| needs to be balanced around an intended difficulty level
| to make it compelling. It takes a lot of talent to make a
| good difficulty curve, as proven by the lame ripoffs of
| Souls games that have come out over the years.
| vvillena wrote:
| I mostly agree... and I'd still argue that the FromSoft
| games kinda fail at the "knowledge gathering" phase.
| Walking into a boss that kills you in less than 20
| seconds means very little knowledge can be gathered, and
| sometimes it takes minutes to go back and try again. This
| is a specific thing that Hollow Knight does pretty much
| perfectly: you can keep most bosses at bay, because the
| focus isn't usually to survive, but to find openings
| where you can safely do some damage.
|
| Needing game knowledge is a great approach to game
| design. Dispensing such knowledge in the random way
| FromSoft games do is not. And this goes beyond just the
| combat aspect. Equipment and items in FromSoft games
| usually have non-discoverable hidden effects that at best
| turn the game into a weird puzzle, and at worst draw
| parallels to graphic adventure games of old. Case in
| point: Father Gascoigne in Bloodborne. You can find a
| music box that staggers the boss if you use it during the
| battle. It makes some sense from a lore perspective, but
| it's pure bullshit from a game perspective.
| wpietri wrote:
| > you have to keep dying until you figure out the right
| weapon, right spell, or right attack [...] Hunting around
| and gathering this stuff is the core fun
|
| Different things are fun for different people. That
| sounds pretty tedious to me, a long slog of arbitrary
| "guess what the game designer is thinking of" puzzles.
| Especially when it's all built around killing, something
| that just doesn't interest me much. To each their own, I
| guess.
| kipchak wrote:
| Most of these that I've come across are fairly intuitive.
| For example stone enemies being resistant to slashing
| damage, or dark ghosts being weak to holy damage. There's
| also typically a workaround, for example a jumping attack
| with a small slashing weapon does more physical damage.
| wpietri wrote:
| I believe you, and it sounds like that is fun for you.
|
| Maybe I can explain by analogy. I'm very fond of the
| author Raymond Chandler, who wrote noir mysteries. I love
| his work, and especially the way he uses language. But I
| don't care at all who did it. The artificial puzzle
| aspect of mysteries just doesn't interest me.
|
| It's the same deal here. I get people like this kind of
| thing. I'm just saying I'm not one of those people. It
| sounds like I might appreciate the aesthetics of the
| game, so if I could play through it on easy mode, I
| might. Sort of the way I read through a mystery and am
| allowed to ignore the whodunnit aspect.
| kipchak wrote:
| I definitely get that it isn't for everyone. I'm not
| familiar with that author but I can relate via House Of
| Leaves and only really liking parts of it.
|
| Looking at it from the opposite side, some people have no
| problem with the gameplay, but pay little attention to
| the aesthetics or dialogue and lore or item descriptions.
| For them they can instead look up YouTube videos or Wiki
| articles to explain things. I don't think it's a bad
| thing those alternatives options exist, but I think
| adding say a logbook like in Outer Wilds would cheapen
| the experience for people who really want to get immersed
| in the world.
|
| I think practically watching a playthrough or just
| modding the game to make your character OP is the best
| workaround.
| vvillena wrote:
| I agree. If I wanted to guess weird side effects of items
| when used in different ways, I wouldn't play Elden Ring.
| I'd play Monkey Island.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Not even close.
|
| Welcome to the 70s and 80s where there was no such thing
| as savegames for the most part and you got 3 deaths
| before starting over. This is no different. A boss is
| just a level of sorts. You learn the mechanics and then
| you beat the boss and move on. Do it enough times and you
| can do it in your sleep. People have been playing
| ridiculously forgiving and easy games where there's no
| cost of failure so long that they don't even know what a
| merely challenging game is.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Difficulty systems in the 70s and 80s were famously for
| eating quarter rather than based on any actual game
| design philosophy. Not exactly a comparison I think is
| worth making.
|
| The "just learn the boss" argument is also somewhat
| frustrating given how frequently there are long ass walks
| back from bonfires to boss doors. Dying a bunch to learn
| the tells and attack timings is much less attractive when
| it takes minutes to go from a death to your next attempt.
| Compare this to something like Hotline Miami where you
| are playing again _instantly_. Much better option there.
| Levitz wrote:
| There is absolutely nothing wrong with a product not
| catering to everybody. Even moreso when we are talking
| about a work of art.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| > There is absolutely nothing wrong with a product not
| catering to everybody
|
| certainly agree
|
| > Even moreso when we are talking about a work of art.
|
| why does art get special consideration?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Sure. And there is similarly nothing wrong with a product
| adding options to cater to a wider audience. I don't
| think many of the people asking for easy mode think that
| Miyazaki is a _bad person_. But I 've certainly been
| called some pretty nasty things for suggesting an easy
| mode. What I'd like is for people to be able to express
| their preference without being attacked for being
| perceived as scrubs.
| Jensson wrote:
| There is no game with multiple difficulty options where
| hard mode is as well designed as in fromsoft games. It is
| therefore reasonable to conclude that adding easy modes
| significantly detracts from the experience of hard mode
| options. You can argue all you want about how in theory
| it shouldn't affect hard mode experience, but that goes
| against everything we see happening in practice.
|
| So for the people who likes hardmode, you are extremely
| greedy when you want to remove the only game offering the
| hardmode those people want, you can just go and play any
| of all the other easy mode games while they have no other
| options. You are a part of the majority who is catered to
| in almost every game going to the minority asking them
| why they don't cater to you as well, of course they get
| angry.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > There is no game with multiple difficulty options where
| hard mode is as well designed as in fromsoft games.
|
| I don't believe this is true at all. Heck, you can look
| at the patches put into the various games to see places
| where FromSoft agreed that they botched something. I
| don't think anybody thinks that Bed of Chaos is the good
| kind of hard.
|
| And Soulsbourne games _do_ have multiple difficulty
| options. NG+ exists. SL1 exists.
| darkteflon wrote:
| I'm always surprised to read things like, "please change
| the difficulty so I can appreciate the art." The
| difficulty is the art - you can't just carve it out. It
| couldn't be done even if Miyazaki wanted to do it. You'd
| lose the essence of the art because so much hangs on the
| challenge: the failure, the success, the relationship of
| the player with the game.
|
| Instead, the real solutions to the mechanical challenges
| that Soulsbornes throw at you are sprinkled throughout
| this thread.
