Comparing Elden Ring's shallowness to other Open World games, like Zelda, Red Dead, and Horizon

Ive got over 330 hours into Elden Ring, but the more im playing the DLC the more I remember how shallow this world actually is. I just finished fighting Rellana in the DLC which was an epic fight but as am leaving her gorgeous castle, im brought back to the same dead world with no physics or life whatsoever. Like come on From, can you stop being a one trick pony and add some depth to your games. A damn stupid horse AI that can't react to the environment. Looking at comparison videos to Zelda and Red Dead is just comical how dated Froms games truly are.

I know Fromsoft copies a ton of things from Zelda games and a few others, but damn bro, please copy some depth next game, stop being such lazy devs. Put some Soul into your games.

I enjoy all those games.

I have much more play time in Horizon 5, and the open world is far from shallow.

RD1 was the most fun. :P

I think some slack needs to be given to FromSoftware when this was their first foreray into the open world format. Their previous games were brimming with "life" in their more linear worlds. FromSoft will definitely learn from this and make a future installment better, I would wager.

Zelda invented gaming.😏

Those games are great but I probably spent the most time in Elden Ring, and I haven't stopped playing. There's a lot to do, amazing area design with a lot of variety, a lot of build variety, and excellent combat.

The problem I have with Elden Ring's open world is that it just doesnt mesh with the Souls format.

Souls games thrive when everything is placed with strong intention that work together to build a compelling narrative. Filling the world with the same assets for no purpose other than to pad out game time. Only made the world ugly. Seeing the exact same half ruined town a dozen times was extremely immersion breaking.

Pacingwise, Souls games always nailed the pacing. Nothing ever outstayed its welcome. But all the open world did was add a mindnumbingly boring horse riding section which just added nothing of value to the experience.

Combatwise, souls games work best in claustrophic areas. Where your space to move around is limited so you have to be mindful of your surroundings. In the open world, you almost always had infinite room to dodge.

Doing dungeons felt extremely unrewarding too, because odds are I would just get some summon or a weapon I cannot use because it favors a different stat from the ones I use.

@mycatismilk: They don't need slack they already have hordes of gamers and journalist praising whatever they put out and giving them a pass on flaws that would otherwise be criticized for by most other game studios.

This video calls out a lot of legitimate issues with Elden Ring some of which I am experiencing now and starting to lose interest in the game. Fromsoft fanboyss only retort is "Git Gud" meanwhile this video keeps gaining more views from people that agree with it especially since Shadow Of The Erdtree is out and people are worried that FromSoft are going to lose what makes them special by just doing "what they're known for" which is making hard games that are not fun to play.

I've no idea half the time what's going on in these games from a story perspective but I don't much care either. I enjoy the challenging gameplay and exploration aspect.

I think here is perhaps some perspective on jumping back into a game just to put a small amount of time in DLC then there being nothing much more to experience beyond the main content that the player has already played their fill of. Kind of makes me wonder whether I'll get much out of this DLC.

Most times I play a game at release I experience the main game I have no desire months later to play expansions. But, perhaps extra content for those jumping in for first time to enjoy.

@NoodleFighter: You're talking about difficulty, I'm talking about the barrenness of their first open world game. :/

@mycatismilk: The video calls out the flaws of the open world such as it getting tedious and being a checklist after a certain point. Torrent which is a requirement for some fights to go is a big flaw because the horse can't take much damage and just dies causing you to use up your flasks on him. You'd think with how crucial Torrent is to a lot fights you be able to upgrade and adjust his stats and armor.

Another big flaw of Elden Ring is that the combat is built for flat surfaces no slopes which is what a lot of Elden Ring's environments are. Fighting at a higher elevation than your enemy is generally a bad idea since the position is not adjusted based on the slops and you lose the ability to critical hit enemies when they fall down for some of them.

Red Dead 2 ? Sure, that's the GOAT of open world games (and no, i won't be taking any questions) ... but everything else ? c'mon, even if i think BotW it's a superb open world game, the world can be just as shallow, in Elden ring at least when you discover a cave, or a catacomb, you truly feel like you are getting into in an unknow dangerous place, in BotW you will be getting ... a shrine.

Shallow? 😆

@NoodleFighter: There have always been slopes in these games, being aware of your environment and using it to your advantage has always been part of the strategy in combat.

Using a flask heals both you and your horse at the same time and doesn't penalize you for healing both at the same time. It never really happened to me but you can also use healing spells if you run out of flasks.

In Zelda you always find cool useful stuff when explore off the main path. In Elden Ring you find 98% worthless crap with the same recycled enemies. Even in the new DLC is still the same issues. You're just fighting the same stuff and getting worthless rewards. But that's not the shallowness in talking about, im talking about how you react with objects and the environment.

I’d put Elden Ring, Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom at the very top of open world games myself. Didn’t find them shallow or tedious at all to explore. Found them to be fantastic games that were beautifully crafted and enjoyable to explore and play in. Red Dead and Horizon games were good but not up at that level.

@NoodleFighter: To me, this still calls for consideration of ER being their first open world game. I wager this will be fixed in future installments.

Yeah, ER is a longer Dark Souls with bigger environments.

Still fun though. You having 330 hours means you love it too.

You don't.

@madsnakehhh: You do, that’s how you get handy resources and cool gear. In Zelda every item is useful. Link can do all. Unlike Elden Ring where 98% is useless. Crafting is useless, and 98% of stuff you find isn’t for your build.

Please, stop lying.

@madsnakehhh: What item or resource isn't useful for Link?

