[HN Gopher] Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Open-Wor...
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Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Open-World Design
Author : WHA8m
Score : 44 points
Date : 2022-04-01 14:16 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gamedeveloper.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gamedeveloper.com)
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| My own thoughts on Elden Ring are pretty simple. Give the players
| an absolutely gigantic open world map that you can basically
| travel from one end to the other without fighting anything, just
| for exploration's sake. Fill it with thoughtful mob-level NPC
| placement, making the higher level areas have higher level NPCs.
| Throw in a giant array of weapons, spells, skills and upgrades to
| choose from. Throw bosses around everywhere and lock some gear
| and progress behind them, but not too much. Finally, let the
| player decide how they want to approach the game and what quests
| they want to attack.
|
| This is a game that doesn't have any real "systems" past stats
| and stat affinities, but instead of making it limited, it makes
| the game incredibly replayable. There was at least one boss that
| I would probably have needed to level another 20 or so levels to
| beat, but instead of the slow offensive skill I was using, I
| instead equipped Quickstep on my katana and suddenly I was able
| to dodge attacks that were crushing me before.
|
| Do I think some sort of internal recordkeeping for quests would
| help? Absolutely. I like that there's no checklist on the screen
| so that the game doesn't seem like a chore. But you know what the
| game never asks me to do? Go gather 20 of a certain item. Go kill
| 30 of a certain creature. There are questlines with multiple
| parts to be sure, but most of them are going to take a while as
| you actually fight your way through the world.
|
| Because the focus of Fromsoft is on the player experience with
| world interaction and not with systems design, I will probably
| play through the game 3 or 4 more times in succession. I'm
| familiar with the game now, but I'm playing a bandit. Next time,
| it will be a magic user. The time after, a strength. Then a faith
| build. It can be frustrating to pick up items that you can't use,
| and while the game does give you the ability to respec your
| character to take advantage of all the stuff you find, I'm eager
| to continue my current playthrough on the path I chose from the
| start.
|
| Best game I've ever played, and a vast improvement over the chore
| simulators that have come to dominate the market.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| Yeah, one thing that Elden Ring did very well was the pacing.
| In other open world games, generally my first action item is to
| go and collect every fragment of the map, then start doing
| missions. In Elden Ring this is impossible, it literally took
| me over 100 hours to find some of the map pieces. Makes the
| game feel much larger and more like a grand adventure.
| razzypitaz wrote:
| You're in the Lands In Between, a vast uncaring world where
| you're but a spec. Not just any spec however, you're Tarnished,
| and youre not the only one. Not all of them care to be great,
| most of them are just trying to do their thing, and only one
| other of your fellow Tarnished care about doing the impossible;
| assembling the Elden Ring. No one cares if you die, in fact
| most npc are amazed you're not already dead. You can build your
| outlier how ever you want, play it however you want to play it,
| and the RP involved means you organically get to your ending
| based on the quests you choose to care about.
|
| All of this is to say, my mind shifts when I am playing to what
| CP 2077 could have been. Replace Tarnished with Edge Runner,
| Lands In Between with Night City, the Elden Ring bringing down
| a Mega Corp and it all feels natural. Not to bring up CDPR hate
| or anything, just that Elden Ring fills a hole that was
| promised by other games.
| [deleted]
| uejfiweun wrote:
| Just a phenomenal game. IMO, all the From Games are great, but
| none of them really matched up to the original Dark Souls...
| until now. I've literally played this every day since it came
| out, I have over 150 hours, and I still haven't beat it. And
| still I'm discovering cool new areas, items, and lore. The amount
| of times I've gotten to a new area and just gone "what in the
| actual fuck" is too many to count, it's just jam packed full of
| surprises and cool sights to see.
|
| Of course, I think that "open world" is a pretty broad label at
| this point, as there are other open world games that are totally
| different from ER but just as good. For instance, Fallout 4
| (survival). It doesn't have as good enemy variety, locations, or
| combat as ER, no question, but the questlines are a lot better,
| the settlement stuff is awesome, and the general level of
| interactivity makes it an experience just as immersive as ER.
|
| But overall, for that type of "combat/exploration" focused open
| world game, ER absolutely takes the cake. I hope the BOTW sequel
| takes some inspiration, especially for the dungeons. But I do
| think Bethesda still rules for the "simulation" style open world
| games.
| glouwbug wrote:
| You sure? Bethesda has rereleased the same game 7 times in the
| last 10 years.
| yen223 wrote:
| I am partial to the argument that Fallout: New Vegas is close
| to the perfect open-world game out there.
|
| It gets the open-world aspects right. All of the world is
| accessible from the start, the only limitations being your
| ability to tackle stronger enemies (like deathclaws).
| Exploration is rewarding, not forced. The world is designed
| such that exploration is driven less by quest markers, but by
| the player noticing interesting things in the world, like say
| a giant dinosaur out in the distance.
|
| It has a main storyline, but it is a storyline that can
| accomodate a huge variety of choices made throughout the
| game. There's no artificial "essential NPC" mechanic, you can
| literally kill everyone in the game and the story still
| works. This makes the game very immersive - the player has
| absolute free choice in how they want to approach the game,
| and more importantly it feels like the choices you make and
| the factions you side with actually matter to the world
| periphrasis wrote:
| New Vegas wasn't a Bethesda game?