| Jensson wrote:
| > I don't believe this is true at all. Heck, you can look
| at the patches put into the various games to see places
| where FromSoft agreed that they botched something. I
| don't think anybody thinks that Bed of Chaos is the good
| kind of hard.
|
| The fact that they patch the experience of their hardmode
| helps my case, not yours. It shows that they care deeply
| about the experience of their hardmode players, since
| everyone is forced to play it they have to care about it.
| While other developers just say "if you find it too hard
| just play on easy", fromsoft has to actually fix their
| games when they mess it up.
|
| > NG+ exists
|
| NG+ isn't a higher difficulty, its just continuing the
| game with yoru current character. The monsters have
| higher stats than the first run, but so do you since your
| character is higher level.
|
| > SL1 exists
|
| Deliberately choosing to not use certain options in the
| game makes every game harder, yes, but that isn't a part
| of difficulty options and the game isn't designed around
| SL1 runs.
| archagon wrote:
| On the other hand, Celeste is an example of a brutally
| difficult game with much lauded accessibility options.
| It's not the same as "easy mode", but the results are
| similar.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| Very well put. And the feeling of accomplishment of
| conquering a boss is shared by _everyone_ who plays this
| game. Beating Radahn or Malenia in ER or The Nameless
| King in DS3 or O&S in DS1 was always a magnificent
| feeling and one that everyone else in the community knew
| and appreciated when found in one another. It would
| cheapen it so much if I knew you could just turn a slider
| down and really diminish the community experience.
|
| Agreed, go play something else if you want an easy game.
| This ain't it.
| bontaq wrote:
| Yep, and that is miyazaki's feelings as well.
|
| "We don't want to include a difficulty selection because
| we want to bring everyone to the same level of discussion
| and the same level of enjoyment," Miyazaki said. "So we
| want everyone ... to first face that challenge and to
| overcome it in some way that suits them as a player."
|
| "We want everyone to feel that sense of accomplishment.
| We want everyone to feel elated and to join that
| discussion on the same level. We feel if there's
| different difficulties, that's going to segment and
| fragment the user base. People will have different
| experiences based on that [differing difficulty level].
| This is something we take to heart when we design games.
| It's been the same way for previous titles and it's very
| much the same with Sekiro."
|
| It makes some sense, the constant in the world is the
| bosses, so you have to change yourself in some way to
| beat them. If you suck at souls games, like I do, that
| means a lot of studying to finally win. But then I'm
| content that I've beaten the same thing everyone has.
|
| Quotes from https://www.gamespot.com/articles/heres-why-
| dark-souls-blood...
| xipho wrote:
| Streamers (e.g. MoonMoon's playthrough) are pointing out
| that if you go "everywhere" and do "everything", truly
| immersing yourself (as perhaps intended), and you don't
| rush from boss-to-boss that that "difficulty" is greatly
| reduced to non-existent. Yes, some very hard spots, but
| far less than one would assume from the outset based on
| quick overviews. There are also builds that greatly
| reduce difficulty making some "impossible" bosses
| trivial.
| jrootabega wrote:
| Hmmm...I wonder if that's something you would have to
| deliberately do. In Witcher 3, the world was so huge and
| engrossing that, just by exploring and participating in
| it, I outleveled quests, and had a very hard time
| catching my quests and world progression up to my power
| even when I tried to. Enabling enemies to scale to my
| level wasn't the best solution, since it just meant that
| instead of everything being easy, everything became
| equally hard.
| xipho wrote:
| He is defintely deliberate about it, from what I can
| tell.
| chrsig wrote:
| I doubt this is true, as much for many people, they're
| not willing to invest the time to overcome the challenge.
| Which is fine, but they're not the target audience, and
| that's also ok.
| jcutrell wrote:
| Which ultimately means the game becomes a step more
| towards exclusive, for better or worse. Probably for
| worse.
| bsder wrote:
| However, "difficulty" is Souls games has two parts. One
| good--one bad.
|
| 1) There is the "Git Gud" part. This is fine. Having some
| difficulty in executing game actions is fine. Having to be
| alert to even low-level enemies is fine.
|
| 2) There is the "WTF do I upgrade?" part. This is bad.
| "Poise" was the canonical example where if you didn't
| understand it you would get turned into paste by enemies
| with _no idea why_. Having to read a full treatise on the
| web before starting a game is _not_ something you should
| have to do.
|
| To be fair, most RPGs suffer this problem, but the Souls
| games suffer it worst because the enemies hit very hard. I
| think the Souls games would benefit a lot from being able
| to freely reallocate your points in skill until you hit
| some level (10-15-20?) that then locks them in. "Hey, I got
| pasted by that enemy. Maybe I should adjust my skill points
| and see what that "poise" thing does on the next pass."
| 1_player wrote:
| In fact, death is an intended game mechanic of Soulsborne
| games. The highs of overcoming a challenging foe is much
| greater if victory isn't handed to you on a platter. And
| the game philosophy of the Dark Souls series has always
| been one of the protagonist being little more than just a
| mindless undead, unfit to live, let alone wear a crown.
|
| The difference is whether you see death as a set back and
| learning experience, or just a complete failure that
| frustrates you. It's a matter of mindset.
|
| But in general the difficulty of Soulsborne games is
| overstated. They're mechanically simple, combat is fair
| (RNG isn't a big factor), with plenty of opportunities to
| make the game easier. Just level up more. Now with Elden
| Ring you can choose to go elsewhere, and come back later,
| stronger. This game isn't about easy victory, so easy mode
| has no place existing. A piece of media doesn't have to
| cater to all audiences.
| bitlax wrote:
| deergomoo wrote:
| I'm the same, I tried so hard to like Bloodborne because I
| was so enthralled by the universe and lore. But I just could
| not have fun playing it, or more specifically the fun I did
| have was swiftly undone by frustration.
|
| I can enjoy difficulty when I don't have to redo things I've
| already done; I'm fully on-board with something like a Super
| Meat Boy or a Hotline Miami, which are also games where death
| is expected and a core part of the loop, but when dying to a
| boss involves trekking back through 5-10 mins of low-level
| enemies I very quickly lose interest.
|
| Am I suggesting all games should account for my very specific
| tastes in difficulty in games? Absolutely not, but I sure
| wish that one did. I'm also not sure I buy the argument that
| the mere presence of an easier mode would somehow invalidate
| the enjoyment of those with more skill and patience.
