Elden Ring as the New Skyrim

Following Elden Ring’s massive success, PC Gamer brings us this article that compares FromSoftware’s challenging action-RPG to Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in that both these games seem to be very influential on the industry around them. The article also theorizes how this success can help revitalize open world RPGs.

Here’s an excerpt:

Elden Ring will hopefully spark designers to favor more moments where you stumble into the devastatingly powerful Sword of Night and Flame instead of spending a hundred hours working up to something of similar power at the end of a skill tree. Open world games would benefit from giving you room to have influence over the world, separated from the constraints of where the play-tested path wants you to be. Even the mighty Sword of Night and Flame wasn’t an easy solution for Elden Ring’s hardest boss. Considered open world design lets you have your fun discovering something that feels like you shouldn’t have it yet, and incorporates that into the broader construction of the game.

Even if Elden Ring’s influence works its way into some of the inevitable sequels and remakes that get the green light every year, one big success might convince those publishers that trading on purely familiar features isn’t the only way to grab people’s attention—that we’re all ready to be broken out of our routines and taught something new, even if we don’t know it.