The open-world has to be one of the most popular, and well loved formats of video games. I’m not going to call it a genre because it isn’t: it’s a style of world design. However, you could be remiss for thinking open-world games are part of an open-world genre. So many of these video games share the same mechanics, progression, structure, visual style, design, and tropes. And it’s these very same titles that make me feel like a goddamn crazy person.
As an example: last year everyone was losing their collective shit over Elden Ring. Dark Souls, but open-world. It was the greatest game ever created! Well, maybe for some, but not for me. I actually enjoyed playing the remaster of the original Dark Souls more than Elden Ring. A lot more. There’s a Grand Canyon sized gulf of quality between the 2 games in my mind, and I have a lot more respect, and admiration for the one compared to the other.
Before you steal Chives (my cat) for my sacrilegious claim, let me clarify that I don’t think Elden Ring is a bad game. It succeeds in a lot of the things it sets out to do. The message system that has been present in all of the Dark Souls titles managed to realize its full potential in Elden Ring thanks to the size, and scope of the world. The first several areas are also amazing to explore. It feels like you’re truly discovering this forgotten place with a mountain of hidden secrets.
However, that sense of wonder comes to a screeching halt when you march up to the Altus Plateau. This is where I started to get fatigued by all of the incredibly samey dungeons, and ruins that are littered throughout Elden Ring’s enormous world. It’s also the point in the game where standard enemies, and bosses start getting recycled, which further exacerbates that feeling of repetition. Maybe it’s just a sticking point for me, but the world feels a lot less authentic when you start seeing enemies crop up in places where they clearly don’t belong.
It was at this point in the game, when I started seeing all of the repetitive details, and it felt like I was doing the same thing ad nauseam that I also started to grow tired of the combat. I think the foundation of FromSoft’s combat is great, but boy howdy is it fucking boring to play the exact same thing for upwards of 100 hours. I went through Dark Souls Remastered 3 separate times, and I used a different build for each of my playthroughs. Having a new set of tools to work with helped to keep things fresh even if I was going up against familiar challenges. The same can’t be said when your build remains fundamentally unchanged for 50 hours, and you’ve been killing almost every encounter with the exact same set of tools.
This is why I feel insane. Everyone else heaped mountains of praise onto this game, but my experience felt incredibly lopsided. The first 40 hours were great, but after that I felt like the quality of Elden Ring dropped off of a cliff into an erupting volcano. This makes me feel like I’m broken – like I’m missing something that everyone else experienced. Why is it that everyone, and their fucking dogs loved Elden Ring so much, and I thought it was just ok?
It’s not just Elden Ring, either. I get the same feelings of fatigue, and repetition while playing basically every mega budget game the industry farts out. Hell, even games that only have open-world segments will do me in. For an example of that we need only look to God of War. I pushed through a decidedly boring introduction, but completely bailed on the game once I hit the lake, and I was able to freely explore. I simply don’t have the patience to slowly trudge around the map dotting off a checklist of mindless busy work so that my character will level up and do 2% more damage with their light attacks. It’s not a game at that point – that’s just work.
That actually reminds me of a video by the voice actor SungWon Cho that pretty accurately captures the sentiment I’ve have toward these titles:
I’m in the minority though. If these games weren’t super popular then they wouldn’t keep getting made. Lord knows the industry’s major players are all too afraid of putting out a singleplayer title unless they think it’ll sell gangbusters. The easiest way to do that is to make it big because that’s an easy selling point to communicate to the masses.
And look – I’m sorry if you feel personally attacked by the way I just described your favourite style of game. If it makes you feel any better, my co-workers asked me about fighting games the other week, and were surprised to find out that they aren’t just a contest to see who can press the most buttons.
I dunno – am I the only one? Are there more of you out there? Please, send me a lifeline. I need to know that I’m not completely crazy. Or, if I am, I need to know I’m not alone. Misery loves company after all.
Frostilyte Writes 
I’m also one of the 10 people that found Elden ring to be far from the masterpiece everyone claims it is. I immediately got sick of the gaming community talking about it. Still to this day I see people thinking that anything that game does is perfect and that it makes every other game look like complete trash. As you said it’s not a bad game, but so many of the routes it took to be “new” for the souls genre were wrong imo. So I agree with everything you have to say about Elden Ring.
