The game is a combination of look at that place, go to that place, find dead end, go explore, find the way forward. Liurnia had that too. You feel lost initially, so you explore, then you find the way forward. One of the best game values I've ever purchased.
Yeah the open world could def use some improvement.. as this was Fromsofts first open world souls like game. The dungeons are a lot more fun than the actual open world.
@@Kira-pv4xq the original red dead redemption was a perfect open world. Just enough random number generator events to make it feel populated. Elden Ring was top tier too... all I'd ever add to it are more npc's with dialogue and an open world randomizer for ng+
@@Kira-pv4xq yeah improvement is always possible id say when it comes to open world but from the games i played with this style of open world, its easily the best. Im mainly comparing it to botw/totk
The teleporter chest near the start of the game that teleports you to the capital and shows the fogged over map was such a breath-taking moment for me when i realised how big the game was going to be.
* Exploring Limgrave * - This is going to be a big game * Seeing Liurnia and Caelid * - Oh wow this game is massive * Getting to capital * - Holy shit the map is huge, never stops * Being told to go to the Mountian tops * - * Mind blown *
The map is big but it's nowhere near that big as it seems. Most of the actual playable map that is revealed when the fog is cleared is like 45-60% of what you see on the map. Although there is an underground map as well that maybe can cpmpensate some of the missing percentage.
Same, i'd say it's a pretty big learning curve in understanding general legacy dungeon design in the souls games, since as a new player, i was lost, constantly.
@ihavevisionfearme As an experienced player, it is still much more difficulty in exploring than the levels fromsoft has made in their previous games, since none of them featured as much verticality as stormveil. Stormveil is multiple levels on top of each other interconnected. The previous games had verticality but it would be much less complex. With each new release they added more layering and verticality, but Elden Ring was a big step up. And then there's Leyndell, probably my favourite level in any game ever.
Stormveil is super easy for me now, but at the beginning of the playthrough I kept getting crushed like an empty soda can. Got frustrated with Margit and Godrick and they almost made me quit.
I think this is the sole beauty of the souls series, when i first started playin souls, ive started with dark souls 3 because of its OSTs, and at first gundyr seemed like impossible and as you grind through it, learn its attack patterns, that goal of defeating the boss doesnt seem so far
The game does tell you where to go right from the start: follow the light. The sites of grace lead you to your destination and the game is very explicit about that. That is the "road" players are supposed to follow. The reason why this doesn't work for most players is two-fold: 1) The challenge is too tough. They can't advance through the main quest, so they go elsewhere instead. 2) They get distracted by other interesting areas, enemies or quests. Elden Ring is designed to pull players away from the main quest. It's even designed to pull them away from side quests to other side quests. And then it pulls them back to the main quest. Back and forth all the time.
I thought most people did the same thought process of "oh, the game clearly wants me to go there, I'm not gonna go there so I can explore the map before advancing", I personally do that every open world game, didn't realize they just get distracted lmao
@@merfozz7425 same! i personally hate when games make it impossibly unclear on where i am supposed to go for the main quest not because i need to be handheld through progression but because that way i will always explore literally everything else and only then take the intended main way forward. the worst thing that can happen imo is accidentally doing main quest before all the sidequests lol. the best part though there has never been an issue with that in elden ring for me because the game allows you progression to be so non-linear it barely matters what you do first (and when it does matter it's usually pretty clear, like "are you sure you want to burn the big tree right this moment and go against half of the world or should i wait for you finish your stuff first")
@@plznerf6025 Yeap. I just beat the game, and very likely will not play through it again. I've already seen it all, and my ego doesn't depend on being able to wave a big fancy sword just because I can wave one, lol.
This game establishes very early on with the tree sentinel that blindly following the main path forward sometimes isn't the best choice, if you run into a tough spot it can be best to find another way around or come back later, and Margit is a great example of that. The first NPC you meet tells you to follow the grace to Stormveil Castle, that's where the main road lead you to, and that's where the game itself tells you to go through grace. So you're a new player, you run straight to Stormveil, but then you meet Margit and he beats the living crap out of you, and eventually you decide this isn't working and you leave to go explore some place else. You decide to adventure south, you find a bunch of new landmarks you never saw on your way to Stormveil, maybe you get some new ashes of war and some new weapons, then you go even further south and end up in a brand new area, this place starts out with a woman explaining that the servants from her csatle have all rebelled, and everywhere you go you find misbegotten and the corpses of the people they killed, this area has it's own story arc. Eventually you get bored of that and go east to Caelid, everything there is scary, the sky is red and everything is way too strong for you to fight, but you find even more upgrades, suddenly you open your map and realize that Limgrave, what was originally the entire map, looks really small now. By setting up some strategic roadblocks early in the game you are incentivized to go out and realize just how open the world really is, if you could just blitz the first main boss I think some players would end up missing out on some things that they otherwise wouldn't have taken the time to comb through
I went pretty directly to stormveil and died to Margit many many times. Decided I was gonna explore and didn't fight him again until I was close to 40 or so hours in on my first playthrough haha. I'm about 70 hours in now and feel dumb for not getting this game earlier and makes me want to play through the souls games as this was my entrance to the soulskiroborne ring games
Honestly on my first playthrough I immediately went south. I saw the dude on the horse and said fuck that then I went far east and had a fun time. No idea when i fought Margit
@@KTheStrugglerright? I’m sure you didn’t play before because you heard all the constant memes about how tough the games are but Elden Ring is actually not even as hard as regular games on the hardest difficulty settings. So it’s totally doable for average players, like the enemies do, do a lot of damage if they hit you but it’s way easier to avoid attacks than other games because you seem to be invincible while rolling somehow which I haven’t noticed in other games. So you don’t even really need to parry much which I suck at lol, Shouldn’t have psyched myself out about the difficulty
@@knowingbadgerI did the same. I remember that I wanted to see what was in that tiny island at the very bottom of the map… I knew right there that the game was great and I should enjoy it as much as I could.
Probably the best open world environments and weather in any single player RPG made. SO many times I would stop and just pan around to look. From Sofrias well, Redmayne castle and the music/sound ambiance always fit perfectly the theme.
Pretty much the only open world that matches Elden Ring is Breath of the Wild( and ToTK by extension), and maybe Skyrim as well but to a lesser extent. I haven't played RDR2, but I've heard great things about it.
I mean, it's similar to other FromSoft games. In DS3, when you get to the High Wall, the first area after the tutorial, you can immediately see the Grand Archives and the path to the second to last boss. Lothric can also be seen from most places in the world, and after you beat Vordt in High Wall you also get a peek at most of the aboveground areas. In DS2, Majula lets you peek at Castle Drangleic and Heide's Tower of Flame. In DS1 you can see the walls of Anor Londo and the depths of Blighttown from the main hub. You can see lots of far off areas in the early stages of Bloodborne as well. Many landmarks in Sekiro are also clear...
Agree, however I think the fact that Elden Ring's map doesn't have any real verticality or "intertwining" parts makes it far less interesting than the other Souls maps W take
@@UGCP744 oh yeah, for sure. First time around the map is a banger, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and there's *so* many things to do. For the first playthrough or two, it's amazing. But after that? It keeps getting more and more tedious to the point where even if I feel like doing another run, which I periodically do for all the other games, I tend to quit by Raya Lucaria, because it's just. So. *Tedious.* I mean, hell, the game has you running around for the first *two hours* of every new run just to get set up. Now, sure, you don't *have* to do it... Just like you don't *have* to use armor or even *weapons.* You don't *HAVE* to. Sure would be a good fucking idea to do it anyway, though.
@@YTDariuS-my6dgYou're not required to get every item for your build. For example, while you can of course get the items that give you the most parry frames for a parry build, you can instead learn to parry better with fewer parry frames. That's true for all builds: you can skip the "optimal" items. I mean, when you think about it, how can an item even be optimal if it's excplicitely not fun to make the journey to get the item to begin with? Fun optimization should be the goal, not build optimization. And if getting the item results in a monotone grind rather than challenging fights, how is that optimal? If it minimizes your fun, why do it?
