I finished my second playthrough of Elden Ring yesterday. FromSoft, of course. I will get to that in a second and talk about getting the ‘bad’ ending, but first, I want to muse about some other things. I suck at these games. I have not hidden that–hell, no. In fact, I’m quite open about the fact that I suck at these games. As I have said before, I’m not shy about highlighting my deficits. Ian insists that I’m good at these games, but he is wrong. Or rather, he is only half-right.
If you want to talk about the gen pop, I am better than average at these games. Duh. Because I have played them for the past ten years, I have gotten a handle on the basics, which means I know how to get through a game.
When an open world Dark Souls was announced (the sum-up of Elden Ring before it was released), I was concerned. I don’t like open world games in general because they’re too much for me. Too much what? I hear you ask. Too much everything. Too much open, too much world. Too many questlines and too many collectibles. I’m a completionist with OCD tendencies, so it ends up being uncomfortable for me. While I logically know that I don’t *have* to do everything, I feel bad if I don’t.
Anyway. If you want to talk about FromSoft fans, I’m on the mediocre-to-poor side. I just watched a video by someone who had many negatives to say about Elden Ring (and he has many videos on the past From games as he loves them), and he trotted out that the past games were difficult, but fair. He was evaluating the bosses of Elden Ring, thus the comparison. I snorted out loud because there are plenty of bosses in the past that I thought were highly unfair. He mentioned Midir as one of the hardest bosses in the past, whereas I would say he’s not hard, per se, but just disgustingly tedious.
Also, he’s coming from a very narrow point of view. This is one of the problems with listening to FromSoft fans. We all only have our own viewpoint, of course, but they can’t even try to expand their mind a bit and see that maybe what they find ‘difficult but fair’ can be not fair at all for other people.
I have banged on forever about how frustrating I find the games and how even more frustrating I find other fans saying how the games aren’t that hard, anyway. I feel like every boss I’ve beaten is earned with blood, sweat, and tears, and I’m not always sure it’s worth it. For example, I will never play Sekiro again. I brute-forced my way through it and felt a transcendental high in beating the final boss, but any time I go back to it, I just remember how much I hate the actual combat. Which is a lot. My niece’s husband, when I told him I brute-forced my way through the game, “I didn’t think it was possible to do that.” Me: “Oh, it’s possible, but it’s not any fun at all.”
I felt similarly in Bloodborne, though I would play it again if it were on the PC. In the video I mentioned, he talked about the triumph we feel beating bosses such as Kos and how it would have been diminished if there had been a spirit summons system back then.
First of all, I summoned for three of the five bosses in the DLC of Bloodborne because I was so done with the game by then (playing the whole thing in one go) and just wanted it to be over. So I summoned for Orphan of Kos (two summons) and felt no guilt at all.
He did have a good point that having a spirit summons option in Elden Ring made it hard to fight the bosses solo, but I think he has cause and effect mixed up. Or at least that he was looking at the outcome (using spirit summons makes it harder for the true hardcore fan) and working backwards from it (therefore, it should not have been included in the game), whereas I look at it the other way around. The bosses were made with the spirit summons system in mind, therefore, having a spirit summon is the default.
I want to emphasize that I agree having a spirit summon system makes the bosses more manageable. And, I understand that not using the system may make the bosses much harder to truly solo. But, if you’re a real man, then that’s what you do, right? That is said very sarcastically, by the way.
He’s almost saying the unspoken out loud. He likes the elitism of the former games and the fact that he can feel superior because he soloed them all. I get it. I will admit to the same feeling of superiority for being able to solo all the Dark Souls games, even as terrible a player as I am. I feel as if I earned some kind of badge for being that tough, especially with my terrible reflexes, spatial issues, and a bunch of other flaws that makes these games difficult for me.
FromSoft made it very clear that they wanted this game to be more accessible to more people. They didn’t want to have different modes, though, because they wanted the base experience to be the same. Instead, they encouraged other ways of making the games easier for some people, including the dreaded spirit summoning system, that apparently, many hardcore fans objected to.
The content creator I mentioned shared his worry that FromSoft was betraying their original intent. That’s not how he put it, but that was the underlying message. But, and I say this with respect, they’re allowed to change. They’re allowed to grow. It’s been over a decade since they released Demon’s Souls (RKG has released the entire season of Demon’s Souls remake episodes for the top two tiers of Patreon, which have been everything I’m looking for in the series. Trailer included in this post), and if they have different goals for their games, that’s completely fine.
Also, it’s in FromSoft’s best interest to get their games out to as many people as possible. This has been their most successful (and probably most finished) game to date. They met their stated goal to bring this game to more people.
Which is their right! Me, personally, I had already shed the harmful ‘git gud/must solo) mentality that permeates the hardcore FromSoft community. By the way, this same content creator stated that he believed once the hype died down and there was no longer any secrets to find, the general consensus about Elden Ring would be that it’s not a good game (yes, I’m paraphrasing). I had to laugh because it was so very ‘white dude’ of him. “I have this opinion about a thing and it’s the common opinion.” Yes, we all think we’re right, but when you’re privileged in many ways, you think this even more so.
Oh dang. How did I get here? I was going to talk about finishing my second playthrough and the bad ending. Which, by the way, I actually like better than the good ending I got the first time through. Like, a lot more. I like the journey to get the good ending better, but the bad ending is so fucking cool.
I’ll have to talk about that later, though, because I’m ready to wrap this up. Sorry for that bait-and-switch, but that’s how it goes.