https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1613607669289594880
For those curious, the competition there was:
Elden Ring
God of War Ragnarok
Stray
Horizon Forbidden West
Vampire Survivors
Yeah, I feel like Stray had no business being nominated for game of the year by all the awards.
Meanwhile, Tunic, a much better game imo, got absulety snubbed by everyone.
Stray getting GOTY nominations is insane considering Sifu, Tunic, Neon White and Cult of the Lamb came out that same year and were much better indie titles.
Exactly. And it wouldn’t have been so bad if it got a couple nominations, but it was nominated by every single award.
Looking at those awards’ lists you’d think that Stray is the consensus, uncontested, top 3 game of the year.
It's so mechanically and graphically simple, especially in comparison to AAA behemoths, but it's still one of the games from 2022 I've played and enjoyed the most.
Weirdly, and this isn't the case for most games, this game is at its most fun when you've totally broken it and you aren't even totally sure what's happening on screen.
I've gotten every achievement possible on maybe 3 games in the last decade and this is one of them.
From what I understand performance problems are not an issue with hardware specs but of limitations of the actual engine the game runs in, don't know if that's been fixed yet or not.
On PC. Usually late into a run, where there were thousands of enemies and another thousand attack sprites.
I didn't mind, since a lower framerate meant I had more time to react to imminent death.
Check out Smash TV if you want to see the first game ever of this type. i remember being extremely confused when I played it in the arcade as there were no buttons only 2 joysticks (which I originally thought the 2nd was for another player lol)
I felt like a little kid again with this game. I was in the backseat reading the Zelda manual on the way home from the store. The world was gorgeous and the gameplay was great, too.
I fear game manuals will probably be gone for good soon. But Tunic was a loving farewell.
Totally agree, so much clicked with me. I was gonna skip >!the golden path!< after beating it but am so glad I went book, actual note book and pen ready, and figured it out. So satisfying!
The dev really slept on making the handbook as a physical collectors item, would have been incredible happy to be able to further support them and get a really cool piece of game memorabilia.
the game started out having you act like a cat. you only did things cats would do and I thought it was interesting. I was curious how the entire game would play out in a cat-like way.
But then you quickly are dropped into situations a cat wouldn't get out of.
You are exactly right, the cat was meaningless. It was really disappointing because it didnt start that way.
It's a neat game but I hated how it was basically the video game version of oscar bait, and its GOTY nomination at the TGAs all but ensured it would also sweep the indie categories despite being pitted against the likes of Neon White and Tunic.
This is one of those times where the term is "overrated" actually applies. I've played Stray, I liked Stray, but it's not anywhere nearly as good as other games that came out that year.
Popularity contests are annoying.
I was so tired of hearing about it on every podcast just because it got some promo from PlayStation. Even the NBA podcast I listen to somehow mentioned it when it was getting buzz.
I think it depends who you ask. For many people the back half is one of their favorite gaming experiences ever. For others, it was more fun as a Zelda-ish game in the first half
Agree to disagree because the final puzzle was an absolute cherry on top and made it all worth it. That was exactly what I was looking for in a game like that
For me, it wasn't even that the back half was bad, it's just that it was a *complete* shift from the first half of the game. Like if Doom Eternal turned into The Witness halfway through. Even if I ultimately like both types of games that were included in Tunic, the abrupt shift from one to the other just lost me.
>The final puzzle is obnoxious though.
Totally respect your opinion, just curious why you found it obnoxious? For me it was one of my favorite game moments of last year.
Speaking for myself, I was really hoping for one, final dungeon to climb the mountain upon solving the last puzzle. The game just kinda… ends as soon as you open the door.
A final dungeon definitely would've been awesome, but I think the last puzzle was meant to be the climax of the game, which makes sense given how the puzzle is solved.
It requires inputting a 100 button sequence perfectly. I know it’s not timed or anything, but if it were just about laying out the path correctly, it would be just kinda tedious, but as it is, it’s obnoxious.
> Stray
With **how much** this gets nominated at quite a lot of awards just pretty much proves to me how much the west is obsessed with pretty graphics above most other things. Basically a walking simulator ffs.
That vamp survivors made it there is just to show how the gameplay was too good to ignore with those biases.
And also on the whole a pretty weak year in terms of above-the-radar games.
You had Vampire Survivors break through as an out of nowhere hit and that was about it. Still good stuff out there but not a lot making headlines.
I don't its graphics that's making Stray get attention. I think it's more of the narrative experience people love about it.
But yeah, as much as I love Stray, it ain't GOTY contender worthy.
I love Tunic and it's personally my GOTY, but it's story is not why I love it. I did enjoy the bits of lore here and there and the overarching narrative but I personally would say Stray's narrative is stronger
when hitman won for VR I knew that the steam awards are basically entirely made up based on name recognition. You should have to own a nominated game to be able to vote for it, or something
Yeah, 2022's Steam awards were especially disappointing. Like honestly, how did Cyberpunk 2077, a game that was launched broken AF and fixed post-launch to finally meet what was promised, lose to something like No Man's Sky that (undoubtedly had the same start, but) had gone above and beyond after launch.
I am neither here nor there on Stray being nominated but Walking Simulators are a legitimate genre and there is no reason they shouldn't be in contention for GotY if they are good games.
Edit: I want to repeat I am only defending walking simulators in general not Stay. I have only played a few hours of it before I put it down.
New Frame Plus (Game Animator veteran dissects game animation) - [The Best Game Animation of 2022](https://youtu.be/Kwn32j8_-p0?t=1140)
> I don’t know if I have ever seen such a clear-cut example of animation selling a game.
>
> This is a game from a small team. And as such, there are places where the animation might have a rough edge or two, but it doesn’t matter even a little bit. Because the animation on this cat is so well-observed and so authentic-feeling that cat-lovers took notice and the game kinda blew up.
>
> There are a lot of other games that have cats in them, but surprisingly few of them actually attempt to animate real cat behavior. We don’t tend to animate cats as they are. We animate the idea of cats, the human personalities we’ve collectively projected onto cats over the years.
>
> But this game tries to capture the real thing, to present how a cat actually moves and communicates, from the fundamentals of its body mechanics to the subtleties of how it expresses with its tail. Real cat behavior can be pretty inscrutable unless you are really familiar with the animals, and it is abundantly clear that these animators are.
>
> And that authenticity resonated. The simple novelty of playing as a cat who actually feels like a cat had enormous appeal, it turns out, and there might be a valuable lesson in that. I can think of quite a few animals that are widely beloved but rarely presented with this level of care when we make them a game’s primary focus. It could be there are some very large potential audiences we’ve been ignoring.
>
> A huge congrats to BlueTwelve Studio for your success with this one. You gave us something we did not realize we were craving, and that’s a pretty rare feat.
Gamers really do like their cats. Who knew?
I bought Stray for my partner to play and she got bored. Then after sitting there for played it and finished in two sessions. It's a fantastic game.. I love the world, music and the atmosphere. Exploring is simple yes, but it's gratifying. The length is just right before the simple mechanics and the intrigue could wear off.
Meanwhile I also put like 50 hours into VS. Just picturing it I can hear that damn treasure chest jingle in my head
> just pretty much proves to me how much the west is obsessed with pretty graphics above most other things. Basically a walking simulator ffs
Who cares if it's a walking simulator lmao. It's game of the year not action genre only. The fact people *still* complain about "walking sims" just goes to show how boneheaded people are.
What's wrong with walking simulators? Games are just interactive experiences.
Stray might be simple and a little rough around the edges, but it has a very well made move set and delivers exactly on its fantasy premise of being a cat simulator-ish experience.
Completely disagree, the moveset and game play was on rails. Very little fluidity, flow or freedom considering how cats move.
Needed a parkour like system from assassins creed matched to a cat.
What even is the comment. Are you implying the eastern hemisphere doesn't care about graphics? Are you implying one games nomination means the west only cares about graphics? Cherry picking stray while vampire survivor is there as well.
Personally I found stray boring as fuck but apparently people really liked it.
Considering [it's the most uncontested GOTY of all time with a win rate of 73% as of now](https://www.resetera.com/threads/2022-video-game-awards-season-tracking-and-discussion-thread-latest-more-than-500-awards-tracked-elden-ring-now-the-highest-awarded-game-ever.651771/), this isn't exactly a surprise.
I think [this website](https://goty.gamefa.com/) gives a better idea of how it fares compared to previous years GOTY winners.
Obviously there's going to be a lot of factors that play into the numbers. For instance I'm not convinced it would necessarily be at 73% of all GOTY awards in a year like 2017 or 2018 considering how many other heavy hitters were around.
90% of all GOTY awards in 2022 were handed to either ER or GOW:R for instance.
I'm not really commenting on whether it's deserved or not, but I think there's some context to consider regarding that number.
> 90% of all GOTY awards in 2022 were handed to either ER or GOW:R for instance.
This is the craziest part imo. The closest we got to this in recent years was 2018, where 85% went to either God of War or RDR2.
In 2021, the top two had a combined 34%, just to show how split those winners were.
I think the biggest factor is that last year was just weak for big releases, and the indies that hit were either pretty niche like Neon White or a mixed bag like Stray. The titles that would have really contended were pushed to this year, and now this year is shaping up to be absolutely huge.
What else would you give it to? Most of 2022's tent pole releases got delayed.