@@ETBrooD hm, how do I say this... It's a lot like real life, kind of. You need to do some unfun stuff so you can have more fun later. Like you said, getting a tool like, say, a parry shield with good parry frames may not be particularly fun, but the extra wiggle room you enjoy with it for the rest of the game more than makes up for it. That's how I used to play all the From games I have. Instead of going into NG+, I prefer to make a new build. I actually enjoy early game struggles and find the most enjoyment in areas like High Wall, Yharnam, Forest of Fallen Giants, Undead Burg and the like. You could say that I consistently enjoy about the first 20% of a From game that I already completed. Problem is, with how massive Elden Ring is, something I like to call "replay fatigue" sets in way before I get to finish those 20%, which means the occasional mood to complete an entire playthrough is also difficult to hold up, as opposed to other games like, say, Sekiro, which I have no trouble completing when I'm in the mood for it.
I remember thinking for most of the game, "no way you can go to that place". The answer is yes you can get to at some point anywhere you see in the game which is just amazing. The massive tree is what surprised me the most I thought it was something that's there but you don't go to little did I know you even go there at some point, best map design ever made, you see it you can go there no questions asked.
but theres actually a ton of open world games like that that allow you to go anywhere you see, Elden Ring is just really really proficient in the whole design of it fr
I got minor issue with the map (not the world). Is really hard to display vertical scale on paper map, so multiple times I tought there could be path from one area to another and when I got there, I met 100 high cliff.
I wanna be clear, it’s not just you the map straight up does not show all the cliffs. Like there are a lot of areas with a line designating some sort of cliff or barrier but there are also cliffs that they just never drew into the map at all. It is rare but I noticed it most recently with the place infected with madness in weeping peninsula, good luck trying to get there by map because all the cliffs aren’t drawn
The most annoying shit is spending 2 hours trying to figure out a way to get to something, finally googling it, and finding out you can't go there until you do some quest first
@@Rujewitblood I had something similar happening to me. I wanted to get to the top of a mountain near Liurnia but I didn't figure out how to do it, so I gave up. Later in the game, doing Ranni's quest, I am teleported to a place with some ruins nearby and I realize that I'm on top of the mountain I wanted to go to at the beginning (I'm talking about the mountain in which you find the place you go to give Ranni her ring, basically at the end of the quest).
I've seen so many people be reductive about ER's world design. I think because they dont know what to look for and they just enjoy it in ignorant bliss. They dont realize the the developer's invisible hands pushing and pulling you. The geography isnt just for asthetics. That forest isnt there to look appealing. The literal terrain facilitates exploration. The fact that the trees obscure the gatehouse when you first step out into the world makes exploration possible. The thrill of discovering the gatehouse ruins is made possible by you being unaware of it. But the developers havent left you to wander aimlessly. They uses "satellites" or breadcrumbing to pull you THROUGH the forest. They're called satellites because they orbit the major content. And lure you towards it. As important as what you can see is what you cant. Look at their use of sheer cliffs and rises and mountains and ravines and you'll start to see it. Not to mention the scale of things and the distinctness of assets allows for great use of landmarking. It makes possible for the world to work without icons. Try finding your way without icons in a different open world like Ass Creed. To make this point. The painting you find in ER and you have to find the location it depicts for the reward. I was able to figure them all out without having to google them. Now... if I took 5 screenshots of AC Origins. Do you think you could pinpoint them? Or even get close? I couldnt.
Alot of people are not looking at it like this and we need more of this. They just say: it's the same as all the other games. But really it's not. Darksouls and bloodborne really only have one way to get to the end. Elden ring is so much more open were u can skip everything and go right to the capital if you want to. Of course u can't get in without 2 great runes but you can at least get there. Like you said tree's blocking things are great. It's great when u can't just see everything so u wonder whats behind that big cliff and what's on top of that mountain. But they even were able to stuff in a great plateau moment with liurnia and just seeing on and on. I'm glad that u understand 😃
@@atlantic_love 1. Fort Haight in Limgrave - collect the first half of Dectus Medallion 2. Find a teleporter into Dragonbarrow near Third Church of Marika, go to Fort Faroth and pick up the second half 3. Go around Stormveil into Liurnia, at the end of the lake there is a ravine and from there just go to the Grand Lift Congratulations, you made it to Altus Plateau in 30 minutes or so
Elden Ring is one of a handful of games that made me drive to explore based solely on map design. Like, its ridiculously beautiful. I shouldn't expect anything less from the creators of DS. A masterclass of game design, they use Monolithic Architecture to invoke a sense of insignificance in the player, allowing a sort of terror in the sheer magnitude. Approaching and entering these structures puts them into perspective, giving you the sense that they are old, perhaps eternal even, and not just based on their classical, gothic, or renaissance designs. If you throw on a good ReShade preset and go with the First Person mod it takes it to another level.
I adore how at spawn you can see the way forward all the way atop to the Great Brazier, But up there, You cant see Limgrave, As there is no way to return back in time to what once was before you explored and conquered.
I believe the intended path of progression at the capital gate is to assume you cant enter yet & follow the road out, straght to Mt.Gelmir. where the player will likely take up the quest to hunt down other Tarnished, this quest naturally leads the player back towards the capital.
@@ni9274I went to Gelmir first because the capital was the super important seeming area I’d been working toward the whole game, so it seemed like it would be the last or one of the last major areas. So I wanted to do everything else first because I assumed it would be scaled really high. Turns out the scaling is way too low, which kinda ruined a lot of the fun cause I was way over leveled, especially with morgott. Idk what they were thinking with the scaling cause you either end up over leveled like me, or you get face fucked by the huge scaling spike just after
@@squidwardstesticles5914Morgott makes me sad, he is such a good boss but it's so easy to be like nearly level 100 when you get to him so he is too easy.
The map (I mean the UI map) itsfelf is extraordinary well design, it's a map with a language and when you learn how to read it you can know what could be a point of interest or not. For example the gold aura around a cave entrance => mine. It's the first open world where I actually use the map as a real map to explore, and not just mark point to another.
I still remember playing Elden RIng for the first time, thinking that Limgrave was the whole map and that Stormveil castle was the end game and still thinking "Huh, this game is actually fairly big". Oh boy, when I realized, it had to be the best realization of my gaming years.
if you ever buy the game Okami about the wolf godess with the paint brush you will get the exact same wow moment as this. crazy when you think a game is long but its actually just the beginning.
Finding the alternate path to Altus was also really cool! I did know where the dectus medallions from watching runs before I played but I did find the ruin strewn precipice and makar organically just exploring Liurnia. That alternate route to the plateau and the real door to the capital are both in interesting spots on their respective maps. There's a valley splitting off of Liurnia? Wonder if there's something cool over there. Is that another door to the capital? I wonder if I can get in that way. This game in so many ways does the open world so perfectly. And I feel like I enjoy the game more than some other people, as a newbie to souls like gameplay in general I think the boss design in this game is like nothing else I've ever played. In no other game have I died so many times and not been filled woth seething rage lol. Every time I died I thought "yeah I shouldn't have attacked... why didn't I use my ash there... maybe I shoukd try this physick... i wonder if this weapon would work better etc." I'm not even done with my first playthrough and I really feel like this is one of, if not my favorite game of all time.
There's actually two types of starts for new players. I also took this route.. I looked at the castle, then the tree, then turned around and went the opposite way lmao I went to the dragon burnt ruins and got dropped in scilia cave. Best start ever, lmfao... I eventually did everything in weeping penisula and limgrave before the castle (staying well away from caelid), then went back to caelid just before altus.
The tree reminded me of the huge statue of Kannon in Sendai my father took me to when I was a kid (look it up). He made me walk all the way up to the foot of the statue, and that massive landmark would grow bigger and bigger as we got closer. My first time playing the game, I didn't know anything about the capital. I pretty much ignored the story and just looked into every corner, so I ended up in the Altus Plateau via the other path, coming from the area with the wormfaces and passing by the village with the Godskin. I thought the lift was the end of the game and only later realized what the medallions were for. I even found the sealed path to the mountaintops before even finding Morgott.
the only place where the erdtree is invisible is consecrated snowfield. But thats probably due to the lower elevation than mountaintops of the giants, so the rock formations cover it. Not to mention the constant blizzard covering half of the region.
The main door doesn't hold up water. You can observe that it's in fact a huge chasm there, where map draws "water". That chasm in right where the Deeproot Depths are. Most likely, some part of the city have literally gone underground in the past.