| hibikir wrote:
| As it happens, Elden Ring takes care of the specific
| problem you mention by having save points, or some
| temporary respawn point, ahead of pretty much every tough
| boss available. This is done even for many optional bosses:
| You will respawn 10 seconds away from the fight. It will
| still not help when, instead of a boss, the wall is a
| slightly stronger low level enemy, and there might be an
| example or two of this problem in a few side dungeons, but
| it's nowhere near as common a problem as in their earlier
| games.
|
| Now, this often means said bosses are often quite a bit
| tougher than in earlier games, but you don't have to go
| through a 10 minute dungeon to get to them every time you
| die.
| fartcannon wrote:
| I realize you're not asking for help in Dark Souls, but
| should you ever find yourself playing it again, I feel like
| I should tell you that you can run past nearly every
| standard enemy in pretty much every FromSoftware game. I
| often play the game sections in reverse. Sprint through
| looking for the next safe spot, then after activating it,
| work backwards to the previous safe spot.
| djsavvy wrote:
| Sounds like you might enjoy the Ori games (Ori and the
| {Blind Forest, Willow of the Wisps}).
|
| Not exactly the same genre as the ones you mentioned, but
| some challenging combat (at times, not throughout) that
| doesn't involve slogging back if you die.
| glogla wrote:
| While Ori is similar genre, I think it doesn't have the
| sheer depth of lore and world-building that pulls many
| people into Souls games.
|
| Hollow Knight on the other hand does.
| bananaoomarang wrote:
| > I can enjoy difficulty when I don't have to redo things
| I've already done; I'm fully on-board with something like a
| Super Meat Boy or a Hotline Miami, which are also games
| where death is expected and a core part of the loop, but
| when dying to a boss involves trekking back through 5-10
| mins of low-level enemies I very quickly lose interest.
|
| Sekiro and Elden Ring are both much better here in terms of
| checkpointing close to bosses, though it's still not always
| just right outside it often is. Indeed I remember a few
| very tedious routes in Bloodborne and Dark Souls. It just
| didn't bother me quite so much because I enjoyed optimizing
| them also!
|
| With Elden Ring also at least there is always other stuff
| to do/explore (at least so far for me at ~50 hours in) so
| you can come back later.
| Zababa wrote:
| There was, Hoartfrost stomp, Sword of night and flame and
| Royal knight resolve, but they got patched. You can always
| downgrade or use cheat engine.
| chrsig wrote:
| I strongly feel the opposite. The difficulty is what makes
| you spend time with the game, and truly appreciate each bit
| of progress you make. Without the suffering, you can't truly
| appreciate what you find around the next corner.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Imagine you were forced to do a SL1 run on your first play.
| That'd be more difficult. You would suffer more. Would you
| appreciate it more? I suspect not.
|
| The sweet spot is when something is challenging for the
| particular player and they are able to overcome that
| challenge through growth. But because each player is
| different, it is not possible for a single tuning to hit
| that sweet spot for every possible person.
| chrsig wrote:
| > Imagine you were forced to do a SL1 run on your first
| play
|
| I don't think that's quite a good comparison -- because
| leveling up is literally a method to overcome the
| difficulty. Grind. Get Good. Kill some foes, run back to
| the bonfire. Kill them again, run back to the bonfire.
|
| Eventually killing them becomes trivial, as a combination
| of muscle memory and leveling up.
|
| Some might even call that practice.
|
| It's an unwillingness to invest time into practice that
| hinders people from enjoying more of it, not the inherent
| difficulty. And this goes for a great many things,
| sports, music, painting, programming, woodworking etc.
|
| It's also totally ok that people don't want to invest the
| time -- I'm not making a value judgement here.
|
| For a sports analogy: I don't want to invest time in
| practicing (or even learning about) basketball. As a
| result, I'm horrific at it. I'm quite fine with that. It
| does however mean that a decent chunk of popular culture
| is inaccessible to me.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| "Just grind" is, in my opinion, the argument that proves
| all of this gatekeeping is garbage. Grinding achieves the
| same thing as an easy mode except it takes hours of
| mindless low-engagement gameplay to complete. Grinding
| has widely been considered bad gameplay for more than two
| decades at this point.
|
| If the game didn't have RPG mechanics and there was no
| mechanism to just make the enemies deal a smaller
| percentage of your health pool or to make your attacks
| deal more damage then I'd be much more amenable to the
| "the game is flawlessly tuned according to the
| developer's vision and that should not be touched" but it
| obviously isn't since every single player will arrive at
| each encounter with different character and weapon stats.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| There is another point by people like me - I _really_
| would love to experience this game, but I don 't have
| life to waste in yet another largely meaningless
| grinding. I have 2 kids to raise, wife to attend, work to
| work, real hobbies like sports to do. I've definitely
| grown out of putting insane hours of my life into gaming,
| and not going back, ever.
|
| This one-fits-all-or-goodbye approach means I'll miss
| this game, forever. And just as you say - only
| damage/defense stats would need to be tuned a bit and I
| could approach it. Why would that hurt anybody wanting to
| play it on harder level is beyond me...
| Jensson wrote:
| > Why would that hurt anybody wanting to play it on
| harder level is beyond me...
|
| Two reasons, first people can't control themselves. Just
| like people have a hard time not eating a cake sitting in
| front of them they also have a hard time not using easier
| difficulty modes, even when they would enjoy the harder
| ones more. You can't just tell these people to control
| themselves, to them this is a really important part of
| the game and adding difficulty options hurts their
| ability to enjoy the game. Not using easy mode is as easy
| as not eating so much and get fat, if you could solve the
| issue that easily then 50% of the population wouldn't be
| obese.
|
| Secondly is development, if you add easy modes most
| testers will run the game through on easy, and the game
| will mostly be designed around easy. Hard mode gets run
| to see that it is possible, but not to see that it is
| enjoyable, meaning that in basically every game with
| multiple difficulty modes the hard mode is a boring
| slogfest. Fromsoft games is a breath of fresh air here,
| they are hard without being boring, that is its major
| selling point.
| mariusor wrote:
| For me "easy mode" was watching people playing on Twitch. It
| got me a "good" understanding of the story and let me enjoy
| the world, without the stress of having to actually play the
| game. :)
| pimeys wrote:
| I've been totally sucked into the Twitch Elden Ring
| streams. BarbarousKing having his fourth playthrough
| already, and I'm still watching the first one. A magical
| game I'm going to try myself when it works well with Proton
| on Linux.
