FrоmSоftwаre's Game Design Changed Everything | Asmongold R͏e͏a͏c͏t͏s͏

From software's game design changed everything the whole thing from software's game design has had a undeniable and profound effect on not only the gaming Industries but the industry of Jacobs the people named Jacob such as myself with the massive success of Eldon ring from software has further established that a merciless uncompromising gameplay first design philosophy with little Hand-holding or assistance can also still be a massive success that millions of people will connect with at five on that screen I saw a ten I said I said what the who the [ __ ] who the [

__ ] gave this game a five if I realized it was five out of five please show the kid please show absolutely adore I am certainly one of those millions and while typically brilliant I also believe that from software's games are unfortunately far From perfect and Elden ring it's true that specific boss was such a piece of [ __ ] Royal ratatore you have to kill the four rats and then he comes down holy [ __ ] what a terrible boss sadly no exception and I want to talk about it but first I must warn

you that I will be spoiling the absolute Moonlight Greatsword out of all of these games so if you haven't experienced them for yourself particularly Elden ring I strongly suggest you hit pause on this Video and go Savor that experience first and come back in about 200 hours because it is quite possibly the greatest experience I have had is that how much time you put 200 hours oh [ __ ] yo this guy oh wow ours because it is quite possibly the greatest experience I have had playing a video game in my 28 years of holding

a player human ring top 10 greatest video games of all time it's not even a question Mad cats controller that isn't actually plugged in regardless I believe it is no exaggeration to say that in the world of video games from software has truly changed everything [Music] this is the first trailer Demon Souls was released in 2009 for the Playstation 3 and was nothing like other big games coming out at the time especially in 2009 in a year where games were becoming more and more cinematic And accessible and forgiving to a casual audience Demon Souls crawled

out of a wet Crypt and said I will kill you Demon Souls demon souls was a [ __ ] joke game it was super easy what I died once on flameworker and that was it like that [ __ ] was a joke the reason why it was good is because people don't want to sit around and watch a shittily [ __ ] written movie whenever they want to play a video game like yeah we'll sit through it for Final Fantasy 16 because it's Final Fantasy XV but I don't want to do this as a regular

thing like all the souls games that came after it is a very challenging and unforgiving video game a difficulty that fans of the series often lovingly refer to as hard but fair yep except for them except let's maybe settle on hard but mostly after joining fromsoft in 2004 and working as a coder on the armored Core Series hidetaka Miyazaki took over as director on a Struggling High fantasy project that was running into some serious issues during development because the project was already seen as a failure inside the studio Miyazaki was basically like I'm gonna take

this thing and I'm gonna take it in I'm gonna take it out back to the garage I'm gonna do some stuff to it inspired by fromsoft's own kingsfield series Miyazaki wanted to make a dark fantasy gameplay driven experience in collaboration with Sony Japan Studio a Challenging but rewarding experience that took gaming back to its Basics something he felt was dying out at the time during development remember those games I always you know I've never actually beaten the Castlevania the game I want to go back and play all of them because I love the aesthetic of

Castlevania I've never beaten one Miyazaki actually tried to keep the harsh difficulty aspect on the low from publisher Sony fearing that they might Want to change it for being a bit too extreme much like a DMX writing video game breaking down the basic gameplay of demon souls will effectively break down the basic gameplay for all of the souls games that followed because the very core design pillars have gone largely unchanged it starts with a character creator that before you say anything I know it gets better with time that lets you pick it gets really good

like for a 2009 character creator That's decent man starting class dictating your capabilities with different weapons or Magic Camera system for combat that improves on the Z targeting system that Ocarina of Time introduced back in uh oh that you can control the camera and attack people at the same time which was kind of a breakthrough in and of itself animation based combat that requires you to commit to each action and wait until The animation finishes before you can do something else along with managing how that action affects your stamina bar or in the case of

casting spells your magic bar but I didn't raise you to cast no spells this is a claymore household just like my father and his father before him a Dodge Ram I really hate how people act like magic is the way that smart people play these games because I've never seen a person more [ __ ] brain dead than the people that play Magic and from Software games because every game that they have that has magic is completely [ __ ] unbalanced there's like three spells that One-Shot bosses you don't even need to be alive and

then somebody like I mean it personally like not in game you have to be alive in game but I mean you could be dead in real life and all you have to do is hit one key and the boss dies contains invincibility frames or iframes meaning that if you time your Dodge Right nothing can possibly hurt you similar to action games like Devil May Cry corpse running where if you die you drop all the currency you've racked up from killing enemies and you got to make it back to that spot without dying otherwise you lose

it forever passive and non-passive online interaction where other players can leave helpful tips or uh whatever the opposite of a helpful tip is along with summoning or being summoned as a random cooperator to help Or invasions to either kill or kill you and you know the gameplay of each individual Souls game obviously goes a lot deeper than that with different complex systems and healing items and stupid convoluted [ __ ] like World tendency that you need a [ __ ] Master yeah yeah that's why they never did that again and I think they even changed

