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[mykedo0909]

I have the same feeling: I explored every inch of the map with my starting samurai! After 90h i was burned out and most of the loot i found was useless for my char. Then i took a break for a week to finish it up. The moment to moment ganeplay and controls are sublime, the world atmosphere is great, but after all it was just: go somewhere to kill a boss, get useless loot, go somewhere else to fight sth.... Rinse and repeat. Explore to fight. Now after having 65h on totk, i must say the variety of Hyrule is on another level.

 

[Yoboman]

OP this is how I felt about Metal Gear Solid 5....the reviews out there though were making it out to be the pinnacle of the series

Why would MGS have cities though lol

 

[RAIDEN1]

Why would MGS have cities though lol

What I mean is the open-world setting is dead and boring...

 

[Puscifer]

Extreme hot take:
The only thing souls games have going for them is the arcade quarter munching stickler of dying repeatedly until you memorize patterns to die less.
Outside of that, souls games are rather hollow.

I think that's why I haven't been so into them Demon's Souls, minus Bloodborne. How often can you hit, run away and then hit again? Getting rid of the block capability, using guns as a parry and having weapons with 2 modes changed the entire way you approach combat. After a while you literally become a monster at combat and feels like you're progressing in your actual skill set than grinding it out.

 

[Regginator]

Maybe a little strong wording from your part, but I hope the essence of what you're saying is not considered a hot take. I love Elden Ring, my GOTY of last year, but the best thing about its world is how beautifully desolate it looks, and how it invites to explore further. Other than that, it's your average open-world that basically serves as a means to tie story-driven areas together. Not bad, but not revolutionary either.

Compare it to the worlds of BOTW and TOTK, and mechanically speaking the difference is night and day. Hyrule is a much more interactive, living world in which (how cliché as it sounds) the world reacts to your actions, as well as reacting to external events that happen independently from you. The physics-based engine in them is unreal. Elden Ring doesn't have that. Many praised open-worlds don't have that. I haven't gotten around Red Dead Redemption 2 yet, but from what I've seen, I don't think it has that, too.

Again, I adored Elden Ring, but I hope From goes back to more linear, less sprawling worlds. An open-world doesn't really suit the Souls formula in my opinion. Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne are still unmatched in that regard.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

Yeah, uhhhh… Hard disagree. But I guess we gotta keep making threads

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

Elden Ring is a terrific game with tons of content, clever fights, broken builds and marvelous art.

But I agree that OW in ER is the worst part of the package. Best ER moments are usually transpire in semi-linear locations with clear choke-points. For me, ER kinda drags itself too much with constant OW sins like traversal and needless navigation hurdles.

But hey, It's still kinda ok'ish, it's just Bloodborne felt way more tense and well-structured IMO.

 

[FunkMiller]

Dead and boring isn't the way I'd describe it. Desolate, dying, and devoid of positive interactions though... that it most certainly is.

But I have to wonder if the OP is much of a Souls fan, if he doesn't like a world that is like this? Yes, everyone you meet is trying to kill you, or the few that aren't end up dying. But that's always kind of the point with these games.

 

[YuLY]

The entire Souls genre is kinda boring and lifeless. I cant wait till its over and people stop trying to copy Dark Souls. I'm still baffled that we get a reboot of Lords of the fallen this year, like what made them think that 2nd time they gonna make a profit.

 

[Braag]

Well yeah, the world is designed to be dead and destroyed and I realize it's a design choice on From's part. How they have executed that world is great, I never felt bored exploring the Lands Between, there was always something unique coming my way which I wanted to discover.
I don't think it's in From's strength to create cities, towns and settlements like in Witcher 3. That type of thing requires 100x more writing than is in From games and 20x the amount of interesting NPCs to work. But what From does, they do better than anyone else.

