Home » Elden Ring, the video game born in the shadow of “Game of Thrones”

Elden Ring, the video game born in the shadow of “Game of Thrones”

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From Software’s video games, and the saga Dark Souls first of all, they are the closest thing to a poem by Ungaretti. Of course, where the poet from Alexandria in Egypt preferred dryness and brevity, leaving few lines to release the hidden meaning of each word, in those titles one wanders for tens of hours in places full of threats and mystery. The point of contact, however, is in the unspoken, in the innate ability to tell between the lines, giving up the caption and placing the listeners, or in this case, the gamers, in the condition of having to connect the dots themselves to understand what it is actually happening in front of their eyes.

In the vast majority of video games, finding a weapon or a healing item along the way is functional to the experience: they are there to help those who wield the controller survive a few more minutes, waiting for the next turning point. In a “Souls”, there is a precise but cryptic choice behind each positioning, useful to offer suggestions and conjectures on this or that character, or place, powered by content creators and by increasingly lively and pulsating communities. A long cinematic loaded with dialogue and details, this saga (and we also include Bloodborne e Ax, for the sake of completeness), has always preferred short video sequences and exchanges of words reduced to the bone, preferring to tell his “story”, in a broad sense, through the settings, the limited interactions with the other characters, the

That’s why when the first details about the new project were offered, Elden Ring, and announced the collaboration with George R.R. Martin, the author of “Game of thrones”(Literary saga that has become a very famous TV series), the curiosity for one of the most anticipated video games of recent years, thanks to long silences and postponements, skyrocketed. A new universe to explore, after the fascinating and completely original one of Dark Souls, written from scratch and full of mythology, in particular Norse, but not only: in the first trailers shown so far, in fact, a mysterious red-haired figure with the appearance of a Valkyrie appears , and again, an imposing golden tree that recalls the Yggrdrasill, the world tree on which Odin hung for days in search of a superior knowledge.

We tried a few hours of play thanks to the Closed Network Test reserved for the press, an appetizer of the complete title that will arrive on PC and old and new generation consoles on February 25, 2022. Structured in such a way as to show more the news from the point of view of the game world than elements such as the contribution of Martin (who helped lay the foundations of the setting to the narrative background and build the intertwining between the key characters, according to the statements by From Software), it was certainly useful to grasp the first, substantial differences, as well as not a few similarities, with the past of the Japanese development studio.

The narrative backdrop of Elden Ring

The test, however, offered important details on the setting and on the mythological suggestions mentioned a few lines ago. We now know more precisely that the protagonist is a “senzaluce”, An entity exiled from the Interregnum, the name of the game world, as it lacks grace. As if stuck in a limbo of undeath, the Lightless are sentient and able to fight, but they are soulless, of the flow of life emanating from the Elden Ring, theAncestral Ring which gives the title to the game, and fromMother tree, a huge golden shrub visible from every corner of the world, which radiates it with its light.

The breaking of the ring, however, brought these creatures back to the Interregnum, attracted by the idea of ​​being able to reassemble it by collecting the fragments, and to obtain unimaginable powers. The obstacle, however, takes the form of giants, indestructible knights and semi-gods who guard these fragments, called “major runes”.

It is a story that is intricate, twisted right from the start, typical of From Software productions and, one might say, also of Martin himself, but not without charm. A story told by sibylline phrases pronounced by strangers crossed by chance, or in the descriptions of the objects that are found wandering around the map, such as stones located on the ruins of ancient buildings, apparently belonging to structures “rained down from the sky” , information that leaves the player with more doubts than certainties, waiting to find out what such a statement really means. Was or still is a kingdom in the clouds of the Interregnum? How long ago did those walls, those aisles, those gates descend on the earth? Who lived inside them? And so for every object, or enemy, or piece of equipment, hidden in a chest guarded by an entire army, or protected by a killer 4-meter-high carnivorous plant.

