Hey everyone, thanks for watching. This is a follow up to my other video about Western devs dunking on Elden Ring. Let me know what you think, sub to give my life meaning & I am now gonna go sleep. Thumbnail art by Noah Thatcher Link: thearkon.artstation.com/projects/Ar6dQz
She's an idiot anyways; the only games she's contributed to are small woke indies for xbox. King: "Every player paid and should get to enjoy it". Everyone Else: "How about taking your own advice"!
Well, here're my 50 cent on the comment on the menus and stats: 1. The menus are not complicated, but it is true that opening them (or browsing the inventory) will not save you from being attacked (there's no auto pause we gamers are used to) (and which I personally prefer - no matter how unimmersive this is). 2. Stats are another matter all together. They are NOT well explained (f.e. Dexterity never mentions how much it speeds up spell casting and which part of the spell casting process). Any status effect is only shown as a symbol but never explained - you'll quickly find explanations on the internet, but the game itself does not tell you the details. Items do not tell you exactly what they effect - f.e. Baldachin's Blessing and especially armors often have effects that are not well explained or even hidden effects not stated at all - f.e. the Spellblade set or Black Knife Armor.
I can't believe that dev said that. I think journalists want an easy mode because they want to blaze through the game and write a review as soon as possible to beat others, but get frustrated when they spend hours losing to the same boss lol. It's actually quite funny to imagine.
@@WiseOwl_1408 Some great game journalists would be Colin Moriarty, Paul Tassi or Greg Kasavin. I mean Kasavin even left GameSpot & founded Supergiant Games, the makers of Bastion, Transistor & Hades. So there’s some. But mostly, yeah.
People still requesting an easy mode even after Eldenring release are ridiculous. The game is the easiest fromsoft game by far. A bleed build, bloodhound step + mimic tear can literally bring you through the game without learning the timing of any boss
@@heibk-2019 tbh even with all those op items u still struggle. I literally spammed weapon arts and did cheesy things fighting the final boss and it took me 2 DAYS to beat radagon and elden beast
The ubisoft style of making open world is actively being taught in game design classes ( see: devs who graduated from "ubi-schools" in Montreal) so it isn't surprising to see how SOME people can't wrap their heads around Elden Ring. Or Souls-like. It's called Level Design. Not just an environment that looks realistic, but wasn't designed with gameplay in mind. Bet word from the top that there was a new Mandate: Do things like Elden Ring. And they are breaking their minds understanding WHAT the heck that means. Because they weren't taught that in Ubischool and they don't know the first thing about Level Design....
That's the thing, I don't think most of these devs will learn the right lessons from Elden Ring because its entire design philosophy is basically the opposite of the standard Western game formula. Learning how to NOT control everything and actually give the player autonomy to create their own experience is going to be much harder than learning how to guide the player ever was.
Ubisoft comes from a: "realistic environment and stunning graphics is FAR MORE IMPORTANT than cohesive and fun gameplay" standpoint, so it makes sense.
I feel like this relates to people who learn music theory in college: you learn a specific set of rules that only applied to 50 years of music composition in ONE specific area of the world and then suddenly you graduate questioning why people listen to Kendrick Lamar when he's not following conventional music theory rules. The fact is video games are an art form and just like any art form there's structured "rules" to use as guidelines but they aren't law. but rather the most innovative and interesting art pieces in every genre find ways to break those rules and just focus on offering unique experiences to each individual that witnesses the piece. I'd like to say that therefore the education programs are the problem but that's just can't be the case when there's obviously people who go through those programs and don't come out as snobs that just emulate what came before them
@@aperson9847 modern (ubisoft and team) game formula yes, there are more "old" school people who designed in similar way, but they are practically out of the "big" games. maybe they will be taken back on the board, but most likely higher ups will just scratch their heads how to copy Elden Ring design...
A lot of these devs are really arrogant, their arrogance goes so far that now they are attacking eastern games for daring to be different and challenging.
It reminds me of how some boomer western animation veterans will scoff on anime even if most of thr young blood animators/industry artists love anime. In the west, Undertale took a lot of influence from Japanese game design while continuing to innovate, problem is when it’s taking an indie game severed from executive interference to actually innovate.
Little story from me: There is that one dude that I meet years before, he was a kid at the time actually. Aaaand I was playing Dark Souls at this time. This kid was watching me fighting all of those enemies and bosses times bigger than my character with jaw dropped on the ground. He asked me if he could try for himself, and I gave him controlled. He shouted and screamed that all of that is shit and its impossible. So I showed him that all enemies have thier attacks that can be dodged or blocked. He started to learn. He went through entire Dark Souls 3 from start to bottom, sometimes asking me for a advice or tricks in some moments. But I never took controller from him, even for a second. I said to him "It's your journey, I cannot take you and just throw to USA, can't I?" So years later he saved money and brought ps4 with Bloodborne. And he's first call to me was "Dude, I have Bloodborne! We playing?" So we hopped in an yeah. We died like a morons MANY times. We never really raged. We laughed that we were a idiots to fall for easiest traps. And now? He brought Elden Ring. Without any hasitation he hopped in once again to get he's ass kicked. He ask me how the game works, where should we go, what should he use and that staff. We bounce off from many games for months, but From Games? Nope, there is always motivation to go on and learn some more. Is it lore? Mechanics? Play styles? There is always something we have to do, and God damn us if we won't try some wierd shiet XD
This is kinda what happened to me when I made a Friend in a Elden Ring facebook community. I hadn't any idea how to play it and said that she does not like when someone else plays for her. I understood her very well, and I helped her not playing with her, but giving some info, making her read a bit of itens and teaching her how some mechanics work. Today she always thanks me for helping her to understand and so enjoy the game.
What you said about replaying these games deeply resonates with me. I've NEVER been compelled to replay any Ubisoft-like open world game, and yet, I do this all the time with the Souls series and Elden Ring, despite the fact that I have thousands of hours in the series. Western developers seriously need to rethink some aspects of their cookie cutter games.
I'm opposite I tried playing souls games they get boring with no story but shit gameplay with dodge rolls.ive replayed Ubisoft games especial ac2 and ac unity many times over
I can’t speak for the newer AC games (Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla), but i have replayed AC3 & Unity, and plan to replay AC4, soon. The problem i have with these AC games is that once i finish the game, the world loses much of its life and replayability; though that is probably due to me doing most of the side content along the way.
It's not developers fault, it's almost like the department for marketing has gained so much control over the development in studios that now it's leaked even into the teaching philosophy when people are taught in the we#t how to design games. It's not about fun, it's about micro transactions and what can be shown. Theres no rigid backbone supporting a thin venere of features meant to sell the game, and anything extra is at cost. They don't even care that their audience literally despises them. Developers need to have control back and control finances.
Games like the Soulsborne series are truly fitting of the term "hobby". You just want to go back to them and talk with your friends regarding secrets, boss fights, lore, builds, etc. It is like going to the gym or doing martial arts, or a sport, it creates a symbiotic relationship between motivation and fun to be had.
Elden Ring is my first From Soft game I played, and even though I dont consider my self to be very good at this game I never once thought this game is hard or unfair. Elden Ring gives you so many options in combat and rewards you for taking your time to explore the world. I really hope wester developers learn a thing or two from Elden Ring. P.S. Shout out to my homie Banish Knight Engvall for carrying me through most boss fights
except for the snow region. I hated that area simply because archers had the hp of a knight and huge range while being fast on a wolf that also does damage from close range. Other than that i actually liked the game. If only it wasn't reliant on bleed(i beat ds1 and 3 2-3 times each and passed through stormveil castle underlevelled by only parry and riposte)
First one for me, it was definitely a game above my preferred skill level, which is why I incorporated the hit-and-run technique that everyone hates lol. But over time, I learned and fell in love with the game to the point that I now have all the other Souls games which I'm currently working through. Best purchase I ever made after the months of seeing clips and reading articles.
as a kid who didnt know how to simply look up a guide, a lot of games were like this for me, even if they weren't 8 bit, so i was forced to learn the hard way lmao these people are, to put it lightly, unrefined
Amen! You know how many games I never beat until years later because I sucked at them? A fuckton. Now I seek out challenging games. I don’t want to sleepwalk through an experience.
@@Rubinkys i had lego marvel super heroes on xbox360 as a kid and i played it for so long that i knew the entire open world from the back of my head. But i didn't have the last mission open even after so long. That's because i had trouble racing, or didn't know how to open a thing untill later while falling asleep i remembered WAIT if there's no actual entrance, then there should be a Mr Fantastic or Venom entrance somewhere around there!
"If you paid for it, you should be able to enjoy it" Before you pay for something, you should make sure that it's something you actually want. If you buy a car, only to realize after the fact that the boot is too small to fit everything you want to carry, the car factory is under no obligation to now redesign the whole model just to fit your needs. _YOU_ should've checked before buying the car whether it fulfils your needs. You _know_ what kind of games FS makes. You have no excuse. "MmMMmm, YyYeEeeEEs, let me buy a game from the developer, famous for making really difficult combat, and then let me complain about combat in said game being difficult" GTFOH
Exactly. I can't believe people like this exist. I mean, all it takes is one internet search to find out that FromSoft and Soulslike games are known for their high degree of difficulty and vague style of storytelling and world design. If a person can't be bothered to do even the tiniest amount of research before they buy the game, that's on them. And if you buy something and CAN'T enjoy it, well, isn't that what refunds are for?
To expand, it also feels like they couldnt comprehend and were angry that it wasn't like other games that they've played before. "Where are the map markers?? It should be telling me where to go!" Like getting angry because you bought a prius and you just automatically expected it to be a pickup truck.
yea but he fails to state the obvious: The western devs are jealous and mad and they will say anything to discredit FromSoft. As an analogy, it's easier to cheat and trip the one in front of you in a race than it is to train and become better yourself. Western mentality as old as time. Disgusting!
"Everyone who PAID should get to enjoy the game!" It is up to every functioning adult to inform themselves about a product and decide whether it is something they would enjoy BEFORE paying for it. THat is your responsibility.
It's near impossible to tell if you'll enjoy a game until you start it for yourself. Even if you know the genre, a single twist could change so much about the experience. That being said, that western dev probably should've known better than to attack Elden Ring design like that, because good research is a lot more useful for making a critique
It’s made by From Software. The people who have built their careers on making fiendishly difficult games. And birthed the Soulslike genre. If they did some research into their prior games, they’d have realised that.
Lol. Kids/ teens my age haven’t even picked up a souls game before and we’re already enjoying Elden ring. It’s incredibly multifaceted in terms of builds with a cool world to boot. And I personally love the story. These developers can get over themselves.
@@takehirolol5962 Well, I have played Sekiro and Demon’s Souls. My mom mostly played Demon’s Souls, though I always thought it was cool so I gave it a go. I started on Sekiro pretty late, and then less than a year later I find out that a new game by the same devs called Elden Ring is coming out in three months lol. I think my dad used to play Bloodborne tbh. Though funny enough we don’t have any actual Dark Souls games.
@@AlbertusSalvatierra Well, I started Demon Souls around 8 years ago and Dark Souls on Xbox360 around 12 years ago. Then played all the rest of them on PC except Bloodborne. Just completed Elden Ring after 201 hours, no more SoulsBorne for me for a while!
Elden Ring was my first Soulsborne game, i got hooked instantly. Then i played Bloodborne and man, that game is 10x better, for me at least. The combat is a bit faster, but more fluid. No blocking, parrying with guns, the trick weapons, the setting, the story, the lore... Omg.. I could go on forever. First game ever that i just couldn't get enough of, i immediately went for 2 more playtroughs. Highly recommended
@@milemile4813 at least before Eldenring release the majority of the community thought Bloodborne is the best game of the series. Against Eldenring it probably looses now.
She was just probably fishing for reactions just so she could later write an article in some shill website about how the Souls community is toxic and they were mean to her, or whatever. Seems to be whats in fashion these days.
@@lebonkerz5612 Have you seen the new Obi-Wan show? Reva is a character from there. She's a poorly written character in a poorly written show. People called her character out and both disney and the actress herself called their audience, "Racist". If you want to know why they think it's racism, it's because the actress is black. As a sidenote, the actress has never seen star-wars and thinks she is the only black person that was ever in the series ever.