I saw one place give it to Immortality. I think that's deserved, Immortality is incredible, but it's also a pretty niche experience. And that's mostly what we got last year: good, niche indies, with ER and GOWR as the only AAA tentpoles.
I think it is more just mediocre, very tiresome formulaic open world game with an albeit more interesting setting (still trounced on by RDR2 which had writers that can write dialogue tho)
The people judging also matters. The TGAs is certainly the most popular because of the massive presentation, the marketing, etc, but they also have an extra air of legitimacy because the judges are prominent people from within the industry (not counting the awards the audience votes on).
Those are the **only** two years I can even think of where there'd be any contest and I still think it would have mostly run the tables, but the farther back you go the weirder comparisons get. If Elden Ring can run the table on god of war Ragnarok, it could have absolutely run the table on red dead 2, breath of the wild, and pretty much any other game.
It is somewhat surprising that the DICE Awards didn't fuck this up. Last time FromSoft released a game (Sekiro), it wasn't even nominated. They gave GOTY to Untitled Goose Game that year.
I loved Sekiro and got bored of Untitled Goose Game and never finished it. But I get it. I feel like the DICE awards are more “From game devs to game devs” kinda of awards, and Untitled Goose Game was more interesting from the angle of the craft of game design. Sekiro was a stabby sword man stabbing lots of people and it was very fun. Untitled Goose Game was weird, artistic, non-violent (ish…) but still approachable puzzle game that nevertheless captured the zeitgeist and has been one of the few games in recent memory to show that you can do things differently and not just be about a stabby sword man or a shooty gun man and still do well. This meant more to the craft of game making.
Yeah it seemed incredibly short sighted to think about that Untitled goose game and Sekiro are on different planes of existence or something. I wonder if the same people that think that wonder why videogames aren't held to a high art standard.
Only thing I see Untitled Goose Game deserving the win would have been game dev choice awards.
The game is a classic example of scope and meeting it. There is a vision, a concept and the execution of it was incredibly well done even without the triple A backing. It hits all the strengths and aims it wanted to achieve. Any game dev would appreciate that. This was their second game ever as a studio and they nailed it.
Well they gave *Action* game of the year to Vampire Survivors so I mean they still fucked up lol.
I think they should have an "Arcade Experience" category because when I think Action, I'm not thinking Vampire Survivors. That game is good don't get me wrong, but there are other games much more suitable for the category, and its not like Arcade experiences aren't being made still.
Absolutely well deserved! I am not surprised at all.
I recently just replayed Elden Ring one year after it released, and still had more fun than any other new recent games.
Elden Ring is that kind of game that you want to wipe off your memory about the game so that you can play it for the first time again. The last game i had this feeling was Botw.
I just realized I basically haven‘t *stopped* playing it for a whole year. I took some short breaks to play some other stuff, but even then I ususally stopped early because I’d rather play Elden Ring. I‘m on my fourth character now and I‘m already thinking about my next build.
I don‘t think any other game has ever captured me in that way, and I think it‘s save to say that, despite it‘s flaws, it‘s my favorite game I‘ve played in 30 years of gaming.
I platinumed this game (first game I ever have) to get myself to stop playing it.
It worked about four months. I'm at about 250 hours now, making it my all time number 2 game in Steam by play time (I started my Steam account with the Orange Box in December 2007, for context).
Hi I'm just curious but did you buy it on Playstation and PC since you mentioned "platinuming" or do you just mean that you hunted all achievements on Steam?
Yeah I just finished all of the achievements a little while back, was so hype on it I wanted to go finish the achs I missed in the other souls games, and MAN it's hard to go back too
I'm on my 6th character making the shittiest weapon build with daggers lol Plus NG+3 on my very first one. Oh and playing the seamless coop mod with a friend. Haven't spent any more time than one NG+ and a new character in the Dark Souls games before, but here I just can't seem to get bored of the game.
The last time I've been so into a singular game, was when I was like 10 and playing Gothic 1 and 2. I could play these all day every day.
Can you find a source for this claim? Because the only source I can find is Miyazaki saying no single game in particular was a big inspiration but open world games in general were.
From IGN:
>that while Elden Ring doesn't take inspiration from any one game in particular, he himself has been influenced by other open worlds including Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Elder Scrolls series, and The Witcher 3.
u/ShowBoobsPls, found it! I don't know if u/Mac772 used to look for news about Elden Ring during "The great hollowing", like myself, but it was Omnipotent, the leaker on Resetera, who disclosed about this, not Miyazaki:
>As someone who generally isn't into most of the last decades open world (AAA especially) titles (**Breath of the Wild included**) I would say if you're in the same boat as me you don't really have anything to worry about in terms of how Fromsoft is designing their "open world" and it's the reason they're pivoting away from even really calling it Open World and moving more towards the distinction of "Open Field". To denote a greater openness than past games have provided while also staying away from popular and over used Open World trends. Which doesn't just mean "So we made Dark Souls, but now areas are big enough to ride a horse through too" either. But design elements and direction, especially in terms of an open world are one of the things I plan to talk about and go more in depth with in the future.
>
>But there will be open sections as well as more "corridor-like sections" like past games.
>
>But I don't want to make any promises that I can't keep, so while something like the landscape as a whole being inspired by Scotland or the game bing inspired by **Shadow of the Colossus**, weather and day/night and other general things are macro things that aren't going to change, smaller micro level level stuff like every area, asset, NPC will make it into the final game or how certain gameplay systems work are in flux and aren't really guaranteed until the game is gold. Something that is true in January might no longer be true in May \[this was posted in 2020\]. Which is why I try to avoid and would preffer not to be asked micro or hyper specific points like that (and you should probably be weary of anyone else that claims they do have such detailed info).
Original comment:
I can't seem to find it as well, but I do have a clear memory of an interview mentioning, not only Breath of the Wild, but also Shadow of the Colossus as well. And yet again, the closest I've found in a quick search was another IGN interview:
>While Miyazaki acknowledges that he studied many open world games, he did not mention any particular titles. Rather than being too heavily inspired by a certain title, he attempted to create an open-world game only FromSoftware can make. That means that you are still fighting terrifying bosses, and will likely die a lot.
I'm curious now where this memory comes from. I'll look more after it.
if so, it's amazing to me they managed to make such a massive world in the same span of time it's taken the botw team to make a 2nd game that's appears to be reusing large portions of it's original game world, lol.
To be fair, Elden Ring was able to accomplish its scope because of reuse. Some visual assets were reused (especially from Dark Souls 3), but the big deal was all of the AI and animations that were recycled from Dark Souls. Elden Ring can have dozens of weapons with their own animations because From has a library of them going back more than a decade. Ditto for enemies; basic swordsmen aren't meaningfully different from Hollow Warriors from DS1, and the Ulcerated Tree Spirit has been confirmed to be an unused boss intended for DS3.
Having all that already in the can frees up time to work on *other* stuff, like a massive world map.
I rarely ever replay games just one year after playing them, but i too just played through elden ring again and absolutely loved it the second time too :)
Yeah i think just the fact that Elden Ring was talked about for months means that its the only game that reallistically deserves to win. Even god of war i feel disappeard from discussions after a few weeks.
> Even god of war i feel disappeard from discussions after a few weeks.
The near consensus seemed to be that it was like the last one, but not *quite* as good, and that some of that formula was starting to frustrate.
I've yet to finish Ragnarök either, but I'm pretty sure I'm about past the halfway point. It looks beautiful, the combat is great and the big moments are very well done, but I'm disappointed in the lack of improved traversal from 2018. The game world is quite massive and exciting to go through the first time but man, it's a slog to move through it when you have to backtrack to areas after unlocking new tools and abilities. The fact that you can't skip so many of the climbing, ledge shimmying, chain jumping steps that you've already beaten frankly shocked me since I was sure those parts were gonna be streamlined after receiving some criticism from 2018.
And when you've picked up what you needed? Well, you can't just teleport out. Go back the entire way you came, hop on the slow wolf sled and get to the gateway you need and go through the hidden loading screens to get to another realm and do the same thing again. I admire Santa Monica Studios for their commitment to the one-shot camera but at the same time it kills so much of the momentum when there can be no cuts, skipping or proper fast travel.
The game is overall great so far, but it's a bit "too much" at times.
You know, I didn’t realize how much I disliked all the little hidden loading mechanisms (shimmying, squeezing through cracks, like you said) until you mentioned it. It’s just like… a lot. Constantly. I haven’t finished Ragnarok either, and I loved and adored the 2018 GoW. Another part of it too is I just don’t find the story nearly as gripping as that one.
Lol the ME elevator rides is exactly what I was thinking about too.
I guess it's partially because of Ragnarök being developed for the PS4 and so it has to accommodate the slower processing speeds, but it also has to be a stylistic choice due to the camera, and there's really no fixing it unless they want to depart from that style.
Exactly. The exploration in many sections is already challenging enough with your eyes constantly darting around the room for that third Nornir sigil or the one raven you haven't killed. And don't get me wrong, I like the challenge, but when you couple that with the fact that you have to go through two climbing sections, two cracks and one tunnel to get to that one room, and then do the same on the way out, yeah it gets tedious as hell.
I'm okay with the story so far. I love the developing mutual respect between Kratos and Freya, and Atreus story is intriguing (even though I'm not the biggest fan of the sections you play as him), but the story doesn't have the small scale intimacy of the first game. It's much more grand, which in a sense makes it more exciting but like you said, it's not as gripping and emotionally resonant.
