I will be direct: this is one of the greatest games ever made.
Elden Ring will be more than the Game Of The Year 2022. It’ll be more than the game of the decade. I wholeheartedly believe that this work will be lauded as a peak in video games’ history.
And, alongside many reasons I will write in this text, it’s even more impressive to feel this way about a game which was burdened with expectations. Living up to the hype, in an age when it’s cool for people to be cynical just for the sake of it, is no small hurdle.
Then, you turn on the game for the first time:
That epic music alone tells you Elden Ring is here to face the hype.
Expectations even more particular, if you consider that we are talking about a studio – FromSoftware – which has built a reputation and cult following for pin-point perfect difficulty and lore-based storytelling.
This game sets a new standard in those aspects, for the studio, and the gaming landscape as a whole.
But, it will be very difficult for other studios to replicate this. Only FromSoftware had the experience and artistry to deliver on two fronts with this level of precision and communion: fun gameplay in an immaculate world design.
What you do is interesting and where you do it is on the same level – unbeatable formula.
The achievement here is not only what they execute on, but how they want to execute it.
I know some people like to distil games to two points: how does it look, and how does it control?
And, even if Elden Ring delivers unequivocally on those aspects, what elevates them and the overall experience has its roots in inspired art direction and masterclass level design.
FromSoftware remains the best when it comes to creating atmosphere, environmental storytelling and at elevating the concept of Point Of Interest: from places to people, to other oddities, I challenge you to go for more than 30 seconds in Elden Ring without something/someone grabbing your attention.
You always want to keep exploring and engaging with challenges not only due to the controls feeling responsive and smooth, but also because the architecture is both exquisite and grandiose, the items you find are more than means to an end – they look and contain story –, and enemies have true character, making everything/everyone worth your time.
So, how could I be sceptical about this studio’s ability to make their first open world game?
I still don’t know how they pulled it off – from little caves, castles, citadels to open fields, everywhere engages you, without waypoints or quest markers, simply by picking your curiosity. Well, I know how they did it – hours and hours of hard work –, but what’s more impressive, and another contribution to that sense of place, is that nothing looks or feels overly-designed.
It’s the quintessential definition of worldbuilding, where open areas and linear ones speak to each other, make sense of each other and share a design philosophy that tells a story. You don’t ever feel the need for waypoints or quest markers, precisely because FromSoftware are the masters of the Point Of Interest.
This would be the time when I analyse the gameplay loop.
Ironically, a game that relies so heavily on gameplay, and has it so front and centre, is really good at hiding (like the world design) its loops.
That’s what makes it special: you are in the moment, in the world – no tasks, just escapism and adventuring. I.e., the truest rendition of emergent gameplay: more than mechanics and systems coming together in unique and unexpected ways – art, animation, controls, design and storytelling coalescing to transport you to a physical and mental space where primal curiosity is more than enough to compel action.
And you can play this game a billion different ways.
Like I said, it’s more than permutations of mechanics on mechanics. Garments, talismans, armaments, skills, sorceries, incantations and spirits, even if not all powerful, all have a beautiful design to show or a meaningful story to tell.
You are not expressing yourself just through stats, attacks and min-maxing, but also through the connections to the world and lore of your equipment. Those objects or those techniques have a reason to be, and this makes you even more in tune with your place and actions.
I can’t think of a more profound throughline for interactive storytelling.
And this brings me to the conclusion of this text.
I have yet to talk about how the music knows its place – from naturalistic to encouraging. Or how the sound design is such a contribution for physical sensations, like fear and triumph.
But, I can’t end this opinion piece without writing about the impact the story of this game had on me.
In the intro, I wrote “What you do is interesting and where you do it is on the same level”. I deliberately left out the Why you do it. That, of course, is even more unique from person to person. For me, it was the story.
My favourite author is Tolkien, and years ago I wrote on this website that I found the lore-based storytelling of Souls the best videogame “adaptation” of the British scholar’s legendarium.
Elden Ring, with Tolkien’s admirer George R. R. Martin’s mint to its setting and worldbuilding, is the full realisation of that style and promise. It is the closest I ever felt to be playing a character in my favourite book of all time – The Silmarillion.
It’s that epic and, more importantly, non-explicit. That’s something that is sorely needed in the video games’ industry: storytelling that treats its audience as adults with imagination and curiosity to interpret metaphors and meaning.
The characters and the places are more fleshed-out and lived-in as they ever been in a FromSoftware game. And the story of how their relations evolved through what it feels like a very long time, culminating in the present state of the world, and what it’s saying about how we tend to be enchanted by the constant progress and cleanness brought about by the concentration of capital is what is speaking to me.
Particularly how your character relates to all that. A destructive agent, like nature, who can show that the true riches come from the complementarity of ideas (not ideology), qualities and defects of different subcultures.
After playing more than 100 hours, exclusively for 3 months straight, I feel like Elden Ring might be my new favourite game of all time. What makes me say that? The fact that, after all that, after beating every boss of the game and collecting all legendary items, 2 days after rolling credits, I feel like I will jump back in from the start.
I almost never replay games, let alone right after finishing it. I think the one enchanted is me.
I highly recommend this experience. I paid 70 euros for it, and now feels like a bargain. Not because of the quantity of hours I’m getting from it, but the quality of hours.
And if you have the premade idea that FromSoftware games are not for you, either because of their difficulty or their non-explicit narratives, I assure you: this is, by far, the easiest of their games, and, by far, their most grandiose story.
Opinion Seed 