Elden Ring: Journey to a test that left me with doubts

As you probably know, the Closed Network Test of Elden Ring, which has allowed editors, well-known streamers and various select players to access a provisional version of the new title from From Software.

My dear colleague Claudio had the editorial code to take advantage of this opportunity and wrote a very interesting article about it, while I was lucky enough to be randomly selected after registering. We therefore decided to make our own article to provide two different points of view, so let me take you on what was my first trip to theInterregnum.

A different start

The beginning of Elden Ring turned out to me very different from what From Software has welcomed their players with in most titles from Demon's Souls onwards. After a very short tutorial on basic commands, I saw the right path straight ahead and I didn't even notice that a white note to my right was actually a game note that prompted me to launch below to continue. the tutorial.

The game, therefore, allows you to choose whether to embark on an adventure or whether to learn more about how various game mechanics work. I discovered well after this second part of the tutorial and the difference I noticed was not only in the more substantial basic teachings, but also in the boss.

Demon's Souls weaned many players by offering a tutorial ending with a rather difficult boss for what on average could be the understanding of commands and mechanics of a player struggling with his first From Software title.

Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro then continued this sort of new lore, while here we have the Godrick soldier. It can undoubtedly catch a player who does not know its timing and movements by surprise, but Elden Ring puts us in front of someone who really has the goal of teaching us without being "too bad" (since he is also much less formidable than the first werewolf of Bloodborne ).

Only by continuing and entering the open spaces of Sepulchrid, the first macro-area of ​​the Interregnum, it is possible to find the "boss tutorial of the old days", that is the Tree sentry. Here, here I must say that I immediately found the ones that could be the first classical translation problems of From Software games. In English the boss is called Tree Sentinel, whose most correct translation would be Tree Sentinel, also because the boss has almost nothing arboreal and is clearly a wandering knight who guards the Tree together with at least one other similar one. seen in the trailers. Only in the future will we understand if the española translation will be really problematic or if we will be able to enjoy a good localization.

A map at my disposal

As soon as I entered the lands of Sepolcride I opened the map, realizing that I could not see anything because I did not own any piece of it. I was able to retrieve it shortly after and at that point one of the things I appreciated most in this test opened up, namely the personalization of the map. I've always been fascinated by maps that can change or interact with, so much so that I really appreciated the way maps of Silent Hill 2 or Red Dead Redemption 2 they changed passively based on what I did. In recent years, however, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild rightly influenced the creation of subsequent open world games and here it is possible to notice it with the marks. The map shifts from a passive to an active change, as we can use a range of markers to mark places with rather strong enemies, places where we can find rare materials, or whatever meaning we will choose to attribute to the available symbols.

Just as there was the influence from the timbres of Breath of the Wild, there was also that from the push pins, that is the colored columns that show us the position of the point we are looking for without having to constantly consult the map to orient ourselves. As has been influenced by Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, Elden Ring also opts for a system of multiple pins to be positioned as we wish.

I am happy that Elden Ring has chosen to provide a map of this type and I hope that this system will spread more and more in the open world.

Hide among the selfish

Since From Software showed it, stealth has been of great interest to me. I was hoping I could hide, catch my enemies off guard and kill them with a nice "bacustabu". Indeed, I have done so since my first hour of play. I bypassed an enemy camp, hid in the bushes and caught various enemies behind me, but then I noticed two things:

Enemies are selfish and have severe sight and hearing defects.

What do I mean by that? First of all, the enemies are a bit like the "classic enemies From Software", that is a huge group of individuals who really need a pair of glasses with very thick lenses. If enemies X and Y are more than five meters away, killing X won't bother Y in the slightest, even if he's obviously watching me. Not only do they have visual defects, there is also no solidarity between colleagues. Also because, in the event that enemy Z passes by shortly after, he will not have the slightest concern to see X lying on the ground in a pool of blood. He will not pay attention to him and will not investigate the possible presence of an enemy nearby. The only time the enemies have a vague inkling of investigation is when I stand in front of their eyes for more than 1/2 seconds, at which time they decide to approach the last place they saw you for a few seconds.

Unfortunately the stealth rather disappointed me because I hoped that, having integrated it, they had at least put the available actions in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. In reality, Elden Ring's stealth consists solely of being able to crouch down and not be seen in a bush. The enemy AI, on the other hand, has not been evolved in any way for the purpose of managing stealth and investigation mechanics. I hope that this mechanic can still be enhanced through its future use in certain sections of the game.

