Introduction: Journey to the Altar! initiate!
Under pressure to postpone the release, FromSofteware recently released a nearly 20-minute "Eldon's Ring of Law" promo, which not only showed the innovation of this game that is different from the "Soul System" work, but also the familiar texture that Soul players feel very close to.
Miyazaki Hidetaka's journey to the altar of the Vulcan Sect began when the video website was in its infancy, and the core players lit the spark of stars, one "Demon Soul", three "Dark Souls", one "Blood Source Curse", and one "Only Wolf", making Miyazaki Hidetaka the man who fell off the altar and then fell on another altar.
Now that the pressure and expectation are all in the hands of "Eldon's Circle of Law", is it the open world to create a new situation of "soullike"? Or is the Japanese factory's inclination of technology throwing armor and armor in the face of the open world? Let's try to take the pulse of this highly anticipated work by analyzing the promotional images.
Can the open world retain its soul?
The success of "The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wilderness" in our country is far more than a simple NS blockbuster game, as small as the copycat material package promotional image advertising page, feeding a short video of the game marketing number; large to reinvent the open world, being hit by the industry's epic marketing porcelain, inside and out to tossing to the present, although some NS players have so far sighed at the high price of "Breath of the Wilderness" (not ygq, as a physical store merchant, I have seen too many consumers who bought NS but were reluctant to buy "Breath of the Wilderness", Reasons include "I still have a lot of games on Staem that I buy at a discount, what is the original price?" "Why are you still selling new works for so long" "Why are second-hand ones 50 yuan cheaper than new ones", etc.), but the huge amount of dissemination still makes the protagonist in "Eldon's Ring of Law" ascend to a high and far-reaching picture at the first time, triggering the call of the bullet screen to "Breath of the Wilderness".
We knew early on that "Eldon's Ring of Law" would be an open-world game, but we didn't expect its "fine imitation" to be so delicate, such as the open-world map custom marker, the use of vertical light pillars to locate the target point, the area to unlock the large map, riding a long-distance horse and other large map elements, the previous "brother games" of the oppressive and closed environment, become unprecedented open.
However, I personally prefer that the open-world gameplay in Eldon's Ring of Law will be more "restrained", guiding the player to actively discover, but not to force a bunch of tasks into the map interface from the beginning, such as the demo we are glad not to find the "question mark" task points that other open worlds are desperately filling.
There will be plenty of wild exploration elements in this game
FS technical force is limited, can not do Ubisoft, R star that kind of "bigger than bigger" scale, there will be no "Breath of the Wilderness" "air" level of freedom, the role of the open world, is to allow players to decide the order of each area in the raid scene (high-intensity fast pass is worth looking forward to), through the technical reduction of the threshold for getting started, so that the previous novice high probability will be stuck to dissuade the area or boss is not so insurmountable, really can not fight, you can also choose "curve to save the country", That is, wait until the player's operation level and character ability improve, and then go back to the previous difficulties.
Therefore, the presentation of the worldview in "Soul Taste" will be further released through the broad vision of the open world, and the part of jitter M will have more room for maneuver, which means that the recipe remains unchanged, but the cooking craftsmanship and the way diners eat change.
Will the difficulty be the lowest in the series?
Detouring back to the enemy's back to assassinate, skill moves that do not limit the type of weapon, Qin Wang's roundabout position, and summoning spirits, the rich combat system of "Eldon's Law Ring" can be regarded as a fusion of the tradition and innovation of the combat system of the previous FS family "Soullike" game.
But from this picture, it is completely a dark soul
Players who have played Miyazaki's previous works can easily identify the action templates of games such as "Only Wolf" and "Dark Souls" from the presentation of "Eldon's Law Ring", and the most interesting new system, similar to the "Drip Hit Man"-style spirit summoning, has both multi-person spirits besieging enemies and large single spirits attacking boss-level enemies.
Because the demo battle does not have a UI interface, it is not known whether the specific consumption method of spirit summoning is to limit the number of times, consume energy similar to the "magic slot", or whether it can achieve unlimited summoning throughout the whole process through a certain character cultivation path. I think that designing tactics around summoning will be the biggest difference between the battle system of Eldon's Law Ring and previous works, coupled with the emphasis on multiplayer online this time, the number of summoned creatures will increase exponentially when the demo is a double vs boss, which may also partly explain why the screen of "Eldon's Circle" looks "no progress" at first glance, perhaps a sacrifice for the stability of frame rates under multiple units in the same field.
Hidetaka Miyazaki said that there are "useless" spirits in the game, and the spirits themselves have special growth elements, Japanese games have always had a "weaker initial, more exaggerated growth" setting preference (such as carp king - tyrannosaurus), combined with the characteristics of the open world of "Eldon's Ring", it is certain that powerful spirits can be cultivated through monster spawning. Players jokingly call Dark Souls a "turn-based action game", and the skipping style in Eldon's Circle of Law may develop towards "Spirit Pokémon", and everyone earns to become a "Necromancer".
"Fighting side by side" means they go to fight, and I'm in charge of calling in the back
What is the actual function of jumping?
