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Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

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Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#161

Post by enragedcacti »

unicornmama wrote: post #144
nassimsoftware wrote: post #27

I'm new to From Soft games and decided to buy Elden Ring because it's a similar game to Zelda Breath of The Wild which I really liked. I was afraid that the game would be too difficult. After playing 17hrs, the game is indeed difficult but there are many things you can do in the game to make it easier for yourself (Which I did because I'm more interested in exploring the world than mastering the gameplay). For exampl…

I hated BoTW, would I also hate Elden Ring?

Probably. The fighting mechanics are very different (and more interesting) in Elden Ring, but a ton of the fun of both games is seeing something cool on the map or off in the distance and exploring it. If that loop with its lack of explicit guidance or goals didn't work for you in BoTW it probably won't work for you here.

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#162

Post by telchior »

esjeon wrote: post #132

I enjoyed reading this, but had to filter so much overhype out of the article. The author should consider reducing the dose of caffeine. One thing is that the ideas noted here aren't really unique to Miyazaki. The game industry once shared the same notion implicitly, but they lost it as their businesses got bigger. Many games these days are more like digital drugs that stimulate your peripheral nerves. Many of them g…

You could say he has genius in some respects, and craftsmanship in others. Games are big, complex things that actually have a lot of different systems and aesthetic inputs, so it's not really fair to act like their creators are similar to someone painting a masterpiece or writing a book.

On the other hand, it's also not fair to give Miyazaki all the credit. Hundreds of other people worked on this game, and their creativity and contributions are unknown.

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#163

Post by the_doctah »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #146
wyager wrote: post #14

I bought ER the other day after hearing rave review and was super disappointed. I ended up returning it after a couple hours. * Visuals: Disappointing. Looked like a cheap free-to-play MMO. Cheap-looking textures, stock-looking characters, bad rigging (e.g. characters holding things in unnatural poses), etc. * Controls: Unpleasant. Controls felt very sluggish. If this is supposed to make the game more challenging or…

> Am I missing something? This is my first souls game; is feeling cheap and clunky part of the aesthetic? The visuals are... better than preceding games, but not as 'next gen' as they could be, definitely the same engine as they have used for a long time now. That said, games like this need some time to grow; I've played Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 myself, I do feel like this one only starts to come into its own when…

I started playing Elden Ring directly after finishing God of War on PC, and that is way more mashy. I don't think I realized how much so.

ER is my first FromSoft game and the length and weight of the animations is something that took me a very long time to get used to. Mashing R1 isn't going to do you any favors at all. I don't think I've ever played a game that respects your buffered inputs as much as this game. But I'm starting to dig it.

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#164

Post by jjj123 »

idle_zealot wrote: post #54
nassimsoftware wrote: post #27

I'm new to From Soft games and decided to buy Elden Ring because it's a similar game to Zelda Breath of The Wild which I really liked. I was afraid that the game would be too difficult. After playing 17hrs, the game is indeed difficult but there are many things you can do in the game to make it easier for yourself (Which I did because I'm more interested in exploring the world than mastering the gameplay). For exampl…

> This is essentially the easy mode everyone wanted but the core souls fans. This easy mode has been in every From game I’ve played. It’s the reason core fans don’t want the much-demanded difficulty settings.

Most of the demands for an easy mode are about accessibility concerns. If you’re working with a motor impairment you may be blocked out of ever playing a souls game.

A mode with slower enemies or more forgiving dodge timing would allow those people to experience the game in some form.

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#165

Post by aordano »

aixi wrote: post #156
aordano wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more akin to having Dostoevsky on big print and in Open Dyslexic font, on thick pages easy to grab and handle. Is not about easing the media itself or diluting its essence, it's about making it approachable to people that want to experience it and is not able to. I am not disabled in any relevant way, but i know intimately people that is, and having a big chunk of the world unreachable like that is very demor…

No, that's not akin to having Dostoyevsky on big print --- that is how you consume the content, not the content itself. Those things would be comparable to having a controller that a disabled person can use, which Souls games don't limit: you can play them with whatever controller you want. Requesting an easy mode, or a god mode, is more similar to requesting for the author to modify complex prose, or avoid using wor…

I think it's debatable; where the «experience» or delivery a game tries to reach, end? Where do we draw the line between considering it a modification of the "soul" of the game?

This is an important distinction because a game is much more rich and complex than a book, and has many more axes where things can change. I fathom that for some people the level of punishment is just too much, and maybe that flies in the face of how do they enjoy the game.

This is not to detract from the artistic vision of the creators, given art has a meaning imbued by its maker, and a meaning bestowed by its consumer, i think that having the /option/ to change something that a player can't enjoy is always a plus.

Not all ability or disability is on the body, as some may lie on the mind, whether it is because of a persistent problem, a bad time in your life, or just constraints.

