Wen 丨 賴夕
The 2009 E3 Game Show was a year of blockbusters, with Call of Duty's most prestigious "Modern Warfare" series sequel, the "Assassin's Creed" Ezio trilogy origin, and the popular "Road to Survival" sequel, all of which released their own trailers and live demonstrations in this year.
At a time when the console sales war between PS3 and XBOX 360 has entered a white-hot stage, the richness of the game content matrix has become the winner and loser between Sony and Microsoft, and game developers have made great efforts to try to leave their own works in this turbulent era.
On the one hand, the fierce battle industry is in full swing, and on the other hand, the manufacturers are ready to develop, Activision, Ubisoft, and V Society all have an infinite bright future at that time.
Also on this hilarious E3, a small booth in sony's exhibition area, a developer is introducing his studio's newly released medieval fantasy style game to the media, the game itself has many highlights, but to the camera in front of the slightly cramped developer's mouth has become lackluster, even more than a decade ago, a brave monster upgrade of the adventure RPG theme is too bad street.
E3 Game Show 2009
Producer Sammy Matsushima is presenting the development of his studio
With less than 40,000 copies in the first week of release, the game was staged in the same embarrassing scene as at the E3 exhibition, but the magic thing is that this small group of players who insisted on playing it, after suffering from the high difficulty of the game and defeating one boss after another, gained an unprecedented sense of achievement, so this game that had little attention, relying on the player's word of mouth, sold more than 200,000 copies.
This game is Miyazaki Hidetaka's studio From Software's "Demon Soul", and it is also the origin of what we often call soul-like games today, they often have the characteristics of quite hardcore operation difficulty, complex structure of the box court map and fragmented obscure narrative, etc., after accepting such a torturous setting, the satisfaction of the game is also magnified to the extreme in proportion.
We must all know a little about the later story, soul-like games have always had a very high status in the niche player circle with Europe and the United States as the main body, but in this decade or so, except for some in-game memes that are talked about, soul-like games have always been subject to its high threshold - most players are not able to accept "suffering" in the game - and can not break the circle.
Until the FS company's latest work "Eldon's Ring of Law" turned out, even in the context of stingy publicity, it also achieved the "shelf is the peak" of the Tianhu start, the overall sales in less than a month has exceeded 12 million copies, Steam at the same time the peak of online numbers approached one million, ranking sixth in history. There is no doubt that the birth of the "Eldon Ring" completely upset this balance, and after achieving such impressive sales results, soul-like games are no longer synonymous with niche.
* "Eldon's Ring of Law" has won many full scores from the game media
What kind of magic does the "Eldon Ring" have? After releasing it for half a month and making sure that I had fully experienced most of the game's content, I wanted to try to analyze the real reason why the game itself and the environment changed on two levels, and tried to analyze the real reason why it could break through the shackles and go mainstream.
First of all, the conclusion is that the "Eldon Ring" is regarded as a "masterpiece" of Miyazaki Hidetaka and FS Society in the soul-like class, and on some levels, the various performances of the "Eldon Ring" highlight the shadow that it is designed for the mainstream.
Conclusion, before talking about the process in detail, we must first understand what is the commonality of soul-like games?
From the "Demon Souls", "Dark Souls" series, "Bloodborne Curses" and "Only Wolves" several orthodox soul games put together, it is not difficult to see that they all have high difficulty, pitiful guidance systems and fragmented narratives, these points of commonality, high difficult games abound, we mainly focus on the last two points to analyze.
The lack of a bootstrap system may be a factor that dissuades players more than the high difficulty of soul-like games. Starting from "Demon Souls", soul-like games have always adhered to their own visual design in a very simple style: the meter bar in the upper left corner of the play interface, the item bar in the lower left corner, and the amount of currency in the lower right corner, even in subsequent soul-like works, these designs will not appear on the screen until they encounter enemies.
Even if it's a boss battle
"Eldon Ring" still maintains its own simple game interface design
There are no minimaps, no to-do lists, and no need to give you a destination icon on the screen as a navigation, and players will often get stuck at a certain point in the plot progression and generate "Where am I?" Where do I go?" This experience is especially evident during the first 10 hours or so of most Soul-like games.
Fortunately, although the plot of the soul-like game before "Eldon's Ring" is obscure and lacks guidance, it always has a very obvious main line, such as in "Dark Souls 3", if the player does not defeat the first watchman BOSS Guda, they will not be able to reach the fire sacrifice field, let alone advance the plot. In this linear game flow, no matter how missing the guidance system is, as long as the player continues to follow the road that has not been traveled, it is theoretically possible to achieve a certain ending.
