The Elden Ring network test was wondrous and worrying in equal ways
George R.R. Martin and From Software's new game takes the Dark Souls formula and adds in a little Zelda: Breath Of The Wild—to mixed effect, so far
Games Features Elden Ring
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Like a giant, leaping, land-based octopus, gnawing on one of its own severed tentacles, I’ve been chewing on the Elden Ring Closed Network Test for a while now.
Spread, somewhat haphazardly, across a single weekend in early November, the Closed Network Test was the first chance I’d gotten to play Elden Ring. Bandai Namco’s new game has built hype for itself by stressing its connection with author George R.R. Martin (who helped write it). But it fascinates me (and large chunks of the gaming community) because it’s the latest iteration on the decade-defining success of From Software’s Dark Souls games, and its latest attempt to make a game that is not just another damn Dark Souls game.
From Software has been striving to bust out of its own self-built cage since roughly the day that Dark Souls became an international best-seller, usually annoying its fervent fanbase in the process. (The studio’s latest effort, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, barely even qualifies as a “Soulslike,” abandoning many of the key principles of the nascent genre; it was, to say the least, a controversial attempt.)
Elden Ring, from first impressions, might be the furthest afield the studio has gone yet, both literally and figuratively. The logline for the game is almost ridiculously simple, and obvious: Slam together a Souls game—meticulous, thoughtful combat; a steep but scalable difficulty curve; 8 million pounds of apocalyptic gloom—and that other inescapable 21st-century gaming innovation, the open-world genre. (And specifically, the unguided, horse-heavy exploration of Nintendo’s The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild.)
The result (or, as much of the result as I could cram into a handful of three-hour sessions with the beta) is big, intimidating, and undeniably ambitious. After clearing the tutorial cave, I opened a door onto a vast landscape and swiftly felt suitably overwhelmed. I went poking around by the seaside, and was murdered. I walked over to a guy riding a horse near a tree, and got murdered. I approached the distant castle gates (now with my own horse, the spectral steed Torrent, beneath me), and both Torrent and I were murdered.
Elden Ring is undeniably a Souls game.
It’s worth noting it’s also a significantly more guided experience than the original Dark Souls, which famously plunked players down at a crossroads in its opening moments, then expected them to throw their corpse at various paths until they found the one that wasn’t staffed by unkillable ghosts or giant screw-you skeletons. Elden Ring at least has the good sense to gift you a compass, a map, and easy fast travel, even ripping off Ghost Of Tsushima’s wonderful “guiding wind” mechanic to help point you in the right direction toward progress.
And yet, the one thing that continually struck me while playing the Closed Network Test was this: That the one element that unifies every other Souls game—an exquisite sense of place, of moving through environments brimming with intent both intrinsic and extrinsic—was seemingly absent here. It’s bizarre to cross space in one of these games and to realize it has no purpose other than to be space—no cunning ambush, no nested bit of lore, no memorable encounter. It’s a probably necessary evil induced by the game’s open-world nature, which requires, by definition, lots of open, neutral space to ride and run through. But that also means that Elden Ring is the first major From release where large parts of its world can feel like filler, selling off some of that precision-curated world-building that’s defined so much of the series’ landmark success in the process.
The things Elden Ring acquires in this sale are obvious, noteworthy, sometimes breathtaking. Things like fighting through a cave full of goblin-ish warriors, only to emerge from the other end on an island I’d been eyeing curiously from the first time I’d gazed out over the landscape. Or cresting a hill on the back of Torrent (an excellent boy), only to look out over a valley through which a small army of giants was dutifully trudging. Or wandering through one of From’s beloved swamps, only to come a little too close to a set of ruins, and suddenly find myself in a terrifying, overwhelming boss encounter. The sense of being in a living (dying) world, of having escaped the endless corridors of haunted churches and slime-caked caves at last, is palpable, and exhilarating.
But it’s impossible to deny that the lack of focus is felt too, a notable demerit for a series that’s been defined by demanding said focus from both developers and players alike, at laser beam levels. Maybe chalk it up to the nature of the beta, but some of the boss battles in the Network Test were not just loose but actually sloppy, punishing not in the wonderful Dark Souls way where you learn through the pain, but genuinely slipshod-feeling. Combine it with the occasional aimlessness of the open-world maps, and it was hard at times not to pine for a more limited but, well, designed design.
And yet.