I liked Skyrim but after a while the caves and dungeons started to get really boring. I also love Witcher 3 but the "?" marks on the map felt boring and uninspired. I stopped exploring random caves in Skyrim or visiting points of interest in Witcher 3 unless a quest took me there or I knew there was something unique there.
The main reason those things felt boring to me is because the rewards were usually a randomized chest with trash loot and the location consisted of boring mobs.
In Elden Ring if I found a cave or a catacomb I ALWAYS felt excited, because I knew at the end of it would be a cool boss fight and some unique loot. Not some randomized chest but an actual unique item or weapon or armor which will be useful in some way.

 

[rhodesianshepard]

Nope, vastly prefer Elden Ring because I enjoy its combat especially because I can go with a weapon that I enjoy its move set, whereas BOTW is constantly slapping weapons out of the player’s hands with its durability mechanic. I’m aware some like that, but I definitely did not.

I couldn't disagree more with weapon degradation. It motivates the gamer to keep exploring for better and better loot because nothing lasts too long. Elden Ring would of greatly benefitted from it imo. The game has some of the best variety in gameplay I've ever played. And Fromsoftware should force players to engage with their deep combat mechanics. The lack of weapon degradation is one of the reasons why the last 1/3 Elden Ring dragged for me(and a lot of people). I already knew I had the equipment needed to beat the game. Other than leveling up the equipment higher, there was not much reason to explore

 

[Boy bawang]

I have yet to see from make a game where enemies arent just wondering back and forth waiting to fight you.

That was the most bizarre thing for me in ER.

In a closed setting like Dark Souls, it made more sense but in an open world, it felt very jarring.

 

[01011001]

Extreme hot take:
The only thing souls games have going for them is the arcade quarter munching stickler of dying repeatedly until you memorize patterns to die less.
Outside of that, souls games are rather hollow.

that's always the take of people that suck at games

 

[Labadal]

It's a top-tier game, deserving of much praise. With that said, the open world was my least favorite part of the game.

 

[RoboFu]

Yeah the crazy thing about TOTK is the detail they put into the world objects being unique. Like in Eldin Ring there is like 2 different shack models, 2 cave entrances, two buildings.. ect.

TOTK … sure it has the same shrine models and towers .. but unlike BOTW they really made all the world model’s unique looking. Like the enemy forts are now all built around the land. Some cave entrances are fully decked out and unique looking,

It really doesn’t feel like repeated cut and paste set pieces like all these other open world games.

 

[ungalo]

To make it simple, i think RDR2, BoTW and ER are very different and that's good.

Obviously if ER open world is not as organic, doesn't have much besides walking and fighting, it's a matter of expertise. Studios build their know-how in the long run and they stray away from each other (which is for the better in my opinion), in ER case that's pretty much a Souls game as everybody know.

But on this simple basis they managed to make a fantastic world. Way more fascinating in the worldbuilding aspect than BoTW/TOTK in my opinion, despite the technical limits that make it less organic.

 

[Zheph]

Yeah the crazy thing about TOTK is the detail they put into the world objects being unique. Like in Eldin Ring there is like 2 different shack models, 2 cave entrances, two buildings.. ect.

TOTK … sure it has the same shrine models and towers .. but unlike BOTW they really made all the world model’s unique looking. Like the enemy forts are now all built around the land. Some cave entrances are fully decked out and unique looking,

It really doesn’t feel like repeated cut and paste set pieces like all these other open world games.

There are legacy dungeons in Elden Ring and a lot of very uniques places

TOTK is built on BOTW also so it needed to rework a lot of stuff

 

[TerribleAtThisGame]

I think it has both From's absolute best and worst content. There are moments where the open world leads to something like an accidental discovery of an elevator hidden in a forest and you assume there might be some chest or some shit down there. Turns out there is a literal entire underground with some of the most beautiful art direction I've ever seen in a video game. One of my favorite moments in gaming of the past few years.

Yet within the same game I felt like they hit the absolute limit of what their "only combat" design can support in terms of game size and then proceeded to steamroll over that limit by just throwing copy/paste bosses with everything-and-the-kitchen-sink movesets at you. I've never gotten so genuinely sick of a game I absolutely loved earlier on by the end. I really think the formula would've worked much better if the game wasn't so massive, there is too much of a good thing for me at least.