Space for exploration

In discovering that Elden Ring would have been an open world, the first fear that hit many players was that of finding themselves in front of a too dispersed map and coming to the conclusion that everything would have been better if they had compressed the map a little more. . During my journey, I think I have had mixed feelings.

A positive note of the Souls-like level design is the interconnection, partially explained by the possibility of asking ourselves the question “What is that place I see over there? Sooner or later I want to visit it ”, doubt to which the game would have replied“ Yes, you can do it ”. In Dark Souls it was sublime to be able to see the Infamous City or the Great Void right from the Shrine of the Fire Link. In Elden Ring I had the same feeling with a 'island located to the left of Sepulcride. I looked at it from afar, it intrigued me, I wanted to understand how to get there and at a certain point I discovered that crossing a dungeon allowed me to. Not only that, the completion of a boss fight and the dialogue with an NPC then allowed me to understand that I could return to that island to continue in a secondary narrative arc.

Overall, Elden Ring has an extremely aesthetically appealing world, especially with the big one Mother tree that constantly "observes" us from above. Everything we observe, even the most particular place, is truly an accessible place and not just something that remains in the background. On this front, therefore, exploration is truly enjoyable, yet there is a MA , which is important.

Some places gave me the feeling of "Dark Souls 2 Boss Fight", ie those places that have impromptu boss fights where an enemy has been placed there because yes. Let me be clear, other From Software games have also had similar flaws here and there. For example, Phalanx in Demon's Souls is a cosmically mammoth BOH. Phalanx is a blob of shields and spears, it clearly exists and is located in Boletaria because …… .. but let's move on.

As I was saying, Dark Souls 2 was most affected by the phenomenon of random things being put there and for now Elden Ring has shown some similar boss fights. Currently there have been no items released by most of the bosses that give them a reason why they exist or are in the place where we face them. Quite a few of these places also don't have something that sets them apart. Some caught my eye, subtly stand out from the rest of the landscape, but others I found purely because I had 15 hours to spare and wanted to explore every inch of the map to get a full test experience in my hands before writing a article about it. L'an enormous golem shown in the trailers is pleasant to find because, on my way, I turned around and saw an expanse of rocky remains that led me to get closer to better understand what I was looking at. Only when I approached a golem ready to kill me was activated, whose appearance reminded me of the other remains scattered around. In this case I don't have anything written to describe the golem's story to me, but at least I have some silent narrative. Evidently once upon a time the golem had similar and he is the only survivor of that place. We have disturbed him and now he wants to kick us out. It's not much, but a hint of context is present.

The open world must attract you visually e audibly. The much vaunted immersion is also enhanced by the way in which the game manages to lead you to the places of interest without letting you go to the map and put the pin on the place you have not yet completed. Assassin's Creed: Valhalla (in Pioneer mode) and Red Dead Redemption 2 have given me positive feelings about it. As I explore the world, the game tends to attract me, to reach out to me, making me see and / or feel something particular that moves my attention to a place that probably contains something of my interest. In Valhalla, for example, I encounter Roman ruins on my way and this leads me to wonder why they are there. Perhaps there is a Roman artifact to be brought back to Ravensthorpe? In Red Dead Redemption 2, however, I find a small abandoned village apparently struck by the plague and this intrigues me. What happened in this place? Is there any survivor? Can I find some unique objects or written notes? In all of this, even though both the games mentioned have various spots where certain things are pretty hard to find if you don't search on purpose (right, Red Dead dream catcher?), The game shows me its ways without explicitly showing them to me.

As far as I have seen so far, the Grave Lands have only managed to do this on a few occasions. For example, in addition to the golem, I found the way the game draws you to the place where the fight with the dragon is particularly effective. Others, like Pumpkin Head, they seem to have happened there a little by chance.

How much blood, how many souls

Another sore point is the strong feeling of already seen that I felt in various points of this test. First of all, entire animation sets are completely (or almost) recycled, for example the Jade Goblins identical to the Schiavi Vacuum of Dark Souls 3 or the Tree Sentinels that shoot a lot Gyoubu Oniwa by Sekiro. As for the history of this setting, there are so many references to blood and souls, two concepts belonging to Bloodborne and the Souls. They could be self-referential tributes like the miracle that evokes the clawed hand of the Cleric Beast ecclesiastical beast, I hope so. George RR Martin had claimed to have written the foundation of this world, the pre-destruction past of the Ancestral Ring upon which the present we play now is based. For now I have some doubts about it.

