I’ve spent a lot of time since this last message JoJoestar trying to understand and come to terms with the bitterness I have been left with by Elden Ring and I’d like to share some thoughts on what I think has happened to me and the issues I have with it (this is going to be a rather long read, hope you guys put up with it).
A lot of my criticisms have surrounded in one way or another the idea of repetition and recycled content as the main culprits of this game’s problems, and while I do think that’s probably the main issue this game has, it doesn’t explain the whole situation and why I feel this game is a disappointment even though at an objective level I’m very conscious of its many successes. I know Elden Ring is a good game but for some reason I don’t feel that way. At a rational level I’m aware this probably deserves to be game of the year, but at a sentimental level I feel a great deal of negativity and rejection towards it.
My main realization has to do with what a Souls game is (to me), the relationship I maintain with them (and which I consider to be ideal), and how all of that translates to all the changes and transformations derived from the adoption of the open world format.
A Souls game is inherently more demanding than the average game for a lot of reasons. Not talking about skill or mechanical difficulty here, but rather, that these are games that require a lot of investment at many levels to correctly understand not only the game’s narrative, but also a great deal of its systems and how everything works, from the combat to the npc interactions. This isn’t unique to this franchise by any means, Pathologic 2, Caves of Qud or, let’s say, any random realistic military submarine videogame, are all examples of videogames that are incredibly demanding, each for a different set of reasons.
If you are, like me, the type of player who wants to piece everything together and go deep in understanding and engaging with the world, who feels compelled to pay attention to all the details in the level design, enemy placement and generally speaking, looking for clues everywhere, Elden Ring is… a pretty insane amount of work, one I’m almost inclined to say no piece of media should ask from anyone. Add the mechanical friction and difficulty to the mix and all the traditional stressors derived from the constant tension and sense of danger, the fear of missing some quest or important item and the general flow of the game and multiply them by 200 which is how much bigger and denser this game is compared to the others in the series.
Take a moment to consider the tremendous amount of effort, time, focus and concentration this game seems to demand from this specific type of player, who has, up to this point, been very happy to dedicate all those to smaller, more focused and directed experiences, and who is, probably naively, assuming this game will also be at that level. Consider also that this player has chosen to be confronted with the game directly, and has no external tools to calibrate how different this game may be compared to the others in the series and how much they should adapt their effort; but also that, as a Souls game, this is a thing that expects the player to put major work and does absolutely nothing to communicate in advance, adapt or adjust those expectations. This type of player is unknowingly about to completely devote all this tremendous amount of concentration and effort over one full month of their free time with its days and its nights to something that, to put it simply, they have complete trust in (a trust developed over the course of 13 years and 5 excellent games).
And it is NOW, at this specific point, when you add the bland and uninspired aspects of Elden Rings to the mix. The tedium of the repeated content, which for this player wasn’t as obvious at the 40 hour mark, but became insufferable at the 100th. The ubisoft-style open world populated with its limited array of iterated and palette-swapped activities (the tombs with runes, the scarabs, the churchs with its invariable sacred tears, the ruins with its invariable cellar, the minor erdtrees with its invariable erdtree avatar). When, at the third week of sustained effort, and after having already killed 9 Ulcerated Spirit Trees (a demanding enemy which isn’t specially fun to fight with) in what this player assumes it’s every conceivable permutation of that particular encounter, sees the game shamelessly presenting a battle with 3 copies of this enemy simultaneously, at the 150th hour of play time… it’s very hard for this type of player not feeling something break inside them.
That no matter how you put it, this game is not as meticulously crafted and carefully conceived as the others by the same director, that it’s not even close in that regard. That this game is very happy to accept being Just A Videogame, being fun and engaging and full of content (builds, weapons, spells, weapon arts, summons) in all the universally accepted and mainstream ways of a, let’s say, Skyrim or Monster Hunter, as it wants to develop a world and offer a hand crafted textually and thematically rich experience. But also the lingering suspicion that even if it really was that good, it would still be… too much, in almost every way.
