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Elden Ring odds and ends and the nature of spoilers

Posted on June 15, 2022 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Before Elden Ring came out, there was a discussion on various sites about spoilers. What is one and what isn’t. Most sites came down to, “You have to know what is a spoiler for you” about which I agree. However. I find it humorous, specifically in terms of FromSoft games that many games sites don’t consider anything shown in the CNT to be a spoiler.

I get it. The games are so dense and crammed with things to do. The idea that anything in the first ten hours is spoilery seems a bit precious. But to say that nothing in the first two areas should be deemed spoilers doesn’t sit well with me.

There was a mini-kerfuffle about a Game Informer video, featuring Dan Tack, their resident Souls guy (well, at least he was. He’s since left to work for Bandai Namco). I’ve included it in this post. GI was chosen as the official, uh, games site? Cover story? Something like that for Elden Ring. They were given a lot of information that other sites didn’t get.

I had no issue with that. My M.O. for deciding what I wanted to see was that I watched all the trailers. I watched journalists play the closed beta and the CNT. That was in the first area only and I made my peace with knowing things from that area. Even with that, they were carefully penned into certain areas. It wasn’t as if they could truly roam everywhere; you could see the fog walls where they couldn’t go.

When the aforementioned Game Informer video came out, I watched the first ten minutes before quietly shutting it down. He was showing then-never-seen-before footage of Castle Morne and the Academy of Raya Lucaria. I don’t think I even got to that point before nope-ing out of the video.

Here’s my line when it comes to spoilers. I will watch official trailers. I was fine with the CNT and the hoopla surrounding that. Anything other than that, no. When Elden Ring came out, my fave channels did let’s plays of it, of course. And they all said there were no story spoilers, meaning they went and explored the worlds without going into the legacy dungeons.

I was not fine with that because one of the joys in a From game is exploring the worlds. In the past, I didn’t even watch the trailers because they like to stuff them full of bosses. Ian argues that you can’t tell what’s going on with the bosses from the trailers, which is fair. My argument was that I didn’t even want to know they existed. Which I also think is fair.

Waiting in breathless anticipation with Sekiro pre-loaded

Posted on March 22, 2019 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which hereafter shall be known as Sekiro because that’s what it was intended to be called until Activision shoved its nose into the–I’ll get to that in a bit–is coming out tomorrow (or today by the time you read this). Or rather, tonight since it’s coming out at midnight EDT (are we DT or ST now?) which means 11 p.m. here. I had to uninstall Dark Souls: Remastered (the current DS game I’m replaying) to make room for Sekiro, which I bought last night. Pre-ordered it. At full AAA price.

If you know anything about me, you’ll know that I’m cheap as hell. I don’t mind waiting for a game to go on steep sale before buying it, which means I’m usually playing a game a year or two after it’s released. I bought the original Dark Souls a year and a half after it was released, the Prepare to Try edition, for ten bucks, I think. Maybe twenty. I did play Dark Souls III in real time, but that was because Ian bought it for me along with the season’s pass. After DSIII, I said that any future game by FromSoft was an auto pre-order for me, and this is also amazing because I am very against pre-orders for a few reasons.

One, before Steam instituted its return policy, you were SOL if you bought a game and didn’t want it for whatever reason. Now, if you buy a game after it’s released, then you can look at reviews and whatnots of it in order to get a better feel if it’s for you or not. With the sheer volume of games being released these days, it can be overwhelming if you’re not the type only to play, say, Collar Duty games. If you are the type to only play COD BlOP or whatever, then I can absolutely see pre-ordering the next iteration. I can also see paying full price because console games don’t go on sale nearly as often or as steeply as do PC games.

Two, I don’t like this move to making games a service thing rather than a one-time product buy. I hate that a game can be released broken with the idea that it’ll get patched in time. Honestly, I would rather wait until a game is fully functional before it’s released, even if it means the game is delayed months. I will say that waiting for Eitr to come out has tested that theory, though. I first heard about it…I want to say three years ago, but it might have been six months more or less. Anyhow, they are the exception, and I would rather the game come out later fully intact than to be released a broken mess.

In other words, I don’t want to reward companies for bad behavior. Continually pre-ordering games that turn out to be broken, incomplete, or just downright bad gives said companies no incentive to do better. If they’re going to make the same amount of money either way, why not just released a broken game? I’m not even blaming them because it makes business sense. I also know I can’t make other people wait to buy games, but I don’t want to play into that system.