Fighting Feels Real at Elden Ring


In the last two years, the pandemic has brought forth many works of art that seek to definitively capture humanity’s struggle. there was this Movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio She turns pink as she screams at the top of her lungs for people to look at the comet speeding toward Earth. It was so much on the nose that it caused little thought: Yes, we were divided, we were probably doomed. So what?

No medium has come as close to perfect coverage of Our Situation as video games. In the beginning, when most of us were in quarantine and cooking mediocre sourdough, We played Animal CrossingThis includes finding comfort in simple tasks like fishing and gardening while stranded on an island. We are playing this year Hand Ringis a brutally difficult game that gets harder the more you play. This sums up what it’s like to live in a pandemic.

Elden Ring has a story about the ring, but more importantly its design: It’s an open world game, so you can do whatever you want whenever you want. Players will ride horses through a poisonous swamp, sprint over molten lava, and cross a collapsing bridge surrounded by tornadoes, fighting or dodging enemies along the way.

Whatever you choose to do, you will probably die trying to do it, sometimes for hours on end. This is because the slightest wrong timing of pressing a button will cause you to fall to death or open you up to attack. Even the most experienced players will die dozens of times in a dungeon before reaching the main villain, the boss, at the end of a game level.

None of that makes Elden Ring seem like crowd-pleasing, but the video game, a collaboration between creative director Hidetaka Miyazaki and Game of Thrones writer George RR Martin, is on track to become the year’s bestseller. 12 million copies sold Within a month of its February launch.

At some point in the game, you encounter a dragon. You have a choice to fight or flee. At first, you’ll probably retreat, and eventually, after you’ve got enough strength and the appropriate weapon or spell, you’ll return to kill the lowly fire-breathing and enjoy your victory. But after a few minutes, you will be ambushed and killed by something evil. hawk holding a razor in its claws.

It’s hard to imagine Elden Ring succeeding in another era. Offices, schools and restaurants have reopened as vaccination rates have increased and hospitalizations have fallen in some regions in Year 3 of the pandemic. For many Americans, the dragon was killed. Yet in other parts of the world, a new strain of the coronavirus ride another waveand in New York, cases are starting to climb again.

While some of us let our guard down to look like a normal life, we brace ourselves for that stupid bird in the corner that can still kill us. Our hard-learned lesson about the pandemic – disappointment and anticipating more struggles – has trained us well for Elden Ring.

Where is DiCaprio movie, “Don’t Look Up” Polarizing for picking a side that criticizes all those who deny the apocalypse, Elden Ring’s choose-your-own-advent format is more inclusive to a public who can’t agree on anything. There is no right or wrong in Elden Ring.

To defeat a boss, you can carefully study their moves and plan an attack, or “cheese” with an inexpensive trick that requires no skill and guarantees victory. Either way, a win is a victory. Such a flexible game could resonate with players around the world, and bring them together at a time when people choose their own truth about masks, shots, and the information they read online in general.

Players mostly suffer from Elden Ring alone, but there are parts that are so difficult, like an ultra-hard boss fight, that people will need to seek help from others online. To accommodate this, the game erects small statues in challenging spaces that act as call points to bring in a collaborator. When the quest is complete, the good Samaritan disappears.

Struggle has always been a central theme in Mr. Miyazaki’s games, famed for the modest success of the Dark Souls trilogy, the predecessors of Elden Ring, but so has the need for people to turn to each other.

Miyazaki, who did not respond to requests for comment, said: interviews He said he was inspired by a personal experience he had while climbing a snow-covered hill years ago. One car in front of him got stuck, he and someone behind him got stuck too, but then another car behind drove forward and started pushing the third car. Similar help eventually got everyone over the hill.

“For a minute, we disappear into each other’s lives and we still make an impact,” said Keza MacDonald, video games editor of The Guardian and author of the book. “You Are Dead”, a book about Mr. Miyazaki’s plays. “It’s not really a single player against the game. The entire community of players against the game.”

When I finished Elden Ring for about five weeks online with a little help from friends and strangers, I never felt more anxious or moody than the game. I started making plans with friends I hadn’t seen in two years.

Most of us have faced the pandemic alone because restrictions and health risks make it difficult to travel and gather indoors. It was an impossible situation to navigate and the struggle continues, but we have been together for a long time. Why don’t you come back to each other?



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