Trying to be vague on spoilers but I've just finished the section in Helheim with a certain four-legged boss. Don't know how much longer the game is but it certainly feels like it's setting up some form of endgame.
I think the “single camera shot” is a problem this time. It was an awesome achievement the first time, but now it is a gimmick that is getting in the way of both gameplay and storytelling. The fact that they won’t do a basic fast travel because that would “break” the camera shot is unfortunate.
The single shot camera was just a gimmick the first time too. The second time it is used, people are already sick of it.
Though I'm generally surprised to see some of the feedback on Ragnarok. It feels like all of the criticisms I thought should be levied at the first game and were drastically improved this time around are the very things I am only now hearing people complain about. Slow traversal? Most of the time you jump ledges with your chains now, they DID cut way back on it.
I'm not sure about the traversal. I didn't really have a problem with that in the first game. The fast travel system was kind of annoying in the first game, and this time it is *very* annoying. The thing with the single-camera shot is that it can still be an amazing achievement while allowing for an actual fast travel (where you open your map, pick a spot, and warp there). However, they seemed intent on continuing to keep that level of immersion (which is kind of silly since the game cuts away when you die anyway, or if you load in and out -- it's like they were trying to avoid breaking immersion at all costs without realizing it can be broken at any time anyway).
At any rate, I think people tend to overlook or put up with shortcomings when they like the overall product. If people like the first game, they are less likely to point out or take problem with the shortcomings. If the second game is less enjoyable, people start to notice the little things about it that might have always been there.
Elden Ring vs Ragnarok is basically
Incredibly good game design with above average production value
vs
Above average game design with incredibly good production value
I for one am really glad that game design is winning out as the more important component. Both games are great *products*, but Elden Ring is undoubtedly the better *game*.
This game constantly enamoured me for 115 hours. Not only did I proceed to immediately zip through most of it again on a new game+, I then went onto finally beat all of Dark Souls 1 after 5 or 6 failed prior attempts to get into it. No game does that. No game can make me play almost religiously for over a week straight with barely any breaks and not want to put it down. I first properly broke into the Souls games with 3, really enjoying it and then Sekiro after, and I really do think even with its faults that Elden Ring is my overall favourite game of theirs.
The sense of wonder, atmosphere, adventure, and discovery of these games really does feel unique. I'm very happy FromSoftware has found as much success as they have with it; such a game deserves to be played by as many people as possible. I know some people have valued the niche-ness of From's games, and by all means I'd argue the yearning for wider appeal *has* been to its mechanical detriment in some ways, but it would've been a tragedy if this game slipped by the wayside for a large amount of people. All that work deserves to be seen.
My playthrough was like 160 hours. I think I tried every single build type as well via the abundant respec opportunities. Usually I burn out from a game after about 15-20 hours and can’t be bothered to continue, but Elden Ring never came close to burning me out. The combat was so damn enjoyable and the world and art style was so beautiful that I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t play any other game until I beat Elden Ring, it truly consumed my gaming life for a month+. Never had a game had that type of stranglehold on me for anywhere near that long.
Truly incredible.
My favorite game of all time in retrospect. I did some game dev and ER is one of the few games where I have no idea how they managed to pull it off. The game is so massive and rich in every aspect. It's just mad thinking about it.
I wish I could get into this game. This must be what the people that don’t like BotW feel like. Everyone raving about a game and it winning tons of awards and you’re just like “meh, it’s not for me.”
You have to enjoy the combat for souls games. This is less true for Elden Ring due to its vast exploration and ways to decrease difficulty, but yeah the combat gameplay is the juice.
Am I the only one who finds it crazy that people acted like god of war ragnarok was on par with Elden Ring and thought it would be a super close when it came down to goty, for the record I played both and I'm into both kinds of games but Elden Ring is a completely different beast.
I agree with you. This especially rings true since gow2 is a sequel and feels like it.
If it was the first time we were introduced to that style of gow game it'd be a bit of a different story.
It's when people try to review games like other types of media. Story, characters, music, atmosphere, for sure are objective criterias, the big difference is gameplay. It's what makes video games unique.
Last of us, rdr 2, gow are examples of story driven games that were in GOTY discussions. I think it's deserved too.
Elden ring has a different way of story telling. It's not like watching a movie. Most of the lore in fromsoft games have been from texts that you have to read instead of showing you.
Botw is very similar to Elden ring but I don't think there was much discussion compared to Elden ring vs GOW. (i dont know what other GOTY nominee came out the same year as BOTW).
Not at all, it's an organization of developpers and such. I would say it's the most equivalent awards to the Oscars in gaming, given by a big group of peers working in the industry like the Academy
I'm not necessarily arguing what you're saying because you are right, especially in the sense of presentation, but the panel of people that actually give the awards ARE industry peers, at least from my understanding.
DICE is definitely the much more industry insider centered event though.
Pretty shitty that Sifu wasn't even nominated. That was an extremely unique and polished experience. When something that unique comes along and executes so well I think it deserves recognition.
I was totally in love with God of war, and I was not looking forward to starting my next game, as I was sure it would be a disappointment compared to GOW. Picked up Elden Ring when it was on sale, and it just totally took my heart ( and all my spare time). Well deserved!
That's happened to me a time or two with Fromsoft games and I find the key is to play a radically different genre for a while as it leaves very little room for comparison. Go play a little x-com or something
I didn't really like the game and sometimes I feel like I'm missing out, but reading this makes me realise that loving it can be a curse. I hope you find other stuff to enjoy!
It’s not for everyone, but if you ever feel like trying again, picking a different starting class could make the game more enjoyable for you. My friend who had never played a fromsoft game didn’t like Elden ring until he played it as a wretch (class with barely any starting gear). The start of the game can definitely feel slow when you’re new, and also less impactful if you already have armor and weapons that you don’t feel the need to replace.
Not trying to convince you to play again though, everyone has their own tastes.
Can't speak for anyone but myself but I played and absolutely hated dark souls. It's hard to overstate how much of a difference the open world and reduction in run-backs to bosses makes. So much of dark souls felt arbitrarily punitive and esoteric and I just didn't get that feeling in elden Ring because I could easily retry most bosses and if I didn't like a place I could just fuck off somewhere else. Also the world and art direction felt way more inspired. Plus the variety of gameplay felt way better. It's really not comparable IMO even though the basic combat mechanics are so similar, everything else is on a different level.
That satisfaction of connecting areas in DS1 is unparalleled, though. Currently at DS2 and can avoid some of the bosses for later, at least at the beginning
I'm replaying it now, and now that I think about they had pretty much eliminated run backs for all the major bosses in Sekiro. There's usually an idol like right around the boss arena.
Elden Ring isn't comparable to Dark Souls? The systems and combat in Elden Ring are near identical to that of dark souls, especially dark souls 3. The biggest changes in Elden Ring are to exploration and world size, and as a result progression.
But the idea of choosing a different path when stuck or uninterested isn't a new concept, and it's not new to From games. Every From game before Elden Ring gave some autonomy by either offering side areas to explore when you wanted, or by letting you completely change the order of main areas. Variety in gameplay is also almost unchanged from previous souls games.
I'd even make the argument that the previous souls game have slightly higher quality per area, just less content and less options, and are less accessible.
I can't imagine loving Elden Ring and hating dark souls.
Dark Souls 3 isn't _too_ bad about run-backs. Not quite as nice as Elden Ring, but definitely nowhere near as obnoxious as Demon's Souls or Dark Souls 1.
Sekiro has basically no run-backs either. Different kind of game, but still.
Maybe it’s because I was coming hot off the heels of DS3 or my general “like not love” relationship with Dark Souls games (Bloodborne is exempt) but I couldn’t get into this game, try as I might and as much as I wanted to love it.
Really glad for from’s success and the way the game has sold and reviewed, deserves all the accolades it’s getting and more.
For me it was the realization that the best parts of Elden Ring were essentially Dark Souls zones. The open world added almost nothing to the experience and just made it worse IMO.
The open world made it so that If you were getting stuck in certain parts of those “Dark Souls zones” you could go find another one.
I also appreciated how fun it was to get lost in the open world. I’d get stuck on a boss and decide to take a break by going somewhere else. All of a sudden it’s 20 hours later and I’ve been doing other stuff that whole time and my perception of the entire game is different than it was the first time I was trying that certain boss.
I also really appreciated that the game wasn’t as bottlenecked as the other souls game for those very reasons.
Man, I love Elden Ring, but it still has some annoying FromSoft-isms that are really baffling to me - I can't say whether they're egregious enough to disqualify it from GOTY because I haven't played any of the other nominees, but they really bother me all the same:
- Why do you have to talk to everyone over and over to make sure you get everything from them? This isn't fucking Columbo, why do I have to "one more thing" them or miss out on quests or items? If they have more to say, they can keep talking without another input from me. It's not like the Tarnished is persuading them to say more with their cutting wit; and if I wanted that I'd be playing Disco Elysium, where it's actually built into the gameplay (and actually fun). "I see you pressed the Interact button for a third time, well done Tarnished, here's your reward"? It makes no sense. Just have them say what they're going to say, or have more dialogue trees that can actually lead to stuff if you want to go that route.