World tendency in the remake uh for the the PS5 so yeah obviously they got rid of it because it was stupid but I I Think really one of the reasons why I like Dark Souls games and from software games is because I don't have to sit through a bunch of [ __ ] menus cut scenes and [ __ ] like I want to play a game like whenever I start whenever I load up Super Mario World there's like that thing where everybody's there and there's like a few guys jumping around they're like Mario Mario you've

got to save the world and then you go save the world and it takes Like five minutes like you don't have to go through six levels of backstories of some [ __ ] persons writing oh this is like the whole like what is oh God bro where's the boss where's somebody over there no [ __ ] there's a cutscino's yeah it's a loading loadings for another cutscene oh [ __ ] right it's about the gameplay I love the gameplay games that's why like for example it was the game I recently played uh is it like

any game that has almost no dialogue and is Just gameplay I'm having fun now I'm not saying I I love Final Fantasy 16 it was great Hall's a torment yeah there's no [ __ ] it's like Hall's tournament you start the game all right there's the door well what are you waiting for go through the door and that's it there's not some four score and seven years ago that was the invasion of the skeletons and that is whenever the king well you have to Understand the King's father oh [ __ ] oh my God agree

to understand but the challenging and methodical combat system [ __ ] these mobs then the Beating Heart of all of these games a heart that's married to another heart exploration you know how in my Rockstar's game design video I Really harp on how those games constantly berate you with hyper-specific instructions and yellow map markers and assume you have the IQ Of a tiny baby rat yeah you probably I mean most people play those games I mean they're made for a large audience most games do like the exact polar opposite the tiny baby rat is now

actually a boss you have no idea what the [ __ ] is going on and what makes exploration so compelling in Demon Souls and really All Souls games is that is a true exploration that really makes you feel like you don't have an override it really makes you feel like an Explorer There is no detailed map that you can rely on and consult only your own sense of direction and understanding of a space this along with a strong Challenge and an actual fear but the corpse running system makes discoveries and victories feel that much more

mean meaningful and rewarding because you really feel like you the player actually charted and conquered a space and overcame a significant challenge instead of just watching well It's a it's they give the player agency over their own outcomes because whenever Victory is guaranteed Victory isn't earned so you don't really feel good for just follow the yellow Dot okay and I'm here all right okay so that's okay I did it wow congratulations you beat the game [ __ ] Wally do it in a cut scene the souls games have very few cut scenes or long unskippable

passages of dialogue by NPCs or RPG conversation trees where your choice actually doesn't really matter instead the story is discovered and slowly unraveled by the player through observing their environment and reading item descriptions and inevitably watching vati videos you know it reminds me remember whenever I thought that we were going to get DLC for uh Demon Souls for the PS5 remember whenever I thought that yeah those are the good days man those Are the good days videos because I don't understand any of this so you're saying the rat was like a king at some point

or I appreciate miyazaki's approach to storytelling though because it's very unique to the medium of video games and was actually inspired by his real life experience of reading English language sci-fi and fantasy books as a kid that he couldn't fully understand but would fill in the gaps using his imagination the story is So much more about the general mood and atmosphere and feeling of exploring a place rather than scripted plot points or set pieces the Innovative online elements of summoning random strangers to help you out was actually inspired by miyazaki's real life as well or

after his car was trapped in snow on a hill a random group of strangers showed up and helped push the car out of the snow and then mysteriously drifted off into the night like ghosts drifting in and out of His world at a spontaneous and serendipitous interactions are what people remember because if something is programmed to occur and you know it's going to occur it doesn't feel the same it doesn't feel good because sometimes you'll have like Invaders that do crazy things sometimes you'll have Malcolm Reynolds who gets into your game and you actually have

to restart the whole game because you Picked up one of his corrupted file things you probably logged your IP address uh sometimes you'll have you know a guy who's even dumber than you are and you can kill him like it's everything is exciting because you don't know what's going to happen and it's truly random I think it's kind of um like Eldon ring had a very I still don't know if it was the right decision to can't you I'm pretty sure you're not able to by Default invade players unless they have another player with them

unless that player opts into being solo invaded I'm trying I I it was a long time ago so I don't really remember correct yes like I don't know if that was the right decision or not I I don't know I still have to think about it I kind of like I understand it but maybe they should have changed it later on you have to enable through an item PP Yeah and it's like yeah yeah yeah fully frame Pace 30 frames per second yeah these games also have some technical issues Demon Souls was not an immediate

success Sony decided to not publish it in North America after feeling pretty negatively about it before its release during the Tokyo game show in 2008 Sony president shui Yoshida played it for two hours couldn't get past the starting area and then stopped playing and said this is an unbelievably Bad video game this is way is that true it's got to be [ __ ] right it's true no way what the [ __ ] oh my God that just makes me appreciate the you know the Devil May Cry guy from Final Fantasy 16 team where it's

like I remember I didn't know like oh how's this guy like okay the developer's gonna play the boss uh what the [ __ ] is this gonna be and then immediately the first Attack he perfect parries it and it's like oh okay never mind yeah he made okay yeah he made this game same guy that years later with Platinum bloodborne and that game was like way harder so spoiler alert from software changed everything yeah it wasn't until later in 2009 when Atlas would publish the game in North America that sales would slowly start to pick

up critics would start to take notice Western audiences generally loved it because Apparently we're all sick masochistic bastards and Gamespot even gave it their game of the year the same year that Uncharted 2 and Modern Warfare 2 came out but along with establishment I always say like I think Demon Souls it gets a great game but I feel like too many of the bosses were experimental like I I didn't think it was like a super insanely great game it was just like a very solid good game that's it pushing the core pillars of What a

