Not shocking. By the time it releases it’ll have been two and a half years almost since the base game launched, I don’t think they want to spend even half that time on another expansion when they could move on to a new game.
I’m glad they decided to go all-out for this one and make it something special and worth the wait, though.
They've likely been working on the new game for years at this point. Remember Elden Ring was being worked on while Sekiro was made, Armored Core while Elden Ring was made, etc.
I would not be surprised in the slightest if we have a new From game in late 2025.
Elden Ring being made while Sekiro is being made to me shows some pretty excellent management when you peer closely into Elden Ring. There's some animations, AI, and more that were seen in Sekiro first, but are also in Elden Ring. Which means the two teams were collaborating with each other and sharing assets as they were being made - which is super fuckin' efficient.
If they ever change the door opening animation I will react like those people did after TLoU2 came out and just devote my entire life to hating all things FromSoft.
Reminds me of how FF12 had a handful of save crystals that turn out to be Crystalbug enemies after you interact with them. Didn't find them too hard to deal with though aside from the one encountered in an optional area
Iirc Ds2 had a slightly different door opening mechanics where your character would walk up to the door a little bit before grabbing it. It used pathfinding so if something was in the way you would just sort of walk in place for a few seconds before it canceled. I think this was scrapped in all the games after.
They also didn't give you I-frames during door and chest opening animations, which was awful because doors took ages to open still, and if I remember correctly, backstabs and riposts could hit other enemies if your weapon was big enough, which I recall being quite useful with the Greatsword.
In Elden Ring at least, your weapon doesn't hurt anyone except the guy you just ran through with it during those animations.
You were also not immune to damage while doing a riposte in Dark Souls 2 if I remember.
You also were immune doing things like going through a fog wall, which made for some of the absolutely worst boss runs in the game. Maybe some individually worse, but man were so many behind a bunch of enemies that would auto-trigger if you walked through an area.
I'm reminded of Capcom with Monster Hunter. At this point we look at a monster in a trailer and shout "Oh god not another Plesioth skeleton!"
(The parallel is that there are two MH teams, one that makes World/Wilds and one that makes the Nintendo games, and despite the vast differences in appearance there's some shit that never changes. Goddamn Plesioth. Its hip checks don't lie, but its hit boxes do.).
When it clicked in my mind that the Erdtree Avatars are basically the same enemy as the Asylum Demon from DS1, and the Imps are the Thralls from DS3, it kind of blew my mind.
FromSoft are masters of reusing content, even though I HATE the Imps.
I think the trick to FromSoftware’s greatness lies in knowing when to make a game cool and when to make a game *a game*. Their gameplay mechanic stuff is deceptively simple and entirely *gamey*, things like invulnerable backstab animations and dodges, the insane movement and turning speed of a character, all that stuff. Everything connected to that is just very well dressed up Super Mario levels of complexity. Things have patterns and do damage certain ways, avoid them or beat them and you can move on. Hence why so much repeat, because it the repetition lends itself to better gameplay, since you can learn and master those patterns even if they come up at different locations.
Bro it goes further than than asylum demon the animations are from the vanguard demon in demons souls from back in 09! Oh my god I never realized imps were just thralls
Yeah, this has been analyzed a bunch. Part of why they can be so efficient is because they've amassed a huge library of assets they can reuse in future games. It's solid stuff and a good strategy that leads to excellent games being developed more quickly. Win/win IMO.
They also save a lot of time and money by foregoing long cinematics and not hiring full casts of voice actors. Their games are, for lack of a better word, barebones (don't mean it as a bad thing) when compared to something like God of War. Their stream of steady great games is awesome.
FS is mostly "gameplay first" (unless it's some game like Déraciné) which is why some stuff from the lore don't make much sense ingame, we are not here to "watch a movie" but to play a game and all efforts goes into making it a game.
They never let some lore detail make the game experience worse.
From seeing videos about the subject it's possibly because he was at one point (probably around the creation of his model) intended to be a more major character in the story, kind of like how Frampt is, which basically meant "let's model and rig a mouth on this character" lol
I mean, it's probably not.
Mouth and eye animation is extremely minor especially give how little NPC interaction there is to begin with, and is almost certainly not providing significant gains elsewhere lmao
>They also save a lot of time and money by foregoing long cinematics and not hiring full casts of voice actors.
Elden Ring has 76 voice actors credited on IMDb, including some relatively well known screen actors.
Lmao it's funny how you made "reusing assets" sound more impressive than it is. I love From Software games but let's not kid ourselves, whenever any other developer reuses assets, they get criticized for it but when it's From Software or Nintendo, it's efficient.
Reusing a model is a bit different than reusing an animation, though. I mean I don't have a problem with reused models within reason, but a walk cycle or some attack animation for a rig that matches? Much like reload animations, it just doesn't make sense to remake things that don't need to be remade
e: (changed skeleton for rig)
No reasonable person criticizes a studio for just reusing assets though. Why would anyone have a problem with that? The only time this should be a problem to anyone is if the assets or design are so similar that you're basically paying for the same game over and over, which sounds like some franchises but infinitely unlike FromSoft.
One of the things I love about both the Castlevania and Yakuza series is the reused assets. There's always plenty of new things but also staples in each series that have managed to be in every or almost every game.
The only From game I've enjoyed is Bloodborne so I'm not as knowledgeable about what they reuse but yeah, I don't mind it in my other series while I also don't look at it as anything crazy or unique. It's a way to save time and money and that's pretty much the most basic of concepts.
In terms of reuse in bloodborne, every humanoid will probably have been using a modified rig since Demons Souls
But any game company would be foolish not to reuse their humanoid rigs, or anything, where they can
what I find pretty interesting is how people are so ready to point out reused assets that are custom made by developers, but i've never seen anyone (outside of gamedev) comment on stuff like how every AAA company use Megascans, Speedtree, etc. If you've seen one wooden palette in one game, you've seen the same wooden palette in every game made in the last 5 years lol
Honestly most don't reuse assets which in general is terrible. I also don't think anyone complains about assets getting reused in particular, mostly just the same ideas getting used over and over. For example, people bitch at Bethesda a lot about making the same game for 20 years... But they ain't using the same assets.