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| I think author is forgetting a very important part: _From it 's
| beginning, Elden Ring was positioned as a soulslike game._ People
| walk into a soulslike game knowing they're going to get wrecked
| often and things are going to be difficult. This gives developers
| freedom like abbreviated tutorials, making the player character a
| non-hero, etc.
|
| Linear storylines and sidequests, are often used as interactive
| tutorials. They give the player some structure within the game.
| For example, in Dying Light 2, a level 1 player is partitioned
| off from level 6 areas. A level 1 player facing off hordes of
| level 6 zombies, volatiles, etc. will have no shot. That would be
| frustrating for players not explicitly looking for that sort of
| experience.
|
| In soulslike games, it's expected that your hand isn't going to
| be held and you might blindly walk into areas for which you're
| severely under equipped. That's a part of the experience, which
| again, is expected by players when they load up Elden Ring for
| the first time.
|
| TL/DR: Elden Ring can have an organic open world without linear
| quest elements, because that's what players expect when picking
| up the game.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >In soulslike games, it's expected that your hand isn't going
| to be held and you might blindly walk into areas for which
| you're severely under equipped.
|
| Game even goes out of it's way to place Sellia Crystal Tunnel
| teleporter extremely close to start point if you immediately
| start going east.
| troon-lover wrote:
| libertine wrote:
| I hate to be that guy, but it's not fair to dismiss one of the
| best open world games released in the last 20 years, and which I
| believe inspired many things on Elden Ring - I'm talking about
| Breath of the Wild.
|
| Just like how you're introduced to the world is literally how
| BoTW introduces you to it's own world (could it be a homage?), or
| something as simple as picking up consumables with a simple press
| of a button with no animations, little things that aren't in the
| way of you experiencing the world.
|
| What I haven't put my finger on was how both of these games
| propel you to discover the world, and to find out what's above
| the hill or if there might be a cave in a cliff. I don't know if
| it's the terrain design that's actually thought through and not
| left to some algorithm, or if it's simply the perk of having a
| great brand behind these games that have rewarded us properly for
| exploring their previous worlds.
|
| A better tittle would be : _Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20
| Years of Bad Open-World Design_
| giobox wrote:
| Agreed - with very little googling you can find the exact same
| arguments as this article being made in others discussing
| Breath of the Wild. Lots of people have been rightly
| celebrating this aspect of BoTW since its release, I found it
| odd not to mention it as well. It was arguably an even bigger
| risk for Nintendo to make these radical changes back in 2017,
| given the sales volume a Zelda game is expected by the business
| and investors to shift.
|
| The industry influence I would credit FromSoftware with is that
| its ok to make _really_ difficult games again, a trend born
| through their work such as the Dark Souls games and Elden Ring
| etc. It 's been a long time IMO since games this difficult were
| this mainstream.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| > What I haven't put my finger on was how both of these games
| propel you to discover the world, and to find out what's above
| the hill or if there might be a cave in a cliff. I don't know
| if it's the terrain design that's actually thought through and
| not left to some algorithm, or if it's simply the perk of
| having a great brand behind these games that have rewarded us
| properly for exploring their previous worlds.
|
| Breath of the wild is a game full of secrets. Things are there
| and they need to be found.
|
| Many other open world games are not. They're full of missions.
| Because the ui is so informative, you actually get rapid
| confirmation that there is nothing.
|
| A lot of missions start at a hub and make you go to a place and
| then come back. That's how that portion of the world gets used.
| Botw doesn't do this much. Most content that you find is
| immediately relevant there because that place is interesting in
| itself.
|
| Lastly, you don't have a dearth of dialogue to get through
| things. Dialogue is fine and all but side quests are
| conceptually very stupid and the writing is inevitably
| tiresome. It breaks immersion when someone needs you to collect
| maguffins again.
| WHA8m wrote:
| I definitively agree with you. In favor of the article one
| could say: The initial statement was basically that something
| got successful by ignoring "conventional trends of the genre"
| and the article is about Elden Ring. So the overall statement
| stays correct, but some context could (should?) have been
| provided, because things have been done before or originated
| somewhere else.