@mesome713: Gold poo is useless in Zelda but in Elden Ring you can use it to make a fetid pot and roped fetid pot

@girlusocrazy: 😭

@mesome713:

Bit hyperbolic?

Most of the stuff you do find will be useless. But it isnt 98%. Closer to maybe 60-70%. Still, unlocking a mini dungeon with a key, doing the copy paste dungeon only to be rewarded with another summon was extremely disappointing.

RDR2 was such a damn chore. I vehemently dislike playing it.

Elden Ring and BotW are two of my favorite games tho.

I'd say Just Cause 3 & 4 are amongbthe best open worlds.

Now people will laugh at that, but until you use gadgets on the people, cars, objects etc and make your own fun, is where the open world in these games shine.

Elden Ring's and Zelda's open worlds have nothing going for them.

I don't know, so many new drops in DLC, but for my build the vast majority is useless. I know it depends on your build, but if you play Pure Mage, your looking at high 90% useless drops

Zero Mage armor, zero Mage weapons. You get a couple good Talismans so far. But nothing Boss worthy. I found good Tailsman to increase casting speed, but won't stack with old one. Then found Blessed Blue Dew Talisman which slowly increases FP regain, but useless for bosses.

And the sad fact that Mimic Tear is still the best summon by far when it shouldn't be. How does a Mimic of me have such amazing defense when I can get one shotted easily. Yet it gets same attack as me. You have so many summons yet still haven't balanced them out to add cool diverse battles.

Zelda does all that in much more interesting ways with far more flexibility. The interactions are more layered and actually lend themselves to solving the playable content. Playable content which itself is more interesting and varied than anything Just Cause has to offer.

There's a reason why people just screw around in Just Cause for an hour or two of mindless fun and drop those games.

The open world aspect of Elden Ring is very static, just a space between points of interest, not much to do outside of fight even more enemies. That's the game they're going for.

Trying to pit Just Cause against Zelda on sandbox interaction though? Please lol. Try playing the games first.

@SolidButtCheakS: I agree you should play Just Cause before you make a comment about it.

Creating a dick & balls in Zelda might be funny at first, but the humour wears off very quickly unless you're 10yrs old.

Ah so this is the level of discussion you bring.

Hope you've met Sniper on here, you two will make fast friends.

Just Cause lmao. This is like entering a sneaker junkie chat and name dropping Payless Shoes as the goat

The entire game in TotK is a giant sandbox, nothing wrong with creating a dicks and balls if that's your thing, but assuming that's all you do in that game, it's objectively wrong, especially when you mention Just Cause as games where "you create your own fun".

The same amount that the items you find in Elden Ring.

Well I mean it’s not like you can’t create a million and one other things in Tears of the Kingdom besides a dick and balls. 😅

Just cause 3 is dope asf don't hate

I didn't say all you create is dick & balls, so I didn't assume anything, I used it as a reference point.

This coming from a guy who calls himself solidbuttcheaks🤦‍♂️

Exactly, that's when you know it's dire. A guy named solidbuttcheaks telling you to step your game up.

Reflect on that. 🙏

@SolidButtCheakS: "step my game up"

This isn't a "game" as you put it. Just stating that JC has a better open world interaction compared to the other 2.

Then you admit than the game is more than that ... if that's your reference point, it means that the game indeed allows you to create your own fun.

Just a thread full of gatekeepers

You shall not pass!

shallow is not a word i'd use to describe elden ring. it's anything but shallow and shows the souls formula does scale. the paradigm shift that makes it work is the map.

fromsoft are notorious for playing their cards close to their chest. whereas in a lot of open world games the map's just tokenistic, in elden ring it's a legitimate treasure map. identifying and investigating even the tiniest and nondescript of its landmarks can result in some of the biggest rewards.

if you don't tap into that sprit of exploration, you won't get it. you won't comb over areas to the depth you should, marking places to explore and the things you discover, thoroughly investigating and being rewarded for doing so. you'll dismiss the horse and the open world as gimmicks. you'll miss out on mountain of runes, weapons, summons, incantations, upgrade mats, talismans, night enemies, invasions, npc quests, catacombs, caves, dungeons and underground areas that hold secret bosses, devilishly designed short cuts to seemingly inaccessible areas and magically epic oh shit moments.

if all you've got from exploration is useless items, something's gone wrong.

it's not without its faults or annoyances and a game with that much content is undoubtedly going to suffer from pacing issues. but regardless, it's an amazing first attempt into a genre that has become an industry bad joke from a company that aren't influenced by industry trends, and brave enough to tread their own path

@Macutchi: Yeah, it’s great for journalist and YouTubers to make how to videos on. That shit is so hidden and confusing. It’s not as back as the broken quest system though.

@mesome713: that's why i found map markers so useful.

as i made my way through each area on the map i marked up places to explore, enemies i couldn't kill, areas i couldn't access, teleporters, mausoleums, merchants who had cookbooks or stonesword keys etc, basically anything of interest. thankfully an update added icons for the npcs. and i left markers in place for things i hadn't figured out when i moved onto the next area so i wouldn't forget to return later.

the game's so big and there's so much content in there it's very easy to overlook exploring areas within regions. that's why the map and the detail it provides is so central to the game, and map markers so useful, and why it works so well with fromsoft's opaque progression system with no explicit goals or objectives

Elden ring and RDR2 might be the most overrated games ever released imo! ER have nothing going for it except challenging combat, everything else in the game is mid at best! RDR2 is just to much of a slog to play where basically 50% of every mission is riding from a to b, extremely slow while on the characters is yapping his brain out, soo dull…