Open World Fatigue: Elden Ring & The Ubisoft Formula
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- Опубликовано: 15 сен 2024
- DX discusses Elden Ring and the formula Ubisoft uses to create open world video games by contrasting and analyzing the two approaches.
Thumbnail & Title Card art by Azuma Yasuo, check them out on Twitter:
/ azumayasuo96
Horizon Zero Dawn was gifted to me by Zelix30, check them out on Twitter:
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Mods used in this video:
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#EldenRing #Ubisoft #FarCry
Thanks to Ash and Lo for insightful conversations on this topic.
The thumbnail and title card art for this video were done by artist Azuma Yasuo, you can check them out on Twitter here! twitter.com/AzumaYasuo96
I think it's no surprise people started calling for another Armored Core game just before and after Elden Ring came out.
It's a killer thumbnail, really clever idea and great execution!
There is always the other side in that parting statement and that is the devs learning the wrong things. You've seen this in film and TV and if anything, the game industry isn't immune to it. The next games would have slow-paced combat with healthbars up the wazoo but twice the HUD/notification.
In the video you should have included Zelda BotW and trashed it too. All those uninspiring shrines with one puzzle. Repetitive setting for each shrine. Tiny main dungeons. Uninspiring bosses. Repetitive enemies.
That is why i also like the Elder scrolls games they are the same as Elden Ring but older
The genre just has so many games that feel exactly the same. Kinda like dunkey said in his horizon forbidden west video, "it's not a bad game, but I've already played it. I played it when it was Assassins Creed 2, and i played it when it was Batman Arkham City."
I mean Vaas already told us what the definition of insanity is. So how can ubisoft expect us to be doing the same shit over and over again?
The same can be said about the souls genre
@@frontrider3240 they say they ended the souls franchise but Elden Ring is just Dark Souls w/ a jump button and a mount. There hasn’t been any innovation to the entire genre in 13 years. Souls fans may like that but it’s a massive double standard for them to then complain about other franchises not changing. Fromsoft is never held to the same standards as other developers and it’s getting ridiculous
@@a.g.m8790 played it yet?
@@coltj5907 for about 70 hours now
I love how elden ring makes the hud go invisible when not in combat. fromsoft knows that the hud would distract from the beautiful visuals and removes it when travelling.
Shadow of the colossus did that too and when you are going for a colossus there is a pillar of light. I think sotc is one of the best action RPGs because it was so ahead of it's time and made the open world mechanics relate directly to the story. It was also one of the best realistic depiction of battling huge monsters too.
@@FoxUnitNell Miyazaki states ICO was the main reason he left his corporate job and went to work at FROM so the SOTC inspiration makes a lot of sense
@@jadyn2446 ICO?
@@cjgreen4331 another game with a similar aesthetic to Shadow of the colossus
@@cjgreen4331 Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are made by the same creator, who is an influence on Miyazaki.
Potentially worth mentioning that Elden Ring, at least to my eye, looks built around the idea of no hud. Things that you can grab will glow in some way, yes even plants. Places of interest have hints to orient you. A statue, a bunch of flying jellyfish that glow, hanging out by the spot, a big enemy, hints that there's something there. Item descriptions give hints to what to do with them, or reference something you might have talked about with a character as a hint of what it's for.
There’s also the paintings. A modern game would slap a waypoint on a part of the map after finding a certain item even if it alludes to a particular area in some way. The paintings are as basic as can be. “Look for the spot that looks like this place and go to it, there’s a thing there”. It’s not hard to figure out, but it also makes you feel smart for tracking where the area depicted in the painting could be.
It's not just visual too, you get a lot of information from audio cues. There's the usual things like the information you can glean from an NPC conversation and music changes, but there's also the growl/scratching alerting you of a Rune Bear, the subtle ringing of a Grace or a Teardrop scarab, the boom of a Walking Mausoleum's footsteps. They aren't new, but they're all done excellently.
i like how elden ring guides you through visual elements... you see those one eyed stone worms you know there's a battlearena for example...
Elden ring graphics is garbage
@@handel1111 It is absolutely not.
When u said “let players think for themselves” that’s literally what makes a game fun, creating strats and improving skills with said strats and the overall achievement of beating something without help
Thats why breath of the wild was so good, so many different tools at your disposal to approach the same problem in every situation.
@@ayzix-polytopia3854 Breath of the wild was garbage, and this is exactly why any game that doesn't hold your hand is garbage. Sorry but I'm not a jobless dude who finds fun in running around of every corner of a fictional world to feel a sense of achievement, it's a devs job to make me discover their world and tell me story, not mine.
@@hydrocy.9165 what are you talking about you paid money to play the game, and it is open world, wtf do you mean "make me discover their world", that's why you're playing the damn game isn't it? I thought games were supposed to be fun? The way you talk about it makes it seem like they're more of a chore for you or something, which is fine but I don't see how that makes the game bad.
@Hydro Cy.
unreal that you are the modern gamer
gaming is dead and garbage
@@hydrocy.9165 Wow... Just wow... That just mean "OPEN" world is not for you my guy, what the heck are you doing playing them? Go fetch an interactive cutscene from Quantic dream or smth... No, you know what? At this point, drop gaming and go see movies or read books, why bother wasting your oh so short time of your busy life pushing buttons to make your characters _go_ do something when you can just see them doing it with 0 input from a movie?
You definitely picked the *WRONG* hobby mate...
As a player of most soulsborne games, I didn’t find Elden ring’s design “unique”, more like the natural evolution of souls games to an open world format.
This is prove that fromsoftware's world design was always excellent. ER being open world and hence giving more freedom, more people are getting the chance to experience this.
While you're completely right, it's design is unique to other open world games. Closest I can think of is Botw
I think it's because from software have in the past been able to quick skip to the toughest bosses or just having it right there so any unbalanced placement of enemies makes sense for the open world realism while allowing speed runners and challenge guys from the previous game have these right in front of their faces. New players feel the naturally dispersion of enemies - that other open world bar you from - while this practice of bringing in tough enemies near the player rewards previous players to start a sequel with similar difficulty. I'd admit horizon forbidden west was also very tough from the beginning with the cobra fight but that's during a scripted linear early story progress so it's still possible without bearing the first game, which isn't going to be the case for else ring if you never beat a souls game likely they will die in these early encounters therefore needing to find weaker enemies in larger regions to permit them.
Considering how absurd some hidden areas/secrets are in old games yeah I’d agree. Even after multiple games I end up finding something new or completely forgetting where to find crucial items.
@@cjgreen4331 probably due to botw’s haha, go save the world, but maybe , just maybe, head east first. They give you mild directions, but let you figure it out yourself. And no HUD
I'd argue Far Cry 3 didn't start this "Ubisoft Formula". It was Assassin's Creed 2 that started it all, and Ubisoft only refined the idea a tiny bit with each game they made till they hit Far Cry 3. After that, the "Ubisoft Formula" never improved. They did, however, try their best, like making shameless attempts to make the next Witcher 3, but it never worked out. I'm not going to be surprised if every moron developer starts taking "The Elden Ring Formula" way too literally and starts pumping out similar games without understanding why the game even "works".
Yeah, I think most of this traces back to Assassin's Creed 2, Far Cry 3 just feels like it had a bigger impact. Also, considering that Ubisoft's copies of The Witcher 3 outsold it, I think it did "work out" despite whatever problems we have with them.
Oh my God. I hadn't even really considered that Deck 13 might be making The Surge 3 as an open world game.
@@DXFromYT To be fair Fifa games outsell everything and there is not a soul on this planet that would claim they are better than Witcher 3 by any definition.
did you guys forget the infamous AC1 flags? the most useless collectible in the history of games. 100 feathers all over the map, and collecting them all gives you... a sense of acomplishment?
LOL now they're going to make ridiculously hard games with no explanation for anything. People will love it probably
What I find additionally really good about Elden Ring and in turn bad for modern ubisoft games is that being lead by the hand to such a massive degree often means that there is nothing you need to do outside of the game to actually get anything done
Meanwhile the community in Elden Ring comes together, makes guides, makes wikis, gives tips on farm spots and where to find x boss or x weapon. And its fucking fun
This! The amount of times I've seen someone get excited or learning something new, Like genuinely excited and rush to share it with someone else is great! Elden ring just feels like your actually exploring, And just like exploring in the real world, It means people come together to talk and share about stuff. I Don't think i've really seen much of that from Ubisoft games, and the most i've seen from horizon was some tips for harder enemies.
I didn't know stormveil castle had a basement till my third playthrough and the amount of people who got wide-eyed from thatwas great!
I’d say that there’s also a consequence to Elden Ring’s approach: NPC quests. Because it’s open world and the vague nature of these side quests, leaving them unfinished or never encountering them at all is easier than ever. Yes, there’s online guides, but it did lead to moments where I only find out how to properly do the quests after it’s too late
@@Poptienza03 I honestly think that’s a fair, if not necessary, consequence. It give me incentive to actually explore and check every nook and cranny.
Even more so, leaves me in a sense of suspense and excitement when finding ANY NPC or detour.
(I argue this as someone who enjoys playing games by myself entirely offline) While I appreciate the sentiment of having the community come together to solve a mystery in their beloved game, it rubs me the wrong way when a sizable amount of content is built around that expectation. It’s a similar feeling of how WoW devs design their raids based on third party add ins their community commonly uses. I personally don’t like going out of game to progress through the game.
