Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Open-World Design

gamedeveloper.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 172 posts

Re: Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Open-World Design

#41

Post by andrewingram »

lagmos wrote: post #37
KptMarchewa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In soulslike games, it's expected that your hand isn't going to be held and you might blindly walk into areas for which you're severely under equipped. Game even goes out of it's way to place Sellia Crystal Tunnel teleporter extremely close to start point if you immediately start going east.

Yeah. Getting teleported was almost the first thing that happened to me in the game. Way befor getting a horse

What I like about the game is that once you’ve been down a path once, you can usually repeat it without stopping to fight or getting hurt. That cave is a prime example, it only takes about 10 seconds to get from the place you get trapped to the site of Grace once you know where it is.

Re: Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Open-World Design

#42

Post by kibibu »

throwntoday wrote: post #32
sushid wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally their highly refined tried and true formula with BOTW. Hard to believe that you don't see the parallel in open world design if you've played both games.

I would not compare these two games. Death Stranding was a refined BotW. Elden Ring is a totally different game and I think comparing it to BotW is an insult to FromSoft as they actually put effort into making the open world feel full of content. BotW is 15min of riding your horse through nothing and dodging the same 2-3 enemy mobs to get to a shrine where maybe you get a fun puzzle but most likely you fight a robot…

Weird that you're fighting a robot for the 100th time when there are only 6 "test of strength" shrines.

Re: Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Open-World Design

#43

Post by oneoff786 »

linkdd wrote: post #35
oneoff786 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Botw is so much more than just NES Zelda. That the two are non linear is just one similarity.

Both games are centered on exploration more than the main quest. You're thrown into a world without instructions, you don't know who you are or what you're doing here. There is just a world to explore and have a fun adventure in. While quite different of course, they have basically the same goal: you first have to get lost in order to find your way. The fun begins when you explore and stumble across things by mistake…

Eh. The original Zelda is vaguely non linear. But there are several sequential dependencies for dungeons. Once you’re done with the first 3 it’s pretty darn linear for things like the ladder and the bow and what not. And that game has a progression curve that makes it fairly punishing to do things out of order for normal players. I would say that game forces you to be lost whereas botw really allows you to enjoy exploring. The original isn’t that big and you’ll probably find yourself scouring the same few areas annoyedly over and over.

Zelda 2 was pretty linear too.

The twin mountains are spectacle rock. They have appeared in many games. Most notably, imo, they’re in the crater of death mountain in ocarina of time. If you squint at the way the fire temple is built (two towers) it’s sort of implied to be built inside of it. Very cool

https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Spectacle_Rock

Re: Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Open-World Design

#44

Post by sk1pper »

The commentary around organic learning reminds me of The Outer Wilds. Imho it’s an even more extreme case of what the author is getting at here: (very mild spoilers follow) there are no stats or levels in The Outer Wilds; there are no upgrades (mild spoiler because I spent like 75% of the game thinking I’d get some sort of item to help me deal with various obstacles eventually, but nope). The game randomly picks a planet at the beginning and suggests you start there, but you can truly just fly around and do whatever you want, and the only factor that limits what you can do is how well you understand the mechanics of the universe and its various planets. It encourages experimentation, and there’s never a lack of leads on what to go experiment with, because it has a system that kind of takes notes for you and gently indicates when there are more clues to be uncovered in a given area.

Re: Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Open-World Design

#45

Post by Apocryphon »

throwntoday wrote: post #32
sushid wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally their highly refined tried and true formula with BOTW. Hard to believe that you don't see the parallel in open world design if you've played both games.

I would not compare these two games. Death Stranding was a refined BotW. Elden Ring is a totally different game and I think comparing it to BotW is an insult to FromSoft as they actually put effort into making the open world feel full of content. BotW is 15min of riding your horse through nothing and dodging the same 2-3 enemy mobs to get to a shrine where maybe you get a fun puzzle but most likely you fight a robot…

> Out of all the previous soulslikes, Elden Ring is the fairest in terms of providing options and routes. If you want to rush through the castle and beat Godrick right at the start, you can do that.

Doesn’t BOTW have a similar option to rush to the end boss?

Also, this video shows BOTW doesn’t have to be like what you say

https://youtu.be/9EvbqxBUG_c

Rather uncharitable to compare a four year old game to one that just came out.

Re: Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Open-World Design

#46

Post by pxc »

andrewingram wrote: post #40
throwntoday wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof, BotW was absolute trash. It was the epitome of bad open-world design. You have an absolutely massive map with nothing to do. The story is fragmented into just four dungeon/town areas and some memories scattered around the map. There are like two villages otherwise with still basically nothing to do in them. Exploration is not rewarded, weapons break for no reason (doesn't add difficulty or fun, it's just frustra…

I’m over 100 hours in, and it’s probably the most sticky gaming experience I’ve had in years. I’ve played most of the recent AAA open world games (Horizon Forbidden West, Far Cry 6, AC Valhalla etc), and Elden Ring is the only one that didn’t quickly descend into feeling like a chore. It’s got a lot of rough edges, but it’s an absolute breath of fresh air; and even my gf says it’s the one she’s enjoyed watching me pl…

I struggled to finish most of the older 3D Zelda titles, but with BotW, I had so much fun just exploring and finding my own things to do that finishing the game was basically an afterthought. IMO it's a model for open world design.

