Elden Ring - GotY 2022 @ Inverse

[Deleted member 18181]

Best is to check steam achievements page and see how many unlocked the one beating the last boss.

 

[Thiraury]

What I like about Elden Ring and Fromsoftwares other soulsborne-titles is mostly the character progression, build diversity, combat, exploration and immersion into their worlds. It's close to the same way I like Gothic 2/Risen/Elex, except for me Fromsoftware makes better and more fluid combat and more interesting worlds.

Finished Elden Ring at ~250 hours of gameplay, explored as much as possible.

 

[JDR13]

Hence GoW would be by far the most completed game followed by Stray. Elden Ring and Dying Light 2 would be about as little completed. GoW would be almost 10 times more completed than ER. This all assuming that all reporters had to report whether they completed/abandoned the game and that there was no bias in reporting.

That's not surprising though given that GoW is a much shorter and easier game.

 

[Luethar]

As someone who doesn't like Elden Ring I think the idea that only .02% of gamers got into Elden Ring is out of touch with reality. Maybe you need to get out more and see what people play because it isn't Solasta. Solasta is a great game but that is the niche game, not Elden Ring. Lots of people don't finish games across the board, that is pretty well known. Whether not-finishers is extra high for ER I wouldn't know - the person who wrote that article did a tiny ad-hoc sample based on some of her followers which isn't a good sample. The game is popular and well liked and more mainstream then Solasta. Now here at the Watch Solasta may be the mainstream but the Watch itself is a pretty niche set of players.

That being said I don't have access to any official numbers of who finishes what game but what I have seen suggests it's still a large number and I expect a lot higher than .02% of the people who purchased the game.

Wolf,

I am completely in touch with reality, thank you for your concern. It was a made up stat. It was purposefully set as a ridiculous stat to show how small the achievement is. It was writer's license. I did not cite the stat so I figured I wouldnt have to explain. What I meant by the .02% was that a very small population of PC gamers get into a game like Elden Ring for what it actually was - a punishing endeavor.

 

[Thiraury]

What I meant by the .02% was that a very small population of PC gamers get into a game like Elden Ring for what it actually was - a punishing endeavor.

What do you meen by this? That the ultimate attribute of Elden Ring is that it's punishing?

Edit: If you think there might be other qualitys to Elden Ring but the difficulty makes it impossible for you to experience them I found this mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/146
Edit 2: And another mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/207

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

I've been looking at the "overview trailer", and I see that this game really very much deserves praise from a world design perspecive.

This is, so to say, in my eyes, the pinnacle of "western grimdark heavy metal RPG gaming", so to say. To say it more boldly, in my eyes, it represents the very end level of that kind of gaming. It is the very end of the pendulum swinging into one direction.

No game can ever reach this game in terms of "western" world building / "western" fantasy look, also difficulty, and freedom. I do believe at this moment that this game is simply unreachable.

It can become no more dark, no more un-colourful, no more difficult than this game.

However, with this being the absolute pinnacle / top of the mountain of thiskind of gaming, there is only one way this sort of fantasy games can evolve : Probbly stay on the top for a while, and then go down again.

Now, and that's the surprise here : I see similarities to Genshin Impact. The similarities are, that there is a variety of monsters, although far not with such a diversity of monster creation.
It is rather as if for Elden Ring, a developer took fantasy and fairy tale tropes and twisted them, or developed them further, or re-imagined them.

A similar design model - take typical fantasy tropes and use them to make something new - also happens in Genshin Impact. In fact, I get more and more the feeling as if asian developers are not at all that conservative when designing new worlds and new monsters than "western" ones are. Their kind of grimdark gamng has stagnated for one or two decades now, with no new developments. And then, From Software took that and developed the top predator game of that.

Elden Ring also shows me very much why it was a very good choice for me, personally, to abandon all "western" RPG gaming, and turn towards the so much more colourful Genshin Impact. It gives me everything I cannot see in "western" RPGs. ( I silently include Elden Ring into my personal definiton of "western RPGs", because it seems to have everything to belong to that style of fantasy gaming. )

Senior Entertainment Writer Eric Francisco expressed his mingled awe and dissatisfaction with the game rather elegantly in a December Twitter thread.