| Polycryptus wrote:
| I've heard that it works fairly well on Proton already.
| In fact, perhaps even better than it does on Windows in
| some regards as a result of Valve having implemented some
| mitigations for things the engine does incorrectly in
| Proton. (Thanks to a desire to have the game work
| properly on the Steam Deck)
|
| I haven't tried yet, though, as I'm playing my way
| through the Dark Souls series proper before giving Elden
| Ring a try.
| gambiting wrote:
| Also really, just look up strategies. In all of these games
| nearly every boss can be cheesed in some way. Really,
| there's no shame in looking it up.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I would find that pretty shameful personally.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Honestly, just watch videos of people playing the game. If
| you find someone who doesn't annoy you, this can be a great
| experience.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| When I was a kid, being invited over to watch your friend
| play a single player game was the peak of lameness.
| Streaming culture seems very odd to me unless there's
| something noteworthy about the streamer.
| soared wrote:
| Elden ring doesn't have an explicit easy mode, but you
| definitely can play it in easy mode. You can outlevel weak
| enemies, play with mage, and for bosses just summon in other
| players to kill them for you.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| "Just grind to level up" is, in my opinion, a _way_ worse
| system than "go to the menu and select 'easy mode.'" The
| effect is roughly the same but takes hours of boring
| gameplay rather than five seconds of menuing.
|
| I'd be much more receptive to the "no easymode" argument if
| the games didn't have RPG elements at their very core.
| dkersten wrote:
| My experience with the game has been that I've been over-
| levelled for almost all bosses (and the ones I wasn't
| were all optional), just by exploring the world. The game
| is designed so that if you get stuck somewhere, you can
| go do something else and come back later. If you
| stubbornly hammer your head against the one challenge or
| focus purely on the critical path, then I feel the
| difficulty is self-inflicted.
|
| For example, some of the early bosses I've heard people
| complain about, Margit and Crucible Knight, I beat first
| try without much difficulty at all because I explored the
| starting areas thoroughly before reaching them and was
| naturally overpowered. I plan to actually play again when
| I'm done and purposely _not_ level just so I can
| experience the challenge.
|
| Speaking of self-inflicted, I've also seen a ton of
| people (eg on Reddit and Youtube) complaining that
| they're being one-shotted by bosses with their high level
| characters, but when they share their stats, they pumped
| everything into a damage dealing stat and few (or often
| NONE!) into their health. Of course they're being one-
| shotted if they don't increase their health. Again, this
| difficulty seems completely self-inflicted.
|
| There are some truly hard bosses, for sure, but with a
| game as huge as Elden Ring and with as much value for
| money as Elden Ring is, I think people just have to make
| peace with the fact that unless you're dedicated to
| overcoming the challenges it presents, you may not see
| every bit of content the game has to offer. FROM Software
| certainly are ok with that.
| gambiting wrote:
| >> Of course they're being one-shotted if they don't
| increase their health. Again, this difficulty seems
| completely self-inflicted.
|
| Unfortunately it happens to the same people who will
| shout the loudest that "BUT THE GAME DOESN'T TELL YOU
| THAT YOU HAVE TO DO THAT", as if somehow that should
| validate their (wrong) choices in the game. It's a role
| playing game. That's what the RP stands for in RPG. If
| you are role playing someone with inhumane strength but
| no health whatsoever, then you have to accept
| consequences of your choices. Like the other comment said
| - games require a certain level of literacy, not just in
| terms of actual reading but also in terms of
| understanding what the stats actually mean.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| This can still fail, though. Consider DS1.
|
| Resistance is a stat you can put points into. It does
| virtually nothing. Little in the game will make it
| obvious that putting points into Resistance will be a
| waste. "Well, you made bad choices" is not a perfect
| defense against this.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| There is always trainer and offline mode
| honkycat wrote:
| Games have literacy in a way books have literacy.
|
| I would not recommend a casual reader pick up "A Brief
| History of 7 Killings" but it is still a great book.
|
| Fromsoft games have an author, Miyazaki, and that author
| has the right to decide how their work is presented and
| engaged with.
|
| Honestly I agree that there should be an "accessibility
| mode" but I understand why it is not in there. Musicians
| don't include a "kids bop" copy of their albums
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Yet we also translate books, even when recognizing that
| translations will always interfere with an original
| vision.
|
| Miyazaki has the right to set whatever difficulty he
| wants. My complaint is less with FromSoft. I've resigned
| myself to the fact that they'll never release a game with
| difficulty that is accessible to everybody. My complaint
| is more with the community, who sees any discussion of
| "hey the monster design and lore and scenery look cool
| but I can't get past the Asylum Demon" as some sort of
| threat and responds with vitriol. The discussion here has
| been largely positive but _even here_ I 've got somebody
| who decided to just respond "git gud." You can imagine
| how it goes on reddit or twitter.
| eldenringthrow wrote:
| >My complaint is more with the community, who sees any
| discussion of "hey the monster design and lore and
| scenery look cool but I can't get past the Asylum Demon"
| as some sort of threat and responds with vitriol
|
| Because it is a threat, you are effectively arguing
| against that which makes the games what they are,
| ignoring the perfectly legitimate workarounds which could
| achieve any level of difficulty you desire (Cheat
| engines, asking for help, learning the game, etc.), and
| on top of all that, you gaslight by saying that your
| issue is not with the game difficulty / fromsoft itself
| (Despite the fact that this entire comment chain started
| off with you explicitly stating that), but with the
| "community" who rightfully disagree with your take.
| cmorgan31 wrote:
| As someone who has declined in gaming skills as I lose
| free time I've adopted just using mods on PC versions. It
| removes the online aspect of the game but allows you the
| chance to explore the world. I'll be in the retirement
| home paying someone $20 to update the mod engine for
| Elden Ring 3.
| ng12 wrote:
| I think the fear is that one day the FromSoft suits will
| demand they start making their games easier so they can
| sell more. A fear that's pretty reasonable: they've
| already made one or two Elden Ring bosses easier with
| patches.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I'm not aware of anybody who wants the game to be made
| easier with no option to maintain its difficulty. People
| are generally asking for optional difficulty settings.
