Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What games are you playing while waiting for BG3?/No Politics version.

The tricky part of Elden Ring is that gameplay is the narrative - it is not an obstacle in between story like is so common. Experience of fighting through areas and bosses, and interacting with their moveset are as much of a storytelling tool, as conversations or tool descriptions. I would say that in FromSoftware games more story is told through dungeon crawling and combat encounters than through other mediums. This cohesion is a big part of why I respect their titles so much.

I don't think you need a particularly high skillset to enjoy FromSoftware titles - aside from Sekiro - but they will still demand an engagement with combat system. If not learning enemy patters and mastering player inputs, than through character builds, and abuse of enemy weaknesses. If you completely don't enjoy action games or aren't interested in figuring game's RPG systems and bending them to your advantage, than I think FromSoftware games will be just an unpleasant wall of difficulty for you, and I don't expect you will get much of it,

Ok, but that's the playstyle I use and I have beaten Elden Ring 7 times. Elden Ring isn't hard if you take a moment and pay attention. There are no difficulty sliders in the options. You make the game as easy or difficulty as you want based on your playstyle.

Here is what people find most difficult in this game:
1. There is no hand holding, in regards to story or direction. You can engage with as little or as much of the story as you want. People have built youtube careers out of explaining Elden Ring's complex lore, art and backstory.
2. There is no quest log, but there are quests. Some of which vastly affect the outcome of the endgame.

Dunky does a great job of summing up why this game is so fun:

[video:youtube][/video]


Look, thats fair. But I would counter that narrative in games has been ruined by too much 'exposition-style' storytelling which is lazy and disrespectful to the audience. Elden Ring does zero exposition. The experience and the world tell their own story and the depth and level of detail, homages and so forth is on a level with Elden Ring that far supasses anything I have ever seen.

Just a small slice as an example would be the Congregants of the Village of Dominula which - if you pay attention, and read the descriptions of clothing, weapons and so forth - is like a slowly unfolding horror story. It's pretty clearly an homage to the movie Midsommar - which is an incredibly well-done Swedish Occult horror film. Here is a video on just THAT lore.

[video:youtube][/video]

Yeah, I actually don’t mind and actually respect that about ER. A narrative that disrespects it’s audience by forgoing all nuance to make sure nobody for a moment is at all even slightly confused is much worse, and I don’t play those games either. I just found the general setup of telling me I’m something I’m completely ignorant about (Tarnished) and then telling me my goal is to go find a MacGuffin I’m completely clueless about (Elden Ring) to be ineffective at drawing me in.

Now Bloodborne is extremely effective as providing a sense of purpose. Even if you have no idea what the backstory is, all you need to do is look at the visual design of the game and you can get the distinct impression “there is something wrong here. I need to leave,” and that’s a great setup. For me, Elden Ring lacked that narrative clarity. Everything else can be a hazy mystery, but just make sure my motivation is clear and I’ll run with it. But if you tell me my goal is to become Elden Lord, all I can say is “I don’t think that’s something I want.”

Yeah, I haven't actually played Elden Ring but I have watched playthroughs of it and I watch the lore videos and it took me watching several lore videos before I even sort of understood what the Tarnished are. In Dark Souls you do get explained what you are and what your role in the story is. You're a chosen undead in the first game, part of some big prophecy. In the second you travelled to try and undo hollowing or something like that, and got caught up in some bigger thing. In the third you're a failed person who tried to link the shrine and you're being sent to kill people to link the fire now. And Sekiro is the one game of From's that I feel has a genuine narrative that moves forward as opposed to just stuff you do that happens+lots of lore.

I think in terms of mixing good environmental storytelling with actual narrative, the Pillars of Eternity games did a great job with those. There's an actual central narrative with events and stuff that you move along, but it's all set in a world that's very deep and has a lot of stuff going on.

Also for all the interesting lore present and the backstories at play, ultimately the only way you engage with it in FromSoft games is through combat and fighting. And that's why I've never found the idea of SoulsBourne games appealing, because combat's never the thing that's interesting to me about games. Like Congregants lore. For all that's interesting and cool there, ultimately what does it amount to? You killing them a bunch of times. In fact I've realized something as I type all this out. Blackheiffer noted a disdain for "exposition-style" storytelling, but exposition is a tool, and an important one. It's for when the audience really has to know something and there's just not a more elegant way to convey that knowledge. FromSoft games can get away with no exposition because all the player actually has to know is how to kill things. Every other piece of information in the game is secondary, pretty much.

