Elden Ring Has Ruined Other Open World Games For Me
Elden Ring feels like a new milestone in open world gaming. It follows in the footsteps of Far Cry 3, Breath of the Wild, and Red Dead Redemption 2 as watermarks in the medium that signify a substantial shift in how we approach it. FromSoftware’s gameplay formula built on layered exploration and challenging combat that first debuted in Demon’s Souls went on to influence a decade of experiences because it was so monumental in its execution.
It showed that games didn’t need to hold your hand anymore as they were becoming increasingly obsessed with quick-time events and scripted sequences that favoured spectacle over subtlety, seldom trusting the player to figure things out for themselves and push forward inspired by little more than their own desire to discover and succeed. While it might sound like needless hyperbole, it really did change everything, unleashing a shockwave of influence whose ripples are still being felt even as Elden Ring rears its head.
Related: If Elden Ring Isn’t Your Thing That’s Totally Okay
Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro all build upon FromSoftware’s formula while abiding stringently by its core tenets. I adored all of these games, but if nothing was done to expand upon it, the risk of diminishing returns would inevitably surface. Elden Ring feels like a response to that potential irrelevance, with Hidetaka Miyazaki daring to push this condensed formula into an open world format for the very first time. Somehow, it not only manages to carry over the focused worldbuilding and rewarding progression, it expands upon them with an unparalleled scale that is so obscenely dense that it borders on overwhelming.
Elden Ring clearly draws inspiration from Breath of the Wild, and why wouldn’t it? Nintendo
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