Demon's, Dark and Bloodborne are up there in my favorite games of all time but I think From really needs to stop recycling at this point. The formula needs a real kick in the ass in the form of some actual new mechanics, not just a slight iteration of the previous game every time. Elden Ring felt like an All-You-Can-Eat buffet to me where at first it was fucking amazing and you can't get enough but by the end you wanna puke.

 

[Ogbert]

Yes, it is. ER’s world is reasonably empty, with long stretches of nothingness. It makes an amazing first impression which quickly dissipates.

However, even as someone who is fairy ambivalent on the game, it has moments of absolutely awe inspiring beauty. The art design and style is amazing, even if it’s not your particular taste.

 

[Flutta]

Elden Ring is absurdly over-hyped... just like every FromSoftware's Souls games.

 

[Madflavor]

ER, BotW/TotK, and RDR2/GTAV have different approaches and design philosophies to Open World. Thank god for that. I don't want some homogenized attempts from other developers where they all try to be exactly like BotW.

TotK is obviously one of the best designed Open World games we've seen to date with it's exploration and the way you can interact with the world. But it's combat, builds, and boss design doesn't hold a candle to Elden Ring's, nor does it's world feel as lived in as a Rockstar game. These games all have their strengths and weaknesses, but they all excel at something, which is why they're a cut above so many other Open World games.

 

[Bernardougf]

Also Nioh absolutely destroys any fromsoftware game in the aspect which is the most important for an action game - combat.

That is a personal opinion and preference ... for me souls combat is much better and more satisfying than Nioh ... but to each their own

 

[MiguelItUp]

For everything that Elden Ring was meant to be, it's perfect IMO. Especially for their first go of an actual open-world. Everyone's opinion is valid, but I disagree. Elden Ring is full of landmarks, enemies, characters, and other things that make their locations as memorable as they need to be. The opposite of dead and boring. The only difference between the games you mentioned and it, is that it's not a world thriving with NPCs you can communicate with, observe, etc. But NPCs DO still exist in the barren and broken world. But that's all intended. Much like it was in previous Souls games.

But hey, to each their own.

 

[Rea]

The dark souls formula doesn't work well with open world. I really enjoyed darksouls and Bloodborne then sekiro. But not Elden Ring. The worst Souls game due to an open world. If this doesn't have open world bullshit, it would be one of my favorite souls game.

 

[Rea]

Also Nioh absolutely destroys any fromsoftware game in the aspect which is the most important for an action game - combat.

Agree with this. I like Nioh combat alot more. Nioh is more "RPG" than souls game.

 

[kevm3]

Neither Elden Ring or BOTW pioneered anything in open world games. They just happen to be the first open world game a lot of people paid attention to because it's part of their favorite series and each series has hyper fans to the point you can't levy any criticisms or else they go ballistic. I don't feel like either game did open world particularly well either. In fact, their implementations have actually made their respective series worse.

Elden Ring did have some very cool places you could visit, but the overworld was boring because there was nothing particularly unique about going to some new area. I remember first coming to the place where it was stormy and I thought it was really cool, but the storms didn't have any real effect. Each new zone pretty much just felt like a graphical skin and you could see each zone had the same basic formula over and over. They might have had a gaol, a couple of ruins, an underground dungeon or two. I didn't really feel like I was doing anything unique coming to a new area.

Open world in these games also removed the tension and the focus. In Dark Souls, there was constant tension because you were in guided environments and you couldn't easy just run around the enemy like you could in Elden Ring. The best part of Elden Ring was actually when you went to the old Dark Souls-esque like castles or tightly crafted dungeons. In BOTW, open world means you could go anything, but what are you really 'doing new'? The thing a lot of Zelda fans actually really loved about Zelda was removed, which was going to a new zone, finding a new item, and that item giving you the ability to go somewhere you couldn't before. Now, you pretty much are free to go anywhere early on and you're just exploring for hearts and stamina upgrades.