Seeing all these western devs with their cookie cutter open world games being angry fills me with so much joy. Elden ring brought that gaming magic I felt last time as a child
1:17 There's something so sad about that dev experiencing what I can only assume is Agheel's entrance to his boss fight and somehow finding away to be *disappointed* by it. As if that moment of him appearing out of the sky and taking the small settlement AND YOU by surprise isn't not just a great moment of spectacle before a boss fight, but also a great lore moment showing off the immense destructive power of a single dragon (and not even one of the most poweful ones you get to meet) and getting your first taste of seeing this force that once ruled over the whole of the Lands Between before the arrival of the Greater Will. The dragons in the Lands Between have such an impressive yet tragic story and Agheel is one of your first pieces in that puzzle; acting like he's *nothing but* a spectacle is just blatant minimizing. Like, god damn, Agheel is one of the small fry and he STILL has an entire lake named after him, and that somehow is worth *less* than all the questions that dev had. And now that I think about it, Agheel's entrance answers most of their questions: Where are you going? Nowhere, because Agheel's here now. Who are these guys? The people on the lowest rungs of this society that are trambled by every facet of power, like the dragons. Why are you killing them? You don't have to, but you can. Where are you? You're in Agheel's fucking lake so get ready to rumble.
My first Souls game and the community is so f-ing cool! I loved the game, got the Platinum! It was a SOLID 9/10. The NPC quest lines are a bit weird / could be better. Be yeah… it’s game of the year material.
Good video. My partner and I are all about accessibility in games and making it for more people. However as you pointed out, there are genres for a reason, and hating on and calling games like DS or ER trash bc they aren’t for everyone is honestly a very selfish take. ER especially has made the series far more accessible to where my partner who couldn’t get into DS3 has been having the time of his life with ER. Games are like books, music and movies; everything is based on your taste and not everything will always taste good
Restaurant menu: we only sell seafood here Customer: I hate seafood, give me the lobster Customer, while gagging: I PAID FOR THIS I SHOULD BE ABLE TO ENJOY IT This is exactly what all these people are doing. They know Elden Ring, as part of the Souls series, is a hardcore experience before they buy it (if they don't, that's on them for not properly researching what they spend their money on). They buy it anyway, then get mad when they don't like it, and demand that other people put in time and money to tailor the game to their interests, rather than the interests of the game's core audience. And all I've got to say is.......we have an entitlement problem in the modern world.
@@filippogrimaldi7228 Let's not go crazy here. The game has tools new to FromSoft games that their core audience doesn't feel a need for, but at least they're optional. Enemies are still difficult and i-frames still matter, but we have more tools to work with should we so choose. I'd call that a good design choice and say they have definitely not bent their knee to any influence regarding difficulty.
@@prinzezzqtpi5437 I definitely disagree that it was a good design choice, because they added all these OP options and then overtuned the bosses to compensate, which makes the game something like torture to play solo. Player power creep is going to ruin Souls games eventually if they keep going down that road.
Some thoughts I have on the "toxic" get good mentality: yeah some people do use it as an insult but sometimes the only solution to the problem is to get good. I know people don't like to be told they're bad at something (I know I don't) but you have to acknowledge that you're not always going to pick something up and immediately be good at it, be that a game, a real world skill, whatever. And you can either say the thing is too hard, get upset over it and stop doing it or you can admit that you're not very good at this yet but you're gonna stick it out, learn and improve at it. Both options are completely valid
Personally, I think Souls games can really help build character. They teach you to persevere, to pay attention, to keep a cool head facing insurmountable odds, to fall and stand up again, to earn your victories. When you pay for a Souls game, you're not entitled to "enjoy it", it doesn't care about how you feel. You're entitled to learn what it has to teach you. Whether or not you do is up to you, but that's what you're buying into. It's basically life.
"I should be able to enjoy something that interests me and I paid for." Ok but... How do you get to being "interested" in the seventh From game with this formula withou knowing it's basically ABOUT getting owned and lost and not getting what's going on at first? Kinda sounds like "I paid for this Batman movie so I have the right to enjoy it without that stupid adult man in a bat costume." "I hate dough, mozzarella and tomato, but I paid for my pizza margherita, I should be able to like its taste."
Thank you for not even hiding your contempt lmao. People like Delaney should be talked down to in every hilarious way possible. I love how these Western devs always cry and complain whenever FromSoft releases a new game. Meanwhile chad Miyazaki out there is just chilling with his yet another successful (and a surefire GOTY) of a game and promising his fans he will continue making challenging games. That statement from him alone must have made a Western dev or two die from stroke. 🤣 Imagine getting beaten by a "six-year-old" lmfao comedy gold.
Man I can't stress how that I have NEVER, EVER seen such an AMAZING world created by FromSoft, the artwork, the music, the design, the... lore.. ahem. My first time entering the Altus Platau I had to just sit and stare at my screen for five minutes, I was in awe, the beauty of the distant capital, the falling golden leaves, golden landscapes and the music. Every game I get so immersed because of FromSofts creativity and genuine hard work put into their games.
In the idea of a game is the concept that you might lose, losing is part of the experience of playing a game. In this regard Elden Ring is still very forgiving, there are infinite continues so you can't really lose unless you give up.
I tried Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 and I couldn't continue after 10 minutes. I wasn't feeling it. Sekiro I actually managed to play for a few hours but eventually gave up after getting stuck on the first horse boss (dude after the huge snake). That was a few years ago. I'm 200+ hours into Elden Ring and it is the greatest game I've ever played (which was previously Skyrim). I'm at the last boss and I don't want it to end. I'm actually sad, but after I find the courage to finish the story, I'm going back to Yarnham to fuck shit up. Thank you FromSoft.
I bought this ticket to Barcelona when I actually wanted to go to England. I think all tickets should bring me to where ever I want, and having tickets to only Barcelona, really stigmatizes the people who don’t wish to think about where each specific ticket would bring them. Seriously, are we all supposed to know geography and plan out our actions as an autonomous human being?
Funny, that analogy about horror movies is almost exactly what happened to The Exorcist when it first came out. Parents complained when they brought their children to see it in theatres, because they "had no idea" it was a horror movie. They even lobbied to have it banned in cinemas.
Actually, this whole reaction from certain western devs, ragging on Elden Ring and saying that it's a bad game, that its overrated and its success undeserved, made a connection immediately form in my mind. I mean, it's a bit familiar, isn't it? An unexpected result comes in, one that doesn't correspond to your personal beliefs or prejudices - and instead of accepting that your opinions might not be universally shared, or even trying to learn something from this result, you attack it - ignoring the fact that critics, user reviews, and sales-figures all make it clear that this thing is a HUGE SUCCESS. You disregard all the inconvenient facts, wave them off as illegitimate, undeserved. The objective truth is irrelevant, the facts are irrelevant - if the results don't match your beliefs, they are *not real* . So yeah. This seems to be just another expression of the 'post-truth' society that has arisen in the US in recent years. And frankly, a bunch of devs blindly insisting that THEIR game-design philosophy is superior despite abundant evidence to the contrary is about the *least* of its consequences...
So true and they try to push their bs and use some mysterious "people" they are defending to try to come from some moral high ground. They are far from moral people, they're just narcissistic, attention seekers. They just want to cry at people on the internet, which is funny cuz it's there forever.
Basically this. An inability to perform critical thinking, an inability to accept any form of disagreement, and this bizarrely entitled feeling that the rest of the world somehow exists to make them happy. Where did all these little Caligulas come from?
I've been scrolling down comments to see if anyone else made that connection. TH-cam comments are not usually where I find interesting critique, but yeah, you hit it right on. It's essentially our post-truth, post-modern world. Reality doesn't conform with my view, so I get to be pissy about it rather than working on myself.
I am so happy there are content creators like you defending this beauty of a game. From Software put their heart into this game. Magic is more valuable than any other souls game. I actually have fun with it. The combat system is smoother than ever. The open world feels like an actual open world. The amount of money From software has put in the pockets of content creators, blogs, websites from this game all of those people need to be screaming thank you!!! From them not explaining everything has made money for so many folks. I hope from software keeps pushing the limits.
To be honest, only FromSoft could have pulled that kind of open world. It's really the Dark souls philosophy extended to an open world. I am not sure any developer could have replicated something similar and have the same success.
Elden ring is my first souls game and i liked it so much it's actually incredible. Heck it's even my first playstation game and i fucking love it. The mise en scène, the design, the writing, *THE MUSIC MY GOD* , the lore. Anyway this is a masterpiece.
Go play the other SoulsBorne games!! Bear in mind they are different, they are not open world (would say they are "semi open") and are more challenging. But I'm pretty sure you'll like them just as much as Elden. Also for a more "ambience" souls experience, Hollow Knight!! It is AMAZING! If you want a pause from FROMSOFT, Hollow Knight is the way to go. Just getting lost in that magical forsaken bug world. And the music is a banger. To think that game was made by just 3 people + the composer (the mother of one of the devs helped with voicing XD). Everything was hand drawn. It's an experience! You can see the passion and work that was put into it.
I think most of the music in Elden Ring isn't quite as memorable as prior Soulsbornes, but A) I still like it, and B) it has a lot more ambient pieces which I may just not be used to.
Me and my Hubby often discuss/debate Elden Ring lore during our walks to the grocery store and such. It's so much fun to speculate on the mysteries of the game since they are provided in such tantalizing and enticing ways :>
Exactly why I haven't bought it. Years ago when I was in the army, every night was my own and I could put the hours in. I only get the odd 2-3hrs spread through the week now if I'm lucky with a challenging job, 2 kids etc. So I can't commit to the effort and time of this game. Do enjoy a good story though which is why I'm enjoying your lore vids
@Reece Drury I cheated. My whole family games, so gaming time=family time 😎 Edit: I literally typed out your name without noticing we share a surname. Greetings from Texas, potential cousin!
My fav. Part was "complaining the horror movie was too scary" oddly i have seen this with horror movies or mordit thing's... many complain it's too scary or creepy and so is water-down. 😔😔😔😔😔😔
The issue is that game devs were told to "dumb down" their games so that they can be enjoyed by people that do not have experience or mental capacity to deal with more complex tasks (because then they can sell the product to more people). And while it is true that many games (Elder Ring included) have been primarily built to accommodate the tastes of fans with previous experience, the solution is to bring new gamers up to speed with an optional tutorial or offering ways *in the game world* to adjust the difficulty (builds that minimize the damage taken, health upgrades that are scattered around, consumables that exploit planted weaknesses, etc.), not to have a list of difficulty levels before the game starts or to remove the sense of discovery by marking everything.
Yup, ds veterans find the blogs quick and get op first playthrough. I envy new comers who are in awe of everything and take their time without a need to speed win.
@@rodm209 Took my time with the first run through but then the game crashed at the Burning the Tree cutscene and I didn't travel to the new location...which meant I was effectively softlocked until someone on reddit pointed me to the 'wrong warp' glitch. Normally a method reserved for speed running but it actually meant I could continue the game on that save file. So then I begun thinking "huh, I wonder how else I can use the Wrong Warp glitch..." and started using it to do stuff like skipping into the Capital without killing any major bosses because it had a weapon I wanted there that I wanted to build around. I am by no means great at the game or a speedrunner but there's something satisfying about breaking the game in such a way to skip certain parts of the game to get to what you want.
I know I'm throw this cheesey line out to those whiny wester Dev's. Line that all soulborne fans to the newbies. "GIT GUD!" maybe your games won't be so trash. 🤣
Good video, I agree with a lot of what you said- especially so many game design crutches getting relied on so heavily in the 'West' these days. And that developer had the worst takes. The entitlement BLOWS MY MIND. Seriously, and then instead of keeping such a take to themselves they thought it was a good idea to throw it onto the internet. Amazing. I do have to disagree intensely with a minor point you made on WHY people campaign for 'easy modes'. (Not to say every game SHOULD have easy modes, but the way you spoke about the discussion at all came across as incredibly reductive and represented it in very bad faith). Sure, some people may use it to bypass the challenge- but the reason many are arguing for 'easy modes' is so whole groups of people can experience the games at all. There are many, MANY subtle and non subtle disabilities that would make many titles impossible to play. Adjusting some settings would not lower the difficulty to those players, it might even still be harder for them than the usual experience would be for you. This is not to say every game should cater to every person, obviously the whole point of the video is that that is impossible. On top of that I think 'easy mode' isn't a very elegant solution, but accessibility as a growing challenge is definitely a problem that is worth discussing with respect, not handwaved aside as 'these people just don't wanna learn the game'. I also don't think you need mysterious lore to discuss a game's themes, those are fully separate to me. I agree, the type of engagement you get from FromSoft is different in nature- but the implication that you can only have a meaningful discussion about a property when everything is shrouded in mystery does not ring true to me at all. 'How do you think the Horizon franchise handles the climate crisis in its story' could be a super interesting theme related discussion. As you said, different people look for different experiences. I'll never play Horizon, I've seen a playthrough and gotten all I needed from that, but thought its story was quite strong. I'm on my second Elden Ring playthrough. Just because the games require different types of engaging with the themes does not mean there is nothing to discuss. But the way Elden Ring handles LORE definitely encourages the type of long-term investment so typical of Soulsborne fandoms. I wouldn't tie the way a game handles lore to the values or depth of a theme the way this video seemed to.