So the issue is not only that Elden Ring happens to be an open world game with some of its worst vices, the problem is that this is also an open world game which happens to be a Souls game, as all-encompassing and time consuming as the rest, but which is not as finely tuned as it should be given what it asks from its players. So ironically, the problem is two-folded, a great Souls game let down by the fact that it also has to function as a successful open world game, and the best open world game ever made, let down by the fact that is a Souls game with all the associated taxes that fact comes with. How much better would Elden Ring be if it was a more light-hearted experience, like Breath of the Wild, Dragon Quest or a Yakuza game?
This player, which no surprises of course it’s me, doesn’t want to be facetious and is very aware that there is a good amount of care and characteristically Souls level of detail in Elden Ring, and generally speaking those align with the parts of the game I have enjoyed the most, which I have already mentioned a couple of times but that can be summarized as: every legacy dungeon and every place that could belong to any of the other games. Places that truth be told, could belong to a better version of Elden Ring itself, with a less bloated and uninteresting content-filled overworld to trudge through.
Because here’s the thing: that level of demand actually works both ways, I can be willing to devote to Miyazaki and From all of my limited free time, but for that relationship to be fair and horizontal, Miyazaki and From have to correspond that level of commitment from its players, if they choose to put them through the ordeal of a 200 hour long videogame where every step in the wrong direction is a potentially missed item which, worst case scenario, could hold the key to undestanding the whole narrative, or a broken quest/storyline holding information just as valuable (which is, sorry, exactly the case here, specially at launch without the npc map markers). This is a game that comparatively asks so, so much more than the average Souls experience, but fails to proportionally deliver to the committed player.
Elden Ring is, all things considered, a pretty good game. In fact, it may even be a fantastic videogame, one of the greats. It definitely is the open world game that has managed to host the “most” of the type of experience I generally want to have in a videogame. How strange it is, then, that I feel that is not worth it, that my gut feeling with it is that it is less good than it should, given what I had to put up of myself to play it.
There is one last thing I would like to acknowledge here. I feel like in a community less welcoming and willing to engage in a conversation than this one, the easiest way to counterargument everything I said here would clearly be “nobody forced you to play this way, why should that be an issue with the game”. And while that is partially true, it doesn’t change that a) this is a style of play encouraged and cultivated by all the game systems and how everything works (because those systems are largely the same as the other games in the series) and b) this is how I played all the other From games, with no issues. And to be completely honest, this is how I like and want to engage with games in general, and how I played, for example, Silent Hill, ICO/SotC, Symphony of the Night, Nier, Clock Tower and, quite frankly, all of the games I consider my favorites. If Elden Ring is unable to sustain that level of attention and scrutiny on my part, as opposed to the other games in the series, where it was not only encouraged but actively rewarded, I’m inclined to think it’s either an issue with the game in particular, or that it’s a game that is not well suited for this archetypical type of player I have been trying to portray (which again, I think it has been the ideal type of player Souls games have traditionally sought out).
I would also like to make clear that is not me trying to dunk on the game and the people who enjoy it. Quite the opposite, in fact, this is something resembling therapy, to be honest. Me trying to come to terms and accept what I have been left feeling, and why I am so bitter at something so obviously stupid as a videogame. At the end of the day what I feel is envy towards everyone who is able to enjoy this thing, because I wish I could do that! Not enjoying things is a lot worse than being spoke to and touched by them, and I sure wish I wasn’t feeling like writing this several thousand words thing. But after all Insert Credit is a place where I think all these things can be acknowledged and discussed and this is why I chose to share this here instead of writing in medium or using a blog or whatever. To anyone who read up to this point, I hope I didn’t make you lose your time as I feel like this game made me lose mine. And if by any chance you are someone who has also been left disappointed, here’s someone who understands well.