Souls game would be it's important to talk about just How brave Miyazaki from software and Sony Japan Studio were for making such a different kind of game Demon Souls was a huge risk an imperfect weird brutal passion project that was expected by everyone to flop but refused to compromise fans smell like hours there brush it was so funny I remember we banned like 50 people I was laughing my ass off watching that stream on its design goals And eventually found an audience that really connected with it and two console Generations later an extremely faithful remake

was published by Sony as a launch title for the PlayStation 5. I'll say again I played the Remake on release and also in the remake you can get the penetrator's armor it's a change um the Remake was so good that it completely changed my outlook on if remakes are good for games or not I thought it was insanely good there you have it that's uh that's it that's the end the only game they ever made yep oh this one came on the PS2 I love Dark Souls but I also hated Dark Souls my brother Isaac

had played Dark Souls sometime after its release in 2011 and had repeatedly told me to play it I eventually finally tried it uh got past The tutorial section after a lot of struggling made it to Firelink Shrine wandered the wrong way into a graveyard full of skeletons as I know a lot of people did that graveyard eventually became a dark tunnel of skeletons that uh killed me a bunch of times and then I promptly said this game and stopped playing I can't remember I could see that that makes a lot of sense definitely yep went

the wrong way understandable exact reason but a year Or two later I tried the game again probably because of my brother's insistence once again the bastard he is and uh it was different this time it stuck not only did it stick but it seriously changed my life I know that sounds super I've had games like that too where like I play them like just a little bit and I [ __ ] hate them and then I come back way later on and I play them more and I actually appreciate them a lot an exception to

that was Dark Souls 2. I originally played it and I hated it and then I came back and I played the entire thing and uh I hated it even more whenever I finished it Sakira was like yeah Sakura was like that for me dramatic but like it completely changed the way I look at video games and why I like to play them and made me want to talk about them more and examine them and it absolutely ruined most of their video games for me because that's one fact for me it's like After I see how

fair that these games are whenever another game hits me by something that I'm not in oh I'm pissed I'm so [ __ ] mad because like I was out of this like what the [ __ ] are you talking about well how am I getting hit by this is [ __ ] once I finished it nothing could fill the giant rat boss in my heart now if I were to go into all of the reasons why Dark Souls is so Significant in gaming history we would be here all day and my editor would absolutely hate

that I am going to kill you but on my road to eventually talking about Elden ring I do need to touch on three crucial aspects the vastly improved on Demon Souls game design super exploration DX turbo Edition with freckles that's just flask I hardly know her as best as bro that grass [ __ ] this is so [ __ ] dumb bro like I hated that stupid ass grass Yes I can an atmosphere atmosphere you've been seen I feel you inside my screen I also didn't like that what I mean by super exploration DX turbo

Edition with focus is that Dark Souls fundamentally changed how level design and World design worked within this gameplay formula that Demon Souls established while demon holes over here had a hub world that let you freely fast travel to different zones of varying locales and Difficulty levels Dark Souls over here took a lot of its zones and stacked them on top of each other like a stack of paint I've had an unpopular take that's a lot of people disagree with but I think that Dark Souls 1 is pretty much an open world game pretty much it

is and that's because of how interconnected and well designed the map is pancakes and made sure that even if some pancakes have chocolate chips or some Pancakes have bananas that they all seamlessly flow into each other and make sense as one cohesive World in this beautiful interconnected short stack of pancakes the blight down is like a pancake made out of pigeons during the first half of the game you have no fast travel and all of the areas are connected in multiple complex ways like a maze so there's this palpable sense of danger and tension that

slowly Rises as you venture deeper and deeper into this Beautiful mysterious world that is very and it's also like That Dying you have to go all the way back that's also the issue is it it's like you didn't want to die not only because you die but also because then you have to go all the way back and you might not have like you know this is whenever you first start playing the game so like you don't have a lot of resources very clearly inspired By berserk which is amazing that tension is brilliantly paired with

the new edition of bonfires resting points they'll let you catch your breath for a second and spend your hard-earned currency from fighting enemies and bosses and leveling up your stat points and refilling your much needed Estus flask I love the pretty firm opinion that the healing mechanics found in Demon Souls and bloodborne and kind of Dark Souls 2 are vastly inferior to the Standard Estus flask system found in the other Souls games the I completely [ __ ] agree I don't think that they have made a single nice weapon Choice by the way I don't

think that they have made a single like the blood vials was garbage uh the [ __ ] life gems were garbage and the grass was garbage that's it blood vial farming sucked well it simultaneously sucked and didn't suck because whenever you were bad at the game it sucked but Whenever you got better because the the price of blood vials was the same it was like 200 or 400 per vial or something like that so at the very beginning like you know the one like the way I remember farming them is like you would kill like

those two big guys then like reset over and over to get 20. but like later on in the game you just always have 20. it's never a big deal because you have so many uh so many runes Estes has a specific amount of healing Charges that you can increase throughout the course of the game and the only way to refill your charges is by resting at a bonfire which also respawns all enemies in the area not only does this provide an extra incentive to seek out and discover bonfires and push on while exploring but it

solves the dumbass problem those other games have where your healing items are a finite currency that you can run out of meaning that if you're struggling with the game and you Keep dying and you will you will likely have to Halt progression just to go grind mobs of weaker enemies for healing items or currency that you can then spend on healing items and not leveling up which feels so unnecessarily punishing in a game I completely agree I've always really really hated punishment mechanics like insult to injury mechanics you're having a bad day and then the