One of the things I like about the Souls games is being a part of the community, even on its periphery, by getting hints on what to experience online, hints at builds to try and hints at story though youtubers. I may be too goblin brained to find everything myself but if I get pointed in the right direction there's so much to enjoy.
Well said duder, and kudos for the Mastodon reference. One of the biggest reasons why I keep playing Destiny is its lore. It hasn't always been represented in a good way, but part of the fun was piecing it all together, and Elden Ring does the same but on an even grander scale. My only real gripe with Elden Ring was keeping track of progress in certain quests. I know that its up to me (the player) to keep track of the steps or progress, but I legitimately would not have been able to finish Ranni's questline if not for a guide. Maybe this type of quest design would work in a more linear game, but, to me, it doesn't work in a vast and open world like Elden Ring. I'm not saying spell everything out for me, or hold my hand, but even a quest log with extremely vague descriptions would of been nice.
Well, I see where you're coming from, and yeah, I can see why it can be a problem for some people. However, if you follow the questline properly, then all NPCs involved do actually tell you where to go. Blaidd first tells you to meet him in Siofra, and then in Siofra he tells you to ask Seluvis about the road to Nokron. Seluvis tells you to go see Sellen, and Sellen tells you that you need to go and kill Radahn to open the path to Nokron. Then, once in Nokron, the road is pretty linear, you just explore and you find the Fingerslayer Blade in a pretty linear fashion. After that, you go back to Ranni, who gives you the inverted statue and access to Renna's Rise. Now, yeah, here is a point where you could decide to not investigate Renna's Rise, but I think its only fair for the game to expect you to do so. In Renna's Rise you go up, you take the teleporter, you arrive in Ainsel River, you pick up the shiny which turns out to be Miniature Ranni, then you sit at a grace, and then you immediately notice "Talk to Miniature Ranni" in the menu. You do that, then Ranni tells you to continue onwards through Nokron, and defeat the Baleful Shadow. Once you defeat the Baleful Shadow, she gives you the Palace Key, which, again, should occur to you as being the one in Rennala's room cause that's the only locked chest in the game. So you advance through Lake Of Rot, and at the end of it you fight Astel, then arrive in Moonlight Altar where the questline concludes. I agree, some of the later stuff you have to do in the questline is like, kind of hidden away, but all of it falls in natural progression, unless ofc you go out of your way to avoid places and forget about them.
@@cosmic2750 The issue is people are rarely going to be doing any one quest in one sitting, especially considering many are meant to be done as you go through the story. NPCs might direct you fine, but that doesn't mean you'll be able to head straight to wherever you need to go. You might need to do more main story content, or you might just want to stop playing for the day. I think it would've saved players a lot of hassle if the game just had a journal, like Morrowind's, that just keeps track of key dialogue in the order you received it. Not a full-blown quest log like modern RPGs (wouldn't fit in a Souls game imo) but just a in-game journal to track who you've talked to and what about for if you ever just forget what you've already done.
What I would love is a from software game that summarizes all the bits of information you have about the world in a journal and let you piece the mythology and story as part of a sandbox game, like a “scribe” gear that has note taking tools . Even if I love these games, in the end I have to go to TH-cam to understand the lore, but that feels like having people telling me things about the game instead of the game helping me piece together the bits I got. I keep forgetting about the information I got and I can’t even replay cinematics and dialogues
I can understand wanting a codex or something along those lines, however ER is definitely a lot easier to pick up on unaided from both a story and lore perspective than pretty much every fromsoft game before it with maybe the exception of Sekiro, which was designed to be a more linear, cinematic experience.
“Everyone that paid for a game should be allowed to enjoy it.” “I didn’t enjoy the last of us, 1 or 2” “Bigot!!” Prove to me that this wouldn’t happen.
It's the same mindset that results in generic uninspired movies, as well. The idea that it has to appeal to the lowest common denominator to make the most money. Movie adaptations of works from other forms of media are a huge culprit of this. Greedy executives leech off the success of a popular IP and dumb down all of its themes and nuances in an attempt to appeal to people who don't even like the story's genre in the first place. Like the video said, this is also how you end up with entire movie genres seeming formulaic and homogenized, like they came off a conveyor belt. It's sad when you can watch a horror movie for the first time and predict every cheap jumpscare that's flung at the audience.
Another tweet that I remember from the thread made by that dev is when they said something along the lines of: Players shouldn't come up with an idea and doing things or going to places they're not designed/directed to They should be following the path that the devs have carefully designed for them This one in particular boggles my mind, since it's like they're saying players shouldn't have agency and dictate how they want to play the game.
This was my first FromSoftware game like many other people. It's the first game I've played that truly let's you decide how to play it. You can completely ignore the story, or dig for lore. Play only using swords and shields or only using magic. If something is too hard, just grind or find a stronger weapon and come back later. There are so many ways to come at it. I'd say in some ways it's the MOST inclusive game, you just have to find what works for you.
If you buy a guitar, the act of paying for it doesn’t entitle you to be able to play it. You have to learn and develop those skills, and there is tremendous satisfaction in doing so. Similarly if you buy a basketball hoop it’s on you to develop the ability to throw the ball through the hoop. If you buy a book of poetry by John Keats but you don’t like poetry and don’t understand it, you aren’t entitled to an explanation and just looking for one online isn’t half as compelling. The whole “argument” that you should be given everything because you paid money reveals a worldview that utterly toxic in its entitlement.
That would be like me being mad at paying to go see a brand new movie because I didn't enjoy it and I don't think anyone else should either because I did not enjoy the experience then get told by other reviewers that it was a great film
"I don't like this game, it's too hard". Nobody is forcing you to like it. A lot of people don't like Super Ghouls and Ghosts for Super Nintendo because it's hard too. And you shouldn't feel bad for not liking something.
I wonder how the gaming landscape will look like with everyone talking about developers copying Fromsoft in a few years from now. People are scared and rightfully so, but seeing Nioh and Jedi Fallen Order is proof that people can recreate their gameplay with their own twists!
@@KwadDamyj very descent. They improved on the lock on system of Souls. I liked those games + Lords of The Fallen. But I consider them to be on the weaker side of Souls-like compared to the 2 I mentioned which are on the same level as Souls and improve on them.
Another great video Endymion! Personal experience that I don't remember pretty much anything from Horizon Zero Dawn as the game lore was always threw in front of me in a way that didn't make me wonder or think of what happened. When I started Forbidden West, it didn't hooked me at all. After putting 150h in Elden Ring I might have put almost the double just watching theory / lore videos, where the game actually instigsge me to learn more, making me come with MY conclusions about what happened. It's so ingenious that its difficult to articulate so I am not surprised that even devs doesn't understand since offering context isn't something that they're used to.
In the HORIZON series' defense. The games actually do have a lot of SOULS-style lore about the world outside of the main story for those willing to look. But yeah, I agree that the tired old "UBISOFT formula" is holding the series back and the developers should really drop it for the third game.
Elden Ring is my first souls game, and I've been *obsessed* with it since I got it, but I will say that I'm not too fond of how certain questlines are structured in that you pretty much HAVE to look up a guide in order to know what to do in them. Like, not quest related but, I would find it very hard to believe if someone managed to find the Dectus medallion without a guide, and that unlocks like an entire half of the map. Which having to look up guides isnt like necessarily bad, but it does get annoying having to constantly alt-tab to google something. I still have loads of fun on the game but this does irk me a bit.
This Is what happens when you mix a narcissistic ideology with art. You get artists that treat their art the way they treat their ideology, when it gets criticized even with objective facts the answer is demonize and deny.
There's a man on TH-cam named Max0r who occasionally reviews games and oversaturates them with fast paced memes and never tells what's going on properly and yet SOMEHOW he's more reliable than any mf in polygon or really name any game journalist
For me its just a cope mechanism from mediocre developers unable to understand that innovation doesnt mean gimmick, it also shows how much intolerant and bigoted western devs are about embracing oriental physolophy of game making.
It's really weird, there's a vocal minority (I hope) of supposedly "enlightened" people who say they like Japan, but mostly seem to like it like a pet or something, at best. On the other hand, this woman might just be talking out her arse for clicks and I'm completely off base, who knows.
Elden Ring is a very fun game to play, and I love exploration. And sometimes even the lore stuff can be fascinating. But if there's anything I don't like, it's the fact that, well... most NPCs hardly ever interact with one another. They'll often talk to YOU and refer to other NPCs, but never really have any on-screen interactions. It just feels like there's a disconnect; like I'm seeing signs that the video game world is just that; a video game.
I think a lot of negativity from the community comes from a person complaining and not necessarily asking for help. Not saying there isn't some d bags in the souls Fandom, but from my experience it's been 90% helpful. Sharing ideas, theories, and strategy, patting each other on the back, etc. It's a brotherhood forged I'm shared experience. So when somebody new to the series comes in to complain on something we love and bonded over, yeah people get defensive. Git gud is actually the advice, if someone tells you to get good, ask them how. You'll be surprised
"Everyone who PAID the game should be allowed to enjoy a game that interests them" Right, you almost got there, the answer is right in front of your face
I played Horizon Zero Dawn before playing Elden Ring. While Horizon has a cool story, Elden Ring blows it out of the water in terms of sheer content. There were some aspects I hated at first, like how quests progress, but it felt great when they did because I did it on my own terms. You actually have to run around and do stuff with that pink sponge in your head instead of just reading what you have to do from the quest log in the upper right. And for those that use the argument that difficulty settings could make it easier for disabled people to play, I myself have one arm and I have 100 hours in ER, not to mention there are COUNTLESS people who have disabilities that are much worse than mine that manage to play games still. Also, hearing that every entry in the Soulsborne games has no difficulty setting because the creator wanted everyone to experience the same victories is actually really cool.
2:50 - I don't think this kind of thinking is right even for food, if someone hates pizza and goes to a pizzeria then he shouldn't expect to enjoy the pizza...
For a while I avoided playing elden, now that I have, it is a breath of fresh air, combining all the best elements of the best ps2 games. Not having to worry about a quest log or markers really helps, it reminds me of when I would repeat the same levels in old games.
Elden ring had enough hype around it that we have a situation where a group of people stepped in a room where they don't fit in. Some people mingled and others got mad about not fitting in.
Hey western devs, you can either A) Cry us a river, or B) take pointers from Elden Ring to actualy improve your own lame games! The choise is yours, but make it fast, i'm kinda tired of hearing you whining about Elden Ring.
+ point ) take lessons from older Western Dev's who somehow knew how to make world without millions of popups or just show some creativity instead of following that "modern" formula and general trends
Man you’re so right about how watered down and simplified most triple A titles are these days. It’s just so fucking boring, it’s as if the devs treat their audience like they’re 5 years old. So tiring.
I was bad at this game until i wasnt. took the difficulty as a challenge and over came it. thats the biggest difference I see not only online but in the work place as well. some people complain because things are "too hard" and some of us work through the difficulties.
When elden ring blew up I googled if it had an easy/story mode because I was after the lore then I heard GRRM had a hand in it and got more interested. I sucked it up and just played out of curiosity what the difficulty is like. to my surprise I enjoyed the thrill of winning what I thought were challenges I can never overcome with bosses. 50+ hrs in and now I'm playing Sekiro too! I thought the souls genre wasn't for me but FS blew me away Good take btw! Well said
What do you expect from a terminally online dev who spends her whole days on Twitter and has her pronouns in her bio? Those people are hopeless, whether they are dev, game journalists, streamers...
Since nobody will, so i'll say it. This is just the result of the war on masculinity in the west. This obsession with trying to be "inclusive", always trying to be mindful of the "feelings" of supposed "marginalized" players etc just seems to reflect a motherly and nurturing mentality, where as the "git gud" mindset very much reflects more of a masculine psycology. I grew up in the 90s, which was the golden age of western gaming, unparalled both in terms of quality and creativity, and back then gaming was a male oriented hobby filled with passionate pasty nerds who made games because they actually loved the medium. Looking at western dev studios then compared to now is quite instructive IMO.
So sad... She´s just internalized the pathetic excuses the industry uses to push these bloated samey games, whose real and only purpose is to make more money.
