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Bandai-Namco Elden Ring

My brother just started playing this game, so I've been trying to help him but I swear I've already forgotten those useful tips when starting out. Maybe this means I need to play it again haha

I've been using the Lone wolf summon with the Rogier summon outside the area. Most of the time they help me get Margit down to half health before they all start to die. I'll check out the Scarlet Rot Dog to sub in for the wolves. Thanks for the tip!

There's also a unique item (Margit's Shackle) you can find that lets you stun him once during the boss fight, which can be a massive help if you time it right. I believe it was in a cave along the river, down from the big Dragon lake.
 
Pro tip for using the shackles (for Margit or Mohg): get close to him before you use it. If you’re too far away, you’ll waste precious time running over to him and you might only get a couple hits in. Best thing to do is to summon your spirit ashes first, then get in close and use it so you and your summons can hit him with a barrage of attacks.
 
Have ya’ll seen Carbot Animations’ Elden Ring parody videos? These are all so good.

 
So the ER Steam page has been updated recently; it’s not clear exactly what’s been updated there but the general consensus is that it’s for DLC. I have to assume it’s coming soon; all the Soulsbourne experts have been analyzing when FromSoft released DLC for previous games and while we’re past those timeframes (typically something like 250-350 days after the initial release), it’s important to remember that ER is much bigger than all of those games.

That said, it doesn’t exactly bode well that their last game (Sekiro) had no DLC and there are rumors that the PvP update IS the DLC. I don’t believe that to be the case but I suppose it’s possible. It certainly seems like there is more territory to explore, for example:

- Miquella (Just everything to do with him)
- Godfrey’s whole backstory and how that relates to the central Tarnished character (some of which was cut from the base game)
- More insights into the (possible) connections between Melina, Ranni and the Gloam-eyed Queen
- That big mysterious cloud in the middle of the map.

Of course, these could all be things explored in a sequel, or they might not be explored at all (this is FromSoft after all and vague storytelling is kinda their thing). But I have to think DLC is imminent.
 
Beat me to it! Very curious about that image. General consensus seems to be that (pre-Mohg) Miquella is riding Torrent, though some are speculating that is Marika. Also curious why the Erdtree (assuming that is the Erdtree) looks so strange. Given that some FromSoft games have taken players into the past (and Elden Ring has already done this with the Placidusax fight and possibly the Roundtable Hold) I’m thinking this expansion will take you back in time. Or maybe forward in time? Perhaps this image is showing a dead Erdtree? But if so, then that likely isn’t Miquella unless he was somehow reborn as a child again.
 
I'm more surprised by that something like 25% of the players on Steam have gotten the Age of Stars ending. Not that people would go for that ending ( its arguably the closest thing to a Good End, *and* has you hooking up with a 'cute' love interest ), but that more than 25% of the people with the game have actually managed to *beat* the game, at all. Usually even easy games have pretty dismal percentages for getting an ending achievement, and Elden Ring is not an easy game.
 

China's Tencent Holdings (0700.HK), opens new tab has been working to adapt acclaimed action role-playing console game "Elden Ring" into a mobile version, three people familiar with the matter said, as it searches for a new hit to refresh its ageing stock of games.

The world's largest gaming company by revenue acquired the licensing rights for the game by FromSoftware in 2022 and set up a team of a few dozen people to work on a prototype, the same year it bought a 16% stake in the Japanese game maker, the people said. But progress has been slow, they added.

While "Elden Ring" was designed as a premium game with a set price tag, Tencent wants to make it a free-to-play game with in-app purchases, similar to the hit game "Genshin Impact" developed by its Chinese rival miHoYo, the people said.
 
I can’t see how a mobile Elden Ring could work. It will be garbage, I’m almost 100% certain.

Anyway, there is some DLC news (sort of) or at least speculation about it. The general consensus is that we’re going to get a trailer or something around the 2 year anniversary in a couple weeks. Here’s a good video on it:

 
Really excited to finally see this, FromSoft DLC has pretty much always been excellent and I'm sure this will be no exception. That said, how obtuse is the method for actually accessing the DLC content going to be this time?
 
I beat this about a week ago and it was the first FromSoft game I ever completed. Since then I've finished Bloodborne, the Demon's Souls remake just arrived in the mail and I have the Dark Souls trilogy on order.

