Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree proves that when you like someone you really forgive them everything
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree seems to be the practical demonstration that sympathy is a fundamental factor for success.
Likability is fundamental in determining the success or otherwise of a person, a product or a work of art. Think of poor Van Gogh, who obtained posthumous recognition thanks to the contents of the letters sent to his brother Theo, made public by his sister-in-law. Now he is the most popular painter in the world, but when he was still breathing, very few appreciated him, gruff and grumpy as he was. In the world of video games exactly the same thing happens and on multiple levels. This is demonstrated by Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, which forgives many defects that in other games, I’m not saying would have been disastrous, but at least seen as problematic.
The eyes of faith
Let’s take the user interface, not really functional (to put it mildly), or the fluidity issue on PC . Here, a game whose uncertain fluidity would make sense to criticize, because it requires extreme precision in the execution of offensive and defensive moves, does not create much debate, where elsewhere the same has been complained about for games in which having 30 or 60 Fps little or nothing changes.
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree – Launch Trailer
Even the much loved difficulty is becoming a problem for some , because by dint of raising the bar one ends up exceeding that limit which is considered acceptable even by many players who perhaps had few problems with the base game, especially if to improve the level of challenge is resorted to small mistakes, which end up generating great frustration.
Flow is flow, after all, and somehow you have to consider it even if you are FromSoftware and even if your players are highly motivated, otherwise you end up making them spend €40 on an expansion that they end up hating, because they can’t play after you. Consider that we are not talking about casual players, but about people who have advanced far enough in Elden Ring to kill a very tough boss to access the contents of the expansion.
The problem with FromSoftware’s games is that they are often viewed through the eyes of the faithful, so to speak. Many consider them to be initiation tests, almost a post-modern expression of tribal virility, so much so that one of the strengths of these games is their extremely social nature, that is, they encourage the diffusion of videos and images that create a real mythology linked to the experience offered, external to the game itself, with heroes like LetMeSoloHer, priests like Miyazaki and many bards who all play the same ballad.
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree proves that when you like someone you really forgive them everything
With this I don’t mean to say that it’s bad or good, I’m certainly not reviewing it, but only that at a certain point reading the user comments on Steam appears to be a really obvious discord with the general discourse that has accompanied Shadow of the Erdtree in recent months , until the moment of exit. As mentioned, the question I ask myself is very simple: if FromSoftware hadn’t been a “nice” software house, would there have been all this goodwill towards it even in the face of certain problems? Or are we talking about minor problems to which we can turn a blind eye?
Also Read:
Is Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree too difficult? Use these mods on PC to improve the experience