I think one factor here is that these devs kind of miss the forest for the trees. Elden Ring is a cohesive game that comes together to be greater than the sum of its parts, but most devs spend years of their lives working on one part of a game, and will often care a lot about that part. I think it’s fair to say that there are disparate parts of Elden Ring that are a lot worse than their counterparts in many western games when taken on their own. If you were the guy who made the nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor, it might be a bit demoralizing that a game with pretty simplistic AI can blow yours out of the water in critical reception, sales, etc. it just wouldn’t feel fair, because maybe you actually did do a better job than your counterparts in From Software. Western games are often less than the sum of their parts. That’s the sad truth of it. A lot of great work goes into them, but so often it doesn’t really make for an end product that’s enjoyable to the consumer.
I love the part that Delaney complains about the design, like "A knight in golden armor must be a good guy, it's a basic thing in design, BUT HE ATTACKS YOU! Gold is good and people in tarnished silver armor are bad".... and then you go into her portfolio and you can find a Hero of Ferelden, from Dragon Age, wearing a silver and weathered armor. At the end of the day, many of the devs who point out "flaws" in the Elden Ring are just a few guys who haven't gotten the attention they think they deserve, and freak out when they see something they consider "wrong" being a bigger hit than the things they they are doing. And with that they gain visibility.
"They PAID so they are ENTITLED to the enjoyment" Tell me you're painfully american, without telling me you're painfully american. I HOPE that woman never gets to direct anything creative. Ever.
@@draelos8570 Canadian, but your guys obsession with America and Americans is so weird. What 3rd world countries are you guys from? You all sound so ignorant. You point your finger at her and scream she must be America, I point out that she's Australian, so you point your finger at me and scream that I must be American. You need therapy, bro.
@@draelos8570 Got me, you should become a detective. You have a bright future ahead of you. You should move to America to study, you obviously need the education. I will give you points for one thing though, because I live in Montreal which is in Quebec. Canada. I guess you could call me a fake Canadian since we're really just all French in this province.
I genuinely enjoy elden ring quest system where each and every quest felt like hidden event that you need to solve on your own/community helped to solve. It's make the adventure felt real
As Sseth said, elden ring should be played after doing a frontal lobe lobotomy. . . for maximum enjoyment. . . prolly for the western doo doo gamers, devs and journos
Elden Ring is one of the very best action/adventure rpg's ever created. Western devs should be taking notes instead of whining and being a hater. They didn't sell 20 million copies in the first 6 weeks because the game is bad. You don't get a 98 on metacritic by being bad. Elden Ring encourages exploration and adventure. It forces you to have fun. It gives you everything you need to have fun and then encourages you to hone your skills. Not only physically but how you build your character as well. It is an RPG after all. Role Playing is the basis of RPG's. The level of immersion is second to none. FromSoft hit it out of the park. 10/10, best game this year so far by a long ways.
If someone is going to put their nonsense out there, they should expect whatever fallout comes from it. People should not feel bad replying to it in whatever manner they see fit. If a dev doesn't want the negative attention there is a simple solution. Shut your trap.
Elden Ring was the first ever Fromsoft game I’ve played. I was the dumb one who started playing on mouse and keyboard and my friends laughed at the steep learning curve I experienced and the frustration I felt because I actually HAD to learn attack patterns and utilise dodging etc. I’m my first full play through, it took me almost 20 HOURS to move onto Rennala because I explored Limgrave and Raya Lucaria and realised only now on my brand new game, I’m exploring NEW areas I didn’t dare explore because my confidence in my skill playing the game has increased. You’re rewarded endlessly as you learn, but you can simply spend ages travelling around each area exploring and picking up items and it doesn’t feel boring. The negative reaction to Elden Ring feels like a demand for instant gratification instead of failing, retrying, failing again (in my case 4/5 times) and then succeeding and the rush of pride from managing to get past an obstacle in the road, even when that road isn’t the ONLY road you have to go.
As a destiny player, one of the reasons people like myself don’t care for the lore, is because Bungie builds up these amazing lore points, that we expect to have a MASSIVE revealing… and then they throw in some Mcguffin wacky ass character like Finch(those who know…know) who just helps us and knows simply EVERYTHING we need. No need to explore No need to think No need to question They just give us some character we never heard of before, who just gives us everything we need to win. Then there’s how the lore is chopped up. You can have lore start in the lore books, then another piece of the same lore being on some random weapon from the crucible or gambit. The consistency is all over the place. Destiny has great ‘story’, but the way it is told sometimes, makes people not care. That’s why channels like Byf are so popular
We have game companies left and right releasing buggy, unplayable messes, using predatory loot boxes and microtransactions to line their pockets, and straight up lying about the content of their games. But ohhhhh nooooo. The real problem that needs to be addressed is developers releasing games that you happen to not enjoy for purely subjective reasons, especially if those games happen to be a) challenging and b) popular. I'm all for allowing anyone and everyone to express their opinions about a piece of media and level it with their own personal criticisms. But acting as if a game "should" cater to you out of moral obligation is downright entitled. If I buy a game and happen to not enjoy it, well... That sucks, but I'm sure I'll survive. And if lots of other people really enjoy it then it must be doing _something_ right, and it just happens to not be to my preference. I don't like Minecraft. At all. I don't like the lack of concrete goals, I don't like mining for materials, I don't care for the creation options, and I don't like its open-endedness. But I'm not about to jump online and claim that Minecraft should've been made differently simply because I don't like it. These people are essentially screaming "STOP HAVING FUN!" at the millions of fans and hoping everyone will listen. They simply can't fathom that other people like different types of games.
It's really simple just take a list of your top 10 favorite games or movies of all time and ask yourself if you think everybody on Earth loved those games/movies too. Of course they didnt.
Great video! I'm not going to sit here and bash Western Devs - I think there's a lot of going good there too, but I just dont understand how any developer would want games to eventually turn into the same game with a different skin... Elden Ring, like all the Souls games - is made by people who are passionate about making GAMES 'more' than they are about trying to make money. Elden Ring to me is a newschool take on oldschool games, it has been YEARS since a game gave me this same feeling. It's a big open world adventure....and it says "go, and see what happens..." Brilliant
I hadn't been exposed to FromSoftware too much, other than getting ROCKED in Dark Souls and giving up lol so I was a little nervous for Elden Ring bc I'm notorious for blaming the game as "bulls**t" when in reality, I'm just bad lol But I was super hyped for this game bc it looked amazing. I usually LOVE story-driven games and don't mind "checking off" lists and extras on an overloaded map.....but I LOVED Elden Ring. I love that it forces you to "get gud" or move on to another game. When I died (A LOT) I never felt like the game cheated me, or a bug caused me to die (like most Ubisoft games, Kingdom Come Deliverance, etc.). It was straight up my lack of skill lol which could be improved if I just ran away from the bad guy, learned, and leveled up....which is one of the best parts of the game I also loved the amount of engagement it encouraged on TH-cam and other platforms with creators in terms of Lore, tips, etc. Elden Ring made me shift my opinions on gaming in general, and really opened my eyes to how "cookie cutter" other AAA games are, and the general lack of creativity and innovation that seems to be plaguing the industry right now
these takes literally feel like a person attack on me since the eastern developers actually made this game piece by piece to appeal to people like me and people who don't even want to enjoy the game are trying to get it changed? how selfish can you get?? smh
Probably because there’s the assumption that many players who play games don’t have a sense of direction. Which in my opinion doesn’t respect the gamer’s capability to adapt.
Games made in the 1980s-1990s were great because they didn't really give you much direction, didn't really try to explain things, leaving them open to interpretation, and still had a ton of lore hidden throughout the game. They also had little to no bugs and glitches. These are what are important to players, and Elden Ring has all of this.
"so who are these guys? why am i killing them? where am i? where am i going?" funny thing is that it's all answered within the first 4 minute cutscene.
Not only that, but the game gives you this information several times over in multiple different ways throughout your playthrough. In fact you know a whole hell of a lot more about who you're fighting in ER than you did in almost any other fromsoft game before this. It just doesn't spoon-feed you this information and requires you to actually have a brain in your head, which I guess is too strict of a requirement for some people.
I bought a book today, but it was above my reading level. The author should write another version of the book with more accessible language because I gave them my money lol
And to reiterate, people like this are the reason why western media is failing. People who try to cater to everyone and make crappy forms of movies, games, etc tend to entirely mute criticism. They don't like being criticized then deflect back to you that your criticism is being "x" when it could be a valid critique. These people are so far up their own ass with people JUST LIKE THEM, that they are just void of what it means to have value to whatever form of media that gets created. They don't know because they don't care to improve.
i mean, i'm a souls noob and i loved elden ring, it's so cool and detailled. And i'm not a particularly skilled player. I think if people find Elden ring hard, maybe they SHOULD actually "git gud". Like u cannot appreciate any challenging game if u think ER is hard to the point of non-enjoyment. Like you can break the game so easily in every way that fits your playstyle, all you need is to be a little invested. Even if you don't have the time to invest, then don't play RPG's or accept to have a slow learning curve on them because these games require time
I’m not the biggest gamer. But my fav games were fall out 4 and witcher 3. I’ve replayed witcher so many times and love it so much. But I started playing elden ring and I’ve just been killing the knights at the start for HOURS but I LOVE it everytime 😂 can’t wait to explore rest of the world. It’s such a good game. I knew a regular souls game would be too hard for me but the basics are pretty easy to grasp. You just gotta level up 🤦♀️
Hey everyone, thanks for watching. This is a follow up to my other video about Western devs dunking on Elden Ring. Let me know what you think, sub to give my life meaning & I am now gonna go sleep.
Thumbnail art by Noah Thatcher
Link: thearkon.artstation.com/projects/Ar6dQz
hey what was that horror game you were showing in the video, looks really familiar
@@doodoohead8401 Callisto Protocol, comes out in December!
She's an idiot anyways; the only games she's contributed to are small woke indies for xbox.
King: "Every player paid and should get to enjoy it".
Everyone Else: "How about taking your own advice"!
Well, here're my 50 cent on the comment on the menus and stats:
1. The menus are not complicated, but it is true that opening them (or browsing the inventory) will not save you from being attacked (there's no auto pause we gamers are used to) (and which I personally prefer - no matter how unimmersive this is).
2. Stats are another matter all together. They are NOT well explained (f.e. Dexterity never mentions how much it speeds up spell casting and which part of the spell casting process).
Any status effect is only shown as a symbol but never explained - you'll quickly find explanations on the internet, but the game itself does not tell you the details.
Items do not tell you exactly what they effect - f.e. Baldachin's Blessing and especially armors often have effects that are not well explained or even hidden effects not stated at all - f.e. the Spellblade set or Black Knife Armor.
Name is from yugioh ?
I can't believe that dev said that. I think journalists want an easy mode because they want to blaze through the game and write a review as soon as possible to beat others, but get frustrated when they spend hours losing to the same boss lol. It's actually quite funny to imagine.
Game jurnos were expert gamers in the early years. Now they are failed interns to news rooms trying to put their degree to use.
@@WiseOwl_1408 Some great game journalists would be Colin Moriarty, Paul Tassi or Greg Kasavin. I mean Kasavin even left GameSpot & founded Supergiant Games, the makers of Bastion, Transistor & Hades. So there’s some. But mostly, yeah.
People still requesting an easy mode even after Eldenring release are ridiculous. The game is the easiest fromsoft game by far. A bleed build, bloodhound step + mimic tear can literally bring you through the game without learning the timing of any boss
@@heibk-2019 true... I still haven't beaten Sekiro, but beat Elden Ring twice using the mimic tear and a Flame of the Redmanes build.
@@heibk-2019 tbh even with all those op items u still struggle. I literally spammed weapon arts and did cheesy things fighting the final boss and it took me 2 DAYS to beat radagon and elden beast
The ubisoft style of making open world is actively being taught in game design classes ( see: devs who graduated from "ubi-schools" in Montreal) so it isn't surprising to see how SOME people can't wrap their heads around Elden Ring. Or Souls-like.
It's called Level Design. Not just an environment that looks realistic, but wasn't designed with gameplay in mind.
Bet word from the top that there was a new Mandate: Do things like Elden Ring. And they are breaking their minds understanding WHAT the heck that means. Because they weren't taught that in Ubischool and they don't know the first thing about Level Design....
That's the thing, I don't think most of these devs will learn the right lessons from Elden Ring because its entire design philosophy is basically the opposite of the standard Western game formula. Learning how to NOT control everything and actually give the player autonomy to create their own experience is going to be much harder than learning how to guide the player ever was.
Ubisoft comes from a: "realistic environment and stunning graphics is FAR MORE IMPORTANT than cohesive and fun gameplay" standpoint, so it makes sense.