I recently watched a indie devlog by thatFain where he talks alot about Elden Rings level design and map, and how hes using that in his own game! Was a pretty cool insight as well
The area that has the 3 teleporters that require sigil keys is probably one of the best moments to get a feel of how huge and immersive the world is, from your spwan point, to farum azula, and finally Nokron. it also places enemies to show you how much you need to reach their levels and defeat them
I wish I could have played Elden Ring as a kid in the 80's somehow. Before the internet, before Twitch, before any of that. I played as blind as I could the first time through, and didn't look at the wiki and tried to avoid spoiler videos, but a lot just seeps in unless you shut down RUclips, Twitch, and all social media completely. And after my first run, I broke down and looked at the wiki. It would have been so awesome to have slowly and serendipitously learned the NPC questlines and the locations of all the caves and catacombs and so on. Some of the most powerful items in the game are subtly hidden... but the map is a key to finding out so much. Not only is the overall design great, but the in-game map we open up and look at is just an awesome tool and powerful storytelling aid.
Side note: that's not water in Lower Leyndell but an abyss. That's where the Nameless Eternal City fell from, hence you can't pass through it as usual.
this is the main thing i like about elden ring i could be told nothing and go to a seemingly random hut on the map which turns out to be the entrance to a massive level
The moment I opened the door to reveal the map at the beggining of the game, the feeling I got was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. It was liberty, pure liberty. Seeing the gigantic tree before me, the scenery, nobody saying what I had to do... Ispent 140 hours on my firs playthrough and I missed stuff. Truly one of the best games ever.
one great and very overlooked detail, if you start at the place where you first enter the open world and walk directly towards the Erd tree, it leads you to the road that leads to the castle
Fromsoft have always been wizards at map design and just game design in general. They had to have sold their souls to be able to make games this fantastic
The opening area in Limgrave is literally one of the best starting areas in any game ever. You can see almost every significant location just from that one area, it’s insane
also at the start of the game new players don't have torrent, so they will not likely pursue the erdtree after reaching gatefront. They'll end up fighting Margit way sooner, that's how it was with me.
Plenty of people have praised it. But at the same time, good level and world design are just expected from these games at this point. FromSoft never fails to deliver.
the first time i played this game was off 2.5 tabs at a homies house and i just could not get over the fact that you could go to the structures in the background and they aren’t illustrated backgrounds for the area, he was right outside of leyndell and then just walked in and i was so amazed
Reflecting on my first play through so far…. It’s like a series or movie, alternating scenes between different events taking place… creating confusion, discovery, and, connecting things together.. love it
Its an intentional effect, the game alters distant landmarks, distorting the distances between them, you, and each other. It was partially to create the many gorgeous vistas, and also exactly what youre talking about with this video: an ingenius method of encouraging the player to explore the world without needing to explicitly tell you. The vague guidance at the start is just to get you started, with the idea being that by the time you're finished in Raya Lucaria, the player will have learned the importance of exploration, using major landmarks as general points of interest you should work your way towards. I didnt find the map design for getting into Leyndell was flawed; it might seem confusing on a first playthrough, but its very intentional that the door youre guided towards is a dead end. It clearly used to be the way in, but as you can see when you get the area map, that door opens to a huge pool of water. It obviously wasnt always this way, and so the mystery of why, how and when a large chunk of the city was replaced with water is one of the many questions the game wants you to be asking and trying to find answers for. It also forces you to explore an area of Altus Plateau that otherwise most people would totally skip in favor of going straight to the capital. And that would mean no fresh crab meat courtesy of our best buddy, blackguard boggart
Once inside the city, you'll see it's not water behind the main gate, but a giant chasm. And you can find where that section of the city fell if you manage to find your way into the depths below the city.
I think the only flaw with the map design is that there's nothing blatantly encouraging you to go to The Weeping Peninsula, the actual beginner area you should tackle before heading to Stormveil Castle. Seemingly the only thing encouraging you to do so is Margit gatekeeping the castle proper.
I disagree with leyndell having a clear path that tells you where to go, as soon as you go on the streets inbetween all the open and interconnected houses and you end up like me in the slum region, you get very confused on where to go. And all those soldiers dont make exploration easier, especially if you are underleveled. It took me hours until I discovered that you had to jump on the dragon corpse to proceed...
The game is all about exploring without the need for NPCs to give out boring and repetitive quests. The game was designed to give the player 100% freedom along with consequences to your actions and how you interact with NPCs that you cross paths with. This game doesn’t hold your hand, it’s all on you. Which is amazing! Sure you can resort to google like I did, but it kind of defeats the purpose of how the game was designed. There are tons of hidden objects that are crucial to progress through the story (AKA the map). This game was designed to take hundreds of hours to complete due to having to explore every inch of the entire world. But when you use google or RUclips, the game can take less than 20 hours to complete. Again, that’s not how the game was designed at all. To anyone that’s new to the game and ends up reading my comment, do yourselves a favor and just enjoy the game without looking things up. It’ll take you a long time, but it’s how the game was meant to be played. The endgame content wasn’t meant to be accessible until like 80+ hours in. Finding even the medallions to unlock the elevator that leads to the main city should can take a long time. Because you need to explore the map to find both pieces. One of them isn’t obvious to anyone. I won’t tell you where it is, but if you don’t have google, it requires tons of exploration and thinking outside of the box. That’s why this game’s genius. This is why it deserved GOTY.
I wasnt saying you need to look anything up and i have beaten the game before along with all remembrance bosses all i was saying is that the world is made very good
To be honest i think the game still works with Google. Ultimately I'm in it for the challenge and bosses so i want to face as many, if not all of them if i can. As long as you're not looking up guides for op classes, sorceress and what to do against each bosses' attacks, the game is still plenty of fun to explore.
I don't like the fact your punished for exploring, meaning you get locked out of some good quests if you do one small thing or beat a certain boss or reach a certain point
I agree with everything except the 20 hours part and the "game's not designed to use google". Even with guides and maps from google on your side, the game still takes at least 50 hours, assuming you're not rushing through the main bosses. My second playthrough took me around 120 hours, because i did everything the game can offer on one run (every dungeons, side bosses, optional areas...) and that's still using guides. Without them you're definitely gonna miss content and probably lock you out of a few quests, and that's a shame for anyone who's a bit completionist. Also, the game has been designed knowing internet and communities exist. There are some quests that are completely impossible to complete without luck or full dedication (like writing everything down on paper, and even then it's not that easy). As they left players options to help each other using in-game messages, i take it as an invitation to use other players knowledge to get things done on your side using guides and stuff. And it doesn't mean using them blindly without trying yourself first, ofc. Every way of playing is valid tho, and that's the magic of this game.
i think it is pretty clear where you need to go on the gates of leyndell. If they want to get to the tree they will just circle around the wall preventing them from going to the tree and find a way in. and if they do they will find the draconic tree sentinel.
You look into the distance and think "That's a big tree, but it's pretty close. I can make it there." and the further you ride, the quicker you realise "Oh, it's not close, it's really really big." Same with the giant forge.
Dragon Quest 1 is another game that also implemented the fact you can see the end of the game from the start of the game, and the whole map spirals toward that goal.
When melina said to bring her to the foot of the erdtree and I saw that the "foot" is burried in water, I thought there's a way to find a boat and sail there.
Miyazaki said that he makes the team remake the level when they failed to guide the player's line of sight properly. That's the point most of the soulslike games couldn't mimick well.
The placement of Malenias tower. Makes me think there was either a bridge that connected Caelid to Mountaintops. But it could also be to contain the rot in an isolated area.
Great video! I'm also surprised that other people haven't talked about the map. However, I don't agree that the Altus gate area is lacking. It forces you to explore more and I think that's Fromsoft's way of saying "hey we know you're following a linear path, but we made this game open world for a reason, so go explore!" If you follow the side path, you'll naturally end up at Mount Gelmir, opening up the player to experiencing Volcano Manor. Eventually the player may have explored all of Altus, and through that exploration I think it makes sense that players would eventually figure out the way into the capital. Sure, it does mess up the linearity that the main quest had so far, but I don't think that makes it lacking, because it forces the player to explore, and exploration is kinda the whole point of the game. You could just not explore at all and only go to the main required areas, but Fromsoft wants players to see the whole map, and I think the Leyndell gate scenario is them trying to encourage exploration. And plus, from the site of grace near the Leyndell gate, you can see that there's still more to explore off road because there's a staircase in the rock as well as trees and a troll on a cliff. At some point, the player would likely be intrigued and go that way, leading them to DTS and the entrance to the capital. Anyways, this was a fun watch. Subscribed!
someone tell this man about guidance of grace. The game literally points toward the biggest point of interest at almost every single grace. It IS the MAIN method of guidance whenever you're slightly stuck
since you can access this new DLC by defeating Radan and reaching the egg....is mostly like this part is in the middle of the game and maybe can reach a new ending by what you choose in the DLC
I have always loved that Fromsoft respect players intelligence, Miyazaki and his team know that if you really want to play ElldenSoulsBorne games you are smart enough to find the way yourself, no pointers, no UI arrows pointing you to the next "objective". It makes you want to explore the world and find your own interpretation of what it all means. Incredible worlds.
