\"Do they want me to keep reading every single piece of armor every time I want to remember what happened area X?\"
Personally, I never got this style of storytelling. I don\'t think it even makes logical sense. Did the ancients conveniently leave memos written on every artifact and tool you come across? Does your player character have Bourne-esque memory flashes? How are you even getting this information?
For comparison\'s sake, games like Zelda or Metroid have logs for storytelling, but they tend to be more secondary forms of exposition, and you also have a fairy companion that explains things, or a computer AI that scans the world. But how does it work in the Souls games?
I understand the complexity of the story just fine. Its just a needless chore to remember every single piece of crucial detail that I already collected, especially when you consider that this game isn\'t linear. And this isn\'t even considering that I have a job and a life to take care of. When it was a simple linear game with optional details, it was fine. But now its a HUGE world and the crucial details are hidden.
And the thing about the style of storytelling of Dark Souls was that it had optional layers. You were always given what you needed to comprehend the scenario as a whole and your mission within it, but if you were interested in seeing why this place was drowned in water, or why this swamp turned poisonous, the explanation was within the items that you found in said areas, instead of being given as a long expository dialogue.
\"YOUR problem, not the game\'s\" isn\'t a response. So any story is beyond criticism, no matter how convoluted?
I do appreciate layers of storytelling; I just question the logic of that particular one. There\'s nothing logical in the game\'s world that draws my attention to inexplicable item logs for storytelling. Also, even after playing through the first Dark Souls twice, I find the \"top layer\" too obscure. I still don\'t get what the difference is between the Ages of Fire/Dark and why I should care.
For what it\'s worth, as someone who\'s bounced off the surface layer a few times playing it on a friend\'s Xbox, I think the biggest problem is that the open world stuff combines badly with the traditional brand of gameplay and challenge. It\'s hard to feel like I\'m making meaningful progress a lot of the time, and that From has always been bad at teaching people how to play their games or giving them directions where to go is compounded by such an open-ended structure.
I agree. A LOT of the old brand of From Software gameplay mashes badly with open world for several reasons. I couldn\'t delve much into it in the review due size limitations, but for example, the distribution of weapons and armor is wonky due the map size. There is too little weapons and armor at the start, and by the end, too much that won\'t be used because the broken boss balance will force players into cheesy builds. Speaking of boss weapons, 80% of them use faith scaling, nice and all if you want to play meta with them having \'faith\' in the Erdtree, but in practice any other build will be excluded. Wizards are in a weird position, because most of their spells do very little damage compared to the amount of FP they cost... and the rest is broken. (I\'m not even touching Azure Comet, its such a situational spell with so many requirements to work that its fine, I\'m talking about Magic Glintblade, it makes the A.I go bananas)
A LOT of thing went untested and the engine didn\'t mesh well with such an immense map, there are TONS of bugs such as the infamous dog that can hit 11k damage (without adding the bleed effect), and weirdly, some dungeons could be cut without harm to the game overall. Many of the rewards you find end up useless, after grinding through repeated tombs with repeated bosses.
Honestly I think that they spent so much time fine-tuning the exploration and overworld that everything else was rushed.
- For comparison\'s sake, games like Zelda or Metroid have logs for storytelling, but they tend to be more secondary forms of exposition, and you also have a fairy companion that explains things, or a computer AI that scans the world. But how does it work in the Souls games?
But isn\'t that the same for From Soft games? all the info found in the items is not necessary, it\'s just secondary information for world building. What \"vital\" information did you get from it.
Exactly. OP is complaining the story isn\'t spoon fed to them
@Fudge Muppet Also not a response. More accessibility is a valid preference.
@marcellX Perhaps I\'m mistaken about the secondary/vital dichotomy. It\'s more that there\'s nothing logical in the \"primary\" layer that draws my attention to the \"secondary\" one. Like a presumed journal, or a computer log. But Souls also has a more minimalist \"up to interpretation\" type of storytelling. I googled a wiki entry for the Age of Dark, and the first hit reads \"What exactly the term \"Age of Dark\" implies is never made explicitly clear in the games, however it is stated in the canonical Dark Souls Trilogy Compendium...\" So... yeah. Plus, NP Cs don\'t seem to restate info if you forgot/missed what they said.
