Liner Notes: Elden Ring
External Sites of Grace
Podcast is here.
We played Elden Ring this (last) month and considered the merits and limitations of the daunting and rewarding open world FromSoftware has crafted. For those unaware, FromSoft developed the Dark Souls games, Bloodborne and Sekiro, among others. That lineage, of the Soulsborne, as the kids say, is the one we’re mostly interested in discussing here, and it’s where the creators we’ve highlighted below have spent their time and energy.
Elden Ring is a particular kind of acquired taste, but it’s also one that has appealed to a lot of people — matching nearly half of all Dark Souls games sales (12 million copies) in the first week. In part this has to do with the open world of it all. The possibility space is incredible here, allowing for a ton of builds, approaches, and storytelling to develop and crawl up through cracks.
On that note check out some videos from YouTuber VaatiVidya, one about game mechanics and builds, the other a story set in Elden Ring’s world.
Vaati (or should I say Vidya?) goes deep into Elden Ring and it isn’t just these videos. The channel is an excellent complement to playing Elden Ring and without the commentary and the additional information provided I don’t know that I would have gotten as far or seen as much as I did (in 45 hours or so). Truly community-building and informative; it takes a ton of experience and effort with these games to make the content they’re putting out here (lore and build guides alike). If you are the kind of player that doesn’t mind spoilers or tips, some guidance along an illuminated path, then I don’t think you could go wrong starting here (or even just visiting a couple times during your playthrough).
The second creator, Let me solo her, is another Souls series standby on YouTube, quite generously helping players Elden Ring defeat difficult bosses, in particular Malenia, who looks incredibly difficult, as well as providing more walkthroughs and other content. They don’t have a ton up on YouTube, but what they do have is a mix of build or elemental guides (PVP in this case) or montages in an easy-to-follow format, viewer Q and A sessions, and gameplay streams and runs (for Sekiro as well), and more:
This month we’re playing through the Castlevania Advance Collection. On a mix of emulator, portable (possibly), as well as on Steam. This game is part of the recent bandwagon trend of re-releasing old content from a back catalog, with emulator tweaks and changes to make things a tad more accessible.
If you don’t know the Gameboy Advance games, they’re inspired heavily by Symphony of the Night, which many consider to be the best 2D Castlevania game (on PlayStation 1). The flavour of these games is heavily influenced by Koji Igarashi, long-time series producer/steward (until a little while ago), and this lineage of games is the reason ability-gated openish world action roleplaying games are commonly called metroidvania among fans and games industry people and not something else.
You can catch up on more Super Combo Tech content on YouTube, with aggregates of streams, reactions to speed running videos/strategies, and formats that Toben has been diving into including speed run analysis/walkthroughs slowed down to help newcomers understand strategies and games systems (SpeedWalks), as well as genre explorations through examinations of three games: good, better, and the best in the genre (Perfect Trinity).