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+--- Thread: MMOEXP : Elden Ring comes bundled with its own type of friction (/showthread.php?tid=11483)
MMOEXP : Elden Ring comes bundled with its own type of friction - Ludwighench - 09-05-2024
Everything in Elden Ring Runes comes bundled with its own type of friction that's specifically designed to rub you the wrong way until, eventually, it rubs you in the right direction. The rough edges can't be sandpapered down without fundamentally changing the game's primary d'etre. Souls fans frequently praise the sense of achievement which comes from conquering the genre's much-vaunted challenges however it's more than that. It's like when my dad recently cleaned the hinges on the old screen door that was at my childhood home. The first time I opened it , following his work as handyman, I felt in a moment of numbness when I wasn't greeted by the exact sound or sensation I was expecting. I heard nothing. I was not feeling anything. It was as if I was lost in the void. All the appearance, the texture, and all the character that door used to hold in its creaking joints was gone, replaced with a whispery smoothness that hid its existence instead of creating a taste for the world.
It's Elden Ring but without any learning curve. It's a process that lets FromSoftware basically throw users into the ocean and urge them to swim to ensure safety. Would the interface for users be a little more descriptive? I would think so. Could the devs make an effort in concert to enhance the combat mechanics, moving past the confusion of its predecessors? Sure, anything is possible. Personally, however, I wouldn't like a game that behaves just like any other game. It's helpful that I get a perverse level of enjoyment from Elden Ring's repetitious die-retry-die-loop It's also refreshing to observe FromSoftware stubbornly maintain its decades-old principles. It's akin to a project that eschews modern sensibilities like HD graphics and smoother frame rates to achieve a specific aesthetic, Elden Ring wouldn't be such a worthy follow-up to Souls lineage if it didn't kindly ask players to adjust themselves in accordance with its peculiarities instead of and the reverse.
Mind you, Elden Ring isn't as bad as that it or its predecessors were believed to be by ardent fans as well as detractors. The open-world design seems like a deliberate decision from FromSoftware to extend an emulation to players who had a blast playing various Souls games, most of which were far more linear than cheap Elden Ring Runes. Being stuck by a monster in Dark Souls or Bloodborne, for example, usually meant smashing into one of the brick walls again and time until you finally came out bloody and bruised, but The Lands Between provide much more to see and do. Many hours could be spent exploring the area prior to the first major dungeon , and the skill test of a boss, accumulating loot and increasing levels until you're overpowered enough to reduce Godrick the Grafted to a pile of amputated limbs with little effort. You can skip the fortress completely if you've concluded that you're done with his deceit, which is a good strategy for when you want to check out what the rest of the game has to offer.