9:52 idk the first lift was allot less obvious than this, how would you know where to get the medallions without googling it and the forts aren’t big enough to be an eye catching land mark
There are lore theories that suggest the remains of the eternal city used to sit right where that watery moat is behind the Lyendell capital front gate and just like many other places we find throughout the game, it was cast underground by the greater will, that's just speculation, but who knows?
My first 3 hours of this game were of me getting teleported into a cave in Caelid and getting stuck there even before getting the first site of grace you're supposed to get, and torrent. Finally, escaping the cave and realizing Im in video game hell and having to hoof it all the way back to Limgrave because I didnt know you could teleport in this game.
Kind of discounting the gold trails left by sites of grace, no? You make it seem like people aren’t looking at the mega map, but that’s how you fast-travel, go to roundtable hold, set markers, etc.
Never played a souls game before until I bought elden ring like 2 weeks ago and wow challenging game new play style for me I’m into fps games and gezz map design Is amazing ! top notch ! , I’m about 8 hrs into the game trying to complete as much as I can in limbgrave an south peninsula before I head up north and east . Happy travels tarnished ones
I definitely recommend taking your time with your first playthrough. Explore to your heart's content before moving on to somewhere new. Also, don't sleep on buffs, infusions, and taking advantage of an enemy's elemental weakness. You don't need to just run 1 weapon for the entire game. You don't even need to fully upgrade every weapon you end up using for them to be good.
Its just a damn shame there has been 0 games tries to replicate this feeling they would rather just put dodging in the game and yeah its soulslike the game is inspired by darksouls. My most memorable moment in dark souls is just looking at a building in a distance and hours later i just realized wait this level now is the building that i saw back then in the distance.
Bleak falls barrow felt more revolutionary and the throat of the world being seen for all around the world. But what elden ring has is the world story telling of dark souls to accompany these elements when you get there, like the damage to the castle, and the mangled arms everywhere, as well as the occasional flesh abomination made in the castle. By the time you get to the demi god you get an idea of him and the wars been fought at his door.
When i first played it i felt its kinda nice, after a while i found it boring for the small rune drop and hard to kill enemies for those runes, the map was small, very few (interesting for me) weapons etc. Then i found the lake area going around stormhill (couldnt progress it) and realized the map expands which blew my mind (played through 3 DS games before) and hooked me. Tried to get down on the slabs behind godrick, failed miserably untill i managed, battled my way through academia outskirts. After hours and hours i managed to level up enough to comfortably beat stormveil and starting area, everything without any wiki. It took me over 150h to reach Altus through the wyrm area and then virgins. Ended up not even reaching capitol when i deleted my first character and started anew with all my knowledge and im having a blast up to today with all sorts of characters and my (second) main entering ng++
Compared to DS2 and DS3 it's much better bc you can actually go to places you see in the distance. The models of distant areas also seem true to scale, like if you flew directly there it would actually be there. Edit: idk how you didn't mention how hard it is to find the grand lift of Rold! There's no clear path to get there on the map, or at least when you try and follow the map to get there you'll find a dead end every time. Instead you have to open one particular giant door, and it's pretty much the only giant door in the capital that you can open. My first playthrough I walked by it many times because I assumed it was just another big door with no use.
I completely agree that people should talk about the map more, and you make a lot of good points here, however, you didn't even mention my favorite part of the map; Siofra River and the underground. Going down that long well elevator and seeing the crumbling ruins filled with these unnatural beings who move so oddly (I had never seen claymen in my playthrough yet) took my breath away on my first playthrough. I wasn't strong enough to progress, but I was so excited to return and explore this mystery that seemed to follow different rules than the land I had explored so far. And then when I did return and progress further, seeing the space open up, and seeing the false sky and the ruins took my breath away again. And then when I defeated Rahdan and entered Nokron, only to see what I assumed was set dressing was actually a new region, and I looked down to see Siofra from above.... words can not describe how I felt. I had no clue these spaces would connect in such a unique way. The cherry on top being that you can also see Mohgwyn Palace from this area, another piece of what I assumed was set dressing. The interconnected underground regions are easily my favorite region in any game I have ever played. The regions by themselves are beautiful, but how they connect to each other, and the mystery surrounding it all, is truly a work of art in my opinion.
Well I am an absolute weirdo, in my first playthrough. one of the first things I found after some random dungeons in the starting area, was the passage to Liurnia. I was in Liurnia and Caelid before finding Margit
Map/world designs by from software are just genius. You see that thing back there at the horizon? You can and will go there. You look back after progressing for hours and see landmarks you passed on your path. Fromsoftware games are simply awesome. After being sucked into them most other games feel shallow.
The game is supricingly linear this way despite being open world 😂. Having said that me myself who never go the obvious main route, went to Celid first. My friend somehow did manage to ride past the castle and therefor skipped it. And yet another friend started going south at the start of the game.
Игры
The game is a combination of look at that place, go to that place, find dead end, go explore, find the way forward. Liurnia had that too. You feel lost initially, so you explore, then you find the way forward. One of the best game values I've ever purchased.
Ah yeah. Favorite game ever
Yeah the open world could def use some improvement.. as this was Fromsofts first open world souls like game. The dungeons are a lot more fun than the actual open world.
@@Kira-pv4xq the original red dead redemption was a perfect open world. Just enough random number generator events to make it feel populated.
Elden Ring was top tier too... all I'd ever add to it are more npc's with dialogue and an open world randomizer for ng+
You forgot to add the
"get one shotted by a random enemy that pops up out of nowhere" after you go to the place.
@@Kira-pv4xq yeah improvement is always possible id say when it comes to open world but from the games i played with this style of open world, its easily the best. Im mainly comparing it to botw/totk
The teleporter chest near the start of the game that teleports you to the capital and shows the fogged over map was such a breath-taking moment for me when i realised how big the game was going to be.
Yeah, when I started I thought limgrave was the whole thing. Then I got teleport there and it was just so great to see how big the game actually was
Yep, that's the thing that got me about the map how it kept expanding again and again never mind the underground bits.
Felt like a kid again if I'm honest. First time a game had done that to me in years
* Exploring Limgrave * - This is going to be a big game
* Seeing Liurnia and Caelid * - Oh wow this game is massive
* Getting to capital * - Holy shit the map is huge, never stops
* Being told to go to the Mountian tops * - * Mind blown *
The map is big but it's nowhere near that big as it seems. Most of the actual playable map that is revealed when the fog is cleared is like 45-60% of what you see on the map.
Although there is an underground map as well that maybe can cpmpensate some of the missing percentage.
"Now Stormveil is pretty simple"
Not my thoughts when I first got there on my first playthrough...
Same, i'd say it's a pretty big learning curve in understanding general legacy dungeon design in the souls games, since as a new player, i was lost, constantly.
@ihavevisionfearme As an experienced player, it is still much more difficulty in exploring than the levels fromsoft has made in their previous games, since none of them featured as much verticality as stormveil. Stormveil is multiple levels on top of each other interconnected. The previous games had verticality but it would be much less complex. With each new release they added more layering and verticality, but Elden Ring was a big step up.
And then there's Leyndell, probably my favourite level in any game ever.
@@theholypopechodeii4367 That is party the reason I stopped playing ds3, combat was fun and challenging, but the level design deterred me.
Stormveil is super easy for me now, but at the beginning of the playthrough I kept getting crushed like an empty soda can. Got frustrated with Margit and Godrick and they almost made me quit.
