Elden Ring - gamertags on first page

I liked the look of it on the whole. The combat is definitely more Dark Souls than Sekiro, and maybe I'm ready to go back to that. I liked how it looks as if you can traverse to pretty much any area (more vertical exploration like Sekiro than Souls).

The thing that bothered my most was early on, they ride past a load of npcs (some big things pulling a wagon) and they don't attack! I used to everything in these games wanting to kill me, so having to deal with that by killing everything. Feels weird to be able to just ignore enemies

So long as the camera isn't godawful in indoor spaces like Sekiro was.

JonFE yeah looks like the collector editions have all gone already which is a shame.

I'll confess to not being too keen on the open world tropes that have snuck in there, but my faith remains high. It REALLY looks like Dark Souls 3 in places though. The catacombs are just Carthus and there's even big bits of the High Wall of Lothric in there.

But, as I keep saying, I want more souls so badly I just don't care. As said above, it is, for all intents and purposes Dark Souls IV.

I haven't played an open-world game since BotW came out. I find they're great for just messing about in, seeing what you can find, playing with the mechanics etc. I lost hours in BotW just seeing something on the horizon and deciding to investigate, inevitably getting sidetracked on the way, then finding sometihng cool. Hopefully Elden Ring will have lots of that. Combine that with Dark Souls combat and multiplayer, sign me up!

What I find strange is that they've gone to the effort of creating this open world, but haven't really considered its traversal. Terrain seems to be treated as an inconvenience, rather than a challenge.

They've added in "springs" to boost you up cliffs, and there's seemingly no fall damage whatsoever, so the player can bounce up mountains and dive into valleys, consequence free. It begs the question why they bothered with an open world at all, given it seems to add nothing to the game.

I don't know why they didn't take cues from games like Zelda BotW and Death Stranding, where successful traversal of the terrain is rewarding in and of itself - overcoming it feels like an achievement, rather than simply game padding.

I like the art style and colour palette, but on the whole I'm not wowed by the graphics or animation. The lighting looks flat.

Bit disappointed they didn't show the base building.

Except it lets you place up to 100 of your own.  Which suggests you might need to.  So it's basically Ubisplurge, but they make *us* do the legwork.  :-D

Can we meet up for raids?!?!

I for one (and seem like one of only a few) think this could work exceptionally well as an open-world Souls game. All the best bits of Skyrim (exploring, side quests, slowly open up the world map at your leisure) coupled with Souls combat and difficulty, with true Souls challenges in the likes of gated areas, catacombs etc sounds fucking marvellous.

I imagine the enemies roaming the world have an aggro radius (hence not pulling the caravan enemies in the trailer), so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out (and how long an enemy will chase you for).

I don't recall if they hid things from the HUD in previous games' gameplay trailer releases, but the lack of damage numbers, health bars and restoratives was noticeable to me. Nothing to add to that, just something that intrigued me.

mikeck I think they've got form in the past for removing the HUD in their trailers. I imagine it will be the standard equipment quick items, health, magic, stamina and covenant / affiliation type shit. I do wonder if there will be some sort of compassy thing or time of day indicator (although I notice that's on the map so probably not).

Probably because saying "Doesn’t look as good as BotW on Switch though" is an odd thing to say.

Souls + wander + jump + magic horse

50. So it least it's priced like a last gen game too.

COME AT ME BOYS

Definitely waiting for the review on this one I think then - need to hear more about the actual open world side of things and how it all connects, as I can't see anything new apart from a horse that can do large jumps.