I’ve written quite a few posts about the things that frustrate me about Elden Ring. I write those from a place of love because, yes, I love this game, and I want it to be better. But, bottom line, I love this game. I love it like I haven’t loved a game in quite some time. Probably since Dark Souls III, if I am to be honest. Well, there was Night in the Woods by Infinite Fall, but that’s a whole different kind of game.
I am obsessed with the game. I’ve put in roughly 130 hours in a month (4+ hours a day). Every time I start a session, no matter how long I intend it to be, it goes for hours. Even if I think I’m only going to do one thing, it doesn’t matter. I’ll still be at it two hours later.
From Soft has always been good at drawing me in. I tend to think of their games as divisive. You either love them or you hate them. There is little in-between. The first time I played Dark Souls, I really struggled with it. It took me 150 hours to beat the game. That’s more than I’ve played Elden Ring so far. And the original DS is tiny in comparison to ER. I hated the game with all my heart–and yet, I couldn’t stop playing it. That’s how it is with From games and me. Even if I’m raging against the game, I’m obsessed with it.
When I first played Dark Souls, I made it to the Gaping Dragon. I was whittling away its health and got it down to a sliver when I stepped back into nothing. I was enraged. I threw the controller, quit the game, and refused to play it for a year. Then, the sequel was announced (I played the game way later after its release) and I decided to give it another try. I struggled my way through it and made it to the end. Ironically, the last boss was the easiest because I was a Pyro and he was weak to fire. Once I beat him, I sighed in relief and put the game in the finished column.
“There!” said I. “I never have to play that game again.”
I was so young and naïve then!
A decade later, I’ve played all the current From games except Demon’s Souls. If it ever comes to the PC, I will be all over it. I’ve only played Bloodborne and Sekiro nearly two times each, but I’ve played each Souls game dozens of times. I will be playing Elden Ring for the foreseeable future–I predict pouring a thousand hours into the game. It has brought a freshness to the open world concept that the gaming industry sorely needed.
I’ve written before how much I loathe most open world games, especially ones predicated on the Ubisoft model (and, by the way, fuck Ubisoft in general). Have a dozen or so different areas that have exactly the same content in it. A radio tower to climb. A camp to liberate. Collectibles that need collecting. Cringeworthy storylines that wring every ounce of pathos/bathos they can from extremely turgid prose. Lots of swearing. Carefully manufactured ‘edgy’ material that isn’t edgy at all.
Side note: This is something that drives me crazy. Material that wants to crow about how edgy it is, when it’s not at all. I used to go to gay bars when I was in my twenties. I hated it when groups of women would come in and giggle over how ‘bad’ and/or ‘daring’ they were being. Whether it was coyly tucking a dollar in the male dancer’s G-string or grinding against each other on the dance floor, they were painfully unaware of how rude they were being–and how out of place.
It’s the same with games. I can’t remember the last time I was genuinely shocked by something in a game. But that’s me in general. I’m very perceptive about people, so it’s rare that I’ll be shocked. It’s funny because I’m so used to it by now, it’s no big deal to me. But my brother is VERY impressed with my ability. He thinks I should be a psychologist (which is very sweet) because of my ability.
Wow. That’s me wandering very far from the main point of this post.
There is a lot of lore in this game. But like classic Souls, you have to dig deep for it. You need to read all the item descriptions and listen to ALL the dialogue. And there is a lot of it. In previous From games, there were a few NPC questlines, but most of them were two or three steps with very little dialogue. Plus a creepy laugh at the end of every line. The laugh is gone, thankfully. There are a couple dozen quests, some short, but most of them lengthy. There was one guy in the closed network test whom I never found. I knew the general area in which he was, but I could not find him. Honestly, I forgot about him until recently. I looked up what I needed to do and went through his whole questline in ten minutes.
I do like that you can pick up the questlines late, even if you missed them in the early days. There was one with Blaidd (wolf guy, BAE) in which you’re supposed to use a gesture with him in an early part of the game when you hear him howl. The problem is that I was in the middle of running from bears when I heard the howl, and I could not find him again. I tried. I really tried. Even knowing the general area he should be in did not allow me to find him. When I found out that he was perched ON TOP of a building, well, I didn’t feel that bad about missing him.
I was heartbroken, though, because I loved him from the trailers. I didn’t want to miss his questline, and I was afraid I had. Fortunately, I ran into Ranni and made progress in her questline–which is where Blaidd ends up. I talked to his spirit at the behest of Ranni, then ran into him in the wells. I have seen people with his armor, which makes me wonder if they’ve killed him because he hasn’t given it to me thus far.
I’m cleaning up another questline, one that is really interesting to me. Sellen the Sorceress. I ran into her in the beginning of the game (first twenty hours or so), and there was one thing to do with her mid-game, but then nothing. Until now, in the mid-to-late game. I have one more thing to do for her (at least! Who knows? Maybe there’s more), which is an unusual request. I really like that the NPC questlines are more complicated and involved than they have been in the past.
What else do I like? That the lore is a little less obtuse than before. I’m not saying it’s easy to find, but at least it’s there. It’s not just item description, though there is plenty of that as well. But there is a guy…uh…what’s his name? Gideon Ofnir. Yes, I looked it up because I was never going to remember it on my own. He’s the adopted father of Nepheli Loux (hey, boo, hey), and a real jerk. More to the point, he’s the keeper of the lore at the Roundtable Hold. If you talk to him, he’ll give you info on the different major bosses. It’s really handy, but he doesn’t feel as if he’s doing an info dump. Plus, he’s a jerk to Nepheli, which I hope gets resolved in a satisfactory way. It probably won’t, but I can hope.
I love that there is so much in this game. It’s always been the case that you can go as deep or as light into the lore as you wanted in a From game, which is no different here. You can go through the game, killing bosses, not caring at all about the lore. Go ahead! The game isn’t going to stop you from doing exactly that. If you want to know more, though, oh boy, are you in for a treat! I’ve pieced together some of it on my own, but I’m supplementing my knowledge with the collective info gathering of the community.
This is actually one of my favorite parts of the game–digging into the lore. It adds to the major boss fights to know why they are doing what they’re doing. It gives them more humanity and makes them more, not likeable or relatable, but understandable. Alan Rickman used to say about his characters that they weren’t villains–they just wanted certain things. I think the bosses of this game would say the same.
The bigger story isn’t that revolutionary. It’s firmly in the camp of the other games with light and dak, keeping the First Flame lit, etc. In this case, it’s becoming the Elden Lord. I can get lost for hours, just wandering around and soaking in the lore. Currently, I’m cleaning up some questlines, which is a nice way to take a break from the main story.
There’s a joke within the community that you have to look hard for the story–which is true ,but it makes it that much more worthwhile when you find it.