Home Gaming Elden Ring’s gameplay sounds like a big departure from the Soulsborne formula

Elden Ring’s gameplay sounds like a big departure from the Soulsborne formula

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Elden Ring

Elden Ring…it’s basically just another Dark Souls isn’t it? Nope! Running in from outta nowhere to slap the taste right out of my mouth for daring to suggest that From Software is coasting on past successes, comes this new interview with Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki. Speaking to IGN, Miyazaki explained how Elden Ring is doing its own thing, grabbing the Dark Souls formula by the legs and shaking any pocket change loose from it.

Essentially, Elden Ring is designed to give players more options when dealing with threats, more so than even Bloodborne or Sekiro. “We wanted to allow the player to combine these different elements to find their own strategy and even indirect approaches to combat if they wanted to,” Miyazaki told IGN. “So yes, this is something that we wanted to explore moreso than our previous games and really focus on…this level of variety and this level of freedom in combat.”

Three major details sum up this new style of gameplay. The first one is that there’ll be no resurrection mechanic, but there will be a “couple elements” designed to keep players in the fight and moving forward. Secondly, there’s less emphasis on the stamina bar. “Yes, the stamina bar exists in Elden Ring, but we feel it has less influence on the player overall,” Miyazaki said. “We wanted to make it feel less restricting again and contribute to that level of freedom moreso than our previous titles.”

Lastly, stealth is part of the game but is relatively simple. There will still be some variety on offer, such as crouching and sneaking through long grass to deliver a fatal stab to the back, but you’re not exactly going to be Agent 47 here. “We wanted to create these opportunities for players to see what lies ahead of them and below them and around them and to assess how they’re going to confront that or not as the case may be. So stealth, while again it’s a simple implementation, it allows for a lot more of these possibilities,” Miyazaki said.

Elden Ring got its biggest reveal yet at E3 2021, ending two years of absolutely nothing on the news front and going all in at the event. The Bandai Namco-published game is out next year on January 21, and it’ll be launching on all the usual platforms.

Last Updated: June 15, 2021

One Comment

  1. I’m really curious to see how it turns out!

    That said, “resurrection” is something that was only seen in Sekiro, and the stealth is something we’re seeing *from* Sekiro, so I’m not entirely sure those alone really signal any great departures.

    The Breath of the Wild style open world, where you can kind of choose theorder you tackle the environments? That’s probably the largest departure. While they’ve allegedly been design with an order in mind, it’s nice that you can break out of it if you’ve hit a wall in a
    particular location.

    It’s an interesting mix of prior games. Demon’s Souls’ isolated areas terminating in bosses, which you
    can jump into at any time. Large echoes of Dark Souls 1’s narrative, Dark Souls 2’s celtic / nordic influence, Bloodborne’s faster dodgier combat, and Sekiro’s stealth and (relative) openness.

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