FromSoft revealed more about Elden Ring at the Taipei Game Show. More gameplay footage and an interview with Yashiro Kitao, a producer with FromSoft. He talked about quite a bit, including that the game should take 30 hours for the main storyline. That bit made me laugh out loud because that’s ridiculous. I feel like he was just throwing a number out to appease the fans (this was a question asked by a fan) and giving a number that was as minimal as possible. It’s meaningless, really, in a open world game because very few people just inhaled the main storyline without doing the side quests. That’s the whole point of the open world! To explore and wander, not carrying about the main story.
One interesting thing in the interview was that Yashiro Kitao kept emphasizing that FromSoft didn’t want players to stress out so they added things to ease that stress. It’s interesting because they’ve never shown any interest in adjusting difficulty before. Sexiro was the last game they released and that was hard as nails. I felt railroaded into playing a certain way, which I did not appreciate. One of the things I love about Dark Souls games is that I can make my character any way I want her. Granted, I’m always a strengthcaster these days, but I could be a dex build or a pure faith build if I want. In Sexiro, I could only be, well, Sekiro. It was a pure action game with no leveling up. That’s not exactly true. You could level up, but not in any one category. You had to get four prayer beads from beating mini-bosses and then you level up your…I want to say strength nope. It adds 10% to Vitality and Posture. It’s the memories from beating proper bosses that adds to your strength. Or something like that.
I used to say that if Bloodborne was on PC, I would play it more. That’s true. I love the gothic aesthetic, moody, brooding, and dripping with atmosphere. But, I did not enjoy the combat as much as in the Dark Souls series because I have terrible reactions and you can’t use a shield in BB. Again, one of the things I love about the Dark Souls games is that I can customize myself however I want. It’s highly versatile as opposed to BB and Sekiro. Sekiro is extremely restrictive whereas BB is somewhere in the middle. It’s not as proscriptive as Sekiro, but it’s certainly not as wide-open as Dark Souls.