New Video! What Returning to Dark Souls Taught Me About Elden Ring (ad-free!) (Patreon)

Hey everyone!

Sorry for the radio silence the past wee while but it's finally here (for you, it'll be going live on the channel later today)! Elden Ring is, deservedly, widely considered to be the peak of developer From Software's creative output—featuring the most fluid combat and the most densely packed, deeply interconnected world yet. This got me thinking—with these obvious refinements, wouldn't it be fairly difficult to go back to the early days of this franchise, with all the clunkiness (both technical and inherent to the game's design) that comes with it? Well, I decided to go back to 2011's Dark Souls—analysing boss and world design, levelling, combat mechanics, etc.—to find out. Interestingly, it turns out that while both games share obvious visual and mechanical DNA, they could not feel more different from one another—a revelation that has further complicated my views on both an old favourite, and a new classic.

So yeah, this one ended up waaaay bigger than I expected. Thought it'd be a nice, quick ten minute affair but the end result was quadruple that. It turned out to be a bit of a nightmare to actually finish—partially because the scope kept morphing, and partially because of how nervous I am to release a video that (while stating my clear love for Elden Ring) is very openly critical of certain aspects of Elden Ring's design.

I didn't work particularly healthily on this, shall we say. It kinda consumed me from the minute I hit publish on the Gran Turismo video weeks back, and I ended up having to cram about three or four normal videos' worth of work into a fraction of the time I would normally spend doing that work.

I'm also fully expecting people to take issue with certain observations I make here but, hey, gotta be honest. But I'm glad for it to be done and ready to publish. While I don't particularly like going back to older videos, I've tended to find that the videos I'm most nervous about publishing actually end up being the ones whose theses I end up sticking by the most staunchly over time. I look back on all the shit I got for that Death Stranding analysis, for example, and I think "...well, even three years on, I still stand by everything I said there!"

Anyway, as this video script was already charged last month, you won't be getting charged for this actual video. Means my income will inevitably take a hit (temporarily, don't worry) as I may only be able to get the one other video out before the end of the month, but that's on me. I'm just sorry this thing took so long to get done. I sincerely hope you enjoy it.

The video I'm working on getting done for the end of the month is a lot shorter and snappier though, which is always a fun challenge in itself. Got one on Hitman GO that will be going up after that one too. I apologise again for the lack of material to show for the yakuza cinema video I've talked about for months now but I promise it is coming—research has been a long process and it did have to take a back seat while I worked on this Elden Ring Dark Souls piece but I'm super excited to get back into it and actually start finalising the script. I'm really hoping to get it out by the end of June, but I'm certainly not going to make any promises in that regard.

I am immensely thankful for not only your generous support (that really does allow this show to continue) but your saintly patience. You are all the best and I hope you're all excited for the wealth of content to come!

Thanks again,

Hamish

Writing on Games