game decides to piss on you a little bit more And where enemies do this to you with the Estes you at least know that for the next bit you have a guaranteed specific amount and much like a survival horror game the goal is to get to the next area using as little Estes asbestos you can I think one of the greatest single improvements over demon holes over here is the atmosphere I will never forget how it felt to get lost in this world struggling my ah bulletaria versus uh [ __ ] like what would it

what was It a large wren I feel like Yeah The Dark Souls aesthetic is better yeah yeah I would say so definitely ass off through Undead Berg and Undead parish and finally being rewarded by finding that shortcut back to Firelink Shrine and hearing that comforting music creep in that that seriously changed the trajectory of my firstborn son's life he's getting into Brown now journeying all the way down I also think that by The way like Dark Souls the first half of Dark Souls 1 is one of the greatest gaming experiences of all time the second

half is good that's about it first the depth and then Blighttown and then finding the entrance that's a secret to the great hollow and making my way down that and finally ending up at Ash Lake gave me that I will forever cherish the inability to easily fast travel back up to Firelink Shrine after I journeyed all the way down there simultaneously had me terrified and also in complete awe the vertical scope of this world and there's so much of this game that you can just completely Miss from software it doesn't care if every player sees

all of the content that they made for this game and that makes finding the stuff that you do find feel that much more special and memorable well I remember like an Elven ring it's like so yeah there's this one area Um and so if you hit a wall there's like a treasure chest behind the wall but if you jump over the treasure chest and you hit another wall there's another invisible wall behind that invisible wall there's a third invisible wall and if you break through all three of these invisible walls there's like a whole new

Zone with like five bosses and like six quest lines and like all this other stuff and it's like you might not you might miss it It's just all smoke and mirrors and code and textures but the illusion that from software sells here is a powerful one except for some clearly unfinished areas towards the end of the game but those don't exist you made lost Islip Up Gas Light Gas Light Gas Light unlike I wish that they um like I don't think we've had a mod so far for Dark Souls 1 that's really redone lost eyes

with in a way that I think is uh true to form Dark Souls was a pretty instant success Critics loved it and the game reached a much larger audience right off the bat thanks to Bandai Namco publishing it all over the world on PS3 and Xbox 360 and PC with one of the most janky PC ports to ever exist shout out games for Windows Live R.I.P this also annoyingly led to so many industry heads resorting to the phrases it's like dark souls or this is the Dark Souls when in reality all they're trying to say

is that it's hard going to Arby's is like the Dark Souls of going to Carl's Jr oh it's actually true you ever get your change back from Arby's and it's the right amount you all ever have that happen I haven't I is very clearly inspired by French soccer and that game is undoubtedly the greatest metroidvania ever made I [ __ ] love Hollow Knight primarily because it perfected a design aspect from Dark Souls 1 that from software themselves kind of started to abandon With subsequent Souls games non-linear exploration shut up and Jakey attorneys at law

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use it to track our monthly spending and set budgets rocket money notifies us if we Exceed that budget along with showing our spend to earn ratio every month quarter or year also if you're like us and gonna turn 29 this year maybe you're starting to pay a little bit more attention to your credit score well rocket money alerts you of important changes to your score and also offers you Insight I don't even know I don't even think I have a credit score yeah I I've never had a credit I've never bought anything on credit ever

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have a credit card I don't have a car under my name I don't have a mortgage I don't have any of that Mobile bill I do have to pay a mobile bill Digimon World 2 that's a real Souls game I'm out of here Dark Souls 2 bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 all have much more straightforward progression paths than the first half of Dark Souls 1. and While a lot of areas in these games are technically connected and sometimes offer alternate paths the general World design is far less interesting from a exploration point of view don't

you think that Dark Souls won especially again the first half of Dark Souls 1 is better than any before and any after in terms of exploration and open-ended gameplay I do think it's the best these games are bad all of these games probably each deserve their own 40-minute Feature Presentation breaking them down but for the sake of what I want to get into today I'm just going to give you the SparkNotes version Dark Souls 2 dropped in 2014 and was received well and sold well it further grew the Souls game community and deepened combat systems

while adding stuff like power stances Miyazaki didn't direct this one and it does show the atmosphere of each Zone feels a bit random and unconnected from the overall world but the boss Fights and DLCs are great and the game enjoyed a large online community good bro that's the word like how does everybody seem for this [ __ ] boss fight like am I the only person that like whenever I see this [ __ ] like where the [ __ ] this is sword and how do I know that I'm avoiding it what the [ __

] is this like are you kidding me get the [ __ ] out of here they need to remake this game I think that Dark Souls 2 can be really good because it has like that Sense of it's like the most there's like a certain level of like it's compelling in a way I don't know what it is about it but it's thematic yeah it is charm yeah I wish they would remake the game and actually make it good large online community for [ __ ] like PVP bloodborne was developed alongside Dark Souls 2 and

was released exclusively for the PS4 in 2015 and I used money I like that isn't that funny that's so funny Yeah from a car accident to buy a PS4 and bloodborne instead of paying my rent and contrary to what my financial advisors might be saying and Logan Roy looking to ask I'd say it was a wise investment directed by Miyazaki bloodborne felt like the true follow-up to Dark Souls 1. at least for people like me that just want to swing a big sword and [ __ ] Parry everything bye bye magic go back to [