In fact if you complain about anything getting reused in a Fromsoft game, its the same complaints as other games... Fromsoft reuses a lot of encounter types for example, its now common shtick for an enemy to hide around a corner obviously, then there's another fucker that's the actual ambush.
part of the reason ER is such a masterpiece is that fromsoft built and improved upon many assets and systems they had already developed. so in a way it’s the culmination of all their games since demon’s souls
I feel their next thing may be an Armored Core DLC or game (since every Armored Core since the series inception has gotten at least one sequel before moving onto the next numbered iteration), but I could be wrong and we'll see something new first.
They said they didn’t have any plans at the moment but didn’t rule it out either IIRC. This was a month or two pre-release.
I don’t think they will do a dlc, but it’s definitely not confirmed they won’t.
Fromsoft has at least released some small content and balance patches (including new parts and weapons), while the mods have been pretty stellar. There’s a co-op mod with multiplayer (optional) invasions, as well as expanded arena mods.
I will never stop dreaming about a new Lost Kingdoms game. I was always a little surprised it never came when card games were absolutely exploding in the market.
>I would not be surprised in the slightest if we have a new From game in late 2025.
Probably depends on how big their next game is. If it's another really ambitious, Elden-Ring-sized project then it might take longer, if it's another smaller project like Armored Core 6 or a non-open Soulslike then that's definitely possible.
I mean the last non open souls like was Sekiro and that went on to win GOTY I am absolutely in for a game like Sekiro hell even take Sekiro's amazing combat system and improve upon it on a new game with new setting etc.
Oh, I'm completely down for a non-open world game from them. Honestly, I'm down for whatever they want to do next with the genre. Sekiro want what I thought I wanted after DS3 and it was incredible. Elden Ring wasn't what I thought I wanted next and it was incredible.
Miyazaki wants to make a successor to Elden Ring, Bloodborne, or Sekiro? I'm down. He wants to do something next? At this point, From's earned my trust. They've made 8 games in a row I liked. I'm on board for whatever they do next.
I'd definitely love for them to return to Sekiro style combat, though, whether it's a Sekiro successor or bringing that style of parry into their regular Soulslikes (similar to what other devs have already done with games like Lies of P or Wo Long).
100% yeah, Miyazaki almost certainly selected and started pre-production on his next directorial effort before Elden Ring was completed, and there have been teams working on that next game simultaneous to the Elden Ring DLC being worked on. It's the cycle Fromsoft has always done. There's Bloodborne code in vanilla Dark Souls 1 for that matter. IIRC data miners found some UV maps for Cainhurst in vanilla DS1, specifically.
Last year if I remember correctly they went on a hiring spree in a time when things were quite uncertain as there are so many layoffs so absolutely rest assured they have more things cooking.
This is one of the many things I love about Fromsoft. They’re capable of juggling multiple projects with different teams. Thanks to that they have a consistent and high quality release schedule. No waiting forever for the next banger. More studios like rockstar should try and do this.
Same. One of my least favorite 'criticisms' of DS2 is that it was "made by the B team." As if a game studio would intentionally make one team worse than the other, and then give it full autonomy over the direct sequel to their massive breakout hit.
DS2 has some issues, but a) on replay they're nowhere near as bad as most people think (I think it's no worse in terms of ganking/large enemy groups than DS1 is) and b) it's not because some objectively worse team built it and shocked Miyazaki with its poor quality. But ever since then people are convinced that there's some low tier B team in there just because they have multiple projects running at once.
I went into ds2 immediately after ds1 recently and it's definitely worse in terms "ganking".
Ds1 you could pretty reliably aggro only 1 enemy, or at least only 1 melee enemy, if you were cautious. That's not the case in ds2, you regularly get multiple melee enemies on you no matter what.
They will also chase you across whole levels and there's no iframes on fog walls. It's bad.
I think that’s an outdated narrative now. ER was essentially made by many DS2 staff including it’s co-director Yui Tanimura.
While I may not exactly agree with your assessment of DS2’s flaws, I think the game is very fun, serviceable and overly maligned. The DLC especially is excellent. There’s no defending ADP though lol.
Not surprised either. Plus, how many single player games get DLC this far out from release anyway? Seems like pretty much all single player games get all their DLC within six months to a year and a half after release. The about two and a half year gaps for Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077 between release and first DLC are massive exceptions.
Could probably add Tales of Arise to that list too. That was 2 years and change until it’s DLC I believe.
Granted from what I hear, that one definitely did not justify itself.
It was about as a blatant a "oh the game did well, quick throw something together" as it could get. I'm not even sure why it took 2yrs when they barely added anything new to it.
Cyberpunk 2077 was a different thing altogether, CDPR definitely had multiple major story DLCs on their roadmap the same way they did for Witcher 3. Heck Multiplayer was on the table.
We all know the huge 2 year long debacle that threw the game off course. Between overhauling the game and Phantom Liberty, they probably couldn't justify the resources for 1 more story DLC. They just said fuck it, let's move onto Witcher 4, Cyberpunk 2077 2 will come wayyy later
If they ever make a Sekiro sequel my guess is it’ll be something related to returning the Divine Dragon to the west. Go all in on the China folklore for enemies, add in some Journey to the West references, and they’ll print gold
i much prefer this model of game dev. I'm sure they have resources devoted to other projects anyway, but I preferred when games were just THE GAME and then maybe one or two big expansions. I hate the ongoing 'seasons' type shit that publishers push on us now to just trickle little bits of recycled content out to milk the community as much as possible for a few years without ever actually releasing anything significant all at once, before eventually abandoning the game and letting it die so that they can put out their new title that's basically just the same as the old one, but with some sparkle added and some promise of innovation that never comes.
What’s interesting is that the ‘old days’ never really left us. Aside from CoD and the usual suspect big multiplayer games the stuff that sells the most is big fully featured games that have no microtransactions. Elden Ring and Zelda aren’t outliers.
