![]() The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is nearly six times larger than Cyberpunk’s base map, and is surprisingly absent from the comparison video. While Night City is a futuristic labyrinth mixed with industrial plains, its size doesn’t quite compare to CD Projekt Red’s last project. The game may have a slew of other issues, but its map is truly massive - thanks to city planners who helped with the design. Elden Ring's map is dense, but it's designed with sensibility to know what context of that density is important and where.Īny issues with size and travel are made redundant by the liberal allocation of sights of grace and the flexibility of the fast travel system.Cyberpunk 2077 is one game featured in Dimitris Galatas VFX’s YouTube video, and its map of Night City was boasted during CD Projekt Red’s marketing campaign. Finding a tomb or dungeon or whatever else amidst a sprawling landscape feels intentional and earned, instead of just another box to tick off amidst an homogonised blob of densely packed content. I feel it had just the right balance of content-to-space balance that avoids overindulgence and excess, where other games sometimes have no breathing room, and instead bookends the empty space with the satisfaction of very real discoveries and mysteries hidden throughout the world. And having large physical play space to work with gave FROM flexibility in evoking the broadness of empires, conflicts, and their reach. The negative space in varying intensities did a phenomenal job of evoking a sense of adventure and scale to the topography, landmass, and your place within it. ![]() Loved it and wouldn't make it any smaller. There is still quality content there without a doubt, especially in some bosses and in some areas, but they are often held back by repetitive enemies and other hindrances. Not to mention the difficulty spike that hurts the game way more than it helps. ![]() That visual approach that guided you is no longer there, or it's diminished. It feels you're retreading content rather than experience something new. It's not terrible mind you, far from it, but it's relatively mundane compared to the early game. Neither of those two examples tell the whole story, they are part of it, and the whole story is, in short, that the last third of Elden Ring open world doesn't captivate me like the first two. Take Charlie's Bird for example, in Caelid it felt it belonged and made me dread it, but in Mountaintops of the Giants it felt like they didn't have time to design a new enemy so just put them there, so my reaction was just "oh no. Enemies are also often used in multiple places. There are certainly more but not many more. On top of my head the only bosses the entire fight in all new are: Malenia (thank god for those small mercies ) and the last one. The absurd amount of recycled bosses is a good indication of this. However, although It is indeed true for the first third of the game, it's a little less true for the second, but when you get into the third part? Then I think Elden Ring start to stretch its content way beyond what it should. That, plus being visually stunning, plus generally the content you find is superb and rewarding resulted in Elden Ring extraordinary open world. And I come to the conclusion that that is indeed true. ![]() How there was always something drawing your attention, guiding you to something new. ![]() I remember in the days after the game was launched, maybe even before that, people were talking how visual the world was. And on top of all that (or maybe because of that) it has a superb open world. It's the culmination of all Souls games in virtually every way possible, some of which only became clear to me after I replayed previous games. I've been replaying Elden Ring right now and the game keeps impressing me. Some common qualities and problems they share. These are not simply geographical divisions (although they are that as well) but are about a certain. I tend to agree with Caesar here, there are three very distinctive parts in Elden Ring: from the beginning to Stormveil Castle, from there to the Leyndell Royal Capital and from there until the end. "Elden Ring est omnis divisa in partes tres" - Julius Caesar, probably. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |