i'll organize my thoughts a bit more later lol im just Bullshittin

Elden Ring changed the way I look at open-world games, and games at large. Worse games have been made with drastically more money that take up five times the space on your hard drive. Why does every game have to be open-world? There's never anything that makes the world worth exploring. Assassin's Creed has 200 fetch quests distributed in an area the size of the Byzantine Empire. Death Stranding makes it a chore to walk with anything more than a Samsonite strapped to your back. Breath of the Wild doesn't even have anything in the world at all. Grass as far as the eye can see.

I think Fromsoft's approach to enemy strength is perfected in the early moments of this game. A singular enemy being threatening enough to sabotage your peaceful stroll is enough to keep you on edge even in the quiet moments of exploration. This tension goes a long way towards making the world feel populated. Even running into a few grunts on a crumbling road is a memorable encounter if I can't press a single button and rain down annihilation.

I mention this because it's easy to be hyperbolic when discussing how empty many open-world games feel. With Breath of the Wild, of course the game isn't actually a blank map with a few hills, but every encounter (field bosses and puzzles included) feels trivial. The world doesn't feel worth exploring visually or even materially, as the upgrades are temporary or in such tiny increments that it takes an eternity for them to actually impact gameplay. Contrast this with Elden Ring, where a single item can spark a change in playstyle that remains pertinent for the remainder of the playthrough. Each path projects the potential for a pivotal payoff, encouraging the player to persistently peruse each pocket of the map. This is poignantly missing in nearly every other open-world game I've touched. Not to say that every item is perfect, but the possibility makes you want to keep searching, which is the whole point of an exploration-centric game. Fun items can be found both in dungeons and through fighting foes, fearsome or feeble.

Dunkey said that this game can't be spoiled because it never ends, and to an extent that's true. Any named area of the map is most likely large enough to house its own game. The sheer size combined with the classic Souls-franchise style of storytelling, the nebulous (although not nonexistent) narrative, and the immaculately designed environments make this the most massive spectacle of a game where even at the climax I didn't feel like the main character.

150 hours and I still have a few bosses to go.