__ ] Waverly Place faster combat that rewards Aggressive play intricate and varied weapon move sets an atmosphere that just drips out of your TV with such dedicated attention to detailing well I think that like a big thing is like there were a lot of new combat mechanics in uh in bloodborne like I I think there was a very it was you played bloodborne very differently than you played Dark Souls and I like that ballot in the art design Department in rats Dark Souls 3 dropped in 2016 and by This point the souls series was popping

oh yeah beloved by many people directed once again by Miyazaki DS3 did everything right on paper it kept some of the faster paced combat and [ __ ] up enemy designs and boss Transformations from bloodborne while also returning an expansive Armory of weapons and Magic lending to a buttload of different kinds of builds it has a large amount of fan service and callbacks to Dark Souls 1 and some of the hardest bosses seen in a Souls game yet it also just feels really really good to play it looks beautiful but also something about this formula

was starting to feel just a little bit stale don't get me wrong playing through Dark Souls 3 especially doing Co-op box I think that um personally I think Dark Souls 3 is a better game than Dark Souls 1. but I think that Dark Souls 1 is my favorite of the three like there's something about Dark Souls 1 that just had a little bit more texture to it that Made me enjoy it more but I would say that if you compare them like all things considered I feel like they're kind of equivalent us fights with my

brother was some of the most fun I've had in any of these games but that strong sense of exploration felt and yeah like let me let me give you guys a make sure you guys understand thinking to Dark Souls 1 is the best in the series is good thinking at Dark Souls 3 is the is the best in the series is also Good thinking that Dark Souls 2 is the best in a series that's a wrong opinion in your band okay the Dark Souls series had completely shaken the game industry and clearly inspired other developers

to change how their games were designed and played but playing Dark Souls 3 felt a bit like listening to from software's Greatest Hits versus hearing the band's new album that would maybe take them someplace new little did I I actually don't agree with That I actually think that Dark Souls 3 yes it did have a call back to the Asylum Demon that's definitely true but it also I mean keep in mind the Asylum Demon was a call back to the uh the demon Vanguard uh which was the the first boss in uh the Demon Souls

cut scene or the Demon Souls uh like uh Prelude right and then you encounter it later on as you're going towards the adjudicator and then later in the series I don't know if you guys noticed this But uh the urge treaty Sentinels or not yeah the archery Guardians the big tree guys do the thing those are Asylum demons yeah the avatars yeah there you go that's what they're called avatars yeah they're the same thing I think that yes they did have some Greatest Hits call backs but I never felt like it was overbearing to the

extent that it was like weird and I think that some of the callbacks that they had right Because like the nameless King is supposed to be like Gwen's first born son and it's like there's like a whole War behind that a lot of the callbacks to Dark Souls 1 are way more esoteric like these are things that are you're not even gonna know this unless you watch a 40 minute video about it so I think that yes of course they reuse some NPCs and some bosses but I think you can apply all of that to

Elven ring too and I don't think that it took away from the Game at all I know from software was in the studio working on their in rainbows as in the album in rainbows by Radiohead as in radiohead's best album has an element rate oh [ __ ] it's so weird some of you might be wondering why did it take you when I watched it like 2018 or something like that 2019 and then finally it was so crazy to think eldoran came out three years later So long to make a video on Eldon Rick and

I have two answers for you a last year I was very busy working on an album called romco shout out jkmerch.com and B this game is just too damn big and felt too daunting to dissect and talk about and I also just wanted to keep playing it but I feel like I'm finally ready to get into it with my support group that's you this is you this is all of you where do I even begin though Elden ring isn't Perfect but that's also what makes it so compelling it's not properly balanced I mean none of

these games are they never have been fromsoft has pretty much they have never been balance please thank you thank these games have always been clown shows there have always been op items like it's like people say sakiro all right you ever use the Mortal blade oh yeah yeah it's it's real [ __ ] challenging your favorites when it comes to certain Weapons and Buffs and spells you can absolutely break these games in half if you really want to but the sheer depth of content that Elden Rings slowly unveils to you during your 200 or so

hours of playing it the childhood fantasy of exploring a Fantastical magical world filled with swords and beasts and you guessed it rats is fully manifested in a way that knows no contemporary there is no other Elden ring than Elden ring this isn't just no It's yeah that's actually true yeah very good point the Dark Souls of Dark Souls this is the Dark Souls of breath of the wild this is the Dark Souls of Red Dead Redemption 2. if you took a time machine back to 2003 and showed my wooden sword in the backyard swinging ass

that this is what was coming in the future I would have shot you in the head and called the cops Elden ring is truly the adventure yo y'all remember that one clip when McConnell got knocked off the [ __ ] Bridge holy [ __ ] that was a good one truly the adventure of a lifetime but because I've already spent so much time talking about the core design pillars that all of these games share I want to instead focus on certain pillars that Elden ring innovates on or potentially fails to innovate on exploration and scale

