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    Elden Ring

    Game » consists of 18 releases. Released Feb 25, 2022

    Elden Ring by FromSoftware is a collaboration between Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R.R. Martin.

    Elden Ring reminded me about how accessibility can ruin immersion

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    Giant_Gamer

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    I'm a big fan of FS rpg formula and I can't believe how FS managed to top themselves with elden ring but I'm not here to talk about this.

    As I was playing elden ring I was discovering Limgrave so I thought that it might be better to go on top of a hill to see interesting places around me. I found a large structure checked my compass on of the top screen and started my journey to my new way point. On my way I started to wonder why this feels much better than Assassins Creeds and like games where you go on top of a building and the devs will show me all the interesting places around where I can pick whatever I want.

    I found that the AC approach is more convenient yet it breaks the immersion in video games because you have to climb that tower in order to know what's around you and you don't do it for yourself but the game does it for you with a click of a button.

    with elden ring it always it feels like I can get by with following my instincts alone and yes my instincts fail me sometimes but FS always managed to strike the balance where I can confidently say I fucked instead of they fucked up.

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    Efesell

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    Personally I don't think it does much for me in that regard. I'm fine with how Elden Ring does it but like there are these little telescopes in each area that zoom out and give a big panoramic of the surrounding area and if doing that had activated a bunch of things on my map I can't say that I would have had any lesser of a time with Elden Ring or its world.

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    Ares42

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    @efesell: Pretty much this. People tend to forget that you can do things poorly and you can do things well. Much of the problem people have with UbiWorld games aren't the systems themselves, but rather that a LOT of the content is highly generic (if not bad). People rail against towers these days, but when they was first introduced in AC they were such a success that it became a genre staple. And over time the games just stopped being inventive with the mechanic. Same thing for Far Cry style bases or their naval combat.

    Elden Ring isn't successful because it's "breaking the mold", it's because a much larger proportion of the content is actually well made and enjoyable to interact with. In many ways the game is actually trailing behind other open-world games rather than being a front-runner.

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    Broshmosh

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    #4  Edited By Broshmosh

    This post is to engage on the wider discussion being hinted at in OP's post. I haven't played Elden Ring because, full disclosure, it is too hard for me and I will not play enough of it to feel it's worth my time over games I can actually cope with.

    Partially tying how immersive a game is to how it divulges its gameplay is something I try to avoid, because there are other things that get in the way of my immersion much more directly:

    • Animation glitches: In one cutscene in Control Ultimate Edition, Jesse's face was replaced by fuzzy brown-ish static for the duration of one single line of dialogue. Even though it only happened once and I overall love the game, I cannot forget it.
    • Engine/gameplay inconsistencies: I still can't get over how only some of the booze-filled bottles in Dead Island could be used as weapons.
    • Poor translation/localisation: Gujian 3 was an extremely satisfying experience, but I can't recommend it to anyone who can't speak Chinese because the translation is so poor that most lines make no sense. FWIW I also don't speak Chinese, but I have a passing understanding of its nuances vs English and was able to read between the majority of lines. I still WTF at quite a few - I wish I'd taken screenshots of examples.

    As far as I'm concerned, if a gameplay mechanic works, and it only serves to make discovering the rest of the world easier, I will take it for granted and not let it affect my appreciation of the things that improve my immersion. If I were able to cope with a game that offered no help at all with exploration, I don't think I'd note that lack of guidance as particularly praiseworthy. Disco Elysium is a fantastic example of this, and it's one of my favourite games of all time; it's not because the map is vague and I had to learn the town myself.

    While I can't speak to a chunk of Assassin's Creed's earlier titles, I remember feeling very immersed in Odyssey because it was a joy to see and move around in the world. The acting, and much of the incedental and minor story writing was all very engaging. I still felt like I was discovering the world, because having a filled-in map marker to visit only made reaching that place easier. I still had to go there and interact with the game world to do so.

