Elden Ring Succeeds by Ignoring 20 Years of Open-World Design
Just a phenomenal game. IMO, all the From Games are great, but none of them really matched up to the original Dark Souls... until now. I&#x27;ve literally played this every day since it came out, I have over 150 hours, and I still haven&#x27;t beat it. And still I&#x27;m discovering cool new areas, items, and lore. The amount of times I&#x27;ve gotten to a new area and just gone &quot;what in the actual fuck&quot; is too many to count, it&#x27;s just jam packed full of surprises and cool sights to see.<p>Of course, I think that &quot;open world&quot; is a pretty broad label at this point, as there are other open world games that are totally different from ER but just as good. For instance, Fallout 4 (survival). It doesn&#x27;t have as good enemy variety, locations, or combat as ER, no question, but the questlines are a lot better, the settlement stuff is awesome, and the general level of interactivity makes it an experience just as immersive as ER.<p>But overall, for that type of &quot;combat&#x2F;exploration&quot; focused open world game, ER absolutely takes the cake. I hope the BOTW sequel takes some inspiration, especially for the dungeons. But I do think Bethesda still rules for the &quot;simulation&quot; style open world games.