I think this is the sole beauty of the souls series, when i first started playin souls, ive started with dark souls 3 because of its OSTs, and at first gundyr seemed like impossible and as you grind through it, learn its attack patterns, that goal of defeating the boss doesnt seem so far
My gamer instincts go like oh that’s where I need to go let’s go everywhere else first
YES!!! THAT'S ALSO ME XD
me too
Same
so true I knew the game wanted me to go to Stormveil so what did I do? found the path around it hahahahaha
@@m3ga7ron86meanwhile, i heard Margit is still waiting for you at the entrance of Stormveil to this day XD
The game does tell you where to go right from the start: follow the light. The sites of grace lead you to your destination and the game is very explicit about that. That is the "road" players are supposed to follow.
The reason why this doesn't work for most players is two-fold: 1) The challenge is too tough. They can't advance through the main quest, so they go elsewhere instead. 2) They get distracted by other interesting areas, enemies or quests.
Elden Ring is designed to pull players away from the main quest. It's even designed to pull them away from side quests to other side quests. And then it pulls them back to the main quest. Back and forth all the time.
I only forgot what those were on my first playthrough and was so confused
I thought most people did the same thought process of "oh, the game clearly wants me to go there, I'm not gonna go there so I can explore the map before advancing", I personally do that every open world game, didn't realize they just get distracted lmao
Vastly better than smothering the UI. Hopefully other AAA open-world devs rise above their egos and adopt ER’s immersive approach.
@@merfozz7425 same! i personally hate when games make it impossibly unclear on where i am supposed to go for the main quest not because i need to be handheld through progression but because that way i will always explore literally everything else and only then take the intended main way forward. the worst thing that can happen imo is accidentally doing main quest before all the sidequests lol. the best part though there has never been an issue with that in elden ring for me because the game allows you progression to be so non-linear it barely matters what you do first (and when it does matter it's usually pretty clear, like "are you sure you want to burn the big tree right this moment and go against half of the world or should i wait for you finish your stuff first")
It's like an Elder Scrolls / Fallout game, that's why it's so good.
If I could reset my memory of this game to replay it for the first time again.
Having to learn all of the boss moves again ☠️
You and me both. God, how I wish I could completely experience this game for the first time again :(
We wish we could 😢
@@plznerf6025 Yeap. I just beat the game, and very likely will not play through it again. I've already seen it all, and my ego doesn't depend on being able to wave a big fancy sword just because I can wave one, lol.
This game establishes very early on with the tree sentinel that blindly following the main path forward sometimes isn't the best choice, if you run into a tough spot it can be best to find another way around or come back later, and Margit is a great example of that. The first NPC you meet tells you to follow the grace to Stormveil Castle, that's where the main road lead you to, and that's where the game itself tells you to go through grace. So you're a new player, you run straight to Stormveil, but then you meet Margit and he beats the living crap out of you, and eventually you decide this isn't working and you leave to go explore some place else. You decide to adventure south, you find a bunch of new landmarks you never saw on your way to Stormveil, maybe you get some new ashes of war and some new weapons, then you go even further south and end up in a brand new area, this place starts out with a woman explaining that the servants from her csatle have all rebelled, and everywhere you go you find misbegotten and the corpses of the people they killed, this area has it's own story arc. Eventually you get bored of that and go east to Caelid, everything there is scary, the sky is red and everything is way too strong for you to fight, but you find even more upgrades, suddenly you open your map and realize that Limgrave, what was originally the entire map, looks really small now. By setting up some strategic roadblocks early in the game you are incentivized to go out and realize just how open the world really is, if you could just blitz the first main boss I think some players would end up missing out on some things that they otherwise wouldn't have taken the time to comb through
I went pretty directly to stormveil and died to Margit many many times. Decided I was gonna explore and didn't fight him again until I was close to 40 or so hours in on my first playthrough haha. I'm about 70 hours in now and feel dumb for not getting this game earlier and makes me want to play through the souls games as this was my entrance to the soulskiroborne ring games
Honestly on my first playthrough I immediately went south. I saw the dude on the horse and said fuck that then I went far east and had a fun time. No idea when i fought Margit
@@KTheStrugglerright? I’m sure you didn’t play before because you heard all the constant memes about how tough the games are but Elden Ring is actually not even as hard as regular games on the hardest difficulty settings. So it’s totally doable for average players, like the enemies do, do a lot of damage if they hit you but it’s way easier to avoid attacks than other games because you seem to be invincible while rolling somehow which I haven’t noticed in other games. So you don’t even really need to parry much which I suck at lol, Shouldn’t have psyched myself out about the difficulty
@@knowingbadgerI did the same. I remember that I wanted to see what was in that tiny island at the very bottom of the map… I knew right there that the game was great and I should enjoy it as much as I could.
Probably the best open world environments and weather in any single player RPG made. SO many times I would stop and just pan around to look. From Sofrias well, Redmayne castle and the music/sound ambiance always fit perfectly the theme.
Pretty much the only open world that matches Elden Ring is Breath of the Wild( and ToTK by extension), and maybe Skyrim as well but to a lesser extent. I haven't played RDR2, but I've heard great things about it.
I mean, it's similar to other FromSoft games. In DS3, when you get to the High Wall, the first area after the tutorial, you can immediately see the Grand Archives and the path to the second to last boss. Lothric can also be seen from most places in the world, and after you beat Vordt in High Wall you also get a peek at most of the aboveground areas. In DS2, Majula lets you peek at Castle Drangleic and Heide's Tower of Flame. In DS1 you can see the walls of Anor Londo and the depths of Blighttown from the main hub. You can see lots of far off areas in the early stages of Bloodborne as well. Many landmarks in Sekiro are also clear...
Agree, however I think the fact that Elden Ring's map doesn't have any real verticality or "intertwining" parts makes it far less interesting than the other Souls maps
W take
@@UGCP744 oh yeah, for sure. First time around the map is a banger, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and there's *so* many things to do. For the first playthrough or two, it's amazing. But after that? It keeps getting more and more tedious to the point where even if I feel like doing another run, which I periodically do for all the other games, I tend to quit by Raya Lucaria, because it's just. So. *Tedious.* I mean, hell, the game has you running around for the first *two hours* of every new run just to get set up. Now, sure, you don't *have* to do it... Just like you don't *have* to use armor or even *weapons.* You don't *HAVE* to. Sure would be a good fucking idea to do it anyway, though.
@@YTDariuS-my6dgYou're not required to get every item for your build. For example, while you can of course get the items that give you the most parry frames for a parry build, you can instead learn to parry better with fewer parry frames. That's true for all builds: you can skip the "optimal" items.
I mean, when you think about it, how can an item even be optimal if it's excplicitely not fun to make the journey to get the item to begin with? Fun optimization should be the goal, not build optimization.
And if getting the item results in a monotone grind rather than challenging fights, how is that optimal? If it minimizes your fun, why do it?
@@ETBrooD hm, how do I say this... It's a lot like real life, kind of. You need to do some unfun stuff so you can have more fun later. Like you said, getting a tool like, say, a parry shield with good parry frames may not be particularly fun, but the extra wiggle room you enjoy with it for the rest of the game more than makes up for it. That's how I used to play all the From games I have. Instead of going into NG+, I prefer to make a new build. I actually enjoy early game struggles and find the most enjoyment in areas like High Wall, Yharnam, Forest of Fallen Giants, Undead Burg and the like. You could say that I consistently enjoy about the first 20% of a From game that I already completed. Problem is, with how massive Elden Ring is, something I like to call "replay fatigue" sets in way before I get to finish those 20%, which means the occasional mood to complete an entire playthrough is also difficult to hold up, as opposed to other games like, say, Sekiro, which I have no trouble completing when I'm in the mood for it.
@@YTDariuS-my6dgI can see that, yeah. I think you're making a very good point.
I remember thinking for most of the game, "no way you can go to that place". The answer is yes you can get to at some point anywhere you see in the game which is just amazing. The massive tree is what surprised me the most I thought it was something that's there but you don't go to little did I know you even go there at some point, best map design ever made, you see it you can go there no questions asked.
but theres actually a ton of open world games like that that allow you to go anywhere you see, Elden Ring is just really really proficient in the whole design of it fr
I got minor issue with the map (not the world). Is really hard to display vertical scale on paper map, so multiple times I tought there could be path from one area to another and when I got there, I met 100 high cliff.
