How Elden Ring Lost its Way in the Open World

When I look back on the best games of 2022, Elden Ring will be there. The value, the quality, and the design raised the bar for major releases. If anything else released this year is comparable, then 2022 will be awesome for video games. That said, I have some criticisms that hold back Elden Ring from achieving greatness.

Elden Ring is too long. The density of interesting encounters to find and discoveries to make in the starting areas eventually fizzles out, resulting in huge expanses of nothing. Towards what I thought was the end of the game I was happily thinking I had one last area to go, only to discover that I had many more ahead of me. By hour 100 I was fatigued. When I slayed the final boss at hour 120, what should have been a victory lap was instead relief at my newfound sense of freedom. Cutting 4 or 5 of the end-game zones would have been a solid improvement to the pacing and length of the game.

Parts of the game felt rushed. Busted NPC quests in particular stood out, and while they have largely been fixed, it's too late to matter for my initial play-through and impressions. The development team running out of time might also explain some of content voids in the open world. Was there a design meeting that resulted in more zones with recycled bosses and net less content and to draw things out, have a massive open world to traverse, and pad out the completion time while keeping to schedule? I can get on board with that line of thinking.

Was the open world really that remarkable? In the context of other Souls games, maybe. But how does it hold up against Breath of the Wild (please show me the ER equivalent of using fire from a lightning strike hitting grass use as a heat rise and shoot up into the air)? Or Far Cry 2? Or some of the Rockstar and Bethesda games? I think I can count on one hand the number of times that systems actually interacted with each other in measurable ways that I observed.

• The weather didn't impact anything besides lightning killing some of the rams, I guess.
• The wandering wagons were on a set path that would reset at every reload.
• Events based on time of day were incredibly limited, like world tendency from Demon's Souls that you could predict and rest to.
• Different groups of enemies that would fight each other were probably scripted, or positioned in such a way that they may as well have been. I didn't find any dynamic engagements unless I could bait enemies to each other before they'd be leashed.
• The Grace rays were fixed and would likely point you to your doom, not level appropriate content.
• NPCs would show up at fixed locations, and were separate from the rest of the stuff in the world.
• Outside of combat, the horse was basically move really fast, double-jump, or elevator up and down cliffs.

In a couple years I will only remember the dungeons and some of the open world bosses, and maybe one of the lookout towers. The rest of the open world will likely fade as it wasn't utilized in any remarkable way.

Speaking of half-baked, the only crafting I did was for poison and scarlet rot status cures and arrows. Thankfully most of things could eventually be purchased from vendors so as to not have to grind out the materials. Is crafting an antidote from 2 things you pick up off the ground honestly more meaningful than just looting an antidote? Just getting the antidote in the other games didn't hurt my enjoyment of those at all.

At the end, Elden Ring had done many things right. But the open world stuff was only mediocre at best and it turned an epic journey into a grueling slog. Here's to the next iteration in a future FromSoft game, which is probably already considering some of these lessons learned and will be closer to greatness.