Before the latest video was broadcast, the official had released a demonstration of counting the length of the seconds, introducing the new action of the character - jumping. Players were also very cooperative in showing a series of "shocked" reactions. If you are a GTA player, you must have used a lot of imagination in the past because there are no jump buttons in the open world, such as crazy "sun wall" in order to find a suitable angle to cross. The increase in the jumping function of "Eldon's Ring of Law" is obviously not to compete with a player in "NBA2K" for the title of "Golden State Lavin", but to further enhance the player's space for operation on the basis of the three-dimensional combat that "Only Wolf" has already done.
"Breath of the Wilderness" and "Red Dead Redemption" can be regarded as a momentary light of today's industry horse riding system, and the "Elden Law Ring" dedicated to the open world In addition to allowing players to ride horses to increase the efficiency of movement and arrange horse cavalry battles, the map also has a special catapult mechanism to achieve a large vertical movement of the riding "jumping platform", combined with "Hidetaka Miyazaki's malice", I don't know which "surprises" there are TMDs waiting for players to taste in the process of suddenly going up and down.
Compared with superb riding, it is a common jumping chop in action games, flying kicks (jokes, this will certainly not be) and other attack methods, or jumping to avoid the next section of the attack, etc., which did not appear in this demonstration. It is estimated that jumping in the game will be more used in the platform between the skills to move, such as in the moving mechanism back and forth (and then fall down), the use of high and low terrain, landing immortal settings, do some dungeon out-of-order exploration, etc., specific until the game is released to see the difference.
Can fragmented narratives carry the characteristics of Martin's writing?
On the "My Favorite Writers List," R. R. Martin was 24th, with Tolkien in front of him and Liu Cixin behind. When "Eldon's Ring of Law" announced that Martin would write the worldview and part of the plot of this game, "Game of Thrones" + open world + soullike, even if it is a stitching monster, it must be an epic stitching monster.
Later, as more official information became clear, we learned that the development team did not entrust the task of script writing to The Martha writers, which was very wise, because the original "Game of Thrones" novel, "A Song of Ice and Fire", had a difficult childbirth in its subsequent story, compared with Yoshihiro Fuken's "Hunter". The part of Martin's actual completion of the "delivery" action, or the embodiment of his own authorship, lies more in the macro background setting of the game than in recording the adventures of the characters' words and deeds.
The Chinese hardcover version and the simple version of "A Song of Ice and Fire" have been out of two rounds, but the story behind it is still floating in the wind
"Eldon's Ring" will still follow the iconic fragmented narrative of the Soul series, and the new promotional images will bring new female NPCs and mysterious creatures, the former is vague and mysterious, and the latter is cute and crazy in situ, which is highly recognizable as a game character.
In the promotional video of the past year, the impressive character of the original publicity has not been seen again
Compared with the simultaneous publicity phase of "Only Wolves", "Eldon's Law Ring" poses a higher challenge to the "X-Scholar", and it is difficult to find a more reliable setting except for a few vague landmarks such as the Norse mythological world tree. The essence of Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" novel lies in the in-depth description of the fate of the characters, and the description of weapons and equipment in the fragmented narrative, the scattered NPC information, is not suitable for creating a clear-faced character image; the freedom of the open world game flow is also difficult to show the coherence of the plot. I don't think Martin's addition will change the relative weakness of Miyazaki's game in terms of narrative, and in the end, it is the worldview behind the characters and the interaction between the players in the process of digging deeper.
How ambitious is the ambition behind the online gameplay?
Loneliness can be said to be the consistent spiritual temperament in Hidetaka Miyazaki's game, all the masochism of the enemy and the weak, the bleak exploration, the test of life hanging in the line and the glimmer of hope that the bonfire will finally be lit, as if it is the empty echo of the four words "No one loves you", depressed and sad.
In the demo of "Elden's Ring of Law", it unexpectedly gave people a lively feeling, in addition to the various enemy characters walking around the map everywhere, but also highlighted the online play effect of the game, such as "old players" to assist newcomers to find their way, skillful exploration in the maze, and doubles boss battles. When fighting, the two players are in the same field greatly reducing the player's operating pressure, and there is also a mutual cooperation as a T top in front, and another to keep casting spells at a safe distance, it is conceivable that if the player can find a fixed partner, or if the heat is higher during the game's launch, there will be a large number of online people, it will be like "Monster Hunter", relying on convenient connection methods to achieve rapid matching, of course, if the sales of "Eldon Ring" can also be like "Monster Hunter", it will be better.
From "Demon Souls" is extremely difficult to get started, "Only Wolf" has cultivated a set of seemingly simple actions to pure fire, to now "Eldon's Ring" deliberately weakens the restrictions of the endurance slot on the mobility of the character, becoming proficient in eighteen weapons, spells summoning perfect carry, and newcomer players have more path choices, not to mention that even if a person runs into a wall everywhere, he can overcome the difficulties through the line. FS must be aware of the good traffic of its own works on the video website, while maintaining the kernel, selling the game to more players who are willing to try it may be the main purpose of "Eldon's Ring of Law" at the expense of postponement.
Conclusion: "Eldon's Ring of Law" gives people a kind of soul collection series, and to seek their own breakthrough expectations in the open world and multiplayer online, in terms of the volume of FS works, this appetite is really not small, as for whether new and old players buy it, it will be waiting until next year on the altar to see the difference.