This has always been the best part of FromSoft games. People talk about the difficulty first but I think that absolutely takes a backseat to the visuals. The art direction and atmosphere are absolutely unparalleled. I honestly can't think of another game who's world captured me like the first Dark Souls did.
There's a quote from an interview with Miyazaki I really likes which underlines how carefully crafted the world is: https://imgur.com/zO6CcDq
>I remember when I was drawing the Undead Dragon, I submitted a design draft that depicted a dragon swarming with maggots and other gross things. Miyazaki handed it back to me saying "This isn't dignified. Don't rely on the gross factor to portray an undead dragon. Can't you instead try to convey the deep sorrow of a magnificent beast doomed to a slow and possibly endless descent into ruin?"
I think a lot of people on forums focus on the difficulty and gameplay aspects because they're easier to have a conversation around. But, as a big fan of the 'series', I've always been in it mostly for the unparalleled aesthetic and atmosphere. Firelink Shrine in and of itself is one of my favorite locations period, because it's like a complete inversion of a typical fantasy game hub - almost dead, surrounded directly on all sides by danger, full of secrets, populated by NPCs that are either gravely depressed or dangerous. It's this strange isle of safety that isn't necessarily welcoming. Also, as I found out in my first playthrough, magic spells sent from that stupid bridge reach Firelink, killing AFK players who triggered the enemy. Ahem... Not that it happened to me.
When it comes to landscape design, I think Death Stranding is head and shoulders above every game that ever existed - both in visual design and realism. As is appropriate, it is a walking simulator.
In Elden ring you often find sudden drops and cliffs, 10 acher lakes that are ancle deep, etc. In Death stranding the rivers have realistic depths and current that pushes on you and knocks you off your feet, mountains are realistic instead of random cliffs that wouldn't hold up to gravity, etc.
Interestingly both games are lead by japanese dudes and both are about a calamity that brings the dead back to life.
Contrast Dark Soulds and Death Stranding with a typical zombie game, the basic idea is the same, but how imaginatively it is developed!
100%. There are plenty of games that capture the challenge and difficulty of FromSoft's games, but very very few that capture the atmosphere and world building. Their work is very reminiscent of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus in that respect -- and I think that's entirely intentional, as Ico is what inspired Miyazaki to go into game design.
Nioh, for example, is a great series that's even more challenging than Souls, and with an even more in depth combat system. But the atmosphere, world building, and level design is just nowhere near FromSoft's level.
Have you played Blasphemous? Definitely inspired by Dark Souls. I think its world is even more entrancing despite it being a hand-drawn pixel art side-scroller. It draws on Spanish folklore and Catholicism, which I really liked.
(Don't forget to play it with the Spanish voice acting - superb)
100% I could take or leave the difficulty in FromSoft games, sometimes it honestly gets in the way. What I absolutely love, and what keeps me coming back is the atmosphere and exploration.
Recently played the Demons Souls remake and the locations, enemies and atmosphere was just amazing, I couldn't wait to see what was around the corner.
That's funny, because Dark Souls 2 make the same mistake. Much more focus on enforcing difficulty, and none of the connectedness of Dark Souls 1, though the nonsensical world also makes thematical sense to some degree (the game is essentially about universal dementia). The Dreg Heap in Dark Souls 3 does deliver on this concept much better though.
If you need any indicator the team behind Dark Souls 2 misunderstood Miyazaki's vision, the global death counter in Majula is all you need.
You make me really regret throwing away my Demon’s Souls disc when I was depressed years ago. I now have all of the Dark Souls games and Sekiro, no Elden Ring yet.
But having all the games would probably allow me to more fully appreciate the art’s evolution.
he didn't do shit about the art, the artist did, they are all outsourced from China
very shameful to put all the fame on a single person when the work is done by the developers and artists, it's a team work, not the fruit of a single entity
very selfish mindset, only japanese get away with that, i don't understand why westerners are this simple minded
only to let their industry and home companies rot thanks to "shareholders"
I thought it was a bit odd to list the credit under each piece of art to "Hidetaka Miyazaki". He's the director and sets the creative vision for just about everything in the games, but the actual art is done by a talented team of artists and designers. Sad to not see them get any credit for their amazing work.