And I know ER gives tidbits of info here and there, but I already have a limited amount of time to play games because of IRL responsibilities, I don’t want to treat ER like I’m studying for an exam.
@@598019001 wait? It has a basement??
Every time i play a ubisoft game i have this feeling of dread. Its like I have a long list of homework to do. Elden Ring, Botw, Elder Scrolls, Fallout new Vegas and Red dead 2 are just much better designed open worlds
Fallout New Vegas world is big, but never felt too big for me. I usually can map out where I want to go and what to do when I get there. But the only map markers are towns you ether already discovered or someone told you about for the purpose of fast travel
Yeah Fallout New vegas, RDR2, Skyrim, GTA5, BOTW, fallout 3, san andreas,Witcher 3 And Kingdom come. Are some of the best open worlds out there.
Hoooooo boi! Not to rain on your parade but Elden ring does suffer from open world fatigue at some point. Catacombs and such have only so much to offer til it becomes a chore to clear them. It is more bearable than Ubisoft games, but let's not put Elden ring on a 50 foot pedestal and call it a day. Such is the weaker points of an open world game.
@@wildfiremicro6877 Agreed. Right now, it just feels very small to me now that I know it front and back after multiple playthroughs. But even then, it feels way smaller than it should be when there's vast areas full nothingness in-between points of interest. This is especially apparent when you approach the borders of the map. Good thing we have mods to add some flare to these lifeless areas.
@@Discotechque the game won't force you to do so. You can just finish the game after you beat Renala and Godrick and be done with it. And that's why Elden Ring is put on a pedestal. If you don't like it, don't do it, simple.
11:35 This is the reason why Sekiro is my second favorite Fromsoft game. It's extremely focused. By all measures, it's less than their other games. No weapon variety, no armor system, no status or complex leveling system, less exploration. But what it does have were honed to a razor sharp point, and that's exactly what I want from a game. I appreciate a short yet polished handcrafted experience more than a replayable game.
Bloodborne beat it out due to its sheer vibe though.
Bloodborne as a whole is the best fromsoft game upon reflection in my eyes. But as a whole, I think I enjoyed Sekiro more. Beating Ishiin after a hundred tries was the single best moment in video gaming history for me.
@@ccrimewave inner isshin go brrrrr
(Inner isshin is a uber-charged version if Isshin you can only unlock by going 0 death through 1 of the sekiro gauntlets)
YES sekiro is greatly focused, which is why I like it more. From an atmosphere and exploration standpoint tho, BB beats it by a mile.
@@redgarlicbred6228 sekiro is substantially better than bb in exploration. the verticality in sekiro alone completely destroys bloodborne. i would say bb has the best lore and music overall. wether u like the atmosphere more is another subject. but exploration? its actually one of the weakest games in the line up. ds1 is also better in that regard. lets not even talk about elden ring as it curb stomps bloodborne and the other games in everything that isnt music.
@@ccrimewave ehh not really. elden ring beats it in every aspect of game design barring music. the exploration in 2 areas from elden ring is better than the entirety of bloodborne put together.
the thing I love about Elden ring is 'Tree sentinel'
why? because usually, when players saw an enemy, big or small. they most intent to Attack, because most dark souls game was kind of linear, so pretty much in order to progress, you have to beat the hard to beat enemy
but tree sentinel proved that 'Hey this is open world, go back when you're strong'
it's a perfect telling to players, that Elden ring was different
And yet i insisted on killing the poor dude early on till i finally did it. He was my first kill of any kind in the game 😂
@@SeyedMohammadMehdiEmamzadeh lol
Plus there is no wrong way in killing a boss,
You could go Bash your head early on or go back when you prepared enough, both have their own satisfaction
Interesting indeed
@@SeyedMohammadMehdiEmamzadeh That's just another example of how the game makes you improve. There's just options for players regardless of whether some find it difficult or not.
mmm well I think this kind of challenge is actually very Dark Souls-ly. Have you played the first Dark Souls? Do you know that you can go to the catacombs first? Or to the ghost city? Or even the poison swamp? I mean, of course it's not Elden Ring, but it's far from linear.
@@ArturoAlbero i didn't connect with the souls series tbh. Elden Ring is the first one that actually interests me. And I'm not currently playing it. University and crap are in the way 😂
"It's a plant. You can pick it up"
This made me laugh way too hard for some reason. Partly because it's true. Most modern games treats the player as if they are an idiot who doesn't know a difference between left and right. And the way Elden Ring gives us freedom to do shit we wanted and suffer because of it is absolutely phenomenal.
Tbf alot of players are idiots 🤣
i know way to many people who do not know their left from right the majority of people out their are in fact idiots just look at the bell curve it shows their are more people who are dumb then their are people who are smart
There are legitimately people who are super mad at this game because it "Didn't tell me that if I attacked an NPC he would keep trying to kill me" well...common sense would have helped.
@@DoingFavors not really in 99% of games out their once you die the NPCs reset to default and no longer try and kill you
also grace points reset hostile NPCs back to default so most would assume it would work with non hostile NPCs but illogical they do not
so no common sense would not help
@@rayzimmermin Not exactly 99% as all the previous soulsborne games have this rule. The first time I played DS1 I attacked the first NPC I ever saw and got steamrolled for a good couple of time before I tricked the NPC to yeet himself off a cliff.
It's all still part of the gameplay experience.
I guess that is why Read Dead Redemption 2 worked so well, because, yes main and side quests are marked, but there is still a ton for you to explore and encounter many different people along the way and Arthure makes notes about them in his diary and sketches on the map, instead of bright markers.
It also feels very lived in, and Arthur Morgan's character reacts to world encounters as a person logically would. I think From is amazing at representing decadence and death with their worlds, and Rockstar is amazing at representing life and progress. Both are very needed when most open worlds are just vapid treks between objetives that would have worked a lot better in a linear setting.
@@Dynamo33 Yeah its amazing Also i was blown away when I came across a Random enounter with The Valentine prostuite on my second playthrough and then saw a Video on youtube with all the differnt options. I also enounterd a house with a farther and son. I killed the son Came back later to see the Farther mourning his son and i found the sons grave By the lake. I also came across Random side mission with the nightfolk and then encountered a Ghost lady Also encountered a rail road side mission as well and ton of other things. Just finished my 5th and came across a side mission with uncle rustling cattle also Had a women come up to me saying Killed her husbent, I then had Random enounter mission were Jaiver Road up to me saying bill had been captured. Then enounterd Miss Downes showing up at camp. and I two Guys showed up at Camp so I walked up and One of guys aked who i was and Hosea said Arthur is simple minded haha. But they eventually left camp. The world just feels so alive. only recently found out you can talked you way out of a bounty if you are not caught in the act. Arthur has some Great dilague haha. The Witcher 3 is honestly one of only other games i have played were i did not find everything on one playthrough i think these games have a good mix of content thats presented to you and content hidden. Kingdom come had a good mix of having some main quests without map makers were Npcs would guide you. But then having some That would just be marked that way it was not tedious.
You can make red dead 2 as linear as you want, you can play the story missions back to back or go out and do extra things
RDR2 storytelling and mission design is very outdated. They do write amazing stories but I’m talking about how they present it. It’s very hand holdy and exactly the same. Point A to B. However they mastered the open world sandbox, especially if you get rid of all the crutches like free story progression money.
If the story was more like the open world in terms of how we can approach and alter outcomes, or stumble across different outcomes would be such a massive improvement.
I’ll end this with what I think RDR2 missions are. They’re the break from the exploration, where you get into firefights. Cause most of the time, in the open world I never get into them. Unless I’m really mad at blackjack after losing all 30 of my dollars I had.
@@Kyrious The Open world missions are good finding the serial killer Clues or the vampire, Robot, tessure hunts require you do Know the Land RDR2 strikes a great Balance between The Open and the story missions. Actually telling a great story. Witcher 3 has handholdy quests but they are really well written. Kingdom come has the best Balance with lots of freedom. Elden ring does not have much of a story the Open world is pretty dead in terms of its NPCs and the side quests are all fetch quests.
There is not much variety. There is strengths and weakness to all the designs. But the Open world of RDR2 is one of the best have have played with how alive, Detailed the world is. Theres quests like Aberdeen Pig farm which you have to find you self and you can do what you want. I got made fun By a random NPC for wearing a priate hat. Some of the main story missions could have more freedom But they Have vaierty and I dont think the story would be as strong same with Witcher 3. The missions in Elden ring are all the same. Each all just involve boss fights so its a mixed bag. Hopefuyl GTA 6 mixes GTA4 mission design and GTA5 to get the best of both worlds. I wish RDR2 had some Manhunt style stealth missions with how much freedom you get in that game. I also you can talk your self out of a bounty im RDR2 if you dont get seen. This would have been a great use in some of the side missions.
I sometimes imagine game developers as a parent. there's one that encourages you to "C'mon you can do it! Figure it out!" and there's the one that strictly held your hands your entire life saying "you need to do this, this and this." I guess you know which sucks.
I feel like reading a long terms or a simple one with implied something much
Reminds me very heavily of RDR 2
That’s crazy, because the more the first parents you mentioned gets older, they get more sympathetic so Elden ring is much more forgiving than the previous titles.