Yeah I got that too. Luckily they fixed most of them but there are still some
I wanna be clear, it’s not just you the map straight up does not show all the cliffs. Like there are a lot of areas with a line designating some sort of cliff or barrier but there are also cliffs that they just never drew into the map at all. It is rare but I noticed it most recently with the place infected with madness in weeping peninsula, good luck trying to get there by map because all the cliffs aren’t drawn
The most annoying shit is spending 2 hours trying to figure out a way to get to something, finally googling it, and finding out you can't go there until you do some quest first
@@Rujewitblood I had something similar happening to me. I wanted to get to the top of a mountain near Liurnia but I didn't figure out how to do it, so I gave up. Later in the game, doing Ranni's quest, I am teleported to a place with some ruins nearby and I realize that I'm on top of the mountain I wanted to go to at the beginning (I'm talking about the mountain in which you find the place you go to give Ranni her ring, basically at the end of the quest).
@@santihjusto that's the place i meant lol
I've seen so many people be reductive about ER's world design. I think because they dont know what to look for and they just enjoy it in ignorant bliss. They dont realize the the developer's invisible hands pushing and pulling you. The geography isnt just for asthetics. That forest isnt there to look appealing. The literal terrain facilitates exploration. The fact that the trees obscure the gatehouse when you first step out into the world makes exploration possible. The thrill of discovering the gatehouse ruins is made possible by you being unaware of it. But the developers havent left you to wander aimlessly. They uses "satellites" or breadcrumbing to pull you THROUGH the forest. They're called satellites because they orbit the major content. And lure you towards it. As important as what you can see is what you cant. Look at their use of sheer cliffs and rises and mountains and ravines and you'll start to see it. Not to mention the scale of things and the distinctness of assets allows for great use of landmarking. It makes possible for the world to work without icons. Try finding your way without icons in a different open world like Ass Creed. To make this point. The painting you find in ER and you have to find the location it depicts for the reward. I was able to figure them all out without having to google them. Now... if I took 5 screenshots of AC Origins. Do you think you could pinpoint them? Or even get close? I couldnt.
Alot of people are not looking at it like this and we need more of this. They just say: it's the same as all the other games. But really it's not. Darksouls and bloodborne really only have one way to get to the end. Elden ring is so much more open were u can skip everything and go right to the capital if you want to. Of course u can't get in without 2 great runes but you can at least get there. Like you said tree's blocking things are great. It's great when u can't just see everything so u wonder whats behind that big cliff and what's on top of that mountain. But they even were able to stuff in a great plateau moment with liurnia and just seeing on and on. I'm glad that u understand 😃
@@tomyjohnny Yes! The video was refreshing
@@tomyjohnny How do you skip everything and go right to the capital?
@@atlantic_love 1. Fort Haight in Limgrave - collect the first half of Dectus Medallion
2. Find a teleporter into Dragonbarrow near Third Church of Marika, go to Fort Faroth and pick up the second half
3. Go around Stormveil into Liurnia, at the end of the lake there is a ravine and from there just go to the Grand Lift
Congratulations, you made it to Altus Plateau in 30 minutes or so
You can't@@atlantic_love
It’s one of the few games where you can actually walk to everything that you can see from a distance.
What games do that other than souls games?
I wanna experience that more, it’s one of my favorite aspects of souls.
@@khalidpapa6299 botw/totk. Once u finish the tutorial you can literally go beat the game
@@khalidpapa6299 Zelda: breath of the wild and Zelda: tears of the kingdom are the most prominent I thought directly about
botw
Elden Ring is one of a handful of games that made me drive to explore based solely on map design. Like, its ridiculously beautiful. I shouldn't expect anything less from the creators of DS. A masterclass of game design, they use Monolithic Architecture to invoke a sense of insignificance in the player, allowing a sort of terror in the sheer magnitude. Approaching and entering these structures puts them into perspective, giving you the sense that they are old, perhaps eternal even, and not just based on their classical, gothic, or renaissance designs.
If you throw on a good ReShade preset and go with the First Person mod it takes it to another level.
I adore how at spawn you can see the way forward all the way atop to the Great Brazier, But up there, You cant see Limgrave, As there is no way to return back in time to what once was before you explored and conquered.
I believe the intended path of progression at the capital gate is to assume you cant enter yet & follow the road out, straght to Mt.Gelmir. where the player will likely take up the quest to hunt down other Tarnished, this quest naturally leads the player back towards the capital.
There isn’t an intended path I think since many people would naturally end up exploring Gelmir before Altus since you can get teleported.
@@ni9274I think I explored gelmir after fire giant or maliketh
@@ni9274I went to Gelmir first because the capital was the super important seeming area I’d been working toward the whole game, so it seemed like it would be the last or one of the last major areas. So I wanted to do everything else first because I assumed it would be scaled really high. Turns out the scaling is way too low, which kinda ruined a lot of the fun cause I was way over leveled, especially with morgott.
Idk what they were thinking with the scaling cause you either end up over leveled like me, or you get face fucked by the huge scaling spike just after
@@squidwardstesticles5914Morgott makes me sad, he is such a good boss but it's so easy to be like nearly level 100 when you get to him so he is too easy.
From the start of the game I was trying to get to the tree, and I indeed ended up in stormcastle. Great map design.
The map (I mean the UI map) itsfelf is extraordinary well design, it's a map with a language and when you learn how to read it you can know what could be a point of interest or not. For example the gold aura around a cave entrance => mine. It's the first open world where I actually use the map as a real map to explore, and not just mark point to another.
I was too busy exploring every nook and cranny to notice that the map was directing me anywhere. Very nice.
I still remember playing Elden RIng for the first time, thinking that Limgrave was the whole map and that Stormveil castle was the end game and still thinking "Huh, this game is actually fairly big".
Oh boy, when I realized, it had to be the best realization of my gaming years.
if you ever buy the game Okami about the wolf godess with the paint brush you will get the exact same wow moment as this. crazy when you think a game is long but its actually just the beginning.
Finding the alternate path to Altus was also really cool! I did know where the dectus medallions from watching runs before I played but I did find the ruin strewn precipice and makar organically just exploring Liurnia.
That alternate route to the plateau and the real door to the capital are both in interesting spots on their respective maps. There's a valley splitting off of Liurnia? Wonder if there's something cool over there. Is that another door to the capital? I wonder if I can get in that way.
This game in so many ways does the open world so perfectly. And I feel like I enjoy the game more than some other people, as a newbie to souls like gameplay in general I think the boss design in this game is like nothing else I've ever played. In no other game have I died so many times and not been filled woth seething rage lol. Every time I died I thought "yeah I shouldn't have attacked... why didn't I use my ash there... maybe I shoukd try this physick... i wonder if this weapon would work better etc."
I'm not even done with my first playthrough and I really feel like this is one of, if not my favorite game of all time.
The sites of grace literally point you in the direction you're supposed to go 😂 it's a huge map but pretty tough to get lost.
There's actually two types of starts for new players. I also took this route.. I looked at the castle, then the tree, then turned around and went the opposite way lmao
I went to the dragon burnt ruins and got dropped in scilia cave. Best start ever, lmfao... I eventually did everything in weeping penisula and limgrave before the castle (staying well away from caelid), then went back to caelid just before altus.
About the same as what I did too lol
Finally escaping Selia cave only to find myself in Hell was a wonderfully nightmarish experience!
I miss being lost in the Lands Between during my first playthrough
The tree reminded me of the huge statue of Kannon in Sendai my father took me to when I was a kid (look it up). He made me walk all the way up to the foot of the statue, and that massive landmark would grow bigger and bigger as we got closer. My first time playing the game, I didn't know anything about the capital. I pretty much ignored the story and just looked into every corner, so I ended up in the Altus Plateau via the other path, coming from the area with the wormfaces and passing by the village with the Godskin. I thought the lift was the end of the game and only later realized what the medallions were for. I even found the sealed path to the mountaintops before even finding Morgott.
the only place where the erdtree is invisible is consecrated snowfield. But thats probably due to the lower elevation than mountaintops of the giants, so the rock formations cover it. Not to mention the constant blizzard covering half of the region.
The view when you leave the tutorial, and the sight of the tree for the first time….. man, I knew it was something special and unrivalled
The erdtree being the landmark of the game also breaks the 4th wall. It fucking gates your gaming devices lmaooo.
Especially when you burn it
The main door doesn't hold up water. You can observe that it's in fact a huge chasm there, where map draws "water".
That chasm in right where the Deeproot Depths are. Most likely, some part of the city have literally gone underground in the past.