| [deleted]
| ren_engineer wrote:
| easy mode is magic and using summons, you can literally beat
| any souls game without attacking a single enemy, but the
| challenge is 100% part of the entire game philosophy
|
| >"I do feel apologetic toward anyone who feels there's just
| too much to overcome in my games," Miyazaki told me. He held
| his head in his hands, then smiled. "I just want as many
| players as possible to experience the joy that comes from
| overcoming hardship."
|
| >"I've never been a very skilled player," Miyazaki told me
| recently, via Zoom. He was sitting in his office, a book-
| lined room in the Shinjuku ward of Tokyo. "I die a lot. So,
| in my work, I want to answer the question: If death is to be
| more than a mark of failure, how do I give it meaning? How do
| I make death enjoyable?"
|
| source - https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-
| interest/hideta...
| ng12 wrote:
| There really is, but I would also proffer that the difficulty
| is a little important because it makes you afraid of the
| world and makes your achievements meaningful. A tour of
| Lordran wouldn't be as enjoyable.
|
| That said, I think this is what Elden Ring was going for.
| There's a massive amount of content such that you can avoid
| fighting a tough boss until you're strong enough.
| dkersten wrote:
| The difficulty certainly adds a level of tension and
| atmosphere that other games simply don't have.
|
| For the most part, outside of some specific bosses, the
| games aren't actually _thaaat_ difficult, they 're just
| uncompromising and they punish mistakes. I feel that the
| Dark Souls 1 marketing focusing on the difficulty so much
| was a detriment to the series really. Don't get me wrong,
| the games are definitely not _easy_ , but most of the
| content can be experienced without too much challenge if
| you're methodical and take it slow.
| mook wrote:
| > <snip...> the games aren't actually thaaat difficult,
| they're just uncompromising and they punish mistakes.
|
| I find that phrasing interesting, as I would consider
| punishing mistakes part of being difficult, since I'm
| terrible at execution.
|
| (Not saying any particular game should accommodate me, of
| course.)
| dkersten wrote:
| Well, what I meant by that is that in FROM games, even
| the weakest enemy can kill you if you're complacent, but
| beating or avoiding said enemy is incredibly easy.
|
| I've watched a ton of beginners to FROM games play
| Bloodborne on streams and there are a few common trends I
| noticed. For example, players often tend to rush into an
| area without first observing what's actually there. They
| get punished for this by getting ambushed or surrounded
| or whatever. Its not that the area is hard, but the
| player gets punished for the mistake of rushing in
| without first taking a good look around. Players also
| rarely look up... and FROM games love to hide enemies
| above you.
|
| Another mistake I saw a lot is that players see something
| that looks scary, get scared and back away. Or they get
| hit, panic, and back away. But instead of just backing
| away enough to get out of range of the enemy and then
| stopping, they continue to back away... right into
| another group of enemies. They get punished for this
| mistake.
|
| Actually, panic was a major cause of death.
|
| Consider also that you can basically run through any
| region or level without engaging in _any_ enemy, all it
| takes is some understanding of the required spacing and
| to not be afraid of them. Yet the first time I go through
| an area, I certainly fear the danger the enemies
| represent. So the regions aren 't actually all that hard,
| when you really look at it.
|
| The enemies also tend to hit hard, especially bosses. So
| its harder to just shrug off an attack and brute force
| your way through. You often have to take a step back and
| take some time to learn the attack patterns, the
| openings, etc.
|
| Not that there aren't some truly hard situations or
| bosses, where even these things are taken to the extreme,
| because there certainly are, but most of these tend to be
| optional. Although admittedly there are a few throughout
| the series that aren't, so I'm definitely not claiming
| the games are easy. Because they are not.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I think nobody cares about those. Levels with enemies
| tend not to be that hard at any point in the game.
| Surprise enemy ambushes are funny. Dying can be fun.
| Nobody ever feels like they hit a wall on the levels.
|
| It's the bosses that frustrate people. They break a lot
| of norms and falsely make people think it's a stats
| problem.
|
| My issue with dark souls is that it encourages high
| variance play styles if you're not good. Biggest weapon,
| dodge around and hit the boss in just a few spurts.
| Allows you to succeed if you suck but does nothing to
| really improve your skills given enough tries.
|
| Sekiro was much better. It forced you to get competent to
| succeed. Many bosses were serious inflection points in
| difficulty and you just felt so much cooler when you
| nailed it.
| danbolt wrote:
| I think the punishing elements of the games would be a
| lot better received if the larger enemies and bosses
| weren't as tanky. Or, I've noticed a lot of frustration
| (that prevents the eventual sense of achievement) comes
| from having to competently hit/dodge a big armoured boss
| 10-12 times (rather than 3-4).
|
| It starts to feel like an unearned slog, or at worst, a
| Skinner Box if you luckily pull it off after the nth
| time.
| ascar wrote:
| You can actually progress until the main capital without
| killing a single enemy. Like 70% of the games world.
|
| I started as a Wretch and arrived completely under leveled
| and without gear at the first boss, which felt nearly
| impossible to beat so I just started adventuring. At some
| point you get blocked by a barrier that requires you to
| defeat two main bosses. I was actually a bit disappointed
| about that.
| tyrantalope wrote:
| If you're referring to Margit and the other boss after,
| you can skip those. I did by accident. There's a hidden
| path I won't spoil.
| ascar wrote:
| I was talking about skipping Margit (which is boss 1) and
| all bosses after. But at the capital after the Dectus
| lift you will get blocked. I don't wanna spoil too much,
| but that's basically as far as you can go without killing
| anything.
| gtsnexp wrote:
| What book is he talking about?
| ng12 wrote:
| Most likely the Art Book, they put one out for each game.
| ascar wrote:
| Posted further down in another comment this seems to be the
| full interview:
|
| https://www.giantbomb.com/profile/7force/blog/dark-souls-des...
|
| However, the translation differs a bit (e.g. zombie instead of
| undead dragon, which actually makes more sense).
| anothernewdude wrote:
| The aesthetics remind me of this version of Flammarion:
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flammarion-color.png
| Trasmatta wrote:
| 100%. There are plenty of games that capture the challenge and
| difficulty of FromSoft's games, but very very few that capture
| the atmosphere and world building. Their work is very
| reminiscent of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus in that respect
| -- and I think that's entirely intentional, as Ico is what
| inspired Miyazaki to go into game design.
|
| Nioh, for example, is a great series that's even more
| challenging than Souls, and with an even more in depth combat
| system. But the atmosphere, world building, and level design is
| just nowhere near FromSoft's level.