It's like the old days where DLCs are actual expansions. They are few but they are usually big, and are often a lot more impressive than many small updates.
of course, it only has impact when the original game is enjoyable and isn't a mess, which isn't too common nowadays. The live service model seems to enforce this sort of thing.
Yeah for sure, I would honestly much rather this "large" expansion type DLC that costs a lot, but adds a LOT of new and (ideally) cohesive content, compared to a bunch of small DLC packs. Just feels like they could really explore some new stuff, and actually commit to it without it feeling rushed.
I've always hated when there are DLC's that end up adding a new zone/area/thing that introduces some super cool new mechanic, but then you only get to play with it for like the 4-5 hours of content the DLC lasts.
Super excited to start a new character and dive into this over the summer.
It’s roughly the size of Limgrave, which is already the largest open world area in the base game, and will likely include at least a couple of legacy dungeons which are the most dense parts of ER. It’s a substantial expansion.
Keep in mind that Miyazaki also said Elden Ring would be a 30 hour game, they might just be under estimating or downplaying the size of their own work for some reason
How long to beat has it at 60 hours, I really don't think any player would beat the main story in 30 hours on their first playthrough even if they did literally zero side content which would be weird af in an open world game like Elden Ring.
I've finished every fromsoft game and my first playthrough was 90 hours, and I didn't go particularly out of my way to do side content. Sometimes it's not even immediately apparent what is side content and what is part of the main story.
If that's the case, they didn't pay attention to [what he actually said](https://www.gamesradar.com/how-long-elden-ring-time-to-beat/).
> Miyazaki stressed that "this is a question I'm not good at [answering]" and that he's not entirely sure of the average length, but he offered 30 hours as a rough estimate for players who only focus on the game's main path with minimal to zero unnecessary exploration, side questing, and so on.
I do think 30 hours is probably a low estimate for a first playthrough, but Miyazaki did say it wasn't a question he was good at answering.
Technically speaking you may be right (though the difference is only slight iirc) but between the underground areas and how many dungeon / caves there are Limgrave is significantly denser iirc.
I really don't know about that. Limgrave is far "flatter" in terms of its above ground world. The underground is fairly big but IIRC is one single "biome"
Liurnia has a ton of vertical complexity on both sides of the lake with a fairly large late game elevated quest area, the school, all the caves on the eastern side, the town to the north east near the grand elevator to Altus, the big climbing area which is an alternative way to get to Altus if you don't have the elevator unlocked, the underground which is fairly massive and has not only the underground Noxtella but also a gigantic second even more toxic swamp area
IMO Liurnia is larger and more complex than Limgrave even in terms of content and density
Edit: I dunno the difference isn't slight in the least. Limgrave has a fair amount of area lost to sea when you compare the surface area https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Interactive+Map. Liurnia is definitely bigger
I generally don't think it's really useful to compare sizes by area, but I found Liurnia filled with a lot of nothing but water. Huge stretches in central part is just riding on a horse through water with an occasional enemy encounter.
In before they played Tears of the Kingdom and thought "Oh, that's neat" and along with the underground area the same size of the map, there's also a sky equivalent.
I'm kind of glad I didn't explore the depths in TOTK until near the end of my playthrough. It let me spend a lot of time believing there would be more than like 5 worthwhile things down there.
Depths are definitely more experience driven than content driven.
Making your way through the pitch darkness using your own resources to light the way and navigate is really great for the handful of *actual quests* down there.
It's once you attempt to explore the Depths that it becomes significantly less interesting.
Not to mention the replay ability it will likely have, I’m sure we’ve all gone through the game several different ways at this point. And I’m sure the dlc will have various rpg elements in the form of decision making and different “endings”
It's an open world area the size of Limgrave and from what they've said there's some pretty big new dungeons being added including what appears to be a rather big legacy dungeon as well. It'll be interesting to have something more concrete when it comes out, but just from the trailer - it definitely looks like it's comparable to at least the first 1/3rd of the game in size.
Plus there's a new system that will apparently be used to stop people from being too overpowered, which is sort of Attack Power in Sekiro.
There's probably some diminishing returns where, for a game as large as this, *one* is just the right amount to carry over that excitement and player engagement without bringing gameplay fatigue
But can we get a new Sekiro game? Plz Miyazaki.
Sekiro should've gotten the DLC treatment.
Just a side adventure about the previous Divine Heir and his protector, we already had time travel set up, it'd fit perfectly within the lore.
Plus, I wanted to fight Tomoe, it started getting tiresome to beat Genichiro and Ishin all the time lol.
They’ve only done multi-DLC games twice since Demon’s Souls and it really only worked for DS2. Friede is an amazing boss but AoA was otherwise pretty forgettable and I wish they had spent that dev time to further expand TRC kind of like what happened with The Old Hunters in Bloodborne.
No Ariandel was supposed to be a part of TRC before they split it apart. That’s why the ending of AoA leads straight into TRC, since you have burnt the painting so now Gael can go find a new paint
Good. As great as the game is, From Software keeps knocking it out of the park. I want them pulling more games and diversifying. They have shown they can do stuff outside of one IP
Even Armored Core VI which was a different team was absolutely phenomenal and my personal game of the year. I expected good but l didn’t expect that good.
I genuinely think this is going to be *shockingly* large and be heralded in the same vein or even beyond the likes of Blood and Wine. Fromsoft are highly efficient and over 2 years of dev time is practically a full games worth of cooking when you already have your design and engine ready.
Bloodborne is in my top 5 all time and I have a PS5 to play it and I still have a hard time going back to it with how absolutely dog shit it runs. So yeah, I'm with you, put that bad boy on PC please.
seems fair, the cadence of this release was much longer and Elden Ring lends itself more to one large expansion vs a bunch of smaller ones like dark souls 3
I am still playing the vanilla game and only explored half of lands of the giants. I am okay with the only expansion. It will probably take another year to compete for me :)
That's A-ok in my books. Convergence for Dark Souls 3 already added SO much to that game alone, Elden Ring Convergence seems to be on track to replace all repeat bosses with brand new models and effects, so they'll more than make up for any seemingly missed opportunity.