And yet, I have not stopped thinking about Elden Ring since the Closed Network Test, uh, closed. That’s the part that marks this as a true Souls successor for me, the way it repeats and spirals in the mind. There is so much beautiful strangeness in these games, usually lurking at the edges—and Elden Ring has so many more edges to explore. (God bless and keep the land octopi.) I’ll cop to being nervous about the game’s eventual release. Nervous about the latest round of the never-ending arguments about game difficulty it will spur. About the handful of boss fights I ran into that felt unrecognizably messy, from a studio that taught me a whole new way to think about video gaming combat. And yet: February, when the game releasees, still can’t come soon enough.
28 Comments
I’m playing Deathloop, and I am LOVING it so far. It obviously takes a lot from Dishonored, but the tone is much lighter, which works well. I suppose it might start to feel repetitive eventually, but for now, I would say it’s absolutely worth the Black Friday price.
I finally got myself an incoming PS5, and Deathloop is the first thing I’ve really wanted in the next generation. I had heard it was a messy launch though, so I hope it runs well by the time I get it.
I’m playing it on a PS5, and I’ve had no issues.
Nice! That makes it hard to hold out on purchasing it until a deal. D:
I had one crash that didn’t really hurt me, and it’s been totally solid other than that.
I like it, but going back to the same locations time and time again gets a little tedious after a while. I’ve probably given it about 10-15 hours, and I’m ready for it to end. If it’s on sale for $20-30, probably worth it. Not for the $60 I paid.
It took me a bit to get a handle on the mechanics, but once you understand how everything works, Deathloop is great. Love the combat, the constant dread/elation of the online component, and the deep world building. Get yourself a rifle with exploding bullets, thank me later.
I made the decision to wait and play the game on PS5; and a previous decision to wait for a slim model before buying the latter.Every time I read about this game, those decisions get tested hard.Thus weekend is for playing some of the thousands of games already in my backlog though; including the original Demon’s Souls, which I took a break from and risk losing muscle memory for.
Will be gearing up for the upcoming Dragalia Lost Christmas (called Dragonyule in-universe) event:
This is an especially amusing Event since Ilia is trying to destroy the Scrolls of Perdition, which has been a continual subplot almost from the beginning of the game.
To put this in terms non-players can understand, imagine if Jesus was a hot woman and also a brilliant engineer, and thanks to shenanigans time-traveled from her original time to modern day. Then, using a rocket-powered snowboard bazooka she invented, Fem!Jesus set out to destroy the original Bible. Oh, and her companion (not shown in the thumbnail) is technically her son but also her boyfriend (he’s an artificial creation) who unintentionally spawned a Not!Satan (because Satan is a separate, unrelated being in this game) that was the Big Bad for the first two years of the game.
Calling Sekiro, a game that received near universal praise, “controversial” is disingenuous to say the least.
Yes, the controversial GOTY Awarded, critically and commercially successful game, Sekiro.
You are clearly moving in different circles online than I am.
How is a game with an average score of 90 with 96% above median rating out of 172 critcs reviews (source: Opencritic) and multiple awards at TGA (including GOTY) controversial? If that qualifies as such, basically anything you say about Elden Ring (and probably video games in general) can’t be taken seriously at all by anyone ever.
Sometimes controversial means “I, the writer, have a beef with this, but with a eyebrow raising word choice, can make it seem like this opinion is widely held.”
If you looked up any of my writing on Sekiro, including my entry on it for our Games Of The Year list in 2019, you’ll know I absolutely adore it. That being said, I hang out online with a fair number of From Software fans and there are a lot of people who view it as an unfortunate deviation from the Souls formula – especially the decision to not include summoning or other abilities to mitigate difficulty.
Do you refer to Dark Souls as a controversial game because it is hated by a huge variety of players for being:-Over discussed/referenced-Used as a bad example of why every game should be harder and should not include easier difficulty modes-Just not fun to play in the opinion of many players turned away by the difficultyetc? Because “some people don’t like it” isn’t really what calling something a “controversial” game means. Pokemon Sword and Shield would be a controversial game by that metric, despite being easily one of the best selling titles in the industry…
Now I’m genuinely confused – I never referred to Dark Souls as controversial. (Again, my opinions on Dark Souls are not difficult to find, on this very web site! I penned a love letter to it for the 10th anniversary like a month ago!) My point in the piece was to note that Sekiro was controversial amongst a part of Souls fandom for dropping a huge number of the series’ elements, while staying just close enough to the core formula to draw comparisons. That’s not a value judgment on Sekiro, a game I love. It’s just a reflection of numerous conversations I’ve had with people about the game.All of which was only there in the first place to highlight From’s efforts to break free of the Souls formula in the context of a hybrid game like Elden Ring.
