Elden Ring Re-Review and Shadow of the Erdtree
Alright. "Elden Ring" is ok.
Even though I ragged on the game before, I feel my suspicion of open world games is rightly deserved. The reality of most open-world games is that you're doing the same repetitive thing over and over again to find something necessary to your quest. You know, the same as when you pick up bread at the store, or get gas for your car, just like real life. An open world game is like a prettied-up version of your real life, except with sexy ladies and swords. The games are naked in the sense that they demonstrate their creators' chutzpah: a new world that isn't really all that new, much in the way a man may disguise his self-loathing by purchasing a luxury car (the difference being, that the cost is a million-dollar budget and the profound emptiness of the lives of however so many developers). I, of course, find this incredibly objectionable.
But. I have replayed "Elden Ring" a lot. It's definitely the game I played the most in 2023 and probably for 2024 as well. The reason is simple: I love EldenBling. I like picking out armor pieces from different sets and creating a new warrior out of them. That's about it. I mean, I do a fair bit of roleplaying, figuring out what my heroes' stories are going to be. I have this whole saga in my head. I'm a little obsessed with it, actually.
That's an advantage that games overwhelmingly have in comparison to other mediums of art: the lore actually matters. Most other art forms are concerned with brevity and precision. The reason? You can't keep most audiences' attention beyond two hours. Because games have an engaging element i.e. for "Elden Ring" the combat, you can sustain a viewer's attention in intervals. Usually this is in the form of justifying what the viewer is doing.
I think "Elden Ring", to tell you the truth, is the only game I have played that has done this well. The big reason is the same as why the game engages me: the minor details, down to fashion and environment, have a cohesive aesthetic. It helps that the Souls games have barely any dialogue in them; the less the characters have to say, the less bad dialogue is exposed to the audience. (Reading the cut dialogue of "Elden Ring" is jarring.) Much like the best fantasy, the audience wants to participate in it; better than the best fantasy, the audience can participate in it.
The game is still a pain in the ass. The main bosses have long combos; I refuse to remember allat. Weapon balance varies (though the game is good enough that you can still win with a subpar weapon). Some argue you should switch up weapons / builds, but the appeal of the game is choice, much as you will be baffled if a McDonalds no longer sold burgers. And, you know, Malenia. (I'm pissy because she ruined a perfectly good greatshield-only build.) But the rhythm of the combat system is so good that it's still fun to play.
So I've turned face on "Elden Ring". It's very good. It's definitely a wheel-turning game. So kudos to you, Miyazaki.
Shadow of the Erdtree
Alright, now let's shit on the DLC, "Shadow of the Erdtree".
The DLC is hard. OK, all Souls DLC have been hard. And the content is appropriate for the near-end of the main game. Fair enough.
But. As I said before, every main boss has these really long, ridiculous combos that aren't appropriate for fantasy monsters and more fitting for anime characters. On the reverse, every non-main boss has a pretty solid moveset, mixing fast attacks with slow-but-powerful attacks with different ranges, attributes etc.
Every boss in the DLC has the moveset of a main boss in the main game. OK, cool, whatever.
But every main boss in the main game is, like, a demigod. The guys in the DLC are just guys.
That's the problem that ruins the roleplaying aspect of the game, and the cohesion of the narrative as a whole. It's fun to build up a strong character, "Sir So-and-So, Strongest So-and-So". It's fun to overpower lesser challengers. It's fun to duel rivals. It's fun to beat the odds against supposed superiors. The DLC ruins that by making Guy and Gal and Hippo ridiculously difficult to play against.
NPCs and their questlines too were neglected. With roleplaying, who and how your character interacts with other characters is crucial for developing your character's...well, character. There are barely any questlines and, in violation of the regular rules of Souls, you can't even kill any of the NPCs. (Imagine my sadness when I couldn't Inescapable Frenzy anyone. Imagine my madness upon realizing I cackle like a maniac when I Inescapable Frenzy anyone. Maybe I'm the one in the wrong here.) The NPCs exist purely for the story and nothing else.
That being said, the DLC is also correct in the same vein: the focus isn't on boss battles but on exploration. A very good argument against most of the criticism of "Elden Ring" at launch was that the player always had the option to mess around over finishing plotlines and beating bosses. Indeed, going by this current analysis - that Miyazaki focused strongly on the world, over any other element, probably because of his adoration for George R. R. Martin - this was the developers' intent. The DLC, in theory, is no different with the Scadutree Fragments and Revered Spirit Ashes, which is a means to empower the player by exploring the world.