I feel like I'm seeing my Mother vs my Great Uncle in this scenario. My mother being the one to respect my intelligence and my Great Uncle being the old school drill sergeant that wants you to live your life in a very specific way.
Great video! One thing I really love about Elden Ring, and something that makes the game feel even more immersive to me, is the fact that the world map isn't just a miniaturized render of the world. It's instead a hand-drawn style map with all of the inaccuracies that may come from that. The locations marked on the map aren't in the exact place the in-world location is, instead they're usually offset by a couple metres, something that can happen with a real life hand drawn map.
I know it’s probably been said but another great thing about elden ring has been the lack of micro transactions. Nothing makes me feel more bitter than spending $80+ on a game and then seeing some cool weapon or armour that costs another $5. Everything is there to explore and unlock without gouging the player.
I was very puzzled when I encountered many people declaring that they do not like open-world games.
I couldn't understand why.
Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion & 5 Skyrim, Dragon's Dogma, Sacred 2, Fallout 3, these were some of the most beautiful gaming experiences i have ever had, with exploration playing the largest role in my enjoyment of the game.
It's only recently that I realised that most of these people are thinking of these over-produced ubisoft-likes, and it turns out that I have never played any of these.
This is why my conception of what an open-world game is was so different to all these other people who were not enthused by open-world.
Elder Scrolls Morrowind has the best open world out of all the games imho.
It depends a lot on what they have been playing. Also open world games need more time to fully enjoy. And most adults struggle to find the time to play. I can relate. But I'm going to enjjoy elden ring. Mostly because I havent played any open world games for almost 6 years. lol.
@@Foogi9000 the only reason I ever took a chance on Oblivion was because I saw Morrowind.
My friend showed me this new game which I thought looked fantastic to play, which happened to be Elder Scrolls 3.
Alas, I did not have anything that could play it.
Many years later I see the 4th game was published so decided to take a chance on it, and I had no regrets.
Unfortunately, over the years I had ended up getting the story of Morrowind spoiled for myself so it always had been sitting on the back burner.
The thing that all those games have in common is rewarding exploration that is actually exploration, not following a map marker from point A to point B.
DS/Eleden Ring parkour and combat still sucks compare to Dragon Dogma. There's fast travel in D.D... Odysesy dosnt hold my hand..Hell in in Immortal
You'll have to SCALE/CLIMB to high places..You'll fall N die..if you dont have
enough stamina.. Sometimes the markers are wacky..becuase it's somewhere
over theres...It dosnt tell you how to get UP or down there..where the hidden
path or doors are at..I still cant get to certain places in Immortal Fynyx...
Hell...there's even a marker..Up in the sky...You cant make those jumps withOUT
crazy double jump and Boosta skills...lmao
Wack and Perry is just one of many other cambat options..
You can wack ememies with spear and shoot arrows..while MOUNTED in Odyessy...Hell..You can even whip out your BoW..while mid air ( if you're good enough)...the game dosnt tell you that.
Hell...Ive even kill the giant farting PIG while Mounted for kicks and giggles.
It's stupid hard..just do it the regular way...
You're not suppose to ride your horse in there...or the PIG's health will
reset to full..if you step out of that parameter..Your horse wont enter
the cambat arena/area..unless you ride it in..The first thing the pig is
going to do is Jump at your horse and FART...your horse will either die or run..
You can get back on it...if you're FAST and not DYING.lmao
Immortal Fyneyx has more PUZZLE solving..sort of like TombRaider.
It has the same asset from Odyessy..with brighter colors..that's all.
The story in both games has lots of HUMOR
Whatever...as I you dont have to learn boss enemies moves/skills in other
video games aside D/S.....It's just other games dosnt have MORE different
BOSSES..aside from ReSKINS...with different abilties/magic/defense..ect
To witness a man so defeated, so crushed with severe overwhelming depression. Carrying a dark cloud above him so thick to be almost tangible. A man without purpose or goals or achievements of any kind. Then I stepped away from the mirror and watched DX's new video.
When in hell, keep going
Fuck.
Thank God modern life give us so many distractions we can almost forget how miserable and and meaningless our lives really are
And thank god there's ELDEN RING🙌🙌
@@junior1388666 I completely agree, but sometimes I wonder if so many distractions being so readily available might be somewhat detrimental as well. Oh well, I stop thinking about it when I play Elden Ring
Damn bro you good
Wtf do you write? Like damn.
I really, truly love when people come to the realization that From respects a player's intelligence and trusts that they'll find things out on their own. And if they don't, it makes for a fun conversation with friends and/or people online and gives them a reason to go back and find what they missed. Great video!
Hey it's SJC, love your boss guides!
Just like the good old days of gaming, before the internet. Sharing info on Final Fantasy or Resident Evil, etc
Really? But they made you feel stupid with "Grace" telling you where to go, copy and pasted bosses and dungeons. That's one funny way of saying "making you feel intelligent"
@@2wongsdontmakearice588 grace is guidance. It's not a direct route. It's literally called the guidance of grace. The guidance directs you in all sorts of directions. Stormveil, castle Morne, leyndell, volcano Manor, all over. There's not one direct path it puts you on.
Copy paste bosses did get annoying though.
@@Nightweaver1 thank you!!!
I like how Red dead 2 did its world. Its like the best of both worlds (lol).
super simple map, flows well, lots of content and encounters yet big and beautiful for exploring too
Fr same with Elden Ring
So true. They nailed the balance of exploration and missions. And interesting things to do.
@@brendan594 not
Rdr2 is amazing
@@mitchjopeydope8997 really? I mean Elden Ring’s open world is so alive and huge
I never thought to turn off the hud for these games. Makes me think that the mini map is a bit of a crutch for me. Im gonna replay far cry 5 like that, the game looked good even with the hud in my opinion but damn it looks 10 times better
Here is my advice for far cry 5:
Dont use the gps. Travel and explore at your own leisure and advance the plot accordingly, it turned my second playthrough into a whole new game!
@@Roler42 Exactly how I played it with no HUD. Amazing experience.
@@DXFromYT Cranking up the difficulty also changed everything despite being a new game plus run! I was no longer looking to grind and it was simply me vs the challenge of facing the cult!
@@DXFromYT still waiting for you to finish reviewing ths sword art online anime and the movie.
Every open world game do that. BotW, RDR2, Breakpoint, Far Cry
i'm really happy that you're uploading more frequently again, just started following you a year ago and really do like the content, so keep up the good work
if there's something that elden ring have absolutely succeeded with. its the locations because i remember seeing nokkron/siofra river for the first time and i was in awe. And a thing with fromsoft games of saying this was your experience and people wont experience it the way you did because most open world are designed for you to all the content and in elden ring you have to look for it. Like the long necked skeleton statues signifying theres a catacomb nearby and the hero graves with their massive monuments
Wish I could experience going down the siofra River well for the first time again
Nokron is my favourite location of the game. I think it even is my favourite location in all the soulsborne games. I was awed by siofra river, but when I got to Nokron my mind just blew away
@@Tyufoe96 Siofra River experience:
- We're going down, we're going down, wait we're still going down? Jesus look at the size of this! That's just one floor? I can ride my horse in this? Awesome!
- OK cool, we're done with this place, those are two very nice bosses. I guess we're in Caelid now.
- Wow look at the size of this meteor hole. Nokron's looks pretty dope. Hang on - how are we back in Siofra River? There's a second half of it? What is Siofra River Aqueduct? Oh, a Gargoyle, we've seen this befo... and there's another one. Well shit.
- What does this coffin do? WHERE THE FUCK AM I? WHY ARE THERE MORE ANTS?! I want to go home, O' I want to go home...
@@FrizFroz I eventually figured there was a second part I wasn't supposed to get at first. When I got the map for that place I tried for a very long time to find out how to get to the second half of the map. Happened with the other areas as well. It's like here is a map showing you the area and you grind your gears trying to get to other locations because the map sort of indicates these areas as places otherwise it wouldn't show them. Even in deep root depths it was like this. If you look above the area where you fight the erdtree avatar you will see several ants on the root system way above. This indicated to me that area is scalable, because why else would enemies be up there. You have to go thru a whole other area to approach from that direction.
I’ve literally played this game for 80 hours, unlocked one of the better endings, and not realized that means catacombs are nearby.
The fact you have to gradually collect map pieces in Elden Ring is the reason I found Caelid so surprising and amazing my first time there
Great perspective here, one that I wholeheartedly agree with. I love the recent Assassin's Creed games, but in both of them I slowly went from excitement at seeing how massive and detailed the maps were, to being completely burned out and overwhelmed before completing them. Elden Ring lets you genuinely explore, and it is all the better for it. After playing Elden Ring, I've decided that when Starfield comes out I will be playing with as many helping hand UI elements disabled as I can stomach, so that the exploration feels more like Elden Ring.
Awesome Vid.
AC Valhalla was a pretty great game for me initially, but the further I got into the game, the more I felt like the story progression wasn’t changing no matter what I did. Despite the different areas and attention to detail in the open world, none of it really felt unique past a certain point. Plus, the process of actually making allies basically didn’t change so it didn’t really feel like a massive accomplishment since I knew I’d have to do basically the same thing for the next area anyways. And I know this is kind of a moot point, but making an AC game surrounding vikings that are basically as far away from assassins as possible is pretty questionable already
Thank you for making this. Someone should share it unmaliciously with the devs who recently criticized UX in Elden Ring. One thing that you didn’t touch on is that devs having a specific role for a “UX designer” means that those people are going to hyper-focus on UX to validate their place in the company/industry. This can lead to over engineering at the expense of the customer. This is a clear disconnect if you consider the tweet that spurred this discussion along with the subsequent “If Ubisoft developed Elden Ring” memes. The players (sometimes) enjoy Ubisoft formula open world games in spite of the oversaturated instruction, not because of it.