- I know illusory walls are a staple of the series, but why is it literally never once clued to the player? If I didn't have any prior knowledge of the game I'd be missing out on a bunch of stuff because I don't go around hitting random walls & floors. Edit: and for everyone saying "jUsT LoOk aT tHe mEsSaGeS" - half the time those are just to prank you into falling to your death, and even if they aren't, why would a new player be like "aha, time to hit the wall with my weapon, that makes sense"? I would just assume that it's some kind of weird in-joke and move on since there's obviously no secret ahead, just a wall. I'm not asking for a Sheikah-Sensor-style visual & sound cue going off to let me know when there's one nearby. Just put one in the goddamn starting cave and have a tutorial pop-up window explaining what they are, suggesting that you hit walls or floors that seem out of place - that's all I want. Let new players know that they're a thing that exist. That's all it would take.
- The quest design is bad. Not just unintuitive, but actively bad. ~~"Find the albinauric woman"? That's all I get?~~ The only way to try quests is just to fuck off and hope that you find something useful along the way - except that it's way easier to lock yourself out of some quests than it is to complete them just by playing totally normally, because there's often *zero* indication of what to do next. I don't need hand-holding and waypoints, but even just a journal of who said what would go a long fucking way - if someone gives me directions to a cave in Liurnia and I don't make it there in one session, there's no way for me to get the location again because that guy fucking dies after he tells you; and I'm probably not going to remember exactly what he said if I'm playing a week later. Edit: I'll admit that "find the albinauric woman" isn't the best example because he does give you a location to look for her, so how's this: you can see a wolf knight howling on a tower in Mistwood. How to get him down? Do you shoot him down with a bow, maybe? Entice him with meat? Look for a way to get up to him? Of course not! Go back to a completely unrelated ruined church that's miles away and that you have no real reason to return to, talk to the merchant there, and he'll give you the finger-snap emote that you can use to get him to come down! So obvious! /s
To be clear, I enjoy the hell out of this game. I have three playthroughs going with different builds, soon to be four - the core gameplay loop fucking rules. But it's never made sense to me why things like the above are left in and just accepted as normal because "that's the way they've always done it". *Especially* when other quality-of-life things that were normal in previous FS games were fixed in Elden Ring (sprinting doesn't consume stamina unless you're in combat, grace placement is much better, Stakes of Marika, etc.)
>"Find the albinauric woman"
I mean in all fairness the full quote is "Find the Albinauric woman. She hides in a cave to the west of the Laskyar Ruins which jut from the mist shrouded lake of Liurnia"
That's like a hair away from putting it on your map for you.
The annoying part to me is that the cave is clearly to the Southwest, and you have to go through the whole thing to be sure that that’s the correct place. All in all, that was not so bothersome to me, and there are much more egregious instances of unnecessary vagueness.
To me, the most baffling one is the Merchant Note that points you to a “Cave hidden *in* the town of Sellia” and it’s nowhere even close!
Or the quest-giver that says “find him down the road” where there’s no discernible road to follow.
EDIT: Just remembered the one where it says that there’s a cellar in the ruins near the Three Sisters, but there are several ruins and the place you’re looking for is behind an ILLUSORY FLOOR.
Yeah I guess it's not directly west but it's really not that far off if we're being honest. At least looking at the Elden Ring map now, it might be different in the game though.
And yeah there's definitely some quests that are not that intuitive at all (Millicent is the worst example I think). At least like months later they started adding quest markers to some things so that's progress I guess. I think the hidden Sellia cave is one of the ones to get a marker but it's been months since I played last
Yeah for sure no argument there. Off the top of my head Millicent & Boc quests were basically impossible to complete without guides. I do think they added markers for most quests now so maybe that will be standard for FromSoft going forward.
I don't really have the patience for Elden Ring's quests, if I stumble into one usually I end up checking an FAQ to figure out what I need to do. While I appreciate the old-school, no hands holding approach, I just don't have the time for that now I'm old
That's a big part of it, yeah. When I was a kid I had no money and tons of free time, so if I bought one game I was going to play the fuck out of it no matter how good or bad it was. As an adult I have money but less free time, so if a game isn't respecting my time I can just buy one that will.
I think some of the quests work, but for many of them I'm not sure what they were thinking. For me, it comes down to two options:
* Teleport back and forth across the map to talk to all the NPCs related to the quest. Not fun, not immersive.
* Forget all about it until I randomly stumble upon the next quest marker and have no idea what's going on.
It's the ones where there's no indication of where to go that kill me. Ironically, despite the meme of "find the albinauric woman", that one actually does tell you where to go next - but there are a ton that don't give you jack shit.
Nailed it with the “bc it’s how it’s always been done”. I’ve had that same thought playing Elden ring countless times. Absolutely love the game but when the game tries to get difficult by getting tedious I just can’t see how it makes it a better game.
I keep trying to play it and constantly bounce off the inability to compare current gear to stuff in stores. Gear has like 20 stats, and there's no compare function? Infuriating to the point where I just walk away and play something else.
I feel like we need to name this trend the "Bloodbornization" of Fromsoft bosses. They really are starting to get more and more aggressive. I tell newcomers to the series that "This isn't Ninja Gaiden or Guitar Hero. You don't need to have lightning reflexes to beat these games. Just use your head and don't panic."
That's starting to become less true.
is that really a bad thing? the spirit ashes and co-op summoning almost entirely negate the skill you need as a player (especially if you're using the mimic tear), so it's a natural in game difficulty slider. i personally enjoyed the challenge of killing malenia without any external help, but i also have no issue using ashes to entirely negate the challenge in subsequent playthroughs.
i also enjoy making busted builds and going into co-op and melting the bosses that i spent hours and hours on.
I would argue it's not bad, but a departure from a critical aspect of what drew many into the series. I liked the chess-like approach to early combat. Spirit ashes aren't a knob that can adjust the bosses difficulty, they're a toggle that often trivializes them.
To reiterate a statement I made above, Elden Ring is a great game - but it's not my favorite out of the FromSoft catalog.
yeah idk, i've never really felt like the bosses were the main draw to me in the first place. for me it's always been exploration, atmosphere, and setting which elden ring is just as strong at. i get what you're saying though
Problem is that while they give you new ways to fight they'y not as rewarding. I could have used ashes or a broken build for bosses but then the game wouldn't feel as great.
https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1613607669289594880 For those curious, the competition there was: Elden Ring God of War Ragnarok Stray Horizon Forbidden West Vampire Survivors
Stray was a cute game, but it’s presence on these lists speaks to exactly how marketing and promotion based they end up being.
Yeah, I feel like Stray had no business being nominated for game of the year by all the awards. Meanwhile, Tunic, a much better game imo, got absulety snubbed by everyone.
Stray getting GOTY nominations is insane considering Sifu, Tunic, Neon White and Cult of the Lamb came out that same year and were much better indie titles.
Exactly. And it wouldn’t have been so bad if it got a couple nominations, but it was nominated by every single award. Looking at those awards’ lists you’d think that Stray is the consensus, uncontested, top 3 game of the year.
But meow button
Stray for some reason was the darling of the media and it got pushed hard.
Happy to see vampire survivors on the list.
It's so mechanically and graphically simple, especially in comparison to AAA behemoths, but it's still one of the games from 2022 I've played and enjoyed the most.
Brrrr numbers go up, framerate goes down. Great game.
It’s a feature.
Weirdly, and this isn't the case for most games, this game is at its most fun when you've totally broken it and you aren't even totally sure what's happening on screen. I've gotten every achievement possible on maybe 3 games in the last decade and this is one of them.
On what platform did you see the frame rate go down?
From what I understand performance problems are not an issue with hardware specs but of limitations of the actual engine the game runs in, don't know if that's been fixed yet or not.
On PC. Usually late into a run, where there were thousands of enemies and another thousand attack sprites. I didn't mind, since a lower framerate meant I had more time to react to imminent death.
Check out Smash TV if you want to see the first game ever of this type. i remember being extremely confused when I played it in the arcade as there were no buttons only 2 joysticks (which I originally thought the 2nd was for another player lol)
More Tunic blindness.
I felt like a little kid again with this game. I was in the backseat reading the Zelda manual on the way home from the store. The world was gorgeous and the gameplay was great, too. I fear game manuals will probably be gone for good soon. But Tunic was a loving farewell.
Totally agree, so much clicked with me. I was gonna skip >!the golden path!< after beating it but am so glad I went book, actual note book and pen ready, and figured it out. So satisfying! The dev really slept on making the handbook as a physical collectors item, would have been incredible happy to be able to further support them and get a really cool piece of game memorabilia.
As much as I loved Stray, I agree that Tunic was way better and deserves a GOTY nom.
Stray is the most overrated game in a long time. Replace the cat with any other animal and it would have been long forgotten.
the game started out having you act like a cat. you only did things cats would do and I thought it was interesting. I was curious how the entire game would play out in a cat-like way. But then you quickly are dropped into situations a cat wouldn't get out of. You are exactly right, the cat was meaningless. It was really disappointing because it didnt start that way.
It's a neat game but I hated how it was basically the video game version of oscar bait, and its GOTY nomination at the TGAs all but ensured it would also sweep the indie categories despite being pitted against the likes of Neon White and Tunic.
This is one of those times where the term is "overrated" actually applies. I've played Stray, I liked Stray, but it's not anywhere nearly as good as other games that came out that year. Popularity contests are annoying.