I really appreciated a GDC talk from one of the designers of _GoldenEye 007_ who was very critical of auteur theory. [1] He seemed very understanding of the multifaceted nature of big games.
A whole lot of art, even famous old pieces, has been done at the direction of a famous names who get the credit but much of the actual strokes done by skilled technicians or apprentice artists. Credit is hard when you’re mixing someone directing with a sense of taste and people executing that vision with varying levels of creative input.
Me: dying for a hundred times at the same spot. I just wish those "soul" games are more accessible to mortal like me. I'm an avid gamer (FPS) but those games are taking a toll in my confidence. Playing them feels like doing a chore, repeatedly. I tried Bloddborne because the atmosphere and art works are fantastic but couldn't even get over the first level (or act?). I really wanted to give Elder Ring a try but, the horror of doing chores :-)
It's funny because I cant play FPS for the same reason. Getting killed by actual preteens over and over while occasionally getting a kill here and there isnt fun for me. I've been okay to good at FPS and it came from suffering 100's or 1000's of deaths and slowly getting better.
With FPS it is not worth it for me because I'll never have as much time as a kid to dedicate to the game. With Soulslikes at least I can memorize the boss moves and eventually get by or go level elsewhere and then cheese the boss.
The frustrations of the genre feel very similar to me but soulslikes I have options on how to get better.
I’m the same. I love the look of it all but I can barely manage to make progress in something like Hollow Knight never mind Souls games.
With work and family and ageing I don’t have the time, patience or reflexes for this type of game unfortunately.
I really enjoyed Jedi Fallen Order, which is ostensibly a Souls type game. I managed most of the game on regular difficulty before one boss bested me and I was able to drop to easy difficulty.
I get that the desolation and feeling of hopelessness against insurmountable odds (and finally overcoming) is part of the gameplay loop. I just can’t do it.
Souls games offer a true sense of accomplishment. Making it “more accessible” would basically ruin that.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was by a wide margin my favourite game of the past few years. An amazing world, incredible characters, and a wonderful story. But never once did I feel like the game was apathetic to my existence. The game wanted me to win. Winning was guaranteed. So while I felt so many emotions, accomplishment was not one of them.
One thing Souls games get right is that they’re fair. They’re consistent. You almost never die in a way that wasn’t your fault. And that’s what makes the sense of accomplishment possible. You get better. Your reflexes improve. You learn to be patient, studious, thoughtful. The game isn’t an amusement park ride. The difficulty isn’t simulated like it is in most modern AAA games.
Elden ring is a lot of fun once you get the horse.
My typical approach for open world games is: find travel mechanism, explore, find items OP to my current level, figure out how to level up, then have fun.
Elden ring is a huge world and I'm really enjoying it! It is my first souls game, and I've learned that you shouldn't care much about the bank balance of runes/souls/gold/etc.
Elden Ring is the easiest one of these games by far, you don’t have to play it the “hard way”. If you want to get through the game just play a sorcery build and level up a bit. With summons you’ll be able to get through many bosses without even getting hit.
I started with Bloodborne after mostly playing FPS and adventure games like Uncharted. Gave up twice in frustration. I think learning how to step back and do visceral attacks, which the opening area gives you space to learn, was critical. Now it’s my favorite game ever.
Also the game is designed around collaboration. People are supposed to discover things and share what they learned on wikis / Discord / etc, and help each other with cooperative multiplayer.
I had a similar experience when I first played Bloodbourne. It was my fist FromSouls and I kept dying to this big troll dude on the first level. I got so frustrated and I quit, not understanding at all what the fuss was all about.
For some reason I come back to it 6 months later, and persevered through (not realizing that you absolutely DONT need to fight that damn thing). I kept dying until something clicked, and from then on everything become much easier and I enjoyed every minute from then on.
Same with Demons Souls, I kept dying to Armour Spider, got really angry, frustrated, then something clicked and I broke through, and the rest of the game was amazing.