Dungeons and Dragons starring Chris Pine and difficulty and Accessibility where Dark Souls 1's world is like a short stack of pancakes all connected Elven Rings world is like a giant stack of pancakes and you took all those pancakes and you spread them out across a giant table and most of the pancakes are touching each other and some of the pancakes have other pancakes hiding underneath them and other pancakes might transport you to barred pancakes [ __ ] up ways and some of Pancakes are on fire and make you feel Fear I don't want to be

in this Denny's anymore Miyazaki has stated that Elden ring is the closest thing to his ideal game that he would personally like to play and they go that's why they stopped that's why I don't know like I don't know if they're gonna make an Elven ring too you know what I mean I feel like and I bet the guys at from softer probably know this they're like man this one was really good Yeah I don't know if we can do this again going open world enriches this ideal experience trying to achieve a game where if

you saw something over there you could actually go over there a game that isn't open world just to be in the same category as some bloated Ubisoft [ __ ] but a game that's open world because it needs to be in order to fully capture the fantasy of being an adventurer in a giant World riding Across the vast landscape on your trusty Steve you first need to have that vast landscape to really nail that feeling Elden ring was inspired by breath of the wild and it very clearly shows because like breath of the wild Elden

ring knows and expects that your curiosity will naturally lead you to finding interesting things there doesn't need to be an overwhelming list of things to check off or obvious map markers going over here Go over here you have to go over to here and then click the special item okay good job that's number one of 443 if you do all of them you get an achievement it's [ __ ] over here because that would totally Rob the player of a true sense of mystery and Discovery when exploring this massive World Elven ring is very okay

with hiding its hand this is what the map looks like when you start the game and this is what it looks like when you finish the game and these Are the pancakes that are cooking underneath the entire time having a chest throw a smoke grenade at you in the starting area and being transported and waking up in one of the most giant late game areas and checking the map and seeing it zoom out like that was an experience I will never forget yeah those [ __ ] badass more behind the lands between is so rich

in detail and Intrigue miyazaki's style of Storytelling through gameplay combined With the Bible of world history that George RR Martin developed for this game will leave an MF feeling like goddamn Amy Adams as in downright Enchanted I know I haven't mentioned sekideo once in this video because it's I I do feel like as I said I think that Elden ring there are some people that you know they think that it makes their personality more interesting to talk about why Elden ring isn't a perfect and amazing uh I'm not one of those people I think it's

perfect And amazing oh not perfect but it's good enough that it's pretty much perfect yeah that's it I do think however if you want to talk about a perfect game sakiro is a perfect game there's nothing about sakiro that's wrong it is a game that is like you know Elden Rings this big Sakura was this big but this is really good Technically not a Souls game but it was a crucial stepping stone towards Elden Ring's development the addition of a dedicated jump button may sound like a simple thing but it completely changes combat in the

way you navigate this world exploring the lands between over like 200 hours rivaled the experience I had exploring the first half of Dark Souls 1. they both hit really hard but I think that if I had like the thing is for me like obviously Dark Souls 1 Exploration was a lot different but I think that if I had started playing Elden ring first and then I had done Dark Souls I would have felt the opposite where like Elden ring had that same level of like massive large-scale exploration that it's like you just accidentally find a

massive area for different reasons the first half of Dark Souls 1 hits hard because of a lack of a fast travel safety net meaning you become very intimate with your Surroundings in the world design nearly suffocates you with its complexity it suffocates in a good way Elden ring hits hard not only because it marks the return of multiple areas connecting to each other with a very non-linear path of progression but because of just the sheer scale of the world but because the sheer scale and Intrigue of always wanting to see what's around the next corner

is such a big part of this experience much like breath of the wild The game won't ever hit quite as hard on subsequent playthroughs because that main draw of decision yeah I mean you already export everything that's fine though and it's like I remember I I do remember remember whenever McConnell and I did the play through the the co-op play through and we were doing the playthrough and he was showing me all the other areas in Stormville castle that I missed dude I will never [ __ ] forget that That was such a badass [

__ ] stream because it was like one of those things where like I thought I knew everything about the game and then he showed me like oh wow there's like this whole area with like a crucible night another one that I think the Scions there there's like godric at the bottom or not Godwin at the bottom and like you you oh my [ __ ] God it was so good Discovery is no longer there this doesn't mean you shouldn't play multiple Playthroughs of this game because oh my God weapons and spells and armored sets in

ashes of war and so many summoning salt videos quest lines that you can super easily Miss and you will because they're super convoluted and hard to follow you should definitely play the game a second time but I will say that on my second playthrough I definitely wasn't as eager to revisit all of the content once I knew what was exactly around every corner Elden yeah I think Elven ring is like it does an amazing job at a first playthrough but I don't think that it has the same replay value as dark souls or Dark Souls

3. ring has a massive amount of unique and amazing content to experience but there's also some super not amazing content in there too and Joseph Anderson's review I completely agree I completely [ __ ] agree there's some real [ __ ] in this game and it some of it is just wrong There's also some super not amazing content in there too and Joseph Anderson's review which is great by the way he talks about how amazing his first fight with a dragon was and I completely agree that first encounter with the dragon and that big ass

wet field or whatever and he's like breaking all of the physics objects it's amazing it's such an awesome gameplay moment that is just naturally experienced and you're exploring the world but this was insane And like the fact that you did this in like a couple of hours of starting the game was even more insane watching this makes me want to go back and play the convergence mod I downloaded it and everything I just haven't played it yet I also agree with Joseph's point that because the game ends up having like a billion other dragons that

you find there's seriously so many dragons and they all mostly have the same moveset it kind of takes away I think there's like Two different dragon types there's like the dragons with two wings and a dragons with like four or six wings of that first experience it doesn't mean that first experience is invalidated or made bad but more so it's like if you ate pizza for dinner every night and eventually you were like all right I don't really want to eat dragon pizza anymore can we can we have like rat Pizza mom the same goes

