From Software

Elden Ring & Open World

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“The world is a fine place and worth fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.”

–Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

I’m not the biggest fan of open world games. That’s not meant to be the blanket statement it sounds like. There are games in the genre like Insomniac’s Spider-Man and The Witcher 3 I do enjoy quite a bit, but open word games are hardly my favorite type of game overall. I usually find myself overwhelmed with the size of the world and get burnt out by the length of the games. So when I heard FromSoft’s new game Elden Ring was basically going to be Dark Souls but open world, I was a little concerned. I had faith in the company and director Miyazaki to deliver a great game, but how would they adapt the brutal combat and intricate level design of their Souls games into an open world? In short, they succeeded expertly.

I will state upfront that I have not finished Elden Ring at the time of writing. I’m about 60 hours in, have two Great Runes, and have uncovered about half of the map to my best estimate. But even though I have not beaten the game, I have gathered a good sense of the world that FromSoft wanted to create with the Lands Between. You get a taste of what’s to come from the moment you leave the tutorial cave and see the world spread out before you, the wide open fields,the crumbling ruins, the giant Erdtree shining golden in the distance. It has the trademark rotting splendor of the other Souls game but stretched to a size far bigger than any previous game. But that first glimpse of the Lands Between is like looking at the entrance of a cave. You can see it there, possibly even see a ways in, but you can fathom how deep it goes until you explore further in.

It cannot be understated how large the world of Elden Ring is. The opening areas of Limgrave and the Weeping Peninsula to the south are very large in of themselves. Walking across them takes forever if you are not one for fast traveling, but luckily the game gives you Torrent, a horse/yak hybrid creature, for faster travel. You start out a map that is covered in clouds. Traveling into new areas and finding map fragments will fill areas in with more detail. But even spreading hours in these areas collecting maps doesn’t give you a good sense of the full scale of the world. New to Elden Ring are entrapment chests. If you open certain chests in the game and are enveloped by the smoke that spews from it, you will be transported to another area on the map. At least twice, I have opened my map in the game to see where I was only to discover it’s size had doubled, as if your Tarnished never thought to unfold it completely before. But like an ultra greatsword, size isn’t everything if you do not know how to wield it. So what does Elden Ring do with its massive map? Turns out, a lot.

We’ve all heard the phrase “wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle” referring to game worlds that are massive in scale, but with little to do with them. Oftentimes, games like a Ubisoft open world will just have the same types of missions copy and pasted around the map. ER is a different beast. Sure, you will often see the same types of broken ruins around the map and more than once you will fight repeated bosses, but with a game world this large and an estimated 100+ unique bosses, some reused assets are to be expected. What excites me about the Lands Between is the sheer density in which content is packed. There are things to do and find everywhere. Besides groups of the enemies to fight, there are caves and catacombs to spelunk, castles and ruins to explore, and a load of bosses to fight. Every named ruin in the world has a staircase somewhere in it leading to useful items, chest, or NPC to talk to and every stagecoach you find will have a treasure chest to loot to grab. However, the biggest reward you will often get after clearing out a dungeon is another boss fight and seeing how these are the bread and butter of FromSoft, it’s a fitting reward. 

A lot of these bosses will grind you into ash when you encounter them, so it’s smart to leave them be for a while, whether it be until you level up, get better gear, or just feel like fighting them again. In these times, you will want to remember where they are at. Elden Ring only saves icons for places you discover, not merchants* nor bosses nor stone imps that require a Stone Sword Key to unlock a fog wall. Instead, Elden Ring takes cues from Breath of the Wild and makes the players mark notable places in the world by placing their own markers on the map. It’s a small addition, and one that might irritate other players, but it’s one I love thanks to the sense of agency, discovery, and interactivity. The worst thing an open world game can do for me to lose interest is provide markers and icons for everything on the map. What’s the point and exploring if I know what I will find beforehand? By restricting the information the map shows the player until they discover it and making them mark the map themselves, Elden Ring stays surprising and rewarding to explore well past other games in the genre. 