| mhitza wrote:
| I would definitely add Hollow Knight to that list.
| meowface wrote:
| That's a great quote:
|
| >I remember when I was drawing the Undead Dragon, I submitted a
| design draft that depicted a dragon swarming with maggots and
| other gross things. Miyazaki handed it back to me saying "This
| isn't dignified. Don't rely on the gross factor to portray an
| undead dragon. Can't you instead try to convey the deep sorrow
| of a magnificent beast doomed to a slow and possibly endless
| descent into ruin?"
| eawoifjaiowepfj wrote:
| This is rich, maybe Miyazaki just has different judgment than
| me but Dark Souls is one of the grossest and gloomiest games
| I've played due to the immediate application of gross-out
| body horror.
|
| [0] is the Asylum Demon, which is literally the first boss in
| Dark Souls.
|
| Bloodborne cranks the gross-out factor up to 11 with [1] and
| [2].
|
| [0] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6qCB_x7KQR8/maxresdefault.jpg
|
| [1] https://bloodborne.wiki.fextralife.com/file/Bloodborne/lu
| dwi...
|
| [2] https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kXCskueejFY/XLlAKLB-
| nmI/AAAAAAAAd...
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I think that quote gets misinterpreted a bit. I don't think
| Miyazaki is against the gross out factor entirely, but he
| doesn't want that to be the sole characteristic of the
| design.
|
| Ludwig (your second example) is, I think, a perfect example
| of this. He's one of the most disgusting designs they've
| ever made, and yet when he stands during his second phase,
| and the music swells, you get an immense feeling of the
| grandeur and power of Ludwig before his fall to the
| disgusting creature he became:
|
| https://youtu.be/7n1qe2ZSTPA?t=102
|
| That being said, I think FromSoft's designs sometimes ARE
| "just gross". But it's an admirable guiding principle, even
| if they don't always hit it.
| mariusor wrote:
| And now we got the God Skin Duo... gulp...
| michaelscott wrote:
| This idea of a fallen-from-grace character is a common motif
| when it comes to Miyazaki, but it's so effective every time
| and always adds a dimension to the games' lore. To this day,
| I think Gehrman in Bloodborne is my favourite boss fight
| because it's simultaneously a test of everything you've grown
| into over the course of the game yourself, and also the
| conclusion of this man's painful, long and tragic existence
| sascha_sl wrote:
| That's funny, because Dark Souls 2 make the same mistake. Much
| more focus on enforcing difficulty, and none of the
| connectedness of Dark Souls 1, though the nonsensical world
| also makes thematical sense to some degree (the game is
| essentially about universal dementia). The Dreg Heap in Dark
| Souls 3 does deliver on this concept much better though.
|
| If you need any indicator the team behind Dark Souls 2
| misunderstood Miyazaki's vision, the global death counter in
| Majula is all you need.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Dark Souls 3 is even less interconnected that Dark Souls 2.
| And difficulty is hard to measure, but IMO nothing in ds2 is
| as difficult as the Ringed Cities, and there aren't bosses
| with 2+ phases. Did Miyazaki misunderstand his own vision
| when he made ds3?
| ng12 wrote:
| Yeah, I have a strong dislike for DS2. It's not even that bad
| a game, I would probably enjoy if it didn't have the Dark
| Souls facade.
|
| Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro are three of my all time
| favorites. So far feeling favorable towards Elden Ring but I
| would still rank it below those three.
| Shaanie wrote:
| The interconnected world is solely in Dark Souls 1 though,
| none of the other souls games (or bloodborne) has it.
| WilTimSon wrote:
| I think a lot of people on forums focus on the difficulty and
| gameplay aspects because they're easier to have a conversation
| around. But, as a big fan of the 'series', I've always been in
| it mostly for the unparalleled aesthetic and atmosphere.
| Firelink Shrine in and of itself is one of my favorite
| locations period, because it's like a complete inversion of a
| typical fantasy game hub - almost dead, surrounded directly on
| all sides by danger, full of secrets, populated by NPCs that
| are either gravely depressed or dangerous. It's this strange
| isle of safety that isn't necessarily welcoming. Also, as I
| found out in my first playthrough, magic spells sent from that
| stupid bridge reach Firelink, killing AFK players who triggered
| the enemy. Ahem... Not that it happened to me.
| dkersten wrote:
| Bloodborne was my first (I've since played Demon's Souls,
| Dark Souls trilogy, Sekiro and now Elden Ring too) and the
| atmosphere is what drew me in. Sure, the gameplay and the
| challenge kept me playing, but the atmosphere is what made it
| special. Over time, as I started to unravel more and more of
| the lore and storylines, that's what really got me addicted,
| but that took time. The gameplay alone wasn't enough, I
| almost gave up on the game initially, but the atmosphere and
| visual aesthetic really stuck with me. I've since bought a
| bunch of the art books on ebay too since I just love the
| Souls and Bloodborne visual design so much.
|
| Now that I'm heavily mentally invested in their games, I am
| enthralled by their deep yet vague stories, but I'm
| constantly impressed by the visual creativity and aesthetic
| sensibilities. That screenshot in the article is incidentally
| an area I screenshotted myself just yesterday, although mine
| was more about the shadowy silhouettes of the statues in the
| foreground (not really shown in the image in the article).
| skatanski wrote:
| I can one up this. The obscured story told through items
| descriptions and vague dialogue feels like a meta game on
| its own for those who really want to venture in. To me it
| felt like I was rediscovering games again, reminded me of
| playing old games like Lands of Lore, Black Crypt or Ultima
| for the first time, strange sense of wonder. Never thought
| I'll get this feeling again after so many years.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > I think a lot of people on forums focus on the difficulty
| and gameplay aspects because they're easier to have a
| conversation around.
|
| I think that's true for many topics. Some people evaluate
| developers based on lines of code because it's hard to
| evaluate the value of the code. In sports, athletes are
| evaluated based on how fast they run, because it's easily
| quantifiable and understandable, even if that's not
| especially important to the job. People tend to focus on
| flaws, IMHO, for the same reason.
|
| And I think it's especially true in the arts. When people
| don't know what to say, when it makes them uncomfortable,
| they find the flaws - easy to talk about, and it dimisses the
| uncomfortable thing from the conversation. What makes art art
| is hard to define, unquantifiable, and often challenges our
| understanding.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I thought it was a bit odd to list the credit under each piece of
| art to "Hidetaka Miyazaki". He's the director and sets the
| creative vision for just about everything in the games, but the
| actual art is done by a talented team of artists and designers.