In most game all the player knows how to do is to kill things. While I loved PoE1&2 I actually think there quite a bit of dissonance between gameplay systems and progression of PoEs and the narrative. For that reason I would say that Bg1&2 have “a better story” or rather that”the story is better told through the medium” even though I do fine PoEs far more interesting as a world and narrative.

For the record I don’t think Elden Ring is stronger narratively than Dark Souls - it’s pretty much the same thing, and sloppier in some aspects).

It seems to me that people really hang on lore. I do think Elden Ring has some major issues (lack of motivation for doing anything, aside from progressing). For the most part FromSoftware likes to reveal what is needed and leave the rest for those really interested. Does historical record of who Tarnished are that important? You get what you need to know in the intro and character interactions.

Not every fantasy system needs an encyclopaedic explanation of every term used and detailed history in the world. It needs to have consistency and internal logic (and that’s FromSoftware has in spades) but I don’t think it needs to explain background details to the players. I always though it always gave FS games a really mythic quality - you know, like when you read Greek myths and they resonate and ring true on a very fundamental level, while being bizarre at the same time. I don’t think Elden Ring always achieves that, but it did often enough to keep me engaged throughout and hungry to see more.

Thank you @Warlocke, @Wormerine, @Blackheifer and others re. Elden Ring. In sum I am satisfied with my decision to pass on this game.

The problem with exposition is that it's boring, and it's just an information dump. All bad dialogue is characterized by exposition, because good dialogue is about conflict/attack/defend and expressing subtext.

Although the worst part about exposition is that it's insulting to the audience, especially when it comes to conveying story. Exposition is a tool to convey systems, or stereo instructions, not telling a story.

For example: ER has a tutorial that is expository that tells you how to play the game, do jump attacks, block, parry, strong, weak attacks,dodge roll, etc...This is the only correct use of exposition.

But it's so common as a tool for storytelling in most modern games that it has conditioned a generation of people into thinking this is a representation of proper storytelling. It also shows up in really bad movies, the example given in the video I linked was from Attack of the Clones - which is just from a storytelling perspective - an absolute dumpster fire of a movie.

Exposition is used in games and movies because it's cheap. It requires no skill to write and asks nothing of the audience. If you are caught up in exposition it's either because you are learning how to operate your stereo/learning gameplay or you are dealing with a director or game dev who thinks you are too stupid to understand a properly told story.

I am 800+ hours into Elden Ring and I am still finding new parts of the story and narrative built into the world. I am tempted to recommend the game to one of my bookclubs to see if they would take it on as a critical analysis of the overall narrative.

I see your point and I don't think you're entirely wrong, but I also think you're demonizing exposition a bit too much. Not because it's good, but I think you're hanging a bit too much on it. In terms of all bad dialogue being characterized by exposition, I would put it to you that dialogue can also be bad because the conflict being expressed is unnecessary or inauthentic.

Secondly, I don't think exposition is always insulting and I think you're taking it kind of personally. Sometimes a piece of information is important to the plot, but in terms of time it doesn't make sense to seed it subtly, or it doesn't warrant it. Maybe we actually have different standards for what counts as exposition. Because I consider anything that purely conveys information as exposition. So one character telling another where they need to go? That's exposition. To use star wars as an example, Obi Wan in Episode 4 telling Luke about his father? That's exposition by my standards. The scene around it is conveying more through nuance and is doing more than that. A whole SCENE that only exists for exposition and isn't doing anything else is a failure on the part of the writers because they couldn't find a way to inject it with more life and nuance.

In another example, I've been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation for the first time, and basically every episode has an exposition dump where they explain the weird sci fi anomaly of the week. I've been loving the show, but those pieces of exposition are absolutely necessary because there's simply no other way to get across the information that the audience absolutely needs to know.

Obi-Wan talking about Luke’s father and the ‘Dark Times’ is exposition and on the page it’s bad exposition. It works here because Alec Guinness is a great actor (who could rewrite his dialogue)

The very opening chase between the blockade runner and the Star Destroyer is also exposition, good exposition because it communicates the state of the world at the same time as it is telling the story.

It all depends

It's funny, with Elden Ring, I really enjoyed the 'story' even thought I really didn't know what was going on. It's hard to put it into words, but when I was following Ranni's questline, I didn't really know what her plan was, other than vague 'put an end to the two fingers and the greater will who seem super sus'. In this sense, I was essentially latching on to her goal because of who she was, and the trust that she was putting in me even though I didn't know how her goal would end up. The way they essentially made you her champion, with the ring scene symbolizing your commitment (at least in my mind lol), and then the final summoning to let her take over at the end. Masterful. I felt more emotion during those moments than I have in most games in years.