"I don't know how else to express it but when it comes down to it, Elden Ring -- a game I acknowledge is fantastic but that I ultimately do not love and cannot finish -- kind of alienated me away from gaming completely," he wrote. "Elden Ring's immense status sorta disillusioned me on where the hobby is going, evolving into a thing I do not recognize and do not see myself fitting in anymore. It's like everyone loves a person I had a very bad date with and I'm left to keep it to myself."

I completely agree to that. Elden Ring is so ... overwhelming in every of its aspects that I simply do not want to touch it with a ten feet pole.
I repeat : Elden Ring is for me the extreme end of a certain style of fantasy gaming. And as an end point, there simply is no more, no further development in that style of gaming anymore possible.

"Western" fantasy gaming is practically dead and done for me now, if it follows that formula that is presented in Elden Ring.

And I'm only *slightly* curious about "what comes next", because "Grimdark" has been oh so popular within the last 10 years that I simply do not see any evolution possible anymore.

P.S. : You can take a look at my current signature about that, too.

 

[Morrandir]

Now that's quite a grimdark point of view.

For me Elden Ring is only the current pinnacle of Souls-like games as a sub-genre of action rpg games.

There are other western fantasy games and sub-gernres that go nowhere in this direction and will develop further.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Well, in my opinion, "western" styyle ( and I don't mean "The Wild West" with that, mind you ! ) are so much combatz-heavy, because they are made for a mostly male buyer group. And male players are about competition, mostly, be it PvE or PvP, and PvE competition is combat heavy, because diplomacy and the so-calle "soft skills" are not useable in terms of competition.

Elden Ring and the sub-genre of the "Souls-like" are the ultimate player against environment - PvE - competition, because of the dificulty. It just can't get more difficult. And because of that I regard Elden Ring as the absolute end point of PvE RPG gaming.

And it just cannot become darker as well, considering the colour palette.
Looking at the graphics, Elden Ring is like a Heavy Metal album cover come alive.

 

[Hastar]

Uriah Heep and Molly Hatchet did have some amazing album covers. You talked me into trying Elden Ring, thanks.

 

[largh]

I don't understand why you keep on babbling about "Western RPG gaming" when talking about Elden Ring. There's nothing western about it except the target audience. Otherwise they'd talk Japanese. To me the game is a refinement of the same design and concept the Japanese have utilised since the dawn of Nintendo.

 

[Morrandir]

Well, in my opinion, "western" styyle ( and I don't mean "The Wild West" with that, mind you ! ) are so much combatz-heavy, because they are made for a mostly male buyer group. And male players are about competition, mostly, be it PvE or PvP, and PvE competition is combat heavy, because diplomacy and the so-calle "soft skills" are not useable in terms of competition.

Elden Ring and the sub-genre of the "Souls-like" are the ultimate player against environment - PvE - competition, because of the dificulty. It just can't get more difficult. And because of that I regard Elden Ring as the absolute end point of PvE RPG gaming.

And it just cannot become darker as well, considering the colour palette.
Looking at the graphics, Elden Ring is like a Heavy Metal album cover come alive.

That my all be true, but your synopsis from your last post

"Western" fantasy gaming is practically dead and done for me now, if it follows that formula that is presented in Elden Ring.

is far too pessimistic in my opinion.
I don't think that western fantasy gaming in its entirety will follow that formula.

 

[JDR13]

I don't understand why you keep on babbling about "Western RPG gaming" when talking about Elden Ring. There's nothing western about it except the target audience. Otherwise they'd talk Japanese. To me the game is a refinement of the same design and concept the Japanese have utilised since the dawn of Nintendo.

Elden Ring isn't remotely similar to most Japanese games.

 

[largh]

Elden Ring isn't remotely similar to most Japanese games.

You mean it doesn't have anime inspired graphics? But that doesn't make it "Western". It is a game made by a Japanese company basing on the "soulslike" concept developed by the same company.

 

[JDR13]

You mean it doesn't have anime inspired graphics? But that doesn't make it "Western". It is a game made by a Japanese company basing on the "soulslike" concept developed by the same company.

Yes, and it's not remotely similar to most Japanese games. I didn't say it was Western.

 

[largh]

Yes, and it's not remotely similar to most Japanese games. I didn't say it was Western.

Yeah, well, you quoted my question above why Alrik called Elden Ring "western grimdark heavy metal RPG gaming" and other confusing expressions. I might have misunderstood the whole discussion. We can let Alrik answer when he wakes up