| Sad to not see them get any credit for their amazing work.
| arketyp wrote:
| I genuinely wonder, were that whole team to be replaced,
| whether the art would come out much different.
| mhh__ wrote:
| It's a bit like Hans Zimmer scores, we'll never know other
| than that Zimmer is basically the creative director of a very
| large bunch of people. I think he dictates the mood rather
| than actually writing every melody.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Miyazaki tries not to be too heavy handed when working with
| designers and artists, so a lot of this is their personal
| creativity shining through:
|
| > Miyazaki: Yes, according to the artists it was, but I
| think, If your instructions are too specific, the designs you
| get will be somewhat devoid of creativity, so I try to give
| them just the most basic, essential information before
| handing it over to the artists imaginations, which inevitable
| eclipse my own. But my initial instructions are certainly
| abstract. For example, when designing equipment I'd simply
| say "Make Something you can trust your life to on the
| battlefield, or "Make something that has enchantments to
| protect you." I think the artists probably didn't know what I
| was talking about half the time. Haha.
|
| > Waragai: That's true
|
| > Miyazaki: I'm sorry. Haha. Of course, If I don't get what I
| want, then I start giving more specific descriptions, and I
| might even start drawing things on the white board, but even
| then I'd never go so far as to say it has to be this colour
| or this shape. I don't want the designers to just become my
| tools. Of course, It doesn't always go as I want, but I think
| that's probably due to me not getting the best out of the
| artists, and this is something I want to get better at in the
| future.
|
| https://www.giantbomb.com/profile/7force/blog/dark-souls-
| des...
| danbolt wrote:
| I really appreciated a GDC talk from one of the designers of
| _GoldenEye 007_ who was very critical of auteur theory. [1] He
| seemed very understanding of the multifaceted nature of big
| games.
|
| [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Fx18cppZk
| [deleted]
| colechristensen wrote:
| A whole lot of art, even famous old pieces, has been done at
| the direction of a famous names who get the credit but much of
| the actual strokes done by skilled technicians or apprentice
| artists. Credit is hard when you're mixing someone directing
| with a sense of taste and people executing that vision with
| varying levels of creative input.
| nohuck13 wrote:
| Can a frontend developer explain to me about the disabled two-
| finger zoom on this page? Is my mental model that zoom is between
| me and my mobile browser, not something that should be disable
| able, just hopelessly naive these days? Or is the platform not
| doing this, and the browser is?
|
| I just want to zoom in on the picture of 3m-wide Garden of
| Earthly Delights...
| cma wrote:
| Facebook, an image sharing site, does this too on their mobile
| site version... why?
| shmde wrote:
| Two finger zoom is working fine for me. I am using Chrome on
| Android with the "Force enable zoom" setting enabled.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| In FireFox it's under the accessibility options.
| pfooti wrote:
| It's just a mobile thing due to pixel scaling. In the overflow
| menu, of the browser bar, check the "desktop site" box and you
| can zoom in.
| nohuck13 wrote:
| You'd expect touch-gesture zoom to still work under pixel
| scaling though. You'd expect to just see a downsampled image
| up close, plus normal-looking text up close, right?
|
| Here even the text doesn't zoom.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| To appreciate Bosch, Great Art Explained did a very in-depth
| video of of the Garden of Earthly Delights:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBG621XEegk
| k_sze wrote:
| Thanks. You just made me discover more great educational
| YouTube channels.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| This is amazing, I had no idea they could use infrared scans on
| paintings like that to get a glimpse at previous iterations.
| mrbonner wrote:
| Me: dying for a hundred times at the same spot. I just wish those
| "soul" games are more accessible to mortal like me. I'm an avid
| gamer (FPS) but those games are taking a toll in my confidence.
| Playing them feels like doing a chore, repeatedly. I tried
| Bloddborne because the atmosphere and art works are fantastic but
| couldn't even get over the first level (or act?). I really wanted
| to give Elder Ring a try but, the horror of doing chores :-)
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Elden Ring is the easiest one of these games by far, you don't
| have to play it the "hard way". If you want to get through the
| game just play a sorcery build and level up a bit. With summons
| you'll be able to get through many bosses without even getting
| hit.
| tomrod wrote:
| Elden ring is a lot of fun once you get the horse.
|
| My typical approach for open world games is: find travel
| mechanism, explore, find items OP to my current level, figure
| out how to level up, then have fun.
|
| Elden ring is a _huge_ world and I 'm really enjoying it! It is
| my first souls game, and I've learned that you shouldn't care
| much about the bank balance of runes/souls/gold/etc.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| It's funny because I cant play FPS for the same reason. Getting
| killed by actual preteens over and over while occasionally
| getting a kill here and there isnt fun for me. I've been okay
| to good at FPS and it came from suffering 100's or 1000's of
| deaths and slowly getting better.
|
| With FPS it is not worth it for me because I'll never have as
| much time as a kid to dedicate to the game. With Soulslikes at
| least I can memorize the boss moves and eventually get by or go
| level elsewhere and then cheese the boss.
|
| The frustrations of the genre feel very similar to me but
| soulslikes I have options on how to get better.
| knolan wrote:
| I'm the same. I love the look of it all but I can barely manage
| to make progress in something like Hollow Knight never mind
| Souls games.
|
| With work and family and ageing I don't have the time, patience
| or reflexes for this type of game unfortunately.
|
| I really enjoyed Jedi Fallen Order, which is ostensibly a Souls
| type game. I managed most of the game on regular difficulty
| before one boss bested me and I was able to drop to easy
| difficulty.
|
| I get that the desolation and feeling of hopelessness against
| insurmountable odds (and finally overcoming) is part of the
| gameplay loop. I just can't do it.
| vmladenov wrote:
| I started with Bloodborne after mostly playing FPS and
| adventure games like Uncharted. Gave up twice in frustration. I
| think learning how to step back and do visceral attacks, which
| the opening area gives you space to learn, was critical. Now
| it's my favorite game ever.
|
| Also the game is designed around collaboration. People are
| supposed to discover things and share what they learned on
| wikis / Discord / etc, and help each other with cooperative
| multiplayer.
| Zababa wrote:
| I'm not sure about the Boschian connection, but most of what's in
| Elden Ring isn't really "new". The vast majority of what's in
| Elden Ring is themes that From Software have been using for a
| long time, starting with Demon's Soul for some. I'm not sure
| about the origin of most though. Spoilers ahead, so don't read if
| you want to discover everything by yourself.