Which does make me think that Miyazaki is trolling his audience to a certain extent. I think any creator doesn't like being pigeonholed into a certain reputation, and Miyazaki is rather indifferent to his games' reputation for being difficult. I've started to suspect this recently. It may have taken me this long to think in this dimension because I hadn't come around to thinking the game was actually art. And I would call the game art, as, for many areas in the Land of Shadow, I had begun to contemplate their natural beauty instead of seeing them as, well, levels.
I mean, the artist, at their deepest, merely wants to engage. Some desire to challenge the audience, some do not. "Elden Ring" was meant to be different, less a challenge and more a world. So the developers came up with Spirit Ashes and all this stuff. And they don't care about what the fans think on what the supposed difficulty of the game should be. If a player wants to beat the game with only torches, fine, that's their thing. I am OK with that. Well, I'm not, because the game can be a struggle to get through, but for the eight-to-nine-tenths of the game not being a struggle I am OK with that. (My conclusion comes partly from the lack of achievements / trophies associated to the DLC. This is either unintentional or FromSoft just shrugging and saying, "Isn't playing the game itself worthy of joy already?" (My conclusion also comes from the fact that of Elden Ring players only Let Me Solo Her has gotten formal recognition from FromSoft. A lot of players have beaten Malenia, and some Souls players are insane, but LMSH specifically does so through co-op - as in, soloing Malenia on behalf of other players. Considering this, can we really imagine Miyazaki huffing and fuming in his office that if people don't learn the boss's patterns, they're not actually playing the game?))
And I will add a little note, the game earned a lot of goodwill from me after they released some patch last year that recalculated all the weapon stats. The developers knew the game didn't feel as finetuned as it should have been. Now it does. So good on them.
If the NPC questlines and relevance to the main game are severely lacking, the DLC helps roleplaying in one sense: it gives a bold flavor behind the purpose of the player's actions in the main game, namely by providing a strong, clear motivation and history for the most prominent character, Marika. People will be figuring out the lore of "Elden Ring" forever through the item descriptions (the Zanzibart meme is funny and real), but we can strongly gleam that the whole reason why the Lands Between is the Lands Between is the cycle of suffering and finding strength through suffering. Somewhat of a cliché story, sure, but without that clarity an audience member was somewhat justified in believing that the situation of the main game was caused by assholes being assholes.
Here's my informal view of what the heck happened:
The whole planet is filled with vibrant energy. The whole cosmos is also filled with energy of an unspeakable magnitude. This kind of energy fills people and you can kinda jam people into other people to increase the size of the ultimate vessel that contains the energy. Some assholes wanted to harness that energy by torturing a bunch of poor saps, among whom is Marika. She is pretty unhappy with this whole deal, it doesn't seem particularly humane to her, so she takes some agency in her life. Now, some assholes, because they're insane, decided to sacrifice, like, lots and lots and lots of people to make a gate that essentially sends a signal into the cosmos to connect with a god, not necessarily a sentient god like Zeus or Thor or Marika is but a god of so much profundity that we can't even conceive of it in a physical or mental sense. Marika thinks a great idea is to use herself as the receiver for this signal because after countless of years of suffering by her ancestors she has, like, great genes. She does all of this, becomes a god, punishes everyone, rises to the surface world (???) and creates a golden order. First rule: no one dies. This sounds bananas and awesome. You can't really kill a man so there's no concept of revenge, and there's no dire consequences for killing someone as their soul will be recycled and returned (for people who know the game, this is my glib take on regression and causality). Second rule: you have to worship the god I connected to and also me by extension. Everyone is cool with this; some people are REALLY cool with this, because they can stare at the endless luminance and awe of the universe through her. So it really sucks when she takes that away from them. Only issue is that people don't necessarily agree with her, so she has to kill them, or, because no one can die anymore, seal them forever in jail as undying abominations. This is a very pro- / anti- capital punishment kind of debate here. Life is good for a while after all the murder but as it happens people still disagree with her, particularly her own children, mostly because their fates are tied up to this god she has made an eternity-binding contract to. She's also not happy because she's become like a radio signal for the god and so she can't do much with her life i.e. eat ice cream, watch Netflix, read a good book, hug her children (she can still have kids though). Her kids betray her, they murder someone, and she has a moment of just saying Fuck it, I was wrong, I was wrong to make people live forever, that doesn't solve any problems and kinda makes things worse actually, it was wrong of me to grant grace and blessings to a select people, and it was wrong of me to make a contract with this god thing which doesn't even speak to me and I'm not sure if it's even there anymore. Setting off the whole engine of the main game.