Bethesda and even Ubisoft have been doing open world for much longer and better. Rockstar as well... and that's probably because they created series that were meant for open world. What makes open world interesting is actually being able to interact with the world and the people in unique ways. For example, you go steal in a shop and then people try to fight you or guards come after you. Maybe you can buy your own house... in some of the Elder Scroll games you could do things like turn into vampires or werewolves. You could craft your character however you want.

There's also no interesting 'random events' in the Elden Rings or BOTW, which is one of the things that made GTA so interesting. In GTA you might just see some utterly random, chaotic event such as a plane crashing into something random.

With BOTW or Elden Ring, they don't do anything with open world that actually makes the open world good unless you just like aimlessly exploring. In fact, they deescalate a lot of the tension since you can just run away from a lot of the threats. The world doesn't feel vibrant and like you're actually a part of it due to no real npc interaction. They take the worst part of open world, which is the huge periods where you're doing nothing in particular and you're just travelling around. Almost feels like those road trips with your parents when you were a kid and just looking at the 50th bale of hay.

 

[SmokedMeat]

For me, Red Dead 2 and BOTW are far superior open worlds. They actually feel alive and lived in. You can literally just walk around like a normal citizen in RDR2 and vibe with the games atmosphere because it is so filled with life.

The world is plenty alive with plenty to discover. How dare the game not reward you at every turn with gear specific to your build.
Is that how you go into these games? Pick your build and get your little guide out, instead of just playing and experimenting? You ruined it for yourself if anything.

 

[kvltus lvlzvs]

I wish they would just go back to a more collect interconnected environment.
The first half of Dark Souls should be a blueprint.

Agreed. I wish that they had stuck with that for all the souls games. I was disappointed when you got teleportation right off the bat in dark souls 2.

I love elden ring and also think this is a bait thread lol, it's like being on /v/

I love botw/totks and love elden ring. They both do something in different ways, and do it exceptionally. It would be cool if the two teams got together and made a baby. Zeldin Ring.

 

[Filben]

Oh my own ambivalence. At first I liked the melancholic world, then I dropped ER because of too little character interaction and very little happening and if something happend it was complete senseless without having studied the lore or that one item description you haven't read carefully.

Then I returned, liked it again for what it does, was annoyed by the last quarter of the game with recycled enemies and bosses with another colour and ramped up damage and health numbers.

Ultimately I wanted to be done with it, but was still drawn to acquiring new stuff.

in the end I only played by guide to look for certain things for my build. So here I'm with you, OP, but only after my 80th hour or so where I was pretty much done with exploring and wanted my build to be complete .

However, no two games need to be the same. It's okay to have this game and its open world and RDR2's or TW3's and the like. I don't always like combat only games, but sometimes it is was I want or need. But at the end of the day and despite having played ER for 110h I'm having more fun with different games, mostly less difficult ones.

 

[Yoboman]

What I mean is the open-world setting is dead and boring...

MGS5 wasn't really about a lively open world. It's a stealth game where you plan infiltration of key areas in an open setting. The open world gives you a sandbox in how to approach that

 

[Imru’ al-Qays]

Thread is full of people who don't seem to realize that Elden Ring has NPCs and side quests - probably better ones than BotW/TotK if we're being honest. What do you do in BotW that's narratively half as interesting as Millicent's or Ranni's quests, for instance? There's genuine pathos and narrative depth in Souls

 

[b0uncyfr0]

Oh look, someone i agree with regarding souls/bourne games

 

[Madflavor]

I'm just starting to realize I don't even remember much about BotW's world. I played it for like 80 hours back in 2018, beat it, and never went back. But nothing about it's open world stuck with me.

 

[Trunim]

For me, RDR2 is the pioneer in this area. Elden ring and botw ain’t even close.