I tried really hard to like Horizon, but I just didn’t. I’m going to give it another chance will all the BS turned off because of your video. Thanks for that!
Also Elden Ring is GotY imo.
UX and gameplay design go hand in hand, when you’re designing gameplay mechanics you’re also designing a user experience. What elden ring shows (and other Fromsoft titles too for that matter) is that they’re not separate disciplines that are at odds with each other. Making sure the player knows exactly whats happening and what they’re doing might be a UX designers job (and not an unimportant one at that), but sometimes hiding things from the player on purpose or adding mystery actually enhances the user experience, which the UX designers at Ubisoft obviously do not understand
@@zeppie_ Well said. I’ve been thinking lately about the parallels between Elden Ring and the OG LoZ. In both games there are genuine unfiltered secrets that can only be discovered by careful exploration or socially. I think Souls games take direct inspiration from the first LoZ in particular. I think Miyazaki and co. Want players to feel surreal when they find something purely through their own volition or by total accident. That is an experience you don‘t forget because it leaves you feeling accomplished and with a renewed vigor to uncover all of the other secrets. When you point the player directly to every damn thing in the game, you’re giving them a task list rather than an experience.
I think the thing these developers forget about open world games is it's not always about the size of the map but rather the level of interactivity within it that players really crave. Recently I almost feel like I'd rather be given a smaller map with more interactive options than just freedom to roam for 4 hours and accomplish very little.
Exactly 👍
GTAV set this concept in motion. The "bigger is better PERIOD" formula really took the industry by storm after the success seen by Rockstar through GTA5's map size. Difference was GTA5 and RDR2 worlds actually felt LIVED IN and drew the player inward, whereas Ubisoft maps are empty, beautiful, and boring. I agree. Smaller world with more depth is where game developers focus needs to go. "Wide as an ocean deep as a puddle" is ruining AAA gaming.
The way Elden Ring tells the player to go to progress the story is so simple and nice. When you leave the tutorial area you meet an NPC who basically tells you, "See that castle behind me? You should go there."
You don't get a map marker, you don't get a waypoint, you know where the castle is because you can see it and you know you should go there. That's it and I love it. Sure, sites of grace give you a hint on where to go by pointing in the general direction of the next grace to your objective, but they don't pin point the exact location where it is. This simple way of telling the player where they should go encourages exploration of the world and instead of seeing a map marker constantly reminding you of your primary objective you'll remember it yourself when you feel ready to progress, or when you see the castle that of course you want to explore.
You say it's great i say it's a terrible joke by the developers to tell players to go face margitt as their second or third boss
@@lucasbeck1391 You don't have to...
@@PsypherWolf no but why wouldn't you follow the literal guiding light at first
@@lucasbeck1391 Because I didn't have to, so I didn't
One thing I'd add that's very different about Elden Ring is that it is OK to miss huge amounts of content. It's easy to just single out the hud and quest markers, but they inherently tell the player "you must go do this" instead of trusting the player to genuinely do, what they want to do, including missing half the content if they choose.
@@FreeFlow__ I would say its good design, like you said some people cant invest hundreds of hours into games to be able to explore everything and get everything, so giving those players the option to not have to go and explore is a good thing. And those players that fo enjoy exploring like myself can invest a lot of time into the games to find lots of stuff.
Not everyone should have the same experience, everyone having their own unique experience helps create fonder memories rather than everybody watching the same cutscenes and progressing the same way.
That's From Software period. It's only after the fact that I found out there's mountains of stuff I missed in previous soulsborne games.
Elden ring just nailed the sense of exploration. And excitement of finding new things and vista's. Modern game design wants to direct you to a severely tailored and narrated series of events and stories. Elden ring does not do this at all. It leaves it ALL open to you. It's YOUR story. YOUR journey. And one tbst you tailor to your strengths and weaknesses. The journey is what's important. The destination is just the end result of the journey your particular tarnished went on and through. I'm on my second char. And I'll say one thing. I found shit that I NEVER found my first play through. And my first play through was 200 hours. And I focused on. Exploration entirely .... yeah. I no lifed the game for two weeks i found what I thought was everything. And was pleasantly surprised and also pissed thst I found ruins the 2nd time I completely passed up the first time entirely.
Not to mention the fact that the combat is in and of itself a means of exploring the world as well. My first play through of 150+ hours was a strength/faith build where I used the halo scythe and the ole reliable claymore. (I mean I've 700+ hours in Monster Hunter World alone, strength, slow attacks, and Skill are my Thing.) I've just started a new playthrough where I'm a mage and let me tell you. Its like playing an entirely different game. My old tricks don't work, and it makes it feel like I'm playing the game all over again for the first time and relearning all the enemies and bosses.
Yes because it’s an exploration based game.. not every open world game is based on exploration hence why it’s designed differently, however Elden ring does nail the exploration
@@jordonrenaud1178 Gotta correct you there…EVERY open world game is about exploration. It just depends on how monotonous or exciting developers want to make that journey.
@@ewjiml nah lol every OW game HAS exploration. Not every open world is ABOUT exploration. Quite the difference Read dead 2 for example is a story driven game. could never convince me in million years that it’s ABOUT exploring because its just not lol. Elden ring main goal is to get u to grind & get stronger whilst having little guidance. It has to be built this way because it’s simply not a story driven game unlike RDR2 who’s main goal is to get u to connect with the world & characters, rather than to get ur character stronger so u can progress & that happens through exploration. That’s what makes a game about ‘exploration’ a more similar comparison is GOT where it’s semi story driven semi explorations & nails the open world perfectly imo, Doesn’t hold ur hand at all but never leaves u feeling lost it stuck for hours.
Metro Exodus I felt had a nice compromise in its small open worlds - where locations of interest were often obvious from looking around the game world with your binoculars, but your map still would mark them but only with a (?) symbol, not telling you exactly what they are or the rewards. And all were unique places, not generic outposts. There’s also a lot of both scripted and emergent encounters away from these locations.
From memory I think you also had to look at the points of interest with binoculars or be told about them for the (?) to appear as well.
I also enjoyed wreaking havoc the smaller and content-dense open worlds of the destroy all humans remake.
Perhaps there’s something to be said for smaller and denser worlds?
Try Gothic 1 and 2. Masterclass in dense open world level design full of wonder and exploration able to support 30-50 hours RPGs.
God I love the open world in Metro Exodus. Thank you for bringing it up, very underrated game that isn't talked about enough imo
@@dlakodlak Try playing Baldur's Gate, Divinity, Never winter, Titan Quest, Path of Exile, Diablo and Torchlight series. It was wayyyy better than Gothic.
Metro Exodus was a damn good game. I'm glad you mentioned that.
I really liked Prey (2016) as well, not really an open world per se but it's a pretty big map with many interconnected parts (and an overworld, basically just out in space!)
The map is pretty good too. Not too much detail.
Nothing hit my excitement and intrigue in a video game more than in 2002 when I first stepped foot on Liberty City and could go where I want to go and do what I want to do (to an extent sure) with GTA3. No other game had done that for me… Until I stepped outside and saw that giant Erdtree for the first time 20 years later.
In Horizon's defense, it has an active HUD that disappears when you're not using any tools. But and there's SO MUCH dialog for side quests(complete mind you) that it kind of makes them worth while for the sake of world building. I'm currently playing elden ring though because it makes me feel a sense of discovery that modern games have failed to give me.
Also in horizon, your map is covered in clouds until you override a tall neck, which only reveals so many locations. And some side quest aren’t marked on your map until you come near it
Horizon is trash. You can't defend that
@@jokinplaysgames elden ring is trash you can’t defend that
@@trikky8341 Yeah you can. How about this: Horizon is selling at #8 while Elden Ring shifts between #1 and #2 even on the only console Horizon is available on while Elden Ring is multi-platform? How about the fact that Horizon's meta score is way behind too despite people like yourself always needlessly hating on Miyazaki's game solely because they whooped your ass?
Elden Ring has shit all over FW in every field of gaming. I don't even hear anything about FW anymore. First its developers were proud to release it in the same month as ER to showcase Sony exclusives' supremacy, confident that they'd beat ER in sales and debate, and now Guerilla is making sad attempts at slandering ER's name after it got utterly crushed and is selling 1/6th as well and nobody is talking about it or making content on it.
I'm honestly a little saddened by how Guerilla Games has handled their crushing defeat at the hands of From Software. They should have taken the L with *grace,* and congratulated From Software on deleting them from the gaming industry, proving that Sony's exclusives are dogshit overrated games that only prolong a despicable business practice that harms gamers globally. Instead, they opted for the Ubisoft method, and resorted to insulting gamers, saying that ER's success is proof they can't appreciate a good story anymore. Pathetic. As their countryman, a fan of the first game, and longtime PlayStation owner from the PSP and PS2 to the PS4 Pro and soon to be PS5, I'm disappointed. I have every reason to support FW over ER, and yet I just can't. ER is the greatest game ever made. FW is a 7/10. Solid game, solid graphics, nothing special. It was supposed to be more.