    What OP has done in this post, however, is bring up accessibility and how it pertains to their own experience with a game. The difficulty here is that accessibility is not necessarily there to help you alone experience a piece of media, it's there to help a majority. I'm not going to get too far into this, because there is a frankly unnerving discussion in the larger gaming sphere about making From Software games accessible enough that more people can experience them.

    Generally speaking, I am not at all upset or bothered when a game (series, standalone or otherwise) that I like has been somehow made more accessible. I want people to enjoy the things I also enjoy, and removing barriers to that access is, for me, a net positive as there will be more people around to engage in positive discussion about the media in question.

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    mellotronrules

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    i'm generally resistant to the notion that there is a single approach, attitude or philosophy that is the 'true' way to handle this sort of thing. for me immersion doesn't hinge on withholding or providing information- it's whether it's contextually earned or appropriate.

    it makes sense for Elden Ring to be stingy with that stuff, because that's baked into the core of FromSoft games. they're game-ass games that want you on your back foot most of the time, so they let you figure it out.

    but to the contrary, i like that something like Horizon has the Tallnecks and all the augmented reality/HUD info- because the protagonist is literally wearing a device on her temple that is providing her that information. it makes a certain amount of sense she would have a map with the same info the player does.

    as to which is 'better'- i think they both have their place; but generally i'm not the sort of player that gets a ton of wonder of discovery from typical open world games- because at the end of the day- if the map isn't being being generated by something like a seed (and therefore truly unique)- everyone is inhabiting the same world, so the thrill of uncharted territory isn't there for me. my immersion tends to hinge more on the writing, characters, and world building.

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    Nodima

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    #6  Edited By Nodima

    I also think that Rockstar's approach to open worlds hasn't gotten enough credit in this discussion the past two months because they do a really smart effort of blending both types of UI design. GTA V does this mostly by hiding interesting things near interesting places, but RDR 2 takes it a step further by putting primary missions explicitly on the map but hiding most of the side quests behind stumbling upon them.

    Every once in a while a side quest appears on the map and it's not always clear exactly why they have, but there is a lot of content in that game that you can completely miss if you stick to the main roads and ignore the side conversations around camps and towns. In this way it keeps the player aware of what they need to do to progress the state of the game world, while also allowing for things like the lumber encampment, homesteaders outside Valentine or railroad camp to evolve over time in a completely organic way that some/most players may never experience.

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    wollywoo

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    I don't think this is really about "accessibility" as I usually hear the term. Accessibility usually refers to tricks that allow anyone to enjoy the game, eg, having color schemes that work for colorblind people. I think anyone can enjoy the process of wandering around worlds investigating interesting sights without maps with icons for everything. It's just that it means it will be less easy for completionists to do all the things in a methodical way.

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    Justin258

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    Accessibility usually refers to features that allow people to play games they wouldn't have otherwise been able to - colorblind modes, redesigning your UI to allow for larger text, fully remappable controls, etc. Exactly where this ends and ease-of-use or convenience begins depends on the person, but this still seems like an important distinction to make.

    For my part, I have a hard time maintaining interest in open worlds where I open a map, click on a marked activity, run to the location, do the thing, open my map, click on a marked activity, run to the location, do the thing, etc. That's extremely reductive, I know, but you get my point - running in a straight line from point A to point B just removes all of my interest in a game. Assassin's Creed, and other Ubisoft open worlds, are largely designed around a map that will tell you where to go and how to get there. Elden Ring (and Breath of the Wild before it) are designed around the player stumbling upon or figuring out everything for yourself. When done right, this is vastly more engaging than just being explicitly told where to go all the time with a map marker and a waypoint.

    There's a middle ground here that I think can be pretty interesting, and I also think that some games can really make up the difference in some pretty interesting ways. The Witcher 3, for instance, has a lot of icons and I do remember spending a lot of time running from marker to marker - but also, that game's writing and world were more than good enough to keep me entertained.

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    MagnetPhonics

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    #9  Edited By MagnetPhonics

    This isn't what "accessibility" means in games. It isn't even close to the "Should Elden Ring have an easy mode?" caricature of accessibility options in games that sadly dominates discussions.