Which leads the player to conclude one thing: they're not merely becoming a lord of some country at the end of the game, they are literally in control of how the world operates, via your godly sidepiece. Thus, it's really a game about affecting the change you want to see in the world, which is a very modern idea, and each different ending is a reflection on what you think is best. This is also a very East Asian idea, as the emperor is seen as a device to ensure nature goes on its, well, natural way. This interpretation was very strong before the DLC, but it's almost certain now.
Another theme in the game that gains clarity is the concept of barbarism vs. enlightenment. The world Marika originally lived in was intensely barbaric and cruel to human life. When the enlightenment comes, when she becomes connected to the luminous texture that surrounds the whole universe, she decides to remove death. Regardless, barbarity still exists, and sacrifices and murder are still justified. This is also rather Taoist: there is no attire you can wear that will cover up the inner primate within all of us. Some players can make the argument that Marika's Golden Order is a step up from the culture that believed in endless sacrifice and bloodshed, and some players will believe that there is no advantage in faking it until we make it. Definitely great for roleplaying.
Which adds to the overall theme of the Souls series, that suffering is natural to the universe and the only way not to lose despair, and thus becomes the reason for existence, is to fight back, becoming something more and less than human in the process. Insert witty comment about the video game tryhards here. That desire for perfection, but through perfection becoming imperfect (again, pretty Taoist), is interesting, and also makes for great roleplaying.
It's definitely a mixed bag of a DLC. It's hard not to be happy as a video game player as, more game, more challenge, but the relative drought of plot details leaves some of the audience wanting. A big issue is that players are uncertain whether the Land of Shadow has any actual physical connection to the main game, as far as the journey or even the Lands Between. I think this criticism is warranted as a big part of the appeal of "Elden Ring" is the universe established.
This is where we get to the complicated part of the conversation, on what hats "Elden Ring" has been trying to wear this whole time. For the main game, it was definitely trying to wear the hat of setting up this world; the gameplay is all well and good, but it was basically the same engine - design-wise, not literally - as the old Souls games. The DLC, I think, was wearing this hat too, sometimes to awkward degrees, as I don't really understand why Charo's Hidden Grave and Abyssal Woods had to be in the Land of Shadow, largely because I don't know why the Land of Shadow is the Land of Shadow and distinct from the Lands Between.* I think as development went on, this hat, and many other hats (as weapons design, boss design, map design), slowly fell off in the scramble to finish this very hotly-anticipated DLC, which may explain why Miyazaki has said there are no current plans for a second one (though the man has also lied about the ultimate size of the map, so he certainly has a penchant for understatement). It's a reminder to make anything is a huge pain in the ass. Well, if we've learned anything from "Elden Ring" itself, nothing can be perfect, and we should not strive to be perfect. It's good enough that the attempt was made, and the attempt, indeed, shows something human about us.
* Didn't want to put this piece of nerdery in the main essay. After looking into it, the idea of the Land of Shadow is that it's the excised part of the Lands Between that couldn't fit into the Golden Order i.e. Marika's ideal world. Again, reflecting on the theme that the road to perfection requires destruction. So the Abyssal Woods, which is the origin of the madness that encourages the suicide of all life, Charo's Hidden Grave, which is the seat of death (???), and the Ancient Ruins of Rauh, which worshipped rot, all should be here, as well as very ugly-ass hippos. (Jagged Peak, I dunno, but the Golden Order was a bunch of dragon haters, EVEN THOUGH they put all the dragons on the Dragon Alcatraz called Farum Azula. Who the hell knows.) But...why specifically here, connected on this landmass? Not to nitpick, but it's an odd coincidence that the Erdtree's shadow conveniently has all the regions it doesn't like on one tidy map. Particularly when these regions have little connectivity to one another; one place just merges into the other with very little transition. Again: probably shitty deadlines.