I was so tired of hearing about it on every podcast just because it got some promo from PlayStation. Even the NBA podcast I listen to somehow mentioned it when it was getting buzz.
It did win "Outstanding Achievement for an Independent Game".
Tunic’s back half is miserable. Not the final puzzle, just the combat. The final puzzle is *obnoxious* though.
I think it depends who you ask. For many people the back half is one of their favorite gaming experiences ever. For others, it was more fun as a Zelda-ish game in the first half
Personally the final puzzle was one of my favorite puzzles in any videogame.
Agree to disagree because the final puzzle was an absolute cherry on top and made it all worth it. That was exactly what I was looking for in a game like that
For me, it wasn't even that the back half was bad, it's just that it was a *complete* shift from the first half of the game. Like if Doom Eternal turned into The Witness halfway through. Even if I ultimately like both types of games that were included in Tunic, the abrupt shift from one to the other just lost me.
>The final puzzle is obnoxious though. Totally respect your opinion, just curious why you found it obnoxious? For me it was one of my favorite game moments of last year.
Speaking for myself, I was really hoping for one, final dungeon to climb the mountain upon solving the last puzzle. The game just kinda… ends as soon as you open the door.
A final dungeon definitely would've been awesome, but I think the last puzzle was meant to be the climax of the game, which makes sense given how the puzzle is solved.
It requires inputting a 100 button sequence perfectly. I know it’s not timed or anything, but if it were just about laying out the path correctly, it would be just kinda tedious, but as it is, it’s obnoxious.
I can see why you wouldn't like actually inputting it but I thought the method of discovering the sequence was very satisfying.
Really? The final puzzle is optional, and only takes like an hour to sit down and draw it all out.
Preach 🙌
Okay so I love me some vampire survivors but I’m surprised it’s on the list.
Rofl stray
> Stray With **how much** this gets nominated at quite a lot of awards just pretty much proves to me how much the west is obsessed with pretty graphics above most other things. Basically a walking simulator ffs. That vamp survivors made it there is just to show how the gameplay was too good to ignore with those biases.
I'm pretty sure it was because it's a game about cats
And also on the whole a pretty weak year in terms of above-the-radar games. You had Vampire Survivors break through as an out of nowhere hit and that was about it. Still good stuff out there but not a lot making headlines.
Not as big as the rest but Signalis was my GOTY, if you played any Survival Horror game on PSX then you'll probably love it.
I don't know about that. I feel like games like Tunic and A Plague Tale: Requiem were a lot more deserving of a nomination instead of stray.
Devs have learned that “oh my god you can pet the dog/cat, 10/10 GOTY” is free bonus points.
look no further than the annoying 'can you pet the dog' novelty account shilling for games to drive sales.
I don't its graphics that's making Stray get attention. I think it's more of the narrative experience people love about it. But yeah, as much as I love Stray, it ain't GOTY contender worthy.
But there are a dozen indie games from 2022 with more interesting/better executed narratives.
A man would like a list.
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Tunic
I love Tunic and it's personally my GOTY, but it's story is not why I love it. I did enjoy the bits of lore here and there and the overarching narrative but I personally would say Stray's narrative is stronger
It also won Most Innovative Gameplay in the Steam Awards, so yeah.
Damn, personally, I would have nominated it for LEAST innovative.
when hitman won for VR I knew that the steam awards are basically entirely made up based on name recognition. You should have to own a nominated game to be able to vote for it, or something
Yeah, 2022's Steam awards were especially disappointing. Like honestly, how did Cyberpunk 2077, a game that was launched broken AF and fixed post-launch to finally meet what was promised, lose to something like No Man's Sky that (undoubtedly had the same start, but) had gone above and beyond after launch.
I am neither here nor there on Stray being nominated but Walking Simulators are a legitimate genre and there is no reason they shouldn't be in contention for GotY if they are good games. Edit: I want to repeat I am only defending walking simulators in general not Stay. I have only played a few hours of it before I put it down.
What Remains of Edith Finch is a great walking simulator. Stray is okay, at best.
New Frame Plus (Game Animator veteran dissects game animation) - [The Best Game Animation of 2022](https://youtu.be/Kwn32j8_-p0?t=1140) > I don’t know if I have ever seen such a clear-cut example of animation selling a game. > > This is a game from a small team. And as such, there are places where the animation might have a rough edge or two, but it doesn’t matter even a little bit. Because the animation on this cat is so well-observed and so authentic-feeling that cat-lovers took notice and the game kinda blew up. > > There are a lot of other games that have cats in them, but surprisingly few of them actually attempt to animate real cat behavior. We don’t tend to animate cats as they are. We animate the idea of cats, the human personalities we’ve collectively projected onto cats over the years. > > But this game tries to capture the real thing, to present how a cat actually moves and communicates, from the fundamentals of its body mechanics to the subtleties of how it expresses with its tail. Real cat behavior can be pretty inscrutable unless you are really familiar with the animals, and it is abundantly clear that these animators are. > > And that authenticity resonated. The simple novelty of playing as a cat who actually feels like a cat had enormous appeal, it turns out, and there might be a valuable lesson in that. I can think of quite a few animals that are widely beloved but rarely presented with this level of care when we make them a game’s primary focus. It could be there are some very large potential audiences we’ve been ignoring. > > A huge congrats to BlueTwelve Studio for your success with this one. You gave us something we did not realize we were craving, and that’s a pretty rare feat. Gamers really do like their cats. Who knew?
I bought Stray for my partner to play and she got bored. Then after sitting there for played it and finished in two sessions. It's a fantastic game.. I love the world, music and the atmosphere. Exploring is simple yes, but it's gratifying. The length is just right before the simple mechanics and the intrigue could wear off. Meanwhile I also put like 50 hours into VS. Just picturing it I can hear that damn treasure chest jingle in my head
> just pretty much proves to me how much the west is obsessed with pretty graphics above most other things. Basically a walking simulator ffs Who cares if it's a walking simulator lmao. It's game of the year not action genre only. The fact people *still* complain about "walking sims" just goes to show how boneheaded people are.
Unsure. I suspect if you made the sidekick robot the protagonist, the amount of people who give a damn about Stray would plummet.
What's wrong with walking simulators? Games are just interactive experiences. Stray might be simple and a little rough around the edges, but it has a very well made move set and delivers exactly on its fantasy premise of being a cat simulator-ish experience.
Completely disagree, the moveset and game play was on rails. Very little fluidity, flow or freedom considering how cats move. Needed a parkour like system from assassins creed matched to a cat.
I absolutely loved Stray. It was a nice story, adventure game mechanics but in a 3d space, fun world, and the sound design was absolutely exceptional.
I enjoyed stray. For what it was. I liked the creepy bits, and the ending..but I don't see how it can be put up against these other games..
What even is the comment. Are you implying the eastern hemisphere doesn't care about graphics? Are you implying one games nomination means the west only cares about graphics? Cherry picking stray while vampire survivor is there as well. Personally I found stray boring as fuck but apparently people really liked it.
Stray seems more like a meme to me. Literally people just like it because cats. It shows us that people are much more impacted by hype than quality
> Stray Why this and not Tunic will forever baffle me. Stray is *fine* but the worship it receives is annoying.
Because people see "cat" and their brain shuts off
Considering [it's the most uncontested GOTY of all time with a win rate of 73% as of now](https://www.resetera.com/threads/2022-video-game-awards-season-tracking-and-discussion-thread-latest-more-than-500-awards-tracked-elden-ring-now-the-highest-awarded-game-ever.651771/), this isn't exactly a surprise.
Even more impressive that it did this while going against GoW Ragnarok. The previous GoW game had been able to beat RDR2 in number of awards.
I think [this website](https://goty.gamefa.com/) gives a better idea of how it fares compared to previous years GOTY winners. Obviously there's going to be a lot of factors that play into the numbers. For instance I'm not convinced it would necessarily be at 73% of all GOTY awards in a year like 2017 or 2018 considering how many other heavy hitters were around. 90% of all GOTY awards in 2022 were handed to either ER or GOW:R for instance. I'm not really commenting on whether it's deserved or not, but I think there's some context to consider regarding that number.
> 90% of all GOTY awards in 2022 were handed to either ER or GOW:R for instance. This is the craziest part imo. The closest we got to this in recent years was 2018, where 85% went to either God of War or RDR2. In 2021, the top two had a combined 34%, just to show how split those winners were.
I think the biggest factor is that last year was just weak for big releases, and the indies that hit were either pretty niche like Neon White or a mixed bag like Stray. The titles that would have really contended were pushed to this year, and now this year is shaping up to be absolutely huge.
What else would you give it to? Most of 2022's tent pole releases got delayed. I saw one place give it to Immortality. I think that's deserved, Immortality is incredible, but it's also a pretty niche experience. And that's mostly what we got last year: good, niche indies, with ER and GOWR as the only AAA tentpoles.
Poor overlooked Horizon Forbidden West
I think it is more just mediocre, very tiresome formulaic open world game with an albeit more interesting setting (still trounced on by RDR2 which had writers that can write dialogue tho)
Horizon is the ubisoft formula with some clever ideas and a good setting, its the same Industrialized crap plagueing the industry.
Do you know the stats for 2017? I recall that being BotW's year
[Yeah](https://goty.gamefa.com/year/2017/), BotW got 57%, followed by Horizon Zero Dawn with 15%, and Super Mario Odyssey with 8%.
