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Julius

Elden Ring (25th February 2022)

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@Julius yeah the jump is a bit floaty but it was the same in Sekiro. I think it’s programmed like that to give you time to execute mid air actions.

As for his inspirations Miyazaki has been quite open about his love for BotW and it’s influence on this game in particular. I’ve no doubt Dragon Quest is one of the multitude of other influences they borrow from liberally. The Manga Bezerk is the other notable example I know of, with the wheel skeletons in DS1 being a straight copy from that. Don’t care too much though, as long as the gameplay continues to feel unique.

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4 minutes ago, LazyBoy said:

yeah the jump is a bit floaty but it was the same in Sekiro. I think it’s programmed like that to give you time to execute mid air actions.

Ah okay, that makes sense! Just has me nervous seeing that jump onto that narrow ledge, I know where I'll inevitably end up...

looks down at giant chasm

:D

5 minutes ago, LazyBoy said:

As for his inspirations Miyazaki has been quite open about his love for BotW and it’s influence on this game in particular. I’ve no doubt Dragon Quest is one of the multitude of other influences they borrow from liberally. The Manga Bezerk is the other notable example I know of, with the wheel skeletons in DS1 being a straight copy from that. Don’t care too much though, as long as the gameplay continues to feel unique.

Oh yeah, I don't care much either, like you say so long as the gameplay - and game by extension! - are enjoyable, I'll be more than happy. I'd argue that most of the greatest achievements in entertainment stand tall on the shoulders of what came before, which is just as true for games as it is films, so I love to see it.

For example, Star Wars is a mish-mash of what was going on in the industry during George Lucas's formative years as a storyteller in the East (samurai films of the 50's and 60's), the West (cowboy westerns of the 50's and 60's), the Flash Gordon serials he grew up on, what was going on in Vietnam and had happened in World War II, the progression in film technology from 2001: A Spacy Odyssey and a heavy smattering of influence from Dune and Eastern philosophies. 

I just found it hilarious watching the preview because that's immediately where my mind went, imagining that Souls is the realistic take on these funny looking Dragon Quest monsters :laughing: and yeah, the Berserk references have been very liberal in what I've experienced so far in Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, and seen of the other games, which is great because Berserk is awesome. Elden Ring in particular through its trailers I feel has had more Berserk references than some of the marketing campaigns for the earlier games. Kind of hoping we get a nod to Kentaro Miura in this game somewhere, the mangaka for Berserk, as he passed away earlier this year. 

And yeah, actually now that you mention it, that's something I forgot to mention before: I love what they're picking to bring over from Breath of the Wild. In particular, waaaaaay more open world games need to have pins you can drop on a map and then see in the distance, I've no doubt other games have done this too, but nearly not enough. I'm also glad they basically just said "haha yeah, NOPE" to traversing up difficult terrain with the spirit springs, because it's something of an inconsistent nightmare in many open world games these days not called Breath of the Wild (Horizon and Ghost of Tsushima, for example). 

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Performance specs:

I guess the trend of me only playing these games at 60 fps will be continuing :D

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Seems like invites to the Network Test this weekend have started to be sent out, just got mine and very excited to be giving it a go! :bouncy: 

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This info has been going around before, but might as well throw it in here:

Times

Session 1 - November 12: 11:00 to 14:00 GMT
Session 2 - November 13: 03:00 to 06:00 GMT
Session 3 - November 13: 19:00 to 22:00 GMT
Session 4 - November 14: 11:00 to 14:00 GMT
Session 5 - November 15: 03:00 to 06:00 GMT

I'm working on Friday, so will probably only be trying to check out sessions 3 and 4 I guess! 

Character Presets

The five available character presets were revealed a few days ago. 

5-Elden-Ring-Classes-Will-Be-in-the-Netw

5-Elden-Ring-Classes-Will-Be-in-the-Netw

Think I'll be going with Bloody Wolf first, as someone who has sword-and-boarded their way through Demon's Souls and Dark Souls so far I was thinking about going for a Greatsword in whichever medieval fantasy From game I played next, so it seems a good fit! If I get a chance to try another it'll probably be the Enchanted Knight, it's really clear from the gameplay preview last week just how much they've put into making the spells really pop on screen. 

