SHISHKABOB posted:

I play for fun.

Rand Brittain posted:

FromSoft is pretty good at the whole "environmental lore" thing, but like, I have yet to hear anybody come up with a reason that it's a good thing that I have no idea, after reading every bit of lore in the game, what happens if I choose Fia's ending or how it would be different from any other ending.

nrook posted:

I disagree with everybody who is complaining about the lack of a quest log or dialog log in the game (and think that no one who uses the phrase "QoL features" has the cognition required to say anything of value about video games), but this is on point imo. There are a ton of things about Elden Ring that don't make sense in a way that's very different from, say, Dark Souls, which was highly ambiguous but not incoherent. The Elden Lord endings are neither clear nor evocative; the first is fine but the second is disappointing. Why does generic enemy X come back once they die but Radahn doesn't? Why don't any of the various intelligent groups of enemies have anything to say? Why doesn't Stormveil change once it gets a new ruler? There aren't really good answers for this. Some people have even suggested Radahn (et al) will come back eventually, but that doesn't really fit with how various characters like Jerren relate to the idea of killing him.

No Dignity posted:

Yeah I have nothing to defend the mending rune endings, they really could stand to be elaborated on.

Azran posted:

This applies to every single Souls game so it's not something I really give much thought to. Especially the endings, to this day I can't remember a single ending off the top of my head - endings have never been this franchise's forte.

dialhforhero posted:

Okay. But where are people doing the loving to do this? What world?

Asking for a friend.

World War Mammories posted:

expect that most people reading this thread know this, but remember that miyazaki's explicit intent in soulsy games is to evoke in the player the feelings he got as a kid reading english sci-fi and fantasy while having only the most threadbare understanding of the language. he could admire the pictures, pick out proper nouns, and get the very basic gist of a given scene, but the details would be beyond him. then as an adult he played ico, which has the same let-the-player-fill-in-the-blanks structure, and went from there. it is absolutely fair to argue that the style isn't to your liking or that it could be improved - I think it's a great use of games as a medium and a welcome departure from how every modern AAA game wants to be a loving movie when only Kojima has the chutzpah to try it sincerely, but I'm just some rear end in a top hat - but don't forget that the confusion about things as basic as the overarching timeline is very much intended.

Rand Brittain posted:

I mean, he's just a student, so I doubt anybody is paying that much attention to him. Honestly, as far as we can tell, there's literally nobody in the Academy today but zombies.

quote:

Did you know? If you're grafted by the spider, you become a chrysalid.
It's quite the lark, when you think about it.

No Dignity posted:

Those Who Live In Death feel like they're missing at least one example of them being anything anything but mindlessly hostile zombies. All they have is Fia saying 'trust me they're cool' and the mocking item descriptions of some of the Golden Order calling them fanatics, but like you never see a non hostile skeleton who just wants to be left alone

WaltherFeng posted:

You say this but Tibia Mariner exists

skasion posted:

What’s wrong with the fundie skeleton hunters is not that undead are actually nice little boys and girls who don’t deserve it. It’s that the fundies are behaving in a lunatic fashion by killing skeletons that can’t die, as if that’s going to fix anything. “All the good and the great wanted, in their foolishness, was an absolute evil to contend with.” (Order Healing description)

No Dignity posted:

Those guys who show a boss health bar when you get near them and attack you on sight?

John Murdoch posted:

Like was said earlier, all I really want is a little more tangible plot in the way Dark Souls 1 had a more tangible plot.

LazyMaybe posted:

My issue is that the skeletons really seem barely any different from any other random wandering enemy. Like, the exile soldiers and demi-humans and godrick's goons and whoever else all also can't die, and you can look at those common enemies up close and they're all hosed up walking corpses.



so how are "horrifying animate skeletons" any different? you're all undead, man. the skeletons don't deserve getting hunted any more or less than the other enemies.

and if the point is that the golden order guys are doing something pointless, and Fia is just on some nonsense... I really don't care. If Those Who Live in Death had demonstrably meaningfully different conditions, if their experience meant something material to the world around them and Fia had a point about being kind to them, maybe it would be interesting.
But instead you've got a world populated by undead, where one subgroup of the undead is treated differently for esoteric deathroot related reasons that aren't really coherently explained and the player isn't given a real hook for any of it.

Groovelord Neato posted:

I've always been curious how people who want more "narrative" in these games would change them because the only thing anyone else has done is stick more movies in there. God of War 2 is one third the length of Elden Ring but has over 7 hours of cutscenes while Elden Ring has about an hour. I'm here to play a game not watch a movie. Playing the original Dark Souls was a revelation to me because I'd never seen and still haven't seen anyone use the medium like FromSoft has and it kinda ruined video games for me a bit.