That first playthrough was something else for me. I had barely got surgery so I stayed home recovering while playing.
I recently watched a indie devlog by thatFain where he talks alot about Elden Rings level design and map, and how hes using that in his own game! Was a pretty cool insight as well
The area that has the 3 teleporters that require sigil keys is probably one of the best moments to get a feel of how huge and immersive the world is, from your spwan point, to farum azula, and finally Nokron. it also places enemies to show you how much you need to reach their levels and defeat them
I wish I could have played Elden Ring as a kid in the 80's somehow. Before the internet, before Twitch, before any of that. I played as blind as I could the first time through, and didn't look at the wiki and tried to avoid spoiler videos, but a lot just seeps in unless you shut down RUclips, Twitch, and all social media completely. And after my first run, I broke down and looked at the wiki. It would have been so awesome to have slowly and serendipitously learned the NPC questlines and the locations of all the caves and catacombs and so on. Some of the most powerful items in the game are subtly hidden... but the map is a key to finding out so much. Not only is the overall design great, but the in-game map we open up and look at is just an awesome tool and powerful storytelling aid.
One could spend their entire life exploring Elden Ring without any external guides, I'd imagine.
I went to caelid first (worst mistake of my life)
Side note: that's not water in Lower Leyndell but an abyss. That's where the Nameless Eternal City fell from, hence you can't pass through it as usual.
this is the main thing i like about elden ring i could be told nothing and go to a seemingly random hut on the map which turns out to be the entrance to a massive level
The moment I opened the door to reveal the map at the beggining of the game, the feeling I got was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. It was liberty, pure liberty. Seeing the gigantic tree before me, the scenery, nobody saying what I had to do... Ispent 140 hours on my firs playthrough and I missed stuff. Truly one of the best games ever.
one great and very overlooked detail, if you start at the place where you first enter the open world and walk directly towards the Erd tree, it leads you to the road that leads to the castle
Fromsoft have always been wizards at map design and just game design in general. They had to have sold their souls to be able to make games this fantastic
Sold their definitely DARK SOULS, hahah
They're definitely KINGS in their FIELD 😅
The CORE of their designs remains in Elden Ring
The opening area in Limgrave is literally one of the best starting areas in any game ever.
You can see almost every significant location just from that one area, it’s insane
Elden Ring is a masterclass in “show, don’t tell”
also at the start of the game new players don't have torrent, so they will not likely pursue the erdtree after reaching gatefront. They'll end up fighting Margit way sooner, that's how it was with me.
Plenty of people have praised it. But at the same time, good level and world design are just expected from these games at this point. FromSoft never fails to deliver.
It's their only openworld game and they havnt changed a bit
the first time i played this game was off 2.5 tabs at a homies house and i just could not get over the fact that you could go to the structures in the background and they aren’t illustrated backgrounds for the area, he was right outside of leyndell and then just walked in and i was so amazed
Reflecting on my first play through so far…. It’s like a series or movie, alternating scenes between different events taking place… creating confusion, discovery, and, connecting things together.. love it
Its an intentional effect, the game alters distant landmarks, distorting the distances between them, you, and each other. It was partially to create the many gorgeous vistas, and also exactly what youre talking about with this video: an ingenius method of encouraging the player to explore the world without needing to explicitly tell you. The vague guidance at the start is just to get you started, with the idea being that by the time you're finished in Raya Lucaria, the player will have learned the importance of exploration, using major landmarks as general points of interest you should work your way towards.
I didnt find the map design for getting into Leyndell was flawed; it might seem confusing on a first playthrough, but its very intentional that the door youre guided towards is a dead end. It clearly used to be the way in, but as you can see when you get the area map, that door opens to a huge pool of water. It obviously wasnt always this way, and so the mystery of why, how and when a large chunk of the city was replaced with water is one of the many questions the game wants you to be asking and trying to find answers for. It also forces you to explore an area of Altus Plateau that otherwise most people would totally skip in favor of going straight to the capital. And that would mean no fresh crab meat courtesy of our best buddy, blackguard boggart
Once inside the city, you'll see it's not water behind the main gate, but a giant chasm.
And you can find where that section of the city fell if you manage to find your way into the depths below the city.
my first playtrough i ended up in caelid because a box kidnapped me
I think the only flaw with the map design is that there's nothing blatantly encouraging you to go to The Weeping Peninsula, the actual beginner area you should tackle before heading to Stormveil Castle. Seemingly the only thing encouraging you to do so is Margit gatekeeping the castle proper.
I disagree with leyndell having a clear path that tells you where to go, as soon as you go on the streets inbetween all the open and interconnected houses and you end up like me in the slum region, you get very confused on where to go. And all those soldiers dont make exploration easier, especially if you are underleveled. It took me hours until I discovered that you had to jump on the dragon corpse to proceed...
The game is all about exploring without the need for NPCs to give out boring and repetitive quests. The game was designed to give the player 100% freedom along with consequences to your actions and how you interact with NPCs that you cross paths with. This game doesn’t hold your hand, it’s all on you. Which is amazing! Sure you can resort to google like I did, but it kind of defeats the purpose of how the game was designed. There are tons of hidden objects that are crucial to progress through the story (AKA the map). This game was designed to take hundreds of hours to complete due to having to explore every inch of the entire world. But when you use google or RUclips, the game can take less than 20 hours to complete. Again, that’s not how the game was designed at all. To anyone that’s new to the game and ends up reading my comment, do yourselves a favor and just enjoy the game without looking things up. It’ll take you a long time, but it’s how the game was meant to be played. The endgame content wasn’t meant to be accessible until like 80+ hours in. Finding even the medallions to unlock the elevator that leads to the main city should can take a long time. Because you need to explore the map to find both pieces. One of them isn’t obvious to anyone. I won’t tell you where it is, but if you don’t have google, it requires tons of exploration and thinking outside of the box. That’s why this game’s genius. This is why it deserved GOTY.
I wasnt saying you need to look anything up and i have beaten the game before along with all remembrance bosses all i was saying is that the world is made very good
To be honest i think the game still works with Google. Ultimately I'm in it for the challenge and bosses so i want to face as many, if not all of them if i can. As long as you're not looking up guides for op classes, sorceress and what to do against each bosses' attacks, the game is still plenty of fun to explore.
I don't like the fact your punished for exploring, meaning you get locked out of some good quests if you do one small thing or beat a certain boss or reach a certain point
I agree with everything except the 20 hours part and the "game's not designed to use google". Even with guides and maps from google on your side, the game still takes at least 50 hours, assuming you're not rushing through the main bosses. My second playthrough took me around 120 hours, because i did everything the game can offer on one run (every dungeons, side bosses, optional areas...) and that's still using guides. Without them you're definitely gonna miss content and probably lock you out of a few quests, and that's a shame for anyone who's a bit completionist.
Also, the game has been designed knowing internet and communities exist. There are some quests that are completely impossible to complete without luck or full dedication (like writing everything down on paper, and even then it's not that easy). As they left players options to help each other using in-game messages, i take it as an invitation to use other players knowledge to get things done on your side using guides and stuff. And it doesn't mean using them blindly without trying yourself first, ofc.
Every way of playing is valid tho, and that's the magic of this game.
Man i wish i could restart this game over to the first time i played it. One of the best feelings ive had in gaming
That Dragon Quest 1 experience... you can see the castle, you're not going there directly
i think it is pretty clear where you need to go on the gates of leyndell. If they want to get to the tree they will just circle around the wall preventing them from going to the tree and find a way in. and if they do they will find the draconic tree sentinel.
You look into the distance and think "That's a big tree, but it's pretty close. I can make it there." and the further you ride, the quicker you realise "Oh, it's not close, it's really really big." Same with the giant forge.
Dragon Quest 1 is another game that also implemented the fact you can see the end of the game from the start of the game, and the whole map spirals toward that goal.
When melina said to bring her to the foot of the erdtree and I saw that the "foot" is burried in water, I thought there's a way to find a boat and sail there.
Miyazaki said that he makes the team remake the level when they failed to guide the player's line of sight properly. That's the point most of the soulslike games couldn't mimick well.
The placement of Malenias tower. Makes me think there was either a bridge that connected Caelid to Mountaintops. But it could also be to contain the rot in an isolated area.
