Open World Done Right! - Elden Ring
4Slowly but surely I've been burnt out by the generic open world formula that so many games follow. Some games manage to make little twists on the formula or the games excel in other ways like storytelling which makes the open world more bearable. But It's rare I really enjoy the open world elements of game. Elder Scrolls, and Breath of the Wild are some of the first games that come to mind when I think of good Open World design... And now you can add Elden Ring to that list. Elden Ring isn't a perfect Open World but it's a damn good experience.
00:00 - Spoilers Warning
00:06 - Open World Burn Out
00:35 - Exploration and Discovery
01:37 - Open World Accessibility
02:15 - Rewarding Discoveries
03:34 - Scale and Design
04:19 - The Traps of Open World Design
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After the state Cyberpunk was released in I was extra worried for Elden Ring espiscally knowing it would be adopting a more open world design. Souls games have always been open in terms of having multiple paths or directions to explore but they've never gone full open world. I'm happy to say Elden Ring just nails it.
I really like that there's no map markers telling me there's treasure, a collectible, or something I need to do like kill 6 wolves over here - locations are only marked on your map when you first enter them. There's telescopes you can use to take a sneak peak at the surrounding area. Anything that vaguely interests me I'll manually mark on my map to explore later. This is something I really liked with Breath of the Wild's towers aswell. It helps immerse you into the world with your own exploration and discoveries, it's so much more fun than open world games littered with pre-existing objective markers that just end up feeling like a chore of tasks. As a player I'm trusted to explore and make my own discoveries across the world, the devs aren't afraid I'll miss out on content. Elden Ring takes me off my leash. !?!
Elden Ring has managed to take the idea of Open World and mould it around the strengths of the souls games. You could come across a really tough boss that's blocking your path, you can practice and practice against the boss till you overcome it, or alternatively because this is an open world game - you could just explore another direction, level up, find new tools, tackle alternative bosses, and come back to that previous boss later on with a stronger character. While you could do this to some extent in previous Souls games, you've got a lot more potential exploration options with Elden Ring. The devs have managed to design Elden Ring to be a more accessible game without straight up dumbing the game down or adding an easy difficulty mode, through the nature of open world design.
Elden Ring isn't a perfect Open World, you'll probably encounter the same optional bosses more than once or twice. And you could argue that Catacombs are little bit more on the repetitive side. Catacombs are short explorable dungeons throughout the world, there is a genuine attempt to keep them fresh with different layouts, puzzles, challenges, and bosses. Some repetitiveness is inevitable in any Open World game. Thing is, there's still a really satisfying rewarding feeling just discovering hidden Catacombs yourself and there's always a nice reward at the end of a Catacomb too. Speaking of rewards...
When you take the time to explore Elden Ring's locations you'll be rewarded with things like unique magic spells and weapons. A common trend in modern games is to shower you in generic loot or equipment that usually has scaled stat weights or item level numbers on, it's really boring get the same weapon or Armor piece hundreds of times with different numbers on, and trying to work out which piece is 1% stronger. Elden Ring does away with this, every location across the world has interesting rewards, they might not always be useful for your build or playstyle but they always feel unique. new spells or equipment might even entice you to try a new build or character. You'll see other players with awesome equipment or crazy spells and you'll find yourself talking and sharing discoveries amongst friends, because Elden Ring's world is so massive and filled with secrets you're bound to miss things.
Elden Ring really is massive, you don't realise the shear scale of the world until later in the game as the world map extends and adds new floors. When I first rose up out of the starting catacombs I saw the World Map and I was a little worried that this was the setting for the entire game, but when the map extends, you get a sense of the true scale of Elden Ring and it blows your mind. The world isn't as large as some other open world games but it's so much more dense and tailored with unique experiences.
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