In yesterday’s post, I was talking about gate-keeping in gaming communities. Oh, not directly, but it was there. I was talking about the second series of Retry Elden Ring for RKG and how there is a small, but very vocal sub-section of the community who just want to bitch about how RORY IZ PLAYIN’ GAEM RONG!!?#$%! It’s in every community, I know, and it’s much less prevalent in this community than in any other I’ve dipped a toe in. And by this community, I mean the RKG community, not the FromSoft community at large. The latter is a toxic hellhole.
By the way. I woke up to a message from Ian that included the story-trailer for Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, one month before the release date. I will include it down below. And, man. I was so stoked and hyped. The first trailer dropped three months ago the day my personal tragedy happened (well, that day and the day after), so I was not in the headspace or the heartspace to appreciate it. Now, even though I am still dealing with the tragedy, I can fully appreciate the new trailer.
Which, by the way, is fucking fire. Both literally and figuratively. From does not miss when it comes to their trailers, and this is no exception. There are a million things to dissect. It says everything, and it says nothing at all. And, of course, taking it in tandem with the first means that we can just go off on it. The RKG Discord Elden Ring channel has been busy today in a way it hasn’t since the release of the last trailer.
I have two characters ready to go, one who is my first character and the other who is my wildly OP strength character. I will probably play the DLC with both, but it’s a question of successive or concurrent runs.
Anyway. Back to what I was musing about.
No. Wait. Can I just say that FromSoft’s trailers are just masterpieces. They say so much, and yet, they say nothing at all. Even having had played the base game several times for hundreds of hours, even having had watched the first trailer dozens of times as well, I still have little idea what the DLC is going to be about. I mean, I know the basics, of course (Mesmer, flames, etc.), but other than that, there is just so much room for speculation. And to notice details you hadn’t seen before.
The first time I watch a FromSoft trailer, I just soak in the general vibe. There is so much there, you need to let it wash over you. There is too much to see in each frame to take it all in at once. One thing about Miyazaki that I appreciate is that he tells the story his way. He does not care if you get it or not, or if you even see everything in his games or not. I’m not saying that as a negative, by the way. I’m saying it simply as a neutral observation. He trusts his players to find the secrets and the hidden areas, and with how thriving the community (FromSoft in general) is now, he’s not wrong.
Anyway, back to my rant. It bugs me that SOMEONE in RKG seems to listen to the minority of the community who are very vocal about How Things Should Be (when it comes to Rory and how he plays). He rationalizes that they’ve always had ridiculous rules for these series, but I think it’s time to let that all go. The one that really gets my goat is decreeing that Rory can’t use the spirit summons for the boss fights. Rory clearly isn’t on board with that, and it goes against the other thing they always say–which is that this is Rory’s playtrhough.
I get that Retry is meant to be hard (the series, I mean) for hard games, but I think that they can redefine what Retry is meant to be. Look. Rory died over five-hundred times in the first season. That’s more than any other series (in total). It’s not surprising because the game is HUGE. In the first Roundtable Hold, they each took a guess as to how many deaths they thought Rory would have. Only Gav went over a thousand whereas those of us in the community were laughing at them thinking it was so high to even guess nine hundred. Not because we think Rory is bad at the games, bdut because of how much game there is. Many people died to Malenia herself hundreds of times when doing it the ‘hard’ way. That means without a shield, naked, no levels, without a spirit summon, and with they, themselves, blindfolded.
The thing is, I watch the show because of the bants and beacuse I like to see what Rory is going to do. Yes, back in the beginning, it was fun and funny to watch him freak out against a hard boss and come up with wild ideas (“get the tape!”) to get through that fight. Now, however, I just don’t care about that. Maybe it’s beacuse of my own evolution concerning the games, but soloing the bosses is the LEAST interesting thing about the games.
I also find it a tad rich that they talk about how the difficulty of the bosses is so not important, and yet, they’re sticking to the idea that it shouldn’t be TOO easy for Rory. It feels like they are talking out of both sides of their mouths. I’ve been watching the boss episode and there is one that I can’t watch because of how much it annoys me.
I’m afraid it’s going to continue in the sceond season, especially because that vocal minority is so dang loud about their disapproval. It’s astonishing to me that they’re complaining about a show they don’t have to watch. One commenter posted on the bosses video that it was painful to watch. Then don’t watch! Revolutionary, I know. It’s such a dude thing, thinking that things have to be done exactly the way they do it , otherwise it is WRONG.
It’s been a thing in the Souls community in general, but I had thought it might calm down by now. Additionally, the complaints are often at odds with each other. When Rory does well, there are people complaining about him being too OP. When he’s struggling, they complain about him not min-maxing his build.
Seriously. I have the following complaints: he hasn’t chosen a legit built; he’s spreading his points too thin; he’s using magic at all; he’s not upgrading the stats needed to be more powerful in magic; he’s neglecting his vigor; and I could keep going. They just need to stop. And so do I. More in part three tomorrow.