That kind of zero guidance game design and organic exploration is amazing in a game like Dark Souls. Because they’re linear levels that were connected through routes to give an open feel. You had room to explore, but you were still fundamentally on a path whether you liked it or not.
The problem with Elden Ring adopting the same design choice is that it’s fully open world. So obviously, people are going to miss things in locations they visit because it’s not part of a path that they’re on. I was backtracking in Limgrave after becoming way more powerful and found dozens of caves and bosses that I had previously missed.
Elden Ring doesn’t tell you where to find artifacts you need to get to new places. It just wants you to explore this huge world hoping you might come across it and remember its name. I had to look up where to go to find the keys into Lucaria Academy and the Lift of Dectus.
So ultimately I have to be more negative about Elden Ring than with Dark Souls because the “organic exploration” works better with linear levels that have connected design rather than a vast open world.
I never had to look up what to do in Far Cry 2. And it’s not because it told you where to go all the time or gave you a quest log or checklist like most other open worlds do. It’s because the game only allowed you to take one objective at a time. You could choose which kind of mission you wanted to do, you completed it, and you got paid for it. You didn’t have 50 other objectives happening at the same time.