But a larger world needs something to fill it. With the massive world of the Land Between, there can be a lot of bosses to fight and things to explore, but still have a lot of down time while traveling between them. Here is where FromSoft falls victim to rather standard open world trap: they added crafting. I understand why crafting has been so prevalent in the genre in recent years: a bigger world has more walking to do in it, so why not give the player things to collect constantly while traveling? Crafting is a mechanic that can be done well or poorly depending on the game. Well I wouldn’t say it is handled poorly in Elden Ring, it does come off feeling token and unnecessary. It’s useful to be able to craft things like poison heals and different greases (the game’s version of resins), most of the craftable items are different arrows and things that give you negligible buffs to things like robustness and magic deference. It’s not something I find egregious since you can ignore the materials in a world and not collect them, but it is disappointing when you survive a classic FromSoft item trap–where you grab an item and a bunch of enemies jump to attack you–only to find you fought for your life for a mushroom or something.

I was worried that Elden Ring being open world would lose the FromSoft intricate level design the company has been known for with the Souls game–with shorts opening up to bonfires, pathways leading to previous sections of the maps, and many nooks and crannies hidden in areas. Luckily, this type of level design does return in many castles and dungeons of the game, but like everything else, it’s just on a more expanded scale. Stormveil castle was an absolute delight to explore with its blend of shortcuts, multiple paths to explore, and Anor Londo style progression of walking along roofs and buttresses. It’s always amazing to me when I see a small ledge in a wall and edge along it only to find that FromSoft has put an item or area at the end to explore. Something that would just be part of the building model or without a hitbox to crawl on in any other game is a viable path in a Souls game. Of course, to get to Stormveil, you have to fight through Margit first, and that is no easy feat.

After leaving the tutorial cave, the Guidances of Grace point the player toward Stormveil castle and right into Margit’s lap. Margit watches over the gate entering Stormveil castle and he acts as the game’s first skill check. So the game purposefully leads players into a fight that it knows they are woefully unprepared for, and that is actually a great and very FromSoft bit of design. Basically, the game is showing the player that it is not always best to grit your teeth and run your head in the wall that is the current boss fight you have found. It is not one of the more linear Souls games. This is Elden Ring, a game with a huge open world to explore. So go explore. You will get more gear to use, level up a bit if you manage to keep hold of your Runes, and naturally get better at the game through experience. 

I am so happy to see Elden Ring doing so well both critically and financially. As a huge fan of FromSoft, I’m glad they made a hit and will be able to make games for the next foreseeable future. But beyond that, I’m happy that the game is clicking with so many players. Between Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild, I hope the industry takes notice of how their open worlds are designed–being deeply explorative and letting the player discover things on their own without automatically plastering markers on the map, giving them a ton of things to find and do. Much like how Dark Souls created a seachange for games because it was unique and fresh, I truly hope that Elden Ring does the same for the homogenized open world genre.

*This was updated in a patch while writing and now the map does show the locations of merchants.

Top 5 Favorite Game Developers

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I often struggle with my love of video games. Not because I think they are a waste of time like many others, they are as valuable as any other hobby or form of media. No, I mainly struggle with my thoughts and feelings with the industry surrounding them. The video game industry is an interesting bubble of a nearly unchecked capitalist market. This leads to infuriating stories of Activision Blizzard reporting record sales then laying off over 800 employees while the CEO got a $30 million bonus, companies like EA and Ubisoft cramming microtransactions and paid gambling mechanics in games, and crunch running rampant across many, many studios like Rockstar, Naughty Dog, Bioware, and more. 

Which is why I wanted to take a look at some video game developers that are not only seemingly more “ethical” than most, but my favorites companies in the video game market. My criteria is simple: who’s made the most games I’ve enjoyed, who has the most best philosophies for video game design, and who deserves to be spotlighted the most based on practices. Please keep in mind, I still haven’t played a lot of touchstone  games, so there will be some major exclusions from this list like Rareware and Insomniac, among many others. With that said, here are my five favorite video game developers at the time of writing.