Edited by Julius

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Yep, I've downloaded this too and ready for the network test. I'll probably play during the Saturday evening session.

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Embargo is up, and so previews / impressions are coming in hot ahead of this weekend's Network Test. 

The hype is tangible :D

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Edited by Julius
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So, @Julius...are you looking forward to the game? :p 

 

I got into the network test but not sure if I'll be able to play more than 30 minutes :D Still: Can't wait :peace: 

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Watched the EZA impressions and maybe saw more than I should have but yeah, it looks like open world Souls - very much looking forward to playing it for myself in February. 

Will definitely be going media blackout until then though!

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Watched the Skill up impressions, and that’s all I need to see for now. Media blackout for me now until release. Cant wait.

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2 hours ago, drahkon said:

Just gonna tell you one thing @Julius:

Be excited, this game's amazing.

Today turned out to be a really quiet day for me at work, I'm ahead of schedule on projects and all of my meetings got cancelled, so I very much regret not jumping in on today's session and just keeping my laptop to hand :cry: which class did you try out? Excited to hear (well, read) some first impressions :peace:

But yeah, definitely excited. I'm also really curious to see how I get on, with my "newest" From game technically being the first Dark Souls (huh, I've only played remasters so far!), as I know they update their engine with each game but there was definitely a leap when they moved into last gen and Bloodborne from what I've seen of that game. This is a very long-winded way of saying I expect to get thrown around even more than I normally do in these games :D

Can see myself coming out of this weekend and in the mood to go back and play through the Artorias of the Abyss DLC. Really excited to hopefully get in on Day 1 with this, I've definitely enjoyed a lot of what I've experienced in Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, but there's definitely a temptation with those games to look things up and feeling like I'm missing things just being so far removed from their initial releases, which I hopefully won't have to go through with Elden Ring. 

Shame I'm going to probably kick Horizon Forbidden West to the curb at launch as there's no chance I'll be able to finish and enjoy that in a week before going straight into this, but that's PlayStation's fault for being stupid enough to release their open world game one week before From Software's :p

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I managed to play it for about an hour or so before and had great fun, I started as a Bloody Wolf. Didn't get very far but managed to explore a few sections of the map and unlock the steed. Combat feels very Dark Souls-like, and there's a real sense of exploration, like you can go anywhere you see. Can't wait to try it again, probably during the Sunday afternoon session.

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9 minutes ago, Julius said:

which class did you try out?

Bloody Wolf.

Only played for 45 minutes so I didn't do much. Explored one cave/ruin thingy and killed the boss there. Other than that I just ran around admiring the scenery :D 

Very much enjoyed the skill system or whatever it's called. My starting weapon had a lightning "spell" imbued. If you two hand the weapon or don't use a shield you can press L2 and use that attack. It was quite op, to be honest :laughing:  Defeating the aforementioned boss gave me another skill which I could swap in/out at any time when I rested. Seems like there's going to be quite a bit of those which could make creating builds very interesting.

I love the sense of exploration. As Sheikah said, it seems you can go anywhere you see. 

Had some framerate issues including some major stutters at times. Really hope they fix those for the game's release. Other than that, it played like a charm. It's Dark Souls but in an open world and it seems to work just fine :) 

Edited by drahkon
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25 minutes ago, drahkon said:

Thanks for the impressions :p

:D

I won't lie, I probably spent about an hour and a half just messing around in the open world and trying to see what connected to what, seeing what I could jump to on horseback, finding various NPC's*, trying to figure out a decent way to take out camps with a melee build that wasn't just stealthing, etc. Definitely think a melee build might not get the most out of this game, at least based on the network test? At least in the open world, there's definitely a need for ranged attacks that aren't necessarily a bow and arrow. It's not that the horseback fighting isn't fun (quite the opposite), just think it feels very limited than what I imagine some of the other classes were like, albeit in this vertical slice. But man, there's some really cool stuff I found out in the open world! Some shots felt straight out of Shadow of the Colossus with all of the decaying bridges and ruins, but especially the guiding light of Sites of Grace, reminds me a lot of Wander holding up his sword to see which boss you were taking on next in SotC. 

