Omni if you had to compare Elden Ring to a progressive rock song what would it be? The people need answers.
Honestly I don't even really listen to enough progressive rock to have even a silly answer for this. I was never really able to, or at least never took the time to get into stuff like Rush or Dream Theater or anything adjacent as technical musical wankery for technical musical wankery's sake never really interested me. Pink Floyd and Opeth (Ghost Reveries, but otherwise Blackwater Park and everything that leads up to it) are more my speed but beyond that I'm pretty prog rock illiterate.
I think there's a bit of a fine line here. I understand some of the complaints that people might have with the long, multi-phase boss fights like Friede and the Sword Saint, but at the same time, I think those are also some of the most spectacular and rewarding fights that they've ever made.
It's also worth noting that the difficulty scaling might change a bit here with the open-world aspect, as I expect there'll be some freedom in terms of the order in which players tackle the content, as opposed to the more linear design of DS3 and Sekiro.
For sure
I personally wouldn't want the long, more mechanic heavy fights like Friede, Sword Saint to go away, but I can understand if someone wouldn't want them along the critical path. Though for myself I'd just be happy with healthpools being brought down a bit or at the very least not continuing to escalate when it comes to multi-phase, multi-health bar fights or especially in the cases of Demon of Hatred and Midir.
Though I can also agree with the fact that if a fight is going to have multiple phases/health bars, those phases should be mechanically different from one another rather than just having a second or third health bar just because.
I am curious to see how difficulty in Elden Ring plays out. One the one hand, you have From as a developer and their reputation for challenging games, and I'm sure they will continue that tradition. But on the other hand, if any part of the collaboration with GRRM is marketing and attempting to capture a larger audience, then I can see providing tools like co-op and summons and maybe clarify those to make the potential of getting through the game higher. It'll be interesting to see how they handle it.
I think this is an interesting point. I found the challenge of endgame bosses in Dark Souls 3 like Sister Friede/Nameless King/Midir to be annoying with some of the bloat and punishes, whereas, with the exception of Demon of Hatred, I didn't feel the same way about Sekiro. I found it hard as balls, but because it was testing me in different ways, I guess it didn't bother me as much. But with Dark Souls 3 needing to change things up and put a new spin on a system where there are 100 bosses preceding those bosses in roughly the same system, it is a challenge to meaningfully change the difficulty. I'm hoping then that Elden Ring provides enough tweaks to the Dark Souls formula so that it is less an escalation of Dark Souls difficulty, and more providing difficulty by finding new ways to challenge and test players.
I wouldn't really put much stock into the games difficulty or accessibility being adjusted because of GRRM being attached to the project tbh, not saying that's exactly what you're implying but it is something I've seen brought up a lot. Miyazaki had addressed this in an interview from last June.
But addressing your other point, I would agree in that I feel Sekiro is largely pretty fair, though if you miss upgrades some fights can end up being more punishing than they need to be. But I did personally enjoy the more focused nature of the fights that revolve around your ability to "become" the Shinobi of myth and face challenges based around that.
Though in the case of Dark Souls 3 and From ARPG's in general, I think it's also worth noting that these fights then also have to be able to be defeated by a much wider variety of builds (Which From keeps freeform, which increases the number of playstyles that need to be "viable") which also affect their ability to design and balance challenging fights. So just adding and tweaking combat mechanics isn't really the silver bullet solution (especially when these mechanics need to also work for most if not all builds) but of course it helps. It's a bit of a difficult issue to properly navigate for sure.
I think in the case of Bloodborne and Sekiro in particularly, the more focused build variety works in their favor in that regard as it allows them to focus in on a more narrow set of playstyles and design fights around those rather than the much greater variety of something that is more RPG heavy like Dark Souls.
I've been lurking these parts for a long while now, mostly for the infamous Omniposts 🙂 Love you and everything you're doing for this community, in those times of silence I'm at a loss for words and unable to emphasize how much ANY kind of insight into this game means to me, and most certainly, every other FROM fan... On the current topic of difficulty though, I felt I should break the lurker status and throw out this one question... Will SL1 runs still be possible in Elden Ring? Or something equivalent? I'm this guy who got that taste of adrenaline out of those games and once DS3 came out, I went in blind and straight up SL1 for the very first playthrough - I can only say that it was the most memorable and the most intense gaming experience of my life. And repeating this ordeal is something I'm desperately waiting to experience once more!
Much appreciated! I'm genuinely glad that what I do means something to you guys and its always nice to hear it.
As for SL1 runs, not sure if you mean technically possible or humanly possible. They know people like to do stuff like that and I don't see any reason for them to remove ones ability to engage in personally set challenging content like that. I haven't really "checked" for myself, but if something works, is unobtrusive and isn't detrimental to the game then they'll generally just keep it and in the case of stuff like SL1 runs in particular, or things similar they generally prefer to let players engage in their own personally defined challenges rather than making rigid restrictions which is why you generally see a lack of challenge modes across these games.
Whether or not it's humanly possible for one to do, I don't know, it's definitely beyond my own ability. A few years ago I probably would've said it's not possible to beat these games with a dance pad or guitar hero controller, but I've been proven wrong numerous times on that.
Hope that helps!
please say Atom Heart Mother please say Atom Heart Mother please say Atom Heart Mother please say Atom Heart Mother please say Atom Heart Mother
Admittedly, I've always been more of an Animals guy myself.
Obviously not being the same beast, but do you see the world and art direction in Elden Ring to be something that will change the way people approach fantasy games moving forward?
I can only answer this with my own personal thoughts and opinions but my honest answer is probably not, at least not to the degree it would make much of a difference.
I think that especially as of late with so many niche games finding much wider successes that I don't really see devs and studios across the board taking the lesson that less risks and copying what's already been successful is the way to go, but instead maybe making more of an effort to carve out their own path and identity as that's been rewarded time and time again. At least that's how I see it.
Like Skyrim is one of if not the biggest fantasy game of the past decade with over 30 million copies sold to date and as much as devs have said their game was inspired by Skyrim, pretty much none of those games were ever really anything like Skyrim, you could maybe say it helped popularize RPG's in general to a more mainstream audience and
maybe say it helped or influenced other games to move in a Norse inspired direction (though there are a number of other potential reasons for this as well, such as the popularity of Vikings).
But beyond that I don't really think it's convincingly changed the way the gaming landscape has approached fantasy games beyond just popularizing Open World games and RPGs in particular.
it's not been long enough to say definitively but I imagine the same will be true for Witcher 3 and BOTW and all of the above have sold a lot more than From games generally do.
There will always be smaller teams and lower budget copycats but historically, trying to copy the success of X thing has rarely ever panned out and studios usually find much better successes doing their own, unique thing. If there was anything I would really say would change meaningfully is that it's going to be a lot harder for studios that follow closely in From's footsteps to even really attempt to replicate something like ER.
I need to be careful with my wording here as I'm sure some website will pick it up as a headline, but I don't really think that Elden Ring will be some revolutionary work of gaming or fantasy that's completely unheard of. Like I don't think this realistically is going to be gaming's "Star Wars 77" or anything like that where it bursts onto the scene and completely changes the landscape because it feels so new and radically different. Especially in a landscape where fantasy games as a whole have been around, relatively popular and releasing consistently for like 40+ years now. I think it's going to be an incredible game, and one created by people who are well versed and masters at their craft, from two incredible minds. But I don't think it'll be earth shattering.