#5 – Capcom

Out of all the companies on this list, Capcom is the most iffy as a company. With a long history going back to the arcades of the 1980’s, Capcom has released some absolute world class titles. Boasting series like Megaman and its spinoff, Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Street Fighter, and, my favorite, Monster Hunter, Capcom is a well established player in the video game market. Be it offering different campaigns, higher and higher difficulties, or mechanically complex games that take player learning to perfect, every series in Capcom’s roster emphasizes replayability in some way. While the company has shown they understand the harm of microtransactions for series like Monster Hunter, that hasn’t stopped them from crowbarring them into the multiplayer side of the Resident Evil 3 remake. Street Fighter 5 has been especially troubling, with many considering the game to be unfinished at its release only to be built up post launch. They went so far as to put in-game advertisements on loading screens, arenas, and character costumes.

#4 – Devolver Digital

This one is a bit of a cheat because Devolver isn’t a developer, they’re a publisher. They don’t make games, but instead publish them to the public. They are worth mentioning in this list, however, because of their dedication to helping indie developers publish their games. As a publisher, Devolver’s track record is stellar. Perhaps best known for releasing the Hotline Miami series and Enter the Gungeon, they have also published many other indie darlings. Ape Out, Katana Zero, and the Reigns series were also released thanks to Devolver. Many games they pick up have a sort of post-punk, ironic feel to them and Devolver themselves as a company seem to share the same attitude. This is obviously shown with their presentations at E3 every year where they mercilessly mock the entire conference while revealing new games.

#3 – Platinum Games

I’ve mentioned my love for Platinum games on this blog before. I’ve recently been playing Wonderful 101 and, while admitting not liking it at first, it is another fast-paced, hectic fun game from the developer. Wonderful 101 and Astral Chain have done a lot to convince me that Platinum is becoming more interested in unconventional combat mechanics in spectacle fighters. Not that they need to either, because Bayonetta 2 is still the best in the genre. Like Capcom, their games encourage replays, specifically done to the high skill ceiling in the combat mechanics of all their games and their ranking systems. Pair that with a great sense of style in all the games and tongue-in-cheek ridiculous stories, and you have games that are constantly over the top and tons of fun.

#2 – FromSoftware

As far as games made by a company, FromSoftware is probably my favorite developer. Both Dark Souls and Bloodborne are in my top 5 favorite games ever, while Dark Souls 3 and  Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice are also amazing games. This is because Hidetaka Miyazaki is easily my favorite video game director. Starting with Demon’s Souls (which I haven’t played sadly), he has focused on high difficulty games to give players a sense of accomplishment from overcoming insurmountable odds. This design focus is also present in the narratives of most of his games with some of the best mechanical theming of narrative. All that along with the twisting, fascinating level design that is some of the best in the industry. While most of FromSoft’s games do tend to feel similar, it’s their slight differences that make them so interesting to play and compare. It’s no wonder that companies, including AAA developers like EA, have been trying to make their own “soulslike” games in the years since the release of Dark Souls hit the industry like a 900 volt shock.

#1 – Nintendo

Of course it’s Nintendo. What can be said about this titan in the video game industry? Their first games console, the NES, practically single-handedly saved the Western video game market from the crash of 83. They developed some of the most well known and beloved franchises like Mario (and spinoffs), Zelda, Pikman, Metroid, the list can go on forever. They have some of the best subistaries working for them with Game Freak making Pokemon, Monolith making Xenoblades, and Retro making the Metroid Prime and Donkey Kong Country Returns series. As a company, they have been dedicated to finding new, innovative ways for people to enjoy video games. Sometimes, that innovation pays off, like with the Wii and the DS, sometimes it does not, seen with Virtual Boy and Wii U. 

I have nothing but respect for the company and the risks they take. That respect was further cemented when, in 2014, as the Wii U severely undersoldt, Nintendo’s higher-ups took huge salary cuts, including then president and CEO, Satora Iwata, taking a full 50% cut to his pay for months. That’s just something you would never see an CEO of an American game company do. But the thing I respect most about Nintendo is that they work to ensure their games are fun. For them, fun comes before anything else and that’s what all video games should strive for: fun first. Like Reggie Fils-Aime said in a Nintendo Spotlight: “If it’s not fun, why bother?”

Top 5 Best Games of 2019

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2019 was a weird year for video games for me. Most games I played this year felt strangely similar to other games I’ve played in the past. Remakes, sequels, spiritual successors were abundant. However, I did play a lot of great games in 2019. So much so that I didn’t have room for all of them. 

