(spoilers) Awesome game, awesome gameplay, cool cutscenes, complete lack of storytelling

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ELDEN RING

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Iron Reaper 10 Jul @ 1:56pm

(spoilers) Awesome game, awesome gameplay, cool cutscenes, complete lack of storytelling

I just finished the base game and the dlc today on PS5 and am probably going to pick it up for pc whenever it goes on sale so i can get in on modding it, but the game was great from start to finish. You know what would have made it better though? Having a story.

I get it, some people are into playing detective and figuring out what the story is but I don't have any interest in reading endless item descriptions and starting a spreadsheet to piece together what happened.. the story in this game is akin to dropping a dictionary in your lap and saying if you want to learn english go ahead. If you're like me and you didn't want to play detective, the story you experienced in elden ring goes something like this:

I resurrect or something into this world, immediately die, a one eyed waifu gives me a horse ring and lets me turn runes into levels, i kill a bunch of gods and their entire armies because they are hostile to me, waifu wants to burn a tree so im like ♥♥♥♥ it she’s cute let’s do it, she lights herself on fire and dies, dont stick your ♥♥♥♥ in crazy so that kinda worked out.. well i suppose i will just keep killing gods, now i’m a king with nobody left to serve me

That's just not good. Part of what makes a good story is how it is told.. leading you through an experience that is entertaining and which usually builds up to a huge crescendo with a big payoff. My payoff was that i sat in a chair with a voice-over for a few seconds and then that's it. As bad as that story experience is, i want to reiterate that the gameplay, exploration, level design, music, cutscenes, and of course the boss fights were more than enough to make me love the game and it might even be in my top 10 now.

I don't want your jesters or your points, and if it offends you that i hated one aspect of an awesome game then it's time to touch grass for a while, I'm just venting a bit i guess and wondering how many out there agree

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Originally posted by SpaceWombat:

It's hilarious how some apologists claim you're "not invested enough in the story" if you aren't combing every corner of the map for shiny tuffs of smoke which have no direct indication of story importance until you pick them up... instead of idk playing the game?

This kind of "storytelling" is not a charm. It's a remnant of technical shortcomings of older souls games that fromsoft never got rid of because they realized they could save money on not animating dialogue with how complacent their playerbase is.

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Showing 1-15 of 303 comments

Despiser

10 Jul @ 2:23pm

The problem with not reading inscriptions is you may miss out on a couple things that have very specific and necessary uses, without going into too much detail. So you are kind of forced to pay attention to the underwritten story even though 98% of the game you can merrily go about killing bosses without paying heed to the lore.

Iron Reaper 10 Jul @ 2:44pm

like what? i just finished it and i don't recall needing to do any reading, even though i did of course poke my head into an item description or two just to find its effect.

The problem i'm outlining is that there is no storytelling of the story, not that there is some lore on some items. If a game gets me hooked on its story i will gladly seek out more lore but there is nothing here to get me hooked. it just drops you into a world with some bosses who are trying to kill you like an arcade brawler

Last edited by Iron Reaper; 10 Jul @ 2:46pm

zero

10 Jul @ 2:48pm

the story is told through the npcs you meet and the items you find, a lot of tools and equipment explains how things were before the shattering, and a lot of npcs, while clearly having their bias, do give examples of how to improve things that were issues with the golden order.

there is merit to not directly spoon feeding the player the story and having it told enviormentally.

could it use work? yes, no doubt, i cant imagine a game that doesn't in some way; but its not a bad style in itself.

Iron Reaper 10 Jul @ 2:53pm

none of the npcs seemed to really have anything memorable to say, and what they did mention about the order was so vague or disjointed because of the lack of anything to connect it to that it didn't matter unless you were diving into item descriptions. the telling of the story in this game is just bad, which sucks because it's otherwise a great game

zero

10 Jul @ 2:54pm

Originally posted by Iron Reaper:
none of the npcs seemed to really have anything memorable to say, and what they did mention about the order was so vague or disjointed because of the lack of anything to connect it to that it didn't matter unless you were diving into item descriptions. the telling of the story in this game is just bad, which sucks because it's otherwise a great game

eh if you dislike it you dislike it, i like it far more then it holding your hand, having to collect information from the npcs to learn how things were and what they think is best is interesting to me.

Sgt. Flaw

10 Jul @ 3:06pm

Yea...♥♥♥♥ the story...I wouldn't know anything about it nor would I care if there weren't a few threads here about it...I beat the game without knowing wtf the golden order even was

Art designs on point tho

Iron Reaper 10 Jul @ 3:32pm

idk what the golden order is either, or what the elden beast was.. seemed really random. the end of the game was just like why do i care about mending this thing? idk wtf it even is

Furin

10 Jul @ 3:34pm

For the story you have to go to Youtube and watch lore videos.

zero

10 Jul @ 3:41pm

if your getting stuck at "golden order" then im not surprised you dislike the story of this game cause that is one of the most overtly told details about the story.

Iron Reaper 10 Jul @ 3:53pm

Originally posted by Furin:
For the story you have to go to Youtube and watch lore videos.

yeah, not much of a story then right? lol

#10

Iron Reaper 10 Jul @ 3:55pm

Originally posted by zero:
if your getting stuck at "golden order" then im not surprised you dislike the story of this game cause that is one of the most overtly told details about the story.

it's mentioned sure but idk what it is. you have so few interactions in this game with any npc that might give you story and they spend that time being creepy and vague mostly. I liked the interactions but that is not how you tell a good story

#11

Wild

10 Jul @ 3:56pm

Originally posted by Furin:
For the story you have to go to Youtube and watch lore videos.

How do you think they come up with the story?
They think about things, not impossible for other people to do.

#12

zero

10 Jul @ 4:04pm

Originally posted by Iron Reaper:
Originally posted by zero:
if your getting stuck at "golden order" then im not surprised you dislike the story of this game cause that is one of the most overtly told details about the story.

it's mentioned sure but idk what it is. you have so few interactions in this game with any npc that might give you story and they spend that time being creepy and vague mostly. I liked the interactions but that is not how you tell a good story

its not how to spoonfeed* you a good story, but it is a method to deliver an interesting and good story none the less, you just need to use your own agency.

like even just resting at churches gets you infodumped about the golden order and thats something you're driven to do cause thats where major flask upgrades are, and then any ending questline is ultimately about the shattering, and by proxy, the golden order as well, which gives you even more information, it doesn't even take a lot to connect the broader strokes.

even the video at the start gives you a huge jumping point to work from in that reagrd

#13