A new but familiar world

Elden Ring it’s brand new intellectual property, yet holding the controller and taking the first few hits, it feels like a full-fledged new Dark Souls, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It is always a mixture of action and role-playing, with a protagonist to be customized in appearance and abilities, by investing experience points (here called “runes” and also valid as a currency to buy weapons and items). But also in the equipment, including white weapons such as broadswords and axes, armor, enchanted objects and spells, sold by merchants, collected from the remains of an enemy just defeated or found wandering the lands of the Interregnum. And as in the Dark Souls, if you die, you lose the runes you have laboriously conquered up to that moment: to recover them, you have to go back to the point of death, under penalty of definitive loss. A mechanics now established, after years, but which always manages to give that thrill, due to uncertainty, to the terror of loss.

But the news is there and you can hear it: as in AxFor example, the Lightless can jump, and use this ability to deliver blows that can throw enemies off balance. It seems trivial, thinking back to masterpieces such as Super Mario in which the jump is the main mechanic, if not the only one, at least in the very first chapters, but for the titles of From Software it is a small, great revolution, linked to another fundamental change. We are referring to the new open world setting, and more generally, to the greater verticality of the world itself.

More vertical, more democratic

The strength of the past works of this software house also lay in its ability to create worlds with a labyrinthine and intricate structure, with interconnected areas in ever surprising ways, doors that could only be opened in the most advanced stages of the adventure, and a whole series of shortcuts. which made it easier to return to the track after yet another death, both with the “end-of-level” bosses, in quotation marks, and with common enemies, given the general difficulty rate which is always very high.

In Elden Ring there is a partial change of course, as that way of structuring the game sections remains, but in limited areas: there are dungeon optional and of minor importance, which can be solved in a short time, just long enough to reach the end and eliminate the boss on duty; or in the main and fundamental ones to progress, such as the Castle of Grantempesta, the only one seen and tested so far, albeit to a minimum.

However, the Interregnum can be explored freely, thus being able to choose where to go, in which areas to enter, and even if, which and how many enemies to face, and the merit is of Stream: it is a magical steed that can be summoned in a snap of your fingers, useful both for duels on horseback (although it seems a fairly indecipherable mix) and for moving faster. And if you have a giant or a handful of soldiers in front of you, it is the perfect plan B with which to escape and postpone the fight later, perhaps after visiting a place of grace, a recovery point in which to recharge your health. and the ampoules (with which to heal even from a distance, in the heat of battle), or invest the runes to enhance the protagonist’s statistics.

The world thus becomes a sort of glue between the various areas, which on the one hand risks fragmenting the experience, as it is no longer marked by the structure of the levels it had in the past; at the same time, however, it makes the experience more affordable for those players who have always found Dark Souls too complex or frustrating. Who can count, as in the past, on a multiplayer sector that allows you to evoke in your game both characters controlled by Artificial Intelligence (common warriors or even packs of wolves), and more experienced players, who can make themselves available before the clash of a boss, or even in special areas of the world, at the so-called effigies of martyrs.

Git gud” (that is to say “Get good”, “Gets better“) it’s a inside joke common within the growing community linked to From Software, which alone with the Souls has sold more than 30 million copies: it means that if the game is too difficult, you can either let it go, or you commit yourself to mastering and appreciating it . With Elden Ring, things could change, as more experienced and dedicated players will be able to eliminate any threat on sight, while newbies will have more than one tool to tame the challenge rate, having more ways and more time to shape the experience of I play on my own abilities and at a slower, more compliant pace. It is a way of democratizing the difficulty that was not expected from such a team, which has made a real boast of inaccessibility, but which appears understandable after 10 years of success. And the involvement of George RR Martin’s pen, although apparently marginal, only confirms this. Elden Ring aims at a wider audience, but it will not be easy to reach it without betraying the hard core of the fans. On the other hand, the conditions for a great adventure, new but familiar, are all there.

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