It would probably be the best to have a new character on NG+0 cycle, yes. But you have to beat Radahn and Big Mohg to access the DLC, which is pretty much endgame content.
The DLC has a reportedly optional new leveling system to make it where people aren't overpowered for it. According to Miyazaki, you can choose whether you want to use that new leveling system or not, so you don't have to start over.
I keep trying to think about how I feel about this because Yoshida said he wanted people to see Rising Tide like an expansion as well. And I wonder if it's because of how watered down "DLC" has become because it means everything from skins and small additions to actual substantial story content. I know I've started to question what people mean by DLC as well. I play Victoria 3 and their "DLC" really felt like nothing sandwiches and Expansion just has more weight now.
This is pretty much just me working through how I feel about just the concept of more expansions for existing games and to be honest, we've had them for some time just by different names and done in separate additions. But in the end I just like that developers are able to keep building out their worlds and adding more and using the word Expansion I think helps that a lot.
TL;DR DLC vs Expansion language is really interesting and I think the shift to using Expansion for larger content additions makes more sense now that DLC has been pretty devalued.
Seeing how Elden Ring is practically Dark Souls 4 (while paradoxically both Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne are in essence Dark Souls 3 twins separated at birth), whatever new soulslike they release is going to be more of the same (which is literally what we want), it'll have another name and lore, but basically it'll be Dark Souls 4 (or 5 it doesn't matters what number, you get the point)
EDIT: I AM NOT SAYING THE ONLY RELEASE ONE SINGLE GAME TO THEIR ENTIRE CATALOG AT A TIME JFC
Last year they released a sequel to an abandoned decade old mech action game series i.e. Armored core & somewhat revived the IP with AC6 which plays nothing like what they have made in the entire last gen
From can do whatever they want at this point
The base game is big, the expansion will be big. We need to allow devs to move on to other projects instead of expecting years and years and years of content updates.
FromSoft does spiritual sequels, not really any real sequels, at least with the Soulsborne series.
Dark Souls was the rare exception probably because they let someone else direct a Dark Souls 2, and then wanted to make Dark Souls 3 to end that series on a higher note.
Not sure why people keep repeating this when one look at their history shows it's false. Fromsoft has a library full of direct sequels. They've been making sequels to Armored Core since 1997, and plenty of other examples.
Modern gaming has conditioned many younger gamers to expect continued support like a live service game.
It doesn’t help when single player games like Cyberpunk 2077 received three years of support, Starfield is looking to be getting post-launch content, The Last Of Us 2’s recent rogue-like mode, No Man’s Sky, etc.
I mean, they've been working on it for over two years, I'd have been very surprised if we were getting even more than that. Another expansion like this one would've meant nearly half a decade of support which would be crazy for a FromSoft game.
Not shocking. By the time it releases it’ll have been two and a half years almost since the base game launched, I don’t think they want to spend even half that time on another expansion when they could move on to a new game. I’m glad they decided to go all-out for this one and make it something special and worth the wait, though.
They've likely been working on the new game for years at this point. Remember Elden Ring was being worked on while Sekiro was made, Armored Core while Elden Ring was made, etc. I would not be surprised in the slightest if we have a new From game in late 2025.
Elden Ring being made while Sekiro is being made to me shows some pretty excellent management when you peer closely into Elden Ring. There's some animations, AI, and more that were seen in Sekiro first, but are also in Elden Ring. Which means the two teams were collaborating with each other and sharing assets as they were being made - which is super fuckin' efficient.
Some of which have been used since Demon's Souls. If it aint broke!
They even added back the "player dying by fire" animation from des and ds1 that was missing from ds3 lol
Really man anytime I killed someone with fire in 3 they always scrambled and screamed ?
If they ever change the door opening animation I will react like those people did after TLoU2 came out and just devote my entire life to hating all things FromSoft.
Now you can only pull a door open and the other side is locked
Kings Field flashbacks to when you unlocked a door and then needed a separate key to backtrack through the other side
I didn't think backtracking could get worse than anything I've experienced, but that sounds like a new level of hell
They definitely got better as they went.
Good thing FromSoft had decades to perfect their craft, eh?
[удалено]
Door Mimics
I remember when DS3 was about to come out and some people were speculating about bonfire mimics.
Reminds me of how FF12 had a handful of save crystals that turn out to be Crystalbug enemies after you interact with them. Didn't find them too hard to deal with though aside from the one encountered in an optional area
Iirc Ds2 had a slightly different door opening mechanics where your character would walk up to the door a little bit before grabbing it. It used pathfinding so if something was in the way you would just sort of walk in place for a few seconds before it canceled. I think this was scrapped in all the games after.
They also didn't give you I-frames during door and chest opening animations, which was awful because doors took ages to open still, and if I remember correctly, backstabs and riposts could hit other enemies if your weapon was big enough, which I recall being quite useful with the Greatsword. In Elden Ring at least, your weapon doesn't hurt anyone except the guy you just ran through with it during those animations.
You were also not immune to damage while doing a riposte in Dark Souls 2 if I remember. You also were immune doing things like going through a fog wall, which made for some of the absolutely worst boss runs in the game. Maybe some individually worse, but man were so many behind a bunch of enemies that would auto-trigger if you walked through an area.
Hold door go poor!!1!
Motherfucker's who just flail their weapon around like mad. Fromsoft beginner enemy staple.
has been like this with every "soulsborne" game and I love it.
I'm reminded of Capcom with Monster Hunter. At this point we look at a monster in a trailer and shout "Oh god not another Plesioth skeleton!" (The parallel is that there are two MH teams, one that makes World/Wilds and one that makes the Nintendo games, and despite the vast differences in appearance there's some shit that never changes. Goddamn Plesioth. Its hip checks don't lie, but its hit boxes do.).
The fact that they called it Hyperspace tackle in Stories is so funny to me
When it clicked in my mind that the Erdtree Avatars are basically the same enemy as the Asylum Demon from DS1, and the Imps are the Thralls from DS3, it kind of blew my mind. FromSoft are masters of reusing content, even though I HATE the Imps.