| linkdd wrote:
| Zelda BOTW is just the first NES Zelda for the modern era.
|
| Nintendo's open-world is the only open-world I liked.
|
| I can't get immersed in GTA's open world because I'm just a
| random going on a killing spree for 15 minutes then shut the
| game down.
|
| I hated Skyrim, the world is big but empty. There is nothing
| particular about the landscape that makes me want to "go
| there". Most of the time, I discovered areas because I was
| going in straight lines.
|
| Zelda on the other hand, I was like "oh wow, a mountain split
| in two, I wanna see it". The landscape view makes you want to
| see what's going on and act as a map ("oh so the gemini
| mountain is on my right, I must be at XXX"). You're on top of a
| tower, look at the volcano, and you're like "what is that thing
| moving on the horizon". Same thing for pretty much all divine
| beasts.
|
| The other nice thing about BOTW's open world is the map. You
| don't need it. In The Witcher 3 you have a GPS that tells you
| where to go. When people tells you to go somewhere in this
| Zelda, you ask people, you look at the road signs, and you go
| there. This makes the world much more realistic and less empty
| because you need to interact with it.
|
| To go to the Goron village, you have many ways of doing it,
| stockpile a huge amount of food to heal while you burn, or go
| around and talk to people to find the potion. If you choose to
| stockpile food, you need to hunt, to cook, and to interact with
| the world once again.
|
| The world is part of the game play, unlike many other open
| world games where the world is just the scenery where the game
| play take place.
| mcbutterbunz wrote:
| One part of BOTW that really stuck out to me is how close,
| yet far away things felt. You know how when you look at
| something through a telephoto lens, things get compressed?
| They did that really well in BOTW. Things could look close
| and you could see they were there, but when you start moving
| towards something, there was actually a lot of ground to
| cover. It helped make the world seem within reach, yet
| distant at the same time. This made me want to explore cause
| I was almost there, just gotta get through this valley or
| around this lake. If the devs and designers are out there
| reading this, great job and thank you.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Botw is so much more than just NES Zelda. That the two are
| non linear is just one similarity.
| holyyikes wrote:
| Elden Ring has absolutely nothing in common with BOTW.
|
| The whole "exiting the cave to reveal the world" is Socrates
| cave shit. Old as the hills.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Plato
| intsunny wrote:
| Yah, it seems very strange the article completely fails to
| mention Zelda Breath of the Wild.
|
| It is amazing to see how many games today have taken
| inspiration from Zelda BOTW.
|
| The first time I played the game, I decided it was more fun
| just exploring the open world and visiting all the Sheikah
| Towers.
|
| I didn't have good armor/equipment/food/etc, and I had a
| complete blast doing it. That was one of my fondest memories of
| gaming.
| holyyikes wrote:
| Because Elden Ring is about as far from BOTW as you can
| possibly be. It's not inspired by it at all.
| sushid wrote:
| It's literally their highly refined tried and true formula
| with BOTW. Hard to believe that you don't see the parallel
| in open world design if you've played both games.
| defterGoose wrote:
| I just want to point out that although BOTW is perhaps the most
| recent example of a widely lauded (though rightly criticized as
| well) expansive open world, it is in no way the only or even
| the primary inspiration that Elden Ring draws on. Yes, it has
| crafting, dungeons and long vistas. But in that sense, Skyrim
| is equally valid. Heck, even GTA games fill most of those
| criteria. And if you're going for sheer quality of exploration
| over quantity, RDR2 for instance was a far more technically and
| aesthetically impressive game than BOTW.
|
| So I guess all-in-all I agree with your thesis though. Elden
| Ring _does_ seem to have managed to leave the worst aspects of
| previous games while inviting the best ideas along for the
| ride. Add to that the most beautifully crafted world FROM has
| ever made and you have something that simply exudes GOAT.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| It's not about the open world dimension, it's dropping the
| player into a world with little to no training.
|
| Skyrim, GTA, and RDR2 all share the same "Main Mission"
| mechanic that helps keep players centered on overall story
| progression while leaving room for side quests and
| exploration. This "go there, do this, go there" cycle doesn't
| exist in BOTW or Elden Ring.
| istorical wrote:
| Good observation and if I may I think a great term for this
| is just 'sandbox' gameplay.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > this is just 'sandbox' gameplay
|
| That sums it up. Enjoyment comes from core game play
| mechanics, not quest content. I'd be just as happy with
| core Street Fighter mechanics in an open world, with no-
| explanation filler content between boss encounters.
| bitlax wrote:
| Everybody steals from everybody.
|
| https://twitter.com/DarkSoulsGame/status/768525788844961792
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