But in the open world of the "Elden Ring of Law", the importance of guidance has been magnified several times again, and even in the eyes of many players, the experience of lack of guidance on the endless map is catastrophic, which is why when the game was just released, the social media was full of players who were abused by the "Big Tree Guard" in the initial place, because in terms of numerical and mechanical design, although the "Big Tree Guard" is the most easily seen boss for players, it is not necessary to attack at the beginning.
In Station B, there are various videos related to teaching novices to raid "Big Tree Guard"
If you don't deliberately do your homework in advance, the phenomenon of skipping the level and playing bosses in the "Eldon Ring" will frequently occur in the first and middle stages of the game experienced by players.
This is the most special thing about the Eldon Circle of Law compared to other open worlds, from the award-winning "Zelda: Breath of the Wilderness" and "Red Dead Redemption 2" to the popular "GTA" and "Assassin's Creed" series, and no one has ever tried to almost erase the guidance system in the open world.
What makes many people even more puzzled is that there are several side quests in the game (such as the assassination of the volcano mansion and the portal to the Temple of the Beast), and the marked destinations do appear on the world map, which further shows that in the original design, the FS Society was not incapable of doing this, but deliberately chose not to do it.
"Guidance System" commissioned by the Volcano Mansion
Obviously, the FS Society, which aspires to the mainstream market, is not willing to make compromises and concessions on this "good tradition" of this soul, and it still chooses to pile the guide in a large number of texts and props when players talk to NPCs, and if they do not consider the details, they will inevitably miss a considerable part of the game experience.
This also brings a polarizing sound to the "Eldon Ring" standing in the spotlight, some players even think that this is a semi-finished product that has been rushed out, while another way of saying that it is part of the design concept of the soul-like game, which multiplies the fun of exploration and adventure in the open world of the "Eldon Ring", and when the game no longer has detailed guidance and a clear destination, every inch of the "junction" under the player's hooves is full of surprises.
I don't mean to compare the two statements between right and wrong, but there's no denying that FS does show players an open world that's very different from other titles.
At the same time, the Eldon Ring also buries enough content to increase its playability, from the small branches stripped out of the main branches, to the fluidity of NPCs as the plot progresses, to the impact of each choice the player makes on the NPC and the plot.
According to the official statement, the game flow of "Eldon's Ring of Law" is about 80 hours, and perhaps many players can achieve the purpose of completing the level in 80 hours, but if you want to experience the game content completely, this length may be more than tripled.
Of course, these shadows that can be seen in previous soul-like games do not need to be repeated too much, even if these designs are moved to the open world, they are still necessary factors for the "Eldon Law Ring" to maintain its hardcore properties, and next, we will talk about the FS Society's attempts to try to cater to the mainstream market.
First of all, in terms of the visual effect of the map design, if you want to divide the soul-like games according to the differences in cultural background, then they can be roughly divided into "only wolves" representing the East, and the remaining works representing the Medieval West.
The "Only Wolf" screen has typical oriental elements
Although the dark temperament that Hidetaka Miyazaki wants to create is still everywhere in the "Eldon's Ring", it is much softer in its expression.
For example, if the player enters the "Nymgfu" after the novice tutorial, this place name can be roughly translated as "limb graveyard" according to the original expression of the English "Limgrave", and the demigod "Jieligrick" who rules the area is constantly drawing strength for himself by cutting off the limbs of others.
Even with such a dark setting, when the player actually steps into this land, they will be greeted by sunshine, beaches and large areas of greenery, and "Nym Gefu" is not alone, from the fantasy magic academy to the golden tree standing at the foot of the royal city, to the beautiful snowy mountain pass, this game is filled with a large number of multiple settings that have never been seen in Western soul games before.
The beautiful setting of "Nymkofford"
This may be largely due to George W. Bush, who wrote the game's backstory and worldview. R· R. Martin, anyone who has read the original novel of "A Song of Ice and Fire" or has seen the adaptation of "Game of Thrones" will remember that the old man prefers to use stories, conflicts rather than circumstances to reflect the dark temperament.
In addition, the FS Society also uses rich combat resources to increase gameplay and reduce the difficulty of the "Eldon Ring" in disguise.
"Skipping class" is a long-standing black word in the soul-like game, which refers to the player's ability to deal with the boss through some abnormal means to achieve the purpose of greatly reducing the difficulty of the battle, or even bending the soldier without fighting.
In the previous soul-like works, there are many kinds of boss skipping play developed by players, but in most cases, even if the player passes through various small means, there are always a few bosses that cannot be bypassed, such as in the work "Only Wolf", the rich combination of ninja hands + props may be of great help, but in the end, the "giant ninja owl" and "Reed Name One Heart" that do not enter the oil and salt will still give the player a make-up lesson on bounce, only in the continuous challenge, With the back plate and training, the player has the possibility of defeating them.