I feel like this relates to people who learn music theory in college: you learn a specific set of rules that only applied to 50 years of music composition in ONE specific area of the world and then suddenly you graduate questioning why people listen to Kendrick Lamar when he's not following conventional music theory rules. The fact is video games are an art form and just like any art form there's structured "rules" to use as guidelines but they aren't law. but rather the most innovative and interesting art pieces in every genre find ways to break those rules and just focus on offering unique experiences to each individual that witnesses the piece. I'd like to say that therefore the education programs are the problem but that's just can't be the case when there's obviously people who go through those programs and don't come out as snobs that just emulate what came before them
Well try to teach lefties NPCs something else than their echo chamber shit. Its literally input error for them.
So they cant understand
@@aperson9847 modern (ubisoft and team) game formula yes, there are more "old" school people who designed in similar way, but they are practically out of the "big" games.
maybe they will be taken back on the board, but most likely higher ups will just scratch their heads how to copy Elden Ring design...
A lot of these devs are really arrogant, their arrogance goes so far that now they are attacking eastern games for daring to be different and challenging.
I’d rather say they’re pretentious and attacking devs for being better then them.
It isn't even that different. You level up, you get better stats, you beat bosses to progress the game.....
So much for diversity.
It reminds me of how some boomer western animation veterans will scoff on anime even if most of thr young blood animators/industry artists love anime. In the west, Undertale took a lot of influence from Japanese game design while continuing to innovate, problem is when it’s taking an indie game severed from executive interference to actually innovate.
Dont bother with theses devs, they are overpressured at work and arrogance is the only thing making them survive in this shitshow of megacorp money
Little story from me:
There is that one dude that I meet years before, he was a kid at the time actually. Aaaand I was playing Dark Souls at this time. This kid was watching me fighting all of those enemies and bosses times bigger than my character with jaw dropped on the ground.
He asked me if he could try for himself, and I gave him controlled. He shouted and screamed that all of that is shit and its impossible. So I showed him that all enemies have thier attacks that can be dodged or blocked. He started to learn. He went through entire Dark Souls 3 from start to bottom, sometimes asking me for a advice or tricks in some moments. But I never took controller from him, even for a second. I said to him "It's your journey, I cannot take you and just throw to USA, can't I?"
So years later he saved money and brought ps4 with Bloodborne. And he's first call to me was "Dude, I have Bloodborne! We playing?" So we hopped in an yeah. We died like a morons MANY times. We never really raged. We laughed that we were a idiots to fall for easiest traps.
And now? He brought Elden Ring. Without any hasitation he hopped in once again to get he's ass kicked. He ask me how the game works, where should we go, what should he use and that staff. We bounce off from many games for months, but From Games? Nope, there is always motivation to go on and learn some more. Is it lore? Mechanics? Play styles? There is always something we have to do, and God damn us if we won't try some wierd shiet XD
This is kinda what happened to me when I made a Friend in a Elden Ring facebook community. I hadn't any idea how to play it and said that she does not like when someone else plays for her. I understood her very well, and I helped her not playing with her, but giving some info, making her read a bit of itens and teaching her how some mechanics work. Today she always thanks me for helping her to understand and so enjoy the game.
damn, what a nice story.
This is wholesome
Why make these fake stories?
@@ska4dragons I feel sorry for you having no life.
What you said about replaying these games deeply resonates with me. I've NEVER been compelled to replay any Ubisoft-like open world game, and yet, I do this all the time with the Souls series and Elden Ring, despite the fact that I have thousands of hours in the series.
Western developers seriously need to rethink some aspects of their cookie cutter games.
Yep I’m gonna replay Dark Souls 2 & 3 some point in the year cause I just enjoy them. I already replayed DS1 & Sekiro this year too 🥳
I'm opposite I tried playing souls games they get boring with no story but shit gameplay with dodge rolls.ive replayed Ubisoft games especial ac2 and ac unity many times over
I can’t speak for the newer AC games (Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla), but i have replayed AC3 & Unity, and plan to replay AC4, soon. The problem i have with these AC games is that once i finish the game, the world loses much of its life and replayability; though that is probably due to me doing most of the side content along the way.
It's not developers fault, it's almost like the department for marketing has gained so much control over the development in studios that now it's leaked even into the teaching philosophy when people are taught in the we#t how to design games. It's not about fun, it's about micro transactions and what can be shown. Theres no rigid backbone supporting a thin venere of features meant to sell the game, and anything extra is at cost. They don't even care that their audience literally despises them. Developers need to have control back and control finances.
@@wingedhussar1453 2 and unity are good. Those were the good times, before it became a mid rpg
Games like the Soulsborne series are truly fitting of the term "hobby". You just want to go back to them and talk with your friends regarding secrets, boss fights, lore, builds, etc.
It is like going to the gym or doing martial arts, or a sport, it creates a symbiotic relationship between motivation and fun to be had.
I agree
Elden Ring is my first From Soft game I played, and even though I dont consider my self to be very good at this game I never once thought this game is hard or unfair. Elden Ring gives you so many options in combat and rewards you for taking your time to explore the world. I really hope wester developers learn a thing or two from Elden Ring.
P.S. Shout out to my homie Banish Knight Engvall for carrying me through most boss fights
except for the snow region. I hated that area simply because archers had the hp of a knight and huge range while being fast on a wolf that also does damage from close range. Other than that i actually liked the game. If only it wasn't reliant on bleed(i beat ds1 and 3 2-3 times each and passed through stormveil castle underlevelled by only parry and riposte)
Banished knight engvall helped me lots through my first play through.
First one for me, it was definitely a game above my preferred skill level, which is why I incorporated the hit-and-run technique that everyone hates lol. But over time, I learned and fell in love with the game to the point that I now have all the other Souls games which I'm currently working through. Best purchase I ever made after the months of seeing clips and reading articles.
She clearly didn't play games in the 8 bit era.
You weren't guaranteed to see a game to the end if you couldn't play it on its terms.
Yup. That's the way it should be.
as a kid who didnt know how to simply look up a guide, a lot of games were like this for me, even if they weren't 8 bit, so i was forced to learn the hard way lmao
these people are, to put it lightly, unrefined
Amen! You know how many games I never beat until years later because I sucked at them? A fuckton. Now I seek out challenging games. I don’t want to sleepwalk through an experience.
@@Rubinkys i had lego marvel super heroes on xbox360 as a kid and i played it for so long that i knew the entire open world from the back of my head. But i didn't have the last mission open even after so long. That's because i had trouble racing, or didn't know how to open a thing untill later while falling asleep i remembered WAIT if there's no actual entrance, then there should be a Mr Fantastic or Venom entrance somewhere around there!
@@Sruf. I fucking *feel* this lmao
I swear Lego games were some of the most unforgiving ones for me back then lol
"If you paid for it, you should be able to enjoy it"
Before you pay for something, you should make sure that it's something you actually want.
If you buy a car, only to realize after the fact that the boot is too small to fit everything you want to carry, the car factory is under no obligation to now redesign the whole model just to fit your needs. _YOU_ should've checked before buying the car whether it fulfils your needs.
You _know_ what kind of games FS makes. You have no excuse.
"MmMMmm, YyYeEeeEEs, let me buy a game from the developer, famous for making really difficult combat, and then let me complain about combat in said game being difficult"
GTFOH
Yeah, I don't like spicy food, so I don't buy spicy food and complain why this food is too spicy
@@ordinaryraccoon crazy that people need this explained to them in 2022 but here we are
Exactly. I can't believe people like this exist. I mean, all it takes is one internet search to find out that FromSoft and Soulslike games are known for their high degree of difficulty and vague style of storytelling and world design. If a person can't be bothered to do even the tiniest amount of research before they buy the game, that's on them.
And if you buy something and CAN'T enjoy it, well, isn't that what refunds are for?
Again, PC overcharged.
To expand, it also feels like they couldnt comprehend and were angry that it wasn't like other games that they've played before. "Where are the map markers?? It should be telling me where to go!" Like getting angry because you bought a prius and you just automatically expected it to be a pickup truck.
You’re fair and responsible with your criticisms. That is very much appreciated.
Thank you, I try
yea but he fails to state the obvious: The western devs are jealous and mad and they will say anything to discredit FromSoft. As an analogy, it's easier to cheat and trip the one in front of you in a race than it is to train and become better yourself. Western mentality as old as time. Disgusting!
"Everyone who PAID should get to enjoy the game!"
It is up to every functioning adult to inform themselves about a product and decide whether it is something they would enjoy BEFORE paying for it. THat is your responsibility.
It's near impossible to tell if you'll enjoy a game until you start it for yourself. Even if you know the genre, a single twist could change so much about the experience.
That being said, that western dev probably should've known better than to attack Elden Ring design like that, because good research is a lot more useful for making a critique
I bought FIFA23. It wasn’t at all like the Mario games I enjoy. 1 star. 😂😂😂
People who speed have to pay for tickets
It’s made by From Software. The people who have built their careers on making fiendishly difficult games. And birthed the Soulslike genre.
If they did some research into their prior games, they’d have realised that.
Lol. Kids/ teens my age haven’t even picked up a souls game before and we’re already enjoying Elden ring. It’s incredibly multifaceted in terms of builds with a cool world to boot. And I personally love the story. These developers can get over themselves.
That's expected.
@@takehirolol5962 Well, I have played Sekiro and Demon’s Souls. My mom mostly played Demon’s Souls, though I always thought it was cool so I gave it a go. I started on Sekiro pretty late, and then less than a year later I find out that a new game by the same devs called Elden Ring is coming out in three months lol. I think my dad used to play Bloodborne tbh. Though funny enough we don’t have any actual Dark Souls games.
@@AlbertusSalvatierra Well, I started Demon Souls around 8 years ago and Dark Souls on Xbox360 around 12 years ago.
Then played all the rest of them on PC except Bloodborne.
Just completed Elden Ring after 201 hours, no more SoulsBorne for me for a while!
Elden Ring was my first Soulsborne game, i got hooked instantly. Then i played Bloodborne and man, that game is 10x better, for me at least. The combat is a bit faster, but more fluid. No blocking, parrying with guns, the trick weapons, the setting, the story, the lore... Omg.. I could go on forever. First game ever that i just couldn't get enough of, i immediately went for 2 more playtroughs. Highly recommended
@@milemile4813 at least before Eldenring release the majority of the community thought Bloodborne is the best game of the series. Against Eldenring it probably looses now.
She was just probably fishing for reactions just so she could later write an article in some shill website about how the Souls community is toxic and they were mean to her, or whatever. Seems to be whats in fashion these days.
Yeah we're just gatekeeping
The Reva effect
@@GhilenPeek What is the Reva Effect?
@@lebonkerz5612 Have you seen the new Obi-Wan show? Reva is a character from there. She's a poorly written character in a poorly written show. People called her character out and both disney and the actress herself called their audience, "Racist". If you want to know why they think it's racism, it's because the actress is black.
As a sidenote, the actress has never seen star-wars and thinks she is the only black person that was ever in the series ever.
@@LargeInCharge77 imo you should gatekeep the things you love or they will get diluted and become something you don’t love anymore
Seeing all these western devs with their cookie cutter open world games being angry fills me with so much joy. Elden ring brought that gaming magic I felt last time as a child
🤘❤️
Well, some NES games were hard as balls, so no doubt bro.
1:17 There's something so sad about that dev experiencing what I can only assume is Agheel's entrance to his boss fight and somehow finding away to be *disappointed* by it.
As if that moment of him appearing out of the sky and taking the small settlement AND YOU by surprise isn't not just a great moment of spectacle before a boss fight, but also a great lore moment showing off the immense destructive power of a single dragon (and not even one of the most poweful ones you get to meet) and getting your first taste of seeing this force that once ruled over the whole of the Lands Between before the arrival of the Greater Will. The dragons in the Lands Between have such an impressive yet tragic story and Agheel is one of your first pieces in that puzzle; acting like he's *nothing but* a spectacle is just blatant minimizing.
Like, god damn, Agheel is one of the small fry and he STILL has an entire lake named after him, and that somehow is worth *less* than all the questions that dev had.
And now that I think about it, Agheel's entrance answers most of their questions:
Where are you going? Nowhere, because Agheel's here now.
Who are these guys? The people on the lowest rungs of this society that are trambled by every facet of power, like the dragons.
Why are you killing them? You don't have to, but you can.
Where are you? You're in Agheel's fucking lake so get ready to rumble.