|
| The most obvious one is as always the idea of stagnant water at
| the bottom that becomes corrupted, which from what I understand
| comes mostly from the asian religious ideas about impurity. I'm
| not sure if it's coming from Shinto or Buddhism, or something
| else, but there's always something about stagnant
| water/stagnation being "bad", and water at the bottom "washing
| away" impurities on the way and being the "worst". That's where
| the usual poison lake comes from. It's also a strong idea in
| Sekiro, with immortality coming from the heavens (with the divine
| dragon) and being corrupted on the way down (with the
| centipedes). Here in Elden Ring we have the lake of rot, the
| deeproot depths, and the bottom of the Haligtree.
|
| Then there's the idea of a fallen empire hiding behind illusions.
| In DS1 Anor Londo was the prime example of that: everything is an
| illusion, that you can break. This was used here in Raya Lucaria:
| the Rennela that you fight is an illusion put here by Ranni,
| which mirrors Gwynvere/Gwyndolyn, and Fillianore. Rennela and
| Fillianore both hold an egg. I'm not sure about the reference
| here, there's the same theme in Angel's Egg by Mamoru Oshii, but
| maybe there are deeper origins.
|
| There's the idea of some people living a corrupted form of life
| that still try to live their life "in peace": in Demon's Soul
| there's Maiden Astrea in the valley of defilement asking you to
| leave them alone, in DS1 there's the inhabitants of the painting
| (with Priscilla asking you to leave them alone), in DS3 the
| painting makes a comeback, with its inhabitants that want to rot
| in peace. In Sekiro, there's the monks in Senpo Temple, that
| acceeded to a corrupted form of immortality and are being
| devoured by insects/corrupted by centipede. There's the same in
| Elden Ring with Fia and those who live in death, and in a way the
| Haligtree people.
|
| Lots of ideas are refinement of previous ideas: Rykkard seems to
| be a refinement of Aldrich as a "person in the world", and of the
| King of the Storm/Yohrm in terms of gameplay (Serpent Hunter is
| way more interesting than Storm Ruler). This one is a bit of a
| stretch, but Ranni's questline with Blaidd reminds me of the
| questline with the Painter and Gael. Both are about partially
| revolting against the order of this world to find a way outside
| the influence of the fire cycle/equivalent in Elden Ring. The
| smith at the hub is also an improvement: he gained a real
| personality, a real purpose. We meet again the last giant of his
| species that's already hurt when you meet him and removes one of
| his limb. Giants keep transforming into trees. Sorcerers doing
| too much research keep ending up in weird places (brain of
| mensis, the end of Sellen's questline). We went from giant crabs
| (there's a hilarious PC Gamer article about this) to giant crabs
| AND giant lobsters. There's something about Miquella (arm coming
| out of a coccoon, removed from a tree) and the curse-rotten
| greatwood, though I don't see much else about it. Maybe I'm
| missing some cultural references, maybe a DLC is coming, maybe
| it'll be refined in a next game/
|
| All of that to say, it's nice to discover who Hieronymus Bosch is
| and what he did, but I wish the article instead focused on From
| Software themes and where they come from. Where do girl with eggs
| come from? Why are giants always corrupted in some way? What's
| the history of impurity in asian religions, and how did it
| influence From Software? We now have 7 games: Demon's Soul, Dark
| Souls, Dark Souls 2, Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, Sekiro, Elden
| Ring. They slowly went from niche hits to a specific audience to
| a mainstream appeal. They come from a country with a rich
| culture, that's often seen through the lens of "weird Japan".
| They appeal to people through the gameplay, but also through the
| themes, the visuals, the gameplay. I think it's time to take them
| seriously as pieces of art by themselves.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| >Where do girl with eggs come from?
|
| Miyazaki seems to have been inspired by Angel's Egg. I never
| read a quote, but the similarities are there.
|
| https://youtu.be/fIhKqaNp4Dc?t=3035
| cyberpunk wrote:
| > The most obvious one is as always the idea of stagnant water
| at the bottom that becomes corrupted, which from what I
| understand comes mostly from the asian religious ideas about
| impurity. I'm not sure if it's coming from Shinto or Buddhism,
| or something else, but there's always something about stagnant
| water/stagnation being "bad", and water at the bottom "washing
| away" impurities on the way and being the "worst". That's where
| the usual poison lake comes from. It's also a strong idea in
| Sekiro, with immortality coming from the heavens (with the
| divine dragon) and being corrupted on the way down (with the
| centipedes).
|
| Hi, friendly neighbourhood hackernews buddhist here. That's not
| from us. Washing away your 'impurities' seems like a foolish
| idea, since there's no you to have them. Also, we don't really
| get along with anything like immortality or heavens either.
| Impermanence is kinda..... obvious?.
|
| Either way, as a (very) casual gamer with kids and not enough
| time as it is, I'll probably skip these. :}
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I'm not a buddhist so in no position to refute but there is a
| temple near me that I have been to several times for non-
| religious reasons. There is a water basin by the entrance
| that people use to wash their hands and faces as they enter.
|
| I understand theologically this must not be a "ritual
| purification" but as an outsider I definitely can't tell the
| difference.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I'm not a Buddhist, but one of the themes in many of
| Miyazaki's games is suffering caused by an endless cycle of
| life, death, and rebirth. There's a major focus on breaking
| that curse, and accepting death in many of his games. My
| completely naive, outsiders perspective is that this might
| possibly be analogous to samsara and nirvana. I think this
| theme is particularly present in Sekiro, which has explicit
| Buddhist themes and imagery, and where the main character is
| constantly reborn, and seeks to end that cycle.
|
| But yeah, I'm not a Buddhist, so I would absolutely be
| interested in a Buddhist's interpretation of the games.
| Miyazaki pulls from many sources and inspirations, and I
| think Japanese Buddhism and Shintoism are both present in
| there (as well as a myriad of inspirations from Western
| culture and history as well). The games are honestly an
| amazing example of the immense creativity that can come from
| a melting pot of ideas from many different cultures.
| m10i wrote:
| Berserk - which inspired these Souls games - is also highly
| influenced by Boschian art.
| mLuby wrote:
| Second time in a month that "Lonely Tree" painting from 1822 has
| been in a HN game analysis article.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30414470
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