Games Inbox: Is the Elden Ring DLC too difficult for its own good?

16/06/2024

Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree – even starting it is a struggle (Bandai Namco)

The Thursday letters page suggests Square Enix make a purposefully low budget Final Fantasy, as one reader hopes that Bioshock 4 has not been cancelled.

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PLEASE NOTE: Due to staff holidays there will be no new Inbox on Friday. Normal service will resume on Monday morning.

A step too far

I’ve been reading about what you have to do in order to start the Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC for Elden Ring and it seems like it’s just a step too far. It’s not even that you have to beat the game (which I have done) but you have to have beaten a boss that I never even knew existed the first time I played it.

I’m sure the expansion will be worth it, in terms of the amount of content, but so many people are going to buy it and then realise they have tens of hours of work ahead of them to even start it. It’s certainly made me take pause, given the limited amount of time I have.

My problem with FromSoftware is that it’s often not clear if they’re making things hard on purpose or if they just don’t realise some things are asking too much. Obviously, it’s easy for them to always say it’s the former but I’m not convinced. I feel that they should rein it in a bit or they’re really going to go too far.

Dunston

Age-old problem

Is anyone else starting to think twice about Monster Hunter, now that the graphics are getting better and better, in terms of it being basically a hunting simulator? I know it’s in the name but previous games have always been relatively abstract but now that everything is looking more realistic I’m starting to wonder about hunting all these creatures and using their body parts to use armour and weapons.

It’s a similar problem with Pokémon, where they’ve been skirting around the issue for years, but there at least the graphics are very not real and the creature designs are harder to take seriously.

A lot of these games were designed 20 or more years ago, when the world was a different place and I’m not sure they’re going to still be acceptable in another 20.

Torbor

I’m alright, Jack

I’ll never understand the obsession with new releases over existing games. Have people really played everything and need something new to play? I for one have a list of about 20 games that I really want to play but haven’t got round to. Add this to the upcoming Star Wars Outlaws, new GTA, and SteamWorld Heist 2 and I have more than enough see me through.

I recently picked up Gran Turismo 7 and have yet to give it a proper go, but first impressions are it doesn’t seem to be a very good game. I can see that it’s a very well-made simulator and everything is there that could make an excellent entertaining game, but it seems so unbalanced (ironically). I’m not very good at racing games but can fly past the CPU cars whilst banging off barriers and driving through dirt.

It’s ridiculously easy to win the races even when I’ve ramped it up to maximum difficulty, literally zero challenge. Maybe this changes as you progress? On the flip side the tests for the licences are really tough to obtain gold, so I know that I’m not ‘doing it properly’. Also, you get so many cars arbitrarily thrown at you for ‘winning’ the races that you don’t feel any achieved ownership of them.

I seem to remember in an early Gran Turismo game where you would race, earn money, and then buy a second-hand car of your choice to tune up and take as far as you can. Gran Turismo 7 seems very strange, I just hope it improves.

Alex

GC: Is it really that hard to understand that people might be worried that the rate at which new triple-A games are being released is decreasing?

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Go old school

I read the letter from AudioSpanks, based on former Square Enix employee Jacob Navok’s post with interest.

While I agreed with a lot of Navok’s comments on how it’s difficult for large publishers to succeed in modern markets, I would say that it’s demonstrably not true that publishers have no remaining options other than raising prices.

Some alternative suggestions would include going multiformat for the PlayStation-only releases and creating more special editions and merchandise.

Navok said that many people only buy 9/10 games and would rather go back to live service games like Fortnite than buy a 7/10 game. But putting less well reviewed or older titles on Game Pass or PlayStation Network would encourage more people to try them. And also something very rarely used by publishers that would cost them peanuts to produce is box sets of existing titles.

The Square Enix back catalogue is really underutilised compared to other companies. Many of their older titles were not even released worldwide or are extremely expensive to buy physically. These games could get digital re-issues, or if they wanted to go all-in then a Square Enix subscription service that allows access to games over a year or two old would attract plenty of interest.

And it’s not true that Final Fantasy games all have to have huge budgets – there have been plenty of spin-offs over the years that clearly cost less to make.

If I was in charge of Square Enix I would commission a new ‘retro’ style Final Fantasy aimed at classic fans with deliberately old-fashioned graphics and turn based combat. While it might not sell as much as Final Fantasy 16, the development costs would be tiny in comparison. There could even be a Kickstarter to prove demand is there and not have to use lots of investor’s money.

