Elden Ring (From Software + G.R.R. Martin)

[Kong Wen]

Elden Ring sounds incredible.

Where Sekiro leaned into action, Elden Ring pendulizes back towards RPG elements while maintaining From's traditional style of consequential action combat. They're also saying it's their biggest game/world ever. And, because of the deeper narrative focus (thanks Martin), it's going to be more of an open world. Character customization (fashion souls) is also back in full force.

Looking forward to.

[VictorViper]

I'll be looking for more info on combat with this one. Sekiro is awesome (and I totally need to get back into it), but even it feels more like the Souls combat pushed hard into a new direction rather than something new. I'm not opposed to further refinements of the system but Dark Souls 3 really felt stale, action-wise, after Bloodborne.

With the suggestion that Elden Ring is going with a more narrative and exploration focused approach, I'd love to see similarly dialed-back combat but still in the vein of Sekiro. Duel-based combat, but with shields and broadswords instead of shuriken and katanas sounds like a fine mix to me.

[Kong Wen]

Bloodborne and Sekiro are certainly still possible templates for Game of Souls combat mechanics.

When they say they're pulling back from the action focus of Sekiro, I don't interpret that to mean that the combat in Game of Souls will be less action-focused, but that the overall progression metric and encounter design will not be delivered via action as the core medium.

In Sekiro, you progress through a series of action-based set-pieces where environment is important. In Bloodborne, you progress through a series of environment-based set-pieces where action is important. I see Game of Souls leaning more heavily towards the latter, with environment and exploration being the way the game is chunked up and staged. They can still use improved, modernized, refined combat in that paradigm.

[VictorViper]

Sure, but they can also not do enough. I guess more bluntly, they're really going to need to raise the bar or come up with something distinct (as they did with Sekiro) to get me on board. The Martin collaboration isn't a real draw for me, and Bloodborne supplanted the Dark Souls combat formula, to the real detriment of my enjoyment of DS3. I'll surely buy it sight unseen, but we'll see if they can raise my excitement level with meatier info.