Not saying this is/would be your experience, and I generally agree that the difficulty does get in the way sometimes, but maybe it's worth it to see if you can break through. I do think Elden Ring is the hardest of all the ones I've played, BUT the open world means it's as hard as you make it, if something is too hard in ER, you can just nope out of there and explore somewhere else.
You can also just play as a spell-caster and the game gets much easier.
Same here. I've now played Elden Ring for 70 hours, and I'm about to give up. I gave it a chance but it seems that this type of game is not for me. I'm not able to get better at it, and there's no feeling of accomplishment at all.
I had the same problem with sekiro, but found a fov fix (for pc) that also included a slowdown option. 95% speed was already enough for me to make it enjoyable, but still a challenge.
Do we have any clue what, if anything, Martin contributed? Because I’ve played every From Software game and Elden Ring just feels exactly right for a Miyazaki game. Is Martin’s name just along for the ride?
I mean, without delving into spoilers, the idea of a world and a society that undergoes major structural cycles is a GRRM idea as much as it is a Miyazaki idea. I'm sure he had some kind of impact on the story, they are just already very aligned on the big ideas going into it.
Besides that, most if not all of the major bosses/characters names start with either a G, R, or M.
Can a frontend developer explain to me about the disabled two-finger zoom on this page? Is my mental model that zoom is between me and my mobile browser, not something that should be disable able, just hopelessly naive these days? Or is the platform not doing this, and the browser is?
I just want to zoom in on the picture of 3m-wide Garden of Earthly Delights...
This will probably get buried, but how do people with software engineering jobs manage to play single-player games? I just see programming logic everywhere and it breaks immersion for me.
Wasn’t the case ears back when I didn’t code
I'm not sure about the Boschian connection, but most of what's in Elden Ring isn't really "new". The vast majority of what's in Elden Ring is themes that From Software have been using for a long time, starting with Demon's Soul for some. I'm not sure about the origin of most though. Spoilers ahead, so don't read if you want to discover everything by yourself.
The most obvious one is as always the idea of stagnant water at the bottom that becomes corrupted, which from what I understand comes mostly from the asian religious ideas about impurity. I'm not sure if it's coming from Shinto or Buddhism, or something else, but there's always something about stagnant water/stagnation being "bad", and water at the bottom "washing away" impurities on the way and being the "worst". That's where the usual poison lake comes from. It's also a strong idea in Sekiro, with immortality coming from the heavens (with the divine dragon) and being corrupted on the way down (with the centipedes). Here in Elden Ring we have the lake of rot, the deeproot depths, and the bottom of the Haligtree.
Then there's the idea of a fallen empire hiding behind illusions. In DS1 Anor Londo was the prime example of that: everything is an illusion, that you can break. This was used here in Raya Lucaria: the Rennela that you fight is an illusion put here by Ranni, which mirrors Gwynvere/Gwyndolyn, and Fillianore. Rennela and Fillianore both hold an egg. I'm not sure about the reference here, there's the same theme in Angel's Egg by Mamoru Oshii, but maybe there are deeper origins.
There's the idea of some people living a corrupted form of life that still try to live their life "in peace": in Demon's Soul there's Maiden Astrea in the valley of defilement asking you to leave them alone, in DS1 there's the inhabitants of the painting (with Priscilla asking you to leave them alone), in DS3 the painting makes a comeback, with its inhabitants that want to rot in peace. In Sekiro, there's the monks in Senpo Temple, that acceeded to a corrupted form of immortality and are being devoured by insects/corrupted by centipede. There's the same in Elden Ring with Fia and those who live in death, and in a way the Haligtree people.