Gatekeeping things like this is, IMO, a bad pick (assuming that they would be properly implemented and tucked away under several menus, not shoved down your throat or made default).

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#166

Post by sergiotapia »

vlunkr wrote: post #157
sergiotapia wrote: post #39

No other games give me this feeling of melancholy, longing and revisiting once glorious places that are now dead and faded. Elden Ring is his magnum opus and I don't know how he tops this. What a tremendous achievement. If you haven't played Elden Ring, give it a try - you may be surprised how absorbed you are.

Isn't it a little early to declare this his magnum opus? It's been out less than a week.

I've played all Souls games and am qualified to give this assessment.

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#167

Post by X0Refraction »

autoexec wrote: post #59
idle_zealot wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are some examples of games that do this? The Souls games, and Elden Ring. There are places you can go in-game to find powerful weapons and easily level up. If a boss is too hard you can go explore surrounding areas and come back when your character is more powerful. Or you can choose to persist and master the boss’s mechanics to beat it at your current strength. Each area in these games works like a puzzle wit…

Dark souls has been on my list of games to try for some time. Sounds like they went the route of the grind which I'm fine with as a compromise (in some games I even prefer to be over-leveled). I'm still trying to decide between playing on PC or console though. I know the PC port had issues, but there have been plenty of times when a mod or simple console command would have saved me from bugs if I were on PC instead o…

While you can grind to an extent in Dark Souls games, I would say the route they've taken is to let you explore. So very often if you're stuck on a particular boss or area you could grind lower level enemies for souls to level although this is generally inefficient, or you could try looking around a different area you've not explored and potentially find an item that lets you upgrade your weapon, or a spell that greatly helps with the boss fight. This is subtly taught early on in the game when after leaving the tutorial zone there are multiple routes you can take, but you quickly come to realise that one is a lot easier than the others.

Note that this isn't as true with Sekiro, which has a lot more sections where you are forced to just learn a particular encounter. That's not necessarily a bad thing and in fact is part of the reason why many people find the combat a lot more satisfying once it clicks, but it's worth keeping in mind that it's a different kind of game and it probably shouldn't be approached with the same mindset.

As for the Dark Souls PC port, the original release (Prepare to die edition) was locked to 30fps. There was a mod that let you run it at 60fps, but it caused some slight gameplay issues (I believe you would go half the horizontal distance when jumping). That version is not available anymore - you can only purchase Remastered edition now, which runs at 60fps.

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#168

Post by FumblingBear »

gretch wrote: post #105
meheleventyone wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think the hit volume based damage in both makes this rather untrue. Both Souls games and SF have moves where damage happens completely incongruously to the animation. This is partly what makes both ‘hard’ because there is this piece of hidden knowledge that when you first encounter it seems really unfair because you get hit by attacks that look like they missed. It’s somewhat remedied in fighting games bec…

It’s not really “completely incongruous” though? Big haymaker swings deal massive damage. Or a jab/stomp from a gargantuan creature. Small/quick attacks from small creatures deal small damage. What’s the problem?

I would say that to a casual observer, i-frames (invincibility frames) from dodge rolling are not intuitive. Why would an attack clip through them just because they rolled? (or in the case of Elden Ring, mounted or dismounted their horse)

It feels very intuitive when you've played games that include mechanics like that, and there are more and more games that implement it nowadays, but if you've never seen a game with i-frames as a core combat mechanic, I'd imagine it can be very jarring.

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#169

Post by guuz »

Since Friday, I've been pouring hours and hours into the game. It is marvelous, but arguably inferior to their previous titles on a highly subjective level (I've missed, for example, the more accentuated dread and hopelessness of Dark Souls and Bloodborne). I guess these points will probably be addressed more thoughtfully by people more qualified than me in due time.

The more flagrant problem is the abysmal graphical performance for 2022 standards — it is borderline unacceptable, no art direction can compensate for the insistence on a clearly obsolete tech foundation. I wonder why they are reluctant to change.

Re: Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

#170

Post by isk517 »

me_me_me wrote: post #148
Trasmatta wrote: post #7

The popular discourse seems to focus on the difficulty of From's games, but that's just one part of the entire experience. FromSoft has a holistic approach to game design that very few other studios manage to match. There's just an incredible amount of depth to their world building, and the gameplay, difficulty level, online mechanics, level design, characters, music, story, and themes all work to reinforce and compl…

Genichiro Ashina fight from Sekiro took me 3 days of multiple 15-20 mins sessions. With each attempt you learn the attack patterns and tells of which move-set boss will use. Its immensely satisfying to slowly learn and see yourself improve. When I eventually beat the boss I felt like a badass. But most importantly its memorable experience, something that is hard to create. From Soft can created hard but fair experien…

Genichiro definitely almost broke me. Walked away from the game a few times trying to beat him sure that I wouldn't come back, but every time I returned and eventually I prevailed.
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