So honorable mentions go to Slay the Spire, Streets of Rogue, and The Outer Worlds, all games I sank too much time in to. There is also one game I want to mention for my biggest miss of the year and that’s Disco Elysium. I feel Disco Elysium would have a good chance to be my game of the year, but I don’t have the means to play it until its PS4 release slated for 2020. 

With all that out of the way, here are my top five games of 2019.

#5) Pokemon Sword

My number five spot was tricky to decide on. This is a very biased pick because of my love for the Pokemon series, but Pokemon Sword is one of the few games I’ve beaten this year that I still want to play. It’s a standard Pokemon game, but the new Pokemon introduced are some of the strongest in while, Raid Battle are surprisingly addictive, and I’ve lost too many hours to count in the wild area while trying to complete my Dex. I love this game so much, I already want to start another playthrough with a whole different team.

#4) Astral Chain

This year, I played two games that involve themselves with the astral plane: Control and Astral Chain. Out of those two, Astral Chain is a clear favorite for me. Developed by Platinum Games, it has all their hallmarks I love: varied and satisfying combat, perfect dodge mechanics, a variety of enemies, and an over-the-top, ridiculous story. The best part of the game are the Legions, though, and the many ways they can be utilized in and outside of fighting. 

#3) Resident Evil 2 (Remake)

I never played the original Resident Evil 2, so I had no nostalgia for the game when the remake was announced. But I picked it up based on my love for RE 4 and after playing through the RE 1 remake, and this new remake plays like the best aspects of those two games combined. The shooting is satisfying while the over-the-shoulder camera provide a claustrophobic feeling in the tight halls of the police station. The station, where most of the game takes place, is expertly crafted and the survival horror balance is pitch perfect, ensuring the player is always low on supplies but can still scrape by if they play smart.

#2) Untitled Goose Game

2019 was a landmark year for me because Untitled Goose Game released. It was my most hyped game since I saw it a few years back and it was everything I wanted. It’s a funny game with an interesting take on stealth gameplay and a dedicated honk button. The levels are solidly designed and they even open up upon completion, connecting them all for more open playthroughs after the first. The game is effortlessly charming with a pleasant art style.The only drawback to the game is the short length. It helps the humor not overstay its welcome, but it does feel sadly lacking. But then again, it has a dedicated honk button.

#1) Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Like my review of Majora’s Mask, what impresses me most about Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is how it feels similar to the Dark Souls series, yet completely different at the same time. The additional of the hookshot is great, adding a huge amount of verticality to levels and enables more stealth options and quick escapes. The exploration is still present even with the more linear level design and the rewards for searching can be truly gratifying. The game strips out all the different weapons, armor, and classes of From’s earlier Souls games, but it still manages to be as challenging as those other games. With a more narrow move set provided to the player, the bosses and enemies were created with laser focus. Honestly,there were times while fighting some bosses where I thought I might not be good enough to beat them. Genochiro, the Guardian Ape, Demon of Hatred, the Corrupted Monk, all beat me now to the point of despair. But no game gave me a better feeling than taking out each and every one of Sekiro’s bosses.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice & Revisiting Levels

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The world of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is noticeably smaller than those seen in previous Fromsoftware’s Souls games. Dark Souls was a tower of levels stacked on top of each with paths and elevators and secret connecting them all. Dark Souls 2 started in Majula and branched out from there, with branches coming off those branches and so on. Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 are a combination of the previous games and are like webs with areas spreading out and folding on top of each other while being interconnected throughout. But while Sekiro’s world is not as large or as interconnected as those other games, it does something genius with its central point, Ashina Castle.

The first part of Sekiro is very linear. You have to make your way from the Dilapidated Temple through Ashina Outskirts and the valley until you reach Ashina Castle. Ashina Castle sits in the middle of the game’s world and works as the trunk of the tree that the rest of the game spreads out. From the castle, you can go to the Sunken Valley from the shrine, Senpou Temple from the dungeons, Ashina Depths from the bottomless pit, or stay and explore the interior of the castle. During my first playthrough, I completely missed the window to enter the castle. So I actually went and explored all the other areas until I hit dead ends before going back and fighting the boss in the castle to progress the story. The young lord tasks you with retrieving a few items from the other areas. But once the items are collected and you try to warp back to Ashina Castle, you’ll discover something surprising: you can’t.