LazyMaybe posted:

My issue is that the skeletons really seem barely any different from any other random wandering enemy. Like, the exile soldiers and demi-humans and godrick's goons and whoever else all also can't die, and you can look at those common enemies up close and they're all hosed up walking corpses.



so how are "horrifying animate skeletons" any different? you're all undead, man. the skeletons don't deserve getting hunted any more or less than the other enemies.

and if the point is that the golden order guys are doing something pointless, and Fia is just on some nonsense... I really don't care. If Those Who Live in Death had demonstrably meaningfully different conditions, if their experience meant something material to the world around them and Fia had a point about being kind to them, maybe it would be interesting.
But instead you've got a world populated by undead, where one subgroup of the undead is treated differently for esoteric deathroot related reasons that aren't really coherently explained and the player isn't given a real hook for any of it.

a primate posted:

Yea GoW 2 felt like such a slog at times due to the cutscenes, and felt like it had been Disney-fied since the last one. Very glad Fromsoft is keeping things simpler.

To be honest I barely watch the boss cutscenes before battles. Probably explains why I don’t really know what’s going on in the story, but then again it didn’t really help me in Bloodborne

Perry Mason Jar posted:

I love how Radahn rides on that tiny skinny horse. Funniest and best thing in the game. The plot and lore reason is that it's hilarious, I think

skasion posted:

Think of it like this. The skeletons are an obvious parallel to the Tarnished: hunted outcasts with magic death problems whose main sin is that their existence shits all over the religious dogma of Golden Order. they’re a reminder that the Erdtree these people worship is super hosed and there is no going back. They’re different in a way that devalues the position of the “great and good”, and therefore get picked on.

And this is all completely independent of their actual conduct. so far as we can see, that conduct is murderous and gross…but as you and everyone else can see, they’re hardly the only ones. It’s hard to be anything BUT murderous and gross when the “good guys” want to kill you on sight. It requires an act of faith to reach across a divide like that. Approaching it from a rational point of view will never do the trick. notice that brilliant Goldmask, who is presented as the source of that quote about how dumb the skeleton killers are, himself has no ambition to help the skeletons out. You can either make the leap of faith (like Fia does by having sex with a gigantic dead fish man), or you can not.

LazyMaybe posted:

and then there's just general esoterica like Roderika saying [...] and then you're sort of just left with that and have to eventually assume she's just being loving weird and talking about bodybags or something

LazyMaybe posted:

who the gently caress turned boc into a tree anyway

Lord_Magmar posted:

That the Skeletons aren't meaningfully different from any other group is the point, and I'll point out most of the Lands Between are sane, they want to murder you because you are a Tarnished and thus a conquering force.

Bur the skeletons being hunted down for being outside the Golden Order is the same thing as the Omens being hunted down for being outside the Golden Order. It's bullshit religious persecution. It's all bullshit religious persecution, Turtle Pope makes it clear. Sin isn't real, all things can be conjoined.

Lord_Magmar posted:

That the Skeletons aren't meaningfully different from any other group is the point, and I'll point out most of the Lands Between are sane, they want to murder you because you are a Tarnished and thus a conquering force.

Rand Brittain posted:

The game specifically says that most of the people in the Lands Between have lost their minds.

Bobby Deluxe posted:

That sort of thing makes a lot more sense with what someone was saying earlier about Miyazaki loving watching western movies while barely understanding the subtitles and trying to replicate that. I'd love to be able to speak fluent enough Japanese to be able to compare the translations to see how the specific word choices compare between the English & Japanese dialogue.

Lord_Magmar posted:

Where does it say that, because I don't remember it (but I'm not gonna suggest I have perfect memory of this game).

Commoner's Headband posted:

A headband that holds cloth in place. Standard wear for commoners of the Lands Between.

Only, there are no commoners remaining with their wits about them.

Lordsworn's Straight Sword posted:

Well-crafted straight sword with an illustrious design, wielded by regulars of a lord's army.

Though blackened and damaged by years of use, it appears to have otherwise been kept in a servicable condition, despite the soldiers having long since lost their minds.

Lord_Magmar posted:

That the Skeletons aren't meaningfully different from any other group is the point, and I'll point out most of the Lands Between are sane, they want to murder you because you are a Tarnished and thus a conquering force. They're also not really intended to read as undead, the way that Hollows in Dark Souls are.

LazyMaybe posted:

John Murdoch posted:

Like was said earlier, all I really want is a little more tangible plot in the way Dark Souls 1 had a more tangible plot.