@@TheStraightestWhitest damn someone took that at heart. I’m not reading all of that but have a great day!
I started gaming again a few months ago after 20 years, my most vivid memory of a game being Tomb Raider II. And given my net jump from a totally different gaming era to the modern one, I noticed all you're mentioning in this video immediately, my first impression of a game like Horizon Zero Dawn being "wtf, this game is just borrowing my fingers to play itself". And when I finally tried Elden Ring, after playing a few more modern games that gave me that same impression, I immediately thought "OMG, a game!! I can't believe it, they still make games you actually have to play yourself!". I hope its success will be an example for many developers to take that route (hopefully with different difficulty modes, as I really didn't like the overwhelming difficulty of Elden Ring).
Damn, I am the opposite of you, I have been gaming nonstop for 20 years and see everything evolving and devolving. I used to love Ubisoft game and openworld genre but I got burnout in the PS3/360 era and mostly play combat focused game like Devil May Cry or Monster Hunter because I love the thrill of the hunt more than the result/destination but Souls series and game like it really reminds me of the reason why I used to love this genre
@@zeromailss I got burnout from Ubisoft and Ubisoft-like games in less than 1 year 😆 I really dislike the "go from point A to point B" mission structure of those games and I love the free roaming in Elden Ring. I'm currently playing Zelda BoTW as I heard it was the best open world of all times and, although it's true when it comes to the world interaction, it's not true when it comes to the world exploration, as it's still too guided. In that aspect, Elden Ring is still the best I've ever played.
I love the fact that you were able to fairly and objectively talk about why Ubisoft games are getting tiring while still being a fan of those games. Unlike some RUclipsrs who tend to insult and belittle people who disagree with them, you calmly and gently advise them which obviously makes it more likely for people to listen to you.
For me, metro exodus is semi open world done right. I actually felt compelled to seek out mystery markers on the map.
They really nailed on both the old titles and Exodus. The ability to just go discover by yourself, searching for ammo, ingredients, interacting with people and doing activities that trigger moral point with no obvious map makes me feel very in character.
Yes its really well done.
Excellent video, man!
I really dislike open world games for the most part. But elden ring's world was incredible to me. The amount of hidden areas and secrets is insane, only FromSoft would tuck some of their best level designs away in the world without any indicators. It was so amazing to explore.
Yessss exactly!!
I was watching my friend play it and the absolute awed silence we fell into when we found this gorgeous glowing elevator in a completely innocuous building that took us all the way down into a huge underground area with a river and twinkling lights on the cave ceiling like stars and a massive stone temple was such an amazing moment. An entire other world was below the surface and not a single NPC or world marker had told us it was there.
We could've gone the entire game without finding this place but you can bet your ass we're gunna remember seeing that false sky for the first time for years to come.
For anyone wondering and haven't found it yet, it's called the Siofra River.
You don't like freedom?
@@ChangedMyNameFinally69 it's not about freedom, it's that the vast majority of open world games are tedious and not interesting.
@@willh9104 Of course but I don't know if I can go back to linear
@@Cobalt360Degrees So many people, myself included, hold that exact moment in such high regard. Every person I've talked to about it found it at a wildly different time into their game, ranging from like 5 hours to 20(me) to 80 and even 120 hours. It speaks to the absolute scale of the game and the sense of wonder there is all over the map which keeps getting bigger and bigger... I have about 130 hours and I don't know when I'll be done.
The classic Ubisoft formula. Can't wait for these trends to die out.
ubisoft never created it but attempted to adopt it from elder scrolls and witcher but couldn't
@@suuriz I would disagree with that, far cry and assassin's Creed were made just as the genre was really starting to become popular and definitely helped pioneer it. They became such a massive success for Ubisoft, so they starting cranking them out every year and just made all their other games like them as well.
Its funny because the Ubisoft open world formula is what made open world an opportunity back in the day, the problem is they don't improve it.
Waiting for the Crpg formula botw does immeraive som mechanics and fonv did crpg while not being an isometric game
"creating enemies"
And copypasting them everywhere
"designing intricate levels"
And copypasting them everywhere
"and creating incredible world encounters"
And copypasting them everywhere
That's Ubisoft for ya.
I think “open world” and “sandbox” are terms that should be separate. Open world games can also be linear stories with much changing in the “open” world as the main story progresses. Sandbox games seem to value exploration more and diverging off the beaten path rather than keeping the player to a strict main scenario, rather leaving the main story stuff straight and to the point.
I got tired of exploring Ubisoft open worlds.
I got exhausted exploring Elden Ring.
Being exhausted makes you way more excited to rest up and explore.
In Elden Ring I felt like I was always advancing in the game, no matter what I was doing. Every Lost Grace and every boss I encountered felt like I was going forward. It's a game in that we don't notice that we are being directed, it just felt like exploring and getting stronger. In Ubisoft games I always felt that I was losing my time if I was not going to the quest mark, that there was no point in doing anything else, and that the game didn't offer any real challenge.
The Ubisoft formula is a big part of why Ghostwire Tokyo was such an average straight down the middle, not good or bad game. The visual presentation and concept are great. The execution of gameplay just feels like Japanese Far Cry. It's not bad enough to make me regret buying it, but I'm not foaming at the mouth for more either
I didn’t play that but from the gameplay I saw it looked incredibly boring.
I'm playing Far Cry 3 with the following challenge: don't use cars. So, to get from point A to point B, sometimes I can die for a enemy patrol, sometimes for the animals that show up. So I ended up memorizing that some areas have certain dangerous critters, so each time the combination of dangers is different. The animals make a huge difference here - which doesn't happen in AC Origins, for example.
Dude!! Yes!! This is my exact thought. I knew if I didn’t finish Horizon before playing Elden Ring it would be hard to go back. Games these days are inflated with meaningless BS. Devs definitely have pride in what they make and I respect that but it’s so bad now that they hold your hand through the whole experience not missing anything. I wish Devs believed in their fan base and just let us go explore on our own, not being afraid that the player will miss something.
I don't remember Horizon 1 being as hand-holdy as Horizon 2. It's weird. I immediately felt like Horizon 2 was babysitting me. TERRIFIED that I would miss something or get confused. Aloy was CONSTANTLY talking to herself (but really talking to the player) telling them what to do, without giving you any chances to figure out what your next move was first. It was so goddamn annoying. She comments on ever fucking bug she steps on. In platforming sequences she immediately tells you what the next thing to do is before giving you a few seconds to do it yourself. It's so irritating.
Ngl that sounds exaggerated. When playing she only reiterates the objective. Like if your looking for a dead machine or something, she’ll say something along the lines of “I should probably search for that machine carcass”. It’s really not babysitting you
@@frankgrimes7388 oh sorry I didn’t know it’s babysitting to tell the player the objective. Sorry every game doesn’t tell you absolutely nothing and force you to have to rely on google to find stuff. Forgive me for misunderstanding
@@trikky8341 was that a jab at Elden Ring?
@@shmekelfreckles8157 no but elden ring does do that. For me I would at least have some general idea of what to do but I usually feel like I end up having to watch a video or read the wiki. Which sends me on journey just to find a weapon or whatever. But it doesn’t bother me that much. More of the people who make the videos. The ones I find half the time or stretched out.
@@trikky8341 Please trust me to relate my own experiences accurately, thank you!
BTW, NPC markers in Elden Ring was added only in recent update.
thats actually good..What I only wanted was a marker for the merchants but npc wlwas also great..they also dont automatically show unless you have discovered them on that location so it still encourages exploration
I think some of Elden ring's questlines are complete bs, the number of times I've had to open a guide because an NPC told me to meet them in the 'forrest' is astonishing, I have 80 hours on the game and rarely run into the same NPC twice
yea ive wished there were more npcs a lot, even ds3 felt like i met and interacted more
Yeah the npc movement from place to place through their quest lines and not having a clue where they go is a bit frustrating. That’s my main gripe with ER.
I always say this on every Elden Ring video. Except the Dark Souls level of combat, the world mechanic and design was made back in the day, by Piranha Bytes with they're Gothic 1 and 2, and Bethesda with Elder Scrools 3 Morrowind in 2001-2002. This tipes of games are so rare, the immersion and exploration are at its finest.No quest markers, no hand holding, just you and the world.
Elden Ring is the game of the decade. A truly gem.
I mean we’re only 2 years into the decade so I wouldn’t go saying that just yet
I do love how ubisoft and horizon devs had a mental breakdown when they had to comprehend that players dont NEED to have 80 things shoved down their throat all the time. Like the thought of discovering it without their markers made them challenge their entire view on the world
I mentioned this on Twitter already, but Yahtzee brought this up in his Extra Punctuation on Elden Ring: too many open world games are desperate to ensure that players don't miss anything, and so they sacrifice the freedom to discover things on one's own by marking everything on the HUD/map. This in turn eliminates the joy of exploration for a lot of players and instead makes them feel like they have an overwhelmingly long list of chores to complete.
Also, one comment under that video had this to say: "In game design courses taught in recent times, students are taught that if a mechanic, level or even side quest is missed, than that is poor game design and should be fixed."