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It’s funny – I originally started this post from a more general standpoint, but it kinda turned into a bit more of an Elden Ring rant. After 2 separate playthroughs of ER, and 3 different drafted posts that I threw out where I complained about aspects of it, I was finally able to get some of my pent up ranting out with a tangentially related post lol
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I loved Elden Ring, but I totally get where you’re coming from with the general fatigue. By the time I made it to the Mountaintop of Giants I was starting to feel it and spent as little time as possible in the Consecrated Snowfield. One of the worst things about this was the fact that what I thought were two of the coolest areas in the game – Miquella’s Haligtree and the Mausoleum of Blood were optional areas which required you to access them through the Consecrated Snowfield. Dark Souls is much more of a streamlined experience compared to Elden Ring.
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Absolutely. What’s even more wild is that the consecrated snowfield is itself a completely optional area. Though I do actually like that about From: part of what makes ash lake in Dark Souls so interesting is that it is hidden behind so much bullshit, and yet there isn’t really a great reason to go there.
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Ash Lake is pure FROM SOFTWARE: It may very well be the most interesting lore in Dark Souls, but very little reason to go there from a gameplay standpoint. 😅
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No. My brother is the same way.
Just because something is super popular doesn’t mean it’s the right game design for everyone. It’s good to recognize that you don’t like open world games because now your criteria for identifying what you like is clearer. Don’t waste your money on any games that are supposedly super good but don’t fit the bill.
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I can’t get into open-worlds. I can do giant, contained areas, but I need some guidance or I will just run around in circles and get overwhelmed. Recently, Tears of the Kingdom has felt completely overwhelming since there is so much crap to do and all I want to do is find clothes in caves.
Elden Ring should have been overwhelming to me too (at some points it was). I think the reason why I got through it at all was because I was playing alongside a friend. I would be open (ha) to more open-world games if there were more multiplayer options.
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I haven’t played Elden Ring, but I’m with you on the open world concept. I can appreciate why people like it, and I do see the appeal in it myself somewhat — if I just want to ignore the story and go riding around to find whatever I can find, it’s nice that I have that option. But then I remember getting Skyrim ten years ago and really enjoying that open world for a few days, then getting bored with it and using fast travel because you can only see the same brown mountains and traveling merchants so many times. And that was what passed for open-world over a decade ago.
Maybe the more traditional closed worlds bother people who feel that limitation makes the game feel less real. But big surprise from my JRPG-loving self, I really don’t need a massive world map to play on to make it feel more real. I know I’m playing a game, and I don’t need to convince myself otherwise.
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Would it come as any surprise to know that not much has changed in 10 years? I mean…the environments are more colourful, and have more foliage in them, but aside from that…
Yeah I dunno. I think I just appreciate having a more focused experience myself. Like…I don’t mind wandering when I’m in the mood for it, but most of the time I want to sit down, and play a board game. You set things up, play the game, are satisfied with the experience, and pack it up. Probably why I’m drawn to so many roguelikes, card games, and fighting games. They’re so easy to pop into, play, and leave when you only have a limited time window.
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I think you’ve posed a lot of fair criticisms for Elden Ring! I enjoyed it more than my previous FromSoft outing but that was moreso due to the quality of life features and certain combat mechanics fitting my playstyle more. While I did enjoy the open world in the sense of having alternative objectives to explore when I needed a break or needed to go improve my character, the parts of the game I enjoyed the most were the more authored areas like the big dungeons. I think some games execute open world structure more elegantly than others but personally I think there are more interesting systems for giving the player a sense of progression and meaningful choice than just “you can go wherever you want in this empty sandbox.”
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Open worlds are daunting, especially when you have limited play time. What I will say is that it then provides me a clear indicator of a fantastic game when I do get gripped into one, and the hours fly by easily. Think Horizon or Zelda.
I think my main problem with the genre/mechanic of an open world is that it feels impossible to play everything now, because so many games are 80-100 hours. But that’s a very first-world problem, I’m aware, aha!
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