Jean-Paul Satire

GC: We’d certainly agree that the collector’s editions only being available before a game is out – and before you know you like it – is very odd, but that is changing somewhat with companies like Limited Run.

Comic book canon

Sorry I can’t remember if I saw this in the Inbox or Underbox but the person who mentioned about the new powers Max has in the new Life Is Strange game trailer, she has these powers in the Life Is Strange graphic novels, which are set after the first game.

I am halfway through reading them, there are six volumes so I better finish them off before the new game releases, so I am up on all the backstory of the new game as I thoroughly enjoyed the first game (and others) but never thought they would go back to the Max character in a new game because of the ending

of the first game.

Andrew J.

PS: Just seen Neon White on physical for PlayStation 5 is currently £13.99 on Amazon. Yes, you can get it cheaper on digital when it is on sale, but if you want a physical copy like me that is an excellent price.

The truth is out there

I just have one question to ask Microsoft after their showcase – why so serious?

I know this could probably be levelled at them at any time over the last 20 years, but almost all their first party games seemed grimdark, overly serious and devoid of humour. From the first minute it was guns, war, guns, death, violence, more guns… I counted about 45 minutes in before the first hint of a joke or light-hearted moment.

I know it’s known as the Shooter Box but c’mon, video games can also be fun, colourful, and offer some positive escapism from the difficult world outside.

Don’t get me wrong, there were some impressive games in there with great graphics, but if they’re trying to expand their audience on Xbox, which going by their recent sales numbers might be a good idea, then they’re not trying very hard.

It all just adds to the feeling that Microsoft are a joyless company, whose execs take themselves far too seriously. After everything they’ve said and done over the last 12 months, I had to laugh when Phil opened with the line ‘the truth isn’t what it seems.’

Still, at least they’ve got some first party games on the horizon, which is more than can be said for Sony right now. And I’m excited to see a new Transformers game coming out… what’s that you say? Mecha-what?

Stephen

Shocking set-up

I hope that the new Bioshock has not been cancelled, as part of Take-Two’s cost-cutting measures. I realise that the original creator is no longer involved but he didn’t do Bioshock 2 either and I thought that was very good.

I also liked the idea of an Antarctica setting, with a riff on the Eloi and Morlocks from The Time Machine. That all seemed an interesting set-up to me. I don’t know if that rumour was true or not but I hope that if the sequel does happen it’s something like that and not just back to Rapture yet again.

Dosez

Uncertain welcome

Last year, I wrote in to the Inbox expressing my belated love for Life Is Strange: True Colors.

GameCentral replied underneath suggesting I play the original game and Before The Storm, which I did and I now love them way more than True Colors. So much so that I’ve gone and bought all the pre-order bonus trinkets, T-shirts, and stickers from eBay, RedBubble, and Etsy, respectively. (I did also play the second game and its DLC but apart from the two Life Is Strange 1 references, I didn’t really enjoy it.)

Again, with the choices I made in the first game, I always wondered (for weeks) how certain characters’ lives turned out but despite the official Life Is Strange comics, I didn’t read them and decided it would be nice to leave all that to wonder and speculation.

I’m currently following the official Life Is Strange page on Facebook in the hope of seeing a new game in the series to meet new characters.

Over the weekend just gone, I was checking my Facebook Feed and was surprised to learn a new game is coming out but simultaneously surprisingly disappointed to see the next game will feature… Max Caulfield who now looks different.

Some of the fans are happy to re-see her and have been asking for this for ages but others, like me, are not.

The reason being I fear/feel that this is going down The Last Of Us route where gamers liked Ellie in the first game (which I love) but then hated her in the second one (which I won’t play).

Sometimes, good characters/storylines need to be left alone once it’s all been played out, otherwise the creators risk losing the magic that made the original so special in the first place.

The game will be out in October 2024 so I’ll await GameCentral’s review of it with some trepidation.

LeighDappa

Inbox also-rans

If Nintendo announce Metroid Prime 4 this month, and don’t mention the Switch 2, surely that means upgrades must be free? Or otherwise they’re not giving people who buy the Switch 1 version fair warning.

Keeps

Am I the only one that doesn’t think Astro Bot is all that cute? He’s kind of a bland design. Mind you, I don’t like Grogu either, so it’s probably just me.

Toll45much

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