Which is also definitely not the same for all of From Soft. Sekiro has more upfront and explicit storytelling, and repeatedly makes your main objective clear.
Well, I got it from Sekiro, which was developed alongside Elden Ring
\"In fact, my opinion is that stretching the Dark Souls Formula into an open sandbox opened cracks that the From Developers couldn\'t deal with\"
Exactly. For example, the early game is unbalanced as hell because they fully expect you to be overleveled by the time you fight Margitt. But also, it\'s hard to get a decent number of souls because most legacy bosses only give you a few thousand.
Find the Light in the Dark
@Ninja######
Isn't that the point of the age of dark? there's the clash between the almost endless diminishing strugle to keep the age of fire going but the risk of the unknown of the eventual follow up. The issue is that the age of dark is the unknown future. A better example would be the current story, setting and characters/enemies.
- Primary: You need to reach Annor Londo to get the lordvessel andSecondary: Annor Londo's current state is an illusion created by GwyndolinItem: The gods left Anor Londo long ago; Smaugh was a cannibal; Gwyndolin was raised as a girl, etc.
Meawhile Sekiro
- Primary: You need to defeat the guardian ape to get the lotus flower.Secondary: the guardian ape had a mate and now has a new one.Item: the lotus flower was used to attact female apes.
Now you can say you find Sekiro's story more interesting and thus more complelled to know more about it but that aspect has always been the same.
...The lordvessel was in Anor Londo? Wait, what was the deal with the lordvessel again?
I dunno, I just couldn't follow the "primary" objective of Dark Souls well. I swear I was trying to figure out at least the basics, but the best broad understanding I remember was "I have to go to... this place to... ring bells so that... something will happen and... I can go to this fortress and... ooh, this kingdom is pretty... there's lords and souls and... the Dark Soul and... Age of Fire/Dark!"
Maybe it's because I was following Fightin Cowboy's guidance most of the time, and so did the dark path first or something.
The "primary" objective of Sekiro was simple: I have to rescue my young lord. And when I did that, in case I hadn't yet noticed, the lord clearly spells out that he hates his power to grant immortality and wants to get rid of it. That becomes the new objective.
Yeah, the lordvessel is in Anor Londo, guarded by Ornstein and Smaugh (arguably one of the best fights in the whole series). The Lordvessel is needed to open the gates of the first flame, after you put the souls of the lords in it (Nito, Four Kings, Seath the Scaleless and Bed of Chaos). Frampt does tell you this though.
The first game was quite straightforward, telling you what you had to do (Ring the bells, get the lordvessel, kill the four gods, kill Gwyn), and just letting you explore the paths available or return to spots after you killed something specific. It just offered the hidden layers and the secret path such as Kaathe (but of course it also had its \'guide dangit\' moments, because From, they were just a FEW instead of half of the frigging game).
Also it seems that Elden Ring was meant to have something akin to a bestiary and a journal, but it was axed. Dammit. Why!?
...Oh. Well, I guess that partly explains it. FightinCowboy recommended I talk to Kaathe instead of Frampt, so that's what I did on my first playthrough.
That\'s... kinda like going \"extra features\" content before playing the full game. Kaathe just tells you about how Frampt is \'lying\' (which can also be a lie of his own). Basically each serpent is serving a different agenda, and its up to you to interpret everything and choose as you see fit. Frampt wants to keep the fire going to maintain the godly status quo, and Kaathe wants to snuff it so the age of dark (and mankind) to rise.
@Nija
The Lordvessel is that where you put the souls to open the final gate. It's very spell out by either of the snakes. Dark Souls plot is light the fire, that's it. Now you can say, well you have to ring the 2 bells, get the lordvessel, kill the 4 bosses to put their souls in the lordvessel to open the gate to light the fire but you can just as easily break down Sekiro. You return 3 times to the same palace which is in a differelt state each time; a giant straw man takes you to snake, fish heaven to ultimately fight a sword wielding dragon. etc.
But since I was following that guide, I never spoke with Frampt on my first playthrough, just Kaathe. He's in the Abyss, so I only met him long after I had already gotten the lordvessel. I also didn't light the fire and walked away for The Dark Lord ending.
I looked up Kaathe's monologue, and it's pretty lengthy and feels like it could benefit from preexisting context. Like SkullWriter said, it was like "extra features" content before a normal playthrough.
