Random Friday Night Thoughts- Let’s Chat About Elden Ring

My normal Wednesday night blogging was interrupted by Elden Ring.

Introduction

As you’ve probably figured out by now, I can’t turn my brain off when I read, write, play, or watch anything. I call it “The Curse of the Writer” and no matter how hard I try, I can’t avoid analyzing the media I consume and myself while I do so.

So while I was watching my husband play and playing myself, my thoughts were centered around how I felt about it.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m a critic at heart. You kind of have to be if you’re a writer, because you’ll spend quite a lot of time critiquing your own work. I’ve found that I really enjoy it, and it was my third choice of dream career after writer and youtuber.

Elden Ring made me think a lot about why I love RPG’s, and not all of my thoughts are good. Keep in mind these are just my thoughts and opinions, and I expect, (I’ll go one step further) I encourage you to disagree. There is a lot of buzz around this game, and the majority of it is positive. Also keep in mind I only have 10 hours into the game at this point, so these are just my initial thoughts. I am of the mindset that initial impressions are just as valuable as final thoughts, and should be not only allowed but encouraged.

Elden Ring is an action RPG (role playing game) based in the world of The Lands Between. After extensive character creation and a short tutorial, you’re turned loose in a huge open world map and the only two things you know is that you’re what’s known as a “Tarnished” and your goal is to find the Elden Ring. (Roll credits)

Starting Out

I was a bit terrified going in because I had seen a lot of comparisons of this game to Dark Souls, which if you don’t know is the main source of gamers’ shattered monitors (if you don’t believe me go watch The Lazy Peon’s Dark Souls rage on Youtube) and probably where the term “ragequit” originated.

The character creation is glorious. It lets you customize everything from body hair, to facial tattoo placement and color, to how feminine or masculine you want your character’s face to look, all to later be covered up by layers upon layers of armor or too-large headpieces or capes. (Go figure). But at the end of the day I’m a lover of in depth character customization, so this is a plus in my book. You can take it in a silly direction, like my husband’s poor character; a pink haired, blue mustached, green eye-patched samurai, or give them a more serious and badass look.

The tutorial is short and sweet, and the controls are pretty self explanatory. Once you’re turned loose in the open world, however, things become a bit more hectic.

There’s Something You Need to Do, We Just Aren’t Sure What.

Elden Ring is one of those “open to interpretation” games both in lore and in gameplay. There is no quest log, no quest tracker, no way of quite knowing what you’re doing and where you should be going.

The point of the thing is to kind of blindly stumble through the game, explore, and learn everything the hard way. Youtube is already swimming with “how to get overpowered fast” tutorials, and the comments are plagued with people who love telling new players how stupid they are for not “just experiencing the game, man” and for not wanting to sink hundreds of hours into a game while making little to no progress.

It’s an adventurers paradise, and I’ve spent quite a lot of time myself exploring the various places in the Lands Between. That doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing, but I’ve had a good time doing it. If I run into a strong monster (as there’s no real guide in-game to where high level zones are located) I just hope I can outrun it and move on.

During my travels one thought has outshone all others.

My God This World Feels Empty.

One of the reasons I adore open world role playing games is how alive the world often feels. One of the key components of making a role playing game is to immerse the player in the gameplay.

In Skyrim, a game that is 11 years old at the time of writing this post, the NPC’s all have their own schedules, jobs, paths to walk, evening trips to the pub, grocery runs, etc.

Even in your travels you can come across different NPCs and random encounters.

The NPCs in Elden Ring are all either seated around a campfire desperate to get you to buy something so they can eat that day, or are lost/hanging out in the world and give you some vague instructions on how to complete a quest for them. (Bonus point if they just poof into nonexistence after these interactions)

There is no life to the NPCs and I can’t find the will to care about any of them. Even the ones that do seem intriguing just poof into and out of existence, appearing to randomly give you a bit of information. They have no real purpose or story of their own.

Years later, people are still figuring out new things about the NPCs in Skyrim or Red Dead Redemption 2: Overhearing a conversation they’ve never heard, noticing a hobby they have, or taking note of a particular part of their day they missed previously.

I see none of that here. And that makes this world feel so incredibly lonely. While a feeling of loneliness can add to a game experience, it most certainly detracts from a RPG of this style.

The closest thing I can relate to it is Subnautica in the feelings of loneliness I get playing the game, which is sad considering there are exactly ZERO interactable NPCs in Subnautica (one if you count the Sea Empress, but she is still a sea monster) and the feeling of loneliness is what gives the game that feeling of horror, fear of the unknown, and excitement, which are themes that fill the game.

The characters you learn about through voice logs on your player’s interactable overpriced Ipad are more interesting than any NPC interactions in Elden Ring.

I am in a world full of things that want to kill me, but it’s not a horror game, and there is no meat or sense of life to offset that.

Where’s The Inn?

Another thing I love about RPGs is the sense of home, coziness, togetherness, and warmth you often get in the form of inns, hotels, houses, towns, etc. that often pervade games like this.

If I get tired of adventuring in Skyrim I can return to my house to sit by the fire with my children, or stop at an inn for a pint, a little singing courtesy of the resident bard, and a sleep in a warm bed.

As corny as this sounds, a large part of my Red Dead Redemption play is camping in my cozy tent in the wilderness, brewing myself a pot of coffee, or staying at the Valentine hotel, having a bath, buying my horse some oat cakes from the local general goods store, and stocking up on ammo before continuing on my travels.