Lots of ideas are refinement of previous ideas: Rykkard seems to be a refinement of Aldrich as a "person in the world", and of the King of the Storm/Yohrm in terms of gameplay (Serpent Hunter is way more interesting than Storm Ruler). This one is a bit of a stretch, but Ranni's questline with Blaidd reminds me of the questline with the Painter and Gael. Both are about partially revolting against the order of this world to find a way outside the influence of the fire cycle/equivalent in Elden Ring. The smith at the hub is also an improvement: he gained a real personality, a real purpose. We meet again the last giant of his species that's already hurt when you meet him and removes one of his limb. Giants keep transforming into trees. Sorcerers doing too much research keep ending up in weird places (brain of mensis, the end of Sellen's questline). We went from giant crabs (there's a hilarious PC Gamer article about this) to giant crabs AND giant lobsters. There's something about Miquella (arm coming out of a coccoon, removed from a tree) and the curse-rotten greatwood, though I don't see much else about it. Maybe I'm missing some cultural references, maybe a DLC is coming, maybe it'll be refined in a next game/
All of that to say, it's nice to discover who Hieronymus Bosch is and what he did, but I wish the article instead focused on From Software themes and where they come from. Where do girl with eggs come from? Why are giants always corrupted in some way? What's the history of impurity in asian religions, and how did it influence From Software? We now have 7 games: Demon's Soul, Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, Sekiro, Elden Ring. They slowly went from niche hits to a specific audience to a mainstream appeal. They come from a country with a rich culture, that's often seen through the lens of "weird Japan". They appeal to people through the gameplay, but also through the themes, the visuals, the gameplay. I think it's time to take them seriously as pieces of art by themselves.
> The most obvious one is as always the idea of stagnant water at the bottom that becomes corrupted, which from what I understand comes mostly from the asian religious ideas about impurity. I'm not sure if it's coming from Shinto or Buddhism, or something else, but there's always something about stagnant water/stagnation being "bad", and water at the bottom "washing away" impurities on the way and being the "worst". That's where the usual poison lake comes from. It's also a strong idea in Sekiro, with immortality coming from the heavens (with the divine dragon) and being corrupted on the way down (with the centipedes).
Hi, friendly neighbourhood hackernews buddhist here. That's not from us. Washing away your 'impurities' seems like a foolish idea, since there's no you to have them. Also, we don't really get along with anything like immortality or heavens either. Impermanence is kinda..... obvious?.
Either way, as a (very) casual gamer with kids and not enough time as it is, I'll probably skip these. :}
[+] [-] ng12|4 years ago|reply
There's a quote from an interview with Miyazaki I really likes which underlines how carefully crafted the world is: https://imgur.com/zO6CcDq
[+] [-] meowface|4 years ago|reply
>I remember when I was drawing the Undead Dragon, I submitted a design draft that depicted a dragon swarming with maggots and other gross things. Miyazaki handed it back to me saying "This isn't dignified. Don't rely on the gross factor to portray an undead dragon. Can't you instead try to convey the deep sorrow of a magnificent beast doomed to a slow and possibly endless descent into ruin?"
[+] [-] WilTimSon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] UncleMeat|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ClumsyPilot|4 years ago|reply
In Elden ring you often find sudden drops and cliffs, 10 acher lakes that are ancle deep, etc. In Death stranding the rivers have realistic depths and current that pushes on you and knocks you off your feet, mountains are realistic instead of random cliffs that wouldn't hold up to gravity, etc.
Interestingly both games are lead by japanese dudes and both are about a calamity that brings the dead back to life.
Contrast Dark Soulds and Death Stranding with a typical zombie game, the basic idea is the same, but how imaginatively it is developed!
[+] [-] Trasmatta|4 years ago|reply
Nioh, for example, is a great series that's even more challenging than Souls, and with an even more in depth combat system. But the atmosphere, world building, and level design is just nowhere near FromSoft's level.
[+] [-] whateveracct|4 years ago|reply
(Don't forget to play it with the Spanish voice acting - superb)
[+] [-] ab-dm|4 years ago|reply
Recently played the Demons Souls remake and the locations, enemies and atmosphere was just amazing, I couldn't wait to see what was around the corner.
[+] [-] sascha_sl|4 years ago|reply
If you need any indicator the team behind Dark Souls 2 misunderstood Miyazaki's vision, the global death counter in Majula is all you need.
[+] [-] ascar|4 years ago|reply
https://www.giantbomb.com/profile/7force/blog/dark-souls-des...
However, the translation differs a bit (e.g. zombie instead of undead dragon, which actually makes more sense).