Wrong. PERMANENTLY miss-able content (e.g., the Great Glacier in FFVII) is bad game design. If the player can go back and rediscover it at a later point however, then devs should stop trying to force players to notice it.
That is utter stupidity if they're really teaching that in classes. Hoping that mentality dies out soon, even the big developers are *starting* to try and move away from it.
@@DXFromYT Agreed.
That sounds so bad.
Glad they never told us that when I went to school for game design.
>and so they sacrifice the freedom to discover things on one's own by marking everything on the HUD/map
Some players are just not going to go to certain places if there's nothing marked there though. They simply have no reason to.
@@DXFromYT that's subjective though. There will always be players that feel bad when they learn that they missed something important earlier. Especially if that something is hidden by 2 illusory walls or some other obscure stuff like invisible bridges. The solution is easy though. Just open the wiki and play it like usual, from POI to POI. Sure, it lacks immersion, but you won't have that constant feeling that you're missing a lot of things (and you won't ever bother to check every inch of the dungeon each time just to make sure that you didn't). All in all, both types have their consumer. Would be ideal if all those markers were toggleable so you can choose for yourself.
Maybe that's why I liked Conan Exiles ( in solo ) so much : the open world is really well designed, with huge landmarks to guide you, very few NPCs giving you directions in obscure riddles and lore, you have to explore and discover everything by yourself ( and get you ass kicked pretty much every time ).
Too bad it was tailored for multiplayer, and the gameplay wasn't great ( and full of bugs ). But it's definitely one of the best open worlds I've played these few last years.
Hell yah, Conan Exiles was rad. I also got my ass kicked all the time, but the open world was a filled with stuff to explore, and def loads of lore. That game needs to be remade.
I like how you don’t preemptively take sides and show the perks as well as the flaws of Ubisoft-style games. Great video!
Elden Ring’s open world map design is literally a giant fromsoft level, and the brilliant layout and especially the topography constantly pull you to explore and discover the world. I actually really enjoyed using and studying the topography of the map when planning journeys.
Every new playthrough is my own personal fantasy adventure, and after 7+ characters I still can’t get enough. This is truly a once in a generation masterpiece.
I feel like Yakuza could be brought up as an example of good worldpacing; because you're literally just restricting to a single moderately sized chunk of city which is then filled with a decent spread ofcontent.
fuck decent, the newer games have such high density of content.
While I enjoy the Morrowind/Breath of the Wild/Elden Ring approach to open world design a lot more than most other formulaic open world games, I think Elden Ring absolutely suffers a lot of the same issues especially when it comes to distributing its content on the scale it attempts to.
By the end of my 140hrs with Elden Ring I was exhausted of finding the same content behind every corner with reused bosses, no items of actual excitement and the exact same-looking dungeons. It's a Dark Souls game except now spread among a big landscape with some additional features to trick the player that this game has more content than a normal Dark Souls game. Bosses have absolutely also dipped in quality, instead of being creative with them they just gave them awful movesets and status effects which don't actually challenge the player in any creative way like the previous games. There isn't even a single boss arena I can think of which isn't a plain field circle. I attribute the massive drop in quality simply to the open world and I honestly don't think FromSoftware were ready yet to make something which captivated me the same way Morrowind or Breath of the Wild did when they released.
I like Elden Ring but I certainly don't love it. It got a lot of things right but much more wrong in my eyes.
I'm glad others are enjoying it more than me, though.
I fully agree, I played all Dark Souls games and been a fanboy for 10 years by now, tried some Ubisoft games, and Elden Ring feels exactly like an Ubisoft open world, just as repetetive and even more static. Not having HUD markers doesn't change the fact the game has a set of open world "activities" (Erdtree with boss, map marker, 3 types of dungeons etc.) that just are repeated on and on for 100+ hours. Only major difference is that the combat system in Elden Ring makes you considerably more engaged with high lethality compared to Ubisoft etc. games where you can run through many encounters. Rest of it feels EXACTLY like I'd be playing a Ubisoft game. By the halfway point the open world just made me want to skip to the next main story area.
@@aleksanderolbrych9157 Yeah, I think the point in the game where exploring became a chore was when I got to the Altus area after the elevator, which is a massive problem because there was still about half of the map left but I already felt like I've seen all of the content which is a major problem.
Another thing about Morrowind and Zelda is that those games had much more to do with the world than just run around and stab things. Essentially the only thing you do in Elden Ring is run around and engage in combat, which can be fun, sure, but I don't think it carries a game well for a hundred hours...
This game will likely receive GOTY because I can't think of anything else coming out this year which has the same clout or which would have the same positive reception. It will certainly be up there this year for me as well. I don't like that people are blindly praising it like it's some masterpiece neglecting to point out its very severe flaws. FromSoftware isn't some magical developer which needs to be cherished. They need to be criticised when they make mistakes so that next time I play a game of theirs I don't feel like 60% of that time is a waste.
I also genuinely think they need to chill on the Souls format for a while, this game really made it feel like they ran out of ideas. So many things here are just reskins of things from previous games whether they are monsters, bosses or even plain level design tricks.
@Varkster I think a hostile open world would be much more interesting had it been dynamic. Instead we just get Night Cavalry which appears in some places at night. Everything is scripted and static.
If you'd had roving bands of monsters with extensive AI, dragons circling overhead and Night Cavalry actively hunting you after sunset and the point of the open world was to survive from one location to another in a dynamic environemnt it would be a much more engaging game than just clearing one copy pasted location after another.
In short, I think open world peaked with Stalker and only went downhill from there.
@UnderKill PC Breath of the Wild isn't a game that is 100% combat. There are many more things you can do in the game which involve interacting with the world. Elden Ring has almost none of these things. In Elden Ring all you do is everything you already did before in 5 different games from the same developer and that's it. There's barely anything other than go and kill thing and then find thing.
I'm sure you love this game a lot but please stop sucking its dick and replying so passive aggressively. I'm stating what my experience was.
Yet another Elden Ring defender who can't write a comment without insulting someone
I noticed a lot of these issues apply to GTA Online, the game has genuinely good content that gets overshadowed by the meta elements that force the players to buy shark cards or play the same boring missions because the somewhat fun activities aren't very profitable and a waste of time. The game probably has the worst ui in a videogame from the last 10 years, and the hud is always being invaded by useless crap that destroys immersion and some times even forces the player to stop whatever they are doing. The devs also completely destroyed the world pacing with yellow lines and flying vehicles, most players drive straight into a mountain if a mission doesn't have a yellow line to tell them where to go. All of this crap makes you feel like a robot following orders and for some reason a lot of people enjoy that
It applies to GTA as a whole. Not sure why people think it's just Ubisoft problem when most Open world games play the same.
@@pixelcount350 GTA does not have everything marked on the map other then having a mini mao it does not have the ubiosft formula.
@@John-996 Everything is marked on the map, Only thing that isn't are some collectables otherwise you have it playing just like any Ubisoft game or any open world for that matter.
@@pixelcount350 Not at all the are side quests, secrets and random enounters one which i only found recently And manged to get travor Girlfriend. Theres not as Much hidden as RDR2. Most things in RDR2 are hidden Done 5 playthroughs and still found New things. But the main thing is GTA5 does not have watch towers and other things to climb and the Whole map is not coverd with icons. As Far as open worlds go the GTA and TES series are some the best you can really do your own thing. San Andreas is the best exsample of this.
@@John-996 What secrets? You mean Easter eggs. Okay? Those aren't quests. Side quests were littered all over and the only way i knew they existed was by the map. They were those little markers that had a Letter or a flashing marker. Random quests were randomly generated and aren't important so they wouldn't show up immediately on the mini map unless you were in general location on misc. Same thing in any Ubisoft game. Everything was literally on the map. Just go back into GTA 4 or 5 and check.
Just gonna say it, I think the best incarnation of a Ubisoft type game, for me, would be Ghost of Tsushima. The HUD is minimalist and immersive, the open world is packed with content and just the right size. The world pacing works with enemies getting smarter with more tricks as you progress and not just higher numbers. It doesn’t tell you everything there is and encourages exploration.
It just ended up being one of my favourite open word experiences and I wish Ubisoft took more pages from Suckerpunch but then we Valhalla, aka, more of the formula.
This is easily one of the more nuanced and mature takes on the break down of Fromsoft vs Ubisoft design differentials.
I remember back in the days when I played Morrowind, and there were no quest markers, no precise explanation where something was and some very limited fast travel options, and it was marvelous!
I feel like the Yakuza/RGG games are another example of something with really nice pacing (Where filler isn't as much of an issue) and tons of side content without paralyzing players. It has a generally small, yet familiar area. But I sense that discussion has already taken off.
Really insightful video. You nailed some points that I couldn't quite put my finger on.
12:31
The interaction prompt doesn’t just tell you there’s a pickable plant.
It also tells you how close you have to be to actually be able to do so, which is important.
Even in elden ring it gives you an interaction prompt for picking up items
Agree, the circle jerking of Elden ring is crazy smh. These youtubers are just blind or what. All the plants you can pick up in ER are like super shiny, where in HZD it blends more in the environment. The bias is real for this game that is crazy
Man, congratulations on your video, i really like it!!
I'm not a game designer, but i sure learned something and saw something from a angle that i was not seeing.
What i really liked too, is that you not simply complain about, you talk in a more educative way, discussing the subjects.
Once again, really liked it!
