FromSoftware's Dark Souls series has always had a fantastic relationship with scope, containing massive, interconnected worlds where players can often look off into the distance and see areas that they'll soon be exploring. However, that scope may reach all new heights thanks to the next game coming from the company, as Elden Ring promises to have a more open world, or at least an open field built into the game.
This open field has many players assuming that Elden Ring will be a much larger game than any other title in FromSoftware's collection so far. In terms of sheer distance traveled, that may be true if there really are areas of just wide open field meant to be traversed on a mount, but what does that mean for the overall size of the game and how it stands in the legacy of Souls-like games?
Well, it really comes down to how FromSoftware plans to fill that space that makes all the difference from whether or not bigger will actually mean better. However, considering how dense the most difficult areas of Dark Souls tend to be, filling the space hardly seems like a challenge for the developer. So, players can likely rest assured that the new scope of Elden Ring will lead to great things, even if bigger has not always meant better in the past for Souls-like titles.
More bosses
If the rumors are true and Elden Ring does turn out to be the largest game attempted by FromSoftware so far, it could mean that this game will have the largest roster of bosses so far. For any longtime Souls fan, the bosses often stand out as the top tier experience from the games that offers the greatest and most rewarding challenges. In fact, some of the best bosses in Dark Souls have helped define what a fight against a boss should feel like for any action-rpg, helping spawn an entire Souls-like genre.
To that degree, if Elden Ring ends up having more bosses than any other game under the FromSoftware banner, this could mean that there are more high quality bosses to pull from the list than ever. Each game obviously has a few enemies and boss fights that don't exactly reach the technical or mechanical amazement players would hope for, instead filling in a place in the lore in exchange for a satisfying fight. However, more often than not, overcoming challenging boss fights is the heart and soul of the game, beyond Dark Souls and into Bloodborne, Sekiro, and even outside Souls-likes like The Surge.
More bosses is not always better
It should be noted that quantity can't always stand over quality, and another title by FromSoftware can perfectly encapsulate where the division between these two concepts lies. Dark Souls 2 may have memorable bosses, but more often than not, the overwhelming number of boss encounters that the player faces off against are far from the best that the series has to offer. While there are plenty of complaints that fans have made about Dark Souls 2 over the years, the quality of bosses like the Rat King and Royal Rat Authority are fairly consistently seen as a blight on the overall roster of bosses.
In this case, FromSoftware may want to look at Dark Souls 2 and its standing among the Souls series and be careful not to repeat the same mistakes in Elden Ring. While Elden Ring's size and scope may offer a chance at making dozens of new boss encounters and allow the developers to really flex the design work that they excel at, it comes with a level of risk. It's a huge ask to say that a game should have tons of incredible bosses, but when a company has a reputation for making some of the best boss designs in recent history, that seems to just be a drawback of such an illustrious legacy.
Less linear
If the Dark Souls games have a drawback, it's how linear they all seem to be when looking at the order of events as the game intends players to follow them. Sure, there are a few things that players can do out of order, and having certain items can allow them to skip some of the more infuriating areas of the original title, like Blighttown, but in most cases there is one direction that the game directs players to go. Attempting to progress through the catacombs too soon will result in being destroyed by skeletons that are way too powerful for new, low level players to fight, and New Londo requires specific gear or items just to fight them.
However, with the new open field concept for Elden Ring, this could mean that there are directions that the player could go at any point that will lead to dozens of different locations all at once, and the order is up to the player to choose. It's possible that the levels will be crafted similar to the way they have in the past, with powerful enemies blocking progress by simply being to strong to challenge at low levels, or NPCs gatekeeping the player until they have a specific item. That being said, this would be the best opportunity yet for FromSoftware to loosen those player restraints and allow players to choose the sequence of events, as opposed to the developers and mechanics.
Brand new combat
Specifically, the new combat that some players are looking forward to is mounted combat, similar to how games like Legend of Zelda will allow players to quickly rush past enemies, swinging their weapons off to the sides or shooting arrows ahead and behind. One recent game that excelled with this type of combat is Final Fantasy 7 Remake's motorcycle mini-game. Now, with open fields traversed by mounts, this could mean that FromSoftware could be trying its hand at mounted combat, and possibly even making a sort of revamped version of the Gyoubu Oniwa, except with both fighters on equal footing, horse feet to be precise.
This may be the most ambitious new mechanic for FromSoftware to be attempting to tackle in Elden Ring, seeing as how mounted combat often gets ridiculed as much as water-levels when it comes to haphazard level design. However, taking this opportunity to add a new level of mobility to the fight could be the company's way of inovating on new ideas while separating Elden Ring from titles like?Sekiro.
Elden Ring is currently being developed for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
