Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

PSYCHED. Took Friday off for this bad boy.

Okay I've ordered it

reviewing almost as well as *checks notes* GTA 4

Listening to this and not watching, but hell yeah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdstSHeoNGA

The reviews are all exactly what I want to hear. I guess this is gonna be my weekend. I demand everybody liveblog!

Iron pineapple is my go to guy for enjoying from games, if he likes it that much I am all in

Glad to hear that it's a bit more forgiving in a sense cuz you can go off and grind when you get stuck, which is less of an option in the other games, and I am baaaaad at these

i watched the review above and minor quibble but this shit is not stunningly beautiful its grody as hell, looks like an amazing game tho

Yeah idk if “stunningly beautiful” is a thing I’d associate with From, but there are moments amidst the gnarly, gloomy grime that are pretty and/or awe inspiring.

That review in particular’s also limiting itself to the first two main areas of the game for spoilerage sake.

jeez these reviews are HYPE, i keep running into critics begging you to buy the game even if you don't like souls games
fextralife guy called it "skyrim but with online and good combat and no bugs and ingenious developments... definitely game of the year and possibly game of the decade" and ouch i guess i don't get to leave the house for awhile? lotta complaints about PC bugginess so i am hoping the ps5 investment was the right call.

why would you buy it if you dont like souls games, its still the exact same gameplay

maybe you like it now

the argument i'm hearing is that if you find it too hard, they have built checks and balances to allow for alternates to GIT GUD but the guys what GOT GUD already don't have to cop to them if they don't want to. also that if you hit a boss and don't want to fight a boss, there's so much else to do that you can just fuck off and not worry about it until you are overleveled. and a better spawn system. mostly that a lot of the flint that makes things souls like is greatly reduced, leaving you just with the fun stuff. We'll see.

The promise of a cross between "Dark Souls" and "Breath of the Wild" does indeed scare me into the prospect of isolated hermit-dom. I think I'm going to maintain my self-imposed limit of not getting this (or Horizon Zero West, and other next gen games) until I have a PS5, and I'm not getting a PS5 until it's easier to get a PS5.

I guess there’s no soapstone (or equivalent) message system in this? One thing I haven’t heard anything about, so I assume not.

Magic actually looks pretty fun this time out, I’ll probably play a hybrid class of some sort.

Oh and bows that look much more functional as part of the combat flow this time out. Looks like no shortage of viable options.

ohhhhhhhhh elden ring

There are still messages, I'm pretty sure (and the usual bloodstains, ghosts, summon signs, etc).

Pvp is a little different, fyi you can't be invaded unless you summon help first, or use a dried finger-type item to open the invader floodgates. Also 4 player max, with at least one slot reserved for invasions.

Magic actually looks pretty fun this time out,

I've never used magic in any Souls game, but magic in this game looks dope, and the game seems to encourage magic used as part of melee builds rather than as its own thing.

There's bus ads for this here and while I understand GRRM just did the backstory, having the pull quote be "this looks amazing - George R R Martin" and then "developed by Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R R Martin" underneath is still lol

lol, i love seeing the stuff he gets into instead of finishing those books

Well said forks, it sounds like it's easier in that there are a ton of approaches and you'll rarely if ever be in a "you need to beat this hard boss in order to progress" situation.

But if you don't like 3rd person action rpgs, then this still won't be your game, lol.

I never do magic either and I'm excited about all the ash of war/spell options, it seems like they want you to play around more with crazy build options and moves this time.

I'm pretty sure there must be traditional unskippable gatekeeper bosses to advance the story (as such), but it seems like maybe there are many different paths one can take to get there.

what is the penalty for death in this one?

you die irl iirc

looks like the same concept as in previous games, except no like "hallowing" type penalty on top of it.

