With the one year anniversary of “Elden Ring” behind us, it’s impossible to quantify how impressive the success of FromSoftware’s magnum opus really is.
Sure, the 20 million units sold worldwide and the horde of “Game of the Year” wins are impressive, but there have been plenty of titles in the past to rack up such accolades and sales.
So what separates “Elden Ring” from the pack?
It starts with the game developers. Japanese developer Hidetaka Miyazaki and studio FromSoftware rose to fame in the early 2010′s with “Dark Souls,” a fantasy adventure game notorious for its crushing difficulty and fragmented storytelling structure that spawned its own subgenre of games aptly titled “souls-likes,” The difficulty was not only present in the boss fights and complex level design, but it extended into the story and individual side quests. Players had to decipher item descriptions and the non player characters’ (NPCs’) cryptic dialogue to piece together the story themselves. This atypical approach to game design simultaneously popularized the game franchise and demoralized the casual audience from approaching FromSoftware titles, which makes “Elden Ring’s” success all the more impressive.
“Elden Ring” maintains Miyazaki’s signature brand of punishing enemies, eccentric character interactions, and nonlinear storytelling while revitalizing the oversaturated open-world subgenre. Instead of having a list of tasks to check off around the map, FromSoftware gives the player free reign to explore any part of the game world, The Lands Between, with no restrictions in sight.
Exploration is key to both “Elden Ring’s” design and success. Minimizing the information presented on the player’s heads-up display (HUD) and having every area of the world available for exploration immediately might seem inaccessible at first glance, but by doing so, FromSoftware gave players full reign to explore to their heart’s content without the added pressure of a traditional quest screen.
This approach to exploration is not unique to “Elden Ring”; Nintendo’s 2017 “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” was critically acclaimed for this very reason. However, the harsh difficulty of the souls-like titles being applied to “Elden Ring’s” massive open world is what makes this game remarkable. FromSoftware circumvents the criticisms of their lack of difficulty settings by encouraging players to find weapons, armor and items in the world to aid them on their quest to become Elden Lord while picking up the story along the way. If a boss or region is too difficult, the player can leave to level up, discover new bits of lore or grit their teeth and continue to push through in the face of adversity.
The plethora of options at the player’s disposal, both in terms of playstyle variety and progression order, is revolutionary for the gaming industry. There are hundreds of weapons, magic spells, and special attacks for players to experiment with and every playstyle is viable. Giving players flexibility to approach every area incentivizes the casual audience to stick with the game during its more punishing moments and the multiple gameplay styles allows for several playthroughs worth of content.
The obscurity of the game’s story and boss difficulty also led to thousands of gameplay discussions and lore theories being posted online, uniting both new and veteran players. Instead of requiring online access to experience the game, FromSoftware’s game design philosophy gave players a chance to organically come together and discuss the game’s hidden secrets and unique experiences they had exploring The Lands Between.
What stands out more than the game’s accessibility is FromSoftware’s dedication to packing in as many unique enemy encounters as possible without artificially the game’s already lengthy playtime. “Elden Ring” has a diverse set of regions for the player to traverse and each area acts as a mini world populated by enemy campsites, varied ecosystems, and intricate castle-like structures capped off by demanding boss battles. Every area is filled to the brim with information about the game’s in-world history and is aesthetically distinct from every region preceding and succeeding it, a stark contrast to the unstimulating monotony and abysmal repetition of many open-world games released today.
In an era when big budget, highly anticipated games are cash grabs being released in an unfinished state, “Elden Ring” is a diamond in the rough. It is both a culmination of FromSoftware’s previous work and an innovative step forward in the gaming industry. The game’s success is a testament to the unparalleled passion put into it and the genius of the entire FromSoftware team. “Elden Ring” catapulted FromSoftware into the public eye in an unprecedented manner and is a gleaming example of what AAA titles should aspire to be, and with a DLC in development, the game’s mountainous success over the past year does not seem to be slowing down any time soon.