[+] [-] anothernewdude|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k_sze|4 years ago|reply
But having all the games would probably allow me to more fully appreciate the art’s evolution.
[+] [-] Razengan|4 years ago|reply
Check out Darkest Dungeon
Slay the Spire
Everything by Amanita Design (Machinarium, Samorost)
[+] [-] x0hm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gtsnexp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shadonototra|4 years ago|reply
very shameful to put all the fame on a single person when the work is done by the developers and artists, it's a team work, not the fruit of a single entity
very selfish mindset, only japanese get away with that, i don't understand why westerners are this simple minded
only to let their industry and home companies rot thanks to "shareholders"
[+] [-] Trasmatta|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danbolt|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Fx18cppZk
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] arketyp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colechristensen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrbonner|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlwaysRock|4 years ago|reply
With FPS it is not worth it for me because I'll never have as much time as a kid to dedicate to the game. With Soulslikes at least I can memorize the boss moves and eventually get by or go level elsewhere and then cheese the boss.
The frustrations of the genre feel very similar to me but soulslikes I have options on how to get better.
[+] [-] knolan|4 years ago|reply
With work and family and ageing I don’t have the time, patience or reflexes for this type of game unfortunately.
I really enjoyed Jedi Fallen Order, which is ostensibly a Souls type game. I managed most of the game on regular difficulty before one boss bested me and I was able to drop to easy difficulty.
I get that the desolation and feeling of hopelessness against insurmountable odds (and finally overcoming) is part of the gameplay loop. I just can’t do it.
[+] [-] Waterluvian|4 years ago|reply
Red Dead Redemption 2 was by a wide margin my favourite game of the past few years. An amazing world, incredible characters, and a wonderful story. But never once did I feel like the game was apathetic to my existence. The game wanted me to win. Winning was guaranteed. So while I felt so many emotions, accomplishment was not one of them.
One thing Souls games get right is that they’re fair. They’re consistent. You almost never die in a way that wasn’t your fault. And that’s what makes the sense of accomplishment possible. You get better. Your reflexes improve. You learn to be patient, studious, thoughtful. The game isn’t an amusement park ride. The difficulty isn’t simulated like it is in most modern AAA games.
[+] [-] tomrod|4 years ago|reply
My typical approach for open world games is: find travel mechanism, explore, find items OP to my current level, figure out how to level up, then have fun.
Elden ring is a huge world and I'm really enjoying it! It is my first souls game, and I've learned that you shouldn't care much about the bank balance of runes/souls/gold/etc.
[+] [-] AmericanChopper|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmladenov|4 years ago|reply
Also the game is designed around collaboration. People are supposed to discover things and share what they learned on wikis / Discord / etc, and help each other with cooperative multiplayer.
[+] [-] ab-dm|4 years ago|reply
For some reason I come back to it 6 months later, and persevered through (not realizing that you absolutely DONT need to fight that damn thing). I kept dying until something clicked, and from then on everything become much easier and I enjoyed every minute from then on.
Same with Demons Souls, I kept dying to Armour Spider, got really angry, frustrated, then something clicked and I broke through, and the rest of the game was amazing.
Not saying this is/would be your experience, and I generally agree that the difficulty does get in the way sometimes, but maybe it's worth it to see if you can break through. I do think Elden Ring is the hardest of all the ones I've played, BUT the open world means it's as hard as you make it, if something is too hard in ER, you can just nope out of there and explore somewhere else.
You can also just play as a spell-caster and the game gets much easier.
[+] [-] Geee|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enimodas|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martythemaniak|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Trasmatta|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k_sze|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dissent|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bick_nyers|4 years ago|reply
Besides that, most if not all of the major bosses/characters names start with either a G, R, or M.
[+] [-] UberFly|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dash2|4 years ago|reply
* Elden Ring is a bit like Bosch, Doré and Caspar David Friedrich;
* Elden Ring is an open world game.
[+] [-] nohuck13|4 years ago|reply
I just want to zoom in on the picture of 3m-wide Garden of Earthly Delights...