My first Souls game and the community is so f-ing cool! I loved the game, got the Platinum! It was a SOLID 9/10. The NPC quest lines are a bit weird / could be better. Be yeah… it’s game of the year material.
🔥🤘🏻
Good video. My partner and I are all about accessibility in games and making it for more people. However as you pointed out, there are genres for a reason, and hating on and calling games like DS or ER trash bc they aren’t for everyone is honestly a very selfish take. ER especially has made the series far more accessible to where my partner who couldn’t get into DS3 has been having the time of his life with ER. Games are like books, music and movies; everything is based on your taste and not everything will always taste good
Restaurant menu: we only sell seafood here
Customer: I hate seafood, give me the lobster
Customer, while gagging: I PAID FOR THIS I SHOULD BE ABLE TO ENJOY IT
This is exactly what all these people are doing. They know Elden Ring, as part of the Souls series, is a hardcore experience before they buy it (if they don't, that's on them for not properly researching what they spend their money on). They buy it anyway, then get mad when they don't like it, and demand that other people put in time and money to tailor the game to their interests, rather than the interests of the game's core audience. And all I've got to say is.......we have an entitlement problem in the modern world.
Yep lol why buy something you know isn’t for you, like I don’t get it
@@Vecha302 sadly, From has (partially) already fallen to those people by adding in-game easy mode (skill-substitute OP weapons +spirit ashes).
@@filippogrimaldi7228 Let's not go crazy here. The game has tools new to FromSoft games that their core audience doesn't feel a need for, but at least they're optional. Enemies are still difficult and i-frames still matter, but we have more tools to work with should we so choose. I'd call that a good design choice and say they have definitely not bent their knee to any influence regarding difficulty.
@@filippogrimaldi7228 And even with that...some people coughURINAListcough (the correct term is too good for them) still find it hard.
@@prinzezzqtpi5437 I definitely disagree that it was a good design choice, because they added all these OP options and then overtuned the bosses to compensate, which makes the game something like torture to play solo. Player power creep is going to ruin Souls games eventually if they keep going down that road.
Some thoughts I have on the "toxic" get good mentality: yeah some people do use it as an insult but sometimes the only solution to the problem is to get good. I know people don't like to be told they're bad at something (I know I don't) but you have to acknowledge that you're not always going to pick something up and immediately be good at it, be that a game, a real world skill, whatever. And you can either say the thing is too hard, get upset over it and stop doing it or you can admit that you're not very good at this yet but you're gonna stick it out, learn and improve at it. Both options are completely valid
Personally, I think Souls games can really help build character. They teach you to persevere, to pay attention, to keep a cool head facing insurmountable odds, to fall and stand up again, to earn your victories. When you pay for a Souls game, you're not entitled to "enjoy it", it doesn't care about how you feel. You're entitled to learn what it has to teach you. Whether or not you do is up to you, but that's what you're buying into. It's basically life.
@@TrueDiox explain how im good at souls games but bad at life then
Soulsborne games aren't really that hard. "Git gud" is more about gatekeeping than insult.
@@Rubinkys can't learn the attack patterns of paying taxes or getting a job
@@luckerowl8990 ah...
How ironic is that to acomplish her goal, she has to exclude "hardcore Dark Souls players" from her definition of "everyone".
"I should be able to enjoy something that interests me and I paid for."
Ok but... How do you get to being "interested" in the seventh From game with this formula withou knowing it's basically ABOUT getting owned and lost and not getting what's going on at first?
Kinda sounds like "I paid for this Batman movie so I have the right to enjoy it without that stupid adult man in a bat costume."
"I hate dough, mozzarella and tomato, but I paid for my pizza margherita, I should be able to like its taste."
Thank you for not even hiding your contempt lmao. People like Delaney should be talked down to in every hilarious way possible. I love how these Western devs always cry and complain whenever FromSoft releases a new game. Meanwhile chad Miyazaki out there is just chilling with his yet another successful (and a surefire GOTY) of a game and promising his fans he will continue making challenging games. That statement from him alone must have made a Western dev or two die from stroke. 🤣 Imagine getting beaten by a "six-year-old" lmfao comedy gold.
Wait wait... has she not been paying her dentist?!
Man I can't stress how that I have NEVER, EVER seen such an AMAZING world created by FromSoft, the artwork, the music, the design, the... lore.. ahem. My first time entering the Altus Platau I had to just sit and stare at my screen for five minutes, I was in awe, the beauty of the distant capital, the falling golden leaves, golden landscapes and the music. Every game I get so immersed because of FromSofts creativity and genuine hard work put into their games.
In the idea of a game is the concept that you might lose, losing is part of the experience of playing a game. In this regard Elden Ring is still very forgiving, there are infinite continues so you can't really lose unless you give up.
such is life.
miyazaki sure likes objetivism.
Unless you do a no bonfire run hehe
@@rodm209 If a person is complaining about Elden Ring's difficulty, it's likely they are just simply struggling to beat vanilla Elden Ring.
I tried Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 and I couldn't continue after 10 minutes. I wasn't feeling it. Sekiro I actually managed to play for a few hours but eventually gave up after getting stuck on the first horse boss (dude after the huge snake). That was a few years ago. I'm 200+ hours into Elden Ring and it is the greatest game I've ever played (which was previously Skyrim). I'm at the last boss and I don't want it to end. I'm actually sad, but after I find the courage to finish the story, I'm going back to Yarnham to fuck shit up. Thank you FromSoft.
Went back to bloodborne after 300 hours in elden ring and omg its so much better and easier now way worth going back
Bloodborne dark souls 1 and dark souls 3 rule. You will definitely appreciate them all now.
Bloodborne is one of my favorite games of all time. Dark Souls 3 is amazing. I put over 500hrs in Dark Souls 3.
I bought this ticket to Barcelona when I actually wanted to go to England. I think all tickets should bring me to where ever I want, and having tickets to only Barcelona, really stigmatizes the people who don’t wish to think about where each specific ticket would bring them. Seriously, are we all supposed to know geography and plan out our actions as an autonomous human being?
😂🤷🏻♂️
Funny, that analogy about horror movies is almost exactly what happened to The Exorcist when it first came out. Parents complained when they brought their children to see it in theatres, because they "had no idea" it was a horror movie. They even lobbied to have it banned in cinemas.
Actually, this whole reaction from certain western devs, ragging on Elden Ring and saying that it's a bad game, that its overrated and its success undeserved, made a connection immediately form in my mind. I mean, it's a bit familiar, isn't it? An unexpected result comes in, one that doesn't correspond to your personal beliefs or prejudices - and instead of accepting that your opinions might not be universally shared, or even trying to learn something from this result, you attack it - ignoring the fact that critics, user reviews, and sales-figures all make it clear that this thing is a HUGE SUCCESS. You disregard all the inconvenient facts, wave them off as illegitimate, undeserved. The objective truth is irrelevant, the facts are irrelevant - if the results don't match your beliefs, they are *not real* .
So yeah. This seems to be just another expression of the 'post-truth' society that has arisen in the US in recent years. And frankly, a bunch of devs blindly insisting that THEIR game-design philosophy is superior despite abundant evidence to the contrary is about the *least* of its consequences...
So true and they try to push their bs and use some mysterious "people" they are defending to try to come from some moral high ground. They are far from moral people, they're just narcissistic, attention seekers. They just want to cry at people on the internet, which is funny cuz it's there forever.
Basically this. An inability to perform critical thinking, an inability to accept any form of disagreement, and this bizarrely entitled feeling that the rest of the world somehow exists to make them happy. Where did all these little Caligulas come from?
@@KwadDamyj I think we all know that the answer to that question is "The Internet".
Honestly, this is apparent in the whole of western society, not just limited to the US.
I've been scrolling down comments to see if anyone else made that connection. TH-cam comments are not usually where I find interesting critique, but yeah, you hit it right on. It's essentially our post-truth, post-modern world. Reality doesn't conform with my view, so I get to be pissy about it rather than working on myself.
I am so happy there are content creators like you defending this beauty of a game. From Software put their heart into this game. Magic is more valuable than any other souls game. I actually have fun with it. The combat system is smoother than ever. The open world feels like an actual open world. The amount of money From software has put in the pockets of content creators, blogs, websites from this game all of those people need to be screaming thank you!!! From them not explaining everything has made money for so many folks. I hope from software keeps pushing the limits.
Imagine each upcoming dlc being as long gameplay wise as the base game, id climax. Or at least a randomized npc bosses in colosseum.
To be honest, only FromSoft could have pulled that kind of open world. It's really the Dark souls philosophy extended to an open world.
I am not sure any developer could have replicated something similar and have the same success.
Elden ring is my first souls game and i liked it so much it's actually incredible. Heck it's even my first playstation game and i fucking love it. The mise en scène, the design, the writing, *THE MUSIC MY GOD* , the lore. Anyway this is a masterpiece.
Go play the other SoulsBorne games!!
Bear in mind they are different, they are not open world (would say they are "semi open") and are more challenging. But I'm pretty sure you'll like them just as much as Elden.
Also for a more "ambience" souls experience, Hollow Knight!! It is AMAZING! If you want a pause from FROMSOFT, Hollow Knight is the way to go. Just getting lost in that magical forsaken bug world. And the music is a banger.
To think that game was made by just 3 people + the composer (the mother of one of the devs helped with voicing XD). Everything was hand drawn. It's an experience! You can see the passion and work that was put into it.
I think most of the music in Elden Ring isn't quite as memorable as prior Soulsbornes, but A) I still like it, and B) it has a lot more ambient pieces which I may just not be used to.
Me and my Hubby often discuss/debate Elden Ring lore during our walks to the grocery store and such. It's so much fun to speculate on the mysteries of the game since they are provided in such tantalizing and enticing ways :>
I agree it’s awesome. Although I’m single and alone, a hermit living in a cave that lives off of coffee & pain.
Thanks for watching!
What is a hubby? Some kind of dog? All I know is that I enjoy the hobby of playing Souls games.
Exactly why I haven't bought it. Years ago when I was in the army, every night was my own and I could put the hours in. I only get the odd 2-3hrs spread through the week now if I'm lucky with a challenging job, 2 kids etc. So I can't commit to the effort and time of this game. Do enjoy a good story though which is why I'm enjoying your lore vids
Hey I hear you with the kids and job but brother you gotta play it and take your time with it so good
You’ll have more fun playing 2 hours of elden ring a week for a year than you will playing 20 of some shit like apex or cod.
@Reece Drury
I cheated. My whole family games, so gaming time=family time 😎
Edit: I literally typed out your name without noticing we share a surname. Greetings from Texas, potential cousin!
My fav. Part was "complaining the horror movie was too scary" oddly i have seen this with horror movies or mordit thing's... many complain it's too scary or creepy and so is water-down. 😔😔😔😔😔😔
Same thing happened with Resident Evil. :(
The issue is that game devs were told to "dumb down" their games so that they can be enjoyed by people that do not have experience or mental capacity to deal with more complex tasks (because then they can sell the product to more people). And while it is true that many games (Elder Ring included) have been primarily built to accommodate the tastes of fans with previous experience, the solution is to bring new gamers up to speed with an optional tutorial or offering ways *in the game world* to adjust the difficulty (builds that minimize the damage taken, health upgrades that are scattered around, consumables that exploit planted weaknesses, etc.), not to have a list of difficulty levels before the game starts or to remove the sense of discovery by marking everything.
Yup, ds veterans find the blogs quick and get op first playthrough. I envy new comers who are in awe of everything and take their time without a need to speed win.
@@rodm209 Took my time with the first run through but then the game crashed at the Burning the Tree cutscene and I didn't travel to the new location...which meant I was effectively softlocked until someone on reddit pointed me to the 'wrong warp' glitch. Normally a method reserved for speed running but it actually meant I could continue the game on that save file.
So then I begun thinking "huh, I wonder how else I can use the Wrong Warp glitch..." and started using it to do stuff like skipping into the Capital without killing any major bosses because it had a weapon I wanted there that I wanted to build around.
I am by no means great at the game or a speedrunner but there's something satisfying about breaking the game in such a way to skip certain parts of the game to get to what you want.
I know I'm throw this cheesey line out to those whiny wester Dev's. Line that all soulborne fans to the newbies. "GIT GUD!" maybe your games won't be so trash. 🤣
Good video, I agree with a lot of what you said- especially so many game design crutches getting relied on so heavily in the 'West' these days. And that developer had the worst takes. The entitlement BLOWS MY MIND. Seriously, and then instead of keeping such a take to themselves they thought it was a good idea to throw it onto the internet. Amazing.