One distinct difference I really notice in ER vs mosre or less any other modern open world game, is the traversal of the map itself. Like you pointed out, in most games you get a quest marker, then ride/run/drive/etc to that marker. And the traversal itself is more often than not very, very boring. Maybe you are lucky and the game has some (often repeatable) "random" events, or pretty views/vistas along the way. But that is mostly it, making the traveling boring, the world feel empty and unpopulated/lived in and something you just kind of want to get over with.
In ER traversal is intense! Sometimes creepy/scary and more often than not has your heart rate up, because you'r traveling trough unknown territory, you have no idea what kind of enemies are there or around the next corner, or natural/geographic traps and pitfalls or often too, when suddenly a random boss makes an epic entrance and you suddenly have to fight for you life. All of these things and more, create an atmoshpere and a willingness to explore the world that I have not experienced in any other game for atleast the last 20 years!
Dude your analysis is so concise and on point! I'm a game designer myself and I have never felt so engaged in my past 10 years playing 'open world' games as I did when playing Elden Ring. You have earned a sub!!!
I'm happy that Elden Ring has made people talk about this. Calling it, Elden Ring GOTY
IT's my GOTY. The only thing that has a shot is God Of War. And hey, that's a good thing! If anything else can match this or beat it, then it's a win for us gamers anyway! More power to any other games this year, that can compete with this for GOTY.
Given that we have a whole year left, I hppe it only goes up from here.
The first open world game I've played since 2017 that is on par with breath of the wild.
It's impossible for me to think of Elden Ring's open world without thinking about BOTW. They basically used that game as an early draft.
Honestly it does feel like it. especially with the dialogue giving you very little information and the world itself being what tells the story. At times it does feel like a botw like world with sould gameplay
That was an excellent video with very interesting points, as a guy who actually really likes most Ubisoft games I definitely see the criticisms other people point out, but you presented a different and unique perspective of the situation, and not dumbly saying “Ubisoft bad, from soft good” .
Well done, sir. Very salient criticisms, and an interesting approach to these open world games that I sincerely never even considered. Bye bye, HUD
Elden rings formula needs to take over the open world genre.
With it's succes, it very well may be the case.
No please don't. Elden Ring is barren and doesn't respect your time. I wasted an hour yesterday because the game doesn't tell me whether I started a quest.
I looked all around the map for Yura. No marker for him.
I finally looked on Reddit and found him somewhere else. I shouldn't need to do that. The game should tell me whether I started or failed a quest to save my time.
I think Elden Ring should be its thing and not every dev should emulate it.
@@noobbotgaming2173 Bruh, if you want 10000 questmarkers on the map go play your casual ubisoft boring ass games. Ive played this type of games the last 15 years and Im so done.
Ive played over 150 hours and I never had the feeling that elden ring doesnt respect your time. You need to listen good what the Npcs are saying. But I need to agree here. I think elden ring could use a questlog. This npc design from dark souls doesnt work in a open world game and we need a questlog.
Ubisoft games dont respect your time. Filled with useless content so you can put more hours into this bad games.
Then the same thing will happen that with Ubisoft's formula man. And will eventually happen since Elden Ring sold a lot. The best thing is that every developer takes their own approach
@@vini-ix8yt You focus too much on content and markers and not enough of capable protagonists.
I had so much fun exploring Paris or Egypt and you don't need to level up too much to play the main quest and bosses.
You traverse the environment quickly with your mount and you can climb. For a protagonist that defeats a boss titled "The God-Devourerer" I'm surprised they are so weak they can't even hang on a ledge.
Also Valhalla doesn't have markers it has colours. So it's a nice experiment for markers.
Elden Ring's problem is it wants to be open world RPG but FromSoftware didn't adjust the Souls formula. FromSofyware needs to pick a lane. Dark Souls should be its own thing and Elden Ring IP should be the more accessible one.
Honestly the huge size or Horizon zero dawn's map was a real turn off for me 😂
Compared to? Horizon doesn’t have a big world
@@antonybrisson4090 it was too big for me, I played like 5 hours and I was done, same is gonna be for elden ring probably.
This is the most informative and rant-less video I've seen on the subject. You have earned a sub.
I have to wonder why Breath of the Wild was not brought into this conversation. Mario 64, Metroid Prime and Ocarina of Time were done with the open world formula in mind but were more of a linear experience. Breath of the Wild is the evolution of those plus borrowing ideas from the latest open world games. Including the Far Cry and Assassins Creed series.
Elden Ring, Red Dead Redemption, and Breath of the Wild are absolutely some of the best open world games ever made.
They reminded me of my first time playing Oblivion and stepping out into the open world for the first time. The game gave you a simple quest marker but told you absolutely nothing else.
Because Breath of the Wild adds nothing to the discussion. Or indeed most discussions except for the one about Nintendo's steep decline into malicious nostalgia bait mediocrity.
As much as I'm enjoying how much of a Zen experience BotW is, it doesn't feel like a real open world or even a real Zelda game to me, so much as a jungle gym with a Zelda skin.
People keep saying that doesn't have a checklist, but I would argue that it's entire progression system is a checklist, with constantly repeating content that stops being satisfying around 25% of the way to maxing out your inventory slots, hearts, and stamina, because it gave away pretty much all of its narrative heft in exchange for freedom, in a way that left it a mile wide and an inch deep.
l'm fighting like hell to not buy Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana for a third time so that I can experience on me Switch what BotW would have been like as an actual (albeit far more arcadey) Zelda game, where its detailed maps, checkpoints, and checklists don't detract from the sheer enjoyment of exploration due to is Metroidvania elements, how meaningful all that content is, how all the various checklist systems interact with one another, the vast number of non-palette swapped enemies and bosses, and how good the narrative and character interactive are.
Seriously, if it wasn't for the fact that it came out a year earlier and all of its similarities with BotW are iterations on things that Nihon Falcom have been doing since the PSP and early Vita eras, I would seriously have thought that they were legitimately trying to make "BotW, but Zelda."
@@lnsflare1 botw does open world at its most literal. People like you obviously dont care about the thing that makes botw so amazing and thats fine. Botw excels in one thing: the world itself. Yes there is little to none reward for exploration and most of it is repetetive but if you can immerse yourself in the world and explore for the sake of exploration it is an amazing experience that almost no other game can match. If you cant do that, ok, then botw isnt for you but for those of us who can it is one of the if not the greatest open world ever created
@@raptorxrise5386 What, specifically, do you mean by that? Like, I could run around a jungle gym for 100+ hours too, but I wouldn't find it particularly enriching or entertaining after the first couple of hours, and BotW's open world is similarly very lacking in things like reasons to want to explore, such as new enemies, interesting questlines, hidden areas, neat NPCs, world building, lore, etc...
Free Roaming is enjoyable enough, sure, but tons of Open World games are as good as it after you get over the initial curiosity of the chemistry mechanics. This weekend, I spent some time falling with style through the gorgeous cities and psychedelic pocket dimensions in Gravity Rush 2, web-slinging through NYC in Spider-Man, rocketing around Seattle with multiple move sets in inFamous: Second Son, and just exploring the Golden Apple Archipelago one last time before the summer vacation event ends and closes that region and a brand new nation opens up this week in Genshin Impact, just for fun, and they were all *at least* as fun to traverse and explore as BotW even after I finished all the story content that was way meatier than anything in BotW.
"elden ring doesnt insult the player's intelligence" while i totally agree with this i would say that is more like :
- me: i want to play
- elden ring: fuck you, i will play you
To me, the biggest thing holding Elden Ring back was the decision to go open world. Pretty much every problem I have with the game leads to "well, that's just a problem with open world games" and it's just disappointing. I enjoyed Elden Ring, I put my time in, but I don't see myself going back to the game like I do the other souls games.
I feel the same way and I definitely have a good few complaints about elden ring. Loot, reused enemies, and the fact that I would miss some content in one area, go to another and then come back and it just felt like a chore to get through the dungeons. Among other complaints too, just went back and played ds3 and I was in love
@@Vitamin_jp been playing monster hunter world waiting for DS3 to go on sale in a few weeks. The loot was the worst part by far though. Grinding my way through a dungeon just to get some shit spirit ashes that I'll never use felt like a spit in the face.
AC Valhalla was my first ubisoft openworld game and I like to explore and collect as much as i can. I always do this in rpg games like the souls game,but 60% of the way thru i just felt burnt out since it felt like a chore to finish and ended up dropping the game. Elden ring on the other hand 130 hours in I still explore without feeling burnt out despite being at the end of the game.
Same here, I have spent 120 hours in Eldon ring and still can’t stop playing but I couldn’t finished Assassin Creed Valhalla. You won’t be disappointed with Assassin Creed Origin if you give it a try. It’s just so much better.
Hello there! This is the first video that I came across on your channel, and I want to share my opinion.
I like Ubisoft games, too. In fact, the first one that I bought for myself was Splinter Cell on the PS2. It was my first introduction into a franchise that's all about action and stealth gameplay. Once Chaos Theory was brought to light, I was amazed; Ubisoft not only changed the gameplay elements for the better, but they added more mechanics and other ways to complete objectives such as navigation. Other one's I've played by them are Far Cry and Ghost Recon.
Coincidentally, my first action-adventure open-world game by Ubisoft was Far Cry 3. It was so engaging; it made me more interested about the characters, piqued my interest to explore and discover new areas in the Rook Islands, and the game was balanced in terms of pacing and story.