The Lightless must obtain the Great Runes of the ancient ancestral lords. According to an armor available in the Test, the first of them is called Godfrey and was served by a group of horsemen. Always reading the descriptions of this armor, we discover that one can be corrupted by chaos. Mmmmm….

Obviously we are always talking about a provisional version of the game, we do not yet know what the rest of the vast world of Elden Ring hides, but the purpose of the Test is also to provide a demo to the player so that he can have his first impressions. Well, I really found a lot of blood, many souls, but few fingers. What intrigued me right away were not the dragons, which are widely mentioned in this Test, but the very Dita. Fingers are the tools we use to help or invade other players; the Virgins of the Fingers accompany the Senzaluce on their journey; the fingers are that part of the body that wears the rings and it is interesting to see the iconography of the fingers represented in various ways. Since the Ancestral Ring is extremely important, the fingers become just as central to the Lightless and the world uses the form for hatred, for status, for fighting, or more. In Elden Ring I may come across a room where someone has hung the torn arms of various people, but I can also find enemies who are more powerful thanks to theplenty of hands that they possess, be it the terrible keeper of the keys or Godrick, boss seen during the gameplay presentation. In a trailer we can also see an entire enemy in the shape of a hand or a man taken by a giant hand. The hands or individual fingers are apparently very important and this is also reflected in the impossibility of wearing rings. Rings are a From Software classic, but Elden Ring, the ring-based game, takes them off to put on talismans. It might seem like a silly choice, but it actually reveals theimportance assumed by the rings. As strong as they might be, in other From Software games, rings are seen as pretty common items. Sure, some of them may have belonged to legendary individuals, but wearing a ring doesn't automatically make you more important or noteworthy. In Elden Ring the ring is not a "simple" piece of equipment, but something much deeper, something that we do not gain by finding an object somewhere to put it on our finger.

I was fascinated by all this, just as I was bewildered by a prevalence of blood and souls in this Test. We'll see if the full game will be able to embrace more a more personal and less "parasitic" identity than the important concepts of other From Software titles, as Bloodborne did.

You have learned to use your legs, now also use your hands and crotch

Let's open a parenthesis on the jump and on horse riding. Again, I'm sorry, but the new mechanics of Elden Ring didn't convince me very much. My dear Senzaluce jumps and so far so good, it is undoubtedly an appreciated novelty. You can perform jump attacks and overcome some fearsome obstacles such as stepped ladders, but no more than that. If I don't go past the last pixel of my obstacle, the jump has no effect. There is no way I can hold on to it and the whole mechanic is left in a very bland state.

The horse is not in a dissimilar situation. If we do not take advantage of the rapid journeys between the places of grace discovered, the horse Torrente it is undoubtedly good for crossing unknown places for the first time, but its moveset in combat is extremely limited and I personally found its use rather inconvenient. On a note of merit, however, I found it in the double jump, as it was very satisfying to use it to dodge a dragon flame arc.

Magic, ashes, miracles, weapons, everything!

My journey through the lands of the Tomb of the Tombs took me back and forth to places that allowed me to unlock quite a few weapons, miracles, spells, summons and ashes of war. The latter, in my opinion, are the most positive point of everything I've played.

Whether I found them lying around or recovered them from a slain enemy, the ashes of war allowed me to customize my equipment. I have opted for a enchanted knight, so I left with a spear, an enchanted shield (it can repel magic too) and a staff to cast spells. After earning enough I bought a bastard sword and I started to cross its use with that of the stick, which uses darts or a thrust with a giant blue magic sword. When I recovered the first ashes of war, I realized that From Software had evolved Sekiro's concept of "fighting arts".

Sekiro offers various arts with which to perform special attacks with hands and katanas. Elden Ring, for its part, immediately shows a lot of techniques that can be inserted directly into certain types of equipment. For example, I have often used theArc of Scintispade, a more powerful and beautiful-looking version of Dark Souls' Searching Souls. Here I really felt the evolution, I recognized a mechanic present in a previous game and I saw From Software evolve it and expand it wisely. If we add the novelties of the evocations and of the armament that falls into the classic categories, including the great return of the twin blades of Dark Souls 2, I believe the game will really offer a wide range of character build and customization.

Overall

At the end of it all, I still remain very interested in Elden Ring. It is an RPG that immediately offers vast customization, a fascinating world and powerful enemies to defeat. However, I find it objectively has flaws, including Dark Souls 3 glitches that still persist now. I'm sorry that what has currently made me turn up my nose the most is the trio of stealth / jump / horse novelties, but I remain confident and hope that the full game will be able to give a greater feeling of fresh air. Fresh air for a new franchise.