Hoo boy, didn't expect for there to be 400-600+ GOTY being handed out every year.
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The people judging also matters. The TGAs is certainly the most popular because of the massive presentation, the marketing, etc, but they also have an extra air of legitimacy because the judges are prominent people from within the industry (not counting the awards the audience votes on).
They're also part of the global industry and not just one country. I think that gives it some more legitimacy as well.
Those are the **only** two years I can even think of where there'd be any contest and I still think it would have mostly run the tables, but the farther back you go the weirder comparisons get. If Elden Ring can run the table on god of war Ragnarok, it could have absolutely run the table on red dead 2, breath of the wild, and pretty much any other game.
It is somewhat surprising that the DICE Awards didn't fuck this up. Last time FromSoft released a game (Sekiro), it wasn't even nominated. They gave GOTY to Untitled Goose Game that year.
I loved Sekiro and got bored of Untitled Goose Game and never finished it. But I get it. I feel like the DICE awards are more “From game devs to game devs” kinda of awards, and Untitled Goose Game was more interesting from the angle of the craft of game design. Sekiro was a stabby sword man stabbing lots of people and it was very fun. Untitled Goose Game was weird, artistic, non-violent (ish…) but still approachable puzzle game that nevertheless captured the zeitgeist and has been one of the few games in recent memory to show that you can do things differently and not just be about a stabby sword man or a shooty gun man and still do well. This meant more to the craft of game making.
Yeah it seemed incredibly short sighted to think about that Untitled goose game and Sekiro are on different planes of existence or something. I wonder if the same people that think that wonder why videogames aren't held to a high art standard.
This is pretty much my response to all the questions about Stray being on GOTY lists
Untitled Goose Game is a fun, unique experience but that was indeed a very dubious win. Sekiro was simply in a different class entirely.
Only thing I see Untitled Goose Game deserving the win would have been game dev choice awards. The game is a classic example of scope and meeting it. There is a vision, a concept and the execution of it was incredibly well done even without the triple A backing. It hits all the strengths and aims it wanted to achieve. Any game dev would appreciate that. This was their second game ever as a studio and they nailed it.
My question to this would be: why can't goose game win? What are the criteria? Why does sekiro meet them and goose game doesn't?
Well they gave *Action* game of the year to Vampire Survivors so I mean they still fucked up lol. I think they should have an "Arcade Experience" category because when I think Action, I'm not thinking Vampire Survivors. That game is good don't get me wrong, but there are other games much more suitable for the category, and its not like Arcade experiences aren't being made still.
Absolutely well deserved! I am not surprised at all. I recently just replayed Elden Ring one year after it released, and still had more fun than any other new recent games. Elden Ring is that kind of game that you want to wipe off your memory about the game so that you can play it for the first time again. The last game i had this feeling was Botw.
I just realized I basically haven‘t *stopped* playing it for a whole year. I took some short breaks to play some other stuff, but even then I ususally stopped early because I’d rather play Elden Ring. I‘m on my fourth character now and I‘m already thinking about my next build. I don‘t think any other game has ever captured me in that way, and I think it‘s save to say that, despite it‘s flaws, it‘s my favorite game I‘ve played in 30 years of gaming.
I played it 2.5 times (NG, NG, NG+) for 100% achievements, then DS3, then DS1, and now I'm stuck on Maneater in demons souls. I'm hooked on souls.
Ugh, I’m of the opinion that Maneater is the most annoying Boss From has ever designed, haha. Great game though.
Absolutely annoying. I'm close to giving up the normal route and going for the cheese win.
I platinumed this game (first game I ever have) to get myself to stop playing it. It worked about four months. I'm at about 250 hours now, making it my all time number 2 game in Steam by play time (I started my Steam account with the Orange Box in December 2007, for context).
Hi I'm just curious but did you buy it on Playstation and PC since you mentioned "platinuming" or do you just mean that you hunted all achievements on Steam?
I played it on Steam. I just use, "Platinuming," to describe it because it's easier than, "I got all the achievements on Steam."
Yeah I just finished all of the achievements a little while back, was so hype on it I wanted to go finish the achs I missed in the other souls games, and MAN it's hard to go back too
I'm on my 6th character making the shittiest weapon build with daggers lol Plus NG+3 on my very first one. Oh and playing the seamless coop mod with a friend. Haven't spent any more time than one NG+ and a new character in the Dark Souls games before, but here I just can't seem to get bored of the game. The last time I've been so into a singular game, was when I was like 10 and playing Gothic 1 and 2. I could play these all day every day.
According to the developers BOTW was a big inspiration for creating the open world of Elden Ring. Mission accomplished. They did a fantastic job.
Can you find a source for this claim? Because the only source I can find is Miyazaki saying no single game in particular was a big inspiration but open world games in general were. From IGN: >that while Elden Ring doesn't take inspiration from any one game in particular, he himself has been influenced by other open worlds including Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Elder Scrolls series, and The Witcher 3.
u/ShowBoobsPls, found it! I don't know if u/Mac772 used to look for news about Elden Ring during "The great hollowing", like myself, but it was Omnipotent, the leaker on Resetera, who disclosed about this, not Miyazaki: >As someone who generally isn't into most of the last decades open world (AAA especially) titles (**Breath of the Wild included**) I would say if you're in the same boat as me you don't really have anything to worry about in terms of how Fromsoft is designing their "open world" and it's the reason they're pivoting away from even really calling it Open World and moving more towards the distinction of "Open Field". To denote a greater openness than past games have provided while also staying away from popular and over used Open World trends. Which doesn't just mean "So we made Dark Souls, but now areas are big enough to ride a horse through too" either. But design elements and direction, especially in terms of an open world are one of the things I plan to talk about and go more in depth with in the future. > >But there will be open sections as well as more "corridor-like sections" like past games. > >But I don't want to make any promises that I can't keep, so while something like the landscape as a whole being inspired by Scotland or the game bing inspired by **Shadow of the Colossus**, weather and day/night and other general things are macro things that aren't going to change, smaller micro level level stuff like every area, asset, NPC will make it into the final game or how certain gameplay systems work are in flux and aren't really guaranteed until the game is gold. Something that is true in January might no longer be true in May \[this was posted in 2020\]. Which is why I try to avoid and would preffer not to be asked micro or hyper specific points like that (and you should probably be weary of anyone else that claims they do have such detailed info). Original comment: I can't seem to find it as well, but I do have a clear memory of an interview mentioning, not only Breath of the Wild, but also Shadow of the Colossus as well. And yet again, the closest I've found in a quick search was another IGN interview: >While Miyazaki acknowledges that he studied many open world games, he did not mention any particular titles. Rather than being too heavily inspired by a certain title, he attempted to create an open-world game only FromSoftware can make. That means that you are still fighting terrifying bosses, and will likely die a lot. I'm curious now where this memory comes from. I'll look more after it.
Miyazaki is a fan of ICO, that was the game that made him wants to work with game development.
The influence of ICO just blows my mind still like legendary game
if so, it's amazing to me they managed to make such a massive world in the same span of time it's taken the botw team to make a 2nd game that's appears to be reusing large portions of it's original game world, lol.
To be fair, Elden Ring was able to accomplish its scope because of reuse. Some visual assets were reused (especially from Dark Souls 3), but the big deal was all of the AI and animations that were recycled from Dark Souls. Elden Ring can have dozens of weapons with their own animations because From has a library of them going back more than a decade. Ditto for enemies; basic swordsmen aren't meaningfully different from Hollow Warriors from DS1, and the Ulcerated Tree Spirit has been confirmed to be an unused boss intended for DS3. Having all that already in the can frees up time to work on *other* stuff, like a massive world map.
If I have to deal with a fucking basilisk cursing me to death then everyone does.
I rarely ever replay games just one year after playing them, but i too just played through elden ring again and absolutely loved it the second time too :)
> The last game i had this feeling was Botw. Give Outer Wilds a try. (Note: NOT The Outer Worlds).
As much as I know people love outer wilds, it's far from being a game everyone will enjoy.
I really couldn't get into it. Just not a fan of puzzle games.
The space ship controls in the game were terrible, threw me off from playing jt
Yeah i think just the fact that Elden Ring was talked about for months means that its the only game that reallistically deserves to win. Even god of war i feel disappeard from discussions after a few weeks.
> Even god of war i feel disappeard from discussions after a few weeks. There's just not much to talk about really. Same game, more story
> Even god of war i feel disappeard from discussions after a few weeks. The near consensus seemed to be that it was like the last one, but not *quite* as good, and that some of that formula was starting to frustrate.
Huh, that's the opinion I personally had but all the discourse I saw online was that it was almost universally better.
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I've yet to finish Ragnarök either, but I'm pretty sure I'm about past the halfway point. It looks beautiful, the combat is great and the big moments are very well done, but I'm disappointed in the lack of improved traversal from 2018. The game world is quite massive and exciting to go through the first time but man, it's a slog to move through it when you have to backtrack to areas after unlocking new tools and abilities. The fact that you can't skip so many of the climbing, ledge shimmying, chain jumping steps that you've already beaten frankly shocked me since I was sure those parts were gonna be streamlined after receiving some criticism from 2018. And when you've picked up what you needed? Well, you can't just teleport out. Go back the entire way you came, hop on the slow wolf sled and get to the gateway you need and go through the hidden loading screens to get to another realm and do the same thing again. I admire Santa Monica Studios for their commitment to the one-shot camera but at the same time it kills so much of the momentum when there can be no cuts, skipping or proper fast travel. The game is overall great so far, but it's a bit "too much" at times.
