FromSoftware had to put in five years of hard work behind it and when Elden Ring came, the game became an instant hit. Elden Ring’s open-world gameplay was compared by fans and developers to that of other iconic AAA open-world games created by Western developers like the Horizon series, and the Assassin’s Creed series.
FromSoftware’s Elden Ring became the target of outspoken criticism on social media by a few developers from Western developers. Their strongest criticisms were directed at the game’s difficult combat, clunky game user interface, and absence of common features like a quest log.
Western developers not happy with Elden Ring’s success
YouTuber @ENDYMIONtv in their video states that “Elden Ring pissed off an entire continent of game developers”. This is because many game developers criticized the game on different game websites and on X. These developers added that the game’s success was not earned because it had problems from PC stability, mysterious quest design, and game UI.
ENDYMIONtv states, “the constant game design philosophies of Western game devs and their need to flood the player with quest markers, handholding, telling the player what something in the distance is before they even reach it”.
According to the YouTuber, these things make the game feel less adventurous for the players and makes it more of a guided tour and remove all the surprises of discoveries. Hidetaka Miyazaki’s Elden Ring makes them angry because it constantly doesn’t handhold the players and doesn’t tell them in which direction to go keeping the element of surprise intact.
The YouTuber also adds, “Too many of these open-world games go for quantity over quality in basically every regard”. To substantiate this they add that the side quests in games like Valhalla, Watch Dogs, and even Horizon Forbidden West aren’t very memorable. Moreover, a few of these games have better graphics than Elden Ring, however, the game’s world feels more interesting and vast than any of the other Western games.
The YouTuber then adds, “This problem of homogenizing genres and gameplay ideas stem from not only from the Western game dev making process but the industry as a whole”. This is happening because games are expensive and they take a lot of time to develop. Therefore, Western developers do what they think might work and do not take risks. This makes these games less interesting as fans know what to expect from the subsequent releases.
The YouTuber concludes by saying, “I really hope the success of Elden Ring not only shakes up the industry but gives strong message to the people in charge of making the actual big decisions”. By this, the game studios can allow their developers to be creative and try to make games that are unique. This is because fans do not want to see any more of the live service games being made in the hope of more sales.
Elden Ring is not the only game to receive criticism
From an alternate angle, players worldwide found Elden Ring’s gameplay to be extremely alluring and lucrative because of its lack of immediate approachability.
However, this isn’t the first time FromSoftware has been on the receiving end for its games. The developer has faced criticism in the past for creating games that are unduly challenging.
A few video game critics were not happy with FromSoftware’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice when it first came out. For the unknown, Sekiro is a stealth action game about a prosthesis-wearing shinobi in a fanciful depiction of Japan’s Warring States era. According to the critics, they were not happy with the game as didn’t have an “easy mode.”
According to these critics covering video games, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice’s combat and gameplay become less accessible and irritating for players with lower skill levels due to its high base difficulty.