I do have to disagree intensely with a minor point you made on WHY people campaign for 'easy modes'. (Not to say every game SHOULD have easy modes, but the way you spoke about the discussion at all came across as incredibly reductive and represented it in very bad faith).
Sure, some people may use it to bypass the challenge- but the reason many are arguing for 'easy modes' is so whole groups of people can experience the games at all. There are many, MANY subtle and non subtle disabilities that would make many titles impossible to play. Adjusting some settings would not lower the difficulty to those players, it might even still be harder for them than the usual experience would be for you.
This is not to say every game should cater to every person, obviously the whole point of the video is that that is impossible. On top of that I think 'easy mode' isn't a very elegant solution, but accessibility as a growing challenge is definitely a problem that is worth discussing with respect, not handwaved aside as 'these people just don't wanna learn the game'.
I also don't think you need mysterious lore to discuss a game's themes, those are fully separate to me. I agree, the type of engagement you get from FromSoft is different in nature- but the implication that you can only have a meaningful discussion about a property when everything is shrouded in mystery does not ring true to me at all. 'How do you think the Horizon franchise handles the climate crisis in its story' could be a super interesting theme related discussion. As you said, different people look for different experiences. I'll never play Horizon, I've seen a playthrough and gotten all I needed from that, but thought its story was quite strong. I'm on my second Elden Ring playthrough. Just because the games require different types of engaging with the themes does not mean there is nothing to discuss.
But the way Elden Ring handles LORE definitely encourages the type of long-term investment so typical of Soulsborne fandoms. I wouldn't tie the way a game handles lore to the values or depth of a theme the way this video seemed to.
One of the things I like about the Souls games is being a part of the community, even on its periphery, by getting hints on what to experience online, hints at builds to try and hints at story though youtubers. I may be too goblin brained to find everything myself but if I get pointed in the right direction there's so much to enjoy.
Well said duder, and kudos for the Mastodon reference.
One of the biggest reasons why I keep playing Destiny is its lore. It hasn't always been represented in a good way, but part of the fun was piecing it all together, and Elden Ring does the same but on an even grander scale.
My only real gripe with Elden Ring was keeping track of progress in certain quests. I know that its up to me (the player) to keep track of the steps or progress, but I legitimately would not have been able to finish Ranni's questline if not for a guide. Maybe this type of quest design would work in a more linear game, but, to me, it doesn't work in a vast and open world like Elden Ring.
I'm not saying spell everything out for me, or hold my hand, but even a quest log with extremely vague descriptions would of been nice.
Well, I see where you're coming from, and yeah, I can see why it can be a problem for some people. However, if you follow the questline properly, then all NPCs involved do actually tell you where to go. Blaidd first tells you to meet him in Siofra, and then in Siofra he tells you to ask Seluvis about the road to Nokron. Seluvis tells you to go see Sellen, and Sellen tells you that you need to go and kill Radahn to open the path to Nokron. Then, once in Nokron, the road is pretty linear, you just explore and you find the Fingerslayer Blade in a pretty linear fashion. After that, you go back to Ranni, who gives you the inverted statue and access to Renna's Rise. Now, yeah, here is a point where you could decide to not investigate Renna's Rise, but I think its only fair for the game to expect you to do so. In Renna's Rise you go up, you take the teleporter, you arrive in Ainsel River, you pick up the shiny which turns out to be Miniature Ranni, then you sit at a grace, and then you immediately notice "Talk to Miniature Ranni" in the menu. You do that, then Ranni tells you to continue onwards through Nokron, and defeat the Baleful Shadow. Once you defeat the Baleful Shadow, she gives you the Palace Key, which, again, should occur to you as being the one in Rennala's room cause that's the only locked chest in the game. So you advance through Lake Of Rot, and at the end of it you fight Astel, then arrive in Moonlight Altar where the questline concludes.
I agree, some of the later stuff you have to do in the questline is like, kind of hidden away, but all of it falls in natural progression, unless ofc you go out of your way to avoid places and forget about them.
@@cosmic2750 The issue is people are rarely going to be doing any one quest in one sitting, especially considering many are meant to be done as you go through the story. NPCs might direct you fine, but that doesn't mean you'll be able to head straight to wherever you need to go. You might need to do more main story content, or you might just want to stop playing for the day. I think it would've saved players a lot of hassle if the game just had a journal, like Morrowind's, that just keeps track of key dialogue in the order you received it. Not a full-blown quest log like modern RPGs (wouldn't fit in a Souls game imo) but just a in-game journal to track who you've talked to and what about for if you ever just forget what you've already done.
What I would love is a from software game that summarizes all the bits of information you have about the world in a journal and let you piece the mythology and story as part of a sandbox game, like a “scribe” gear that has note taking tools . Even if I love these games, in the end I have to go to TH-cam to understand the lore, but that feels like having people telling me things about the game instead of the game helping me piece together the bits I got. I keep forgetting about the information I got and I can’t even replay cinematics and dialogues
I can understand wanting a codex or something along those lines, however ER is definitely a lot easier to pick up on unaided from both a story and lore perspective than pretty much every fromsoft game before it with maybe the exception of Sekiro, which was designed to be a more linear, cinematic experience.
“Everyone that paid for a game should be allowed to enjoy it.”
“I didn’t enjoy the last of us, 1 or 2”
“Bigot!!”
Prove to me that this wouldn’t happen.
You didn’t like Last of Us 1, and you still bought Last of Us 2, even with all the controversy?
@@deriznohappehquite No, it’s an example.
It's the same mindset that results in generic uninspired movies, as well. The idea that it has to appeal to the lowest common denominator to make the most money. Movie adaptations of works from other forms of media are a huge culprit of this. Greedy executives leech off the success of a popular IP and dumb down all of its themes and nuances in an attempt to appeal to people who don't even like the story's genre in the first place.
Like the video said, this is also how you end up with entire movie genres seeming formulaic and homogenized, like they came off a conveyor belt. It's sad when you can watch a horror movie for the first time and predict every cheap jumpscare that's flung at the audience.
It's like some of these developers hate learning. Also I see why Assassins Creed has such an identity crisis.
Another tweet that I remember from the thread made by that dev is when they said something along the lines of:
Players shouldn't come up with an idea and doing things or going to places they're not designed/directed to
They should be following the path that the devs have carefully designed for them
This one in particular boggles my mind, since it's like they're saying players shouldn't have agency and dictate how they want to play the game.
This was my first FromSoftware game like many other people. It's the first game I've played that truly let's you decide how to play it. You can completely ignore the story, or dig for lore. Play only using swords and shields or only using magic. If something is too hard, just grind or find a stronger weapon and come back later. There are so many ways to come at it. I'd say in some ways it's the MOST inclusive game, you just have to find what works for you.
If you buy a guitar, the act of paying for it doesn’t entitle you to be able to play it. You have to learn and develop those skills, and there is tremendous satisfaction in doing so.
Similarly if you buy a basketball hoop it’s on you to develop the ability to throw the ball through the hoop. If you buy a book of poetry by John Keats but you don’t like poetry and don’t understand it, you aren’t entitled to an explanation and just looking for one online isn’t half as compelling.
The whole “argument” that you should be given everything because you paid money reveals a worldview that utterly toxic in its entitlement.
That would be like me being mad at paying to go see a brand new movie because I didn't enjoy it and I don't think anyone else should either because I did not enjoy the experience then get told by other reviewers that it was a great film
"I don't like this game, it's too hard". Nobody is forcing you to like it. A lot of people don't like Super Ghouls and Ghosts for Super Nintendo because it's hard too. And you shouldn't feel bad for not liking something.
I wonder how the gaming landscape will look like with everyone talking about developers copying Fromsoft in a few years from now.
People are scared and rightfully so, but seeing Nioh and Jedi Fallen Order is proof that people can recreate their gameplay with their own twists!
And also The Surge 1 and 2.
@@KwadDamyj very descent. They improved on the lock on system of Souls. I liked those games + Lords of The Fallen. But I consider them to be on the weaker side of Souls-like compared to the 2 I mentioned which are on the same level as Souls and improve on them.
Another great video Endymion! Personal experience that I don't remember pretty much anything from Horizon Zero Dawn as the game lore was always threw in front of me in a way that didn't make me wonder or think of what happened. When I started Forbidden West, it didn't hooked me at all. After putting 150h in Elden Ring I might have put almost the double just watching theory / lore videos, where the game actually instigsge me to learn more, making me come with MY conclusions about what happened. It's so ingenious that its difficult to articulate so I am not surprised that even devs doesn't understand since offering context isn't something that they're used to.
In the HORIZON series' defense.
The games actually do have a lot of SOULS-style lore about the world outside of the main story for those willing to look.
But yeah, I agree that the tired old "UBISOFT formula" is holding the series back and the developers should really drop it for the third game.
Elden Ring is my first souls game, and I've been *obsessed* with it since I got it, but I will say that I'm not too fond of how certain questlines are structured in that you pretty much HAVE to look up a guide in order to know what to do in them. Like, not quest related but, I would find it very hard to believe if someone managed to find the Dectus medallion without a guide, and that unlocks like an entire half of the map.
Which having to look up guides isnt like necessarily bad, but it does get annoying having to constantly alt-tab to google something. I still have loads of fun on the game but this does irk me a bit.
This Is what happens when you mix a narcissistic ideology with art. You get artists that treat their art the way they treat their ideology, when it gets criticized even with objective facts the answer is demonize and deny.
There's a man on TH-cam named Max0r who occasionally reviews games and oversaturates them with fast paced memes and never tells what's going on properly and yet SOMEHOW he's more reliable than any mf in polygon or really name any game journalist
For me its just a cope mechanism from mediocre developers unable to understand that innovation doesnt mean gimmick, it also shows how much intolerant and bigoted western devs are about embracing oriental physolophy of game making.
It's really weird, there's a vocal minority (I hope) of supposedly "enlightened" people who say they like Japan, but mostly seem to like it like a pet or something, at best.
On the other hand, this woman might just be talking out her arse for clicks and I'm completely off base, who knows.
Elden Ring is a very fun game to play, and I love exploration. And sometimes even the lore stuff can be fascinating. But if there's anything I don't like, it's the fact that, well... most NPCs hardly ever interact with one another. They'll often talk to YOU and refer to other NPCs, but never really have any on-screen interactions. It just feels like there's a disconnect; like I'm seeing signs that the video game world is just that; a video game.
I think a lot of negativity from the community comes from a person complaining and not necessarily asking for help. Not saying there isn't some d bags in the souls Fandom, but from my experience it's been 90% helpful. Sharing ideas, theories, and strategy, patting each other on the back, etc. It's a brotherhood forged I'm shared experience. So when somebody new to the series comes in to complain on something we love and bonded over, yeah people get defensive. Git gud is actually the advice, if someone tells you to get good, ask them how. You'll be surprised
"Everyone who PAID the game should be allowed to enjoy a game that interests them"
Right, you almost got there, the answer is right in front of your face
I played Horizon Zero Dawn before playing Elden Ring. While Horizon has a cool story, Elden Ring blows it out of the water in terms of sheer content. There were some aspects I hated at first, like how quests progress, but it felt great when they did because I did it on my own terms. You actually have to run around and do stuff with that pink sponge in your head instead of just reading what you have to do from the quest log in the upper right.
And for those that use the argument that difficulty settings could make it easier for disabled people to play, I myself have one arm and I have 100 hours in ER, not to mention there are COUNTLESS people who have disabilities that are much worse than mine that manage to play games still.
Also, hearing that every entry in the Soulsborne games has no difficulty setting because the creator wanted everyone to experience the same victories is actually really cool.
2:50 - I don't think this kind of thinking is right even for food, if someone hates pizza and goes to a pizzeria then he shouldn't expect to enjoy the pizza...
For a while I avoided playing elden, now that I have, it is a breath of fresh air, combining all the best elements of the best ps2 games. Not having to worry about a quest log or markers really helps, it reminds me of when I would repeat the same levels in old games.
Elden ring had enough hype around it that we have a situation where a group of people stepped in a room where they don't fit in. Some people mingled and others got mad about not fitting in.
Hey western devs, you can either A) Cry us a river, or B) take pointers from Elden Ring to actualy improve your own lame games! The choise is yours, but make it fast, i'm kinda tired of hearing you whining about Elden Ring.
+ point ) take lessons from older Western Dev's who somehow knew how to make world without millions of popups or just show some creativity instead of following that "modern" formula and general trends
Elden Ring isn't perfect and I wish they found their own formula
Man you’re so right about how watered down and simplified most triple A titles are these days. It’s just so fucking boring, it’s as if the devs treat their audience like they’re 5 years old. So tiring.