Re: Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Open-World Design

#47

Post by kamranjon »

holyyikes wrote: post #14
intsunny wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yah, it seems very strange the article completely fails to mention Zelda Breath of the Wild. It is amazing to see how many games today have taken inspiration from Zelda BOTW. The first time I played the game, I decided it was more fun just exploring the open world and visiting all the Sheikah Towers. I didn't have good armor/equipment/food/etc, and I had a complete blast doing it. That was one of my fondest memories…

Because Elden Ring is about as far from BOTW as you can possibly be. It's not inspired by it at all.

From the Wikipedia for Elden Ring:

Miyazaki cited Fumito Ueda's work such as Shadow of the Colossus (2005) as an influence that "inspired him to create" Elden Ring, while also drawing influence from "the design and the freedom of play" in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017).

Re: Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Open-World Design

#48

Post by brazzledazzle »

Spivakov wrote: post #39

"When it comes to open-world games, I’ve never liked the “fakeness” of the open-world and why games like Skyrim, Horizon, the Assassin’s Creeds, and so on, didn’t interest me." Skyrim and AC are milestones in open-world design around 2010. Sort of mind-blowing if you played them at their initial release. Horizon, though not being top, also has its own merit. I wonder how can an author comment on open world design whe…

Horizon Forbidden West feels overly polished. Like they brought in the best people to improve things but the end result is like eating 12 courses of the same perfectly prepared chicken breast. It’s good but feels like it’s missing something the guest had. Its story isn’t bad, you feel urgency and care about the characters. There’s powerful moments. It checks the boxes. But this gives the game a dramatically different feel from the first.

HZD seemed to generate a lot of discussion about how it’s a great science fiction story, and it is, but it’s also a really dark tale that feels hopeless even when you know how it ultimately plays out. It told two very different stories side by side and one of them was a history in our future that was utterly bleak and it told you in a way that held little back. It truly felt like every time you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did. And then Ted Faro murdered the Zero Dawn architects and deleted all of the teaching data thus dooming an entire world of unborn children to a life free from safety, food security, needless infant mortality, medicine and reading. All to hide his shame from a future he wouldn’t even be alive in. And then we learned he got to go live in his bunker while Elisabet suffocated to death in front of her childhood home. It was infuriating but fitting.

There’s bits of that sprinkled throughout Forbidden West but they’re not given the stage.

Re: Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Open-World Design

#49

Post by metamet »

Apocryphon wrote: post #45
throwntoday wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not compare these two games. Death Stranding was a refined BotW. Elden Ring is a totally different game and I think comparing it to BotW is an insult to FromSoft as they actually put effort into making the open world feel full of content. BotW is 15min of riding your horse through nothing and dodging the same 2-3 enemy mobs to get to a shrine where maybe you get a fun puzzle but most likely you fight a robot…

> Out of all the previous soulslikes, Elden Ring is the fairest in terms of providing options and routes. If you want to rush through the castle and beat Godrick right at the start, you can do that. Doesn’t BOTW have a similar option to rush to the end boss? Also, this video shows BOTW doesn’t have to be like what you say https://youtu.be/9EvbqxBUG_c Rather uncharitable to compare a four year old game to one that jus…

Also worth watching Dunkey's Elden Ring review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1H4o4FW-wA

Re: Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Open-World Design

#50

Post by thatswrong0 »

brazzledazzle wrote: post #48
Spivakov wrote: post #39

"When it comes to open-world games, I’ve never liked the “fakeness” of the open-world and why games like Skyrim, Horizon, the Assassin’s Creeds, and so on, didn’t interest me." Skyrim and AC are milestones in open-world design around 2010. Sort of mind-blowing if you played them at their initial release. Horizon, though not being top, also has its own merit. I wonder how can an author comment on open world design whe…

Horizon Forbidden West feels overly polished. Like they brought in the best people to improve things but the end result is like eating 12 courses of the same perfectly prepared chicken breast. It’s good but feels like it’s missing something the guest had. Its story isn’t bad, you feel urgency and care about the characters. There’s powerful moments. It checks the boxes. But this gives the game a dramatically different…

It was kind of an impossible task for Forbidden West to replicate the experience of Zero Dawn.. to me the magic of the first game was entirely based around the discovery of why the world became the way it did. The mystery of the second game is not about the state of the world, but instead one cliffhanger aspect from the last game (what caused Hades to go rogue?).

But I’m in complete agreement about with the OP about the “overpolished” aspect of Forbidden West.. just check out the Horizon subreddit right now. They just released a patch that nerfed the legendary weapons in the game. There was no real reason to do that. They didn’t feel horribly broken (especially for how much grinding it takes to upgrade them and how expensive their ammo is to craft). And come on: it’s a single player game. No idea what’s going on at that studio right now.. maybe gearing up for DLC.

Post reply on HN