Baldur's Gate 3 is safe from the top-down Elden Ring CRPG that only exists in our imaginations and these modded screenshots
The only thing that could even attempt to compete with Baldur's Gate 3 for me would be a game that doesn't exist. But I can imagine what it would look like with this gallery of Elden Ring screenshots taken from a top-down perspective as if they were environments in a CRPG spin-off.
Reddit user Fanica98 zoomed way out with a camera mod at the lowest FOV possible to give Elden Ring's world a pseudo-isometric look. I've messed with camera tools before but I've never thought about trying to recreate this perspective. Apparently, it's a little fussy to achieve.
«The game is highly optimized under the hood to unload a significant amount of what the player is not supposed to see,» Fanica98 explained in a comment, «to the point where I could barely get a shot in the Haligtree and none at all in the Academy or Volcano Manor.»
I noticed this too. Pulling the camera outside of a cave or building you're in will reveal how much of the game disappears as soon as there's no way for you to see it. Plenty of games do this to lighten the load on the engine. Fanica98 also said FromSoft uses a thick blanket of fog on the outer edges of the world, which they had to disable to be able to see anything. That's why some of the shots look way clearer than they do while playing the game.
The entrance to the Grand Cloister sitting in the watermelon red Lake of Rot might be one of my favorites. From this far out, the rot almost looks like the surface of Mars. I want to click between its two statues to lead my little party inside and straight into the worst enemies in the game (if you know, you know).
Inside the Church of Vows sits Miriel, AKA turtle pope, and you know he'd have some of the most mind-blowing lore drops in the game if Elden Ring were a CRPG and actually let you talk to him for a while. Fanica98 did a great job framing the three large statues peering over the smaller one where you absolve your sins. The cracks and overgrown ivy crawling along the stone walls have all their
