Eén van de grootste titels die we dit jaar kunnen verwachten, is ongetwijfeld Elden Ring, de nieuwe bikkelharde actie-RPG van FromSoftware. Maker Hidetaka Miyazaki maakt dus van elke gelegenheid gebruik om zijn game nog even in de schijnwerpers te zetten en hij deed dat ook in de laatste editie van Edge Magazine waar hij sprak over heel wat details.

Eén aspect waar Miyazaki het over had, was de vertraging die Elden Ring had opgelopen. Deze zou immers te danken zijn aan de ambitieuze plannen die het team achter de game had, waardoor er toch meer tijd nodig leek te zijn dan initieel verwacht.

“The level of freedom that we wanted to ultimately achieve in Elden Ring exceeded what we were initially planning for. This [complexity] gradually built up, and the time needed to debug and QA in particular took a lot more effort.

There were a number of challenges that, of course, came with the scope of this game and of the world. There are a lot of areas in which we’ve had to use trial and error since creating the Dark Souls series, iterating on those mechanics and formulas, expanding on them in this new sense of scale. A lot of it was related to the game tempo – the rhythm and the flow of the game, to keep the player from getting bored, to keep them interested, exploring and having fun. And, of course, in this brand-new huge world that we’ve created, we wanted to prioritise that fun and level of player freedom more than anything. So with that comes a lot of characters, a lot of events that you’re trying to incorporate, and you don’t want anything to tread on the toes of anything else – you want it all to mingle and to mesh nicely with the player and their own motivations as well. But you want it to be there, and you want it to provide that stimulation for progressing forward and exploring. So that was probably one of the biggest challenges.”

Die gloednieuwe, gigantische wereld waar hij over spreekt, kan bovendien te voet, maar ook op de rug van je paard getraverseerd worden. Dit is toch wel een nieuwigheid ten opzichte van eerdere FromSoftware games, maar Miyazaki verzekert ons dat je nooit verplicht zal worden om gebruik te maken van dat paard. Het paard is er eerder als een mogelijke optie om verschillende situaties aan te pakken.

“At no point do we want to enforce horse riding or mounted combat on the player. Rather, we want to build situations that may ask for mounted traversal or may suggest that mounted combat is a viable strategy, and it’s up to the player whether they want to pursue those strategies. They should never feel as though something is being forced upon them. In terms of map design and encounter design itself, due to the scale and structure of the world, it’s something that should encourage traversal using Torrent. And also the mounted combat will hopefully play into the players’ variety of choices and how they approach these various situations, with that level of freedom, as well. So in that sense, yes, we’ve designed the world with that in mind.”

We kunnen vast wel stellen dat de verwachtingen voor Elden Ring hooggespannen staan en daarbij komt ook nog eens het succes van de Demon’s Souls Remake op de PS5 kijken. Die game had namelijk fantastisch mooie graphics, waardoor het team achter Elden Ring toch wel de lat een stuk hoger heeft gelegd om dat te kunnen evenaren. Miyazaki zelf heeft de remake nog niet gespeeld, maar hij beseft wel dat zijn ‘graphics team’ een enorme druk voelt door het succes van de remake, ook al vindt hij zelf dat het grafische onderdeel geen ’top prioriteit’ heeft in games.

“Yes, I’m pretty sure our graphics-creation staff felt that pressure more than anyone else.

And not just with Elden Ring, but with all the games we make. Graphical fidelity is not something we put as the top priority. What we ask for on the graphics side depends on the systems and requirements of the game itself, and it takes less priority compared to the other elements of development.

So this is always an area where I feel a little bit apologetic towards my graphics team because I know they work extremely hard. And they’ve worked extremely hard on Elden Ring – our graphics-systems team and our programmers have been pushing a lot of new features to create the best-looking games we’ve ever made.”

Elden Ring verschijnt op 25 februari, lees gerust hier onze preview na.