[+] [-] pfooti|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmde|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m10i|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mLuby|4 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30414470
[+] [-] wellthisisgreat|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 127|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zababa|4 years ago|reply
The most obvious one is as always the idea of stagnant water at the bottom that becomes corrupted, which from what I understand comes mostly from the asian religious ideas about impurity. I'm not sure if it's coming from Shinto or Buddhism, or something else, but there's always something about stagnant water/stagnation being "bad", and water at the bottom "washing away" impurities on the way and being the "worst". That's where the usual poison lake comes from. It's also a strong idea in Sekiro, with immortality coming from the heavens (with the divine dragon) and being corrupted on the way down (with the centipedes). Here in Elden Ring we have the lake of rot, the deeproot depths, and the bottom of the Haligtree.
Then there's the idea of a fallen empire hiding behind illusions. In DS1 Anor Londo was the prime example of that: everything is an illusion, that you can break. This was used here in Raya Lucaria: the Rennela that you fight is an illusion put here by Ranni, which mirrors Gwynvere/Gwyndolyn, and Fillianore. Rennela and Fillianore both hold an egg. I'm not sure about the reference here, there's the same theme in Angel's Egg by Mamoru Oshii, but maybe there are deeper origins.
There's the idea of some people living a corrupted form of life that still try to live their life "in peace": in Demon's Soul there's Maiden Astrea in the valley of defilement asking you to leave them alone, in DS1 there's the inhabitants of the painting (with Priscilla asking you to leave them alone), in DS3 the painting makes a comeback, with its inhabitants that want to rot in peace. In Sekiro, there's the monks in Senpo Temple, that acceeded to a corrupted form of immortality and are being devoured by insects/corrupted by centipede. There's the same in Elden Ring with Fia and those who live in death, and in a way the Haligtree people.
Lots of ideas are refinement of previous ideas: Rykkard seems to be a refinement of Aldrich as a "person in the world", and of the King of the Storm/Yohrm in terms of gameplay (Serpent Hunter is way more interesting than Storm Ruler). This one is a bit of a stretch, but Ranni's questline with Blaidd reminds me of the questline with the Painter and Gael. Both are about partially revolting against the order of this world to find a way outside the influence of the fire cycle/equivalent in Elden Ring. The smith at the hub is also an improvement: he gained a real personality, a real purpose. We meet again the last giant of his species that's already hurt when you meet him and removes one of his limb. Giants keep transforming into trees. Sorcerers doing too much research keep ending up in weird places (brain of mensis, the end of Sellen's questline). We went from giant crabs (there's a hilarious PC Gamer article about this) to giant crabs AND giant lobsters. There's something about Miquella (arm coming out of a coccoon, removed from a tree) and the curse-rotten greatwood, though I don't see much else about it. Maybe I'm missing some cultural references, maybe a DLC is coming, maybe it'll be refined in a next game/
All of that to say, it's nice to discover who Hieronymus Bosch is and what he did, but I wish the article instead focused on From Software themes and where they come from. Where do girl with eggs come from? Why are giants always corrupted in some way? What's the history of impurity in asian religions, and how did it influence From Software? We now have 7 games: Demon's Soul, Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, Sekiro, Elden Ring. They slowly went from niche hits to a specific audience to a mainstream appeal. They come from a country with a rich culture, that's often seen through the lens of "weird Japan". They appeal to people through the gameplay, but also through the themes, the visuals, the gameplay. I think it's time to take them seriously as pieces of art by themselves.
[+] [-] sergiotapia|4 years ago|reply
Miyazaki seems to have been inspired by Angel's Egg. I never read a quote, but the similarities are there.
https://youtu.be/fIhKqaNp4Dc?t=3035
[+] [-] cyberpunk|4 years ago|reply
Hi, friendly neighbourhood hackernews buddhist here. That's not from us. Washing away your 'impurities' seems like a foolish idea, since there's no you to have them. Also, we don't really get along with anything like immortality or heavens either. Impermanence is kinda..... obvious?.
Either way, as a (very) casual gamer with kids and not enough time as it is, I'll probably skip these. :}
[+] [-] sharmin123|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]