Soul games are usually known to induce so much paranoia and dread among gamers that their blood pressure ends up going over the roof. On top of this, the adversaries packed by such games aren’t the easiest to deal with, which can make you feel stuck.
Ask any Dark Souls, Bloodborne, or Demon Souls enthusiast; they’ll tell you how soul games’ difficulty can actually be a significant hindrance that prevents you from immersing yourself in a beautifully woven plot and compelling gameplay.
But it looks like things will change for the better with the arrival of Elden Ring next month.
As revealed by FromSoftware’s Producer, Yasuhiro Kitao, during the Taipei Game Show, Elden Ring has been designed to be less stressful without reducing the difficulty factor that FromSofware’s games are known to pack.
With the game’s world being so large, that can produce real depth and breadth of enjoyment, but it can also lead to unnecessary stress for some players. The dev team has been very careful to avoid that where possible, especially as the enemies are so strong.
Yasuhiro Kitao
This implies that the foes and bosses you’ll encounter would still be carving through you like nobody’s business. But given the way they have been placed in the game, the entire experience would be less nerve-racking yet interesting.
What this means is that you will find the map neither brimming with enemies nor too freed of them.
The challenge was to place enemies in a way that would keep players interested but still provide them with a low-stress experience. This applies to item distribution, too, as well as in-game events. Fine-tuning these placements and timings has been ongoing until the very end. Changing enemies for all times of day would create a kind of pressure on users to play the game at various different times. We felt this was stress our users could do without.
Yasuhiro Kitao
Even the introduction of horses and their unique ability to travel on air currents has been made to focus on stress-reducing as mounts provide a peaceful traveling method to cover large distances. Ultimately, this will let players explore every corner of the game with ease.
On top of this, the addition of fast travel feature is there to make your life a whole lot simpler as you can directly visit the already discovered locations and avoid certain challenging boss areas while you’re at it as well.
This proves to be an effective way of combating stress by eliminating the need to cover a mammoth map and dealing with unnecessary situations.
Elden Ring is slated to hit the shelves on February 25 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
About Elden Ring
Elden Ring is a major title released by FromSoftware in 2022, the developers of Demon’s Souls, Bloodborne, and the Dark Souls franchise. Set in the ‘Lands Between’, players are on a quest to repair the Elden Ring and become the new Elden Lord.
Shadow of the Erdtree is a full-fledged expansion for Elden Ring added in June 2024. It is a whole new map with new Weapons, Sorceries, Ashes, and Craftables. It is a challenging DLC and as players continue to explore the map, they find surprises and easter eggs left by the developers every day.
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