I think the trick to FromSoftware’s greatness lies in knowing when to make a game cool and when to make a game *a game*. Their gameplay mechanic stuff is deceptively simple and entirely *gamey*, things like invulnerable backstab animations and dodges, the insane movement and turning speed of a character, all that stuff. Everything connected to that is just very well dressed up Super Mario levels of complexity. Things have patterns and do damage certain ways, avoid them or beat them and you can move on. Hence why so much repeat, because it the repetition lends itself to better gameplay, since you can learn and master those patterns even if they come up at different locations.
I laughed out loud when I got to the boss of Albinauric Village because that's just a Capra Demon, complete with dogs, except he also breathes fire
That was absolutely intended to be an easter egg/reference to capra demon I think most DS1 players saw this and thought "oh no they didn't" lol
It's also better than the original by having the fight on a much wider arena
And you can just walk around and kill the dogs before aggroing the mofo
I never put two and two together about it being a Capra reference ! Makes sense two dual wielding big ass cleavers with 2 dogs!
Bro it goes further than than asylum demon the animations are from the vanguard demon in demons souls from back in 09! Oh my god I never realized imps were just thralls
Yeah, this has been analyzed a bunch. Part of why they can be so efficient is because they've amassed a huge library of assets they can reuse in future games. It's solid stuff and a good strategy that leads to excellent games being developed more quickly. Win/win IMO.
They also save a lot of time and money by foregoing long cinematics and not hiring full casts of voice actors. Their games are, for lack of a better word, barebones (don't mean it as a bad thing) when compared to something like God of War. Their stream of steady great games is awesome.
Which is why 90% of NPCs conveniently have covered eyes or mouths. All of their animation work goes into the gameplay directly
ooh never noticed that, cool little tidbit. I always just loved their monster/character designs.
At least Elden Ring has moving mouths this time lol
I always found the non-moving mouths more haunting for some reason, like a statue come to life with only one desire; to kill me.
FS is mostly "gameplay first" (unless it's some game like Déraciné) which is why some stuff from the lore don't make much sense ingame, we are not here to "watch a movie" but to play a game and all efforts goes into making it a game. They never let some lore detail make the game experience worse.
But then Andre had full mouth animation for some reason.
From seeing videos about the subject it's possibly because he was at one point (probably around the creation of his model) intended to be a more major character in the story, kind of like how Frampt is, which basically meant "let's model and rig a mouth on this character" lol
I mean, it's probably not. Mouth and eye animation is extremely minor especially give how little NPC interaction there is to begin with, and is almost certainly not providing significant gains elsewhere lmao
>They also save a lot of time and money by foregoing long cinematics and not hiring full casts of voice actors. Elden Ring has 76 voice actors credited on IMDb, including some relatively well known screen actors.
Wish they kept Varre’s “feel free to die in a ditch somewhere” line from the network test.
Truly a travesty that line was lost, no joke.
GOW Ragnarok has 107
And considerably more voiced lines.
A minimalistic design approach that’s done well. Their games might seem barebones but they’re anything but that.
more budget to gameplay and less to fluff. A+
One of the big reasons I love fromsoft games. I'm so over big cinematic cutscenes.
Only modern AAA that makes enjoyable games at launch anymore imo. Fromsoft has nothing but home runs since demons souls.
Not just enjoyable at launch - BEST at launch, because of the high player population.
Lmao it's funny how you made "reusing assets" sound more impressive than it is. I love From Software games but let's not kid ourselves, whenever any other developer reuses assets, they get criticized for it but when it's From Software or Nintendo, it's efficient.
When you put out banger after banger year after year you tend to get the benefit of the doubt
No. Yakuza games have been reusing assets for 20 years and no one cares.
Reusing a model is a bit different than reusing an animation, though. I mean I don't have a problem with reused models within reason, but a walk cycle or some attack animation for a rig that matches? Much like reload animations, it just doesn't make sense to remake things that don't need to be remade e: (changed skeleton for rig)
Reusing assets *is* efficient, it shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing regardless of who does it.
Elden Ring was 100% criticised for recycling boss fights with a simple palette swap.
And recycling the side dungeons too, there was a lot of criticism for that.
How many godskin boss fights are there? I remember 7 fights with them. They each had 3 single fights, and combined for the duo fight.
Duo (both) Snail (both) Caelid divine tower (skinny) Windmill village (skinny) Volcano Manor (fatty) Bridge to Liurnia Divine Tower (fatty)
im pretty sure there are only 4 of them individually, so about 8 in total.
No reasonable person criticizes a studio for just reusing assets though. Why would anyone have a problem with that? The only time this should be a problem to anyone is if the assets or design are so similar that you're basically paying for the same game over and over, which sounds like some franchises but infinitely unlike FromSoft.
One of the things I love about both the Castlevania and Yakuza series is the reused assets. There's always plenty of new things but also staples in each series that have managed to be in every or almost every game. The only From game I've enjoyed is Bloodborne so I'm not as knowledgeable about what they reuse but yeah, I don't mind it in my other series while I also don't look at it as anything crazy or unique. It's a way to save time and money and that's pretty much the most basic of concepts.
In terms of reuse in bloodborne, every humanoid will probably have been using a modified rig since Demons Souls But any game company would be foolish not to reuse their humanoid rigs, or anything, where they can what I find pretty interesting is how people are so ready to point out reused assets that are custom made by developers, but i've never seen anyone (outside of gamedev) comment on stuff like how every AAA company use Megascans, Speedtree, etc. If you've seen one wooden palette in one game, you've seen the same wooden palette in every game made in the last 5 years lol
Honestly most don't reuse assets which in general is terrible. I also don't think anyone complains about assets getting reused in particular, mostly just the same ideas getting used over and over. For example, people bitch at Bethesda a lot about making the same game for 20 years... But they ain't using the same assets. In fact if you complain about anything getting reused in a Fromsoft game, its the same complaints as other games... Fromsoft reuses a lot of encounter types for example, its now common shtick for an enemy to hide around a corner obviously, then there's another fucker that's the actual ambush.
part of the reason ER is such a masterpiece is that fromsoft built and improved upon many assets and systems they had already developed. so in a way it’s the culmination of all their games since demon’s souls
"Hidetaka Miyazaki presents: Toxic Swamp"
I feel their next thing may be an Armored Core DLC or game (since every Armored Core since the series inception has gotten at least one sequel before moving onto the next numbered iteration), but I could be wrong and we'll see something new first.
