Since Elden Ring’s meteoric entrance into the pantheon of soulslikes, many players have grown very fond of the very new and fresh open-world approach to the genre. Miyazaki himself said that ER is as close to his dream soulslike as he could wish it to be. It felt like a new direction for future soulslikes to come and felt similarly revolutionary as Breath of the Wild did for Zelda.
The open world didn’t come with only positives, however. Repeat bosses and assets, dungeons weren’t as diverse as one hoped them to be, the rewards for exploring some of them felt very situational and niche-y at best and outright useless at their worst. Some say the game is only ever good for a first blind playthrough and that the open world stands in their way of getting to “the fun part™” of the game.
After almost four years of the game existing, a, objectively speaking, very strong DLC, and a spin-off with Nightreign, how do you guys feel about open worlds in soulslikes? I understand this is not the first or only soulslike to feature an open world - I don’t have any examples at hand off the dome - but ER is definitely the open world soulslike.
Is it something you’d like to see featured in future soulslikes? Are you over it? Very keen on hearing your thoughts since I can’t really make up my mind either :)
Very much team nay. The ER open world was alright for one playthrough. Then i wanted to start a bow only playthrough, opened the gate out of the tutorial area and then closed the game. I love Nioh 2 and it is probably my favourite game ever but i bounced off hard from Rise of the Ronin because of the open world. While in ER you at least still had to explore the world yourself, in RotR you could open the map and see points of Interest and just run there. I just played the Nioh 3 demo a few days ago and it follows the same pattern but at least the world seems more dense and the gameplay is more varied. Also it seems to have “legacy dungeons as well”
Discovering the lands between was incredible, and that first ER run is forever etched in my memory. Then the dlc recaptured the feeling.
The open world fits Elden Rings story, imo. And that’s why I like it. As a whole, as an art piece. (Even so, I aknowledge that it has many flaws.)
After nightreign and duskbloods I do hope that FS returns to the concept of strong level design. (And other studios follow)
What I liked most about ER’s open world was that it meant you could go and do something else if you were getting frustrated with something, then come back a little stronger and a little better. The starting region being designed to teach you this lesson is clever, and I think overall it was a huge success in getting more people into the genre.
That being said, the more traditional “scripted” (if not linear) sections of the game are where it shines. I think they learned that lesson, as the expansion is more diverging and intertwined paths, rather than fields dotted with content.
As someone who was way out of practice at games like this when I picked up ER, I would almost certainly not have made it past Margit if I didn’t have the option to go prod at the edges of Caelid and carve up the Weeping Peninsula until I levelled up a bunch
Some say the game is only ever good for a first blind playthrough and that the open world stands in their way of getting to “the fun part™” of the game.
Yes, this is pretty much where I’m at and have been since the beginning. I played ER on release and had a blast exploring the world at that time before the wikis were even filled out, where everyone was discovering the game collectively and people on forums/group chats were constantly finding new stuff. However, after finishing it I have had no desire to go back. And after the dust had settled I also came away from it with the feeling that the best parts of the game - the legacy dungeons - were the places where ER stopped being ER and played like DS4 instead.
If the entire game was like Stormveil Castle I’d probably have done a second playthrough already.
Elden Ring’s world was empty, boring, and full of copy paste
I’m not a huge open world fan. It’s fine, but my preference would be more like multiple branching paths, some of which would be locked in a Metroidvania fashion, or just gatekept by strong enemies/bosses so you could still get through if you were stubborn enough. Something like DS1 interconnectivity, DS2 multiple branches, and DS3 Dancer blocking the late game, all put together.
I’m a big fan of it (provided it is done well, of course). I love exploring in games. I enjoy seeing something interesting in the distance and being able to go check it out. I love soaking in the atmosphere of somewhere like Siofra, or figuring out the maze of Leyndell. I personally don’t see the problem with replay value either, given how permissive the fast travel system and Torrent’s mobility are; if you just want to zoom between the legacy dungeons on subsequent playthroughs, you absolutely can
I don’t think an open world should be an expectation or a requirement, as I do recognise that making a good open world is fucking hard and resource-intensive in development. If a dev team thinks it’s right for their game, though, I’m absolutely on board
The Lands Between have some low points as a map, of course. I did most of the catacombs on my first run, now I only do the ones that have something in them I want or a fun fight like Ordovis. The Consecrated Snowfields and the Mountaintops are both short on stuff to do and see. That’s not the end of the world, though. I don’t need it to be flawless to find it fun
If I could only have one style it would be more DS-style with smaller areas and branching/converging paths.
