I Hope Elden Ring Is FromSoftware’s Last Open-World Soulsborne Title For A While

Let me just start this off by saying, I adore Elden Ring. My 325 amassed gameplay hours, 3 entire playthroughs with my level 204 and level 112 characters, respectively, and 100% trophy collection is evidence enough of that. Allow me to also disclaim that I’m far from a harsh critic of FromSoftware titles; hell, Bloodborne is stamped in bold on my personal top ten action RPGs of all time list.

But it is precisely because I am so enamored by the brutal, lore-heavy, and majestic worlds FromSoftware pumps out for us to ravenously consume and dissect for hours on end that I can fairly assess and argue certain viewpoints that might benefit the future experience of Soulsborne enthusiasts like myself. Walk with me for a bit.

The Shadow of the Erdtree expansion comes out in less than 12 hours as I write this, and, of course, I already have it queued for installation on my PS5 at midnight. And, of course, I plan to spend at least another 50 or so hours dashing around the far corners of the new explorable areas added in on Torrent’s back, marveling at whatever new spectacular landscapes and set pieces the developers have carefully placed for us to enjoy and uncovering all manner of secrets, whether they relate to Miquella or not.

My stating that I don’t see the benefit in prioritizing an open-world element for the next Soulsborne title is not an opinion borne out of any sort of distaste for the open-world formula implemented by Elden Ring. On the contrary, for what the passion project launched from a joint idea by Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R.R. Martin hoped to achieve, Elden Ring was likely the best possible outcome for making such a concept feasibly enjoyable. That said, there are more than a few things about Elden Ring’s open-world formula and gameplay feedback loop that detract from the core sense of progression and hinder (if not outright halt) the momentum of enjoyability established by its stronger points.

A Big Ol’ Sandbox With Not Quite Enough Sand

My biggest gripe with Elden Ring’s open-world design is that it is simply faaaaar too large. I don’t think it’s a reach to say that the primary appeal of Soulsborne titles for most fans concerning the discoverables is the larger-than-life battles and boss fights, the intricate legacy dungeons and level design, self-paced lore discovery through attentive gameplay, and the branching role-playing character classes and abilities customization(s) earned and available to build your character into something rivaling a living god. It pains me to say, then, that beyond those interesting legacy dungeons and very spread-out points of interest in which to find valuable loot and bits of lore, all of the in-between can feel like padding at times.

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This is especially noticeable in regions like Caelid and Liurnia, where large portions of the explorable area are left shallow and/or unpopulated and act as set dressing to gallop through on Torrent’s back. And before you say it, scattering a few minor (and easily skippable) foot soldier enemies to navigate around as you make your way to more enticing locales does not inspire reason to tarry in a space longer than necessary.

I have spent a good handful of those aforementioned 325 hours carefully rounding boulders, cliffsides, or peculiarly placed assets that may have drawn my eye, only to approach and find nothing of value for having taken the detour (or maybe some minor smithing or alchemical material that could be farmed more conveniently in another, more engaging area). Almost the entire central portion of Liurnia, minus the Raya Lucaria Academy and the preceding town ruins, is devoid of very relevant points of interest. That is not to say there are not some alluring things to be found in that central space, but that is to say that the ratio of those discoverables to the ground needed to cover in between them is super skewed in an unappealing direction. This problem persists in a lot of places throughout the game.

The NPC questlines of Soulsborne titles are also an essential part of the experience for a lot of players, and Elden Ring doesn’t do much to accommodate the impracticalities of keeping track of those questlines or the quest givers’ whereabouts for the map to be so huge. Since the game’s release, patches have provided map icons for where some notable NPCs are located or have moved, and this was a grand improvement from the early versions of the game, where you were initially more or less on your own in that regard.

Though there is a particular notoriety to the series for not being a ‘hand-holdy’ genre of game, the scores of complaints back in 2022 when the game was first released about how easy it was to lose track of an NPC due to the sheer size of The Lands Between were pertinent enough that they drew a developer response. All this did, in my critically analytic eyes, was demonstrate that even though this method of quest progression has been well-received in most all other Soulsborne titles, the simple factor of Elden Ring being much larger and open than any previous title, made the decision to re-implement a tried and true idea into a new IP of this variety less practical. This quest design has never been a ‘bad’ idea, per se, but it has proven less accessible for more general players in an open-world setting than it ever had in smaller, more condensed settings that were also more tightly focused on core progression and had less area to fill with meaningful and satisfying discoverables, such as Bloodborne and Demon Souls.

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Speaking of, it’s no small secret that Elden Ring has a fetish for repetitious and reskinned boss fights. Framing Godrick the Grafted, the primary antagonist of the game’s premiere legacy dungeon and the most featured villain in the initial promotional marketing, as this singular, epic two-stage boss fight at the end of Stormveil was beyond epic. Seeing him again, renamed as some offshoot relative and trapped in a random evergaol while exploring haphazardly was… less so, but that isn’t even my gripe, that’s been talked about to death.

My issue is with the game’s numerous caves, crypts, mines, and towers that are barely distinguishable from one another. Disregarding that the boss fights at the end of these side adventures are copied and pasted more often than not, the interiors of these places themselves are often so similar with just a few gimmicky changes, that I couldn’t help but feel like I’d been yanked back to my days scouring the chalice dungeons of Bloodborne, an almost equally droning experience and the weakest part of that game. I understand that the world is massive and that it needs to be filled with content in order to be worthy of its grandeur, but when the quality of the content begins to feel more like a chore to delve into than an exciting new venture to embark on, I think we begin to lose the plot.

Elden Ring is a very strong game, but every game has its flaws, and it is also, at least conceptually, the compilation of a lot of previously well-implemented ideas, such as Sekiro’s stealth system and ability to jump and Dark Souls’ encumbrance system. While a lot of those ideas do work well together, it doesn’t fall beyond a reasonable margin of error that not all of them do. The open-world formula has been an exciting new direction for FromSoftware for this particular title, but as we’ve seen, it has done enough to detract from the things that make the game fantastic that I think it can be comfortably removed from future titles without the quality suffering in place of more robust spaces with extra love and greater attention to detail. Imagine these issues plaguing legendary titles like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Bloodborne, or Dark Souls 3.

Do you think those games would have been made better if they were on a larger scale and made open-world in the way Elden Ring was? Food for thought. Regardless of what the future holds for FromSoftware’s next Soulsborne title(s), I trust it’ll be every bit as memorable and impactful on the gaming community as every entry has been thus far. Now, I do believe we all have a fast-approaching DLC to prepare for. Shall we?

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