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Tuesday, March 01, 2022
Old Man Ring - Part 3
In this part of my ongoing series on Elden Ring, I will talk about exploration. I love exploration. It was probably my favorite part of the MMORPGs that I played. So how does Elden Ring stack up?
Elden Ring fulfills two conditions of a good exploration game: It has a large world with not too many restrictions on where you can go, and there are lots of things to discover when exploring that large world. So, yes, I am having fun with exploration in Elden Ring. And if I understand correctly, previous Dark Souls games were much more linear, so open world exploration is really a big plus for Elden Ring for fans of the "souls" genre.
Having said that, I had originally read some reviews that compared Elden Ring with Breath of the Wild. Breath of the Wild is probably the benchmark of open world exploration games. And sorry, Elden Ring doesn't come anywhere close, it isn't even playing in the same league. What made Breath of the Wild special was the fact that if you saw a landmark on the horizon, you a) could get there, and b) there would be something interesting there. Elden Ring fails on both counts of that. Elden Ring has neither climbing nor swimming, and limited jumping, which improves a bit if you are on a horse. But as a result, there are many, many spots on the map to which you simply can't go. Elden Ring sticks to the old school world design of having mountains and water that restrict where you can go, and thus lead the player along certain paths. It's okay, and there still are a lot of places you can explore, but it isn't Breath of the Wild.
Also, in Elden Ring, what you see is not necessarily what you get. I went to interesting looking structures in Elden Ring to find out there was no entrance, and nothing much to find there. I liberated a fortress that had a suspicious absence of interior rooms, several buildings of it simply had no entrance anywhere. I saw magnificent pillars spanning a sort of bridge between islands, only to find that there is no way to reach the top and cross that way. The world design in Elden Ring is great for looks, but it hasn't been designed to be reachable everywhere. You can't even get on the roof of most buildings, so it doesn't even match Assassin's Creed games.
In World of Warcraft, some of my more fun expeditions where taking a low level character to a high level spot for something, e.g. fishing. That usually involved dying several times, because the lower you are in WoW compared to the monsters, the higher their aggro radius becomes. In comparison, exploring higher level areas in Elden Ring is somewhat trivial: Aggro radius is tiny and doesn't get bigger with level difference, monsters are mostly slow to react to your presence, and with the horse you can get very early in the game you can basically get anywhere without much risk.
So, overall I enjoy exploration in Elden Ring, but I would grade it just okay, not great. If you are looking for a replacement for Breath of the Wild, you'll have to wait for Breath of the Wild 2, releasing later this year.
- posted by Tobold @ 10:18 AM Permanent Link
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Yeah BOTW definitely has more freedom in the sense of where the player can go. If you see it you can go to it. Besides leaving the map of course.
I'm glad you're seeing some of the many ways souls games are "easier" then other games. People just say these games are difficult but miss the many obvious things the devs do to swing things the players direction.
You've already figured out you can venture into high level areas without much difficulty. You could now use that knowledge to make yourself much stronger, much faster then following the "normal" progression path.
I'm glad you're seeing some of the many ways souls games are "easier" then other games. People just say these games are difficult but miss the many obvious things the devs do to swing things the players direction.
You've already figured out you can venture into high level areas without much difficulty. You could now use that knowledge to make yourself much stronger, much faster then following the "normal" progression path.
Previous Fromsoftware games have ranged from linear to more sandbox.
In Dark Souls 1 you could do things in just about any order. The world was interconnected and areas were often linked to multiple other areas by shortcuts or side paths. It wasn't open world in the BOTW sense but allowed you do do things however you wished, albeit with some exceptions.
Dark Souls 3 was more linear in that the games zones weren't as interconnected and typically if you wanted to get to Zone B you HAD to go through Zone A as no other Zone connected to B. There were a few ways you could get into high level zones earlier but for the most part you followed an intended order of zones.
Eldenring leads more towards Dark Souls 1 in that you can seemingly do things in whatever order you wish. I myself have already wandered into a high level zone and I've heard you can bypass the entire first legacy dungeon and the main boss of Limgrave and continue past it into the zone after. Supposedly you can even complete a majority of the game before you HAVE to come back and kill that first main boss.
In Dark Souls 1 you could do things in just about any order. The world was interconnected and areas were often linked to multiple other areas by shortcuts or side paths. It wasn't open world in the BOTW sense but allowed you do do things however you wished, albeit with some exceptions.
Dark Souls 3 was more linear in that the games zones weren't as interconnected and typically if you wanted to get to Zone B you HAD to go through Zone A as no other Zone connected to B. There were a few ways you could get into high level zones earlier but for the most part you followed an intended order of zones.
Eldenring leads more towards Dark Souls 1 in that you can seemingly do things in whatever order you wish. I myself have already wandered into a high level zone and I've heard you can bypass the entire first legacy dungeon and the main boss of Limgrave and continue past it into the zone after. Supposedly you can even complete a majority of the game before you HAVE to come back and kill that first main boss.
Tobold, have you played "Immortals: Fenyx Rising" from Ubisoft ? It's often being talked about when people praise BOTW, so I think it could interest you since exploration seems to be in the core of its gameplay.
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