Once Far Cry 5 released, i wasn't as excited as Far Cry 3; it had less of an impact. Throughout the releases after Far Cry 3, Ubisoft had this apparent pattern of keeping most of the mechanics the same, hiring well-known actors to play the villains (excluding Michael Ironside as the iconic Sam Fisher until Blacklist), and the introduction to pay-to-win micro-transactions (I think FC5 had them, but New Dawn, how could you?) turned me off. This may have occurred in other games as well, but I can't confirm that.
Elden Ring on the other hand, it has taken me on some wild adventures that I'll never forget; opening a treasure chest to find out that it's a portal to a new world I've never seen before, then to exploring every square inch of the environment while encountering new enemies. As much as I enjoy modern games that hold one's hands for the journey, the lack of information and discovering when exploring, not to mention the characters you meet and talk to, make Elden Ring a more engaging experience.
While some ex-developers argue that the UI can be customized in some titles to make them more immersive without having tons of information on the screen, the UI can be very distracting to players' minds and cause information overload; in other words, it doesn't require the players to think about anything; the levels of curiosity when exploring are lower than what they would be in Elden Ring.
Anyway, that's my two cents! Thanks again for creating this content! Have a great day!
You really nailed it about the map markers. With those, you look at the map, see the marker, and instantly know what's there. Curiosity satisfied. With Elden Ring, you look at the map, and...nothing. What's there? Gotta go there to find out.
One of my early experiences in Elden Ring was simply deciding to go visit one of the lesser Erdtrees. There was no map or directions to tell me how to get there. So I essentially set, explored, and completed my own side quest, powered by nothing more than my own curiosity.
I started playing Souls games really late, like 3-4 years ago and I didn't even realize for the longest time how they were ruining me on other games I generally enjoyed in the past (such as the examples given here). I haven't tried going back to turn off the HUD in any of these games, but I'm definitely going to try it now. Great video - thanks!
Myazaki understood all of this since Demon Soul. That's why exploration in a Soul games, even if it was not open world, is more rewarding than most of existing Open World. Or there is also the Zelda Breath of the Wild formula. Elder Ring and ZBOTW are both open world that let you explore en discover things by yourself without a tons of indications. And for me it's two of the best open worlds we had(also with with Witcher III or Red Dead 2 in a different style )
Elden Ring makes me want to explore. The map is absolutely blank at the beginning and leaves it up to the player to fill it in. Every inch of the Lands Between has something different to discover and always rewards the player with something meaningful and useful. I will play for hours and have a hard time putting the controller down because I keep wondering what's around the next cliff or where is that catacomb hiding. I often find myself thinking about and making lists about what I want to do and explore next. I actually feel like I know each NPC personally and they are all individuals who look different, sound different and act different. Elden Ring is arguably the best game of 2022 and other open world games developed from this point on will have some big shoes to fill.
I feel like this is why you get ppl saying "the world is empty" it's because the map and twenty other things don't tell them where everything is. Elden Ring is literally Open World Dark Souls and I'm all for it. There's caves to explore, gear to aquire, bosses to defeats, NPCs to find and all sorts of nooks and crannies.
It’s literally packed with shi everywhere
4:54 That's a perfect description on how i felt about Elden Ring and what a lot of developers lack.
Funny thing about Ubisoft games, you can't even escape the markers even after turning off the hud now. In Far cry 6, the environment is littered with blue things pointing you where to go. It's worse than a hud.
skyrim has a special part on my heart bcs the mods it has and the ability i had to remove aoll the bars, compass, aim, and replace the map with a paper drawn one, made me enjoy a LOT of the game more, its incredible how bigger the map feels when you have to walk instead of fast travel
While I agree with everything said, I think Eldenring could have been a tad smaller. It's just a bit too big with the extra underground areas and tons of verticality. Also fighting the same dragon 10 times with different colored fires, lul
Great video. I do believe one thing about Elden Ring is just how much of it is optional. If want to go find something then sure. But the vast majority of the game is completely optional. When you run a NG+ you realize just how much is optional. The large majority of the game. Sure, there is plenty of copy and paste in the game, but there isn't a checklist you have to finish either.
For a while there there were so many developers talking about how so few saw the end of their game. If you are designing around the idea that the player must see this content you are doing it wrong.
To me the gold standard of open world games is still Red Dead 2, the world is beautiful and seems handcrafted, it feels so alive with its npcs with many many lines of just optional dialogue that you may never see but are there, countless random events, animals so deeply crafted that they feel really alive, stories told by the world through its locations and minor characters, and the best part of all, its never thrown out it your face, there are never icons or annoying prompts telling you to go somewhere, it feels rewarding to sit by a campfire and hear a stranger tell something about the world you're in when you could have just passed by without even noticing it. I once went to investigate a guy singing near a bonfire, he was drunk and told me how remorsed he was for having killed so many indians in the civil war years ago, that he was just a boy needing to provide for his family and the army gave him the only chance at the moment, he told me about a location he attacked and I went to investigate, there was nothing but burned houses and tents and signs of battle, truly a sad scene that made me feel some of the sadness the drunk guy was feeling, what a beautiful way to tell a totally optional story.
I am 44 years old, I have been playing video games since I was 7 years old.
I have seen the world of video games change many times.
What is described here is one of the consequences of the ultra casualisation of video games.
This concept was born somewhere in the late 2000s, when video games stopped being a niche hobby and became a mainstream hobby.
Slowly but surely, everything became easier, less complex, more accessible.
They had to standardize in order to please as many people as possible, attract more and more people, make more and more money.
I remember very clearly how I felt when I discovered Crysis 2 (2011), I really had the feeling that the game was taking me for a fool, all my options were explained to me excessively.
I clearly felt a difference with the first Crysis (2007) which I had enjoyed.
Another example is Mass Effect 2 (2010), which I love, where the talent trees have been oversimplified compared to the first Mass Effect (2007).
These are only small examples, and every gamer of a certain age will be able to give you similar examples.
I'm not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing, but there has clearly been a dumbing down over the years.
Personally I can't play Ubisoft games for a long time now, I get bored very quickly, I feel like I'm always playing the same game over and over again.
But I've played a lot of them.
All tastes are in nature and mine are no better than others.
I played and liked Assassin's Creed 1, 2, Brotherhood, Revelations, 3, Black Flag but I didn't feel anything while playing Unity which I never finished.
I tried AC Origins, I played it for about 10 hours and I was very bored (I didn't try the next ones).
I tried 3 times to immerse myself in Far Cry 3 and I'm deeply bored (I haven't tried the following ones).
I enjoyed the first Watch Dogs but nothing more (haven't done the second one)
I've done Fallout 3, New Vegas, 4, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim which I love and enjoy but I sincerely hope Bethesda can renew themselves.
I loved The Witcher 3 which for me really added something fresh to the open world genre.
I liked the first Horizon, but I think it was more the story than the game itself that I liked.
I had a great time on Days Gone, probably because of the hordes that I was so entertained by.
There are a lot of factors that go into the hows and whys of a game that make you like it or not.
I've given you a non-exhaustive list of my tastes.
I'm a Souls player and I really liked Elden Ring, it had a forgotten feeling to it, an old school gaming feeling from a time when they didn't take you by the hand and explain everything.
But where the games let you discover the mechanics at your own pace, and where you didn't feel overwhelmed by the sheer size and number of tasks to accomplish.
The fact that you discover the map in pieces and not all at once is a brilliant idea.
I hope that the success of Elden Ring will give ideas to other studios because I think that open world games need to be renewed.
thanks for bringing this up again. we need more games like elden ring. games that treat us like adults despite having an open world.
After playing assassin creed Valhalla, elden ring was a breath of fresh air ,because it didn't hold your hand the whole way through the game
I've started noticing an improvement in the Ubisoft formula in their latest games - for example, after the disaster with the eagle in AC: Origins, Odyssey at the very least started using storytelling to lead you to your destinations, and in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, you can outright turn off map markers and every quest has leads for you how to locate specific targets in parts of the map. So at the very least, there is some shift to quality from the terrible, brainless handholding.
I share the same views ago. Breakpoint with everything turned off is a damn good game. You should also try valhalla. With the exploration mode and without the sponge enemies of odyssey or other 3rd person games in general, its an excellent game
I also agree. Breakpoint becomes an entirely different game with the right options turned off. Incredibly immersive and entertaining.
Even as a giant Horizon simp I'll admit that Zero Dawn and Forbidden West are essentially just very refined executions on what is a pretty tired formula at this point. I think part of the reason I'm not hit nearly as hard by open world fatigue is that I just don't play that many open world games, and the ones I do I select specifically because I think they're cool rather than because I felt I had to.
Voss: Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is?
Ubisoft: Oh boy...
"Let the players think for themselves."
Spot on.
Im looking foward to the gaming industry after the elden ring boom. I REALLY hope that they notice the goods in elden ring and make a decent open world game (yes Ubisoft im talking about you)
Open Worlds aren't a genre, they're a map type.
There was never any reason for these open world games to be designed so similarly.
The first thing you see in ER is big ass Castle, an NPC and a Impossible boss. The game tells you exactly what it's all about in a single frame.
''If I had Ubisoft maps, Activision technology and Rockstar direction I would rule the open-world market'