Look, one of my degrees is in 18th century poetry. I LOVED the writing in Elden Ring. It was everything great writing should be. It was also highly prosaic. It was designed to challenge players to pay attention and sift interpretations, to be comfortable with ambiguity, or answers that are more complex than they seem. Once the real story unfolds you are left with a sense of mixed wonder and horror at not just the challenge of the game, but the mental journey you had to take, and the layers of story you had to unpeel to get to the truth of things...and even then.
After Elden Ring has been nominated for Best Narrative, I have been thinking if it deserved it. But than I thought to my fondest memories of God of War (didn't play Ragnarock so can't compare it) and how highly I regarded how mechanically useful Atreus was. When he becomes rebelius in the story, he stops responding to your commands. Brillaint - story telling through mechanics.
Elden Ring does that all the time. How an enemy fights is a story in itself - about his past, his connections to factions and other characters. What characters drop tells us more about their history and the world. Item descriptions paint a picture of the world and its past. Playing though the area is integral to understanding that place.
I won't argue that exact plot details can be difficult to decypher and there is a lot of interpreting going on. But it is not even the core of the story - Elden Ring has vague writing, because it doesn't need to do exposition dumps. There is so much story in enemy, item and combat that what is said is just icing on top, helping to connect the individual dots. It is not a game one can watch and get most of it. The game doesn't need to form connection through lengthy cutscene or elaborate writing, because it does so through the act of playing the game.