 

[Ribi]

Well duh. What do you expect when they just copy paste old assets and stich them together?

I would have loved random encounters or a random boss fight that wasn't set on a time of day at a specific place.

 

[Lokaum D+]

This is what developers are saying about TOTK

Ex Naughty Dog developer dammmmmmnnnnn hahaha

"breaking the game" is all that TotK players are doing at the moment



the game is good and this new "DIY" gameplays is real fun, but we have to agree that is highly, HIGHLY exploitable and does "break the game",

the autobuild imo should never be in this game, to do contraptions on the fly took the immersion from me and makes the game SUPER easy.

 

[BabyYoda]

I guess it's all down to taste. I found BotW and TotK to be rather boring affairs. ER was a glorious 200 hours of adventure and awesome combat for me. I also found Skyrim to be boring after Dark Souls ruined me forever on what to expect from an ARPG (after previously loving Oblivion).

Whether you like it or not, From have changed the gaming landscape forever. I've not seen anything like that kind of influence to come from the two latest Zelda open-world offerings (still early days for the sequel I appreciate, but Rare beat them to the punch 15 years ago, with the vehicle building shenanigans of the highly underrated B&K:N&B), they haven't changed anything or inspired any copycats, clones or spiritual sequels etc, certainly they didn't create a new sub-genre, hello Souls-like!

 

[lughnasadh123]

 

[Terenty]

The simple truth is neither of these games are masterpieces. Devs figured out how to make engaging worlds worth exploring as far back as the 90s. Modern devs completely lost that skill.

Take a game like Ultima Underworld for example, where exploration was truly rewarding and most importantly there were no templates shamelessly copy pasted all over the map. Just a dungeon with 9 handcrafted levels which you could freely explore. You could meet a friendly NPC and have a conversation, maybe get a quest, a piece of lore, some information etc. You could meet hostile creatures. You could come across a puzzle or a place that you had to figure out how to traverse. You could find all kinds of cool loot and useful items. Everything felt organic, immersive.

I guess Deus Ex was the evolution of this design philosophy. This is the direction games should have been evolving. Instead we have devs obsessed with the size of their open worlds, quality of the content be damned.

When your game is so big you have to fill it with repetition something is not right.

 

[Balducci30]

The dark souls formula doesn't work well with open world. I really enjoyed darksouls and Bloodborne then sekiro. But not Elden Ring. The worst Souls game due to an open world. If this doesn't have open world bullshit, it would be one of my favorite souls game.

It does work well though. Was Elden ring not the most appreciated souls game by far? Maybe you liked the the previous ones better but I played bloodborne and demons souls and felt Elden ring was far better than both

 

[Gideon]

For me it's the opposite, elden ring rewarded me for exploring but botw/totk just gave me total shit for exploring, I cleared a difficult area in totk finally after 2 hours to only just get a chest with 1 zonaite in it and personally I disagree with your opinion saying the world is boring, I actually had more fun exploring the world of elden ring than I had with botw/totk

 

[Doom85]

I couldn't disagree more with weapon degradation. It motivates the gamer to keep exploring for better and better loot because nothing lasts too long. Elden Ring would of greatly benefitted from it imo. The game has some of the best variety in gameplay I've ever played. And Fromsoftware should force players to engage with their deep combat mechanics. The lack of weapon degradation is one of the reasons why the last 1/3 Elden Ring dragged for me(and a lot of people). I already knew I had the equipment needed to beat the game. Other than leveling up the equipment higher, there was not much reason to explore

Elden Ring motivated me to explore because the world was interesting, not loot. Nothing in BOTW IMHO could compare to crossing the landscape and seeing a titanic turtle creature, then hearing a woman’s beautiful voice coming from down the cliffs, and upon heading to the source of the song, discovering something quite unexpected.

And god, the elevator. THAT ELEVATOR. And what lay at the bottom of it.

