Here's What Other Games Should Steal From Elden Ring

gamespot.com:

From Software's games have always had a somewhat niche audience, but with the release of Elden Ring, the size of that audience seems to have exploded. The Soulsborne formula works exceedingly well when applied to the template for open-world games, it turns out. In fact, you could argue that it's exploring a strange and enormous world, rather than the usual Souls-style difficulty and mechanics, that makes Elden Ring so fun.

The open-world genre is pretty expansive, and as with major winners before it, like Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed games or Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring is sure to leave a mark on the field. The question is, what should the rest of the open-world genre learn from Elden Ring?

Though there's a lot to like about Elden Ring (as well as quite a few things to be annoyed with), there's one element that developers of other open-world games should take note of and use liberally, because it alters the entire feel and scope of these games: the field boss.

Field bosses in Elden Ring are bosses you run into while just wandering in the world, outside of dungeons. They're bosses, but, you know, out in the field. They're not a major change to open-world design, per se--games like Horizon Forbidden West have monster robot creatures like the Thunderjaw or Tremortusk just wandering around its world, and you might even get a similar boss fight scenario in Breath of the Wild with its tough Lynel enemies scattered throughout the world. The difference is in how Elden Ring handles such encounters, how many of them there are, and what they mean for the world at large.

In a lot of open-world games, the actual game is all about destinations. Especially with the rise of the Ubisoft model following