The Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077 Mechanic More Games Need To Steal

ign.com:

Generally speaking FromSoft’s games are synonymous with difficulty, and the “tough but fair” approach to combat has been applauded by gamers looking for a challenge. There’s certainly a masochistic appeal to getting your ass kicked for not pushing the buttons real good, but that’s really just one facet of a larger design philosophy: these games have faith that players will figure out how they work.

Elden Ring in particular makes the delightful assumption that maybe players already know the basics of how to play, and if they don’t… Well, they can go jump in a hole. I mean, they actually put a tutorial at the bottom of a hole. If you already know how blocking and rolling works, you don’t have to go down in the hole, you can just go outside and do Tarnished shit. If you’re new here? Get in the hole, idiot.

FromSoft’s games have a lot of old school sensibilities and Elden Ring’s tutorial hole in particular feels like the modern equivalent of an instruction manual. You know, those little paper pamphlets that used to come with games in the olden days when games only came in little boxes? They weren’t always required reading, but they were there to explain the basics if you didn’t know what you were doing. If you got stuck in the actual game, you could call Nintendo’s 1-900 number and they’d tell you how to get the ice beam or whatever and then your dad would yell at you when the phone bill arrived.

Even before Elden Ring’s educational pit, Souls games have been good at getting out of the way and letting players go learn from their own mistakes. In FromSoft’s earlier action-RPGs, the closest thing to a tutorial is a bunch of informative messages scattered around like a passive aggressive roommate’s Post-it notes, but you’re not