And no, From Soft should not force their players like that. I stuck with the axe throughout the entirety of Bloodborne and had a blast with it. If players want to switch up weapons, more power to them, but don’t punish players who are enjoying a particular move set.

But you do you.

 

[The artful mincer]

I think it's well designed in the way its structured. Practically it not much different from other open worlds but it cleverly funnels you in certain directions through choke points by use of cliffs, bridges the sea etc and makes good use of eye catching landmarks like the erdtrees.

It's at its peak in Mt Gelmir which slowly funnels you up to Volcano Manor. That section feels more like a giant wide linear section than an open world.

When it's sections become giant blob like masses like the lake of liurnia exploration starts to feel a bit tedious. Your no longer on an adventure your ticking locations off a map like every other open world. Elden ring just has the advantage of good combat and tons of variety even including the reskins.

 

[ungalo]

Yeah the crazy thing about TOTK is the detail they put into the world objects being unique. Like in Eldin Ring there is like 2 different shack models, 2 cave entrances, two buildings.. ect.

TOTK … sure it has the same shrine models and towers .. but unlike BOTW they really made all the world model’s unique looking. Like the enemy forts are now all built around the land. Some cave entrances are fully decked out and unique looking,

It really doesn’t feel like repeated cut and paste set pieces like all these other open world games.

I'm going to lose it reading about TOTK, seriously.

There is much more variety of assets in ER than in TOTK, what the hell ?

TOTK is = "Recycling : the game". The game is intelligent in how it delivers it (although it's really not perfect even on that level) but the content is recycled ad nauseam. The caves are maybe not layered the same, but there is 3 assets in there, come on. I'm not even going to talk about the underworld or the sky islands.

Even for minidungeons ER is repetitive but at least it has 4 different templates of minidungeons, in TOTK it's all caves (with slightly different variations like ice caves meaning stalagtites on the ceiling omg, which ER does also in the snow field and better)

4 or 5 new minibosses in the entire game perhaps. That's astonishing when i read that BoTW has almost become garbage when the content is so similar.

 

[Thief1987]

That is a personal opinion and preference ... for me souls combat is much better and more satisfying than Nioh ... but to each their own

It's not an opinion or preference, it's just a fact.

 

[touchfuzzy]

Any game where the only thing you actually do is combat gets boring fast (IN MY OPINION, chill everyone). I much prefer open worlds like Zelda or Ghost of Tsushima where many of the objectives are not combat related at all, just little puzzles and exploring, with some combat scenarios thrown is as set-pieces or extra things you can do.

 

[BossLackey]

Extreme hot take:
The only thing souls games have going for them is the arcade quarter munching stickler of dying repeatedly until you memorize patterns to die less.
Outside of that, souls games are rather hollow.

Nope. Here are the areas that From is simply better at than ANY working developer:

• Level Design
• Enemy Design
• Art Direction (debatable, but it's damn good)
• Bosses (full stop THE best bosses in video game history. Nobody gets even close to touching them here and I can't imagine this is even debatable).
• Trust in their players. Do not forget. Dark Souls (Demon's Souls wasn't popular enough at the time) was THE game that pulled AAA gaming out of the insanely handholdy, easy as shit, hyper linear road we'd been on for years. People forget this.
• DLC
• Music (debatable again, but the scores in all of their games are top fucking notch. You add boss encounters to this, and fuggetaboutit)
• Lore (if you like that, which I very much do. The "story telling" methods of FROM are annoying to many people, and I fully understand that).

Then there's a ton of other stuff they do really really well (but may not be best of class).

 

[BossLackey]

TOTK does some unique things compared to other open world games and other open world games do unique things compared to TOTK. Again, nothing really special but I know you love to sniff Nintendos ass so no point going further.

 

[thuGG_pl]

Hmm, a world after some cosmic apocalypse, I wonder why there are no cities bursting with life... We may never know.

 

[RagnarokIV]

For the OP and those who would agree, can you give an example of a better or maybe not boring open world game? Tryna get a baseline here.

Deadly Premonition