Exactly! I'm 40 and been playing games my whole life and they think we're stupid.
if a "six year old" created elden ring, how old are some specific western devs :D
5…
seconds.
I was bad at this game until i wasnt. took the difficulty as a challenge and over came it. thats the biggest difference I see not only online but in the work place as well. some people complain because things are "too hard" and some of us work through the difficulties.
When elden ring blew up I googled if it had an easy/story mode because I was after the lore then I heard GRRM had a hand in it and got more interested. I sucked it up and just played out of curiosity what the difficulty is like. to my surprise I enjoyed the thrill of winning what I thought were challenges I can never overcome with bosses. 50+ hrs in and now I'm playing Sekiro too! I thought the souls genre wasn't for me but FS blew me away
Good take btw! Well said
The others, too?
I like how Elden Ring so good it's made Western Devs a bunch of Karens
What do you expect from a terminally online dev who spends her whole days on Twitter and has her pronouns in her bio? Those people are hopeless, whether they are dev, game journalists, streamers...
Since nobody will, so i'll say it.
This is just the result of the war on masculinity in the west. This obsession with trying to be "inclusive", always trying to be mindful of the "feelings" of supposed "marginalized" players etc just seems to reflect a motherly and nurturing mentality, where as the "git gud" mindset very much reflects more of a masculine psycology.
I grew up in the 90s, which was the golden age of western gaming, unparalled both in terms of quality and creativity, and back then gaming was a male oriented hobby filled with passionate pasty nerds who made games because they actually loved the medium. Looking at western dev studios then compared to now is quite instructive IMO.
So sad... She´s just internalized the pathetic excuses the industry uses to push these bloated samey games, whose real and only purpose is to make more money.
Played over 300 hours of elden ring. Finally played horizon for 2 hours and now back to elden ring at 309th hour
😂
I think one factor here is that these devs kind of miss the forest for the trees. Elden Ring is a cohesive game that comes together to be greater than the sum of its parts, but most devs spend years of their lives working on one part of a game, and will often care a lot about that part.
I think it’s fair to say that there are disparate parts of Elden Ring that are a lot worse than their counterparts in many western games when taken on their own.
If you were the guy who made the nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor, it might be a bit demoralizing that a game with pretty simplistic AI can blow yours out of the water in critical reception, sales, etc.
it just wouldn’t feel fair, because maybe you actually did do a better job than your counterparts in From Software.
Western games are often less than the sum of their parts. That’s the sad truth of it. A lot of great work goes into them, but so often it doesn’t really make for an end product that’s enjoyable to the consumer.
I love the part that Delaney complains about the design, like "A knight in golden armor must be a good guy, it's a basic thing in design, BUT HE ATTACKS YOU! Gold is good and people in tarnished silver armor are bad".... and then you go into her portfolio and you can find a Hero of Ferelden, from Dragon Age, wearing a silver and weathered armor.
At the end of the day, many of the devs who point out "flaws" in the Elden Ring are just a few guys who haven't gotten the attention they think they deserve, and freak out when they see something they consider "wrong" being a bigger hit than the things they they are doing. And with that they gain visibility.
Wow, I wondered if she was just grifting before, but now I'm just thinking she's genuinely not smart (in the sense of critical thinking).
@@KwadDamyj she has her pronouns listed, of course she's not smart. Just another woke NPC.
"They PAID so they are ENTITLED to the enjoyment"
Tell me you're painfully american, without telling me you're painfully american. I HOPE that woman never gets to direct anything creative. Ever.
Go read her twitter page, she's Australian. But cope against America more you weirdo.
@@pcbangbros8350 American spotted bwahaha
@@draelos8570 Canadian, but your guys obsession with America and Americans is so weird. What 3rd world countries are you guys from?
You all sound so ignorant. You point your finger at her and scream she must be America, I point out that she's Australian, so you point your finger at me and scream that I must be American. You need therapy, bro.
@@pcbangbros8350 fake Canadian detected hehehehe
@@draelos8570 Got me, you should become a detective. You have a bright future ahead of you. You should move to America to study, you obviously need the education.
I will give you points for one thing though, because I live in Montreal which is in Quebec. Canada. I guess you could call me a fake Canadian since we're really just all French in this province.
I genuinely enjoy elden ring quest system where each and every quest felt like hidden event that you need to solve on your own/community helped to solve. It's make the adventure felt real
As Sseth said, elden ring should be played after doing a frontal lobe lobotomy. . . for maximum enjoyment. . . prolly for the western doo doo gamers, devs and journos
Elden Ring is one of the very best action/adventure rpg's ever created. Western devs should be taking notes instead of whining and being a hater.
They didn't sell 20 million copies in the first 6 weeks because the game is bad. You don't get a 98 on metacritic by being bad.
Elden Ring encourages exploration and adventure. It forces you to have fun. It gives you everything you need to have fun and then encourages you to hone your skills. Not only physically but how you build your character as well. It is an RPG after all. Role Playing is the basis of RPG's.
The level of immersion is second to none. FromSoft hit it out of the park. 10/10, best game this year so far by a long ways.
If someone is going to put their nonsense out there, they should expect whatever fallout comes from it. People should not feel bad replying to it in whatever manner they see fit. If a dev doesn't want the negative attention there is a simple solution. Shut your trap.
How to tell someone never leveled vigor, died to tree sentinel, and quit before ever leaving limgrave
Elden Ring was the first ever Fromsoft game I’ve played. I was the dumb one who started playing on mouse and keyboard and my friends laughed at the steep learning curve I experienced and the frustration I felt because I actually HAD to learn attack patterns and utilise dodging etc. I’m my first full play through, it took me almost 20 HOURS to move onto Rennala because I explored Limgrave and Raya Lucaria and realised only now on my brand new game, I’m exploring NEW areas I didn’t dare explore because my confidence in my skill playing the game has increased. You’re rewarded endlessly as you learn, but you can simply spend ages travelling around each area exploring and picking up items and it doesn’t feel boring.
The negative reaction to Elden Ring feels like a demand for instant gratification instead of failing, retrying, failing again (in my case 4/5 times) and then succeeding and the rush of pride from managing to get past an obstacle in the road, even when that road isn’t the ONLY road you have to go.
As a destiny player, one of the reasons people like myself don’t care for the lore, is because Bungie builds up these amazing lore points, that we expect to have a MASSIVE revealing… and then they throw in some Mcguffin wacky ass character like Finch(those who know…know) who just helps us and knows simply EVERYTHING we need.
No need to explore
No need to think
No need to question
They just give us some character we never heard of before, who just gives us everything we need to win.
Then there’s how the lore is chopped up.
You can have lore start in the lore books, then another piece of the same lore being on some random weapon from the crucible or gambit.
The consistency is all over the place.
Destiny has great ‘story’, but the way it is told sometimes, makes people not care.
That’s why channels like Byf are so popular
We have game companies left and right releasing buggy, unplayable messes, using predatory loot boxes and microtransactions to line their pockets, and straight up lying about the content of their games. But ohhhhh nooooo. The real problem that needs to be addressed is developers releasing games that you happen to not enjoy for purely subjective reasons, especially if those games happen to be a) challenging and b) popular.
I'm all for allowing anyone and everyone to express their opinions about a piece of media and level it with their own personal criticisms. But acting as if a game "should" cater to you out of moral obligation is downright entitled. If I buy a game and happen to not enjoy it, well... That sucks, but I'm sure I'll survive. And if lots of other people really enjoy it then it must be doing _something_ right, and it just happens to not be to my preference.
I don't like Minecraft. At all. I don't like the lack of concrete goals, I don't like mining for materials, I don't care for the creation options, and I don't like its open-endedness. But I'm not about to jump online and claim that Minecraft should've been made differently simply because I don't like it. These people are essentially screaming "STOP HAVING FUN!" at the millions of fans and hoping everyone will listen. They simply can't fathom that other people like different types of games.
It's really simple just take a list of your top 10 favorite games or movies of all time and ask yourself if you think everybody on Earth loved those games/movies too. Of course they didnt.
Great video! I'm not going to sit here and bash Western Devs - I think there's a lot of going good there too, but I just dont understand how any developer would want games to eventually turn into the same game with a different skin...
Elden Ring, like all the Souls games - is made by people who are passionate about making GAMES 'more' than they are about trying to make money. Elden Ring to me is a newschool take on oldschool games, it has been YEARS since a game gave me this same feeling. It's a big open world adventure....and it says "go, and see what happens..."
Brilliant
to summarized, how to make a successful timeless game:
Please the fandom community, not game journos & wokenism
That dev just got owned for her idiotic comment.
Playing Elden Ring is like stepping 5 years into the future of game design.
More like stepping 20 years back when games still used to be good
@@jaujud now way! Some games were good back then, most were trash as well.
More like going to a apple product convention, event ones drinking the Kool Aid.
I hadn't been exposed to FromSoftware too much, other than getting ROCKED in Dark Souls and giving up lol so I was a little nervous for Elden Ring bc I'm notorious for blaming the game as "bulls**t" when in reality, I'm just bad lol
But I was super hyped for this game bc it looked amazing. I usually LOVE story-driven games and don't mind "checking off" lists and extras on an overloaded map.....but I LOVED Elden Ring. I love that it forces you to "get gud" or move on to another game. When I died (A LOT) I never felt like the game cheated me, or a bug caused me to die (like most Ubisoft games, Kingdom Come Deliverance, etc.). It was straight up my lack of skill lol which could be improved if I just ran away from the bad guy, learned, and leveled up....which is one of the best parts of the game
I also loved the amount of engagement it encouraged on TH-cam and other platforms with creators in terms of Lore, tips, etc. Elden Ring made me shift my opinions on gaming in general, and really opened my eyes to how "cookie cutter" other AAA games are, and the general lack of creativity and innovation that seems to be plaguing the industry right now
these takes literally feel like a person attack on me since the eastern developers actually made this game piece by piece to appeal to people like me and people who don't even want to enjoy the game are trying to get it changed? how selfish can you get?? smh
Probably because there’s the assumption that many players who play games don’t have a sense of direction. Which in my opinion doesn’t respect the gamer’s capability to adapt.
Games made in the 1980s-1990s were great because they didn't really give you much direction, didn't really try to explain things, leaving them open to interpretation, and still had a ton of lore hidden throughout the game. They also had little to no bugs and glitches. These are what are important to players, and Elden Ring has all of this.
When I watch videos about these, it reminds me of fallout 76, and how the main premise was to explore for yourself. It blows my mind
"so who are these guys? why am i killing them? where am i? where am i going?" funny thing is that it's all answered within the first 4 minute cutscene.
Not only that, but the game gives you this information several times over in multiple different ways throughout your playthrough. In fact you know a whole hell of a lot more about who you're fighting in ER than you did in almost any other fromsoft game before this. It just doesn't spoon-feed you this information and requires you to actually have a brain in your head, which I guess is too strict of a requirement for some people.
I Always liked the joke "we kill big Monster and then we Watch Vatividya to understand why we did It"
But that's Just pathetic😂
I bought a book today, but it was above my reading level. The author should write another version of the book with more accessible language because I gave them my money lol
as a Puzzle game player, I totally am appalled at the lack of puzzles in a FPS game ~ I paid for it. It should have puzzles.
The Guerilla devs comments actually hurt my enjoyment of Horizon 2
These types of people have infected EVERYTHING IN WESTERN ENTERTAINMENT. And it's super frustrating
And to reiterate, people like this are the reason why western media is failing. People who try to cater to everyone and make crappy forms of movies, games, etc tend to entirely mute criticism. They don't like being criticized then deflect back to you that your criticism is being "x" when it could be a valid critique. These people are so far up their own ass with people JUST LIKE THEM, that they are just void of what it means to have value to whatever form of media that gets created. They don't know because they don't care to improve.
i mean, i'm a souls noob and i loved elden ring, it's so cool and detailled. And i'm not a particularly skilled player. I think if people find Elden ring hard, maybe they SHOULD actually "git gud". Like u cannot appreciate any challenging game if u think ER is hard to the point of non-enjoyment. Like you can break the game so easily in every way that fits your playstyle, all you need is to be a little invested. Even if you don't have the time to invest, then don't play RPG's or accept to have a slow learning curve on them because these games require time
I’m not the biggest gamer. But my fav games were fall out 4 and witcher 3. I’ve replayed witcher so many times and love it so much. But I started playing elden ring and I’ve just been killing the knights at the start for HOURS but I LOVE it everytime 😂 can’t wait to explore rest of the world. It’s such a good game. I knew a regular souls game would be too hard for me but the basics are pretty easy to grasp. You just gotta level up 🤦♀️