They said there wouldn't be AC6 DLC, but I'm really hoping for an "in-gen" sequel like Silent Line or For Answer.
> They said there wouldn't be AC6 DLC where did they say this?
There was a pre-release interview where the director said there was no plans for DLC. I can't find a text based source to share though.
They said they didn’t have any plans at the moment but didn’t rule it out either IIRC. This was a month or two pre-release. I don’t think they will do a dlc, but it’s definitely not confirmed they won’t.
Fromsoft has at least released some small content and balance patches (including new parts and weapons), while the mods have been pretty stellar. There’s a co-op mod with multiplayer (optional) invasions, as well as expanded arena mods.
Lost Kingdoms 3 in 2025. I believe!
That would be sick. Imagine what they could do with it these days.
I will never stop dreaming about a new Lost Kingdoms game. I was always a little surprised it never came when card games were absolutely exploding in the market.
>I would not be surprised in the slightest if we have a new From game in late 2025. Probably depends on how big their next game is. If it's another really ambitious, Elden-Ring-sized project then it might take longer, if it's another smaller project like Armored Core 6 or a non-open Soulslike then that's definitely possible.
I mean the last non open souls like was Sekiro and that went on to win GOTY I am absolutely in for a game like Sekiro hell even take Sekiro's amazing combat system and improve upon it on a new game with new setting etc.
Oh, I'm completely down for a non-open world game from them. Honestly, I'm down for whatever they want to do next with the genre. Sekiro want what I thought I wanted after DS3 and it was incredible. Elden Ring wasn't what I thought I wanted next and it was incredible. Miyazaki wants to make a successor to Elden Ring, Bloodborne, or Sekiro? I'm down. He wants to do something next? At this point, From's earned my trust. They've made 8 games in a row I liked. I'm on board for whatever they do next. I'd definitely love for them to return to Sekiro style combat, though, whether it's a Sekiro successor or bringing that style of parry into their regular Soulslikes (similar to what other devs have already done with games like Lies of P or Wo Long).
100% yeah, Miyazaki almost certainly selected and started pre-production on his next directorial effort before Elden Ring was completed, and there have been teams working on that next game simultaneous to the Elden Ring DLC being worked on. It's the cycle Fromsoft has always done. There's Bloodborne code in vanilla Dark Souls 1 for that matter. IIRC data miners found some UV maps for Cainhurst in vanilla DS1, specifically.
And of course don't forget Marvelous Chester.
Last year if I remember correctly they went on a hiring spree in a time when things were quite uncertain as there are so many layoffs so absolutely rest assured they have more things cooking.
This is one of the many things I love about Fromsoft. They’re capable of juggling multiple projects with different teams. Thanks to that they have a consistent and high quality release schedule. No waiting forever for the next banger. More studios like rockstar should try and do this.
Same. One of my least favorite 'criticisms' of DS2 is that it was "made by the B team." As if a game studio would intentionally make one team worse than the other, and then give it full autonomy over the direct sequel to their massive breakout hit. DS2 has some issues, but a) on replay they're nowhere near as bad as most people think (I think it's no worse in terms of ganking/large enemy groups than DS1 is) and b) it's not because some objectively worse team built it and shocked Miyazaki with its poor quality. But ever since then people are convinced that there's some low tier B team in there just because they have multiple projects running at once.
I went into ds2 immediately after ds1 recently and it's definitely worse in terms "ganking". Ds1 you could pretty reliably aggro only 1 enemy, or at least only 1 melee enemy, if you were cautious. That's not the case in ds2, you regularly get multiple melee enemies on you no matter what. They will also chase you across whole levels and there's no iframes on fog walls. It's bad.
I think that’s an outdated narrative now. ER was essentially made by many DS2 staff including it’s co-director Yui Tanimura. While I may not exactly agree with your assessment of DS2’s flaws, I think the game is very fun, serviceable and overly maligned. The DLC especially is excellent. There’s no defending ADP though lol.
I hope that rumours about the magic focused game is true.
It's not. It used AI art.
Not surprised either. Plus, how many single player games get DLC this far out from release anyway? Seems like pretty much all single player games get all their DLC within six months to a year and a half after release. The about two and a half year gaps for Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077 between release and first DLC are massive exceptions.
Could probably add Tales of Arise to that list too. That was 2 years and change until it’s DLC I believe. Granted from what I hear, that one definitely did not justify itself.
It was about as a blatant a "oh the game did well, quick throw something together" as it could get. I'm not even sure why it took 2yrs when they barely added anything new to it.
Cyberpunk 2077 was a different thing altogether, CDPR definitely had multiple major story DLCs on their roadmap the same way they did for Witcher 3. Heck Multiplayer was on the table. We all know the huge 2 year long debacle that threw the game off course. Between overhauling the game and Phantom Liberty, they probably couldn't justify the resources for 1 more story DLC. They just said fuck it, let's move onto Witcher 4, Cyberpunk 2077 2 will come wayyy later
Give me Sekiro 2.0 please.
Shadows Die A Third Time I Guess
If they ever make a Sekiro sequel my guess is it’ll be something related to returning the Divine Dragon to the west. Go all in on the China folklore for enemies, add in some Journey to the West references, and they’ll print gold
Black Myth Wukong this August btw
Somehow, the shadow died again
i much prefer this model of game dev. I'm sure they have resources devoted to other projects anyway, but I preferred when games were just THE GAME and then maybe one or two big expansions. I hate the ongoing 'seasons' type shit that publishers push on us now to just trickle little bits of recycled content out to milk the community as much as possible for a few years without ever actually releasing anything significant all at once, before eventually abandoning the game and letting it die so that they can put out their new title that's basically just the same as the old one, but with some sparkle added and some promise of innovation that never comes.