This is because Ashine Castle is under attack. When you go back to Ashina (I used the Abandon Dungeon idol and climbed over the gate), you’ll find it under siege with bamboo ladders reaching to the rooftops and new enemies slaughtering the Ashina soldiers. You find yourself in the middle of a war. The soldiers of the opposing factions will attack other enemies and yourself upon sight. This helps give the ascension up Ashina Castle have a different feel than before. The battles with enemies are more chaotic and dangerous while sleath has a new option of luring different enemies into each other and slipping away in the confusion.

Sekiro does these moments of revisiting previous areas so well. A lot of games don’t change anything in levels you need to revisit, leading you to fight early game enemies with late game equipment, skills, and stats. This can help the player feel the growth the character has undergone throughout the game’s journey, but it also often leads to these sections to feel uninteresting or boring. Like in their other Souls games, Fromsoft never wants the player to feel overpowered in Sekiro.

I loved playing through Sekiro because I was still learning things about the game and the combat mechanics up until and during the final boss. It’s amazing having a game that feels like there is still so much more to master even after you’ve beat it, especially one where a large chunk of the game is revisiting the same areas multiple times. Sekrio keeps its difficulty cranked high when revisiting Ashina Castle by introducing new, tougher enemies or by having enemies that were mini bosses now being basic mobs. The interior ninjas and Ashina generals were early game mini bosses while the Red Guard are some of the toughest enemies in the game with tricky attack patterns and guns that shoot fireworks.

The game stays challenging when revisiting Ashina Castle, but it also manages to feel fresh when exploring. There are new routes through around the castle. First time revisiting it, there are bamboo ladders all over the castle, making for new grapple points and new ways to ascend. During the second revisit, you start from the top of the castle and have to fight your way down. It’s a small thing, but it goes miles to prevent revisits feeling samey. The castle itself will also look different, be it from the ladders scaling the rooftops or from everything being engulfed in flames when you have to make your way down during the games final section.

During the final third of the game, you also have the option of revisiting both Hirata Estate and Ashina Outskirts in new ways and both these areas are also burning, almost seemingly to the ground. Fire works as a wonderful theme in the last moments of the game representing the war and destruction the world is set in. Hirata Estate you revisit through Owl’s memory of that night instead of your own and it’s pretty much the same with tougher enemies and much harder mini boss encounters. Revisiting Ashina Outskirts, however, is what solidified my appreciation for the reuse of previous areas in Sekiro.

When you go back through Ashina Outskirts, you do it in reverse. You start from the castle and make you way over a bridge where you see Ashina’s defenses being slaughter by the Red Guards. After this point, is all Red Guards and fire. I went through Ashina Outskirts so many times on my way to the castle in the beginning of the game that I had a set route through it so I could stealth kill all the enemies in the way. Upon revisiting Ashina Outskirts, I didn’t have that route so I have to think quick about stealth, had to pay closer attention to my surroundings, and I had to fight hard or find an escape route when I fell into a nasty fight. Everything looks different when you go through the outskirts again in the same way that a road might look different if your driving through it in the opposite direction you usually do. At the end of the trek through Ashina Outskirts, after seeing all the fire and destruction suffered to the area, you find yourself up against the cause of all of the damage: the Demon of Hatred

This ferocious, tragic, pain in the ass boss is a strange creature in the world of Sekiro, belonging more in the worlds of Dark Souls and Bloodborne both in design and boss battle. It is huge and beastlike, with one arm composed entirely of flame. His fight relies more on attacking his vitality instead of his posture which runs counter intuitively to the rest of the boss fight in the game. But it is a good fight after you learn its patterns and it all takes place in the battle field before Ashina Castle gates. The world of Sekiro comes full circle as one of the final bosses in the game has the exact same arena as one of the very first bosses.

Bloodborne & Horror

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Bloodborne has been one of my favorite games (easily in my top five) ever since I played it in early 2016. I was just getting back into video games at the time and had bought a PS4, the first console I had owned since the Wii, a few months earlier. After getting burnt out on Fallout 4, I picked up a used copy of Bloodborne because I kept hearing it was one of the best games for the console.