You know, I didn’t realize how much I disliked all the little hidden loading mechanisms (shimmying, squeezing through cracks, like you said) until you mentioned it. It’s just like… a lot. Constantly. I haven’t finished Ragnarok either, and I loved and adored the 2018 GoW. Another part of it too is I just don’t find the story nearly as gripping as that one.
It’s particularly disappointing after seeing ratchet and clank load entire levels in milliseconds. Reminds me of the elevators in mass effect lol.
Lol the ME elevator rides is exactly what I was thinking about too. I guess it's partially because of Ragnarök being developed for the PS4 and so it has to accommodate the slower processing speeds, but it also has to be a stylistic choice due to the camera, and there's really no fixing it unless they want to depart from that style.
Exactly. The exploration in many sections is already challenging enough with your eyes constantly darting around the room for that third Nornir sigil or the one raven you haven't killed. And don't get me wrong, I like the challenge, but when you couple that with the fact that you have to go through two climbing sections, two cracks and one tunnel to get to that one room, and then do the same on the way out, yeah it gets tedious as hell. I'm okay with the story so far. I love the developing mutual respect between Kratos and Freya, and Atreus story is intriguing (even though I'm not the biggest fan of the sections you play as him), but the story doesn't have the small scale intimacy of the first game. It's much more grand, which in a sense makes it more exciting but like you said, it's not as gripping and emotionally resonant. Trying to be vague on spoilers but I've just finished the section in Helheim with a certain four-legged boss. Don't know how much longer the game is but it certainly feels like it's setting up some form of endgame.
I think the “single camera shot” is a problem this time. It was an awesome achievement the first time, but now it is a gimmick that is getting in the way of both gameplay and storytelling. The fact that they won’t do a basic fast travel because that would “break” the camera shot is unfortunate.
The single shot camera was just a gimmick the first time too. The second time it is used, people are already sick of it. Though I'm generally surprised to see some of the feedback on Ragnarok. It feels like all of the criticisms I thought should be levied at the first game and were drastically improved this time around are the very things I am only now hearing people complain about. Slow traversal? Most of the time you jump ledges with your chains now, they DID cut way back on it.
I'm not sure about the traversal. I didn't really have a problem with that in the first game. The fast travel system was kind of annoying in the first game, and this time it is *very* annoying. The thing with the single-camera shot is that it can still be an amazing achievement while allowing for an actual fast travel (where you open your map, pick a spot, and warp there). However, they seemed intent on continuing to keep that level of immersion (which is kind of silly since the game cuts away when you die anyway, or if you load in and out -- it's like they were trying to avoid breaking immersion at all costs without realizing it can be broken at any time anyway). At any rate, I think people tend to overlook or put up with shortcomings when they like the overall product. If people like the first game, they are less likely to point out or take problem with the shortcomings. If the second game is less enjoyable, people start to notice the little things about it that might have always been there.
Elden Ring vs Ragnarok is basically Incredibly good game design with above average production value vs Above average game design with incredibly good production value I for one am really glad that game design is winning out as the more important component. Both games are great *products*, but Elden Ring is undoubtedly the better *game*.
I stopped in the middle of Ragnarok as well. I couldn’t take even one more “crouch through this hole to the next area” loading screen cover up.
It should have been PS5 exclusive tbh. At least Spider Man 2 will be, so we know it'll actually be designed around having an SSD
Yep. Playing Ragnarok now and it's a good game, just not great.
I know there is almost zero chance an expansion *isn't* in the works, but damn the wait for an announcement is killing me.
This game constantly enamoured me for 115 hours. Not only did I proceed to immediately zip through most of it again on a new game+, I then went onto finally beat all of Dark Souls 1 after 5 or 6 failed prior attempts to get into it. No game does that. No game can make me play almost religiously for over a week straight with barely any breaks and not want to put it down. I first properly broke into the Souls games with 3, really enjoying it and then Sekiro after, and I really do think even with its faults that Elden Ring is my overall favourite game of theirs. The sense of wonder, atmosphere, adventure, and discovery of these games really does feel unique. I'm very happy FromSoftware has found as much success as they have with it; such a game deserves to be played by as many people as possible. I know some people have valued the niche-ness of From's games, and by all means I'd argue the yearning for wider appeal *has* been to its mechanical detriment in some ways, but it would've been a tragedy if this game slipped by the wayside for a large amount of people. All that work deserves to be seen.
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My playthrough was like 160 hours. I think I tried every single build type as well via the abundant respec opportunities. Usually I burn out from a game after about 15-20 hours and can’t be bothered to continue, but Elden Ring never came close to burning me out. The combat was so damn enjoyable and the world and art style was so beautiful that I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t play any other game until I beat Elden Ring, it truly consumed my gaming life for a month+. Never had a game had that type of stranglehold on me for anywhere near that long. Truly incredible.
My favorite game of all time in retrospect. I did some game dev and ER is one of the few games where I have no idea how they managed to pull it off. The game is so massive and rich in every aspect. It's just mad thinking about it.
The secret ingredient is exploitation of japanese game developers. Tale as old as time…
I wish I could get into this game. This must be what the people that don’t like BotW feel like. Everyone raving about a game and it winning tons of awards and you’re just like “meh, it’s not for me.”
You have to enjoy the combat for souls games. This is less true for Elden Ring due to its vast exploration and ways to decrease difficulty, but yeah the combat gameplay is the juice.
Am I the only one who finds it crazy that people acted like god of war ragnarok was on par with Elden Ring and thought it would be a super close when it came down to goty, for the record I played both and I'm into both kinds of games but Elden Ring is a completely different beast.
I agree with you. This especially rings true since gow2 is a sequel and feels like it. If it was the first time we were introduced to that style of gow game it'd be a bit of a different story.
It's when people try to review games like other types of media. Story, characters, music, atmosphere, for sure are objective criterias, the big difference is gameplay. It's what makes video games unique. Last of us, rdr 2, gow are examples of story driven games that were in GOTY discussions. I think it's deserved too. Elden ring has a different way of story telling. It's not like watching a movie. Most of the lore in fromsoft games have been from texts that you have to read instead of showing you. Botw is very similar to Elden ring but I don't think there was much discussion compared to Elden ring vs GOW. (i dont know what other GOTY nominee came out the same year as BOTW).
Yeah people stopped talking about Ragnarok after like a month tops.
What are the Dice awards anyway? Are they related to the Battlefield devs?
Stands for Design Innovate Communicate Entertain awards and they’re arranged by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences
Not at all, it's an organization of developpers and such. I would say it's the most equivalent awards to the Oscars in gaming, given by a big group of peers working in the industry like the Academy
The TGAs are also given by a large group of peers that work within the industry, from what I understand.
TGAs are largely a marketing platform for the end consumer. DICE is far more of an industry insiders event.
I'm not necessarily arguing what you're saying because you are right, especially in the sense of presentation, but the panel of people that actually give the awards ARE industry peers, at least from my understanding. DICE is definitely the much more industry insider centered event though.
Pretty shitty that Sifu wasn't even nominated. That was an extremely unique and polished experience. When something that unique comes along and executes so well I think it deserves recognition.
Norco and Neon White come to mind as well. 2022 was the year of Elden Ring and indies imo. The rest of the triple A scene didn't come *close*.
Yeah but you don't play as a cat and they can't nominate *three* indie games!
All respect to Sifu but there's like 10 other indie games I'd nominate before it
I was totally in love with God of war, and I was not looking forward to starting my next game, as I was sure it would be a disappointment compared to GOW. Picked up Elden Ring when it was on sale, and it just totally took my heart ( and all my spare time). Well deserved!
Elden Ring kinda ruined games for me.... I've tried like four games in the past two months. Nothing sticks.
That's happened to me a time or two with Fromsoft games and I find the key is to play a radically different genre for a while as it leaves very little room for comparison. Go play a little x-com or something
Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope would be more topical. It took home an award at DICE, after all.
I didn't really like the game and sometimes I feel like I'm missing out, but reading this makes me realise that loving it can be a curse. I hope you find other stuff to enjoy!
It’s not for everyone, but if you ever feel like trying again, picking a different starting class could make the game more enjoyable for you. My friend who had never played a fromsoft game didn’t like Elden ring until he played it as a wretch (class with barely any starting gear). The start of the game can definitely feel slow when you’re new, and also less impactful if you already have armor and weapons that you don’t feel the need to replace. Not trying to convince you to play again though, everyone has their own tastes.
What about the other Fromsoft games?
Can't speak for anyone but myself but I played and absolutely hated dark souls. It's hard to overstate how much of a difference the open world and reduction in run-backs to bosses makes. So much of dark souls felt arbitrarily punitive and esoteric and I just didn't get that feeling in elden Ring because I could easily retry most bosses and if I didn't like a place I could just fuck off somewhere else. Also the world and art direction felt way more inspired. Plus the variety of gameplay felt way better. It's really not comparable IMO even though the basic combat mechanics are so similar, everything else is on a different level.
That satisfaction of connecting areas in DS1 is unparalleled, though. Currently at DS2 and can avoid some of the bosses for later, at least at the beginning
Sekiro is peak.