Yeah you just lose your 'runes' (souls), nbd.

one punch pulled that i'm all onboard with is apparently there are almost always save points right by bosses or difficult encounters. running back to a boss after getting wrecked was never fun.

admit it - permadeath elden ring would be kind of amazing

what if the game only costs $9, but permadeath is the only option and the game deletes itself after you die, and you have to sign a NDA with From beforehand prohibiting you from talking about it

That's how all pre-release streams should be handled.

Actually useful non-spoiler content, for those who care about stats & stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgq4CADdr8w

i really want this to be the first From game i've ever beaten (or really come close to beating)

I want this to be the second From game I put over 1000 hours of my singular life into :/

haha

how would you feel, honestly, if what that guy in the 15 minute or so video you posted said about how he couldn't imagine going back to the older games because this one obliterates all?

i guess he was being a little hyperbolic, lol. despite me not beating any of them, it's clear the souls games are lasting classics in the zelda/mario mold, where the og games are still legitimately fun to play long after those series went off in different directions

Tbh I have no desire to play through the single player version of Dark Souls 3 ever again, it's the multiplayer that becomes the game for me. I'll definitely miss doing invasions in DS3, but doubt I'll come back to it for a long time if ever (both because I'm hoping invasions will be fun in Elden Ring, and because activity in DS3 is going to nosedive for awhile, although I bet a lot of people will play ER as their first From game and go back to DS3).

All the games are still great, but I stopped doing Bloodborne duels when DS3 came out and I expect the same thing will happen with this one. The only reason I kept playing DS3 for five years is because they didn't release anything to replace it, lol.

jeez these reviews are HYPE, i keep running into critics begging you to buy the game even if you don't like souls games

This me but

The promise of a cross between "Dark Souls" and "Breath of the Wild"

Neither of these have any appeal to me whatsoever. :(

then i guess your choice is clear

but they're begging you!

curious though, is there something in particular that you don't like about the two, like a dealbreaker? one thing that stands out is that neither usually has much of a story.

Lack of story is probably it! I don't care enough about exploration for its own sake or playing around with the sandbox physics to get me into a game.

And my days of tackling HARD games is well behind me (I rage quit Bloodborne).

i was playing bloodborne last week for the first time and hadn't even gotten stuck yet, up until i suddenly got OBSESSED with vampire survivors for about 20-30 hours (of playtime). now i feel like i just exited rehab and it's time to get my new elden ring game and do it right

i've already notified the 3 people irl i know who give a fuck about my whereabouts and have let them know that starting at midnight i need to go away for a while, and that it's good for me. they all either understood or said they already knew i was going to do that

lol

do i get this on a 1st gen ps4

if it helps, i am! i'll be digitally downloading asap

If u ever upgrade to PS5 you can freely upgrade your PS4 version to PS5. I’ve heard this plays about the same as past souls games have on the base PS4.

Although your save file won't transfer from the PS4 to PS5 version from what I understand (but running the PS4 version on a PS5 is still supposed to be an improvement as far as FPS etc)

oh bummer, i wonder why you can't transfer your save? seems like one of those things you could at least do via a usb stick or something, even

looks like it'll be playable at midnight eastern, and i'm currently in central, so that's an extra hour to play tonight! :) i'm guessing there's probably a way to adjust my ps4's clock so that it seems like i'm in, say, new zealand?

if it helps, i am! i'll be digitally downloading asap

Ha judging from reddit the New Zealand trick works on Xbox, but on PS requires setting up a whole new account.

Ohhh, apparently you can transfer a save from PS4 to PS5, but not the other way around: https://www.aroged.com/2021/11/08/elden-ring-can-save-games-be-transferred-between-ps4-ps5-xbox-one-and-series-x-s/

I was initially hoping you could freely jump back and forth just so I could use whichever controller I want to, which is not the case. It's so dumb that you can't use the PS4 controller with PS5 games.

oh nice, on the save transfer! i'd hope that maybe there's a way to easily patch the game later so that it's easier to do and goes both ways (ps4 -> ps5 definitely the more common of the ways though)