ER’s open world really shines when combined with seamless co-op shenaniganry. I also played through DS3 seamless co-op and it’s fun but doesn’t fit nearly as well as ER.
No. I love ER but its open world style didnt add anything to the base formula and in some ways held it back. I dont want linear or open… i want complicated and interesting…
I feel like it’s really a mixed bag. Like some of the other comments I think overall I’d rather them go back to a smaller more interconnected world though. If I’m really honest I don’t think any game has been as good as the first half of dark souls 1. Purely on level design. I liked the almost metroidvania layout.
I like that you can go the wrong way, although accidentally sitting at a bonfire could screw you if you were too far into the catacombs. While you aren’t gated by skills like in a true metroidvania I like that you either have to find keys or find alternate routes to areas. While going through undead burg and beating the gargoyles is clearly the intended route you don’t have to do that. I like that taking the master key opens up whole new routes for you and I love the amount of times you open a door back into an area that you know. Taking the elevators down from the parish and seeing firelink again might still be one of the best feelings I’ve gotten from any game.
Since then they’ve only gotten more linear. DS3 in particular feels really linear with just occasional forks in the path that dead end. For being one of my favorite games in most other ways the layout and progression is really lacking IMO. Even within areas I didn’t feel like they were as interconnected as I would have liked.
The open world of Elden Ring does provide some of what I liked about DS1. You can absolutely go the wrong way and are likely to with things like chest traps sending you to Caelid. You can skip over an amazing amount of the game which I feel like is a strength. It keeps the game from feeling too linear and giving players options to explore more before taking on certain challenges. I loved finding extremely hidden caves and tombs and treasures in the world. And I was often shocked at how much bigger the map was getting. Going underground and seeing stars and realizing that this whole underground world is as big as the surface was awesome.
But I do feel like I could have done with something in between. Areas that are a bit smaller with more interconnected features. Ladders to open shortcuts and one way doors and elevators that loop around to familiar spots and less caves and tombs to keep them feeling fun and relevant. I personally understood the amount of re-used assets but you could have done away with a lot of them and kept the really interesting ones and been able to re-use things more sparingly, cut down on the amount of dungeons with a regular enemy as a boss, less watchdogs, less tree spirits.
If the next game is open world it certainly won’t keep me from playing it but I’d be happier with a little less space between the “legacy dungeons” and making those legacy dungeons and bit more expansive and interconnected I think. Keep the areas that you stumble across fun and meaningful where now it’s a really mixed bag on whether or not a given cave is worth the effort or not.
Really hope they don’t make any more open world souls games. Open world games are already a plague on gaming and have consumed enough genres and series.
The level design is where souls games really shine, the interconnected world with secrets and shortcuts. The thought put into it really matters and you just can’t get that when the devs have to fill a literal continent. They can’t do that with dense levels. So you end up with a copy pasted empty world with clusters of details in places like the legacy dungeons.
Open worlds are unoptimized, lazy and uninteresting from a gameplay perspective.
It’s needless padding added to bloat out a game. Tedious walking (Torrent is only for single player 🙄) just to get to the next spot that has actual content. Most of the areas in Elden Ring are just landmasses that contain a single item worth gathering too.
An open world is a design choice with a subtext that to me says “go anywhere, you’ll find something interesting no matter what”. And when it’s well executed, that’s a fun way to play, just going in whatever direction looks intriguing and enjoying it every time.
That’s… Not what the vibe of a Souls game is to me. I expect to be on my guard at every turn, creeping past dangers, searching for goodies, progressing carefully and learning the enemies’ patterns. In that headspace, I’m not recklessly chasing my way to the horizon in search of fun, I’m warily hunting my way through an ugly crapsack world.
The twisting, vertical, meandering, highly constructed and closed-in design of those worlds lends itself to the sense of prowling through a dreadful mystery.
If he loves open worlds so much, I wish he’d do so in a setting that fits the subtext. Using open worlds as a “sense of scale” gimmick is not fresh or impressive anymore.