That said, you don't play Elden Ring for just the story, if you don't like the gameplay, you might as well move on and watch a youtube video of the lore.

A quick aside from Elden Ring (which, like kanisatha, I passed on as I’m sure the gameplay is not my bag, though I’m perfectly willing to accept that it’s a fantastic game and even “Art”, just not for me).

Today, I finished my playthrough of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, and would definitely recommend it to any party RPG fans who haven’t yet tried it. Though I might have been the last one here on that bandwagon! I’d even recommend it to folk who, like me, gave up on Kingmaker part way as I found it less frustrating, largely I think because the timed quests I hated in the first game were mainly absent.

For much of WotR I had a blast playing a Trickster chaotic kitsune sorceror whose favoured strategy was to incapacitate her foes by reducing them to hysterical laughter then pelt them with sneak attack snowballs and the odd dead fish until they died. At least until she hit level 17 at which point most enemies just committed suicide rather than fight her. Which led to some hilariously anticlimactic scenes after baddies made a big entrance only to instantly die, and much relief on my part given that like its predecessor I think there are WAY too many samey encounters that, unless I turned down the difficulty and made combat boringly trivial, meant that pace slowed to a crawl. Particularly in what were presumably meant to be high excitement missions like the liberation of Drezen.

Overall, I found it a flawed but enjoyable game. It’s pretty clear I barely scratched the surface given that I only got 26 out of 100+ achievements despite trying to be reasonably thorough. And frankly the ending and epilogue were pretty disappointing, which I’m still a bit grumpy about. I think writers should reward all players with interesting endings even if they’re not good ones, rather than leaving them thinking “well, I clearly missed something there” despite having put in a couple of hundred hours of their time. But despite the fact that there’s obviously a lot more game to be discovered, plus a gazillion classes/archetypes to experiment with, the things I didn’t like about it will probably stop me replaying it at least for a good while. But I definitely got good value for my £10 and am glad I took a punt!

Thanks folks for your recommendation and tips here.

Both of the pathfinder games is great... but i get started and generally start act 1 or 2 then the game just gets to much for me, the cheer amount of stacking bonuses and buffs, kills it for me... i really want to love the game, but it just gets to much, its why i much more prefer 5e and DnD one, so much over pathfinder (3.5)... i do love the early play, just so frustrating couse it feels so "right" story, voice everything... but there you go

I certainly enjoyed WotR, and I'm glad you did too, but I'd rather I got it sale like you ;d. I think, like Cyberpunk, I might give it another go after they wrap up their DLC gamut.

I might even try a path of least resistance class/epic just to alleviate that last slog.

I adore wotr, one of my all time favorite games. If it feels like a slog, really just turn down the difficulty. Tweak it to your liking. I keep the difficulty really low and sometimes just turn it right to the bottom when I don't feel like any challenge. You have a lot of options to customise the difficulty, my biggest advice is to use them.

Your loss.
Imagine passing on one of the best things out there without even giving it a chance, just because "you have a vague hunch it may not be for you".

Speaking of WOTR, there are aspects of the game that made me feel like it was up there in the pinnacle of the CRPG genre, but Owlcat is another studio that seems to be incapable to not do unnecessary missteps. In their case that means over-tune their games to death.
I absolutely despise how their "Core" difficulty is generally tuned and how they "over-bloat" most of their major encounters.

We talked about even in the past pages of this thread, but given that it was years ago at this point I felt the urge for a refresher.

EDIT -nope, apparently I was misremembering and this thread is a complete split from the original one.

Yes, imagine having lived long enough to have developed a firm sense of what you like and don’t like so you can reliably tell what sorts of pastimes you’d enjoy or not. Astounding. 🙄

Man, if you aren't trying too hard.

Edit: I’m going to try and phrase this is a way in a way that hopefully doesn’t give extra work or stress to Red Queen:

If you weren’t already aware that saying “Imagine” followed by something to diminish somebody else’s perspective or opinion is not polite conversation, well now you are.

Well, since "giving it a chance" means pay full price ...
It dont seems like so bad attitude to me. :-/

You hardly need to pay full price for Dark Souls 1. In fact you can probably get it for pennies, if not even as a freebie somewhere, these days.
And that's more than enough as an introduction.


Keep fighting the good fight, man.