After renala u follow the bridge and the finger lady says to go to the lift
Great video! I'm also surprised that other people haven't talked about the map. However, I don't agree that the Altus gate area is lacking. It forces you to explore more and I think that's Fromsoft's way of saying "hey we know you're following a linear path, but we made this game open world for a reason, so go explore!" If you follow the side path, you'll naturally end up at Mount Gelmir, opening up the player to experiencing Volcano Manor. Eventually the player may have explored all of Altus, and through that exploration I think it makes sense that players would eventually figure out the way into the capital. Sure, it does mess up the linearity that the main quest had so far, but I don't think that makes it lacking, because it forces the player to explore, and exploration is kinda the whole point of the game. You could just not explore at all and only go to the main required areas, but Fromsoft wants players to see the whole map, and I think the Leyndell gate scenario is them trying to encourage exploration. And plus, from the site of grace near the Leyndell gate, you can see that there's still more to explore off road because there's a staircase in the rock as well as trees and a troll on a cliff. At some point, the player would likely be intrigued and go that way, leading them to DTS and the entrance to the capital.
Anyways, this was a fun watch. Subscribed!
Its the classic fromsoft signature, when you play sekiro your first legitimate duel/scripted death, you're fighting genichiro in the end game area.
someone tell this man about guidance of grace. The game literally points toward the biggest point of interest at almost every single grace. It IS the MAIN method of guidance whenever you're slightly stuck
Yesterday I thought about the EXACT same things you mention here. This game really is a masterpiece!
since you can access this new DLC by defeating Radan and reaching the egg....is mostly like this part is in the middle of the game and maybe can reach a new ending by what you choose in the DLC
3:50 - to the place they are supposed to be, which is mortgage
I have always loved that Fromsoft respect players intelligence, Miyazaki and his team know that if you really want to play ElldenSoulsBorne games you are smart enough to find the way yourself, no pointers, no UI arrows pointing you to the next "objective". It makes you want to explore the world and find your own interpretation of what it all means.
Incredible worlds.
I love how this suddenly got into my youtube tab.great video.good insights for such a basic production quality
9:52 idk the first lift was allot less obvious than this, how would you know where to get the medallions without googling it and the forts aren’t big enough to be an eye catching land mark
There are lore theories that suggest the remains of the eternal city used to sit right where that watery moat is behind the Lyendell capital front gate and just like many other places we find throughout the game, it was cast underground by the greater will, that's just speculation, but who knows?
On my first playthrough I went everywhere so it took me 115 hours to finish it.
I think the entrance to the Capital is fairly logical. The huge door is closed but i need to get there, lets explore around it to find something
This is basically a eldin ring boss guide in disguise
My first goal in game was to make it to the erdtree I b-lined for it to find out it wasn’t that easy.
A stretch... most of the people will not assume the tree is a place they can actually walk on.
i remember when the game came out everyone was talking about the map. I think the conversation has just shifted but im glad you brought it back up :)
I skipped the castle my first run through the game, totally on accident I just liked exploring lmao
I was a little lost at capital, but it was cool to find that side back entrance.
I went around the castle to the lakes and I was so lost I spent like 5 hours getting no progress on the story
As I play this game as I haven’t burned the world, I’m still making hella discoveries
Great video man
I havent had any issues knowing where to go, especially due to the guiding light. It's a very linear game with wide paths.
Me thinking I missed the melania fight because I was already at the Elden tree
In the Capital area I found my way in by looking at the map , I explored a lot & than by studying the map clearly I found my way in
Took me 4hours to reach greyoll yesterday…..no complaints just wow lol
elden ring may be open world but its just like all souls where you're on a path
My first 3 hours of this game were of me getting teleported into a cave in Caelid and getting stuck there even before getting the first site of grace you're supposed to get, and torrent.
Finally, escaping the cave and realizing Im in video game hell and having to hoof it all the way back to Limgrave because I didnt know you could teleport in this game.
Actually there is a road to skip stormveil, and it’ll bring you to hyetta’s site of grace
Kind of discounting the gold trails left by sites of grace, no? You make it seem like people aren’t looking at the mega map, but that’s how you fast-travel, go to roundtable hold, set markers, etc.
Never played a souls game before until I bought elden ring like 2 weeks ago and wow challenging game new play style for me I’m into fps games and gezz map design Is amazing ! top notch ! , I’m about 8 hrs into the game trying to complete as much as I can in limbgrave an south peninsula before I head up north and east . Happy travels tarnished ones
I definitely recommend taking your time with your first playthrough. Explore to your heart's content before moving on to somewhere new. Also, don't sleep on buffs, infusions, and taking advantage of an enemy's elemental weakness. You don't need to just run 1 weapon for the entire game. You don't even need to fully upgrade every weapon you end up using for them to be good.
I actually skipped the Stormwill😀 came back there later when my friend told me there is Godrick 😀
Its just a damn shame there has been 0 games tries to replicate this feeling they would rather just put dodging in the game and yeah its soulslike the game is inspired by darksouls. My most memorable moment in dark souls is just looking at a building in a distance and hours later i just realized wait this level now is the building that i saw back then in the distance.
Bleak falls barrow felt more revolutionary and the throat of the world being seen for all around the world.
But what elden ring has is the world story telling of dark souls to accompany these elements when you get there, like the damage to the castle, and the mangled arms everywhere, as well as the occasional flesh abomination made in the castle.
By the time you get to the demi god you get an idea of him and the wars been fought at his door.
You can also see the divine towers all over.
When i first played it i felt its kinda nice, after a while i found it boring for the small rune drop and hard to kill enemies for those runes, the map was small, very few (interesting for me) weapons etc. Then i found the lake area going around stormhill (couldnt progress it) and realized the map expands which blew my mind (played through 3 DS games before) and hooked me. Tried to get down on the slabs behind godrick, failed miserably untill i managed, battled my way through academia outskirts. After hours and hours i managed to level up enough to comfortably beat stormveil and starting area, everything without any wiki. It took me over 150h to reach Altus through the wyrm area and then virgins. Ended up not even reaching capitol when i deleted my first character and started anew with all my knowledge and im having a blast up to today with all sorts of characters and my (second) main entering ng++
Compared to DS2 and DS3 it's much better bc you can actually go to places you see in the distance. The models of distant areas also seem true to scale, like if you flew directly there it would actually be there.
Edit: idk how you didn't mention how hard it is to find the grand lift of Rold! There's no clear path to get there on the map, or at least when you try and follow the map to get there you'll find a dead end every time. Instead you have to open one particular giant door, and it's pretty much the only giant door in the capital that you can open. My first playthrough I walked by it many times because I assumed it was just another big door with no use.
I completely agree that people should talk about the map more, and you make a lot of good points here, however, you didn't even mention my favorite part of the map; Siofra River and the underground.
Going down that long well elevator and seeing the crumbling ruins filled with these unnatural beings who move so oddly (I had never seen claymen in my playthrough yet) took my breath away on my first playthrough. I wasn't strong enough to progress, but I was so excited to return and explore this mystery that seemed to follow different rules than the land I had explored so far.
And then when I did return and progress further, seeing the space open up, and seeing the false sky and the ruins took my breath away again. And then when I defeated Rahdan and entered Nokron, only to see what I assumed was set dressing was actually a new region, and I looked down to see Siofra from above.... words can not describe how I felt. I had no clue these spaces would connect in such a unique way. The cherry on top being that you can also see Mohgwyn Palace from this area, another piece of what I assumed was set dressing.
The interconnected underground regions are easily my favorite region in any game I have ever played. The regions by themselves are beautiful, but how they connect to each other, and the mystery surrounding it all, is truly a work of art in my opinion.
I went straight for the tree becase i wasnt payingb attention and thought the grace of the erd tree was the tree itself lol.
Well I am an absolute weirdo, in my first playthrough. one of the first things I found after some random dungeons in the starting area, was the passage to Liurnia. I was in Liurnia and Caelid before finding Margit
Map/world designs by from software are just genius.
You see that thing back there at the horizon? You can and will go there.
You look back after progressing for hours and see landmarks you passed on your path.
Fromsoftware games are simply awesome.
After being sucked into them most other games feel shallow.
The game is supricingly linear this way despite being open world 😂.
Having said that me myself who never go the obvious main route, went to Celid first.
My friend somehow did manage to ride past the castle and therefor skipped it.
And yet another friend started going south at the start of the game.