Gaming Under
the Influence
[podcast]E.117

Elden Ring is GOTY 2022

Elden Ring is special. It isn’t just a great souls game. It doesn’t simply absorb eclectic parts to come across as new. Instead it actuates latent possibilities in the soulslike genre, both in terms of gameplay mechanics and creative concept.

The circumscriptive melee combat and traversal that characterize the series have been employed to symbolize new modes of engaging with the vast world from has built here (mounted combat and increasing mastery of the expansive map via fast travel and healing refills are our central concerns).

And what a world it is: a world rendered derelict by the contravention of natural order is the centerpiece here. The metaphysical questions of alterity and sameness prove to be Miyazaki's eternal conceptual preoccupations, while the the Lands Between constitute their appliation to subject matter (vs gameplay conventions) from the mind of GRRM. The world is wracked by the Shattering, a revolution of parts against the whole, demigods against the order of their divine parentage. The cosmos falls apart, Elden conveys, when the finite seeks to dictate a new order and universality premised only on its subject-position. The subsequent absorption of difference by sameness is explosive and horrific (see Godrick).