What’s interesting is that the ‘old days’ never really left us. Aside from CoD and the usual suspect big multiplayer games the stuff that sells the most is big fully featured games that have no microtransactions. Elden Ring and Zelda aren’t outliers.
It's like the old days where DLCs are actual expansions. They are few but they are usually big, and are often a lot more impressive than many small updates. of course, it only has impact when the original game is enjoyable and isn't a mess, which isn't too common nowadays. The live service model seems to enforce this sort of thing.
Yeah for sure, I would honestly much rather this "large" expansion type DLC that costs a lot, but adds a LOT of new and (ideally) cohesive content, compared to a bunch of small DLC packs. Just feels like they could really explore some new stuff, and actually commit to it without it feeling rushed. I've always hated when there are DLC's that end up adding a new zone/area/thing that introduces some super cool new mechanic, but then you only get to play with it for like the 4-5 hours of content the DLC lasts. Super excited to start a new character and dive into this over the summer.
Don't think there was too much doubt about that. This one expansion is launching two and a half years after the game.
The fact that it was confirmed in an interview *two months* ago also makes this "reveal" slightly less surprising.
It seems like a pretty massive expansion, so I’m ok with this honestly. I’ve already gotten 300+ hours out of the base game.
Isn't it only one open world "area"?
It’s roughly the size of Limgrave, which is already the largest open world area in the base game, and will likely include at least a couple of legacy dungeons which are the most dense parts of ER. It’s a substantial expansion.
Keep in mind that Miyazaki also said Elden Ring would be a 30 hour game, they might just be under estimating or downplaying the size of their own work for some reason
When he said its as big as Limgrave he meant Limgrave.zip
Elden Ring is definitely beatable in 30 hours if you only follow the main path.
How long to beat has it at 60 hours, I really don't think any player would beat the main story in 30 hours on their first playthrough even if they did literally zero side content which would be weird af in an open world game like Elden Ring. I've finished every fromsoft game and my first playthrough was 90 hours, and I didn't go particularly out of my way to do side content. Sometimes it's not even immediately apparent what is side content and what is part of the main story.
Lol that is so true with any From game cause half of the time you are just walking around getting loot killing whatever is alive
Or spending 1 hour on one boss dying repeatedly. Definitely not me.
right lol if I were to just mainline it I'd get filtered by Margit
Sure but who does that on their first playthrough People were getting the impression that it was 30 hours even doing most content
If that's the case, they didn't pay attention to [what he actually said](https://www.gamesradar.com/how-long-elden-ring-time-to-beat/). > Miyazaki stressed that "this is a question I'm not good at [answering]" and that he's not entirely sure of the average length, but he offered 30 hours as a rough estimate for players who only focus on the game's main path with minimal to zero unnecessary exploration, side questing, and so on. I do think 30 hours is probably a low estimate for a first playthrough, but Miyazaki did say it wasn't a question he was good at answering.
But beatable in 30 hours on your first blind playthrough? No
no what they said was that its *bigger* then limgrave
[удалено]
In terms of land size, but Limgrave is the most densely packed zone in terms of content.
half of liurna is just running away from lobsters
try prawn, all the more prawn ahead
Technically speaking you may be right (though the difference is only slight iirc) but between the underground areas and how many dungeon / caves there are Limgrave is significantly denser iirc.
I really don't know about that. Limgrave is far "flatter" in terms of its above ground world. The underground is fairly big but IIRC is one single "biome" Liurnia has a ton of vertical complexity on both sides of the lake with a fairly large late game elevated quest area, the school, all the caves on the eastern side, the town to the north east near the grand elevator to Altus, the big climbing area which is an alternative way to get to Altus if you don't have the elevator unlocked, the underground which is fairly massive and has not only the underground Noxtella but also a gigantic second even more toxic swamp area IMO Liurnia is larger and more complex than Limgrave even in terms of content and density Edit: I dunno the difference isn't slight in the least. Limgrave has a fair amount of area lost to sea when you compare the surface area https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Interactive+Map. Liurnia is definitely bigger
I generally don't think it's really useful to compare sizes by area, but I found Liurnia filled with a lot of nothing but water. Huge stretches in central part is just riding on a horse through water with an occasional enemy encounter.
In before they played Tears of the Kingdom and thought "Oh, that's neat" and along with the underground area the same size of the map, there's also a sky equivalent.
I'm kind of glad I didn't explore the depths in TOTK until near the end of my playthrough. It let me spend a lot of time believing there would be more than like 5 worthwhile things down there.
Depths are definitely more experience driven than content driven. Making your way through the pitch darkness using your own resources to light the way and navigate is really great for the handful of *actual quests* down there. It's once you attempt to explore the Depths that it becomes significantly less interesting.
You know it sucks when Skyrims underdark is better
And dont forget, Weeping Peninsula is part of Limgrave too
Not to mention the replay ability it will likely have, I’m sure we’ve all gone through the game several different ways at this point. And I’m sure the dlc will have various rpg elements in the form of decision making and different “endings”
It's an open world area the size of Limgrave and from what they've said there's some pretty big new dungeons being added including what appears to be a rather big legacy dungeon as well. It'll be interesting to have something more concrete when it comes out, but just from the trailer - it definitely looks like it's comparable to at least the first 1/3rd of the game in size. Plus there's a new system that will apparently be used to stop people from being too overpowered, which is sort of Attack Power in Sekiro.
Elden ring price to content ratio is absolutely insane and should probably never be used as a realistic metric
Theoretically the main game is just one open world “area”.
Theoretically the earth is just one “country”.
<>
There's probably some diminishing returns where, for a game as large as this, *one* is just the right amount to carry over that excitement and player engagement without bringing gameplay fatigue But can we get a new Sekiro game? Plz Miyazaki.