for a lot of Elden Rings catacombs we used to have Pepperoni pizza every [ __ ] day at school every [ __ ] day at school dungeons similar to The Chalice dungeons in bloodborne or the shrines in breath of the wild the quality of experience you might have in one of these copy paste Interiors is a bit of a dice roll in all of the souls games you never know exactly what items you're gonna find as rewards while exploring but the areas and bosses are usually so interesting to Look at and explore that the real

reward is really just getting to experience that area and fight that cool boss so even if the road yeah I remember whenever I fought that boss on the stream and I had a broken weapon and I killed them in one try board is something you're never gonna use like another [ __ ] spell you don't really regret doing it because it was a really cool experience the same does not apply to Elden ring all of these Catacombs are not created equally some will have a cool and unique boss and a really useful piece of Loot

and others will have a boss you've already seen a bunch of times this is an item that you will forget about the second you leave the catacomb funny enough this is actually a problem that's remedied by a second playthrough because if you have a Wiki open you can just avoid doing all the dungeons that aren't worth it but on a first playthrough the one that's the Best and the most memorable you don't know what all of these have so if you're like me you're probably you have to do all of them yeah you you have

to do every single one if it's there you have to do it probably going to do all of them and get pretty burnt out on fighting the same little statue [ __ ] and these pieces of [ __ ] for the most part the enemy and boss variety on display and Elden ring will blow your back out most of the time but seeing Unique experiences that you've cherished like the reveal and spectacle of fighting astel Natural Born of the Void get copy pasted into a separate dungeon or fighting a godskin [ __ ] or both

of them for like the fifth time I think at least this one makes sense but there is some element he's right that there is an element of Dark Souls 2 boss design where it's the boss again there it is it's a bit disappointing the nice thing About Elden ring though is that you technically don't have to do most of this right if a boss is too hard or if an area is too annoying for you you have so much any other options of things to do and bosses to fight and places to see but this

also potentially leads to some issues with the game's design previous Souls games that had a more linear progression path could quickly halt your progress with a super tough boss and you would have to either grind enemy mobs For souls to level up or just slam your head against the wall until you hopefully eventually break through Elven ring being mostly non-linear actually remedies that problem and finally adds a sort of difficulty slider to the souls games if a boss I feel like in terms of difficulty sliders bloodborne and sakiro were kind of the hardest I would

say and then after that I'm not really sure what else I would go with because like it was harder to over level in those games than Any of the other ones giving you a swirly just go do something else maybe find a better weapon learn some new skills or spend time practicing your parries against weaker bosses I don't know there's a lot of stuff you could do then once you're better prepared head on back to that boss that was [ __ ] you up and say it's opposite day you slug huzzah that's pretty amazing right

this makes the game so much more accessible and less Intimidating to a new player that's yeah I think that's one of the big achievements like Elden ring does have a difficulty uh toggle like the game is not very hard and I actually think that Elden ring can be it can be simultaneously the hardest and the easiest game that they've made never been beaten to death by a rat before but this system of sort of choosing your own difficulty could also Potentially rob you of a compelling experience this game is so goddamn big that there's bound

to be stuff in the early areas that you won't find until way later in the game and when you do find it maybe it's a super awesome unique boss battle with like a really cool reward that you beat in like two hits in some cases this feels amazing it fully feeds into the power fantasy of wanting to make the biggest [ __ ] alive and can be super satisfying to just Totally fart on a boss that once had you breaking two by fours from Menards over your leg but sometimes you can feel underwhelming and disappointing

I think the fact that the game doesn't have level scaling for enemies is much better than an alternative where it did because levels yeah I think that yeah the game does not need level scaling this is not a live service like simultaneous online game yeah it doesn't not need that scaling can often make a game World feel Pretty artificial and your progression feel pretty meaningless but I do think there's a world where you could have a bit of both I think if you visit areas in the game that you're very obviously over leveled for the

game could maybe flash a little prompt that says hey do you want to make this fight scale to your level to maybe make it a bit more satisfying and maybe we give you extra runes as a reward for upping the difficulty I would love that Mark Brown Of game maker stool like theoretically right how would this work in reality is it like there'd be a fog wall and then next to the fog wall there would be like an a device then maybe you could interact with and then the interaction could change the difficulty of the

boss fight I don't know I can see what he's saying but I don't know if the game needs something like that bonfire Aesthetics yeah okay it makes a great point in his video About how hollow Knight actually changes the layout of early areas and UPS the difficulty of enemies to keep things more challenging interesting later in the game and I think that's a great example of something that Elden ring could have potentially done as well speaking of roon rewards for defeating enemies holy [ __ ] they are all over the place in this game and

make like zero [ __ ] sense donkey talks about this in his Elden ring video and I Wholeheartedly agree like the difficulty of an enemy does not correlate to how much money you get for defeating them it's honestly ridiculous in a lot of cases Also let's talk about respecting stat points once you defeat ranala at the Wizard Academy Raya lucaria you unlock a way to use specific larval tier items to reallocate all of the stat points that you've spent money on and this is amazing this means that if you find a weapon or spell that

you really [ __ ] with but don't have the stats for I'm gonna give an unpopular opinion I wish that you didn't have to upgrade weapons this that's right here's why I don't want to use the same weapon through the entire playthrough but when my weapon is the best weapon because it's the strongest it makes me not want to try new weapons that I get because I know that it will Be a de facto downgrade because it's not upgraded I'm fine guys I'm fine with it being a mod many mods have this feature I'm not