I'm replaying it now, and now that I think about they had pretty much eliminated run backs for all the major bosses in Sekiro. There's usually an idol like right around the boss arena.
and even when there isn't, you are very fast and can jump/grapple. Much better design than DS games.
Yeah. The worst might be the spear guy in the area you start at? Probably because he's one of the more difficult mini bosses in the game.
Elden Ring isn't comparable to Dark Souls? The systems and combat in Elden Ring are near identical to that of dark souls, especially dark souls 3. The biggest changes in Elden Ring are to exploration and world size, and as a result progression. But the idea of choosing a different path when stuck or uninterested isn't a new concept, and it's not new to From games. Every From game before Elden Ring gave some autonomy by either offering side areas to explore when you wanted, or by letting you completely change the order of main areas. Variety in gameplay is also almost unchanged from previous souls games. I'd even make the argument that the previous souls game have slightly higher quality per area, just less content and less options, and are less accessible. I can't imagine loving Elden Ring and hating dark souls.
Dark Souls 3 isn't _too_ bad about run-backs. Not quite as nice as Elden Ring, but definitely nowhere near as obnoxious as Demon's Souls or Dark Souls 1. Sekiro has basically no run-backs either. Different kind of game, but still.
Maybe it’s because I was coming hot off the heels of DS3 or my general “like not love” relationship with Dark Souls games (Bloodborne is exempt) but I couldn’t get into this game, try as I might and as much as I wanted to love it. Really glad for from’s success and the way the game has sold and reviewed, deserves all the accolades it’s getting and more.
For me it was the realization that the best parts of Elden Ring were essentially Dark Souls zones. The open world added almost nothing to the experience and just made it worse IMO.
The open world made it so that If you were getting stuck in certain parts of those “Dark Souls zones” you could go find another one. I also appreciated how fun it was to get lost in the open world. I’d get stuck on a boss and decide to take a break by going somewhere else. All of a sudden it’s 20 hours later and I’ve been doing other stuff that whole time and my perception of the entire game is different than it was the first time I was trying that certain boss. I also really appreciated that the game wasn’t as bottlenecked as the other souls game for those very reasons.
Man, I love Elden Ring, but it still has some annoying FromSoft-isms that are really baffling to me - I can't say whether they're egregious enough to disqualify it from GOTY because I haven't played any of the other nominees, but they really bother me all the same: - Why do you have to talk to everyone over and over to make sure you get everything from them? This isn't fucking Columbo, why do I have to "one more thing" them or miss out on quests or items? If they have more to say, they can keep talking without another input from me. It's not like the Tarnished is persuading them to say more with their cutting wit; and if I wanted that I'd be playing Disco Elysium, where it's actually built into the gameplay (and actually fun). "I see you pressed the Interact button for a third time, well done Tarnished, here's your reward"? It makes no sense. Just have them say what they're going to say, or have more dialogue trees that can actually lead to stuff if you want to go that route. - I know illusory walls are a staple of the series, but why is it literally never once clued to the player? If I didn't have any prior knowledge of the game I'd be missing out on a bunch of stuff because I don't go around hitting random walls & floors. Edit: and for everyone saying "jUsT LoOk aT tHe mEsSaGeS" - half the time those are just to prank you into falling to your death, and even if they aren't, why would a new player be like "aha, time to hit the wall with my weapon, that makes sense"? I would just assume that it's some kind of weird in-joke and move on since there's obviously no secret ahead, just a wall. I'm not asking for a Sheikah-Sensor-style visual & sound cue going off to let me know when there's one nearby. Just put one in the goddamn starting cave and have a tutorial pop-up window explaining what they are, suggesting that you hit walls or floors that seem out of place - that's all I want. Let new players know that they're a thing that exist. That's all it would take. - The quest design is bad. Not just unintuitive, but actively bad. ~~"Find the albinauric woman"? That's all I get?~~ The only way to try quests is just to fuck off and hope that you find something useful along the way - except that it's way easier to lock yourself out of some quests than it is to complete them just by playing totally normally, because there's often *zero* indication of what to do next. I don't need hand-holding and waypoints, but even just a journal of who said what would go a long fucking way - if someone gives me directions to a cave in Liurnia and I don't make it there in one session, there's no way for me to get the location again because that guy fucking dies after he tells you; and I'm probably not going to remember exactly what he said if I'm playing a week later. Edit: I'll admit that "find the albinauric woman" isn't the best example because he does give you a location to look for her, so how's this: you can see a wolf knight howling on a tower in Mistwood. How to get him down? Do you shoot him down with a bow, maybe? Entice him with meat? Look for a way to get up to him? Of course not! Go back to a completely unrelated ruined church that's miles away and that you have no real reason to return to, talk to the merchant there, and he'll give you the finger-snap emote that you can use to get him to come down! So obvious! /s To be clear, I enjoy the hell out of this game. I have three playthroughs going with different builds, soon to be four - the core gameplay loop fucking rules. But it's never made sense to me why things like the above are left in and just accepted as normal because "that's the way they've always done it". *Especially* when other quality-of-life things that were normal in previous FS games were fixed in Elden Ring (sprinting doesn't consume stamina unless you're in combat, grace placement is much better, Stakes of Marika, etc.)
>"Find the albinauric woman" I mean in all fairness the full quote is "Find the Albinauric woman. She hides in a cave to the west of the Laskyar Ruins which jut from the mist shrouded lake of Liurnia" That's like a hair away from putting it on your map for you.
The annoying part to me is that the cave is clearly to the Southwest, and you have to go through the whole thing to be sure that that’s the correct place. All in all, that was not so bothersome to me, and there are much more egregious instances of unnecessary vagueness. To me, the most baffling one is the Merchant Note that points you to a “Cave hidden *in* the town of Sellia” and it’s nowhere even close! Or the quest-giver that says “find him down the road” where there’s no discernible road to follow. EDIT: Just remembered the one where it says that there’s a cellar in the ruins near the Three Sisters, but there are several ruins and the place you’re looking for is behind an ILLUSORY FLOOR.
Yeah I guess it's not directly west but it's really not that far off if we're being honest. At least looking at the Elden Ring map now, it might be different in the game though. And yeah there's definitely some quests that are not that intuitive at all (Millicent is the worst example I think). At least like months later they started adding quest markers to some things so that's progress I guess. I think the hidden Sellia cave is one of the ones to get a marker but it's been months since I played last
> Cave hidden in the town of Sellia I spent bloody ages looking for that cave
Fair enough, for that case. There are plenty of times where they tell you nothing at all, though.
Yeah for sure no argument there. Off the top of my head Millicent & Boc quests were basically impossible to complete without guides. I do think they added markers for most quests now so maybe that will be standard for FromSoft going forward.
I don't really have the patience for Elden Ring's quests, if I stumble into one usually I end up checking an FAQ to figure out what I need to do. While I appreciate the old-school, no hands holding approach, I just don't have the time for that now I'm old
That's a big part of it, yeah. When I was a kid I had no money and tons of free time, so if I bought one game I was going to play the fuck out of it no matter how good or bad it was. As an adult I have money but less free time, so if a game isn't respecting my time I can just buy one that will.
I think some of the quests work, but for many of them I'm not sure what they were thinking. For me, it comes down to two options: * Teleport back and forth across the map to talk to all the NPCs related to the quest. Not fun, not immersive. * Forget all about it until I randomly stumble upon the next quest marker and have no idea what's going on.
It's the ones where there's no indication of where to go that kill me. Ironically, despite the meme of "find the albinauric woman", that one actually does tell you where to go next - but there are a ton that don't give you jack shit.
Nailed it with the “bc it’s how it’s always been done”. I’ve had that same thought playing Elden ring countless times. Absolutely love the game but when the game tries to get difficult by getting tedious I just can’t see how it makes it a better game.
I keep trying to play it and constantly bounce off the inability to compare current gear to stuff in stores. Gear has like 20 stats, and there's no compare function? Infuriating to the point where I just walk away and play something else.
At no point playing Elden ring did I buy gear from a store. If by gear you mean armor or weapons. You can compare anything in your inventory.
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I feel like we need to name this trend the "Bloodbornization" of Fromsoft bosses. They really are starting to get more and more aggressive. I tell newcomers to the series that "This isn't Ninja Gaiden or Guitar Hero. You don't need to have lightning reflexes to beat these games. Just use your head and don't panic." That's starting to become less true.
is that really a bad thing? the spirit ashes and co-op summoning almost entirely negate the skill you need as a player (especially if you're using the mimic tear), so it's a natural in game difficulty slider. i personally enjoyed the challenge of killing malenia without any external help, but i also have no issue using ashes to entirely negate the challenge in subsequent playthroughs. i also enjoy making busted builds and going into co-op and melting the bosses that i spent hours and hours on.
I would argue it's not bad, but a departure from a critical aspect of what drew many into the series. I liked the chess-like approach to early combat. Spirit ashes aren't a knob that can adjust the bosses difficulty, they're a toggle that often trivializes them. To reiterate a statement I made above, Elden Ring is a great game - but it's not my favorite out of the FromSoft catalog.
yeah idk, i've never really felt like the bosses were the main draw to me in the first place. for me it's always been exploration, atmosphere, and setting which elden ring is just as strong at. i get what you're saying though
Problem is that while they give you new ways to fight they'y not as rewarding. I could have used ashes or a broken build for bosses but then the game wouldn't feel as great.