The story in Elden Ring is terrible and ruins the game

A reader is frustrated with FromSoftware’s approach to storytelling and explains why he isn’t playing the new release Shadow Of The Erdtree.

Shadow Of The Erdtree comes out this week and I’m really not sure if I’m going to get it. It has had great reviews and I certainly enjoyed parts of Elden Ring, but I also found other parts extremely annoying, namely the storytelling. I have no idea what was going on in the game and talking to others it’s clear I’m not alone. It’s so bad that it’s putting me off playing other From games and the DLC.

For those who don’t know, there are very few cutscenes or plot in Elden Ring. There’s an intro, which is basically a fantasy world word salad, and some character dialogue, but none of it is given any context and you have to figure out what’s going on yourself by reading the item descriptions, all sorts of things.

However, these still don’t make it clear and after reading how involved the fan community is, I started reading wikis and watching YouTube videos. As interesting as it all was, there’s still no real consensus on what’s going on, with everything being described as ‘possibly means this’ or ‘maybe that means’.

What strikes me is that it is not even really clear what the Elden Ring is. Not only that, but it’s not even presented as a secret or an amazing revelation, it’s just this ambiguous magical object that can do… things.

Why you want to be the Elden Lord is never explained, who you are is never explained, it’s not even made clear what a defiled is. I find this frustrating, but what’s even worse is that it’s all information that the character you’re playing would know. It is not a mystery to them, only to you as a player. Other things in the game are of course a mystery, but not the basis of what is going on and what your mission is.

It gets worse when you try to do some side quests, where you might as well make up your own story, despite the big difference it will make. Again, I’ve read the supposed statements and I’m both none the wiser and have no idea how they draw some of their conclusions.

It obviously doesn’t impact gameplay, and I’m not one to demand complex stories in all my games. If it’s a real action game, I don’t want to stop for ten minute cutscenes all the time. But Elden Ring isn’t like that. There’s some really complicated lore in there, but the game doesn’t explain any of it and it’s all so muddled that I’m not convinced it makes sense even to the developers.

I beat Elden Ring, but as I imagined, the ending explained nothing and the pride I felt in beating the final boss was quickly diminished by not knowing what the hell I had just done and why.

From what I can tell the DLC is about a character that barely appears in the first game and is perhaps a prequel? And it looks like it’s going to change things up by adding even more characters? I’m not so sure and to be honest I’m not sure I really care.

I don’t want to spend another 60 hours beating a game only to understand less of what’s going on than when I started. No one wants to be spoon-fed information like a dummy, but go too far in the other direction and in my opinion it all becomes pointless nonsense.

By reader Gadfly

Reader characteristics do not necessarily represent the opinions of GameCentral or Metro.

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