saying it has to be implemented into the base game but this is what I like retool your character to be able to use them and switch up your play style and experience one of the many amazing builds that you can do in this game so why the [ __ ] can't you do the same thing with weapons Elden ring offers no way of Transferring or respecting weapons so now he's going to complain about the same thing I am yes see exactly it's so true so true it's only wrong because of limited resource yeah but like

uh like I I think you're a limited resource argument goes out the window whenever you have ball bearing books right and upgrades from one weapon to another And it makes zero fifteen cents to me you find so many [ __ ] cool weapons in this game and it is a total pain in the ass to make switching to them it's actually violent yes you can find the smithing bells that let you buy an unlimited amount of upgrade resources from the merchant but hey what if you don't find some of those bells on your first playthrough

where you're not looking stuff up and B I don't understand what the harm would be in Letting you get back some of your upgrade resources from a weapon if it meant that that weapon went back to its base level right you would be so much yeah I mean I get it I think that like look I get why they don't have you do it I understand it but I also really appreciate the mods and it's not the thing is people say it's too casual uh-uh brother ah brother it's the opposite It said I want to

challenge myself with different types of techniques rather than using the exact same one for the entire game much more excited to find [ __ ] even if it's something out of your typical wheelhouse the Resident Evil 4 remake which is fantastic by the way I talk about it on my second Channel Jaquan the Jeep will like subscribe rate comment five stars lets you sell weapons you've upgraded back to the merchant and you Get most of the money that you've put into upgrading that weapon which is amazing so why can't Elden ring have the same thing

another thing that can feel sorry I think the reason why they do it is because they want people to go through subsequent playthroughs with different weapons and they want to have a sense of uh you know investment into a certain type of character and it's a single player game so I can understand that like again like the reason I want This and like as I said I'm totally fine with this just being a mod but I wish that it was like that because it would give me more ways to play the game that's all that's

backwards and outdated are the NPC side quests and how you progress them these games have always had super convoluted NPC side quests and I know it's partly because Miyazaki knows that with the internet everyone's gonna get Together and figure it out so you can afford to make it complicated whatever I get that but I still think that some of these more basic ones should be doable by just using your common sense it's one thing to have NPCs not progress their dialogue or do something until you go rest or leave the area when it's a smaller

more linear game but it's an entirely different thing to have that same [ __ ] in a massive open world game where people are supposed to move Around from place to place but will never do it while you're watching them so you gotta go rest at a bonfire and then wait no wait and again keep in mind none of this matters because people the game is so good that people will look it up ahead of time and figure it out anyway because they will seek out the content because of the quality of the game and

that's why again Graphics who gives a [ __ ] uh you know The story who [ __ ] knows but the gameplay that's what matters messed up you gotta rest again to load the guy in because it's not night time if you rested and then died and then came back like what the [ __ ] yeah I went where the [ __ ] told me to why does this require so many other extra unseen steps I only [ __ ] and moan about this because the writing and voice acting in this game is so so

good like so heartbreakingly good and because the Storytelling and the Lord bits are so few and far between you'll [ __ ] chase after whatever scraps you can find exactly but at the end of the day I make these videos to criticize the things that I love video games I love them so so so very much and I like really I mean I think often often whenever people give feedback and this is the same thing with kind of like what I'm saying is that maybe like the players Solutions aren't Necessarily the best solution for the

game but I think giving feedback to developers so they can understand Mike is a good developer will understand not what the player wants but what they need right and this is something that World of Warcraft used to do very well and it's something that good game developers with insight into their games are able to discern and figure out like Jeff Kaplan for example said that You can't rely on the players to provide you with a solution but that you can sure as hell rely on them to provide you with a problem or tell you if

there's a problem of Eldon ring more than most other video games I am so eternally grateful to be alive in the same timeline that from software is cranking out games of this quality Elden ring is not only a continuation of the Dark Souls franchise it is an evolution of from software's Trailblazing game design a design that I think defined the last 10 years of gaming and with Elden ring could very well Define the next 10 Years of Gaming as well a massive Journey with some of the most beautiful Vistas I've seen well I think that

it's also it's also a return to form because a lot of video games used to play like this minimal [ __ ] all gameplay and then things started to change in like the PS3 era I would say and they Became much more narrative experiences yeah Zelda Zelda is a great example link go to the castle there's your uncle get the sword okay we'll go get them what do you what the [ __ ] are you doing here let's go you know that's it Windows Vista and some of the most challenging grueling bosses that I've Taken

on and overcome since Windows Vista thank you to hitetakamiyazaki and from software for taking a chance with Demon Souls thank you for making some of my favorite games ever made and thank you for watching this video what a nice feeling what a nice guy wow why does it act like that okay uh yeah I'm so glad that I watched this I I know I've wanted to watch this for a while I remember when it came out And I was like oh [ __ ] I gotta watch this um this is such a good video I

I what a what a great video I I was very very like I mean as I said I was so glad he brought up the weapon thing the enchants and all that I I I I love these games I love the content and I think again it's a return to form to what gaming really used to be right it isn't some cinematic experience that's meant for C grade writers that couldn't make it into Hollywood to still have their stories be told it's just solid good gameplay against hard bosses with the filling combat that's it