Those feelings of coziness and calm are so important to role players. A place to relax, to wind down, to give your character a break. Even if you don’t fancy heading into town, the camp in Red Dead Redemption allows for you to deliver food for NPCs there to eat, bring in money for the gang, and interact with other NPCs by talking to them, finding them unique items, or even playing games with them.

For awhile in Elden Ring, I searched for an inn, a hotel, a town, or anywhere I could go to have a break from the insane murderous creatures intent on killing me. And there was nothing. Everything is desolate or abandoned. The closest thing we get to a relaxing drink around a fire is what’s known as a Grace, which is basically a “no tag zone” from when we were children combined with a spawn reset for the farming of monsters. I even started calling them “campfires” in an attempt to find somewhere my character can rest. But it’s a piss-poor substitute if I’m honest.

It’s an action-adventure game, but it’s also supposed to be an RPG. I came looking for an RPG and as harsh as it sounds, I have yet to find one.

Farming for a Challenge

Elden Ring is pretty challenging. I am 10 hours into the game and I have yet to beat a single boss outside of the tutorial one. I for one don’t mind this. This is where the game’s open interpretation and loose style of gameplay can in fact be a good thing.

If I don’t feel like being challenged and just want some mindless fun, I can run around and farm the various monsters that cover the landscape.

If I do feel like being challenged, I don’t have to go far to find one. There is definitely a level of encouragement and determination to strengthen your character, and a real sense of achievement once you beat an enemy you’ve been trying to for awhile.

My husband fought the elite at Gatefront ruins at a super low level for like an hour until he finally beat him.

I bounce back and forth from farming trolls, the horse riding sentinels I’ve taken to calling “Pony Boys” and the soldiers at the Gatefront ruins.

Making my character stronger has been extremely fun, and as someone who actually enjoys farming monsters, I’ve had a blast with that part.

Feeling a Lack of Gameplay

Unfortunately, the combat is the game’s strongest feature, and it starts to fall flat again when it comes to other aspects of gameplay.

Games like this thrive off of huge in depth crafting systems, fishing, cooking, building, hobbies, and other side hustles your character can partake in if you get tired of fighting monsters.

I realize the game has a weapon upgrade system, as well as a crafting system. But it is pretty lackluster when compared to some of the other crafting systems in the genre. It seems pretty basic and rudimentary, and it is all combat focused.

Let me craft a fishing pole and reel in some salmon that I can cook over my campfire in the wilderness. Let me combine different foods I harvest into various concoctions in a stew pot I can use to boost my attributes. It just feels like they threw everything they had into combat and left everything else hanging.

The good thing about games with multiple hobbies is that they’re not always required to do other things in the game. The people who only care about combat can go on fighting, while the more 100%’er players like my husband can spend 300 hours fishing on the beach, 500 hours building himself a house, 200 hours discovering food recipes, etc.

Miscellaneous Rapid-Fire Thoughts

-You can damage the environment in this game with your weapons, although it respawns, and large monsters will sometimes destroy the environment as they chase after you or fall after being defeated, which I thought was a really cool touch. I lured the first boss into a church and the place started crumbling and pieces started falling off as he charged through it.

-Despite being able to damage crates, barrels, wagons, etc. your player can’t glean anything from doing this, so there really is no point to it besides just wanting to smash things.

-You can’t swim in this game. It seems petty which is why I included it in this section, but the first thing I did when I was released into the open world was run down to the beach and explore it. I promptly fell off the face of the map, discovering the Lands Between is apparently flat, and told my husband “FYI, you can’t swim in the ocean.” There’s a reason why I hate John in RDR2 and spoiler, it’s because he can’t swim.

-There are times where the combat feels a bit clunky and unresponsive. Most things in this game are all about timing. Timing your weapon swings, timing your jumps, timing the monsters’ attacks, etc.

-Sometimes your character will get knocked down and immediately get up again, and others they’ll lay on the ground like they’re desperate for a place to relax in this hellscape of a world and that place has become the soft grass below them, and you’re left screaming at the screen for them to get up in the several heart wrenching seconds it takes and pray the enemy doesn’t get to you before your character recovers. It’s often very last second and I feel like the devs did that on purpose. Well done.

-As a mount obsessed gamer, I can appreciate how deeply your mount is integrated into the gameplay of this game. My first question when I pick up a new game is “is there mounts?” I love them, and the more I can get the better. I thoroughly enjoy the mounted combat in this game. It’s fun and fast paced, and Torrent is the best boy. He makes the game feel a bit less lonely overall as I’ve always got my best buddy by my side. And him being a summon takes away the fear of him dying and losing him forever.

Conclusion

Elden Ring is an interesting game filled with vague but interesting lore and countless monsters intent on killing you.

It’s a game I will continue to play and I might come back to give more thoughts once I’m further in. I’ll gladly eat my hat if I’m proven wrong on something, but as I stated earlier, those initial thoughts and feelings are what new players are going to experience and could abandon the game over.

At the end of the day it’s a fun hack and slasher I will pick up whenever I’ve had a bad day and want to unalive some monsters.

It’s not a game I’d consider a role playing game. At this point the only thing that sets it apart from a standard story driven game is its open to interpretation storyline and the fact that you can make your own character instead of being yeeted into the body of whatever unlucky protagonist is doomed to be murdered over and over by the creatures that fill the world.

If I want a fun combat hack and slash experience I’m either going to pick up this game or God of War. God of War has a complete, powerful story and overall feels more complete, but Elden Ring has a mount, an open world, and mounted combat, so I will likely play both.

Thank you for reading my first video game ramble. This may become a thing as video games are just as much media as books or movies or TV. They’re also a huge part of what I enjoy outside of writing.

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Thank you again and happy playing!