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    eccentrix

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    Assassin's Creed is a series where it's acknowledged that what's happening is a generalized simulation, so any broken immersion is actually an immersive experience you're sharing with the Animus user.

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    cikame

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    I find when a game doesn't help at all and leaves me to my own devices i don't get very far, most of the time i'm not looking to become a survival or navigation specialist i'm just trying to do something cool, having Assassin's Creed point me to where the murder needs to happen helps me get to the good bit, killing people in cool ways, hiding the bodies, pretending to be a badass and contributing to "the greater good".
    I do want to get lost sometimes, i recently played Stranded Deep where your only navigation is a compass and your own creative ideas like leaving sticks on the ground, but most of the time i just want to be told where the fun is.

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    Broshmosh

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    Assassin's Creed is a series where it's acknowledged that what's happening is a generalized simulation, so any broken immersion is actually an immersive experience you're sharing with the Animus user.

    100% this, though I think to most people this is not seen as a positive.

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    BaneFireLord

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    This is a bit afield of the OP's original point, but there's a wealth of space between the icon-vomit handholding caricature of Ubisoft games* and the zero guidance, maximum opacity of a From game. Granted, I have yet to play Elden Ring and am basing this opinion on my recent experience with beating Dark Souls, but I don't think either approach is ideal because in both cases it often feels like I haven't actually accomplished something. To the former, I might as well be on rails; to the latter, the inconsistencies and lack of information often makes accomplishments feel like dumb luck rather than the natural result of my actions (the inscrutable nonsense of Solaire's questline in Dark Souls comes to mind, to the extent that even the presumably vetted wiki I was following fucked up how to do it).

    I prefer the partial information approach, either giving clues that lead to something interesting when you put them together (e.g. Red Dead's treasure maps) or giving you a clear objective and leaving it up to you how to get there (e.g., Breath of the Wild, immersive sims in general). I find that sort of back and forth between the player and the game to be much more satisfying than either having an accomplishment handed to you on a plate or tripping over it by accident.

    But my preferences aren't everyone's preferences. Ultimately, I think the answer is customization. When a game's design calls for a specific form of guidance or lack thereof, that's absolutely fine--the obscurity is a key part of the Souls design philosophy and while I criticize aspects of its implementation I'm not here to argue that it shouldn't keep doing its thing. But 9 times out of 10 a game's balance of guidance versus obscurity is not intrinsic to its purpose. In my view, the ideal solution is putting in as many options as feasible and presenting them all up front for the player to pick and choose rather than forcing a default. Either that, or release mod tools to let the community do what it will. That's what I think the "trust the player" idea should stand for, as opposed to its general use as an antonym for "handholding"--trust the player to know what's best for the player and accommodate a wide range of approaches.

    (Also this conversation is really not about accessibility at all and the muddying of the waters over what accessible means in gaming, particularly as it keeps occurring in the Souls Discourse(TM), is really unfortunate.)

    --

    *I say "caricature" because, while I can't really speak to Far Cry or any of the open world Clance games, the two most recent AC games have included a lot of options to customize your experience in terms of how much or little guidance you're given, what shows up and doesn't show up on your minimap, etc.

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    Undeadpool

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    @broshmosh: I have little to contribute, other than I'm not sure I'd call the Ubi method more "accessible" than the FromSoft one, but I wanted to share my pain and yours: my first time playing through Mass Effect 3, I couldn't find a decent helmet for my build except: the balaclava with goggles...which caused a glitch that made my Commander Shepard's face map onto the balaclava, giving him enormous bug-eyes in EVERY SINGLE CUTSCENE.

    So I had to play the game in a slightly worse state because there was no way I was playing it like that.

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    Giant_Gamer

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    #15  Edited By Giant_Gamer

    @wollywoo: devs use the term accessibility interchangeably. it mostly refer to what you mentioned but it could also mean making the game easier to get into as in more accessible to a wider audience like the easy mode for Elden Ring.

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