Leave a Comment:
The Cracks on the Ring
I loved Elden Ring, I don't regret purchasing it on launch, and had a ton of fun with it. From really nailed the Sandbox aspect of the game allowing the player to explore the world at their own pace, keeping most landmarks within sight in astonishing visuals. I recommend it for people who were afraid of the souls series.
But the purpose of this review is to address problems that many reviewers didn't delve into.
This game is fun, but as the time of this review, its absolutely broken.
Ruins the game? No. Ruins the fun? Depends on your play style, but from a technical standpoint (won't discuss if boss x or y is 'cool' nor story) its still broken. In fact, my opinion is that stretching the Dark Souls Formula into an open sandbox opened cracks that the From Developers couldn't deal with. And yes, I played every single Soulsborne title from From, with multiple builds (I will try to be brief due size constraints).
Basically, most bosses (and enemies) have traits that, while isolated, aren't especially harmful, but when repeated over and over, or worse, joined, makes their specific points a chore to go through having:
A- Tracking attacks (will track where the player is and attack that specific spot, even if they roll)
B- Input-tracking (did you press the attack button? They will immediately jump back, hit the healing button? They will jump to where you are and attack you).
C- An extremely aggressive A.I with RNG attack pattern.
D- Pack a whollop of damage, capable of downing even a tank-build player with just one or few hits.
And the further into the game you go, the more you see these traits cranked up to eleven or intertwined. Margit had one tracking attack and kept high aggressivity, and his A.I was varied enough that you were able to give one or two hits between his attacks. No problem! Except that, in later bosses, these traits are often combined into attack messes that will immediately react to you counter-attacking, closing already tight punishment windows and often spamming area of effect attacks that will kill the player. Got a sliver of hp left? They will react to you either backing down, or worse, drinking estus. And don't forget that this game is HUGE. You will see the same boss over and over again, worse, with dual or even trio versions. Now add everything together. You have bosses with random patterns of punishing moves that won't leave many windows of opportunity and will chase you. This also have the added effect of making the consumables nearly useless. Some of the ingredients of the harder-hitting consumables are finite, so why waste them in a boss can one-shot you? Enemies will often go far beyond their usual range to hunt you down and also have tracker strikes and their a.i is so disjointed that they break at weird thigns. I defeated the first stage of the last boss by standing literally still and just attacking. Most of the fights where you can ride your horse were obviously not prepared for hit-and-run combat, many of the weapons have problems that are still being patched (by mostly toning down). So it doesn't feel balanced, more that both sides of the struggle have nukes.
Also, for those saying that "I haven't updated my vit enough", I did. The same problems are there, and you can still be killed by an over-aggressive combo that will stun-lock you to death at the smallest misstep.
The size of the game also presented problems on its own not just to repetition. NP Cs in previous Fromsoft games often disappeared, but followed the player's path, and due to its linearity were often easy to find (with 'guide dang it' exceptions). The patch that shows where the npcs are on the map was like a band-aid to a bullet wound, because it won't say where they move to, and since they WILL go to areas that you may have cleared, you'll still have to check the guides regardless.
And while I won't discuss the story itself, the From Soft style of storytelling is ill-suited for a game so large. They need to give the player journal to keep track of the plot (a la 'Yakuza' that updates as you meet npcs), because, sincerely, how do you expect to keep track of a npc that was only mentioned in the intro, once, and then appears at the end? Do they want me to keep reading every single piece of armor every time I want to remember what happened area X? It gets egregious when you remember that the names are alliterative. Who is Godwin? Wasn't Godfrey? No, it was Godrick. Didn't I just fight Ranni? No it was Renalla. And so on. Remember, this is a full open-world, not linear and contained. Add 50h exploring another side of the map, and I couldn't remember who was who. My saving grace was Gideon who at least reminded me of who SOME of those people were.
Lastly... I feel that the soundtrack is quite weak. Dark Souls 1 had haunting songs, battle-ready songs, sad and tragic songs, every one fitting their boss like a glove. I honestly can only remember Elden Ring's last boss soundtrack because it finally pumped things up.
In the end, if you haven't bought it, I do reccomend it, but at least after some patches. And for the love of Jolly Cooperation, ignore the 'Git Gud' people, they came out of the woods in force for this one.