Highlights
- Elden Ring's success is a testament to FromSoftware's formula, but future imitators shouldn't try to replicate its massive size.
- Elden Ring's open-world design strikes a balance between exploration and meaningful encounters, but its size can be overwhelming.
- Future Soulslike games should focus on their unique features and mechanics, rather than trying to mimic Elden Ring's immense scale.
Soulslike games are rightfully rampant lately and that hopefully won’t stop for as long as FromSoftware’s inspiration runs hot in developers’ circles. If Elden Ring’s success has anything to say about it, FromSoftware will likely be developing games with its tailor-made formula for the foreseeable future, all while giving it the opportunity to dip its toes into non-Souls endeavors such as Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon. But while many Soulslikes imitate one or more features from a FromSoftware game, future imitators shouldn’t try to leverage Elden Ring’s immensity for its own.
Elden Ring is an open-world game through and through, which could have easily overthrown the core gameplay dynamics of the Souls-esque action-RPG features it embeds. Crafting might not have turned out to be as significant of a feature as it puts itself out to be, but the colossal scale of the Lands Between makes each mechanic at least somewhat helpful depending on what players’ ambitions are. If a future Soulslike game tries to emulate what Elden Ring has done, though, it will surely find itself grappling with the same issues FromSoftware has encountered.
Elden Ring’s Size Comes with Pros and Cons
Elden Ring was first revered for how big its map is, especially on a first playthrough when the game is able to surprise players by initially limiting the scope of the world based on how much else is obscured. This trick is most effective if players stumbled upon the teleporter warping them to the northmost part of the map, at which time they can open the map and see exactly how much of the game exists between those two points of intersection.
Moving forward from there can be overwhelmingly simply based on how much freedom Elden Ring offers in terms of which direction fans would like to go, and any particularly troubling bosses or enemies can simply be avoided for the sake of exploration elsewhere. That said, unlike many open-world games that have empty vistas or are bloated with content, Elden Ring seems to have a perfect balance where locations can be soaked in and enjoyed while almost always finding a fun encounter or mystery around the bend.
Each region of the Lands Between is also unique enough to be memorable, whether players have found themselves trekking along the red wastes of Caelid or trudging through the waterlogged arcana of Liurnia. However, where Elden Ring’s size begins to hurt is when enemies or bosses are recycled, typically when players journey into any one of its dungeons. Likewise, fans have argued that the linearity of Souls games is preferable on repeat playthroughs since Elden Ring’s scope can be arduous to begin tackling again from scratch.
Soulslikes Should Stick to What Makes Them All Unique
Soulslike games are hardly ever unabashed facsimiles of FromSoftware games, and it’s precisely what differentiates each one that makes them interesting as games inspired by a particular formula and subgenre. Mortal Shell is incredibly similar to Dark Souls if someone was to look at a screenshot of each, for example, but its mechanics and level designs are much different once it’s actually in players’ hands and they learn about the Shell system and how it prescribes a certain build to the player’s gameplay.
Lords of the Fallen also takes a familiar dark fantasy approach to its art direction, but the feature of being able to peek and step within another plane of existence in real-time is truly fascinating, giving it a lot of distinction in its themes and moment-to-moment activities. Lies of P is arguably as close to a Bloodborne successor as anyone could imagine while also being heavily inspired by Pinocchio, especially with its rally mechanic, but that adherence to another IP allows it to have unique character-driven narratives and allows the protagonist to lie for dynamic consequences and player choice.
Regardless, if a Soulslike was to try emulating Elden Ring’s enormity, it could fall short in any way conceivable, and if anything should be learned from it it’s that quantity isn’t always better than quality. Elden Ring’s quality is still phenomenal, but an imitator may or may not execute these inspirations as greatly.
Elden Ring is available now for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Series X/S.
