

Meanwhile, thanks to your trusty steed Torrent (who can also double jump), moving about the world at faster speeds is also possible. Stamina consumption has been tweaked as well- when you’re not in combat, you can sprint endlessly. The biggest change here, of course, is the ability to jump, which seems like a small thing on paper, but impacts the moment-to-moment movement quite dramatically. Stormveil Castle is the big dungeon for the area featured in the closed network test, but there are several other smaller dungeons as well, and they’re all unsurprisingly amazing.Įlden Ring’s transition into an open world space rather than a more curated selection of areas for players to traverse through in a set order goes hand-in-hand with changes to traversal as well, with various expansions of movement mechanics empowering players to explore The Lands Between with greater freedom. Here, Elden Ring transforms into a much more traditional Souls experience, with a similar approach to progression and level design. Yes, the open world is the main attraction here, and it’s shaping up really well, but that open world is also populated by several linear dungeons. As you’d expect from a From game, there are no markers or waypoints to guide you, with the emphasis instead being on rewarding player curiosity- but once again, as you’d expect from a From game, that curiosity is consistently rewarded in the best ways possible.įor those who’re looking for the more tightly designed gauntlets that FromSoftware games have been defined by for over a decade, Elden Ring seems to have plenty of content on offer.
#Dark souls meme full#
From horrifying monstrosities looming in the distance to gorgeous vistas and sights around every corner to secret paths naturally leading you into caves and dungeons and what have you, Elden Ring’s world is packed full of things to do, and organically encourages exploration in a way that so many modern open world games fail to do. The closed network test allowed access to a small portion of the game’s world, but even that was enough to promise great things for the entire game at large. The meme applies here very literally- this is the Dark Souls of open world games.
#Dark souls meme crack#
On a more granular level, there are several familiar mechanics here as well, like Sites of Grace and Runes, which are, for all practical purposes, Bornfires and Souls in all but name.Īfter having perfected the art of crafting semi-linear and Metroidvania-esque worlds in Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro, FromSoftware is taking its first ever crack at open world design- though honestly, they’re going about it with a kind of confidence that suggests they’ve been doing it for years. From the way your character moves to the more deliberate pacing of combat than what you might be used to from something like Bloodborne or Sekiro to the general approach the game takes to things such as game design, progression, and more, there’s a lot of Dark Souls in Elden Ring. Of course, being a FromSoftware game, Elden Ring does have a lot in common with the developer’s past works- especially the Dark Souls games. The biggest reason for that, of course, is the open world, which opens up the Soulsborne formula in delightful and unexpected ways, blending the classic grueling action that the subgenre has become known for with a sense of discovery and exploration that one might associate more commonly with something like Breath of the Wild. Elden Ring does take several pages out of that book, of course, but it also feels like a wholly unique beast. Here, we’re going to go over our biggest takeaways from the Elden Ring network test.įromSoftware struck gold with Demon’s Souls’ formula, and over the next decade or so, the developer went to to iterate on that formula with a number of generation-defining modern classics. In fact, having spent several hours with the game thanks to its recent closed network test, we’re convinced that it’s going to live up to that anticipation, and then some. Looking at what the fabled developer is concocting with its newest game, it’s easy to see why people are so excited about it. FromSoftware’s upcoming action RPG might very well be one of the most anticipated games in recent memory, if not ever. Calling Elden Ring a hotly anticipated game would be something of an understatment.