Playing through the game was an eye-opening experience for me, a perfect example of not knowing I wanted something until I had it. I had never played a Souls game before so it probably took me 4-6 hours to get through Central Yharnam, the opening area of the game, when I beat Bloodborne for the first time. Despite struggling throughout the game, I fell in love with it: it’s combat and enemies, the bosses and the leveling system, it’s setting and atmosphere.

However, the aspect of Bloodborne that gripped me the most during my first playthrough were the horror elements of the game. I went into the game almost completely blind and it bred a special kind of terror in me.

There was an oppressive dread and uneasiness that plagued me during my first playthrough. The game takes inspiration from Victorian Gothic literature with the city of Yharnam being a fictionalized London of the 17th and 18th century with its cobblestone streets and abundance of cathedrals and churches. Just outside the city are foggy forests and dilapidated farmsteads. The enemies are also what you might expect to find in a Victorian era story. There’s crazed villagers, werewolves, andbloody crows. There are even gargoyles and ghosts later in the snow-covered Cainhurst Castle, castles being another classic Gothic troupe. Yharnam itself is in chaos. The streets are piled up with coffins and most of the living have barricaded themselves indoors. The only occupants on the streets are the beasts and those hunting them, but the line between the two groups is beginning to blur.

The world of Bloodborne feels utterly hostile to the character and the player themselves. In classic From Software fashion, most of the games mechanics are not clearly explained, relying on the player to learn them on their own, and pretty much any enemy can kill you in just two or three hits. The unforgiving nature of the difficulty keeps the tension high and makes the player never feel completely safe in the game. I always felt anxious when reaching a new area in the game. The idea of new enemies with new attack patterns I didn’t yet know typically meant I was mere moments from death.

Death itself is not the only stressful thing about dying in Bloodborne. Upon death, you drop all the Blood Echoes you have acquired and to get them back, you must return to where you fell to collect them. And you must do this without dying again. The Blood Echoes act as both experience points and currency in the game, so what you lose in losing all your Echoes is progress. This makes death punishing in Bloodborne, but not impossible to overcome. And it always reminded of the save station style of death in more traditional survival horror games. In games like Resident Evil and Alien Isolation, you can only save at certain spots on the map and when you die, you go back to the last save you made. This means that anything you’ve done between the save and death is lost and you have to do it over. The only difference is you lose game progress in Resident Evil, but in Bloodborne you lose character progress.

Death mechanics are not the only aspect that Bloodborne shares from more traditional survival horror games. During a recent playthrough, it struck me how many of the doors you have to open in Bloodborne, which isn’t a lot admittedly, always creak open almost painfully slow. This is reminiscent of the iconic room transitions in the Resident Evil series, where going between rooms would be shown as a door slowly opening or a slow climb up a ladder. Not only did this help hide long loading times on the original Playstation, but it also helped raised the tension during the game. While the door is opening, the player has a moment to anticipate what might be waiting for them in the next room, their imaginations can run wild and let the terror build before revealing what the game has in store for them. There is also the added tension of enemies approaching from behind as you take your opening a door.

One of the most important aspects in survival horror games is an emphasis on atmosphere. A strong atmosphere can do wonders for scaring a player. The atmosphere in Bloodborne is thick as flesh and blood. Everything is dark, dank, and desperate. The feeling of hopelessness presses on the player like a weight on their shoulders. Along with the difficulty discussed before, the bleak atmosphere helps to keep the tension high in Bloodborne. It makes the player feel small and insignificant in the world of Yharnam because, despite what you do, the city is always beyond saving. The player will quickly learn that they are not some grandiose, fantasy hero. Saving Yharnam and its inhabitants isn’t possible, so the only thing they can do is survive.

Like most truly great horror media, Bloodborne explores other dark emotions of the human condition along with trying to scare it’s players. The anxiety of unknown things ahead, the dread of death and losing progress, and the oppressive hopelessness of the setting and atmosphere all lead players to constantly feel uneasy in the world of Yharnam. And despite not being a full blown horror game, Bloodborne still continues to be the game that scared me the most through that very first playthrough.