*That guy calling me maidenless once I got out into the open world pushed his luck but I might have whacked him a few times too many (figured, hey, it's just a Network Test, I don't mind making him a bit angry), and he might have attacked me immediately upon respawning multiple times to the point he outright tanked the frame rate, I'm not really sure what was going on there. Naturally, I came back a bit later on after managing to escape his weird-faced clutches and pummelled his dumb mask into the dirt, but that was an interesting introduction after the very easy to miss tutorial.

Tried out a few dungeons, not really sure how I feel about them - or rather, the ones they chose to include here. The boss fights are fun, but the dungeons themselves just felt...really short? I guess it's this game's counterpart to Breath of the World's shrines, but hopefully there's a bit more depth and complexity to some of the ones you come into later on in the actual game. I'd imagine that's the case, so not really a criticism, heck there might be one in there I just didn't get around to that is exactly what I'm asking for. 

It was my first time stealthing around in a From game, and that was pretty cool. I really don't like the change to Triangle + L1 / R1 to two-hand though, in a boss fight the last thing you probably want to do is accidentally open a message on the ground or watch how someone else died! But Guard Counter is awesome if a little OP, and hey, I like shields, so I hope they stay that way :laughing: and Ashes of War seem really cool, tried one out which basically powered up your next attack, feel like there's a lot of space to play the game how you want to play with how customisable that could become. 

I did sprint past a lot of stuff to go straight to the boss fight at the entrance to Stormveil at the very end, with about 10 minutes left on the clock. Died a few times (naturally), but he definitely felt beatable, I got him down to just over a third of his health in a few attempts before I got booted out. Having only played Demon's Souls and Dark Souls (minus the DLC), seeing all of the awesome flourishes and twirling leaps into the air in a boss fight was awesome, I haven't really had that yet from the games I've played :D

I'm honestly torn on loading up into the Network Test session tomorrow, because while I really enjoyed it...man, I kind of feel like I don't need to see anymore? I was sold before, and now I'm very, very sold on the game after. Now just let it be February already please :p

Edited by Julius
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A heads-up to everyone interested in this game: the Network Test has been datamined and over 3000 audio files from the game are now out there. Naturally, that means a lot of the story is now out in the wild too. 

Thought I'd share because I wouldn't be surprised if we unfortunately see a lot of videos and articles in the next two months spoiling a lot of these details, so take care in avoiding spoilers. 

 

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Properly looking forward to this, the closed network test was really quite something.

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A number of impressions videos have gone up:

Might check out one or two but just listen to the audio rather than watch the attached footage, but man, I'm starting to get hyped.

Just over two weeks to go. Time to start thinking about character names! 

Edited by Julius

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I haven't watched any of the most recent previews, though I hear Vaati's is fairly spoiler free. Most important news to come out is that they have upped the difficulty from the network test and scrambled the items, so no unfair advantages. I did allow myself to see the starting classes. Suffice to say I've picked the one best aligned to my planned Sekiro/Musashi build.

@Julius you playstation or xboX for this?

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1 hour ago, LazyBoy said:

I haven't watched any of the most recent previews, though I hear Vaati's is fairly spoiler free. Most important news to come out is that they have upped the difficulty from the network test and scrambled the items, so no unfair advantages. I did allow myself to see the starting classes. Suffice to say I've picked the one best aligned to my planned Sekiro/Musashi build.

Yeah, Vaati's is fairly free of spoilers, he actually talks for what feels like a good five minutes at the start of his preview about not wanting to spoil things for people, so in his preview he basically limited himself to the opening area and its immediate surroundings - so stuff that we got in the CNT pretty much - and he covered the differences pretty extensively. 

I can see myself going with Vagabond or Warrior. I've gone with a pretty standard melee build in both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls (even more so in Dark Souls actually, as I actually made a bit of room for magic in Demon's Souls!) so feel most comfortable with that kind of build, but I do feel like magic and the like are going to be really helpful for ranged combat (such as in the open world), so will probably end up building a hybrid. 

1 hour ago, LazyBoy said:

@Julius you playstation or xboX for this?

PlayStation! Yourself? 

I'll probably solo the game first before heading online (figuring out and defeating bosses is my favourite thing about From games so far), but would love to head online with people at some point. Haven't really touched it up to this point in either Demon's Souls or Dark Souls, besides when getting invaded myself! 

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