There are very, very few games that I can think of that have actually benefitted from being open world. Dark Souls/soulslikes are not one of them.
Elden Ring, while being a really good game, falls into the trap that almost every other open world falls in. It’s bloated, repetitive, and full of collectibles that you have to look up where to find them.
Dark Souls was a masterpiece of non-linear and connected level design without being repetitive. It had collectibles, but they were never so scattered and isolated that you had to look up guides. Whenever I looked up a guide in DS, it was about how to manage bosses and utilize weapons. In Elden Ring, I’m looking up where half the stuff in the game is. And that’s just a curse that open worlds have.
Another thing that sucks about open worlds is fast travel. You’re telling me your world is so boring to walk and ride through that you put in a system that lets me skip it? Dark Souls did have warping between bonfires, but the game had levels that you had to master and perfect. Not skip.
But here’s my biggest problem with Elden Ring. The game doesn’t have any allegory for determination or not giving up. Dark Souls has “don’t you dare go hollow”, and many characters say it to you. Elden Ring doesn’t have anything like that. It just feels like you’re doing the quest because you might as well.