I know you didn’t call Dark Souls controversial, that was directly my point. Objectively speaking, it’s a much more controversial game, it has caused a never ending debate/argument/etc in the gaming community by its existence/popularity/influence. Sekiro wasn’t controversial just because navel gazing Souls fans are concerned it was different. It was a one off game under a different publisher in a different setting with different mechanics… of course it was different. That was most likely the entire purpose of making it, to try some more dramatic departures out. Imo, a “controversial” game would have to be either offensive (various Call of Duties qualify here), extremely divisive in the community (sales would be lower than expected), or divisive in the professional community (scores would be lower than expected). Sekiro fits none of these qualifications, not even slightly.
The only quality it needed in order for me to describe the game as controversial was that I observed it creating controversy in the people I’ve talked to about it – especially since this is an opinion column about my personal experience with this company and their latest effort to do something similar. I suppose I could have used the word “divisive” instead, but since controversial doesn’t actually carry the apparently highly negative connotations people seem to be imbuing it with, I see no issue with the statement.
From Software has been striving to bust out of its own self-built cage since roughly the day that Dark Souls became an international best-seller, usually annoying its fervent fanbase in the process. (The studio’s latest effort, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, barely even qualifies as a “Soulslike,” abandoning many of the key principles of the nascent genre; it was, to say the least, a controversial attempt.) I don’t understand what this paragraph is based on. They’ve been successfully iterating on their style/formula since Dark Souls. This game is another example of that. Sekiro was widely praised and loved and is definitely a soulslike. Most of the complaints I’ve seen are that it’s too difficult, not about the game design.
:”which famously plunked players down at a crossroads in its opening moments, then expected them to throw their corpse at various paths”3, and 2 were total no goes cause you got murdered (the way to Nito and the way to the kings, it just looked like it was a choice tbh, but anyone not heading for the castle had serious training already if intentional
I’ll admit it, I’m pretty skeptical about an open world Souls game. What makes those games great is how tightly they’re scripted, and how everything square inch feels like it has a purpose. But we’ll see…
Splitting time between my first time through Subnautica and a replay of BOTW after 3 years. I have to say that Subnautica is scratching all the itches BOTW has failed to every time I pick it up. It just has such a tight loop of gameplay where everything leads into everything else despite being such a dense and unguided experience. Each push outward or downward is terrifying but yields a glimpse of progress through new materials or blueprints that I can take back to the safety of my base and work on, knowing that the next push outward will go a little smoother and be slightly less nerve-wracking. Everytime I come into a new biome or find a new structure I am on edge and full of awe and the mysteriousness of the world is deepening the further I go.
BOTW feels spectacular but the sense of exploration and progression is so flat. It constantly gets lauded for giving you all the tools right off the bat, but I really hope they don’t stick hard to that principle for future games. There’s something to be said for needing to work towards gear that isn’t just weapons with higher numbers or armor that negates the game’s most interesting effects. I’d love to stumble into some ancient Sheikah tech 45 hours into the game that causes me to rethink my strategies, but I know it’s not coming. I also know I won’t come across challenges or enemies any different than those I’d find in the first few zones around the Plateau. It’s obviously a great game, but man are its shortcomings highlighted by playing it next to Subnautica. I think that they’ll probably knock it out of the park with part 2 now that they’ve laid the groundwork, though.
Oh Martin lol anything to keep you from Winds of Winter. Anyone hoping the series will be finished is deluding themselves. It is comical at this point..
“The sense of being in a dying world, of having escaped the endless corridors of haunted churches and slime-caked caves” – huh, I didn’t know the game was set in West Virginia!
I started the Guardians of the Galaxy game on PS5, because it was one of my rare “buy a current game” choices (at $30 last week on Amazon); I am putting it aside after one “chapter” because it already softlocked once, and although restarting from checkpoint cleared it up, the reddit thread for reporting bugs to Square Enix mentions at least one where the fix is “restart new game”. So I’ll wait for it to become more stable.
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