But after surviving the "Eldon Ring of Law" for about 10 hours of confusion, the "supermodel" benefits provided by the game official followed, from calling NPC support to the extremely high value bonus of weapon enhancement, to the skillful use of ashes props, most of the BOSS battles in the "Eldon Ring" are players who can easily form a situation of more fights and less.
For example, in front of the recognized most difficult boss in the early stage, "Broken Star Rattan", as long as the player is well prepared, he can even see the spectacular scene of 9 people beating 1 person.
Players who have not yet been killed by the long-range bombardment of the Broken Star Rattan
The richness of the gameplay genre also gives players more room to choose, social media is full of the sound of "Faye Saigao", so that people often overlook the genre of melee combat in this game is also the most abundant one in the soul-like game, in addition to the various shields and dual-wielding genres of the "Dark Souls" series, players can even see the shadow of the undead slash in the "Only Wolf" through the Tai Dao "Corpse Mountain Blood Sea".
This means that in the process of multi-week purpose, players can switch the genre they want to play at will through continuous numerical adjustment, although the opening class has little impact on the later stages of the soul-like game, but this can be completely compensated by the later genre selection.
After talking about the game itself, let's talk about the environmental changes that have contributed to the success of the "Eldon Ring".
At the beginning of 2017, the number of users in Steam just exceeded 15 million, and as the world's largest game platform that has been operating for many years, Steam's performance in China at that time was not very impressive.
For Chinese players who have just passed through the dark period of the domestic game environment, they have adapted to the "downloader" model of domestic game manufacturers, and the concept of a platform and a buyout game is still relatively vague, until the blue hole with "PUBG" almost changed the ecology of Internet cafes, this cognitive balance was broken.
At the beginning of 2018, the number of steam user registrations in the country soared to 40 million and still maintained rapid growth, that is to say, steam as a platform in China in the past 10 years of development, can not withstand the number of users brought by a blockbuster, and from this point of view, "PUBG" mistakenly provides Chinese players with an opportunity to fully understand the buyout game.
At the end of 2018, the number of registered PUBG users worldwide reached 400 million
The rise of Steam in the country has become a catfish that stirs up the domestic player group and the industry, in recent years, the domestic game masterpieces of Steam have been frequently released, these works have popularized excellent games for players at the same time, but also triggered the thinking of game manufacturers, which was largely forced by the environment to choose "Chinese-style game development", has it reached the node where it is time to change ideas?
Based on this background, "Does China need AAA games?" The question has become a false proposition.
A clear example is that in recent years, although many overseas AAA have been controversial, such as "Red Dead Redemption 2" at the time of its release, with its slow pace and pitiful positive feedback, it is considered to be "everything is good, it is not fun", and Naughty Dog Studio's much-anticipated "The Last Survivor 2", whose plot has also been criticized by a large number of players as a failure representative of "ruining an entire game".
But no matter how fierce the controversy, they have really attracted the attention and scrutiny of Chinese players, including the wave of discussion set off by the previous "Black Myth: Wukong" release of the real machine demonstration, all of which indicate that the domestic video game market environment is undergoing earth-shaking changes.
The strategy of simultaneous release of all platforms has made the "Eldon Law Ring" in the changing times have received enough attention, and perhaps no one could have predicted that the orthodox sequel of a soul-like game could appear in front of the mainstream vision with such a high degree of market acceptance before the release.
Of course, this is only a change in the domestic market environment, and the reason why "Eldon's French Ring" can sweep the world is still inseparable from the excellent quality of the game itself.
In the first week of release, I was also addicted to the old man ring and couldn't extricate myself
But it is undeniable that the migration of players' tastes has now forced game manufacturers to step out of the comfort zone, and it is a fact that the combined income of all sales of soul-like games does not reach the monthly turnover of a project of a large domestic manufacturer, but no one can guarantee how long such an advantage can last in the domestic game market.
This is also why Tencent is willing to invest in "support" game science without interfering with development and operation at all, the game development industry can not care about the quality of the work, but the market will not deceive, when excellent game works continue to pour into the mainstream, the past 20 years of business format reversed, like game science these focus on the game itself studios, is the biggest chip for manufacturers to enter the game.
However, as the old joke goes, the self-made wise man sees that others have eaten seven steamed buns to be full, and he decides that the first six steamed buns are unnecessary except for the seventh steamed bun.
"Devil's Soul" sold less than 40,000 copies in the first week of Japan, and the low rating generally given by the Japanese game media at that time also made the project leader Hidetaka Miyazaki nervous, he has been reflecting on himself and waiting for Sony to issue a revision opinion, and surprisingly, Sony did not complain about this, which has the miracle of double reversal of sales after the "Devil's Soul" flowed into the European and American markets.
If Sony had let go of this tolerance for experimentation and experimentation in pursuit of profit, it might have been another story.
Finally, I can assert that the TGA Game of the Year in 2022 is none other than the "Eldon Ring of The Law", believe me, pack steady!