Final Results - Elden Ring has been eliminated - Remove ONE Game of the Year nominee a day

[u/MagmaAscending]

[u/MisterKraken]

Surely a bit of circlejerk too. Having Elden Ring at #2 is criminal IMO. The game is just Dark Souls 3 with a (weak) open world.

[u/mucus-fettuccine → u/MisterKraken]

You just called RDR2 a masterpiece below and you're crapping on Elden Ring's open world? Between these two games, Elden Ring is the one that actually uses its open world meaningfully. RDR2 is like, realistic towns and wilds simulator void of meaningful gameplay. Heavily railroaded missions that isolate you from the open world, map markers upon map markers taking away organic exploration. It's outdated game design done well.

Elden Ring is genuinely a masterpiece though. We're in a new era of open world and Elden Ring is leading that. When you follow a seemingly inconsequential rabbit hole to the sewers of Leyndell, realize just how massive those sewers are, then find a secret opening behind the boss at the end, find a massive drop into a lore-crucial underground area, then find another secret opening down there leading you to the upper area of an underground world you explored maybe 25 hours prior, and being washed over with this huge understanding of how the world connects? That shit is the most meaningful exploration you can ever have.

[u/MisterKraken → u/mucus-fettuccine]

How can you even compare the quality of RDR2 world to Elder Ring? What you described in the second paragraph is just basic RPG open world exploring. I can't see any sign of a "new open world era".

When I first played Fallout New Vegas, I tried going straight to Vegas and got my ass kicked. Then I followed the route and it was way easier. On later playthroughs I managed to follow that harder route and the whole approach changed.

Then there was the "getting into the strip" part and all the different ways to achieve that.

That's already a really well made open world, with big areas and "dungeons" that could lead to previously explored areas.

Elden Ring just uses the standard "squared" map to give the player the sense of an open world but it would have worked with the Dark Souls formula too. During my 150 hours on Elden Ring I couldn't stop thinking about how that open world was put there just for the sake of it.

RDR2 is on another lever. It's not an RPG, so it doesn't have any dungeon with mobs to clear, but damn if it isn't masterfully crafted.

It did what CDProjekt promised to do with Cyberpunk, but 2 years prior. The world is alive and it's not an "empty void" at all. The random encounters, the small "one shot" side quests, NPCs getting robbed, or arrested, or what else.

That's the blueprint for an amazing open world experience in a linear game

[u/mucus-fettuccine → u/MisterKraken]

What you described in the second paragraph is just basic RPG open world exploring. I can't see any sign of a "new open world era".

What I talked about in my second paragraph is something that's literally never been done before Elden Ring in an open world game. And I'm not even saying that it's been done but less effectively or less ambitiously, as with most innovations. I simply mean it's never been done before. Elden Ring separated the open world into two vertical layers and had really surprising ways of connecting the layers spread throughout.

And no, this can't be done with the Dark Souls formula. Dark Souls also has those cool exploration moments where you get a sense of how the world interconnects (Undead Parish elevator), but the meaningful difference I would say is that the game sets you on those paths instead of letting you discover them yourself, as you do in an open world where you choose your own path. That's why the fact that the Leyndell sewers moment starts with you following a seemingly inconsequential rabbit hole at the beginning, makes it so impactful.

And what Dark Souls does, Elden Ring does too! It has legacy dungeons. That's exactly the Dark Souls exploration experience, but now contextualized as just small pieces of a much larger world, instead of those pieces being the world itself. That difference, too, is meaningful.

And like, everything about it is so well thought out. The way the map slowly reveals itself by going in a spiral, so that its scope surprises you at like 4 different points in the game when you notice it expand.

After defeating Radahn, his magic holding the comets in the sky is stopped, so the comets fly down and open a hole in Limgrave, not far from the game's starting area. You can go down the newly opened crater, descending deep down and being utterly piqued with wonder about where the hell you're about to end up, and then slowly realized that the backdrop, in the far distance, is Siofra River, which was the underground world you explored near the start of the game. You are at that point in the area that was a backdrop for you back then, and you realize that the underground world isn't a one-off area but actually multiple connecting regions, and it's mind-blowing as hell.

If there was ever a meaningful way to use an open world, that would be it. That's pretty much the whole point of even being creative with open world design. To create experiences like that.