The Open World Is Not Enough (The Jimquisition)

I never knew you loved lobsters! I have a pet lobster called Gaston and he is super pumped to know my favourite content creator is in his corner.

Day Citrus

Have fun.

Trevor Bond

If you're still looking: I think you use the "Furled finger" or the...shit, it's the golden powder that looks like it comes in a round makeup compact.

Dr. Judge, Private Eye

Cool. The rest of us will.

Dr. Judge, Private Eye

The reason I’m willing to give the game a pass on the lack of a quest log is that it’s definitely a deliberate choice which makes sense in the context of the game.    The game gives you very little objective lore.  You get plenty of information from talking to NPCs and reading documents but that’s all subjective.  Item descriptions are objective but also very limited, even if they do contain the occasional important tidbit.  In order to be useful a quest journal would need to give away important information the player might have missed, and Elden Ring likes to let you figure stuff out on your own.    I suppose it could give you nothing more than the last conversation you had with the relevant NPC, but since almost all of them will sit around repeating their last lines until you progress the quest they’re never more than one warp away, so it really wouldn’t add much, and the design philosophy seems to be “if it isn’t vital, throw it out.”

Andrew L Butula

I just listened fully and what item did you use to join another player co op in an area? Was it the one you use for invasions?

Benedict Holland

Also, I was led into a dungeon in a clever way, with a sub-boss in it - which would be too hard for me to beat but there was no obvious way out, and you can't fast travel to the grace. It never feels particularly fun to lose a load of runes that you can't retrieve in a place you have to fight your way out of. This is something I didn't think was good - especially when you can fast travel out of some places. I'm not going to rationalise that element - the discovery and feel of a dark cave with danger is cool, but every time you end up losing runes because they're in an awkward place feels a bit of a slap in the face. It can be hard to see which stuff you're overlooking or rationalising because there's enough other stuff in the game to outweigh it.

Nathan Shepperd

Not necessarily weird - think it's called the halo effect. I was focusing on the open world as that's the thing that's drawing me in to a surprising degree - it remains to be seen if there are enough options to allow me to approach the combat without me losing patience. I'd agree not having a quest log is just annoying for example.

Nathan Shepperd

I'm also finding that people are much less willing to be critical about aspects of this game than they are others - there's a weird cognative bias. "It's the best game ever! So therefore this can't be bad design. It must be art!" Quest logs, for example, something that reviewers have hounded other games for not having is lauded here.

Quirkz

"while the combat is a bit of a barrier for my patience." That's the best summation of my feelings on the game.

Quirkz

Cool. I'll still never play it.

Trevor Bond

Have to admit I've only managed part of Dark Souls because I'm a coward - but played enough to get the hang of the feel of the game and the environments. I've also watched my kids play through Dark Souls 3 although I didn't get far with it myself. For me it's been wanting to experience the world while the combat is a bit of a barrier for my patience. The only point of saying that was that with Elden Ring the open world bit just happens to be part of the game - Dark Souls, but what if you could run round the back and go to all the levels way before you can actually take on the bosses, test yourself against higher level enemies and then head back to the earlier bosses. Bit of a vague description - but trying to say it's the world of Elden Ring - not an open world template with a new skin?

Nathan Shepperd

But imagine if you walked into a cave, got completely destroyed, recovered your souls, and realized that you shouldn't be there yet. It's just a bit better.

Benedict Holland

Nothing like walking through a normal looking door, hearing the boss music, and seeing the wall of dog pop up behind you. Half the time it's basically an Uber back to the entrance that costs all my runes.

Andrew L Butula

Based on your recommendation and the reworking of the invasion system (it should still be optional) I picked it up. I was playing cyberpunk 2077 and switched over. I feel like cyberpunk was so close to getting to Elden Ring but never got there. There was absolutely no character development or consistency. One minute I was murdering scores of shoplifters and the next I was questioning morality of murdering a single dude who likely killed someone. While I do love the exploration (and that map is fucking gorgious) one thing I am missing is normal mobs as gates. Regularly, I find myself cruising through an area without difficulty and then get absolutely crushed by a boss and there is no indication that I would be. Final Fantasy would set up mobs that simply kill you to block progress or give a hint that perhaps you are not ready for what is coming up but that doesnt seem to be the case here... yet the game does seem to have regions that you should likely go to in an order. That and so many of the bosses have adds. Playing through demon's souls and even dark souls, the number of fights with adds was minimal and they stand out. Here, trivial bosses are made almost impossible due to adds and a really terrible AI for summons. The camera continuous to be the worst enemy. But for all its flaws, I love it. Every location is new and cool. The boss designs are awesome and the art work and map layout is the gold standard. I just wish that the game beat me to a pulp before I got through a large area so I didn't feel like I should be able to beat a boss when clearly I shouldnt.

Benedict Holland

In the same way companies implemented Souls elements into their games and it boiled down to "It's needlessly difficult" and "area progress resets on death/rest" or when they tried to implement BOTW elements and it was just "The world is now big and empty but we did the cliff shot" With that in mind, I would be alright with companies not trying to ape Elden Ring's open world design 100% in this respect. Seriously, remember how in Jedi: Fallen Order, when you would rest, the Stormtroopers would just come back to life. I liked that game but that was silly. When Cal rests, would all the stormtroopers aboard the Death Star come back? Briefly floating back in space for a few seconds of cold agony? These are the things that keep me up at night

Great video! It's especially fun to be playing the same thing as you for once, I'm not into most games these days, so seeing you fight the same lobster I race past at top speed was quite a thrill. (In retrospect I really should have named my character Rincewind.)

Andrew L Butula