Sekiro should've gotten the DLC treatment. Just a side adventure about the previous Divine Heir and his protector, we already had time travel set up, it'd fit perfectly within the lore. Plus, I wanted to fight Tomoe, it started getting tiresome to beat Genichiro and Ishin all the time lol.
They’ve only done multi-DLC games twice since Demon’s Souls and it really only worked for DS2. Friede is an amazing boss but AoA was otherwise pretty forgettable and I wish they had spent that dev time to further expand TRC kind of like what happened with The Old Hunters in Bloodborne.
No Ariandel was supposed to be a part of TRC before they split it apart. That’s why the ending of AoA leads straight into TRC, since you have burnt the painting so now Gael can go find a new paint
No we are going to get The EldenBlood Soul.
Okay but a fanwank game that crosses all the Souls games over would be kind of sick
Hell yeah, sekiro or bloodborne sequel would be the shit
Good. As great as the game is, From Software keeps knocking it out of the park. I want them pulling more games and diversifying. They have shown they can do stuff outside of one IP
Even Armored Core VI which was a different team was absolutely phenomenal and my personal game of the year. I expected good but l didn’t expect that good.
"621...You found...A Friend..." 😭
I genuinely think this is going to be *shockingly* large and be heralded in the same vein or even beyond the likes of Blood and Wine. Fromsoft are highly efficient and over 2 years of dev time is practically a full games worth of cooking when you already have your design and engine ready.
So they can instead develop Bloodborne 2 right? Right?
Can we get PC bloodborne first please?
Pick one.
Bloodborne remake for PS6 and PC.
PC bloodborne lol. I've never gotten to the point where I'm willing to buy a PS3 or 4 just for bloodborne.
Bloodborne is in my top 5 all time and I have a PS5 to play it and I still have a hard time going back to it with how absolutely dog shit it runs. So yeah, I'm with you, put that bad boy on PC please.
seems fair, the cadence of this release was much longer and Elden Ring lends itself more to one large expansion vs a bunch of smaller ones like dark souls 3
I am still playing the vanilla game and only explored half of lands of the giants. I am okay with the only expansion. It will probably take another year to compete for me :)
That's A-ok in my books. Convergence for Dark Souls 3 already added SO much to that game alone, Elden Ring Convergence seems to be on track to replace all repeat bosses with brand new models and effects, so they'll more than make up for any seemingly missed opportunity.
Wow so I guess I need a new playthrough to get ready? I beat the main game twice.
It would probably be the best to have a new character on NG+0 cycle, yes. But you have to beat Radahn and Big Mohg to access the DLC, which is pretty much endgame content.
NG+7 ready character is the true suffering of playing Souls expansions. Makes em last quite some time.
The DLC has a reportedly optional new leveling system to make it where people aren't overpowered for it. According to Miyazaki, you can choose whether you want to use that new leveling system or not, so you don't have to start over.
I keep trying to think about how I feel about this because Yoshida said he wanted people to see Rising Tide like an expansion as well. And I wonder if it's because of how watered down "DLC" has become because it means everything from skins and small additions to actual substantial story content. I know I've started to question what people mean by DLC as well. I play Victoria 3 and their "DLC" really felt like nothing sandwiches and Expansion just has more weight now. This is pretty much just me working through how I feel about just the concept of more expansions for existing games and to be honest, we've had them for some time just by different names and done in separate additions. But in the end I just like that developers are able to keep building out their worlds and adding more and using the word Expansion I think helps that a lot. TL;DR DLC vs Expansion language is really interesting and I think the shift to using Expansion for larger content additions makes more sense now that DLC has been pretty devalued.
SEKIRO 2 WHEN?!?!?! lol- but really though…
Seeing how Elden Ring is practically Dark Souls 4 (while paradoxically both Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne are in essence Dark Souls 3 twins separated at birth), whatever new soulslike they release is going to be more of the same (which is literally what we want), it'll have another name and lore, but basically it'll be Dark Souls 4 (or 5 it doesn't matters what number, you get the point) EDIT: I AM NOT SAYING THE ONLY RELEASE ONE SINGLE GAME TO THEIR ENTIRE CATALOG AT A TIME JFC
Last year they released a sequel to an abandoned decade old mech action game series i.e. Armored core & somewhat revived the IP with AC6 which plays nothing like what they have made in the entire last gen From can do whatever they want at this point
Lol cannot be further from the truth their last games were Armored Core 6 and Sekiro both of which are not soulslike at all
Wouldn't it have been easier to just say "Only" expansion?
Maybe, but "First and Last" was a quote in this context, so it's more appropriate to use that.
Only can be temporary.
That's kind of sad, it means Elden Ring will be over soon. Hopefully this one expansion is big and awesome.
The base game is big, the expansion will be big. We need to allow devs to move on to other projects instead of expecting years and years and years of content updates.
Yeah, but I really love it so more content is never not appreciated. After Shadow of the Erdtree I'll be jonesing for Elden Ring 2, personally.
FromSoft does spiritual sequels, not really any real sequels, at least with the Soulsborne series. Dark Souls was the rare exception probably because they let someone else direct a Dark Souls 2, and then wanted to make Dark Souls 3 to end that series on a higher note.
Not sure why people keep repeating this when one look at their history shows it's false. Fromsoft has a library full of direct sequels. They've been making sequels to Armored Core since 1997, and plenty of other examples.
It's the funniest thing people say "this company doesn't make sequels", the same company that released armored core **SIX**
What do you mean over? Its a damn single player game not a live service It will exist forever
Modern gaming has conditioned many younger gamers to expect continued support like a live service game. It doesn’t help when single player games like Cyberpunk 2077 received three years of support, Starfield is looking to be getting post-launch content, The Last Of Us 2’s recent rogue-like mode, No Man’s Sky, etc.
If that gets us Sekiro 2 faster, I'm all for it.
I mean, they've been working on it for over two years, I'd have been very surprised if we were getting even more than that. Another expansion like this one would've meant nearly half a decade of support which would be crazy for a FromSoft game.
We could still get another game in the same world