In 2017, I was so addicted to Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild that I barely touched my gaming PC for a month. I thought I was getting tired of open-world games and Zelda, but Breath of the Wild’s freewheeling approach to exploration made me feel like I was an honest-to-God adventurer in a video game for the first time in a decade. I’m in the mood. It sold ten million copies a year. I certainly thought Breath of the Wild would be a big change in open world game design.
Elden Ring was payback to a decade of underdog stories
Then it wasn’t.
It took five years for another game to captivate me like Breath of the Wild, but last year Elden Ring did it. I had him play and write Elden Ring every day for a month while I was at work, then boot up and play for hours more at night. Looking back at the impact Elden Ring had on the eve of his one-year anniversary, it’s tempting to declare the same.sell elden ring 20 1 million sheets in a year. Surely that would mean a big shift in open world game design, right?
I think the opposite is more likely. No one can imitate Elden Ring’s success.
rising, discoloration
I could go on and on about how Elden Ring is distinctly different from Ubisoft, Bethesda, or Rockstar’s open world games. No skins or paid level boosts, no sidequest checklists, no glowing waypoints to show you where to go next. Cryptic NPC dialogue, twisting castle ramparts, and giant bosses. blah blah We all know the deal.
Because of these design decisions, Elden Ring was not a phenomenon. It was a phenomenon, as it was the payback to a decade of underdog stories, and the experience of seeing Elden Ring become the triumphant, ultimate version of the game FromSoftware has been creating and remaking has been an experience in and of itself. was entertainment. If Dark Souls was a scruffy young Rocky his Balboa who puts on Apollo Creed a shocking match, Elden Ring was Rocky at the end of Rocky 4. You can’t help but get caught up in the spectacle.
Millions of people have told themselves this will eventually be the From Software game they “get”.
Dark Souls is a mid-2000s game, much like today’s “Boomer Shooter” like Dusk skipped a couple of decades of FPS evolution to start a new timeline from its roots in 1997 Quake. Ignoring the conventions of the 80’s or ’80’s roughshod reimagined. 90’s RPG in more exciting 3D. Being able to create a game that evokes a sadistic DM’s dirty Dungeons & Dragons campaign and proving that people are willing to submit was a total shocker.
Designers can’t stop rave about its raw genius, and players either join soul cults or get mad that no one is shutting up about how this game is positively offensive. But even the haters who were killed by skeletons and shoved discs in the closet in the first half hour of Dark Souls got caught up in the Elden Ring hype. It was an event.An open world, simplified multiplayer, and easy fast travel combine to bring millions of this It’s going to be the FromSoftware game they finally ‘get’. Elden Ring was officially too big to ignore.
How do you repeat that trajectory? you don’t.
Of course you can try. After Elden Ring’s massive success, some open world games may try to parrot out the best Elden Ring ideas. Even though they’ve been mostly present in Souls games for the past decade.
- May remove quest designs with more explicit waypoints for cryptic requests from cryptic NPCs
- Perhaps they recognize the power of FromSoftware’s utterly ridiculous yet perfect messaging system to ease the loneliness of an oppressive world.
- Perhaps it reflects Elden Ring’s focus on mood, with an aesthetic more classically inspired than raw ray-traced fidelity.
- Perhaps they’ll reject the over-reliance on the same skill tree as Triple-A’s current pile of loot.
- Maybe they go all-in on the sheer weirdness as shit bosses
But putting one or all of these pieces together doesn’t make the game feel (or sell) like Elden Ring. This makes corpse run every hard thing or death any of the last decade’s “Soul-like”.
They were of Dark Souls, but they weren’t Dark Souls. Just like any other boxing movie is Rocky. Rocky is an enigmatic mass that enters your throat in 30 seconds. I will fly nowGame of Thrones is a brutally challenging paradox that is often absolutely hilarious.
The downside to Dark Souls and Elden Ring is, for the most part, the idiosyncrasies that converts carry with them as part of their appeal. “Fat Rolling” For dragons that take fall damage. Other Open World Game Developers Help 20 Million Gamers most messed up and nasty man A terrible world will never replicate the success of Elden Ring.
They’ve got a few things to catch up on: FromSoftware has honed the art of insanely small guys decadesThat’s how you know it comes from the heart.
