On February 10, "Eldon's Law Ring", which was shortlisted for the 2021 TGA "Most Anticipated Game Award", finally ushered in the media review and unbanned, and there were still two weeks before the game was officially released.
Different from the online beta version in November last year, the content of this unblock is closer to the official version in terms of richness and numerical balance, and includes new areas and new monsters that have not been released before. Judging from the evaluation of some media, the test on the eve of the launch still received a good reputation.
For example, IGN China commented on this: "'Eldon's Law Ring' has the most soulful open world adventure. Homeless Starry Sky also believes that the combined open-world Eldon's Ring of Law is essentially "more like a dimensionally expanded version of Dark Souls."
It is not only the domestic media that feel that "Eldon's Ring of Law" is like Dark Souls, in terms of foreign media, PCGames commented that ""Eldon's Ring of Law" is like a real successor to "Dark Souls". Some foreign media think that this game is more like the master of past soul games.
After the media review is lifted, the most anxious is the player who can only wait - you can almost see the comments of players urging the game to go online quickly under any related news, and the probability will be the first in the hot review. Of course, there is no shortage of interesting play terrier memes.
As From Software's first open-world work, Eldon's Ring of Law has attracted widespread attention from players around the world since its announcement, and the combination of "Soul Core + Open World" is a new attempt for both players and development teams.
In response, FS President Hidetaka Miyazaki spat bitterly in an interview, saying that "the final freedom of Eldon's Ring of Law exceeded the team's initial expectations, so it took more effort to debug and ensure the quality of the game." How to control the rhythm and flow of the game to prevent players from getting bored has become an important challenge in the development process. ”
When hardcore souls, meet the open world
If there are any features of past soul games such as Bloodborne Curse, Dark Souls, and Only Wolves that have been profoundly influential, the cleverly designed box-style map must be included.
In fact, maps have always been an important part of the hardcore elements of soul games, not only providing a relatively linear path for most players to play for the first time — you just have to follow a path with obvious intentions to catch up with the main storyline ; it's also the basis for the development team to lay the groundwork for "unexpected malice."
But in Eldon's Circle of Law, the situation is a little different. After pushing the door out of the initial land of "Nymgfu", the player is not greeted by a relatively fixed path like the "only way to go this" in Dark Souls 3 or "Only Wolf", but a large open grassland, and the golden ancient trees and dilapidated castles in the distance tell the player the general direction of the main line in disguise.
This is the biggest difference between Eldon's Ring of Law and the previous soul games under the open-world framework, that is, the non-linear exploration experience - the player can freely choose the route forward after leaving the door, and the game does not restrict the player's exploration through air walls, terrain or fog doors. This means that different players may have different stories after the start of the game, depending on the choice of route.
To help players explore, the game has also added mounts for quick progress and detailed maps. Like other open-world games such as Original Gods and Horizon, the map can be tagged with different markers to record important locations, monsters, NPCs, etc., and can be teleported between open "bonfires " ( known as blessings in this game ) without having to return to the campfire point.
Although the map design has absorbed a lot of open-world elements, this does not mean that FS has abandoned the complexity and ingenuity of the past box court maps. Instead, the development team tried to fuse the two, and once the player entered the Scenes of Stonewell City and the Catacombs, the familiar smell of the soul would come over them.
Players may end up returning to familiar places after going around in a roundabout, like dark souls 3, when they travel long distances to open an elevator and find themselves back at the beginning of Ruslik Castle, or similar to Only Wolves jumping down the Bodhisattva Valley and reaching the bottom of the reeds through a deep cave. This kind of map design of "willow dark flowers and bright villages" often makes players happy.
As always, Eldon's Circle of Law maintains a fragmented narrative style, combining NPCs and item information scattered across complex maps to piece together a grand storyline. Exploration and fragmented narratives are better combined within the open-world framework, becoming the biggest and most interesting puzzle solving in this game, and it is also in line with the core experience of open-world games.
In addition, the addition of new war ash systems, jumping systems, skills, and battle mechanic settings has also reduced a lot of pressure for open world exploration and combat, and players can combine various build-ups to kill enemies, in addition to enriching the combat experience, it also reduces the hardcore degree of the game, making this game may become the most mild soul work in FS.
Fish and bear paws, maybe both
Judging from the interviews released by the media, the FS team has been facing many difficulties in developing "Eldon's Ring of Law". Two of these points stand out: how to balance the difficulty of the game and how to avoid repetitive experiences in the open world.
As mentioned above, in order to match the open-world exploration experience, FS added new systems, skills, and mechanics to the game, but this also objectively made the combat tend to be light. In particular, the new summons allow players to get rid of the boss's hatred and easily achieve kills.
In addition, the current beta version of some monster attack design also tends to be simple, many elite monsters and boss attack methods are relatively single, with fast and slow knives and variations of the monster is not many.
Although the reduction in difficulty will attract more new players, for old soul players, the difficulty of not being hardcore enough may not be enough to "plug the teeth" themselves. Once the monster's value is strengthened, it may "dissuade" many new players.
Producer Yasuda Kitao revealed in an interview that in order to solve this contradiction, the game has prepared a large number of optional bosses to challenge the soul of the old players while ensuring the difficulty category that ordinary players can accept, some of which will be very difficult and have a wealth of moves.
"For those non-essential, optional, and hidden bosses, there are some that we deliberately add to the challenge for players who want to seek this experience. Hopefully, if you have that desire, you can seek to solve some of the really daunting challenges hidden in the open world. ”
As for the problem of high repetition of open-world level exploration, "Eldon's Law Ring" also tries to give its own solution - from the actual experience, except for some areas that are restricted by the air wall, this game basically achieves a different exploration experience in a small area.
In fact, Hidetaka Miyazaki also expressed his dislike for the "high repetitiveness of the game experience" in the interview, and the entire development team did not like the high repetitive things such as running errands and collecting materials, but hoped that players could focus on the battle.
"So in The Ring of Eldon, you might have a good-paced battle flow, and every once in a while, you're going to get into an exciting, thrilling battle. After this, players can earn items, experience points, and are further drawn to explore the rest of the map and encounter more intense battles. ”
Being able to achieve a fresh exploration experience on a budget is inseparable from FS's R&D approach. In an interview, Hidetaka Miyazaki revealed that about 80 percent of the vegetation and tree placement tasks in Eldon's Ring of Law are handled automatically programmatically so that the team can focus on other areas.
For example, focusing on the structure of the old dungeon-style adventure in the entire open world, using the technology accumulated by the Dark Souls series, not only keeps the content density of the underground scenes of this game at a very high level, reduces the repetitive experience, but also allows old players to have a similar experience as in the past. At the same time, the moderate difficulty allows new players to experience the charm of soul games.
epilogue
As a work born out of the soul game of the past, "Eldon's Ring of Law" is naturally not perfect. Judging from the real-machine video currently exposed, it has always been inseparable from the old-fashioned settings such as the corner yin people and the righteous group fight of the past soul series, and it still needs to be strengthened in the open world exploration interaction.
But from jumping out of the inherent framework to introduce the open world, to creating a new IP, it's hard to say that Hidetaka Miyazaki and his From Software are not exploring new possibilities for soul games.
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