Since Elden Ring’s meteoric entrance into the pantheon of soulslikes, many players have grown very fond of the very new and fresh open-world approach to the genre. Miyazaki himself said that ER is as close to his dream soulslike as he could wish it to be. It felt like a new direction for future soulslikes to come and felt similarly revolutionary as Breath of the Wild did for Zelda.
The open world didn’t come with only positives, however. Repeat bosses and assets, dungeons weren’t as diverse as one hoped them to be, the rewards for exploring some of them felt very situational and niche-y at best and outright useless at their worst. Some say the game is only ever good for a first blind playthrough and that the open world stands in their way of getting to “the fun part™” of the game.
After almost four years of the game existing, a, objectively speaking, very strong DLC, and a spin-off with Nightreign, how do you guys feel about open worlds in soulslikes? I understand this is not the first or only soulslike to feature an open world - I don’t have any examples at hand off the dome - but ER is definitely the open world soulslike.
Is it something you’d like to see featured in future soulslikes? Are you over it? Very keen on hearing your thoughts since I can’t really make up my mind either :)
An open world is a design choice with a subtext that to me says “go anywhere, you’ll find something interesting no matter what”. And when it’s well executed, that’s a fun way to play, just going in whatever direction looks intriguing and enjoying it every time.
That’s… Not what the vibe of a Souls game is to me. I expect to be on my guard at every turn, creeping past dangers, searching for goodies, progressing carefully and learning the enemies’ patterns. In that headspace, I’m not recklessly chasing my way to the horizon in search of fun, I’m warily hunting my way through an ugly crapsack world.
The twisting, vertical, meandering, highly constructed and closed-in design of those worlds lends itself to the sense of prowling through a dreadful mystery.
If he loves open worlds so much, I wish he’d do so in a setting that fits the subtext. Using open worlds as a “sense of scale” gimmick is not fresh or impressive anymore.