Alright so lets go over this one more time.
Starting with: Given that It's generally the same people in here and my posts are first and foremost, for the people in here, I usually imagine us to all be on the same page. So my posts are
addative and are supposed to work in conjunction with one another, adding context to past things and extrapolating on other things further.
Like Love Machine eloquently put it above. It's not about literally going back to Dark Souls in all but name. But given that this is a Fromsoft game, a medieval fantasy action role playing game at that, there are going to be similarities in terms of design and direction more so than any other game. Like siblings, they share the same DNA as they're from the same creators. But also like siblings, two siblings could look similar and have the same general values due to having the same background but have completely different interests.
While Dark Souls 1 is not where it all started, Its kind of irrelevant to the immediate discussion given its approach to world design is so distinctly different from its successors. Elden Ring included. Dark Souls 1 is a more appropriate starting point given that not only was it the first of the bunch to implement that sort of interconnected design but it has design philosophies that were not prioritized or had been abandoned in its successors and that is mainly what I'm alluding to.
Again, bringing back some of those design philosophies and thinking about how it can be done differently, in a different context or done better. A big one, again, being the players freedom of choice in direction and how to approach a situation.
But that does not mean that we're returning to the essentially hallway esque design of Dark Souls 1 where clever level design makes the world seem a lot larger than it is. There will still be elements of that as there are technical constraints and it's kind of hard to put a fully playable map of a country into a game without concessions (See: Witcher 3) but instead, this time things are actually large, actually open and you're actually traveling large distances to get to far off places, rather than traveling a few blocks to end up in a different castle.
I've previously likened it to Shadows Of The Colossus, that is still true. But it doesn't really tell the whole story. Because while SOTC is open, vast and there is an important sense of scale and distance, and it cleverly weaves between large open landscapes with different vistas down into pathways and decrepit ruins and back outward again. It's incredibly
empty and your freedom is limited and while there are variations in vistas through the use of different biomes, everything conforms to the same sort of visual design philosophies, which works for this game because there isn't much in it, but wouldn't work for a From game. You
can technically go anywhere you want, but that doesn't mean much when the only thing you can really do is kill the Colossi and you
have to kill the Colossi in a specific order.
Which isn't really the image I want to depict of Elden Ring. Yes the vastness, the openness, the freedom, the clever funneling of player pathing. But less so the emptiness and the lack of player freedom or player choice.
Which again, goes back into Dark Souls 1's design philosophies. These together start to form the bedrock of the world design and then you start adding things on top of that.
Dynamic day/night cycles, lighting, weather, I'll even throw you a bone and say wildlife, enemies out in the open world that change their positioning, both big and small. Things that make the world feel like it lives and breathes and doesn't just exist as your playground and while they're relatively minor when looked at as singular elements. You start to take all of these elements and put them together and ultimately what you have is something that again, shares the same DNA as past games, but culminates into something different.
Even just looking at weather, day/night and lighting on its own is cool to me, because while: yes they're in so many games that its not inherently interesting or special. When you look at past games, with very few, contextual exceptions. Every area and locale is going to look essentially the same from when you enter to when you leave or even when you come back. Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro dabble in time of day changes, but these are all irreversible and in my opinion, especially in the case of Dark Souls 3, aren't really super effective in changing the mood and atmosphere of an area and any fan of these games, especially when it comes to world should know that mood and atmosphere are huge parts of what makes these worlds and zones special.
You could enter a zone at dawn on a rainy day and exit with the night setting in and clouds clearing the way for the sky(which will be fantastic for the screenshot community), and even that can change more than just atmosphere with different enemies moving into the scene. Perhaps from there you've decided you're done with this area, see something in the distance and start making an effort to travel in that direction to see what it is.
Which is sort of another element of Dark Souls, you can see Duke's Archives from Undead Burg, and so on and so forth, but due to the way that the game is constructed, you can't really meaningfully execute on the dream of "see that, go there" of your own volition because the game will funnel you there when the game decides its time. Here it's different.
Which is why its not "Just Dark Souls 4". Yes there are elements of Dark Souls, which is to be expected given that again, this is a Fromsoftware Medieval Action Roleplaying Game but its taking the design elements of past games and taking them in a different direction and like Miyazaki said, doing things they couldn't before.
And like Love Machine said, world and lore are huge parts of what make these places feel distinct and unique. Yes there will be some similarities, but in the same way that the actual game world has elements of Dark Souls that have been approached differently while also having its own new ones that come together to create something unique. The world and lore will be the same, there will be dragons, but that doesn't mean its just Dark Souls 4 and personally I'm super happy with the direction that's been taken with the lore and story, more so than Dark Souls, but we will save that conversation for another time.
So while yes, you're not getting 10 million NPC's with 30 million lines of dialogue or BOTW style exploration, Sekiro combat depth or anything that is all that revolutionary (the why should be obvious for many reasons that I can't be bothered to explain right now) , that doesn't mean this game isn't as robust and worthwhile of the moniker of open world (or more specifically Open Field) or is
just another Dark Souls. It's taking that baseline and seeing what else can be done with it.
*sigh* I come to this thread to get away from Star Wars talk. You're breaking my heart Omni.
I don't know what you mean, this is my Elden Ring lore post. Completely original, pulled straight from the GRRM book.