I definitely enjoyed my time with Elden Ring, but I have to admit it didn't quite live up to the hype. The art direction and world design is amazing, but I prefer having a more fleshed out narrative. There were so many gaps in the story and leaps in character motivations that I basically gave up trying to track anything, which is a good thing since the endings were a big let down. All this build up to becoming the Elden Lord and all it amounts to is a few different variations on the same 2 minute cutscene, with a couple other alternates thrown in (my favorite was probably the Frenzied Flame). The way quests were handled was also extremely vague, and I would've been lost without using guides.

The biggest barrier to previous FromSoft games for me had been the difficulty, but by taking the time to grind I found I could beat most bosses in around 5-10 tries (I was also massively overleveled, beating the game at 175 or so with a magic build). I honestly had a harder time with getting ganged up on by a bunch of smaller enemies like imps or dogs than I did with a lot of the bosses (I beat Godrick and Malenia on my first try). I really liked the open world, though, and Torrent made traversal actually fun (he's so much better than Roach), but it felt a little empty and static. The main thing I didn't like was the repetition of the environments (Mountaintops of the Giants is basically Frozen Caelid) and enemies (so many deathbirds & ulcerated tree spirits). I think the game would've been a lot tighter and more focused if they cut out a third of the repeating boss encounters.

The game's a solid 8/10, I just wish more attention was payed to the narrative. They take the time to have cutscenes and lots of info dumps from NPCs, but there's no dramatization of why the player should care about what is happening beyond go here, kill this guy. If Miyazaki's determined to not have a traditional storytelling structure I wish he'd take notes from Inside or Shadow of the Colossus, instead of tacking on monologue after monologue of contextless proper nouns. It's not far removed from the kind of nonsense you find in Destiny, yet somehow it's managed to generate a cottage industry of fan theorists that create hours long videos about some vague line of dialogue.
 
If you’re looking for conventional narrative in Souls games you’re looking in the wrong place.

For my money, narrative/story is the least important part of a game. A game with a great story but ****ty gameplay will be a bad game. But a game with great gameplay and a ****ty story can be a good game.
 
If you’re looking for conventional narrative in Souls games you’re looking in the wrong place.

For my money, narrative/story is the least important part of a game. A game with a great story but ****ty gameplay will be a bad game. But a game with great gameplay and a ****ty story can be a good game.
I just get bored if there's no motivation for me to continue playing. When games feel more like logic puzzle than an emotional experience I lose interest. Who are the Tarnished? Why should I care? Why am I supposed to kill all of these demigods? The only answer the game provides is "reasons" and it ends up feeling more like a board game than something fulfilling, and that's a big problem for me when I spent 125 hours on this game (thankfully I beat Bloodborne in only 25).
 
I just get bored if there's no motivation for me to continue playing. When games feel more like logic puzzle than an emotional experience I lose interest. Who are the Tarnished? Why should I care? Why am I supposed to kill all of these demigods? The only answer the game provides is "reasons" and it ends up feeling more like a board game than something fulfilling, and that's a big problem for me when I spent 125 hours on this game (thankfully I beat Bloodborne in only 25).

Okay I understand this. But the way I approach any kind of media is that motivation and “a reason to care“ is the default. When I’m watching or playing or reading anything the object that I’m having a dialogue with has to give me a reason not to care.

As for the emotional context, the emotionality from Souls games doesn’t come from the story, it comes from the aesthetic and the boss battles. There is no better emotional stimulation than beating a boss that I’ve been trying and trying to best and finally getting there
 
Okay I understand this. But the way I approach any kind of media is that motivation and “a reason to care“ is the default. When I’m watching or playing or reading anything the object that I’m having a dialogue with has to give me a reason not to care.

As for the emotional context, the emotionality from Souls games doesn’t come from the story, it comes from the aesthetic and the boss battles. There is no better emotional stimulation than beating a boss that I’ve been trying and trying to best and finally getting there
I guess I just approach media differently. I'm already giving a movie or game the benefit of the doubt by trying it in the first place, it's up to the creators to wow me in the first few minutes or I'll drop it. Besides the difficulty in FromSoft games (which I feel is kind of overblown), the lackluster storytelling was also why I never bothered to complete one before. The aesthetics and world building are top notch, but I don't much care about lore, I need characters to engage with and root for. The gameplay is interesting enough on its own to keep me engaged. At least Elden Ring was trying to tell something resembling a story, Bloodborne didn't even bother, and I have a feeling FromSoft's other titles will be more of the same. Start the game, get killed, go from site of grace/lamp killing bosses and then it ends. Rinse and repeat. I tried Sekiro a couple of years ago and that one seemed more narrative focused, but the parry system was also much harder for me and there seems to be less opportunities to cheese. At least I have that one on PC so I can mod it if I have to.
 

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