The World Design of Elden Ring
Added 2022-11-10 17:08:30 +0000 UTCHey Patrons!
Since the release of Elden Ring earlier this year, I knew I wanted to do a video about its world design, similar to my stuff on Hollow Knight and Boss Keys.
Now, after 200 hours of playing, the purchase of a new PC, and many script rewrites - it's finally here! Please do check it out.
Cheers
Mark
Comments
I have to ask, and please forgive me: Cata-cooms? I went back and watched your original Dark Souls video and you said "cata-combs", which is how I thought it was pronounced. WHAT CHANGED MARK? :D
Edward Earl Newton
2022-11-18 17:22:32 +0000 UTCOn the level scaling - I agree with you that it can make for a weird experience for all the reasons you said. But I want to make some of the pro-arguments for it. Full disclosure ER was my first Souls game, though it was good enough that I'm likely to go try the others. First off, it is a hidden difficulty slider which makes this game accessible to a much wider set of players. Simply by choosing which enemies to engage with, or to skip and come back to, everyone gets to decide whether they want a "hardcore souls git gud" experience or a more casual one. I'd avoided souls games for a long time and this aspect (along with things like spirit ashes, player summons, and other optional items) let me feel like the difficulty was in my control without a contextless "easy/med/hard" choice at the start Secondly, it enables a much wider set of character builds and enemy types. Since you can skip around, within a single area you can have (for example) enemy A be extremely hard for Mages and enemy B be extremely hard for a Bleed build and enemy C be extremely hard for big-weapon players. In a more linear experience you'd end up feeling very frustrated at certain points, but in ER you can choose to avoid those enemies for now and approach them once you've scaled a bit more. This made me feel much safer about my build choice and like I wasn't locking into something that would screw me over.
Daniel Haas
2022-11-13 05:13:26 +0000 UTCGiven the number of Youtube comments which are disagreeing with your take on level scaling systems in open world games, there's probably an interesting design discussion there that might be worth a video of its own (though I have a vague feeling either you or Architecht of Games has already done this...)
Michael Chester
2022-11-12 11:09:01 +0000 UTCI like the way you do the quotes, with the section of interest highlighted. It looks very professional.
cptnoremac
2022-11-11 11:01:52 +0000 UTC
